I’m just like you, only one day the creepy part of my life could no longer be contained to the realm of other peoples’ stories. Every person who writes one of these has had this moment. All of a sudden, everything is real an inescapable and you regret ever seeking a quick scare in the first place. Sometimes it happens on purpose, and sometimes it just pops up in an unexpected place and you don’t even realize it until it’s too late. Sorry for rambling, but this is one of those.

It all began with a hippie roommate and Lot, or “the place where things get weird.” It’s a music festival, but it’s more. Lot is a place where music and people and drugs all become one (for the right price). If you’re really concerned about technicalities, it’s a version of the parking lots where Grateful Dead fans used to accumulate before/after/during shows.

It was at one such show where it all changed.

I was wandering around between bands one afternoon when a glimmer of something in the tall grass caught my eye. With a sense of childlike wonder one can only attribute to being high as a kite, I approached the shiny. When I got closer I saw that it was pouch of aluminum foil. Trash anywhere else, at a hippie festival this is a ground score. Like a child on Christmas I peeled open the little envelope to expose a few small squares of paper.

Each of the squares was different. I’d seen blotter acid a few times and recognized most of the prints. One was a mystery to me. I spent a lot of time fixating on it, but the best I could figure from the piece I had was that it was some kind of fractal with an odd script I didn’t quite recognize. When I first looked at my prize it had appeared to be purple and green, but later it seemed reddish. Who knows, because I promptly ate a few of the more familiar pieces and went about my weekend. Had a good time.

When it was time to return to the real world, I brought the mystery dose home and promptly forgot about it.

A few months later the restaurant I worked for closed and I found myself moving back in with my parents. Luckily, they were at the point in life where traveling had become a semi-regular occurrence and about two weeks into unemployment I found myself sitting in their empty house staring at my little foil pouch on a Saturday night.

I was unburdened by responsibilities and my parents wouldn’t be home until next Friday, so I knew I had plenty of time for that mystery hit. I decided to take some time to fast and meditate to get the proper ‘set’ to go with my setting and the unknown dosages I was in for. I took the hit around six in the evening and watched dusk creep in.

I started watching some Doctor Who around seven, and began to feel screwed about nine. I know it’s wrong to feel screwed out of something free, but I was really excited about this unknown experience. It was looking like it was all for nothing. By 10:30 I had retired to my normal evening past time of browsing r/nosleep and assorted creepypasta archives while making sarcastic and skeptical comments. Something about laughing at the story that just made me pee myself a little softened the blow, doing wonders to alleviate my fears.

A little bit before midnight, and long after I’d written off the drug, it felt like lead ball fell in my stomach. I doubled over in surprise and tried to catch my breath. I thought I heard someone laughing. I closed my eyes as another wave of cramping shot through my guts and when I opened them everything had gone grey.

Usually acid made my world vibrant and new, but this was just scary. The shadows seemed to pulse and ebb with some sort of malicious intent I couldn’t quite understand. I quickly pulled my feet up to the couch and wrapped my arms around my legs. I sat there shaking for what felt like hours. Any time I glanced at the clock it said the same thing: 00:00.

I kept reminding myself that this was a drug-induced state, that this would eventually end and everything would go back to normal. It’s the hardest thing to believe when you begin to loose yourself, and the overwhelming despair that threatened to drown me was making my situation even more difficult. The shadows seemed tangible as they ebbed towards my upholstered sanctuary, and I knew dread. Not the fight or flight, adrenaline-pumping terror, but a deep certainty that something was wrong, I was in danger, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I still don’t know why I thought it would help to close my eyes.

Tortured faces, distorted in agony, screamed behind my eyelids. I only saw their faces, so I was left to imagine the cause of their misery. As soon as their eyes began to cloud over to embrace death as their final relief, they would be replaced by a new victim. And screaming…

I didn’t understand how I could have missed that screaming before; it seemed to be surrounding me. It sounded off though, like some demented sound editor chose only the peak moments of anguish from thousands of screams and blended them together in an unending loop of the most brutal and unnerving compilation of human suffering. A blood curdling shriek from the pale blonde housewife faded into a teenaged boy groaning into a old man’s wail into another face and another voice.

When I opened my eyes, the faces were gone. The shadows seemed subdued, no longer emanating the same aggression that was so intimidating before. The screaming continued though. It was soft and nagging, barely louder than the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I figured I could tune it out with a little music. Hopefully, the right tunes would draw me to a better trip on their own.

I couldn’t find my iPod, so I weighed my options. I could risk it with the TV, but I had some mildly unsettling experiences in the past involving cable while tripping so that should probably stay out. The entire CD collection in my mom’s 50-disc changer was hair metal, country, and adult contemporary. Computers, with their screens and mouses and keyboards, are just too hard for one in my condition. Time to fall back on vinyl.

I’m going to interject here things I wish I would have remembered before getting my heart set on some Beatles. Thing the first is that the record player was located in a spare bedroom on the far end of my basement. The room in itself was nice enough ever since I cleaned and furnished it to have a ‘me zone’ when I was a teen, but that’s where the next thing comes in. The rest of my basement was an unfinished pit full of junk we were too frugal to throw away but hadn’t missed in years. I mean, concrete floors, exposed rafters, constant leaking, and plywood ‘walls’ separating the rooms. You also had to walk through the cluttered garage and down the stairs with the impossible to reach light bulb socket to get there.

Filled with the bravado of my new mission, I began my journey. The trek went smoothly enough through the well lit garage, but the stairs were menacing even when sober. When the bulb that lit the stairwell burnt out, replacing it involved a precarious arrangement involving balancing our ladder about two-thirds of the way up the stairs. All I’m trying to say is, this bulb was seldom replaced. With the unlit basement waiting at the bottom, the pool of garage light seemed powerless against the shadows.

As I began the long descent, I watched as the amorphous tentacles of darkness crawled up the pale wall past me. It was surrounding me. I didn’t brace myself with the handrail for fear this thing hiding in the dim corners of my world might touch me. I jumped and tripped down the last couple of stairs and stumbled through the basement door. I could have sworn I heard my name in the screaming.

At this volume, the screams were almost like a song. They were still as gut-wrenchingly brutal as ever, but now that it wasn’t as overwhelming I could hear how the rise and fall and changes in tone between the screams meshed together to resemble something like the slow, drawn out chanting of monks. Maybe my mind was just looking for patterns, trying to make sense of this chaos any way it could.

I felt around on the wall for the light switch I knew had always been there. I knew this basement well, but for some reason I couldn’t find the switch. The darkness seemed to throb while I continued my search in vain.

My only option was to sprint to the corner where the next light switch was. For some reason I didn’t want to show weakness to the shadows that were threatening my sanity, if not my very existence. That, and my fear of physical contact with the shadows, kept me from safely feeling my way along the wall like a sane person. I darted to the point where I thought the corner was and reached for the light to my left.

There was nothing. No wall, and certainly no instant safety brought on by a welcome pool of light. I ran blindly, now certain this was not a safe place to be. I couldn’t see the light from the garage where I had come in, and I began to panic. I thundered through another door and finally found the light switch I’d been searching so desperately for. Somehow I had found my way to my room, my sanctuary, and there was light.

The light was so welcome at first that I didn’t miss color. Compared to the unknown I’d traveled through to get here, even the sharp shadows cast by the naked bulb hanging from the ceiling were accepted. I couldn’t welcome the sight of anything that menacing, that ominous, but at least I knew where it was and where it stopped. If I could see it, I could run away; if I could see it, I would be safe.

I was beginning to think everything was going to be okay after all. If I couldn’t get myself out of this bad trip, I could still exert control, even if only by responding rationally to an irrational situation. I convinced myself that I was on the other side of the peak and that things would only get better from this point. I fired up the turn-table and started digging through the vinyl bin.

I needed something mellow enough to calm me down, familiar enough to take me to a good place, and trippy enough to distract me. That meant the acid rock classic, Sergeant Pepper. I’d tripped to it many times, and it was a sort of stand-by.

I started up a couple of novelty lights I had (a variety of colored lights and a laser light projector). Soon I was ignoring the menacing shadows on the floor in favor of the shifting patterns on my ceiling. I was getting through this trauma with a little help from my friends. When it came time for Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, I fell into the song as I had many times before.

My eyes slid shut as I began to picture myself in a boat on a river in a wonderful, awesome, and colorful world. Somebody called me, and I turned in my mind to the place where the girl with kaleidoscope eyes often stood. She was there, but she too was screaming. Her eyes weren’t the pools of color I was used to getting lost in, but pits writhing with the constant swell of the shadows. The screams came back with renewed vigor, drowning out John Lennon’s attempts to soothe my freakout. In my mind, I turned to run from the terrifying vision of Lucy, and was greeted by tangerine trees smoldering against a ash-streaked marmalade sky. The shades of grey invaded my imagination; painting the entire landscape in harsh and uninspired tones.

When I opened my eyes, I was relieved to see traces of color had slipped in under the radar while I had been gone. The warm colors seemed to be creeping back in through the reds in the wood paneled walls and the lights I was running cast intermittent beams of red light through the otherwise greyscale world. As welcome as the small step towards normalcy was, the red glow was almost as unsettling as the shadows. I stood up to kill the lights and locked eyes with my reflection in a mirror across the room.

The woman in the mirror looked just like me. She had my hair, my nose, my mouth. But her mouth was screaming. I could hear her clearly in my mind not instead of the other screams, but over them. The chorus of shrieks seemed to be speeding up, sounding more and more like a message. If only I would stop screaming, maybe I could make out what they were trying to tell me.

The eyes in the mirror were just like the girl in my mind: oceans of darkness and menace twisting and surging against the surface and threatening to break free. I lifted my hands to my mouth and found it closed as I’d expected, though I’d hoped I really was the one screaming. My mirror self also lifted her hand to her mouth. She had a pistol in her hands. I watched anxiously as she placed the barrel in her mouth. Her screaming had stopped, but I filled the vacancy with my own.

I turned away when she put her finger on the trigger. I heard the gunshot. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the mirror again. I couldn’t sit by and idly watch myself blow my brains out, and I didn’t want to see what was left of me. I wrapped myself head to toe in an old sleeping bag and curled up in the recliner. The looping screams continued to build momentum, coming faster and faster until it was impossible to deny it was a carefully crafted message.

The shadows inched closer to me, licking the floor at the base of my chair. The dread that had been growing since this started had grown into an inferno of terrified adrenaline, with every muscle in my body pleading me to run. As much as I wanted to flee, to escape this horror, I knew it would follow me wherever I went. I knew the shadows would always be a few steps outside of the light, creeping and waiting. For now, they seemed content to toy with me. The darkness seemed eager, but for whatever reason it wasn’t closing in. Was it waiting for something?

On queue, the looping chain of cries grew almost deafening. After listening to the repetition for so long, it was hard to hear anything but disjointed syllables. Unfortunately, like Mad Gabs, once it clicked it was impossible not to hear.

“Jenny, we are the monsters in the shadows. We are the things that go bump in the night. We’ve been watching you.”

I remained in my cocoon until the sun lit my basement room. I never bothered to turn the record over, I just sat in the red room and stared at the grasping fingers of my shadowed tormentors. I ran through the basement up into the house like my life depended on it. Maybe because it did.

The rest of the colors came back gradually once I was upstairs and in the sunlight. I figured I was straight again. That was about noon on Monday. I wasted the rest of the day playing mindless flash games and watching Netflix. Everything was golden until I went to bed.

I haven’t been able to sleep. According to my computer, it’s Thursday. That means it’s been five days. Five days and every time I close my eyes I see the same victims from before, only now I’m just watching them die. The housewife appears and sobs softly before letting go of her suffering. The teenage boy cries out for his mother one last time. The old man chokes mid-scream and twitches silently for a few moments.

The screams have stopped. I actually haven’t heard them at all since I deciphered the message. That’s all they needed to say to me. I never thought I’d say this, but I wish they’d come back. I wish they would tell me what they want from me. The silence is deafening.

I keep catching glimpses of myself in the mirror. I can’t bring myself to look directly at it. I’m terrified that’s their last message for me. They wanted me to see it the first time, but I ignored them. They’re telling me what I have to do. They’re showing me the way out.

My parents will be home tomorrow. I only have to make it one more night and Mommy and Daddy will be here to make it safe and warm. I made sure to turn on all of the lights in the house well before dusk, but that doesn’t keep them away entirely. There will always be another dark corner and another void behind the couch or under the bed. They always find a place to creep in, and they are constantly reaching just a little further into the light than they should.

The light in the kitchen just flickered out. Only an extremely paranoid person would say this is anything more than chance. Then again, the bathroom down the hall just went dark.

There are things that reside in the dark corners of our world. They are very real, and they don’t like to be mocked.

The changes appeared over a year ago.

We had happily gone off camping in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The days were spent hiking forest paths, and at night we kept each other warm. Then one fateful afternoon we were separated in a pouring thunderstorm. I lost the path and started running through the trees, searching for my wife in the flashes of light and streaks of darkness. For hours I stumbled through the wilderness, hopelessly calling for her, refusing to admit that I was lost myself.

Suddenly, I burst through the undergrowth into a grove of tall oaks. The clouds broke and the moon spilled into the open copse, bathing it in silver light. My tired legs collapsed under me and I fell to my knees, whispering her name under my breath, “Sophie, Sophie where are you?”…

Suddenly a voice cut through the cold night air. “Danny, is that you?” She stood behind me, covered in the silver light looking like a marble statue. I rose to my feet to embrace her. We spent the night huddled together under the towering trees. The next morning, as we picked our way back to the trail, was the first time I noticed something wrong. She was leading the way, but she kept glancing over her shoulder at me, as if trying to judge my expression. She told me that she was worried about losing me again. At the time, that was enough of an excuse to set my mind at ease.

