Account 03: The Library

Background information

• Name: Unknown
• Pronouns: Unknown
  
• Date: March 17, 2020
• Occupation: Unknown
  
• City of residence: Atkins, Michigan
  
• Date(s) of account: 2019
  
• Subject of account: A blind stranger at the library
  

Account
I've always loved libraries. I've always loved pacing the halls and looking for anything interesting. I've always loved how they're places you can go to relax, where nobody expects you to talk to anyone or buy anything. You can just sit down with a good book and get lost in it for hours.

So it's no surprise that I visited Atkins District Library last year, especially since I was interested in someone who worked there (though she turned out to be dating a girl named Shan anyways).

I was walking around in the nonfiction section and starting to reach for a book about the history of Atkins when I got the strange feeling that someone was watching me. I turned around to see an old man, balding and dressed in a long brown coat. Though his sunglasses and cane told me he had gone blind with age, it felt like he was staring right into me.

The old man motioned for me to follow him as he walked over to a table. I found his behavior a little strange, but it seemed rude to refuse, so I went with him and sat down.

The old man had a book in the hand that wasn't occupied with his cane. It was thick, bound in leather, and just as ancient as him. He sat his cane down on the empty chair beside him and flipped through the book with his now-open hand.

The old man asked me my name. He chuckled to himself as he waited for an answer. The laughter made me uneasy, but after a moment, I told him anyways.

The old man laughed again and asked if I had a pen on me. I asked if a pencil would be okay as I fished around for one in my pocket, but he just shook his head and took an antique-looking fountain pen from the depths of his dusty brown coat.

The old man put his fountain pen to his leatherbound book and began to write. He only wrote for a few seconds, but he seemed satisfied with that, nodding to himself and setting the book on the table. Given how short whatever he wrote must have been and the fact that he'd just asked me my name, I assumed that's what he'd written down. Curious, I glanced at the cover.

I could see the title now that the book was on the table: Grasping At Memories. It didn't have an author listed.

I asked the old man if I could read it. He nodded, so I took the book from the table and began to read.

It was written in first person, and concerned... well, I forget exactly. A girl, I think, or maybe a boy. Or maybe nobody at all.

I'm sorry. This part is hard to tell. Hard to think.

I don't think it could have included the protagonist's name at first. If it had, I would have realized sooner that it was about me.

There were details in that book I'd never told anyone in my life, but it was about me all the same. I can't explain what they were, though. After all, I've forgotten everything that was written in that book. I've forgotten my own name.

One of the only things I can remember is that I used to love libraries.

It's pointless to try and remind me who I'm supposed to be. Of who I used to be.

Don't try to remind me. I always forget.

Analysis
I can't figure out who sent me this message. The account that sent me this email was just... blank. There was nothing where the address, profile picture, or name were supposed to be. I replied asking who they were, but they replied with "Funny. That's funny."

Account 02: The Ruins of Castle Roche

Background information

• Name: Fergus Kelly
• Pronouns: He/him
  
• Date: 1923
• Occupation: Unknown
  
• City of residence: Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland
  
• Date(s) of account: 1923
• Subject of account: The ruins of Castle Roche
  

Account

My name is Fergus Kelly. I am an amateur archaeologist from Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland. The year is 1923. I must write as quickly as possible. Forgive me if some of this is difficult to make out.

 

It happened yesterday. All of it. It sounds so strange, but it all happened in one day.

 

My flatmate is named Oscar Sloane. He is a short man who wears a tattered brown coat that looks like it was made for someone much larger.

 

I have dragged Oscar along to Castle Roche several times in the past. I do not know why yesterday was any different.

It should not have been.

The fog curled around our feet as we walked the path up to Castle Roche. It would have been a foreboding sight in ages past, but as it stood, it was clearly a shadow of what it once had been, crumbling and desecrated.

 

Cold fog drifted in through holes that had once been windows as I stood for the last time in the ruins of Castle Roche. The fog was impossibly thick, and the longer I remained there, the more it bit into me. Oscar seemed unaffected, which I found odd, as he's always been one to complain about minor inconveniences of the sort. In fact, he seemed quite happy as he and I began to walk forward, pressing on deeper into the ruins.

