Curiosity is a Dangerous Thing
In a small, unlit corner of Washington State, there lies a little lumber town, neighboring a beautiful lake and surrounded by a thick forest. The only bus route in stops a half mile outside the town's borders, as if the outside world is scared to enter. The townsfolk are quiet, and keep to themselves, deeply distrustful of any outsiders.The name of this town? Kingscreek. And you've only barely scraped the surface.
(Background art by Sawyer Speton Harvey)
Cast & Crew
Thomas S. Dennis
He/Him
Roles: Show Creator, Writer, Editor, Sound Designer, Damien Bachman.
James Makepeace / Kai After Kai
They/Them
Roles: Co-Writer, Producer, Composer, Announcer
Transcripts
Episodes
Season 2
Fall, 2008. ███ ██ ██ ████ ███████ █ ████ ████ ████ ██████ █ ██ █████ ████ ████ ████ ████
Season 1
Fall, 2008. Two years after the passing of his Uncle Mark, audio engineering student Damien Bachman holes up in Mark's old study, choosing to document the old man's strange and potentially supernatural findings studying the small town of Kingscreek.
103 - Bigfoot Hunter
Case A-56: Mammalian Forest Fauna (Fall 1976)
Recording Date: 09/25/08Starring Thomas S Dennis as Damien Bachman
Written, Edited, and Directed by Thomas S Dennis
Produced by James Makepeace
Score by Kai After Kai
Cover Art by CyberGrapeUK
102 - Echo's Blessing
Case C-34: Paranormal Ingestion Blockage (Winter 1984)
Recording Date: 09/24/08Starring Thomas S Dennis as Damien Bachman
Written, Edited, and Directed by Thomas S Dennis
Produced by James Makepeace
Score by Kai After Kai
Cover Art by CyberGrapeUK
101 - Roadkill
Case A-95: Serial Roadside Phenomena (Fall 1997)
Recording Date: 09/22/08Starring Thomas S Dennis as Damien Bachman
Written, Edited, and Directed by Thomas S Dennis
Produced by James Makepeace
Score by Kai After Kai
103 - Bigfoot Hunter
Content Warnings: Animal Attacks, Mutilation.(*Recorder clicks on.*)DAMIEN: Hello, and welcome back to the “Bachman-cast”. That’s a good name, right? It’s not like anyone’s listening to these or anything, might as well test some fun names out here and there. Otherwise, I'm just sitting here reading these dusty old files to myself, alone in my room. At least I’m using my audio engineering degree, that’s something…Anyway, today we’ve got another story from my Uncle Mark’s case files. This one’s fun because it’s from Dr. Andrea Fisher. That’s right, we’ve got a celebrity on our hands. For those somehow not in the know, Dr. Fisher was a staple of Pacific Northwest TV back in the ‘70s. There wasn’t a household in Washington or Oregon that didn’t, every Thursday at 6 pm, tune in to watch her show. Of course, she wasn’t Andrea Fisher to those people. No, to the television audience of the 1970s, she was known by another name: Dr. Andy: Bigfoot Hunter. Every week, she’d have a new episode of her show, always with some grainy footage of her and her crew wandering through the woods at night. It was cheesy, but it had a kind of lo-fi 70s charm, and of course, inspired countless other bigfoot hunting shows that are still running today in between reruns of MAS*H and Wheel of Fortune.Of course, she’d never get the airtime today. In ‘81, she dropped the act and let slip that all of her hunts were fake in her Johnny Carson interview, all as a way to promote her new book. It may seem obvious to a post-Y2K era audience, but apparently people at the time were pretty pissed. Lotta people my parents' age will talk about it like they would an old friend who had been convicted of murder or something. The book didn’t even sell very well, so it can’t have been worth losing her career over.Anyway, the book was important for one thing. “Case A-56: Mammalian Forest Fauna”. There apparently was an incident in 1976 when Fisher’s show tour took her here, to Kingscreek. There wasn’t a lot of media coverage that Uncle Mark or I could find since everything about that show was wrapped in a billion NDAs, but I do have a police report here, as well as some other official incident documentation. However, the real crown jewel here is that, apparently, she wrote about the strange incident in her book. And that is what I have here for you today.And