We managed to find the trail and return to our camp. The rest of the trip crept by as I felt an increasing sense of unease. Each time I looked at her, something new seemed a little off. The way she kept glancing back unnerved me until I insisted that I hike in front; but that was no better as I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my skull. I didn’t like how she inched slowly away from me as we sat around the campfire…

The situation only worsened when we returned home. The familiar setting served to exacerbate the subtle inconsistencies between the person in my house and the woman I married. Whenever I was with her she became quite and withdrawn, her once joyous smile was reduced to the mere facsimile of a wax model. I could feel her shiver when I drew close, and her skin tensed when I touched her. Worst of all, she never stopped staring. Whenever we were together and I was looking away she would cast a suspicious eye on me. Sometimes, I would catch her reflection and wheel around; she would glance away and avoid eye contact. With subtle questioning I tried to bring up these strange new habits of hers, but she always slipped away from an answer.

As the weeks passed, I felt more disconnected from Sophie than I ever had before. She had begun to avoid me, always ducking out of a room as soon as I entered it. The tension in the house was palpable. In the back of my head, I knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t quite identify what it was. Then one evening, when she was out of town, I ran across a pile of photo albums. As I flipped through them a realization struck me. The more I stared at those old pictures of the Sophie I once knew, the more I grew convinced; the woman who had stumbled across me in the moonlit grove was not my wife…

She returned, and as she opened the door, I sat gazing at her. It didn’t make any sense, but the truth was obvious. Some dark magic that night had replaced my Sophie with a mysterious doppelganger, whose ultimate intentions I could not guess. The copy, the fake, threw another plastic smile at me then disappeared up the stairs. Her ceaseless gaze grew a hundred times more unbearable as I imagined what evil intentions lurked behind those hazel eyes. I doubled my covert observation of the thing, always keeping it in the corner of my vision, never letting it stay behind me. This is the hell I returned to everyday. And at night, I had to lie next to its curled form, not daring to sleep lest it strangle me in the darkness…

Thirteen months and I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had begun to drink, which only served to intensify the creature’s odd behavior. The form of Sophie had taken to pacing the halls, moving from room to room in some enigmatic ritual. I was absolutely convinced that the thing meant to kill me. What else could that strange gaze mean as it peered around corners and through open doorways at my exposed back? I would turn and I would hear feet patter down the hall and a door slam; it was watching me - always watching me.

The thing and I stalked around the house in an absurd dance of scrutiny and evasion. The few times we were in the same room together became sessions of awkward silences and paranoid glares. By now, I was sure the creature knew I suspected it. I had to get rid of it or I would go mad.

If it didn’t kill me first…

My chance came from the creature itself. It had come down the stairs one night and talked through my wife’s lips of how it wanted to plant a row of trees in the backyard. I gazed into the copy of my wife’s eyes as it asked me to dig a trench to put the saplings in. With a struggled smile, I nodded and told her I would start right away. The horrible thing leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I had to restrain myself from snapping its neck right there.

I spent the next several days digging the hole. It needed to be long and wide. And deep.

At night I locked myself in the study and planned. I prepared an alibi, I rehearsed my next steps. The plot was to lure the creature out to the pit, kill it, and bury the body. The next day I would file a missing persons report. When the cops came I would tell them that I had returned home to find Sophie missing. A few weeks later they would knock on the door and tell me, regretfully, that the search had been called off. I would cry and bawl and hold a memorial service for my wife. Then I would sell the house and move on with my life…

The trench was finished. My plan was ready. I slipped a knife into my pocket and walked inside. “Sophie! I finished digging; can you come down and tell me if the pit’s big enough?”

The thing appeared at the door and walked up to the pit. “Yeah, that looks like it’ll fit all the trees. Actually, you dug it a little deeper than I needed. Thanks, hon.”

“No problem” I replied, as I crept up behind her, reaching for the dagger in my coat. Suddenly, she swung around and hugged me.

“Thanks sweetie,” she beamed at me, “now then, would you like the honor of putting in the first tree?”

I turned to pick up one of the saplings, my hand creeping back towards my pocket, steeling myself for the task that lay ahead.

Then something heavy hit the back of my head. Stars exploded before my eyes as I fell down and down into a black nothingness…

I woke up. I was lying at the bottom of the pit. I tried to stand and realized I was bound head to foot in ropes. The thing crouched at the edge of the pit, a bloody shovel in her hand.

She glared down at me, “Good, you’re awake. Now, who or what the hell are you?”

“W-What? Honey, what’s going on? Why am I tied up?”

“Don’t call me honey. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not my husband. Last chance, ‘Daniel’, what the fuck are you?”

“Wha-? I’m Daniel McCormick; I’ve been married to Sophie McCormick for two years!”

“No. I was married to Daniel McCormick for one year. Then he and I went on a hike and got separated. He disappeared, and I stumbled across you, sobbing in the forest.”

“Oh my god, I swear it’s me! I thought that you wer-“

“No more bullshit. You think I haven’t noticed you staring at me this whole time? You think I didn’t notice all the weird shit you were doing? Every time I looked at you, I saw something wrong; you didn’t move right, you didn’t speak right. I saw the anger in your eyes. I tried telling myself it was all my imagination, but I realized something; you aren’t my husband, you’re just some horrible duplicate. I had to live with you for over a year! I had to fucking sleep next to you! It took me a long time to guess your intentions, but when I finally figured out that you were planning to kill me I had you dig this grave.”

“G-Grave?”

“Grave. I won’t ask again ‘Danny’; what the fuck are you and where’s my husband?”

“I am your husband, you bitch!”

“Fine.” She began to shovel the dirt back into the hole.

“Sophie! No! I-I’m your husband, you have to believe me! Let me out, this isn’t funny! Sophie, I’m Daniel McCormick!”

I tried to scream as the mud filled my mouth…

Sophie McCormick filled in most of the hole, then carefully planted the trees and laid sod across the bare earth. She went inside and washed the dirt off her hands. Then, she called the police and filed a missing persons report. When the cops came she told them that she had come home to find her husband missing. A few weeks later the cops knocked on the door, telling her that, regretfully, the search had been called off. She cried and bawled and held a memorial service for her husband. Then she sold the house and moved on with her life.

The saplings grew into tall and thick trees.

We are eight days out of Kirkwall, tracking an intermittent and scrambled distress call from what appeared to be a Icelandic fishing vessel, the Magnusdottir, deep in the no-fishing zone of the North Sea. We found the vessel, or rather, we found a mile wide streak of oil and fragments, the largest of them still burning. The night before, the enlisted man on watch had reported seeing a flash of light on the horizon.

The Magnusdottir’s crew was no where to be found, except for one lone fisherman, unburned and floating at the far end of the debris field. He had been shot in the forehead with a small caliber revolver. When we fished his pale blue corpse from the frigid water, he was still clutching a fishing knife in one clamped hand. What we were able to piece together from the fragmented and confounding evidence was that for reasons unknown, the crew had been in conflict, resulting in the murder of the of at least one sailor, and the eventual sabotage and destruction of the ship.

Visibility was only a few hundred feet as we spent the next day drifting silently among the debris, in hopes of finding a survivor. The crew was already visibly shaken by the discovery; the grim dread of the fog, and lone smoldering pieces of the Magnusdottir that collided with our hull unsettled even the most seasoned of us. We had expected an easy cruise, and the simple retrieval of a dozen thankful Icelandic fisherman. What we got, at first, was a silent and oil-slick coated sea, a single corpse, and more than a few nagging questions.

The Mistral had just been serviced, after an extended tour with the Atlantic Fleet in Bahrain before her transfer to the North Sea. She was in good running order, so I can only assume that the initial mechanical failure was an act of sabotage, or of some external force. It happened the first night, when our final sweep had been completed, and we returned to the site of the Magnusdottir’s first transmission.

There was nothing initially remarkable about the spot, a cold and lonely set of co-ordinates and little else. I was in my cabin, just settling down when the call sounded from the Captain, offering little information, just a stern order to meet him on deck.

Dressing quickly, I emerged from my cabin into a cloud of palpable unease and fear. The enlisted men, and the junior officers were coursing through the ship towards the deck, like panicked rats. No one made eye contact, or spoke. There was none of the usual gallows humor, or camaraderie, that bubbles up in situations of limited information, just a grim inertia that pulled us out into the arctic night.

On deck, the night was unnaturally clear and cold, and the bright of the stars burned in the frosty air. Around us in every direction, just a few hundred yards away, the fog and clouds whorled, as if held at bay by our presence. The Captain was at the railing leaning over along with the men on watch. I approached him, suddenly desperate and panicked to know what was happening, when I saw it, the light flooding up from beneath us.

The sea was flat, like the surface of a mirror. The water was black, reflecting the pale pinpricks of the stars, but beneath the surface, something glowed with a cold light. Pulsating shapes of violet, green, and deep cobalt blue shone from beneath. They flowed and merged and shimmered silently, deep below the glassy sea.

We stared, two dozen men and women, struck dumb and horrified by the sight. There was a sense of scale that emerged from the fluid movement of the lights; they seemed to be many fathoms beneath us, which would make them terribly large and impossibly fast. There were no solid shapes, and no disturbance of the water, just a deep field of liquid flowing light.

We watched for what seemed like hours, entranced by the mesmerizing ballet of cold light, a mirror reflection of northern lights. When it ended, abruptly, there were three almost simultaneous events. First, the lights seemed to contract, each mote freezing in place and collapsing like the iris of an eye in bright sunlight. Secondly, there was a tremor in the air, that first raised the hair on the back of my neck. As the ghostly lights winked out of existence, it rose in intensity, until I thought my eyeballs might shake their way out of my head. Through the fog of sudden pain, I heard a noise rising above arctic wind, a humming vibration from the Mistral herself, that matched the electric shuddering in my skull.

It was as if every lightbulb aboard the Mistral where suddenly flushed with power, flaring bright and buzzing noisily in their housings, and when the whine had reached a fever pitch, they began to pop and shatter among a shatter of sparks. From start to finish, it lasted less than two seconds, and we were left floating silently in the dark waters, beneath the starry sky, on a dead and crippled boat.

The damage was invisible, without any obvious cause, and total. Nothing aboard the Mistral worked, each carefully crafted system of multiple redundancies had crumbled. Every light was shattered, and even the replacement bulbs, and the small flashlights we all carried held fused and useless filaments. Satellite phones, shortwave radios, all means of communication were useless bricks of plastic and wire. Every battery was dead, every stereo system was silent. We were adrift, without sail or engine, isolated from the world by a hundred miles of black and silent sea.

The crew moved through the ship that first night like moles, fumbling through dark corridors with only a few pale green chemical lights to check each system. They relayed each disheartening message like a fire brigade through the darkness, to where the Captain and I stood on the deck, trying to make sense of the senseless. At last, when nothing else could be done, I fumbled my way back to my cabin, and tried to sleep, the darkness feeling like an oppressive many fingered hand, slowly gripping my chest.

The next morning, I again took stock of our situation, hoping for some fragment of hope we had passed by in the night. The damage was total. We would have to find a way to send a distress call, and hope that we had not drifted too far from our last known coordinates. The men may not have known the full details, but it was clear from their haunted visages that they knew how dire the situation was.

The first death was that afternoon. The sounds of screaming brought me above deck and into a thick heavy fog. High in the gloom, I could see bright burning specks of light, descending slowly. My stomach turned; it was two signal flares drifting uselessly through the haze. Some damn fool had fired the signal flares. I burned with an unfamiliar and foreign rage, and rushed through the fog to the foredeck with hatred in my blood and my fists clamped tight.

The scene that emerged from the fog broke me from my stupor. The enlisted man, a flare gun still in his hand lay broken in a pool of blood. The Captain stood over him clutching the railing, driving the heel of his boot repeatedly into the broken mess of the boy’s skull. I realized then that the screaming I heard, the high keening wail was coming from the Captain, his face in a rictus of animal rage. Around them was a small crowd, standing motionless and silent, watching like sentinels.

The Captain turned to see me, and dropped into a crouch, his fingers wrapping around the flare gun and he raised it level with my eyes.

We stared for a long moment at each other, our eyes locked as he panted heavily, his face lightly spattered with blood. The only sound was the wet gurgling exhale of the enlisted man’s death rattle, a bubble of blood forming on his ruined face.

I’d served with this man for nearly a decade. This was not the man I knew. This was a hollow simulacrum, filled with violence and terror. I spoke to him then, in a soothing voice I asked him to hand me the flare gun. He said nothing at first, and then spoke, his voice a tiny trembling sound that was swallowed up by the thick gloom around us.

“He’s murdered us, Ryan. The fog… the flares will never…”

He shook his head and clenched his eyes tight, as if he were trying to shake himself from a dream. Then he shuddered once, violently, his back arching like a seizure.

“This little fuck has killed us,” he choked out. The flare gun wavered in the air, and I took a step closer, reaching out for him. He opened his eyes and I froze again as we stared silently at one another.

“You’re going to die here.” He giggled quietly. “I always wanted to watch you die, you fucking coward.”

He titled his head back and laughed, one hyena-like bark to the grey sky, and then put the flare gun in his mouth and fired, the last flare igniting and temporarily bathing his head in a halo of magnesium orange and smoke. He tumbled back over the railing. If there was a splash when he hit the water, it was swallowed by the fog.

I stood for what seemed like a very long time. It slowly dawned on me that I was alone, the silent audience having melted away below decks, no doubt taking the grim tale with them. I feared for morale, an absurd concern, I realize now, but could not move from the spot, as if sheer force of will would cause the sea to regurgitate this man, my friend.

