13 Months Haunted Summary, Characters and Themes

13 Months Haunted by Jimmy Juliano is a chilling techno-horror novel that bridges the gap between supernatural folklore and digital-age paranoia. 

The story explores the eerie consequences of a cursed computer file — COOLGAME.exe — that infects not machines, but people.  Through an unsettling blend of small-town mystery, psychological suspense, and cyber-occultism, Juliano crafts a tale about the dangers of curiosity and the haunting persistence of digital ghosts. At its core, the book examines how fear, grief, and obsession can travel — not just through stories and memories, but through the endless networks of the internet, never truly dying, only evolving.

Summary

The story opens in September 2024, following Anders, a history student researching viral internet legends.  When he hears from his uncle about a forgotten online phenomenon involving a “ghost business” from a small Iowa town called Clover Creek, Anders becomes fascinated.

He discovers his distant cousin, Piper Lowery-Palmer, may have been at the center of it.  Determined to learn more, Anders visits Piper, who now lives quietly with her husband on a remote farm.

Piper agrees to tell him her story under one condition — that her name remains anonymous.  As she begins, the narrative shifts to October 2000, when the haunting first began.

In 2000, a 22-year-old Piper Lowery works at the Clover Creek Public Library.  During a visit to a local middle school, she meets a timid student named Avery Wallace, who submits a story for the library’s Halloween writing contest.

The story, “The Thing in the Closet,” tells of two sisters haunted by an icy creature that steals one away while their mother looks on.  The tale disturbs Piper, especially after learning Avery’s father and sister had both died mysteriously and that the family’s old house was rumored to be haunted.

Moved by curiosity, Piper shares the story and her reflections on her personal blog, unknowingly reigniting something far darker than she imagines.

Soon, Piper notices strange events around town.  Avery’s withdrawn behavior and her mother Susan’s overprotective presence at the library raise concern.

One day, Avery is cruelly bullied by classmates and locked in a closet, screaming that “it” was coming for her.  Piper intervenes, rescuing the terrified girl.

That night, she witnesses the shocking death of one of the bullies, Shane Brockway, after his father’s violent outburst.  Piper sees a shadowy black mist hovering over the boy’s body — a sight she cannot explain.

Though she reports the death, she withholds what she truly saw.

Her confusion deepens when anonymous commenters on her blog urge her to investigate further, leading her to the Wallaces’ former home in Grangeville.  There, she meets the new owner, who knows nothing of hauntings.

Yet, she senses that the evil that killed Avery’s family has followed them to Clover Creek.  Piper’s fears are confirmed when Susan finally confides in her, revealing the horrifying truth about the Wallace family’s past.

Months earlier, Avery’s older sister Charlotte had died after opening a strange computer file called COOLGAME. exe.

Avery, traumatized, claimed a malevolent presence had entered their lives through the file — a supernatural infection that killed her sister and, later, her father.  Richard Wallace’s death came when he opened the same file Avery had unknowingly emailed him; moments later, he crashed his car while screaming that “it” was with him.

Susan came to believe the file was not just a digital virus but a cursed entity that kills anyone who opens it — unless they are constantly in the presence of others.  Those left alone for more than thirty seconds are attacked and killed by the entity, appearing as the same dark mist Piper saw.

Susan and Avery fled their home, hoping to escape the curse, but the evil spread again when Avery, confused and manipulated by the entity, shared the file with others.  Piper realizes the pattern: the virus is contagious through human interaction and technology alike.

When Avery’s behavior turns erratic and violent, Susan is fatally injured in an attack that leaves Piper responsible for the terrified, infected girl.

Piper’s blog continues to attract attention from paranormal enthusiasts, one of whom, a man named Bill, tracks her down.  Along with another amateur investigator, Frank, they attempt to analyze the cursed file on a library computer.