now, without further ado:“Chapter 14: The Real One.It’s true, most of my shoots were fake. All of them, really. It’s not hard to go to any old backwater town in Oregon, drop a fake footprint in the woods somewhere, and then point a camera at any rattled drunk who was so hammered they wouldn’t know the difference between a Sasquatch and a stray cat. It’s a racket, what can I say? And the studio paid me the big bucks for it. I had always wanted to be an actor when I was younger, and this was certainly one way to do it, if a tad more ethically ambiguous.I’ve made my peace with that, and I’ve already spent the last few hundred pages or so talking about my various exploits in faking seeing a Bigfoot. If that was the whole story, I’d still be doing the show and I’d just say that there’s nothing out there in the woods to worry about besides bears and making sure you don’t eat the wrong mushroom. But… I don’t think that’s quite true, not after what I saw in the fall of ‘76.It started like production for any other episode of the show did. I and the crew had shacked up in this little town in Washington, maybe 20 miles from the Oregon border. Kingscreek, it was called. It wasn’t as dinky as a lot of the places I had been, but my head was aching from my, shall we say, “extracurricular activities” the night before and I wanted to get some shuteye in my trailer as soon as possible.The first place you start any of these “investigations” is usually at the local bar or homeless shelter. Try to find those for whom substances have loosened their grasp on reality if you know what I mean. That’s how you get the best testimonies. We ended up at this little backwater pub by the edge of town with a flickering sign that read “The Misty Pond”.I still remember that place to the finest detail, years later. How the door creaked as I pushed it open. How, despite being so small, it seemed almost deserted. There were maybe 3 people in there total, including the bartender, a pale, lean man who didn’t look up from the glass he was polishing when we entered. The customers all silently stared at or sipped from their drinks, none of them speaking to each other at all. If it weren’t for the broken old jukebox faintly playing Temptations hits at a slightly off-kilter pitch, it would have been completely silent. I was no stranger to creepy old bars, but even I found it rather off-putting.When we entered, one person seemed to take notice. A man in the back, wearing the orange vest and baseball cap of a lumber worker, raised his head when we approached him, before quickly looking back at his drink. I figured he would be the most likely of anyone to have thought he saw something in the woods, so I started asking him the usual leading questions. What’s your name? Do you know what Bigfoot is? What’s your current blood alcohol level? Etc. He answered all our questions with terse, one-word answers, not paying us any mind. His eyes did flit to the door for a second when we asked the bigfoot question, but that was about the biggest reaction we got before I asked him if he had seen anything strange in the woods.When I said that, His whole body tensed, and he whipped his head up to look me in the eye. I’m not easily fazed by people acting strange, part of my job is fending off a mix of paparazzi and crazed stalkers, but something about the way this man looked at me stopped me dead in my tracks. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years, sure, but more importantly, there was this kind of wild, instinctual fear in his eyes, like a mouse moments away from being eaten by a house cat.He leaned in close, not blinking, and said something so quietly that it was barely a whisper.“If I could tell you anything that would make you turn around and run for the hills, I would. I would say that if you like who you are right now, you will stay away from those woods. But I know I'm not going to be able to stop you from going in there, so I have one small piece of advice that I hope you’ll heed: for the love of everything you hold dear, don’t take any food. If you don't, you might just survive.”He glanced out the door once more, and then went back to his drink.
