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Hayley Reed is a mental health professional and writer from Nicholasville, Kentucky. 

After a whirlwind romance that left her divorced with her reputation at stake thanks to the ever-powerful small-town rumor mill, she decided to write a Horror Rock Opera movie titled “Undead to Wed” and a nonfiction book, “Possessed By Love/Devoured By Hell: The true story behind Undead to Wed–A survivor’s descent into madness,” about her experience in an abusive relationship. The latter is furnished with text messages, QR codes to voice recordings on YouTube of her abuse, and diary entries she wrote throughout her relationship. 

After publishing a now-viral video (that received over 2000 views in less than 36 hours) on Facebook for her friends and family to inform them about the secret elopement and divorce, she received an offer from Michael Johnathan. Her story as a survivor of emotional and narcissistic abuse so moved him that he offered her an opportunity to join him at Woodsongs for an upcoming performance where she may even be telling her story on stage. Jonathan also provided Reed a chance to do a cold reading for one of his forthcoming scripts, which she has already done and received payment for. 

“Being invited to Woodsongs and offered a creative role in someone else’s project feels like a full-circle moment. It’s healing, empowering, and more than I could’ve imagined,” Reed said.

She met her now ex-husband in June 2024 on a dating app. “I hate to sound cheesy, but it was like a movie. It just unfolded so quickly,” Reed said. She had dated and been in long-term relationships before but had never married. That changed in July when Reed and her whirlwind romance decided to secretly elope. “Everything with that person seemed so right. As we all know, during the love bombing phase, it always does. But I threw caution to the wind.”

There were red flags that appeared to Hayley, like her former partner calling all his exes ‘crazy’. “When those lines came out, red flags arose, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt [because] he only had three exes that he spoke of,” she said.

But after the two eloped, more red flags arose. Hayley said he had caught her ex in a months-long lie about the wedding ring he purchased for her. The ring wasn’t a big deal to her, but Hayley said her ex had photoshopped bank statements to affirm his lie. “At that point, I knew I was in a world of trouble that someone felt like they had to do all this grandiose stuff to impress me when I already loved this person. I had already taken vows to this person. It took me a long time to get over that lie.” She first drafted divorce papers in September. However, the two gave it another shot because Hayley said her ex told her he would try therapy. 

The Rock Opera idea came to Hayley when she and her ex were organizing a reception party to announce their marriage to friends and family. At the time, the two loved horror—and Hayley still does. “I’m a horror fanatic, especially musicals. I love the Rocky Horror Picture Show,” she said. 

“I thought of this short horror we would film and release on YouTube, and I thought of a plot. It was about a woman who sacrifices everything for love and ends up in hell, and it was supposed to be funny and theatrical, kind of tongue in cheek like a B-rated horror movie; think Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead.” Hayley continued, “As I worked on the story, I realized I was scripting my own relationship in real time. The horror, the descent, the betrayal—it wasn’t fiction. It was foreshadowing. It felt very surreal, especially considering I was quoted not five minutes ago saying that the way that we met and the way that we fell in love felt like a movie, and then I’m writing a movie, and that becomes my life.”

The tone of the Rock Opera, which is now entirely written and copyrighted, is betrayal, power imbalance, and survival through storytelling. “It symbolizes a woman crawling back to herself, and I feel like the reason I wanted to write it is because I wanted to be the woman I was supposed to be playing in the film. I wanted to embody her and crawl out of hell, so I felt like if I wrote her and brought her to life, then she would bring me back to life.”

Reed finished and copyrighted her rock opera story when the relationship continued to deteriorate. 

“I have no idea if it will ever get made, and honestly, it doesn’t matter. I wrote it for one reason and one reason only, and that was so he couldn’t use it for his next wedding, and if he does, I’ll sue him for copyright infringement. If the book does well, who knows? And with Hollywood doing remakes and reboots right now, I would think an original story would be something anybody would be happy to be a part of,” Reed said.

Even after Reed wrote and copyrighted the rock opera, she wasn’t done writing. 

“Fiction’s great. We can escape into fiction; it’s pretty, and we can tie it up with a bow in the end and make it more palpable for an audience. But, when it comes to having to save my career from a small town rumor mill, I needed to release the receipts and the recordings,” Reed said. “The fictional Hayley and [her fictional ex] get their ‘happy ending’, but do they? It’s a metaphor, and I wanted the reality of the situation to be painted in the book where, if you do give up your soul to be in a relationship with someone who is abusive, it’s not happy, and this is the reality, and I need readers to see that not everything is fiction. Happy endings are usually only for the people who yell, ‘Cut!’”

It wasn’t until the beginning of March that Hayley drafted new divorce papers after she began to experience a decline in her mental health and more lies. 

Through researching open records, Hayley found out that her husband had two children at the time in another state. She said she spoke to their mother and found out that her husband owed around $10,000 in child support. “I didn’t know until after our wedding that Wes had children from a previous relationship. What I found in Arkansas court records wasn’t hearsay—it was a trail of enforcement actions to recover unpaid child support. And I don’t think he ended up in Kentucky by accident. In my opinion, it felt like he was trying to get as far away from his responsibilities as possible. Looking back now… that does seem to be his pattern.” Hayley also said that when she met her ex, he was working as a server because his tips could not be garnished for taxes. 

“That set off some red flags because I don’t know why you would lie about children. I love children. But why would you hide them from your partner unless something was wrong?” Reed said. 

The divorce was finalized at the beginning of April.

Although writing her story may be a retraumatizing experience, it’s been very therapeutic for Reed. She said she could finally see what her reality was at the time of her relationship. “So when you’re getting love bombed, and everything seems so rosy, you can’t tell when you’re reading through text messages, or you’re getting spoken to in a certain way that it’s not all sweet little nothings. You can’t tell at the start. Now that I’m going back through everything and reading it all, I’m noticing things where I’m just like, ‘How did I not catch that before?’ I was so hypnotized,” She said. 

“Nicholasville is a small town, and rumors spread like wildfire around here, and he is doing the typical narcissistic smear campaign. Telling people that I was abusive and I was the crazy one. So, if I didn’t stand up and take back my voice, my career in mental health would have been in jeopardy. I have no other choice. He’s left me with no other choice,” Reed said.

Reed’s nonfiction book, “Possessed By Love/Devoured By Hell,” will be finished around this time next year. 

“I’ve worked too hard to let rumors ruin my reputation. I earned my career with years of education and sacrifice, and staying quiet would’ve been the worst decision I could make—not just for me, but for every woman who’s ever been blamed for surviving. If telling the truth makes me the villain in his story, so be it. I’m not here to be quiet—I’m here to be heard.”