When Frank opens it, he dies almost instantly, confirming the file’s lethal nature.  Avery destroys the laptop to prevent further infection, but by then, the story of COOLGAME.

exe has spread across the internet, feeding public curiosity and disbelief.

Determined to understand the phenomenon, Piper enlists her tech-savvy brother, Sam.  He examines the file without running it, discovering its horrific composition: a mix of code fragments from occult websites, disturbing video compilations, and self-replicating algorithms.

Avery, years ago, had created the original program as a prank, a simple “haunted” game that simulated a ghostly presence and encouraged users to pass it along.  But after Avery copied parts of an online ritual script into her code, the harmless game transformed into something sentient and malevolent.

It combined the primal fear of being alone with the boundless reach of the internet, becoming a supernatural virus that preys on human vulnerability.

Sam and Piper learn that the file adapts each time it’s examined, rewriting itself and incorporating new imagery from the web — murders, cult videos, missing-person clips — amplifying its power.  Sam theorizes that exposure creates a 13-month infection period, during which victims must never be alone.

Avery, who created the code, was immune to its full effects, while others suffered mental decay or death.  The countdown element in the program, originally coded by Avery, mimics this curse: thirty seconds of solitude triggers the entity’s manifestation.

After destroying their copies, Piper and Sam try to end the curse.  Avery, miraculously, recovers and moves on with her life, while Piper remains haunted, living under the rule of constant companionship.

Years later, her blog and all traces of the story vanish, buried by time and the internet’s vastness.  The events of Clover Creek fade into legend — until Anders’s research in 2024 resurrects the mystery.

When Anders finishes interviewing Piper, he remains skeptical.  Driven by curiosity, he visits the Wallaces’ old home.

Remembering Avery’s childhood story about the “thing in the wall,” he pries open a hidden compartment and finds an old laptop — the original source of COOLGAME. exe.

Taking it home, he and his sister Grace power it on.  The file still runs, displaying a hypnotic mosaic of grotesque imagery.

As they watch, they begin to feel the same suffocating presence that once tormented Avery and Piper.  The file compels them to share it, driving them to send copies through every possible digital channel — email, AirDrop, and social media.

In the novel’s final chilling sequence, Anders and Grace unknowingly unleash the curse again, sending the infected file to countless devices, including one disguised as an “Interview” attachment sent to Piper’s husband.  The haunting, thought to be long over, begins anew.

The story closes on a haunting truth: the curse of COOLGAME. exe was never destroyed — only waiting for someone curious enough to open it again.

Characters

Piper Lowery

Piper Lowery serves as the emotional and moral anchor of 13 Months Haunted, a character whose curiosity and empathy propel the narrative into the supernatural abyss.  Initially, she is presented as a young librarian adjusting to life in Clover Creek, drawn more by the charm of small-town quiet than by any thirst for danger.

Yet, beneath her calm surface lies a restlessness — an instinctive pull toward the unknown and a deep compassion for others’ pain.  Piper’s relationship with Avery Wallace begins as that of a protector and grows into something far more tragic and symbolic: she becomes both investigator and victim in the same web of fear.

Her progression from a rational observer of strange events to someone living within those very horrors is central to the book’s descent into dread.  She embodies the dangers of curiosity, the power of empathy to both save and destroy, and the haunting notion that understanding evil may bind one to it forever.

As an adult in 2024, Piper has transformed into a woman marked by survival and isolation.  Living under the constant rule of “never being alone,” she becomes a tragic reminder of the price of knowledge.

Her continued infection suggests that some experiences cannot be escaped — they only evolve, waiting to resurface.  Piper’s compassion, intellect, and guilt form a triad that defines her humanity; she is the haunted chronicler of the digital age, bearing witness to how curiosity and connection can turn deadly when mixed with forces beyond comprehension.

Avery Wallace

Avery Wallace is both the origin and embodiment of the curse that drives the events of 13 Months Haunted.  Introduced as a fragile, anxious girl overshadowed by trauma, she initially seems to be a victim of grief and superstition.