Now, despite the explorer character I play on TV, I’m not a very curious person. I do actually have a doctorate, that much is real, but I got that more at the behest of my family rather than because I had some kind of deep desire to “explore the mysteries of the universe” or whatever it is that Carl Sagan hack yammers on about. But something about the way that man looked at the woods outside the door intrigued me. I didn’t think I would find definitive proof of bigfoot or anything, but it couldn’t hurt to maybe shoot over in that area.So that’s what we did. After we had the bar patrons sign release forms, the crew packed up our equipment and we made our way to camp out in the woods. It was a routine we were used to: Spend some time under the stars, find some bushes to shake in front of the camera, and I’d put on my best wide-eyed scared face. It was probably the most fun part of each shoot, and it always put us in a good mood. This time, however, instead of the usual jovial atmosphere, there was this layer of silent unease as we drove to our campsite. Apparently, the other crew members had found the old man’s warning just as unsettling, and it put a damper on our usually laid back mood.But unease wasn’t going to stop us from doing our job. We drove for another mile or so, parked, and started hiking up into the woods. The woods in Kingscreek weren’t like any other forest I’ve filmed in, all across the Pacific Northwest. It’s hard to describe, but most forests feel more …random? Like everything there ended up in that spot by chance. The trees happened to grow here, the mushroom spores happened to be carried in this direction by the wind, squirrels just happened to live here, and so on. The forest of Kingscreek felt more intentional. Not human-made, it wasn’t like each tree was equally trimmed and spaced out, but it did feel a lot more in sync. Like every bit of the flora and fauna breathed in time together and was aligned with the same goal. A goal that our camera crew of fake bigfoot hunters decidedly didn’t fit in. The feeling of unease only grew.We eventually found a good clearing to set up camp. Johnny, our mic operator, went off to scout the area while we put up tents. Not a minute later, he shouts for us to come and look at what he found. I was the first one to get there, and when I saw what Johnny was pointing at, I almost laughed out loud. It was a big footprint, like the ones we would fake for the show. I turned to Johnny to ask where he had gotten the mold, but the look on his face stopped me. He was pale as a sheet, and his extended finger was trembling.I looked at the footprint again, and this time, I noticed that it wasn’t exactly the same as our mold. It was …bigger, for one thing. The toes were shaped slightly differently, and the position of the foot seemed almost… warped. There were scars and indentations that made our smooth, untouched fake foot feel almost amateurish. Whoever had faked this footprint knew what they were doing.Because it was fake, there was no doubt in my mind about that. Probably some sculptor from town who knew who we were and wanted to mess with us. Little did they know they were just making our job easier. How they knew where our campsite would be… I didn’t know. But it wasn’t something to be concerned about. Worst-case scenario, if we had a stalker, we had bear spray to deal with them. That was what I kept telling myself to try to dispel the nagging feeling of dread.We filmed our segments around the footprint, got some daytime B-roll of the forest, and then hunkered down for the night. No one spoke for hours. We kept exchanging uneasy glances with each other, silently agreeing that something was definitely off about this whole town. Johnny in particular seemed pretty shaken. He was still pale, and he kept fidgeting with his microphone. I felt bad for him, he was just a kid. I still feel bad.Night fell, and the crickets began chirping. It was fall, but still early enough that the crickets and frogs were still active. That might have been the only reason I was able to fall asleep. It was a comforting, familiar noise to hear when everything else had been so… strange.I didn’t get much rest. When I did fall asleep, it was shallow and restless. I kept dreaming of the man in the bar, of the way he looked at me, how he spoke. How, for a single moment, he seemed… so afraid.A scream shattered my already uneasy slumber. I bolted upright in my tent and scrambled to grab my flashlight and bear spray as the screaming continued. On top of that horrific cry, I could hear the sounds of a struggle. A tent ripping, punches, metal cans and equipment jangling, and something breaking the branches of the trees around us. Something big enough to break them.I found the bear spray and flashlight and had just unzipped my tent entrance when I heard something I will never forget: a sickeningly wet ripping noise, like someone tearing apart a giant chicken leg. The screaming stopped, and my stomach sank.There was an eerie silence as I stood there with the tent open. I don’t know how long I stood there. It felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. It was almost pitch black, with the only light coming from the stars and the sliver of new moon peeking through the treetops. My heart pounded in my ears as the chill of wind from outside the tent slowly floated in. I didn’t know if it was better or worse that I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, but it is a fact I remember with striking clarity.Suddenly, I heard a tree branch snap and other voices yelling. I realized that the other crew members obviously had heard the commotion and were following in my footsteps. I suddenly remembered the flashlight in my hand and, like the impulsive idiot I am, I flicked it on. Sometimes I lay awake at night and wonder if my night terrors would have been just a little bit less intense if I hadn’t turned on that damn flashlight.The first thing I saw was the eyes. You know how a cat’s eyes reflect light, making them glow? This was like that. For a split second before the flashlight fully illuminated the thing, its eyes glowed from the reflection. Then, I saw the beast in full.It didn’t look like an ape, or a bear, or even a wolf. Long, brown hair grew out of leathery, jet-black skin. It was big, maybe 10, 15 feet if it was standing upright, but right now it was hunched