The first gunshot broke me from my reverie.

In the emergency lockers, I found that a handful of flare guns remained, and I stuffed one into each pocket, and entered the dim passageway to below deck. Over the hollow retort of gunshots, other muffled sounds began to emerge, the choking sobs, the screams of pain and anger, all bringing the faint impression of the copper smell of blood.

The dark was oppressive and thick as my heart rose in my chest. The pale fading light of the chemical glow-sticks that hung at regular intervals illuminated the bare corridor, and I moved slowly toward my cabin.

It had been sacked, and my service pistol was missing. The next two cabins held the corpses of the junior officers, their broken forms still in their bunks, skulls opened like blossoming flowers under the point blank shots.

I felt the distinct and irrational desire to run on deck and leap overboard, to swim away from the boat into the unknown sea. I gripped a flare gun and held it out ahead of me, less like a weapon and more like a talisman, and began to pace slowly down the corridor, to the enlisted bunks.

The door was wide open, and the smell of blood and fear and shit was nauseating. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the dim, I saw a field of bodies, torn, shredded, and shattered by bullets and makeshift clubs. A few of the men still moved, twitching slightly. I watched in frozen terror as one man, his face a mask of blood and rage, turned up his head to regard me, and with a weak cry of rage, began to drag himself with his arms, trailing a broken and shattered leg, towards me.

From the shadows, another form pounced on him, a boot digging into the wounded man’s back with a wet cracking sound. I recognized the attacker’s face in the green chemical dim, a quiet and bookish young man. Like the Captain, this was not the man I knew, this was a beast that wore his skin.

He reached down and grabbed the wounded man’s jaw, thumb slipping into mouth. The wounded man growled, a feral mindless sound, and tried to bite down, but his attacker gripped tight, and pulled.

The jaw came off with the sound of tearing tendons and a ululating shriek that vanished into the air.

I was no longer breathing, holding silently at the entrance, but the attacker snapped his head up to see me, nostrils flaring. The jawbone hit the floor with a meaty sound, and he lunged toward me with silent animal grace.

I fired the flare gun, and it hit him square in the chest. His shirt caught fire, and all air escaped his lungs with a sudden forceful exhale, but impossibly, he continued on towards me. As I passed through the portal and slammed the door, the fire had climbed into his hair and he was squealing now, his clawed hands still outstretched towards me.

I felt him impact against the door, and saw that nightmare visage wreathed in fire through the small porthole, lips already burnt away to reveal two rows of perfect teeth. He wailed and began to smash his burning form against the door. Once, twice, three times, and then silence. I raised my eyes to the porthole, and saw only the faint image of the burning shape as it disappeared into the darkness. All conscious thought evaporated and I fled from that charnel house.

I have barricaded all entrances to below deck now, and have doomed myself to slow death at the hands of the enveloping cold. I can still hear the living ones down there, screaming and banging on the doors. They are not the men that I knew. I console myself with this thought, as I leave them in the dark to starve or murder each other.

If you have read this far, and have not fled these waters, or god forbid, are still aboard the Mistral, then I beg you again: Leave now, while you can. Do not look below deck, there are none of us left to save, and certainly none worth saving.

It’s cold now, and the fading day surrendering the wan grey light to the dark. There are no stars this night, nothing but the heavy blanket of night. If I could get below, I would find someway, of destroying the Mistral, like the brave men of the Magnusdottir, but it’s too late. The most I can make of my last moments, as all feeling flees my extremities, and writing becomes impossible, is a warning.

Please, send us into the deep, tell no one you found us, and never return. There are things and primal desires older than man, and forces beyond the grasp of our simple minds; and they dwell here, beneath the frozen sea.

That one memory that refuses to be wiped, it all started with that new (or old) TV. At that time Pokémon was the latest fad to hit the school. Pokémon cards, games, stickers, and the most popular, the TV show. So, of course, every time I came home from school, I would stay glued to the TV until Pokémon came on at five. The only problem was that my dad watched the news at 5:30, and Pokémon episodes were back-to-back, which meant I had to miss an episode every day, something I whined on and on about. My dad got tired of hearing me complain every day, that must be why he went and bought another TV.

My dad put the TV he bought in my room. Unfortunately, it was just an old, small boob tube, with rabbit ears even. It also only had 20 channels available; not including the channel Pokémon was on. I recall I didn’t care, though. I was just thrilled I had my own TV in my room. After surfing through the channels, I came to the conclusion that only channel 2 (TVO kids) was worth watching so I watched that for a while. It wasn’t for another few months until I discovered channel 21. One day in April, I was flipping through the channels, trying to see if Pokémon was on. I pressed channel 21 into the remote, hoping there were more channels, and to my delight there was. My dad was surprised too, but he let me watch it because it seemed to have kids programs on. The channel was called Caledon Local 21 and later I found out it was indeed broadcasted from the town of Caledon, Ontario, a town very close to my city.

The shows I saw on Caledon Local 21 looked poorly made, and I never understood what was going on in them half the time. However as I grew up, every time I thought of that channel, I realized more and more how messed up the shows were and I had to ask myself, “What the fuck was I watching?”

The following is a list of shows and episodes I remember seeing on Caledon Local 21, how I remember such detail even disturbs me, but I guess things like this stand out in your mind for a while. The channel only ran a few shows, probably because it was only operational between 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm. April 1999

Mr. Bear’s Cellar – Episode 12: Very sketchy name if you were to look at it nowadays. The show featured a guy wearing a bear mascot costume who would get a new visitor into his cellar every day. (It was always a kid) The show was filmed with a camcorder, and not a very good one either. The police asked me a lot of questions about this show. This episode started with Mr. Bear sitting at a table playing checkers by himself. He sat there playing for a bit until there was a knock on the door. The camera was then looking up the stairs at the door, where there was another knock. Mr. Bear climbed the stairs and opened the door to reveal two young children. One was a boy about my age, and the other was a girl who looked about eight.

Mr. Bear danced in delight, and then started talking to the kids; I couldn’t hear any of them that well, I remember. Mr. Bear then led the kids into the cellar, which was quite dark, only lit by a small oil lamp on the table. I can’t really remember that much more, except him singing a song which I couldn’t hear too well either (Probably because of that large bear mask). The episode ended with them playing hide-and-seek, with the kids hiding in a closet and Mr. Bear counting. May 1999

Soup and Spoon: I don’t think this was even a show, I think it was more of a special movie thing. All I know is I stopped watching Caledon Local 21 for a while because I thought this show was too stupid, especially since Pokémon now came on at 4:30 and 5:00. I don’t remember much of this, but it showed a can of soup and a spoon both attached to strings, swinging back and forth, as if someone was holding them and dangling them in front of the camera. Interestingly enough, the show was shot in a basement, which looked just like the one used in Mr. Bear’s Cellar. Like I said, I can’t remember much, the only thing I can remember clearly was the end.

The entire thing was only half an hour, and just included stuff I found stupid, such as the spoon chasing the soup around trying to “Eat him”. The ending showed a table and about seven kids sitting around it, each with a bowl of soup in front of them. They were sitting and looking at the camera, but with confused, almost frightened faces. The cameraman then held the can of soup in front of the kids and said, “Spooooons ready?” And then it just stopped. July 1999

It was summer, and I hadn’t watched channel 21 for a while, until one day when I slept over at my friend’s house, and I decided to check it out again. My friend had gotten a TV in his room for his sixth birthday, so we stayed up very late (for us, 9:30 was very late) and watched TV. That’s when I remembered channel 21 and brought it up to my friend. We decided to see if it was on, and to our surprise it was (they must have changed the broadcasting time).

Mr. Bear’s Cellar – Episode 23: This episode was entertaining for my friend and me, mainly because it had swearing. However, now when I think of this episode, I realize something was definitely wrong when it was filmed. The episode started with the camera on its side, while it was facing Mr. Bear, who was walking upstairs to the cellar door. The camera then blacked out for about a second, before fading in, back upright, and facing Mr. Bear. There was also another kid talking to him, but this kid looked about eleven or twelve.

He was talking to Mr. Bear for a while, but I couldn’t hear well (Again with the crappy camcorder) until the kid started raising his voice. The kid was saying how it was late and his sister had to go home, you could also hear more voices in the background. I remember Mr. Bear clearly saying “Get the fuck out, you’re not invited.” with a deep voice muffled by the bear mask. I remember my friend and I looking at each other and laughing at the mention of the forbidden F word, but the episode got weirder. The kid began climbing the stairs before turning around and saying how he was going to call the police. Mr. Bear began breaking into a run towards the kid, who started screaming and running as well. The camera then cut out, and that was the end of the episode. The channel then turned to static shortly after. August 1999

I didn’t want to watch channel 21 after that. In August I grew more curious to see Mr. Bear’s cellar for some reason though. The last episode I saw of Mr. Bear was weird and had swearing, which also made me think the show was meant for teenagers. Nonetheless, I flipped onto channel 21 when my dad was busy.

Mr. Bear’s Cellar – Episode 28: Apparently this episode had been playing the entire month of August. It was studied a lot by the police. The entire episode was just Mr. Bear sitting in a chair talking to the audience. “Hello, kids! Do you want to visit my cellar? If you do, please write me a letter at this address!” The screen then switched to a white screen with multi-colored letters reading the address, and that was what remained for the rest of the episode. This repeated for five hours every day until September came.

And guess what I actually did? I sent “Mr. Bear,” or that sick bastard who portrayed him a letter. I did it out of curiosity mostly; my dad was OK with it because he thought it was a legit kid show, but then again he never saw any of what was on channel 21. So I wrote a letter using my best writing possible, I think I just said how I wanted to meet Mr. Bear. So my dad sent the letter to the address Mr. Bear said on the show (it stayed on all day anyway for some reason).

It took about a week to get a response, which I was surprised I did. I still have the letter I received on August 15, 1999. The letter read:

Dear Elliot,

Thank you ever so much for your letter, I would love to have you in my cellar! We play games, watch movies, and go fire camping in the middle of the woods!

Come to my house at (the police cut out this address), Caledon, Ontario, Canada.

I look very forward to having fun with you!

Love, Mr. Bear

I cannot believe my dad never found this sketchy, because he actually took me to the house. And then that’s when the police became involved, those endless questions, those pictures of terrified kids, the woods…

That brings me to why I’m writing this blog. That psycho and his friends did some fucked up shit back then, and now it seems he’s trying to get into contact with me again,. The entire police thing is coming back. That has brought 1999 back to me. Over a decade later, it is happening again. [Update] – November 14, 2009

People have been emailing me asking what exactly happened in 1999, I will get to that. Those weird TV shows I was watching apparently were meant to attract kids to Mr. Bear’s house, what Mr. Bear did shocked the entire town.

My dad actually drove me to Caledon along with the address Mr. Bear left on the letter. The house was actually in the outskirts of the town, in the open farmland. I still remember that house. It looked like an older farmhouse that looked to have been built in the early 1900s. The windows were all boarded up, and the house looked in a state of disrepair. As we walked up to the house, I remember my dad checking the address over and over again and looking at the house in disbelief. Then the door opened.

I expected Mr. Bear to be at the door, but I was surprised to see a police officer emerge from the creaking doorway. The officer began talking to my dad, while I quickly asked if that was Mr. Bear’s house. The officer’s face cringed slightly, and he muttered, “Oh God,” or something like that. He started talking quietly to my dad so I couldn’t hear, although my dad told me to go to the car anyway. And then we just went home. My dad was quiet the whole way home. I felt something strange had happened.

My dad never told me what happened for a while, I forgot about it anyway too. Channel 21 no longer came on, and when I asked about it my dad would not acknowledge its existence. I think it was when I was 13 where I learned the truth. I remembered channel 21 one day and asked my dad about it. I guess he finally decided I should hear the truth.

Caledon Local 21 was a local TV channel that ran from October 1997-August 1999 in the Peel Region of Ontario. The entire channel was made from a house in Caledon (The one I visited) and run by a man who was not really known by anyone in the town. The channel was only available to older TVs because the signal was one only picked up by rabbit ears (Weaker frequency). The man created all the shows on the channel, all of which were kid shows. He was Mr. Bear, and he was the mysterious cameraman. The real reason he created the channel was more disturbing than what was originally thought. As you might have already guessed, he kidnapped kids and held them in his cellar. But while most people thought he was a serial child molester, he really wanted to use the kids for another purpose. The day I arrived, the man had fled his house the night before, the day before the police went in for their investigation. I wasn’t the only one who was watching. [Update] – December 2, 2009

Sorry for not answering any questions for so long, I haven’t accessed my email account for some time. Anyway, let me finally set things straight about what I know. Back in October, I visited the house previously owned by the man who ran Caledon Local 21. Two women lived there, operating a daycare business… how ironic. Now to answer the questions you guys emailed to me:

Q: Who else watched Caledon Local 21?

A: I know other people watched it for sure, including those kids who wound up at Mr. Bear’s house. After some Google searches, I found a few people on the Neoseeker forums who were discussing shows from Caledon Local 21. They talked about the two shows I watched, but also another two shows I had never seen before. A user named iamreallife seemed to know all the shows that were broadcasted on channel 21; here are the two I’ve never heard of:

The Fallen Angel and Life – iamreallife described it as a fairly boring show about a guy rambling on and on in front of the camera about how we must please Satan and appease him before it is too late.

Paint with the Soul – iamreallife and another user called sigy92 were discussing this show. They described it as “Blair Witch like” as it consisted of the cameraman wandering around a forest at night, doing nothing particularly interesting.

I’ll go looking for the conversation and see if I can get the link.

