Estelle's childhood started off simple and small. Her family lived in a quaint little house down the street from the University at which her father worked. As a literature teacher, he would be gone most of the day, though bringing back a book to read to her was the highlight of it all. Her mother was a librarian, though not the reading type herself, she despised the time her husband took reading to Stella in the evenings. Her mother made her resentment and contempt well known with every word spoken between them.
Stella insisted upon these readings, as her father's presence drove away the strange sights and occurrences that occupied her room when the dark drapery of night was cast. As soon as he left, the figures would dance around the bed and sit on her windowsill, watching her as she stared wide-eyed at their movement. As she grew older, the fear of night and the unknown faded, as well as her fear of the visions, though they had no plans of leaving her plagued mind.
Just before her teenage years, her father's stories stopped, and her mother's lunacy began. At any time through the day, her mother's howls of rage and warning could be heard echoing through the corridors of the house. Her father would try to rationalize and plead, eager to calm the slipping mind of his troubled wife, but to no avail. Never being fond of her mother, Stella would sit on the stairs and watch the show with the accompaniment of some visions, as her mother would pace and spin around the room, babbling incoherent phrases to every corner.
At the age of 15, while watching a particularly active vision desperately trying to open her bedroom door, a loud bang was heard in the drawing room downstairs. Being used to loud noises and sudden events, Stella was not alarmed, but instead calmly made her way to the supposed source of the sound, only to find her father with a hole in his head and a warm gun in his hand.
Life after the suicide was a blur. She buried her head in her studies and avoided her mother when she could, living like a ghost in her own house while pacing herself through incredible amounts of books and journals. She wouldn't call it a passion, though she was determined to become a psychologist, if only to understand the people around her, and perhaps to find her way towards working in the University where her father once was.
Years of study and practice led her to a degree in psychology, though the town had no use or opening for her profession, leading to her strong disappointment. A colleague at the University told her about the curious case of Arkham, Massachusetts and it's ever filled sanitarium, as well as the college of study in the area. Looking to leave her mother and past behind, Estelle transferred to the bayside town, where she lives out a hidden life between Miskatonic University, Arkham Sanitarium, and her small quarters on Sentinel Street.