 

We normally don't find much there. We really only visited because it was a familiar sight by that point. It was comfortable. Yesterday was different, though.

 

As I walked, I saw a wall before me that I knew was unblemished. It was covered in images of eyes and hands painted in dried blood. 

 

I heard something behind me and turned around. It was Oscar, surrounded by cold, thick fog that obscured most of his body. I could just barely make out that he had a strange bright glint in his eye. 

 

He walked forward through the fog, and I saw a knife held in his strangely twisted hand that was used by the Irish soldiers at the time Castle Roche was built.

 

Somehow, it was only then that I realized that Oscar's fingers were all the same length.

 

Oscar jumped forward, his knife brandished in his wretched hand, and drove it down into me.

 

I elbowed him in the chest and slowly drew the knife out of my own shoulder with a sharp pain. Aggressive with fear, I stabbed him in the stomach. Oscar stumbled back and fell to the ground. His strange eyes were wide with pain. My fearful violence gave way to abject terror, and I fled.

 

I am terrified even now.

 

I hear someone tapping on the window. I see that cold fog blanket everything outside. I know that the person at the window, the person concealed by the fog, is a short man in an oversized coat.

 

I know that although Oscar Sloane was the man with whom I entered that place, the thing that accosted me within its walls was not a man at all.

 

All I do not understand is why this is happening.

 

God deliver

 

Analysis
This account comes from a book I found at my local library which I have been unable to find records of elsewhere. Unfortunately, this persisted even after I looked into the individual who wrote it, one Matthias Clark. It is entitled The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, and contains a series of clippings from newspapers, journals, and notes regarding strange occurrences up to 1924, when it was written and published. All of these materials are left largely unexplained but given a degree of context by Clark.

According to Clark, Fergus Kelly was found dead in his home some time after this journal entry was written. Investigators were unable to find any trace of disturbances at Castle Roche, including the body of Oscar Sloane or the writing on the wall. They were, however, watched by a strange man in an oversized coat as they entered Castle Roche, and both seemed terrified after they left for reasons they refused to explain.

Account 01: Going Hunting

Background information

• Name: Alex Martinez
• Pronouns: They/them
  
• Date: February 30, 2020
• Occupation: Accountant
• City of residence: Atkins, Michigan
• Date(s) of account: 2018
• Subject of account: Strange occurrences at a part-time job

Account

When this happened, I was an accountant. I worked part-time for a small, local company in a small, semi-isolated building. I came in mostly on Mondays when my boss, Samuel Sims, called and asked me to come in and fill out whatever paperwork had to be done. I usually came in at night, when it had already gotten dark and the majority of staff, Samuel included, had left. I had known Samuel for a long time by that point, so he wasn't opposed to giving me a set of keys so I could come in when I was able. Truth be told, though, being alone in the dark made me pretty uncomfortable. I generally parked on the grass rather than in the nearby lot to avoid walking any further to my car than necessary.

The exact details of the company where I worked aren't important. What is important is that Samuel was a hunter. He had a deer skull hanging up on the wall where I turned to the left to go into the office. Could have been a replica, though. I'm no hunter, and I can't exactly tell the difference.

 

One night, as I had gone to my accounting job and was about to enter the office, I saw that there was a second deer skull up on the wall, located directly to the right of the first. It was a little surprising to me, as I'd been working there part-time for several years by that point, and the deer skull had always been hanging up alone.

I started to get an uneasy feeling. It didn't feel like the skull was watching me, or like there was a cold spot indicating a ghostly presence, or anything stupid like that. I wasn't opposed to hunting, at least not within reason, and lowering the deer population a little was probably for the better. I didn't feel wrong around this second deer skull for any sort of moral reason, or any other reason I could find.

I felt wrong, and that was it.

I shook my head and soldiered on as I went into the office to work. I knew there was no point getting hung up on deer skulls that I thought were probably fake anyways. After all, although I knew next to nothing about hunting, I assumed it was at least frowned upon to hang up trophies from kills in random company buildings.

Despite my rationalizations, I kept thinking about that second deer skull. Something about it had made me deeply uneasy, but I couldn't place exactly what.