Yet, as the story unfolds, Avery’s innocence becomes intertwined with the uncanny.  Her fear of being alone, her desperate dependency on her mother, and her repeated insistence that “it came from the computer” create a portrait of a child consumed by guilt and terror — emotions that paradoxically birth the very evil she fears.

The revelation that Avery’s teenage coding experiment gave rise to COOLGAME. exe reframes her as a tragic creator: a child dabbling in something she did not understand, merging adolescent imagination with supernatural corruption.

Avery’s journey from terrified child to recovered adult mirrors the cyclical nature of trauma and technology in the novel.  As a child, she infects the world; as an adult, she survives by suppressing her past.

Her recovery, contrasted with Piper’s eternal infection, reveals the generational dynamic of fear — the young adapt and move on, while the empathetic witnesses, like Piper, remain trapped.  Avery represents both the innocence of creation and the horror of its consequences, a modern Pandora whose curiosity unleashes a virus that blurs the line between data and damnation.

Susan Wallace

Susan Wallace stands as a portrait of maternal devotion distorted by grief and terror.  After losing her husband and elder daughter, she channels all her remaining energy into protecting Avery — to the point of obsession.

Her constant shadowing of her daughter, even following her into classrooms and restrooms, becomes both touching and unsettling.  Susan’s actions stem not from madness but from a desperate understanding: that the danger stalking them is real.

Her fierce protectiveness, though rooted in love, isolates Avery further and accelerates the haunting cycle.

Susan’s eventual revelation — that she believes COOLGAME. exe is a supernatural infection that kills those who are left alone — cements her role as both guardian and herald of the book’s mythology.

Her death, accidental yet inevitable, reflects the futility of trying to outmaneuver a curse born from human creation.  Susan is a tragic figure of doomed maternal instinct: her devotion saves Avery temporarily but costs her own life, demonstrating that love, when intertwined with fear, can become its own haunting.

Anders

In the 2024 frame narrative, Anders functions as the inheritor of the curse’s legacy — the new seeker driven by curiosity, much like Piper decades before.  A history student researching viral phenomena, Anders embodies the modern obsession with rediscovery and exposure.

His fascination with the half-forgotten Clover Creek mystery reflects a cultural hunger for resurfacing forgotten horrors through digital archaeology.  Though he approaches Piper’s story with academic detachment, his decision to open the hidden laptop in the Wallaces’ old house reveals his own fatal arrogance.

Anders’s transformation from skeptic to victim underscores the novel’s cyclical structure.  He represents the next iteration of technological hubris — the belief that understanding something dangerous makes one immune to it.

His fate, shared with his sister Grace, reignites the viral contagion, suggesting that human curiosity is the true vector of the haunting.  Anders is the mirror image of Piper: younger, rational, and doomed to repeat her mistakes in a digital age that still hasn’t learned from its ghosts.

Sam Lowery

Sam Lowery, Piper’s brother, plays the role of both rational counterpoint and moral compass within 13 Months Haunted.  As a computer-savvy skeptic, he seeks logical explanations for the events surrounding his sister and Avery.

His technical expertise exposes the origins of the curse — the fusion of amateur programming with occult code — grounding the supernatural in digital realism.  Yet Sam’s curiosity, like Anders’s later, proves dangerous; his attempts to study the code accelerate its evolution, suggesting that the very act of analysis gives the haunting new life.

Sam embodies the paradox of knowledge in the digital era: understanding can both illuminate and corrupt.  His relationship with Piper is deeply human — protective, exasperated, loving — and their bond offers brief warmth amid the surrounding horror.

Ultimately, his intellectual bravery contrasts with Piper’s emotional endurance, making them complementary halves of a tragic equation: one seeks to decode evil, the other to survive it.

Richard Wallace

Richard Wallace is a character defined by disbelief and grief.  As Avery’s father, he initially represents rational resistance to the supernatural, attempting to solve his daughter’s fears through technology and science.