over, leaning on its front arms. It was skinny, but at the same time, I could see hundreds of pounds of rippling muscle. Its face was… well it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I suppose the closest thing I could compare it to was a big cat, like a tiger, but even that doesn’t do justice to how terrifying it was. Rows and rows of teeth glistened with blood, which dripped from its mouth all the way down its chest. And through it all, those orange, glowing slit pupil eyes stared at me, hungrily. Drool dripped from its mouth. It was salivating. I could literally see it contemplating how good I would taste.There’s not a lot I remember after that. The rest of the crew scared it off somehow while I stood there frozen in terror. Apparently, one of them had packed a pistol and one shot in the air was all it took.It killed Johnny. He was the one whose scream had woken us up, but we were too late for him. Apparently, he had brought some beef jerky from the van with him, and that was enough to lead the thing right to us.There was a whole swirl of police reports and missing persons and animal attacks, but none of that ever really got mainstream attention because my name was kept out of it. NDAs and all that. The crew tried to move past it and pretend it never happened, but I don’t think I was ever able to do a shoot quite the same after that. I was always checking over my shoulder, making sure we didn’t pack too much food, and frankly being a bit of a jumpy mess.Maybe that's why I wanted to publish this book. To end this all, and put this whole thing behind me. Perhaps then I’ll be able to sleep at night without those glowing eyes staring at me.”End account.I’m starting to think that I might not be approaching these stories in the most… respectful light. Something about this… I don’t know
Anyway, Andrea Fisher’s book didn’t sell very well. It was a bigger news story that she was faking the shows altogether, a fact she leaked months before the book’s release, and the rage surrounding that didn’t translate to book purchases, much to the dismay of the bookstores who ordered a ton of copies in anticipation of the demand. She didn’t really have a career after that, so it’s unclear if she ever got her closure or not.As for Dr. Fisher’s story, there are not many specific details to go off of. The Misty Pond is real, and I’ve actually been there myself. I think it gets referenced in another one of Uncle Mark’s files later, but I’ve only skimmed that one. There are some heavily redacted police reports around the death of 22-year-old John Talbot, in September of 1976. Not a lot of details are available, but the cause of death is listed as “animal attack.” I’m not sure what animals around here could entirely remove someone’s ribcage, but I suppose I’m not an expert. It does correlate with a few pet disappearances around the area within a 3 month period, and one other human death by animal attack 2 weeks prior. But at the end of September, it suddenly stops. And no other such incidents occur again.
Of all the things Dr Fisher said in her statement, I can’t stop thinking about what she said about the eyes. About how there was a split second of anticipation where she could see the thing looking at her before she knew it was there. The feeling that must conjure, like a split second of terror at being perceived before you know what’s seeing you. It’s a feeling that… for some reason, I feel like I’ve felt recently. Especially as I look at more of these files.I don’t know. Maybe these are just getting to me. In any case, I should continue reading. Maybe there's something more I can figure out. Like I said before, it's not like I’ve got anything better to do.This is Damien Bachman, signing off.(*Recorder clicks off.*)
102 - Echo's Blessing
Content Warnings: Implied Emotional Abuse, Starvation, Loss of Bodily Autonomy, Forced Weight Loss, Body Horror(*Recorder clicks on.*)DAMIEN: Hey everyone! Welcome back to the pod. I’m your host, Damien Bachman, and today we’ve got something a little less straightforward. Last time I just read one of my uncle’s journal entries, but this time this file has got a bunch of different pieces. There’s a lawsuit filing which includes a witness statement, a coroner’s report, and a whole bunch of other stuff. So I’m just going to try to read the good stuff here as best I can. I do a lotta work for you guys, reading documents aloud to a microphone is hard work.Anyway, all of these are filed under the label “Case 34-A: Paranormal Ingestion Blockage”. These titles just keep getting better. This is a civil suit for the case of Meyer v Crimson Apothecaries, and the complaint reads as follows:“January 14th, 1984
To Whom It May Concern,I am contacting you on behalf of my client, the family of one Margaret “Peggy” Meyer. They allege that you and your product are responsible for the untimely demise of Ms Meyer, and are suing for customer endangerment, wrongful death, and emotional damages.Attached is an account from Jonathan Meyer, Margaret’s father, of the weeks before her demise, as well as testimonials from others close to the situation corroborating the story, detailed descriptions of your business, and the coroner’s report following Ms. Meyer’s autopsy.The standard rate for a wrongful death settlement of this nature is anywhere from 500 thousand dollars to a million, but my clients are willing to accept a settlement of 200 thousand on the condition that you pay their medical debts and close your business for good. If you do not accept these terms, I will be taking you to court.Contact me at the number at the bottom of this letter if you have any inquiries. I’ll be in touch.Sincerely,
Marvin Hickman Esq., Attorney at Law”And here is the account of Jonathan Meyer:“I want to start by saying that I am not a vengeful man. I’ve always said that holding a grudge is what tears apart lives and that if everyone sought revenge on everyone who had ever wronged them, our society would collapse. Forgiveness is the glue that we use to hold together relationships. But if what I believe is true, if who I think is responsible for my daughter’s death is responsible, then no force on this earth can stop me from seeking my revenge.Every year, my daughter’s high school puts on a holiday pageant for the elementary school across the way. It’s a cute tradition and one that brings the community together.