After that, I continued going to my part-time accounting job once a week, usually on Mondays, and tried to forget about the second deer skull. By the third week or so since it first showed up, I'd managed to do just that.

Then the week after, I got a call from Samuel. He said to come. He didn't say much more than that, which I found a little strange, since he usually talked for five minutes before he actually asked me to come to work.

Samuel's voice sounded scared, although I couldn't figure out whether that was actually the case or whether I was just imagining it through the staticky crackle of the poor connection. For the same reason, I wasn't sure whether it was just my imagination or whether his unusually brief call had mentioned something about hunting.

Despite the strange circumstances of the call, I headed to my accounting job, which took about five minutes. As always, I parked on the grass. When I walked into the building, I saw that there was now a third deer skull hanging up on the wall.

I was no longer sure that I'd been right the first time I saw the second deer skull. I did feel like I was being watched.

I knew it was stupid to be scared of fake deer skulls. I knew it was stupid to think anything was wrong just because a call from my boss was a little weird. I knew all I had to do was go into the office and act like nothing was going on.

When I went into the office, I found Samuel slumped over in his chair, covered in bloody scratch marks that looked horrifically infected. He was dressed in a camouflage cap and jacket, and there was a rifle sitting on his desk.

I screamed and fled the office, trying not to look at the wall with the deer skulls mounted on it as I ran out of the building, trying not to pay attention to the snapping of branches beneath my feet as I went to my car.

I heard a raspy laugh from behind. In spite of my fear, in spite of my better judgment, I turned to look.

There was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a torn brown jacket standing in the doorway of the building's meeting room, which I could see through the clear door to the building itself. Although he was, as I've said, huge, he looked emaciated. His scratch-covered skin looked diseased and gangrenous, almost rotting. It was hard to tell in the dark of night, but it seemed like he had this expression of feral excitement on his face, the way a predator feels when it knows that it's found its prey

"I have a question for you, Alex Martinez," the man growled. "Have you ever gone hunting?"

Immediately, I got into my car. I drove until I was home, drove faster than I knew I should have, but even after I arrived at the apartment building and went into the room I shared with my boyfriend and shut and locked the door tight behind me, I could not shake the feeling that I was being followed.

No, not followed. Hunted.

Analysis
This account was written by my enbyfriend Alex. Actually, this was the first account of the supernatural that I've ever believed at all. I say this for a few reasons, or rather, the absence of reasons not to believe Alex.

I knew Alex wouldn't intentionally deceive me about something like this, and as far as either of us can tell, they don't suffer from any mental illnesses or have family history of it, aside from anxiety. Alex doesn't use any drugs except for their prescribed anxiety medication, so it's not as though this account was the result of drug use either.

As far as I'm concerned, we've ruled out just about any plausible explanation resting on Alex's account being false, deliberately or otherwise. Still, this account could still be written off as a horrifying and apparently motiveless but ultimately mundane murder. However, that isn't what the police found when Alex called 9-1-1 after returning to our apartment.

You see, when the police went to Alex's former workplace, Sims' body was nowhere to be found, nor was there any hair, DNA, blood, or anything else. All that they found aside from Sims' hunting rifle sitting on his desk and a few chunks of green fabric on the office floor was a trail of rot across the floorboards from the chair where Alex had found Sims' body to the clear door to the outside, as well as four deer skulls hanging on the wall.

Introduction

Hello. If you're reading this, chances are that either you saw one of my advertisements on a forum or chat room related to the paranormal, or you saw one of the notices Alex and I put up around the city.

 

My name is Thomas Wake. I'm from Atkins, Michigan. If you have an account of the supernatural to share, please email me at thomaswaketdh@gmail.com and include your name, a brief background on yourself, and when the events occurred.

Please use full names where possible- you can talk about your neighbor John Doe and then call him John for the rest of the account, but don't just introduce him as John and expect me to know who you're talking about.
 

Please refrain from giving accounts that will be impossible to follow up on, such as those related to dreams or hallucinations. If you're not sure, just send it over and we'll do our best.

When giving an account, please fill out the following background information, if willing to do so, as it will make it easier for us to follow up on your account. If you'd like, you can include the information but ask us to leave it out or use a pseudonym for you when we post your account here.

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