Q: Where is Mr. Bear, or the guy who wore the costume?

A: If I did know, I would have said earlier. I have no idea where this guy is, or if he’s dead or alive (hopefully dead). When I see my dad’s friend next time I will ask him about this, maybe I can get a more definite answer.

Q: What did Mr. Bear do to the children?

A: This is by far the most common question I’ve been asked. I found this out in October as well, via my dad’s friend who is a retired Caledon regional officer. Apparently, the man playing Mr. Bear took the kids out of the house and into the forest nearby. What he did there, police are not exactly sure how it happened, but 16 charred bodies of children between the ages of 4-13 were found in a 15-by-15-foot ditch deep within the forest. My dad’s friend did not want to go into exact details, but I’m seeing him next Thursday anyway, so maybe I can extort more information from him then.

That’s all I have for now. Thanks for keeping an interest in my blog. I will try to gather as much information as I can for my next post. I’ve actually been getting pretty interested in this myself. It should be my right to know what the hell happened. [Update] – January 14, 2010

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while, I kind of lost interest in this blog since I hit a standstill while looking for more information about the identity of the owner of Caledon Local 21.

However, a few weeks ago, I struck gold. I found some answers surprisingly from the father of a kid I used to babysit. He lives just across from my street, and I used to look after his kids when they were younger, he currently doesn’t have a job either. He used to live near the woods outside of Caledon, and witnessed the owner’s activities in the woods. His name is Anthony Pollo.

When he lived in the small bungalow outside the woods, he would often venture in to smoke a joint of marijuana or two before returning to his work as a wood craftsman. Pollo described that sometimes he would hear voices of children coming from deeper within the woods, as well as a glowing light off in the distance. Pollo told me these events started in late 1997 (Note: This is around the time Caledon Local 21 began airing). He apparently became annoyed by this happening every once in a while and actually went to investigate.

Pollo then described what the whole scene looked like when he got there. There was a group of kids (He said about 13-17) and ages 5–12 gathered around a large fire pit with a burning fire. With them was a single adult. Pollo talked to the man (Noting his unusual unkempt appearance of a crack addict, as well as his constant twitching) and asked what he was doing out in the forest with children. The man said they were on a camping trip, something they did frequently. Pollo, not suspecting anything (Caledon has one of the lowest crime rates in Canada) simply left it at that and told them to be quieter. Pollo then paused for a while before telling me that they never became quieter, in fact sometimes he heard loud chanting from the children in an unknown language. He didn’t bother meeting with the man again, as he was moving anyway.

I told Pollo that the man was probably the owner of Caledon Local 21, but he doubted it, as he heard that the man was moving to Pickering by several other residents near that area.

Here is what I know now:

The Man would take kids into the woods regularly for “camping” The fire pit Pollo described may be the hole the bodies of the children were found in The children Pollo saw are probably the ones found dead The man moved to a city called Pickering (a smaller city east of Toronto)

I will discuss this with my dad’s friend (the ex-cop) and see if this matches anything the police knew about the man. I also want to see if he has any other knowledge of what was aired on Caledon Local 21.

[Update] – February 10, 2010

Good news guys, I talked to my dad’s friend and he disclosed a lot of information for me. First I asked if the police had any information on the man who ran Caledon Local 21, he replied that they have only had the same leads for years and never found a suspect. However, the Peel regional police do have some of the tapes found in the house Caledon Local 21 was broadcasted from, he took me over so I could watch a few. I guess I haven’t said much about him yet, my dad’s friend’s name is Mitchell Wilson, a pretty nice guy, he seems to understand my thirst for knowledge on what happened during the late 90s in that house. He feels it was wrong that my dad went so long without telling me much.

He took me to the Davis road police station (if you don’t know, it’s the largest station in Caledon, and one of the largest within the Peel region itself). Each of the main stations around Peel have some of the tapes. I was able to watch all of the footage that the Davis road station has. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any tapes home for obvious reasons.

Paint with the Soul – Episode 10, “Garbage Thrown Away”: Paint with the Soul was one of the shows that iamrealife and sigy92 discussed on neoseeker. I told the police about this and they informed me that 12 episodes of the show were made and broadcasted between December 5, 1997′ and ‘January 8, 1998.’

Exactly as iamrealife and sigy92 described, the episode opened with the cameraman wandering around in a forest. It appeared to be during the evening as it seemed the sun was setting. The cameraman walked along a path until he got to an area where there was a lot of garbage lying in the leaves.

The camera looked around at the various wrappers, bottles, bags, and boxes, making sure each item got a few seconds of screen time. The camera then focused on a single area before the man spoke. I recall he spoke in a very timid quiet voice, and I swear I’ve heard it somewhere else before, like on another Caledon Local 21 show. I could barely hear what he was saying, but he mainly talked about how humans are garbage, or something that had to do with saving ourselves by cleaning up the garbage (us). It actually sounded really stupid, but still a feeling of dread came over me, I mean that forest was possibly where those bodies were found, right?

Mr. Bear’s Cellar – Episode 25: When the police administrator brought this tape in, I actually said “Ohhh, shit,” and chuckled a bit out loud. Of course, I got stares from the staff, but Wilson explained to them about my little experience with Mr. Bear and how I still kept the letter he sent me. Like the previous episodes, this one included a guy wearing a bear mascot costume.

The episode began with Mr. Bear waddling over to his cellar door with a bottle of orange juice in his paws. On the ground were sixteen shot glasses as well as a small bottle that contained an unknown liquid. Mr. Bear poured an equal amount of orange juice into each glass before opening the smaller bottle and depositing one drop into the glasses. Mr. Bear then went off-camera, there were some minor sounds such as shuffling, and then Mr. Bear emerged from behind the camera’s location.

Following him were 16 children. Some looked as young as four, while others looked like they were practically teenagers. As the children entered, the administrator commented that this is the only episode that showed all 16 victims.

The kids all looked rather content except for this one who had visible bruises on his face, and unlike the other kids, he had a more fearful expression. He also looked about 11-12, which caused me to recognize him. He was the kid who had asked about his sister and subsequently met an unknown fate at the end of episode 23, that one episode I watched during July 1999.

When I told the administrator this, he confirmed it was the same kid. He was also featured in episode 24, an episode that only aired once at 3:00 in July 1999 (the police have still not found the tape). Mr. Bear then broke into song, singing about citrus fruits and how good vitamin C was for you (I could barely hear the lyrics as they were muffled by the bear mask). The kids all drink their juice (the one from episode 23 doing it rather reluctantly), and the episode ended.

After viewing the tapes in possession of the Davis Road police station, I’m satisfied but only temporarily. I still want to know the full story. The police just keep giving me the same crap about the creator of Caledon Local 21 being a fetishist pedophile as well as an apparent cultist. I will sign off for now, get into university first, and get information later. Hopefully, I will get back to this blog as soon as possible. [Update] – May 8, 2010

Last month, I finally got my G2 license (in Ontario, Canada, this allows you to drive in a car by yourself as well as with some passengers after 6 months). I, of course, took advantage of this and drove into Caledon for a little “Sunday drive.” Since I haven’t updated this blog in a while, I figured I might as well visit the house where the infamous channel of my childhood was located. The house looked different than when I last saw it in October. The place was no longer used as a daycare, and just sat there abandoned. However, it did have a “For Sale” sign showing that someone still owned it, wanting to get rid of it, though. Advertisements

The abandoned house drew fuzzy memories from my mind, mainly of that day my dad took me to visit Mr. Bear. A feeling of dread came upon me. What happened to the children while they were living in that house? I walked up the steps to the front door and peered through the window. Inside I could see a nearly empty hallway with a few boxes at the end.

At the end of the hallway to the right was an open doorway presumably leading to the kitchen. To the left were two doors, both apparently leading to the rooms visible through the windows outside. I wondered where the cellar entrance was located and whether it had been sealed up. I walked around to the back of the house and found my answer. Two wooden doors lying at an almost flat angle were padlocked shut; this had to lead to the cellar. Not wanting to hang around (you cannot imagine what was going through my mind at that time), I departed.

Behind the house, the empty field continued on until it reached a dense forest that lined the horizon. I wondered if that was the forest where the bodies of the children were found. I thought to myself “Fuck it” and proceeded to walk across the field behind the house into the forest. The forest was oddly quiet, save for the few periodic sounds of a woodpecker drilling into a distant tree. I cautiously made my way deeper into the woods, not really caring about the fact that I had no idea where I was going. I don’t know how to explain it, but it felt like there was something I had to find. I came to a thinner part of the woods and few small houses in the distance. Pollo’s house crossed my mind and I wondered if one of these homes had belonged to him. I neared a small clearing in which I could see 3 adequately sized logs gathered around a black, charred area (showing a small fire had been lit there recently).

“HEY! GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR FORT!” Those words nearly gave me a heart attack. I turned to my left and saw two dark-clothed people running towards me. My initial thought was to run, however as they came closer I saw they were really just kids in their early teens, possibly 13 or 14, maybe even 12. As they approached me, they realized my size as well. I’m 6’ 1”, while they could have been no bigger than 5’ 8” (one might have been 5’ 7”).

“We said… get the fuck out,” the larger one who was wearing a Slipknot shirt said half-heartedly. I stood my ground and shrugged. The shorter one who was wearing a Metallica shirt swung out a butterfly knife and held it in my direction.

“No, you wouldn’t want to,” I said in a deep, serious tone (trying to sound as badass as possible). I pulled out my cell phone.

The two kids withdrew, the one in the Metallica shirt putting away the knife. “Look, dude, we don’t like people in our fort, so can you just go?” the one in the Slipknot shirt said, obviously intimidated. I had no business in the forest anyway, so I uttered out a simple “fine” and turned before I realized I had a great opportunity.

“Did either of you hear of a guy who murdered a bunch of kids in these woods about… 13 years ago?” I asked the kids. The two looked at each other in confusion, before the one wearing the Metallica shirt answered.

“Yeah… everyone knows about that guy,” he said to me as if I were stupid. The kid in the Slipknot shirt continued, “He still lives around here, in the storm drain… my big brother’s friend says he saw him in a bear costume once, wandering around the forest at night.”

My instincts told me this was probably a lie, and the owner of Caledon Local 21 is probably long gone, only existing as folklore in this smaller isolated community. However, as a human, the thought of the mysterious unknown sparks interest within. “And where is the storm drain?” I asked (Just out of curiosity, I don’t actually believe the kid’s story). The Kid in the Metallica shirt stared at me for a few moments, his eyes seemingly full of annoyance, yet curiosity for me. “You’re not from around here, are you? Why did you even come here?” Now, I do admit I was slightly startled by the nature of his question. However, I figured I might as well explain why I was there, just in case people mistook my intentions. I told the two kids about my experience with the man and Caledon local 21, and that I had to come to maybe seek out some sort of closure (although though even I wasn’t exactly sure).

The kids seemed familiar with the channel as they smiled and looked at each other when I mentioned it. They also became more understanding and gave me a detailed description on how to get to the storm drain. Shortly after, I decided to just turn around the way I came and head back to the house, leaving the kids at their fort. But now you’re probably wondering why I left out such detail about what the kids told me just now, it is it because I’m choosing to conclude what I have gathered now.

Here is what the kids told me in detail:

The storm drain lies ahead of the kids’ fort, the same direction I was heading. The drain ends at a small river, where access water is drained out. Near here is a small playground (the kids told me people rarely use it). The man supposedly lives in the large pipe that rainwater drains out of. People have seen him, although always either wearing a bear mask or the mask and a full body bear costume. Note: I do not believe this is true, and in fact simply a myth made by the residents of Caledon. The story does not seem plausible in any way, why did no one call the police? Didn’t this guy look suspicious? And other questions like these leave the story invalid. I may visit the storm drain. Not because I believe the story, but because I want an excuse to visit Caledon again, so this blog doesn’t die (With no more tapes to watch, I don’t know what to talk about anymore!).

Thanks for continuing to support me and my blog. I know many are looking forward to more information about what happened in Caledon during the year 1999, and I will do my best to continue my research into the topic. Elliot out. [Update] – October 7, 2010

Wow, nearly five months since I last updated. I’m guessing everyone pretty much thinks I was dead right? Thankfully I’m not. But in all my seriousness, I really have been busy these past few months, and a blog about something that could have killed me as a kid is a little low on my current priorities list. As of now, I am living in Waterloo, Ontario, attending the University of Waterloo for computer engineering (yeah, I’m a keener). As you can imagine, engineering is no walk in the park, so obviously I nearly forgot about this blog. But as you can see now, I am back.

I remembered to visit the storm drain the kids from the Caledon forest told me about. It was out in a clearing between the wooded areas, nearby a marsh. Unfortunately, I found absolutely nothing; save for a turtle that retreated into its built-in home when it saw me. I snapped some pics of the pipe which I have posted as well. Also, let me tell you it was NOT a storm drain like they said it was.

What I saw was a simple pipe, possibly to channel the access water from the marsh. When I returned from Caledon however, I simply kept putting off uploading everything until I forgot all about my blog. It just didn’t seem important anymore (Please forgive me). It wasn’t until only recently that I am now interested in my case again. On September 10th, I received an email from this email address: [email protected]

Funny, am I right? Well, it gets better. I’m going to copy and paste the exact email this guy sent me:

Dear Elliot,

My dear, dear boy,

You see this story may or may not be true but it could happen. There are many slots for air time, if you have money you can have a public access TV channel. Some public accsess channels share air time like EWTN (Religouse channel based out of Michigan) That shows Catholic based programming but during off air hours have independant shows or just blue screen. Cable networks have emty channels available for rent space. So the scenario of a pedo renting a channel on basic TV is not far fetch at all. However public access TV is widley reveiwed and can be teminated at anytime. (These are the rules for the United States not for Canada where this story took place) So if this happened in the US the pedo would be tracked and arrested emedatly. Yes this story could happen but it is unlikely.

