Walter Sullivan

Walter Sullivan is the primary antagonist in the video game Silent Hill 4. He was an orphan raised at Wish House, an orphanage in the town of Silent Hill run by the Holy Mother sect of the local cult known as the Order. He was chosen by the cult to perform the sect's ritual called the 21 Sacraments for the Descent of the Holy Mother, which required him to murder twenty-one people to bring about the descent of the cult's God.

Birth
Walter Sullivan was born in room 302 of South Ashfield Heights, an apartment building in the small city of Ashfield, a few hours drive from Silent Hill. His mother was a nurse named Rachael and his father was an artist. His father couldn't stand him, and his parents abandoned him in room 302 when he was only a few months old. Frank Sunderland, the superintendant, found the child and took him to the nearby St. Jerome's Hospital.

Wish House
Walter was sent to live at Wish House, an orphanage used by the Holy Mother sect to indoctrinate young children into the Order. The children were taught the sect's scriptures and were made to read them. If they read poorly or misbehaved in any way, they briefly imprisoned in a stone tower known as the panopticon. The watchmen there were not members of the cult, and one of them, Andrew DeSalvo, was particularly abusive and also an alcoholic. His abuse made Walter resent the Order and had consequences later on. It became clear early on that Walter had special powers, and thus could fill the role of the Conjurer, the one named to perform the 21 sacraments in the sect's scriptures. A series of events unfolded, involving key memebers of the Order.

Jimmy Stone and the Sect of Valtiel
The Holy Mother sect that ran Wish House was rivaled by the Holy Woman sect, led by Dahlia Gillespie. The Holy Woman sect had its own ritual for the descent of God, which involved burning a young woman with special powers in order to impregnate her with God. However, all attempts at performing it had failed because no girl they tried could withstand the ritual. An Order priest named Jimmy Stone formed a third sect, known as the Sect of Valtiel, to mediate between the two and hasten the descent of God. It was decided to use Walter as the Conjurer and Dahlia's daughter Alessa as the vessel for God. Stone's right hand man was George Rosten, the priest who administrated Wish House. Rosten personally tutored Walter in the 21 sacraments. The first ten sacraments had to be ten "sinners," and Walter didn't have the authority in the cult's eyes to make that judgement. Rosten therefore surreptitiously implanted the spirit of the angel Valtiel, considered to be a judge and executioner, into Walter's subconscious. But Dahlia had meanwhile discovered that Alessa was more powerful than she had previously thought, and decided to sabotage Stone's plan. She took the young Walter, who was under the impression that the 21 sacraments would reunite him with his mother, to South Ashfield Heights, and showed him room 302, telling him that the room was his mother, and he used it as the vessel later on. From this point on, he traveled to South Ashfield Heights every Sunday and tried to enter room 302. However, Richard Braintree, who lived in room 207, frightened him so badly that he stopped visting the apartment building. When Walter turned 18, he left Wish House and moved to the nearby town of Pleasant River, where he began his preparations for the the sacraments.