Peggy was never the most social butterfly out there, but whenever her older siblings had participated in the pageant, they had always come out with at least a few more friends. Theatre seems to be one of the best extracurriculars for friendships, so when auditions rolled around in October, I encouraged Peggy to try out. I figured that, at worst, she’d be an extra or a background character, and even then she could still make friends. I had no idea what was coming.Turns out, Peggy is– was something of an acting prodigy. Or at least, she went to auditions expecting a minor role at best and came away with the lead– Mary, I think. Or Mrs. Claus, I couldn’t quite tell the plot. Either way, I was incredibly proud of her and told her so. I said to her that she would be the face of the show, of the school, of our family, and that I had confidence she would live up to it. She didn’t seem super enthused by the idea, but at the time, I just attributed it to nerves.Her mother–my wife, Violet– was less enthusiastic. She told me later that she had heard bad things about the theatre department from our older children. Something about how it puts girls under a lot of… pressure.Peggy started acting off after that. Not in any kind of paranormal way or anything, but more just.. Distant. She had always been a voracious eater before, but after a few practices for the pageant, she started eating less and less. She would spend hours in the bathroom in the morning before school, primping and preening at a level she never had before. And she seemed to wear a lot of makeup, something I hadn’t ever seen her do.I was starting to worry about her, but I also knew that young women often go through phases about their… image. My wife said as much, and I had seen it in my other daughter. So I tried not to pry. Still, Peggy concerned me, and I decided to make a point to assure her that she could talk to me if anything was bothering her.After I told her this, we sat in silence for a moment. She seemed… nervous. She opened her mouth a few times as if to say something, but no words came out. Finally, she told me that she had been hoping I could help her with something. She said that she was having trouble “fitting the part” for the pageant, but that she had found someone who could help her. She just needed to borrow $50. She assured me that she would pay me back as soon as she could, she just needed this desperately.I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this– I didn’t quite understand how $50 would help her in the pageant, but she seemed so earnest that I couldn’t refuse. You have to understand, she was my daughter. I would have done anything for her. I still will.The following evening, she handed me a handwritten note. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a receipt from a seller by the name of Crimson Apothecaries, for a product called Echo’s Blessing. I asked Peggy what it was, and she just gave me a knowing smile. “Something to help me fit”, she said. I should have pressed her further, but I didn’t. I was so stupid.After that day, Peggy seemed to brighten up slightly. She was still spending hours in front of the mirror every morning, but she started eating again. In fact, she started eating a LOT, almost obsessively. As the days started to stretch on further, it seemed like she was eating more and more, much more than she ever did before. Once, while she was piling on her third helping of chicken and pasta, one of her brothers joked that she was going to get fat. The look she gave him made his face go white, and it scared even me. It was angry, but what’s more, it was scared. Desperate. Then the moment passed, and we continued eating like nothing happened.Peggy eventually stopped gorging herself on food, but her behavior became odd in other ways. She became distant, irritable, and slow. She would sleep all the time, barely making time for school and the pageant. She seemed to always be shivering, and she would be wearing more and more makeup. And strangest of all, she seemed to pile herself in layers and layers of clothing. 