100 fuzzy hugs,

Mr. Bear

Now obviously this letter is fake and sounds almost corrupted, but still, I would like to thank whoever sent it — though they could use some English lessons. Just reading this letter creeped me out, but because of it, I am now full of this new interest to continue my blog. I guess it’s just funny trying to pursue the mysteries I’ve always questioned. Now my roommate knows about all of this. He thought the letter was real and actually seemed more scared than I was for a second. But then I shrugged it off, so he did too. I mean, what are the chances of this being real? How would “Mr. Bear” know all this about public access TV, and about when I went to Caledon on those occasions? More or less know my email or me still be interested in his cellar. Ha.

I’m going to send a reply to “returntheb.” Wow, just looking at the email address, you can tell someone wanted to freak me out. It didn’t really work, though. Although, to whomever you are, thank you for sparking my interest back into the full matter. Maybe I can find out more about what happened to “Mr. Bear,” hopefully, because although I don’t buy that email, a part of me still feels anxious. Thank you to all those who are still following me and have become avid fans, you are also why I am choosing to continue this!

Thanks, guys. [Update] – November 7, 2010

Wow, I can’t believe this blog hasn’t been deleted yet, I haven’t posted anything for so long. I have my reasons and I’d rather not discuss them just yet, it has been a rather… traumatic year for me. Some of you were right, I shouldn’t have gone back trying to relive the mysteries of my childhood, but I couldn’t resist. It has been over a year since my last post and a lot has happened. Let’s recap where I’m at right now with regards to the whole “Mr. Bear” incident.

[email protected] is no longer in use, I tried replying to the email but I got no reply. I tried again a while back, still no response. I’ve actually moved up to Ottawa (Capital of Canada for those who don’t know) for university so I haven’t been back to Caledon or back home in the Peel region for a while. I had my reasons for leaving as you could guess why. I’ve had to make a new email account because people keep prank mailing me pretending to be Mr. Bear. Thanks a lot, guys (not). Why have I ventured back to this blog? Mitchell Wilson (Remember my dad’s ex-cop friend?) gave me a phone call on October 23 about a tape that was found in a branch of the Brampton public library. Brampton is my hometown in case you haven’t picked up on that. He claims he isn’t allowed to discuss the contents of the tape with me as it is still in evidence, but he asked me to come check it out when I return home. That tape got the gears grinding again because we all know what was on the last tapes I saw. I can only imagine what can be on it; I’m guessing it must have something to do with Caledon Local 21.

I guess I just wanted to say I am continuing this blog and thank you for everyone who still follows it. I don’t know when my next entry will be, but when I see that tape I’ll write what I find. I don’t know what to expect, but the idea of seeing another tape has gotten me interested in this whole mystery all over again.

– Elliot [Update] – January 21, 2011

It has been a long year for me. University has been giving me the usual sleepless nights especially since I transferred to Ottawa which is the place to party (sarcasm). But now I’m back home with my dad in Brampton, the town I grew up in. I got home on the 18th of December and have been visiting with friends and family, or at least that’s what I would rather have done. Now that festive holiday cheer that I usually have at this time of the month is absent.

To answer the hundreds of emails and comments I got – yes I did see the tapes that my dad’s friend (Mitchell Wilson) promised to show me. These tapes, however, act as a curse; I want to know more, yet I want to forget everything. I couldn’t help it; I needed to see those tapes. Not only for myself, but for all of you guys who are just as intrigued as I am by that ominous man in a bear suit from my past. However, after viewing those tapes, I feel that pit of dread deep inside me once again, that feeling where I know that all those kids in those videos are dead, that I could have been one of those kids, and that humanity is a dark, dark place. If you haven’t skipped this paragraph for the “juicier” details below, thank you for listening to my rambling.

On January 1st, I called Mitchell Wilson and asked if there was a time where I could come by and view the tapes. Things were pretty slow at the station because of a snowstorm so he said I could come down anytime that day. The tapes were located at a branch not too far from me. So I braved the slushy roads and terrible Brampton drivers and made my way to the Peel regional police station located at the Bramalea city center.

I met Wilson at the front desk where he then led me up to the second floor and into a small office. He instructed me to have a seat and wait while he went and got the tapes. Before leaving the office he turned to me and said, “I know you’re curious but… are you sure you want to do this?”

Of course I did, or at least thought so. Besides, Wilson’s friend had pulled a lot of strings to get me in there and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity. This particular station had two tapes on hand. I was only able to watch a few minutes of footage, however, because the second tape was apparently too damaged to be played on a VCR.

Mr. Bear’s Cellar – Episode 30: Mr. Bear never ceases to disturb me, especially after what almost happened when I was younger. This episode took place outside in a forest at dusk, making it slightly hard to see especially considering the quality of the film (A trademark of anything from Caledon Local 21). The episode started with the camera being held in the “paws” of Mr. Bear aiming it at himself.

That bear mask… it looked more sinister in the shadows of the trees. The unmistakable muffled voice spoke up; “Hello children! Today I will be doing a wonderful thing for my friends, I will be delivering them to a faraway land where they will surely be happy!” Mr. Bear turned the camera around to show an ATV with an attached trailer, but what stood out the most was that the trailer contained seven motionless children lying side by side. “T-this here is the first load, but more will be on their way soon!” Mr. Bear turned around and pointed the camera at a large burlap tarp spread on the ground. Advertisements

He picked the tarp up revealing a large hole that must have been at least 12 feet deep and maybe about 15 feet wide. The rest of the episode consisted of Mr. Bear taking each kid and dropping them into the hole. I asked Wilson if they were dead to which he shook his head and replied, “Not yet.” Soon all the kids were in the pit. Some were in awkward positions due to being tossed in, but they remained unconscious. “The vitamin C will surely help these children on the great journey that awaits them!” Mr. Bear mentioned as he panned the camera towards multiple bottles of gasoline beside a bush. The camera zoomed into the bottles as Mr. Bear hummed before the episode ended.

Wilson revealed to me that these were 7 of the 16 victims found burnt to a crisp. The gasoline is what the man playing Mr. Bear used to light them on fire. A pit full of burning children… who the fuck would do that? That feeling of dread found me once again when I realized that I could have been one of those kids.

Wilson then explained to me that he had previously lied. The other tape confiscated by the Bramalea police branch did indeed work and contained the filming of the actual burning. However, he felt that I wouldn’t be able to handle the “disturbing and graphic” nature of the episode. And you know what? Maybe I can’t. I don’t even want to see it. I’m satisfied for now, but I just need some time to get myself together. The thing is, the man who ran Caledon Local 21 is still out there.

More to come soon.

– Elliot

INRI

Once upon a time… There lived a boy named Elliot. Elliot was a clever boy who loved playing with his friends. One day, he watched a lovely television show about a bear and his children friends. The children loved helping each other as good children should, but they also loved the bear. The bear loved the children since the children were so good at helping him and the fallen angel. The children and the bear wanted to play together forever with the help of their angel friend. But the fallen angel needed even more help, so the children had to give the ultimate sacrifice. Because that’s what friends do, Elliot. They help each other. Help us, Elliot, burn with us, Elliot. I want you, Elliot, he wants you, Elliot. Come back to my cellar. Pretty please with sugar and icing on top!

– Mr. B

INRI [Update] – April 5, 2011

I wanted to update more, I truly did. However certain circumstances had turned me off the whole Caledon Local 21 thing. I’ve since then had hundreds of emails about my blog and was even in contact with a magazine about my story. But now is the time to come clean to everyone, where have I been for an entire year? The story of Pandora’s Box is true, and I opened it. I opened it when I watched the second tape in the possession of the Bramalea police branch. The other subject I’d like to address is the number of joke/fake emails I’ve been getting from people claiming to be Mr. Bear. Let’s start with the second tape, as that is what traumatized me into stopping my search temporarily.

After a few weeks of playing silent, I decided to ask Mitchell Wilson if I could view that infamous second tape he had talked about. I don’t know why. I just felt that viewing that tape would give me some closure. Wilson was obviously reluctant to show me, but I was persistent. He gave me an offer. If I was still interested by the time I turned 20 he would show me the tape. Not being able to do much else, I just played the waiting game. By the time my 20th birthday rolled around, I was definitely still interested in viewing the tape. I gave Wilson a call, during which he admitted that he had hoped that I would forget about asking him again, but I was not taking no for an answer. “You really don’t need to see it,” he kept telling me, but I did need to see it. I had to at this point. Sure enough, he invited me to the Bramalea branch one Monday afternoon. Having watched every Saw film, and a video of animal slaughterhouses in my ethics class, I was sure I would be able to handle whatever the tape could throw at me. How naive I was…

Mr. Bear’s Cellar – Episode 31: When Wilson went to collect the tape from evidence, the officer in charge of the evidence room shook his head at me, his face saying “What are you doing?” Wilson explained that this tape includes the last known episode of Mr. Bear’s cellar. I rightfully assumed that I would be seeing the fate of the children, and began to feel a sense of dread.

The episode opened inside a forest, the usual one from the previous episodes. This fact took me a while to realize because it was night, the trees and leaves just looked like shapes dancing around in the darkness. A faint glow of light was present on the right side of the screen. There wasn’t any apparent audio, it appeared to be a windy night yet the trees weren’t making any noise. Slowly, the camera began to pan towards the glow, revealing smoke rising from a hole with the tips of flames peaking over the top. Wilson paused at this point; “Are you sure you want to see this?” he asked me. I insisted on it, even though a voice in my head was telling me not to. The video continued, the cameraman moved towards the hole, showing a pit of fire. This was the hole that I had seen in the previous episode. Only this time it was filled with shapes. I could see shapes moving around, fluttering, flailing…some motionless. I knew perfectly well what they were. The camera began to adjust to the light and… burning flesh. Red, black, a blur of surreal movement and colors. I wish I could forget what I saw, but you can’t forget a scene like this. This was not a horror movie, this was reality. Human beings were being killed in a horrifying way, a fate that I could have potentially met.

The video suddenly cut to dawn, the camera now positioned farther away from the hole. The fire was out. However, there was still smoke rising up. A figure was up ahead. I recognized it right away; the Mr. Bear suit was laid out on the ground. Empty, it looked just as unnerving. The suit was laid out in the shape of a cross. The cameraman did a lap around the suit, treating it like a treasured artifact. Placed at the head of the suit was a sign. In bold red letters, INRI was printed. The cameraman moved back to the end of the suit, zooming in to the bear’s face. The episode finally ended.

I was speechless. It was like a dream. You can find a lot of terrible things on the internet, but I had never seen anything like this. Wilson asked if I was okay and I replied with a shaky “yes.” I assured him as we left that I was fine and that the video gave me some closure over the whole incident. He didn’t seem too confident in me, but he left it at that. He was right, though – I had nightmares for weeks. I gave up. I didn’t care about the whole thing anymore. A sick man burned a bunch of kids alive, attracting them with a fake kid’s TV channel. I could have been one of his victims, yet I’m still here. I suppose I should be grateful, but I feel guilty. Am I still here only by pure luck? Ten months later I’m back, but now I need to address something else.

My email has been flooded with messages. Some people ask for more details, some ask if I can upload the tapes, and some people email me claiming to be Mr. Bear. First, I cannot get the tapes uploaded as they’re A) in police possession as evidence and B) I have no idea how to transfer VHS onto a computer. As for people pretending to be Mr. Bear, you’re not fooling me. When you have dozens of people pretending to be the same person, it doesn’t work. I’ve even seen a fake Caledon Local 21 YouTube channel, which is cute but still not real. Even more annoying is the fact that someone hacked my account just to put up some demented poem about me on this blog. I’ll leave it in the entry above this one, just to show you guys. I have contacted my webmaster about the entry and was told that it was posted on Halloween (oh, spooky!), attached to the email [email protected], which I assume is another joke email.

I’m over episode 31 now. The images of what I saw will stick with me for a while, but I want to do one last hurrah. I will get into contact with Mitchell Wilson again and hopefully get set up with the tapes in the possession of the other Peel Police branches. I’ll try to update you guys as soon as I can (I’m sure this won’t take so long again). Thank you to everyone who still reads this.

– Elliot

I wasn’t worried about the small increase of snow at first, considering I had snow tires installed before I started my long journey home. I did, however, get a little hesitant to drive when the snow started to really come down. The large amount of falling snow coupled with the large amount already littering the ground as I traveled higher into the mountains caused me to consider finding a place to stay for the night. I figured I could get some sleep while the storm passes over, that and the fact that I could give my car’s heater a break before it would decide to burst into flames- or worse, just stop working all together. I scanned as much of the landscape as I could, but there were no buildings in the immediate area.

The only other option that I had for my predicament was to keep driving and hope there was a town or exit nearby that I could take in order to escape from the storm. I must have been driving for at least an hour before I saw a sign up ahead indicating how far the closest city was. My heart sank a little when I read 162 miles as it flew by my windshield and vanished into the snowy night. At this point the snow was beating against my windshield, and I knew that I wasn’t going to last 162 minutes let alone 162 miles.

The digital clock on my radio read 1:21AM, and I decided that the next turn off I saw I would take and hope that I could find a neighborhood that will produce some results on my current endeavor. My thought process was: either freeze to death in my car, or stay the night at some random person’s house. Weighing the two options in my head I picked the only thing a sane person would pick and go with the house.