His determination to find a logical cause for Charlotte’s death and Avery’s behavior manifests in obsessive investigations and violent frustration, culminating in his destruction of the family computer.  His death — after unknowingly opening COOLGAME.

exe — is both ironic and horrifying, a man killed by the very technology he sought to control.

Richard’s arc symbolizes the failure of reason in the face of digital evil.  His reliance on tangible explanations blinds him to the intangible threat, and his death becomes the first proof that the line between virtual and real horror has dissolved.

He is a tragic emblem of modern parenthood: trying to protect his family with logic in a world ruled by unseen forces that logic cannot touch.

Shane Brockway and Dennis Brockway

Shane Brockway and his father, Dennis, illustrate the novel’s exploration of inherited violence and social decay.  Shane, a school bully, mirrors the cruelty of his father — a drunken, abusive man whose aggression hides fear and ignorance.

Their presence grounds the supernatural story in real-world brutality, showing that human evil often precedes the supernatural.  Shane’s death, caused by the manifestation of the black mist, blurs the boundary between divine punishment and random horror.

Dennis’s violent confrontation with Piper in the pub and his drunken accusations of witchcraft evoke the paranoia and superstition lurking in small-town America.  Together, the Brockways represent the everyday cruelty that enables greater evils to flourish — the ordinary malice that prepares the ground for supernatural contagion.

Bill Oakley

Bill Oakley’s role as a blog follower and self-proclaimed investigator underscores one of 13 Months Haunted’s central warnings: the voyeuristic impulse of the Internet age.  Initially curious and harmless, Bill becomes a symbol of online obsession turned deadly.

His participation in the unauthorized investigation of Clover Creek and his accidental survival after witnessing the curse expose the danger of collective curiosity — how digital anonymity emboldens people to trespass into horror.

Bill’s nervous guilt and attempts to explain his actions to Piper reveal a man who wanted to be part of a story without understanding its cost.  He is one of the novel’s most haunting minor figures: a digital pilgrim who follows the trail of myth and ends up face-to-face with the truth, discovering that some mysteries exist only to destroy those who seek them.

Themes

The Intersection of Technology and the Supernatural

In 13 Months Haunted, the boundary between the digital world and the supernatural becomes terrifyingly porous.  The novel suggests that the internet, a supposedly rational and modern creation, can serve as a new medium for ancient horrors.

The file COOLGAME. exe embodies this convergence—it begins as a harmless prank coded by a curious teenager and evolves into something far beyond human understanding.

The idea that evil can exist within code, that a curse can be transmitted through screens, emails, and downloads, challenges our perception of technology as a tool and instead reframes it as a vessel for uncontrollable forces.  What makes this theme particularly chilling is how naturally the supernatural fits into the digital context: an invisible virus that kills when one is alone mirrors both the mechanics of computer infections and the psychological isolation that the internet often deepens.

The narrative never fully explains whether the curse is a manifestation of human fear or a true demonic entity, leaving the reader questioning the nature of belief in an age where data replaces faith.  Piper’s obsession with documenting her experiences online—her journal entries, blog posts, and digital investigations—reflects a culture that turns even terror into content, a compulsion that allows the “infection” to spread further.

The story ultimately warns that the human desire to share, post, and connect may itself be the perfect host for something unspeakably dark.

Isolation and the Fear of Being Alone

The story’s most visceral terror stems from the primal fear of solitude.  Once infected, characters must never be left alone, turning human companionship into a literal lifeline.

This rule transforms the ordinary experience of loneliness into a mortal threat, and every separation—whether emotional or physical—becomes fatal.  The fear of being alone parallels both psychological and social forms of alienation.

Avery’s dependency on her parents after her sister’s death, Susan’s obsessive protection, and Piper’s later isolation all illustrate how the infection amplifies existing emotional fractures.  The entity that manifests in solitude symbolizes grief, guilt, and trauma made tangible.

