Set against the grim backdrop of World War II, this chilling narrative weaves a haunting tale that blurs the line between historical trauma and supernatural horror. Anchored in two interconnected storylines—one unfolding in war-torn France, the other deep in postwar Montana—The Forgotten Dead explores the idea that the violence of the past never truly dies, especially when the land itself bears witness.
In Nazi-occupied France in 1944, Captain Elias Voss, a seasoned and emotionally scarred combat medic, is stationed at a remote field hospital. The hospital is housed in a crumbling, centuries-old chateau rumored to have once been a hub of Nazi occult experiments. Beside him is Clara Hartman, a determined and grieving nurse who is still searching for answers about her fiancé’s mysterious disappearance. Both are soon swept into a terrifying mystery as soldiers begin reporting strange phenomena: voices whispering from empty corridors, shadows moving independently of any light, and the ghostly presence of a long-dead SS officer stalking the halls.
A dying member of the French Resistance utters a chilling line: “They buried them alive, and now they’re awake.” This ominous warning sends Clara digging into the chateau’s blood-soaked history, uncovering layers of violence dating back to the French Revolution and further compounded by Nazi rituals meant to resurrect the dead. Elias, ever the skeptic, begins to see things he can no longer rationalize, as the horrors of war collide with supernatural forces buried in the very soil beneath them.
The horrors escalate when it’s revealed that the Nazis conducted inhuman experiments using hallucinogenic fungi to weaponize fear, blending death, madness, and the occult in unspeakable ways. Clara’s investigation leads her to a mass grave filled with the remains of victims, the restless dead whose pain echoes into the present. The chateau, and the land around it, is not just haunted—it’s alive with malevolent intent, remembering every atrocity committed upon it.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Montana’s Yellowstone region, another legacy unfolds. John Dutton III, recently discharged from the war, returns home plagued by nightmarish visions of a black wolf with glowing eyes—an omen deeply tied to his family’s blood-stained past. The Dutton Ranch, already steeped in generations of turmoil (as seen in the prequel series 1923), is unraveling. Livestock vanish, cryptic symbols appear carved into trees, and strange visitors with German accents lurk near geothermal vents.
Enter Norah Whitlock, a British widow with a secret: she’s an undercover SOE agent investigating whispers of Nazi occult activity that didn’t end in Europe. The Nazis, it turns out, had expanded their supernatural research into America, seeking a mythic energy source called Vril. Believed to reside deep within Yellowstone’s volcanic core, this power is their last desperate hope to revive the Third Reich. With the help of stolen indigenous maps and horrific blood rituals, their plan threatens to awaken something older—and far worse—than fascism.
The story darkens when a Nazi defector reveals a horrifying truth: the regime developed a process to create monstrous soldiers, called gishjaggers, by fusing human bodies with geothermal energy and experimental compounds. Among them, John Dutton recognizes his own brother, presumed dead in the war but now twisted beyond recognition. The narrative crescendos as the Dutton family must confront the horrifying consequences of their legacy—specifically, a long-buried sin involving the murder of a Shoshone shaman to steal sacred land. The price of that theft is now coming due.
To break the cycle, Jacob Dutton Jr.—part man, part monster—makes the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life in a desperate act of redemption to stop the spread of evil. At the same time, across the ocean, Clara stands amid the smoldering wreckage of the chateau, Elias’s dog tags clutched in her hand. Though the Allies advance and the war seems to end, the psychological and supernatural wounds remain. In her possession is a vial of cursed soil from the mass grave, proof that some places carry memory deeper than flesh or stone.
