Emmett Walker

**Judge Emmett Walker** is the main antagonist of *Secrets of Sulphur Springs*.

He is portrayed by Garrett Kruithof.

In 1930, Judge Walker wanted to purchase the Tremont farm in order to build a hotel. Elijah Tremont agreed to sell him most of the property but not the house where he and his two children lived. The judge pretended to accept these terms but secretly had someone forge transfer papers showing that Elijah had sold him everything, including the house. Savannah Dillon secretly stole the original documents from the judge's office but, since they didn't want to change history, she gave them to Harper Dunn to be used in the future. Unable to challenge the forged documents, the Tremonts were forced to leave the farm and move to a small house near the swamp. The fact that her family's land had thus been stolen caused the spirit of Elijah's late wife, Grace, to begin haunting the building.

Grace's spirit caused trouble at the Tremont for decades, greatly delaying its completion. In all, the judge went through six different architects and it took 14 years after the initial takeover of the land before the hotel opened for business in 1944.

At some point, Emmet Walker married a woman named Winnifred. The couple had no children.

In 1947, Judge Walker instituted an investment fraud scheme in which he encouraged some of his wealthy friends to also invest. Although he pretended that he had also been deceived, the judge actually retained all of the money which he hid under the floorboards of the basement of the hotel. However, Grace's widowed daughter Daisy was working at the Tremont as a maid to support herself and her daughter, Ruby. Knowing that the judge had stolen her family's land, Ruby often spied on him and discovered that he was secretly behind the investment fraud. After learning where the stolen money was hidden, Ruby confronted the judge in his room and demanded that he confess to stealing her family's land or she would reveal where he had hidden the money. Unwilling to let himself be blackmailed, the judge decided to keep her quiet more directly. However, as he reached for Ruby menacingly, his wife entered Room 205, saw what he was doing and struck him over the head with a vase, inadvertently killing him. After Ruby told her mother what had happened, the two women decided that it would be best to cover up the judge's death so they secretly moved his body to the barn and buried it there. When Mrs. Walker reported that her husband hadn't come home that night, the local sheriff, who had already begun to suspect the judge, investigated and concluded that Walker had taken the money and skipped town.

Having died by violence, the judge's evil spirit had unfinished business that kept him from passing over. However, the presence of Grace's spirit in the Tremont kept his spirit trapped in the barn for over seventy years.

Many years later, in 2020, Harper claimed that she had found the original transfer documents (which she had actually brought from 1930) that proved that the Dunns, being descended from the Tremonts, had legal ownership of the property. After reviewing those papers, the Campbells and Harper's mother Jess Dunn decided to enter a 50/50 partnership. With the land that had been stolen from the Tremonts thus returned to them, Grace's spirit was finally able to move on so she left the Tremont and ascended.

However, once Grace's spirit had left the Tremont, Judge Walker's spirit was able to escape from the barn and enter the hotel where it began occupying Room 205, the room in which he had been killed by his own wife since he was going to hurt Ruby.

## Appearances

* Wrong Place, Wrong Time
* It’s About Time
* Crunch Time
* Bad Judge of Time
* Time Waits For No One