Another 30 minutes flew by, and still no luck finding a place to pull off. Just when I was starting to loose hope I saw a turn off in the distance. A small shape started make its way closer into my head lights and on further inspection it was reveled to me that they were two wooden poles that possibly belonged to a fence. When I turned onto the road between the two wooden poles the ground beneath me felt rocky and rough, like I was traveling on gravel. I didn’t drive for too long before I started to see a small cabin creep into my field of view.

The lights in the cabin were off, but the place seemed to be in good shape. I parked my car under a tall wild-looking tree that took residence on the cabin’s front lawn. Getting out of my car, I immediately grabbed my extra jacket and put it on pulling the half-hole mask I wore around my neck up and over my ears to keep the heat around my face. I put my cap on and trudged up to the cabin after putting my cap snug on my head. As I traveled through the cold windy night up to, what I felt was my salvation I immediately regretted not getting any gloves for my hands.

Despite the irritation I had with my hands, my face and the rest of my body were comfortably warm so I didn’t have much room to complain. I stuffed my frozen hands deep into my pockets and continued my journey across the cabin’s lawn. As I made my way to the door I noticed something odd. There was no indication of life anywhere; there wasn’t even a car in the front yard.

Taking my right hand out of my pocket I knocked 3 times, waiting patiently before saying “H-hello? Is anyone in there? I’m sorry to bother you so late at night, but I need a place to stay for a few hours.” Nothing answered my plea for help, so I knocked 3 more times on the door hitting my knuckles harder against the aged wood of the entrance.

“Hello?” I said again a little louder before continuing with “I’m not here to rob you or anything; I just need a place to stay for the rest of the night. I promise I’ll be gone by sunrise.”

As I finished my sentence I touched the ornate metal door handle. Noticing that the door seemed to be unlocked I said in a loud voice “I’m coming in now, if there’s anybody in there let me know now please.”

I pressed the metal leaver down, finding it a bit odd that the door was unlocked, and opened the door with little resistance on the other end closing it behind me with about the same resistance despite the fact the door looked really old. Looking around the area I noticed the cabin had 5 rooms: the living room- which was the biggest room- a small kitchen, an even smaller washroom, and- what I assumed were- 2 small bedrooms in the back. No lights were on inside the cozy cabin making it almost pitch dark if my eyes weren’t already adjusted to the darkness from outside. I decided the best thing to do would be to search for a light switch, so I took out my phone and turned on my flashlight app to scan the walls. My scan produced no results however, and at the risk of losing precious battery power on my phone I decided the best option would be to turn off the light and put my phone on airplane mode.

Before turning off my light I studied the paintings hanging on the wall that I glossed over in the initial scan. Each painting that crossed my sights was just typical landscapes or harbors- things like that. There was a painting that looked like a fox hunt or something like that, but other than that it was just typical paintings you would see hanging on the walls around an elderly person’s home. There was a painting, however, that caught my attention. The painting was small and consisted of what looked like two adults- a mother and father- a teenage girl, and a small child.

The family captured in that painting were wearing what looked like Victorian era clothing. I’m only guessing about the clothes, I mean they could have been from the 1800’s or the early 20th century- the point is that the clothing was very ornate and regal. There was something really disturbing about the image in the painting though. The faces of each member of the family looked like they were smoothed over with clay- it’s kind of hard to describe it, but the 3 family members looked like they had no facial features. By no facial features I mean instead of the normal facial features you and I have, the 3 people in the painting hade grooves of smooth flesh where normally you have an eye, nose, or mouth. The only person in the painting that didn’t posses a blank face was the teenage girl, which had normal facial features for a teenage girl- in fact she was quite breath taking. I pulled myself away from the painting to take a glance at my phone for the time. My phone indicated that it was passed 2 o’clock in the morning, so I decided to go to the back room and check to see if it was occupied. To my relief the room was vacant besides a medium sized bed, ornate dresser, and nightstand there wasn’t much to go by. The walls were blank besides more sappy paintings to give it a little more atmosphere.

Although there was no indication of a heating system- besides a chimney- the rooms were bearable enough that I figured I could just bundle up in my clothes under the covers in order to stay warm. I was only going to be there for a few hours anyway, so there wasn’t much point in starting a fire plus the people who owned the cabin wouldn’t be back tonight considering how late it was. I hopped into the worn out bed facing the open door next to another door I assumed was a closet and pulled my half-hole mask completely up and over my face to make sure my head would stay nice and warm the rest of my stay. Pulling the fabric of my mask down slightly I set the alarm on my phone for 4:30AM and put it back down onto the nightstand. I covered my face again and bundled up tightly with the sheets, closing my eyes and letting dreamland take me away until I woke up after what felt like minutes later to the sound of scratching.

My body froze as I heard the noise over and over again softly coming from the closed door. I tried to relax myself by thinking that all the noise that I heard was just a rat or some other animal that was spending the night in the closet while the cabin’s owners were away. Quietly I shifted onto my back, pulling my half-hole mask down slightly so a little slit appeared giving me a small window to look at what was out there. I laid on the bed stiff as a board with my cap and mask covering my face in such a way that it acted like a visor giving me a small peak at what was in the darkness. Thankfully my eyes were still adjusted to the dark, which gave me a small amount of reassurance as I continued looking in the direction the scratching noise was coming from.

The scratching continued louder and longer for what seemed like minutes until just like that, it suddenly stopped. Silence filled the room again, but it wasn’t a safe kind of silence. The deafening silence in the room was a foreboding ominous sort of silence. The vacuum of sound in the air was the type of silence that happens in a movie just before something jumps out at you. Just when I began to calm myself down the door knob to closet began to jiggle and turn very slowly.

My heart was racing out of my chest as I saw and heard that knob turn, and every inch of my body wanted to bolt out of that bed and out of that cabin before whatever was on the other side of that door got out after me. I laid perfectly still on the bed despite the fact that I had a cocktail of adrenalin, nerves, and instincts telling me to get the hell out of there. My eyes widened as the door to the closet opened slightly and I saw what looked like a dried head attached to an elongated neck pop out of the opening followed by a skeletal body. The thing that was emerging from the closet crawled on all fours out of the doorway and slowly made its way to the bed I was sleeping in. I had never been more frightened in my whole entire life as the thing stood up, almost touching the roof of the cabin, and looked down in my direction.

The creature stood there studying me as I peeked through the thin slit in my mask, pure terror swirling around in my mind as I glanced up at the body of the creature. Looking at the creatures’ skeletal face I noticed that it had no eyes in its’ eye sockets, which lead me to believe that it couldn’t see me even though I could see it. Just when the idea of it not being able to see me started to give me a little comfort the creature began to speak.

“Strange…” The creature whispered softly as it continued to watch me, and then began to speak again.

“It has no fear of me…” The creature continued to say in a hoarse tone as it began to breathe loudly, continuing to look at me and gripping down on the edge of my bed. Feeling the creatures’ bonny hand touch the edge of my bed caused my brain to go into complete panic mode. The only thing that stopped me from jumping up was the thought that maybe the creature believed I was dead or asleep and wouldn’t attack.

“How can it not fear…? How can it not fear me..?” The thing said through clenched teeth before loudly gasping and suddenly pulling back with its’ mouth open in an expression that seemed like fear.

“It has no face.” The thing whispered to itself as it continued to back away.

“It has no face.” The creature said again, but this time louder than before and slightly more threatening.

“It has no face!” The creature shouted as it backed off further away from the bed. I heard the thing breathing loudly and quickly before calming down and slowly returning to the side of the bed.

Leaning over me slowly, the creature continued to look at me before softly beginning to breathe on my face. I could smell its’ foul breath even through my mask. The smell was so powerful that it took all my strength not gag as a reflex to the awful stench. In my mind I made the choice to keep motionless, and not do or say anything that could compromise whatever illusion I was giving the thing that was currently studying me. The creature breathed on me again softly. The stench I smelled from its’ breath could only be described as pure death, which only strengthened my resolve to stay perfectly motionless.

“Strange…” the thing whispered at me again, leaning in close to me to the point where I could see and smell its’ decaying flesh.

The creature slowly reached for me, its’ hand slowly moving towards my face. With every inch that decaying hand moved I couldn’t help but feel my situation becoming more and more dire. I thought that this was it for me. The creature would kill me tonight, or take me away and torture me then kill me and no one would know what happened to me. No one would find my body out here, and no one would know my story. I could feel tears start to swell up in my eyes as I thought of everyone I ever loved being yanked away from me in this one moment.

“No face, no face, no face.” The creature softly chanted as its’ hands crept ever closer to my face. I could hear the anguish in the creature’s voice as it continued chanting over and over as it reached for me.

As the creatures’ long boney hand crept only centimeters away from my face I braced myself for the worst, making the last thoughts I would ever have about the people who I loved. Just as I thought my life was all over a sudden loud noise erupted from the room, filling the ear closest to the nightstand with a flood of beeps, and causing the creature to scream and jump back. As the noise continued the creature threw itself back against the wall shrieking uncontrollably in terror as it stumbled back towards the closet. I was dumb struck for a second before the thought came to me that I had set my alarm for 4:30AM, which must have been the source of the noise.

I jumped out of the bed grabbing my phone and pointing the lit up screen at the monster as the alarm continued to ring loudly. The loud ringing caused the monster to shriek even more in confusion and terror as it retreated quicker as I approached. Seeing my chance I activated my phones flashlight and put it on strobe in order to disorientate the monster further.

“No face! No face! No face! The creature shrieked at me as it withdrew to the safety of the closet. I continued to shine my light on the creature, and for added effect I started playing loud music as I continued to jab my phone in the monsters’ direction like a lion tamer. The thing threw itself into the dark recesses of the closet and I shoved the door back locking it after I slammed it closed. The shrieks coming from the monster started to get fainter and fainter, like it was retreating deeper into the house.

“No face! No face! It has no face!” I could hear the creature yell out as it got further and further away.

After hearing the last retreating words of the thing that terrified me the whole night I bolted from the cabin at break-neck speed, jumping into my car, and floored it off the gravel road. I was shaking all over as I drove, and when I pulled my half-hole mask further down my exposed skin was as white as the snow that littered the ground. I was so frightened by the whole experience as soon as I pulled into the first town I saw, I parked my car, and began to sob uncontrollably for awhile. The experience that I had just been through would scar me for life, but as I wept in my car in the parking lot of a seven-eleven I couldn’t help but start to laugh a little in between my fits of crying. I got through my ordeal without so much as a scratch on me- well besides the mental scars- I was fine, I was alive, and I didn’t have to worry anymore.

After I finished with my whole episode of crying and laughing like an insane person I entered the store sniffling and wiping away the rest of my tears. As I continued into the store the cashier looked up at me and traced my direction with his eyes before continuing with what he was doing. The store was mostly empty, besides an elderly couple, I was the only customer in there.

“Had a rough night?” The cashier said with one eyebrow cocked up while he scanned my items. “You have no idea.” I said looking out the window at the sunny winter day.

“I noticed you looked a bit upset when you came in. What happened? Did you get dumped or something?” He said looking up at me as the register computed how much I owed him.

Looking at the young man behind the register, he seemed to be a little younger than I was- although that doesn’t say much because even though I’m 22 I look younger than my actual age. I looked at the cashier’s name tag for a second before feeling that I had nothing to lose by telling him about the night I just had. The small name on his ID tag read Evan, and as I finished telling him my frightening tale something odd happened. I expected him to burst out laughing or say I was the best liar he had ever talked to. Instead of doing any of that Evan just stood there, his skin milk white as he stared at me with an expression so horrified he gave me the impression that he just witnessed someone get run over by a train or something.

“Evan, a-are you alright?” I said looking into his eyes while we both stood there quiet.

“W-what? Oh… Yea- it’s just…” Evan began to say before his thoughts trailed off due to the new feeling that we were both being watched.

I began to feel eyes burn into the back of my head before turning around to see the old couple I glanced at when I entered the store beforehand. The old couple possessed the same horrified look that Evan had just a few seconds ago, they must have heard the whole story I told. After a few moments of silence the old couple asked me what I knew about the cabin, to which I couldn’t really say, I gave them the best description I could about what I saw. The couple proceeded to tell me about the cabin, how long it’s been there, and that it was haunted by a presence so terrifying that the place was condemned and left to rot away after so many people disappeared there. They told me that no one who ever stayed in that cabin has ever been seen alive again- if they’ve ever been seen at all after their visit.

“One of my best friends stayed the night in that cabin…” Evan said quietly as he stared off into the distance, but continued his thoughts with “I refused to go into the cabin, I knew something bad would happen if we went in. I tried so hard to convince him that the dare was stupid and to not go in, but he refused to be labeled as a chicken and continued with the dare.”

Evan’s eyes began to water as he continued with his story “I never saw him again after that night. I kept calling his house but his parents still couldn’t find him. We put out flyers and billboards but we never had any luck. After a few days we contacted the police and I told them about the cabin.”

Evan began to choke down tears as he clenched his fist “They found him in the basement of that cabin sprawled out on the floor. His eyes were surgically removed from his eye sockets, his nose was removed, and his lips… they were sliced off. When they found him he was naked with an incision from the bottom of his rib cage to his pelvis down the middle of his body. All of the internal organs were extracted from his body and to add insult to injury his genitals were sliced clean off. But you want to know the worst part of it all? When the police did an autopsy on the body, they found that he was alive during the whole process.”

Evan winced as he remembered the whole gruesome site and said “they never found who, or what did it. There was no DNA evidence to convict anybody, they didn’t find the tools that made the incisions, and they didn’t find anything.”

