Umbilical Cord

"There are a... lot of strange things in this world... The umbilical cord I keep in a box in my room... Lately, it's started to smell terrible...
 * —Frank Sunderland to Eileen Galvin"

The Umbilical Cord is an important item found in Silent Hill 4: The Room. Henry Townshend comes upon the small box containing the umbilical cord in Room 105 of South Ashfield Heights. The room belongs to the apartment's superintendent, Frank Sunderland, who apparently kept the cord for around 34 years. He felt that the cord was "too precious" to throw away.

It is revealed in the game that the umbilical cord was cut from the newborn Walter Sullivan shortly before he was abandoned in Room 302. As such, the cord represented the only tie that Walter had to his true mother, as well as his "ideological" one.

Henry first reads of the umbilical cord in Frank Sunderland's diary, where it is mentioned that the umbilical cord belongs to the baby a couple had abandoned in Room 302. The umbilical cord is also referenced in the Crimson Tome, which instructs to "...bury part of the Conjurer's mother's flesh within the Conjurer's true body."

In the final battle with Walter, Henry must do as the Crimson Tome instructs and plant the umbilical cord into the newly formed corpse of Walter Sullivan. Only after doing so do the Spears of the Holy Mother appear for Henry to take.