The rule of “never be alone” exposes the desperate human need for connection, suggesting that companionship is not only comforting but essential for survival.  Yet, as the infection spreads, it becomes clear that closeness also carries risk; by saving each other, the characters inadvertently continue the curse.

This paradox transforms relationships into both refuge and contagion.  By the end, even decades later, Piper’s life has been reduced to a constant vigilance against isolation—proof that the horror has replaced human intimacy with dependence.

The theme underscores how fear of loneliness can consume identity, forcing people to cling to others not out of love but out of terror of what might emerge in silence.

The Transmission of Fear and Information

Fear in 13 Months Haunted spreads much like data—fast, invisible, and uncontrollable.  What begins as a local tragedy becomes a viral phenomenon through Piper’s blog, where curiosity and horror intermingle.

Each post, comment, and email extends the curse’s reach, mirroring how rumors and digital myths propagate online.  The novel reflects the early 2000s fascination with the internet’s limitless power to connect and distort.

The characters’ reliance on online communities for validation highlights how fear, once shared, gains legitimacy.  Piper finds more comfort in anonymous commenters than in her own brother, demonstrating how the digital age replaces personal trust with collective hysteria.

Anders’s rediscovery of the story decades later reinforces how information on the internet never truly dies—it merely lies dormant, waiting to be reawakened.  The act of opening COOLGAME.

exe and immediately sharing it reflects the compulsive nature of online behavior, where the urge to distribute overrides judgment.  Fear becomes a communicable condition, carried not only by files but by curiosity and the need to be part of something larger.

Through this lens, the novel becomes an allegory for the virality of misinformation and panic, showing that in the digital era, horror is not confined to haunted houses but circulates endlessly through the networks we build ourselves.

Trauma, Memory, and the Persistence of the Past

The story’s structure—shifting between 1999, 2000, and 2024—illustrates how trauma refuses to stay buried.  Every character is haunted not only by supernatural events but by memories they cannot escape.

Piper’s interviews and journal entries are attempts to impose order on chaos, to rationalize what she experienced, but each act of documentation only deepens her entrapment.  Avery’s childhood trauma, born from the deaths of her sister and father, manifests as a lifelong condition that dictates her every move.

The curse’s 13-month cycle reflects the cyclical nature of grief and the illusion that time can heal what remains unresolved.  Even when years pass, the infection lingers in the background, transforming memory into a form of possession.

By 2024, the past has become a virus of its own, replicating through generations as Anders unknowingly restarts the cycle.  The novel suggests that memory, like code, can be corrupted—that trying to preserve the past can sometimes reanimate its horrors.

In this way, the haunting in the story is not limited to ghosts or curses but extends to the act of remembering itself.  Trauma becomes a program running silently in the background of each life, always waiting for the right conditions to activate again.

The Corruption of Curiosity and the Cost of Knowledge

Curiosity drives every major event in 13 Months Haunted—Anders’s investigation, Piper’s blogging, Sam’s code analysis, and even Avery’s original creation of COOLGAME. exe.

Each act of inquiry, however, brings devastation.  The book portrays curiosity as both a noble pursuit and a dangerous compulsion, echoing the myth of forbidden knowledge.

Piper begins her exploration with journalistic intent, seeking truth and understanding, but ends up facilitating the spread of the curse through her blog.  Anders repeats the same mistake decades later, proving that human beings are incapable of resisting the lure of mystery.

Knowledge in this world carries a moral and existential cost: to seek understanding is to invite contamination.  The modern world’s belief in transparency and information-sharing becomes its downfall, as the virus thrives on precisely those impulses.

Even Sam, who studies the code under the illusion of control, ultimately contributes to its persistence.  The story thus questions whether enlightenment and safety can coexist in a society addicted to discovery.

The haunting truth is that the pursuit of understanding—the same instinct that built the internet—also ensures that no horror, once created, can ever truly disappear.