Evan clenched his fist tighter on the table before the old man listening to our conversation put his hand on Evans shoulder to reassure him that it was going to be alright. As he comforted Evan he looked at me and said “People have been disappearing from that area for decades- maybe even centuries for all we know, but the bodies always end the same gruesome way. I don’t care who you are, no one deserves something like that happening to them. They should just torch that evil place to the ground.

The old lady joined her husbands’ side and looked at me with the most foreboding face I had ever seen. “If your story is true, you should consider yourself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. In all my years of living you are the only one to go into that cabin and come out alive.” The woman said gripping onto her husbands’ hand tightly as she spoke to me.

After hearing the old woman’s’ words I realized that Evan said the body of his friend was found in the basement, which explains why the monsters voice got fainter. It would have pulled me into the basement if my phone hadn’t gone off. I quickly paid for my items and left the store more troubled now than I was when I entered. Feeling drowsy due to the lack of sleep and constant adrenalin rush caused by my whole terrible ordeal I decided to go to a hotel and spend the day sleeping and relaxing to get my mind off things.

That night I sat on the bed in my hotel room and looked at the 2 items that saved my life. In one hand I gripped onto my half-hole mask, which hid my face from that terrible monster. In my other hand I held my Cell phone, which scared away the horrible beast that could have killed me. I decided that from that day on I would always wear my half-hole mask to bed- it saved my life that’s the least I can do for it. The recent brush with death I just experienced had taught me that life is too precious to waste, so I decided to ask my best friend Samantha out on a date and things worked perfectly.

Samantha and I were together for 2 years before I recently asked for her hand in marriage- which she said yes. Part of me will never forget that awful night and because of it not only have I been wearing my half-hole mask to bed every night since then, I’ve also made it a priority not to live in any type of house that has a basement. I as an added safety measure I started locking every door before going to bed- it’s a pain, but you can never be too careful. Despite these crazy precautions Samantha has accepted my little quirks and has continued to be supportive as we continue or journey through life together. I couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out in my life, and I’m so lucky to be with Samantha- everything’s perfect.

There’s just one thing that bothers me- and I think I might just have to blame my imagination, but sometimes when I wake up at night, when it’s really quiet… sometimes I’ll hear soft scratching noises. Also- and I think it’s just paranoia, but I swear, sometimes I hear something whisper “No face…” From inside my closet …

Apparently, there was once a city in the north of Sweden called Korona, but somehow we’ve all forgotten about it. I’m a police officer working in Kalix, a municipality close to where the lost city of Korona is supposed to have been. At that place, there are no signs of the city – only a dense forest – but certain details related to my own family makes me certain this place was indeed real.

The entire world just forgot about it… I can’t imagine how or why, but it’s the only conclusion I’ve been able to reach. For me, this all started when two Romanian blueberry pickers came into my small office to report something they had found deep in the dense forest. They didn’t know enough Swedish or English to explain exactly what it was that they had found, but it was immediately clear to me that it had terrified them completely. From what I understood, it seemed to involve a human corpse. Eventually, after having brought in an interpreter from the town next to mine, it was revealed that they had stumble upon a dead child, no more than ten years old.

They led me and two of my colleagues – followed by an ambulance – to the location where they had found the child. The sun was setting behind a thick mist when we got there. I lit a cigarette while we left the main road and walked into the forest, to where the child was supposed to be. I felt a bit uncomfortable having to deal with a dead child, but I had handled cases like this before – some car accidents – and didn’t feel too affected by it now. It was just another job, or so I thought.

The Romanians stopped when we got close and refused to go any further. There was panic in their eyes, more than I expected even given these extreme circumstances. One of my colleagues stayed with them while the rest of us continued. We soon came upon a huge boulder that had been placed there by the ice sheet that covered Europe during the ice age. My colleague walked around it and a few moments later he came running back, pale as if he had seen the Devil himself. He bent down and puked right in front of me.

“It…” he said. “It’s on the other side… Holy shit.”

I didn’t ask him any questions, I only proceeded to check it out for myself with the medics following behind me. What we found on the other side of the boulder… It wasn’t natural. Half the child – a blond little girl – was fused with the boulder just as if she had been passing through it as a ghost and then suddenly turned into a human before she had time to exit the rock. Or, as my colleague later remarked, it was as if she had been teleported into the rock. The girls sorrowful, dead gaze into the forest seemed to tell a story of a tragedy unknown to the living. The medics quickly shied away from her eyes in silence, horrified by the fate she must have suffered, but I couldn’t look away. I’ve never been a religious man, but this experience made me doubt everything I’d believed before.

And I don’t just mean the bizarre way the poor girl had lost her life, half engulfed by the boulder… There was something else about the girl as well. Something that made me feel completely empty inside, just as if a piece of my own soul was ripped out of me leaving an empty hole in my heart that quickly filled up with a sorrow I had never felt before. It was a dreadful feeling, only made worse by the strange fact that a small part of me recognized the girl. I couldn’t tell from where… Her face was like the vague memory of a dream recently forgotten.

We collected ourselves and started talking, trying to make sense of the situation without any success, while the medics approached the body. I tried to focus on the hard facts while we investigated the scene. The girl was wearing a pink jacket. In one of the pockets, we found an odd looking flower – it’s colors were exotic and resembled the wings of a beetle – and a yellow library card with a text that puzzled us. “The library of Korona,” it said.

The girl had written her name on the card as well. When I saw it, my world started spinning. “Isabella Lexelius”, it said in the girls childish handwriting.

“Isn’t that your last name, sir?” my colleague said.

“It… it is…” I didn’t know what to say or think.

“Well, do you know her?”

“I… I don’t know… No… No, I’ve never seen her before in my entire life. It must be a coincidence.”

“That’s a pretty big coincidence, sir.”

I didn’t respond to that.

“There’s something on the ground as well”, one of the medics said.

On the bloodstained moss beneath the girl, there was a notebook. It must have fallen out of her hand, the one that was hanging limply above the book. I picked it up and opened it. The pages were covered with small text, written with a different handwriting than the girl’s.

“Sir!” one of the medics said. “We will have to bring some tools to cut her down.”

“Yes”, I said absently.

“There’s one more thing”, the medic said.

I put the book in a plastic evidence bag. “What?”

“There’s too much blood.” The medic pointed at the ground.

“What do you mean there’s too much blood?” I asked.

“Beneath the boulder, sir”, the medic explained. “It’s impossible for all that blood to come from a child.”

A moment of silence, then I said:

“We will have to come back here with better tools.”

A day later, we successfully removed the upper body of the girl and brought it back to the morgue where it was examined. We also tried to lift the boulder with the help of a crane, but it wouldn’t budge. Instead, we dug a hole under it but we didn’t find any new body parts. All we could do this day was to sample as much of the blood as possible.

During the examination of the body, I read the notebook. It contained the story of the city of Korona. I was convinced it was fiction – a deranged story written by the man I thought must have killed the girl – until a few weeks ago when the forensic lab called me.

I still have a hard time believing it, but they told me there’s no other way. They had tested the DNA of the girl and compared it to mine because of her last name. It was my idea, since I didn’t want anyone to suspect anything. We didn’t think it would reveal anything, but it did… The ten or so years old girl, Isabella, was my daughter. I was sure it wasn’t possible. Ten years earlier I lived with my ex-wife and I never cheated on her and certainly didn’t have any children with her. We stayed together for five more years, so I would’ve known if she had a baby during that time. And yet, there was nothing wrong with the test.

Below is a transcript of the notebook. I’ve typed it out here in the hopes that someone will remember the city of Korona or someone who might have lived in it. Please contact me if you have any information.

This is what was inside the notebook:

My name is Helena Fredriksson. Five years ago I was a different person. I was younger back then, not just in the ordinary sense but in spirit too. There was joy in my life and I had hopes and dreams. That’s all gone now… I don’t have that much time to write this down, but I will try and explain what happened to us – to our entire community – as well as I can.

The event, as we have come to call it, occurred on July 9, 2013. I was only visiting Korona over the day to take my niece – Isabella – to the grand opening of The Red Grove, the cities new amusement park. It was supposed to be the biggest one in Sweden and Isabella had begged her parents to go to the grand opening, but neither of them had been able to due to work. So they called me and asked me to do it for them. I was their go-to person for when they needed help with Isabella, the only one they trusted. How I wish that hadn’t been the case now, considering what happened.

We arrived pretty early, a few hours before the opening, so that we wouldn’t need to stay in line the whole day to get inside. The weather was amazing. It had rained earlier in the morning, so we had been a bit worried, but when we got to the city there wasn’t a cloud in sight.

Isabella couldn’t stop talking about how much fun we would have, and it warmed my heart to see her so happy. It took us a bit longer than expected to get to the amusement park since one of the main streets had been closed off for a military parade. This didn’t bother us that much, it rather increased the feeling of celebration in the air. To avoid the parade, we had to take a bus to the city center, the Freyja square, and from there we had to take the subway to the Yellow Neutral business cluster – the tallest skyscrapers in Sweden. It was possible for us to walk to The Red Grove from there.

There were people everywhere. It turned out that a lot of them had taken a ferry down the river that I didn’t know about. This meant we had to stand in line after all. Isabella didn’t mind, but I knew she would get hungry soon, and I worried that it would ruin her mood. Luckily, there was a man selling hot dogs from a cart that he was pushing down the line. I bought a hot dog and a soda for Isabella. Her parents didn’t really like when I bought her junk food, but a day like this I thought they would understand. The man was also selling red balloons to the children. Isabella said she wanted one. I tried to tell her that she would have to carry it around all day and that there would be more balloons inside the amusement park, but she wouldn’t listen. Reluctantly, I bought her a balloon as well.

At this point, no one knew that their entire lives were about to change in a matter of minutes.

Isabella accidentally let go of the balloon. I feared it would make her sad, but it didn’t seem to bother her that much. We looked at the balloon as it rose up into the air and drifted away. Soon, it was but a red dot against the vast blue sky. Then, suddenly, it vanished.

“Where did it go?” Isabella said.

I couldn’t explain it. It had just disappeared.

“I don’t know”, I said. “Maybe it popped?”

But something – an uneasy feeling I couldn’t rationalize – made me doubt that. Then, only a few minutes later, strong winds came from every direction. It carried a smell with it that reminded me of something rotten.

“Ew”, Isabella said as her long white hair was blowing in the wind. “What’s that smell?”

I held her hand harder. “I don’t know,” I said.

People looked around, confused, and their joyful voices became concerned. Something was happening, but no one knew what it was. Sirens echoed in the distance, seemingly coming from the business cluster.

“Oh my god,” a woman said and pointed towards the skyscrapers. “The top of the building is gone!”

It wasn’t that easy to see, but she was right. The top of the tallest building was gone as if it had been cut off with a knife. Isabella was too short to see it, but she picked up that something wasn’t right on everyone's faces and she became worried herself.

“I think we need to get away from here,” I said, acting completely on instinct. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

Isabella teared up. “But the opening, aren’t we…”

“We will come back later sweetheart,” I said as I walked away from the crowd with her. One of the ferries were just about to leave. We quickly stepped aboard. A few others joined us, but most of the people stayed behind in the hopes that everything would be sorted out. Isabella cried, but she wasn’t mad. As the ferry slowly drove away from the riverside promenade a commotion of some kind erupted among the crowd back on land. I couldn’t see what was going on, but suddenly everyone screamed in terror and tried to run towards the water. They were clearly escaping from something, but I couldn’t see what it was. All I saw was people stepping on each other while they tried to jump into the river and swim away. It was a horrible sight, and I’m glad Isabella wasn’t tall enough to see over the railing.

Next, the sirens from the emergency alert system began blasting its eerie sound of imminent catastrophe. Everyone asked questions no one had any answers to. Most people I heard thought we were under attack, either by terrorists or the Russians.

I picked up my phone to call my sister, but there was no signal. I tried with Isabella's phone as well without any luck. I soon discovered that no one had any signal. At the sides of the river that passed through the city, people were looking out of their windows trying to get a glimpse of what was going on but the only thing they could see that was out of the ordinary was the cut off building in the Yellow Neutral business cluster.

“Look”, Isabella said and pointed at the sky. “I’ve never seen such a big bird before!”

An enormous bird-like creature soared high above us. It was pitch black. Although it was impossible to say for sure, it seemed to be just as confused about seeing us as we were seeing it. It circled the city center a few times and then flew away again. The sight of the giant bird, or whatever it truly was, turned our anxious confusion into terror. We still didn’t know what had happened, but now we knew it didn’t have anything to do with terrorists or some foreign power. This was something else, something impossible to believe and yet at the same time impossible to deny.

The ferry let us off a bit further down the river, close to Freyja square. People seemed to be in a state of panic, although no one knew what was wrong. Some were packing their cars to escape the city, others were running somewhere – perhaps to their loved ones – but most people clustered around police officers, city workers or military personnel from the parade to try and get some information. But they only got the same answer over and over again, yelled at them so that it could be heard over the sirens from the emergency alert system: that nothing was known and that they needed to return to their homes and listen to the radio for more information.

“How are we suppose to listen to the radio when the power is out?!” The voice came from an old woman. “Look around, there’s no power!”

She was right.

“Go home and close your windows and wait for the power to come back,” a policeman said. “We don’t know what is going on, but the safest thing to do is to follow the procedure…”

He was interrupted by something happening a few meters away. The first person who had tried to leave the city – a man on a loud motorcycle – had come back. I was carrying Isabella, comforting her at the same time as I tried to hear what the man on the bike was trying to tell everyone. I pushed through to get closer to him. He walked to the center of the square and climbed up on the foot of the statue of Freyja. Few people believed him, but everyone that had seen the creature in the sky had no doubt he was telling the truth however impossible it seemed.

“There’s no way out!” the man yelled. “The main road cuts of at the edge of the city and… There’s only jungle. I can’t explain it. I’m sorry. But it’s true. We are surrounded by a dense, thick, jungle and there’s no way around it.”

“Then it’s true,” a policeman whispered to himself next to me. “For the love of God, it was all true.”

I asked him what he meant. First, he didn’t want to acknowledge my question, but when he saw my confusion and tears in my niece's innocent eyes he turned to me and said quietly:

“Before we lost contact with the helicopter that was surveilling the parade, the pilot said something that simply didn’t make sense. He… He was crashing. Something had cut off his rotor blades. And he said that it all had changed somehow… The view had changed. Before he hit the ground he yelled that he had seen a jungle to the west and an ocean to the east.”

More and more reports came in and even though it was impossible to tell rumors from facts they were all telling the same story: the entire world around the city had been replaced in an instance. The city was the same, but the sky above it wasn’t. Eventually, the screaming sirens went silent, the cars stopped beeping their horns and the cacophony of voices died out. An uncanny silence fell over the city. The feeling was beyond unreal.

I didn’t know what any of this meant. I tried to explain it to my niece, but she was only five years old and she couldn’t understand. She wanted to go home to her parents and I didn’t know what to tell her. She was tired and needed rest, so I went to a hostel nearby and paid for a room. Soon, the economy of the city would collapse but for the first few days in this new unknown world, people still accepted money as payment.

What followed was five years of unending trials and hardships, a continuous battle for survival with no hope for help or rescue. It started during the first night. The sun, identical to our own yet new and strange, sat due north instead of west and was replaced by unrecognizable stars covering the entire sky. As I looked up at them from the small window in our room, I didn’t feel awe, but rather I felt completely lost. The strangest feeling during all these years must have been the paradoxical sensation of familiarity on the streets mixed with the awareness of total displacement. I think this was partly why people kept close to the city center, to drown themselves in the illusion of being home even though they knew, deep down, that they couldn’t escape their fate as stranded in the unknown.

Then, as I leaned out the window, I heard the sounds. People screaming, gunshots, cars driving madly through the streets without anywhere to go and the occasional odd howling that made my blood run cold. I never saw anything of what happened that night, but it changed the population – more than two million people – forever.

I closed the window and hid behind the bed with Isabella. She wanted to cry for her mother, but I kept my hand over her trembling mouth.

The next night was calmer, probably because no one dared venture outside. During the days, I soon realized, the threat didn’t come from the unknown jungle outside of the city but from the people within it. It was impossible to tell how much crimes were committed, but given what I saw with my own eyes – looting, robberies, and even murders – I figured the rate of crime must have gone up by a lot. However, it wasn’t total anarchy. The police and the few military units that had been in town for the parade kept some vital order to the community. Since ordinary people didn’t have guns, the police and the military wasn’t threatened by the average citizen.

A leader stepped forward – the man on the motorcycle – and after a few weeks, everyone seemed to cooperate peacefully. The food that was left in the stores were mostly distributed fairly and everyone that could work seemed to do it without hesitation, even I.

The scientists that had been working at the university at the time of the event couldn’t figure out what had happened, but with the help of hundreds of citizens, they managed to build a small nuclear power plant that could return electricity to the city. I mostly helped out with that project. I didn’t know anything about nuclear physics, but I did what little I could. It was amazing what we were capable of as a people and in all my dreadfulness a feeling of pride grew in my chest. Although, our time in this world wasn’t simple. Far from it.

Aside from my personal problem with keeping Isabella healthy and safe – which I succeeded with although she never felt safe – there were three major problems that kept growing larger for every week.

The first one was the food and water situation. Some people had managed to grow wheat and potatoes in parks and on soccer fields, but it wasn’t enough. We were running out of food and water. It did rain from time to time, but very few people felt safe drinking the rainwater. To battle this problem – and to find solutions to some other problems as well – expeditions were sent out to explore the jungle. These typically ended the same way, that is with no one coming back. Only once or twice did someone manage to return to the city, but they weren’t themselves anymore. It was as if something in the jungle had captured their souls and let their bodies walk back unscratched.

The second problem was nature. It seemed to have spared us the first couple of months, but soon after we got the electricity back it turned on us. It took a while before I saw it with my own eyes, but – seemingly at random – mysterious creatures entered the city. Sometimes they just walked right through it, never to return again. A policewoman – one of the new recruits – told me that she had followed a naked blue child as it solemnly walked into the city and then back out of it again.

At other times indescribable monsters wreaked havoc on the streets, killing as many people as they could before returning to wherever they came from.

At one point – and this I actually saw for myself – an enormous centipede, pure white with hundreds of red eyes, suddenly appeared from a manhole. It quickly climbed up against a building – as if it knew exactly what it was doing – and entered one of the windows on the top floor. Next came the screams from the people inside the building. A few escaped, but everyone else inside were ripped to shreds. Only after about five minutes did the centipede exit the building from the entrance, it’s white segmented body stained with blood, and returned down the manhole.

These attacks, as they were called, aroused fear and panic in all of us. Although it didn’t happen that often, it happened often enough for everyone to be on edge all the time.

The third problem also didn’t become noticeable until later. It was a problem of health. There was no pattern to who was affected or not, but some people – probably no more than 1% – got sick. It started out like a fever and slowly progressed with nightmarish mutations randomly hitting the body. Most of these mutations made the victims handicapped and disfigured, but sometimes – very rarely – the victims developed properties that were seemingly beneficial to them. The most extreme case of this that I saw was a young girl who grew a third eye in the middle of her forehead. The iris of the new eye glittered with amazing colors and the girl claimed that she could use the eye to see other peoples emotions.

At the beginning of the health crisis, the sick people were treated badly, just as if they had been monsters from the jungle. This treatment only got worse when it was revealed that the creatures from outside never attacked the sick. At one point, a mob gathered at Freyja square, set on chasing the sick people out of the city. Luckily, this was stopped by the military.

In the end, however, the sick people were sent into the jungle. Not to be away with them, though, but to make use of their immunity to the nature of this world. This turned into a huge success that eventually solved the food and water problem. They could venture out and explore the surrounding area and return with edible fruits, vegetables, and small mammal-like animals that they hunted.

This was a turning point for us. And then luck stroke again. All attempts at fishing had failed so far, but all of a sudden there were fish everywhere in the river. We soon learned that there were different periods for when the fish was out to sea or close to land. However, as soon as they came close to land mysterious purple thunderstorms that lasted weeks tormented the city. And yet, we survived. Many people didn’t, of course, but life was possible. In the end, we prevailed.

During the five years that followed there weren’t that many catastrophes and our focus on survival kept most of our thoughts of home away. Even Isabella thought less and less of her parents as she grew older. Over time, most people got used to the bizarre situation they had found themselves in back in July 2013. Many people did commit suicide, yes, but most people choose to live on in this unknown land.

Two events, however, changed things. First, it was what happened to a planned expedition at sea. Hundreds of people, mostly men, decided to venture out into the ocean with one of the luxury cruisers that had been moored next to the city. This was going to be a great adventure and, perhaps, a way to find some answers to where we had ended up. It inspired all of us. Thousands of people – Isabella and I included – had gathered to watch as the huge boat slowly sailed out. It all felt similar to that day five years earlier when we had waited for the amusement park to open. We all stared at the horizon as the boat – named Birdo de Espero – turned into a small dot against the setting sun. We imagined the amazing adventures they would be on and looked forward to their return. But then something that must have been larger than anything we had seen so far came out of the water and swallowed Birdo de Espero whole.

Some people screamed and others cried. This was a hard blow to the city. Just knowing that a being like that – a being able to eat an entire luxury cruiser in one bite – could exist deprived many people their hopes of a future.

The next event was different. It was a miracle, to say the least. It happened only a month after the destruction of Birdo de Espero. A military guard, a young man who had only been fifteen at the time of our disappearance from Earth, discovered that when he stood at a certain place at Freyja square he could tune into to a specific radio station from our old world. The station's name was Synthwave Mix and dedicated most of its broadcasting to that kind of music. Hope returned immediately, but this time the hope was different from the one we had spent five years building up within ourselves. This was the hope of seeing our loved ones again. The hope to return home. The people at the university investigated the area to try and determine where the radio signals were coming from. They didn’t have much success but soon realized that they emanated from the ground beneath Freyja square.

While the area was investigated by the scientists, ordinary people showed up en masse. They all had radios of different kinds with them, like children carrying stuffed animals to feel safe, hoping to tune in to Synthwave Mix and get a taste of their lost home. Of course, the area where the radio station could be heard was too small and the police had to chase everyone away to give the scientists the room they needed. A few days later, though, the scientists placed a set of large speakers at the foot of the statue of Freyja and connected them to the receiver they were using to listen in on the radio station.

Day and night the relaxed, somewhat melancholic, synthetic music played non-stop to the entire city. People congregated around the statue. They even defied the dangers of the night. This became our cities new tradition. Ending the day by going to the statue and sitting down around it, as if in prayer, became our pilgrimage. It wasn’t exactly the music that drew people to the square, but rather it’s origin. Still, the electronic melodies soon turned into a symbol of all of our hopes and desires. From time to time, people got up and danced – sometimes while crying from a bittersweet joy difficult to explain. Although, the thing that made us all go silent and become totally focused was when the hosts said something. Usually, they only spoke about the music they were broadcasting – completely unaware that an entire city full of people were listening to them almost religiously – but on rare occasions, they talked about the world outside. At those times it felt like our hearts collectively stopped in anticipation. Would they say something about us, about their efforts to figure out where we all had gone and how they would bring us back? But there was never any news about us, just as if they had already forgotten about us or never known about us at all. The tragic fate of the city of Korona never came up. Yet, we never lost fate.

It took a long time – and now I’m getting closer to the present day – but eventually, the scientists decided that it would be worthwhile digging a large hole right where the radio waves seemed to sip out of the ground. This was no easy task and neither was it safe. The work took weeks. Again we all helped. No one really knew what exactly we were looking for, we only knew that it was something.

When we reached the bottom, where the rock was too hard to dig through, a mountain of dirt covered the entire square. Our efforts hadn’t been in vain, we discovered. Right beneath the place where the radio waves had been picked up, there was a small hole in the bedrock. People were asked to back away from it while the scientists investigated it. First, they tried to measure how deep it was. This took some time since it was hard to find a long enough rope. In the end, it was estimated to be about 700 meters deep. Next, some equipment was sent down tied to the end of the rope, and to everyone's surprise everything that was sent down was swallowed by the hole. Of course, no one knew where it went but we all thought the same thing. That, somehow, it had returned home. It was a reasonable assumption given that the only thing coming out of the hole – the radio waves – came from Earth. We all rejoiced in this discovery. More experiments were done and although some questions remained unanswered the consensus – even among the scientists – was that the hole really was a portal back to our own world.

There were two large problems that needed to be solved though. The first was the safety. Every time something tied to the rope disappeared at the bottom of the hole, the rope was cut off just like the skyscraper five years earlier. This meant that it was possible that whoever entered the hole would be cut off as well. However, this problem was solved pretty soon. By tying a camera to the rope, connected to a screen above ground, it was discovered that the rope was only cut off when pulled back. As long as it wasn’t pulled back, the screen still received signals from the camera. The camera never recorded anything other than darkness on what was assumed to be the other side, but since it continued to work until the rope was pulled back this didn’t seem to be such a big problem. After all, some technical issues were expected under the circumstances.

The second problem was that the hole was too small for anyone to fit into. Many attempts were made to widen the hole, but the bedrock seemed to be made out of a stronger material than any of our machines could tear into. This was extremely frustrating. It made us feel like we had reached the finish line only to discover that we were unable to cross it. In the end, one of the scientists said she wanted to send her ten-year-old son down the hole. He was small enough to fit into it. This was widely debated for quite some time before it was approved. The mother argued that the city of Korona was no place for her son and that all the evidence suggested the hole was the only way home.

The boy was brave. He knew he would probably never see his poor mother again but still went through with it. He was given a walkie-talkie and after a tear-filled goodbye to his mother, he was sent down the 700 meters deep, pitch black hole. He was instructed to radio in after he reached the other side, confirming he was safe. After the rope was pulled back, the mother waited and waited for her son to report. However, he never did. For weeks, the mother sat at the edge of the hole – under merciless heat and under pouring rain – calling her son over and over again with her walkie-talkie. No one knew what, if anything, had gone wrong. Since no other radio waves had been picked up other than Synthwave Mix, it was possible that other radio waves simply couldn’t enter into our world for some reason. Still, the authority deemed the hole too unsafe for anyone else to enter.

This didn’t change peoples minds though. The hole represented the only true hope we had felt in years. And given all the horrible things in our world that could destroy us at any moment as easily as it is for us to blow out a candle, the small risk of going through the hole seemed to be more than acceptable. The hole was guarded by the police, but most of the police shared the cities collective opinion that the hole was the only way out… not for any of the adults, but for our children.

And now I’m sitting here, in the room I payed for five years ago, writing this down. During the last few weeks, many parents have been sending their children down the hole at night. This world is truly no place for them. Although they could survive, they deserve better. Hence, like many others, I’ve decided to send Isabella home. When I told her about it, she looked at me with a happiness in her eyes I hadn’t seen since we were transported to this dreadful, godforsaken world.

I’ve been writing this all day now. It’s my testimony to what happened to Korona. I will give this notebook to Isabella. I’m sure she will be able to give it to her father. Somehow, I know it in my heart that she will find her way home to her parents. Soon it will be dark and I will bring Isabella to Freyja square one last time.

I’m sorry it took so long,

Helana

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