3 sweaters became standard for her.She stopped coming to meals. I would barely ever see her, and when I did, she acted erratic and paranoid. She was always deathly pale, and her face seemed thinner and thinner. It got to the point that she would scare me and other family members because she looked so sickly. Still, she insisted that she was fine. I don’t think any of us believed her, but we weren’t sure.It wasn’t long before something terrible happened. Peggy was at practice one day in mid-December, just a week or two before the pageant. Apparently, she was participating in a fairly routine dance recital when she… collapsed. I don’t know if she fainted, or if her muscles gave out, or if she just… fell, but she did not get back up. I received a call from the school that she had been taken to the hospital immediately. Their standard procedure was to simply keep students in the nurse's office, but when they saw her arms… they decided it was an emergency.I called out of work as soon as I could and went to see my daughter. When I got there, I couldn’t suppress my gasp of terror. It was the first time I had seen her without her three layers of sweaters, and I now saw why she wore them. She was like a skeleton, she was so thin. Bones jutting out, pressing against the skin. Her hair was in matted clumps, and she was so weak she could barely keep her eyes open.Her doctors took me aside and told me that she was suffering from extreme malnutrition. They asked me if she had any kind of preexisting conditions if my family had a history of diabetes, and if there was any chance she was allergic to anything. I told them no to all of that and simply said I had seen her eating fairly regularly until a couple of weeks before. At this, the doctors gave each other a wary look. I asked what was wrong.One doctor, a woman in her forties, sat in front of me and looked me in the eye. She told me that the only medical explanation for Peggy’s condition was that she had been starving, without food, for at least a month. Moreover… she wasn’t taking to any of the usual emergency treatments. Normally, if someone was brought in with this level of malnutrition, they would try to infuse nutrients manually, through feeding tubes or even just injecting it right into their bloodstreams. But with Peggy, they couldn’t seem to get it to work. My daughter was starving to death, and they could do nothing.It wasn’t long before she was gone. I felt every torturous minute of waiting crawl by, but she was a few days away from it even before we rushed her to the hospital. After the pronouncement. I took a taxi home. I stumbled through the front door of my home, exhausted from days without sleep. As I took my jacket off, a piece of paper fell out of one of the pockets. I picked it up and recognized it as the receipt Peggy had given me. For “Echo’s Blessing”, from the seller Crimson Apothecaries. Almost exactly around the time this trouble started.I know that I’m being reckless. I know that I might be jumping to conclusions. Heck, I’ve not gotten a full 8 hours of sleep in 2 weeks. But what happened to my daughter wasn’t normal. If Crimson Apothecaries did something, sold something to Peggy that… that changed her, then they deserve to have the book thrown at them. And that’s what I’m paying for. So that the one thing that she won’t be starved of is justice.”End of account. That was… Yeah.Um… All of the testimonials in this file pretty much say the same thing, though none are as in-depth. Looking more into the aftermath it’s hard to say whether or not Mr. Meyer actually got his justice. There’s the lawsuit filing, but there's no record of whether or not a settlement was reached or if they went to court. Apparently, it was pretty hard to locate Crimson Apothecaries, and it’s unclear whether there was an actual brick-and-mortar store anywhere in town. There was a record that the pageant still happened, despite losing the leading actress so close to the performance. There’s an old program included here that lists an understudy. Very in bad taste, if you ask me.Uncle Mark didn’t have a lot of follow-up notes for this one. The only thing that seems to be his own addition is the underlining of the name “Crimson Apothecaries” in red pen. Maybe this business was something he was looking into? Hard to tell. I’ll have to go through his other files to see what’s there.One last thing. Margaret Meyer was pronounced dead on December 19th, 1983. The cause of death was listed as the flu, though it says that her weakened condition caused complications. The autopsy report is… very in-depth, much more than I was expecting. There isn’t a lot to note there out of the ordinary, except for the contents of her digestive system. Her stomach, believe it or not, was full. It was stuffed, even with food. All of it had been chewed obviously, but that disguised the fact that– despite being sometimes weeks old, absolutely none of it had been digested. Not even a little bit.This is Damien Bachman, signing off.(*Recorder clicks off.*)
101 - Roadkill
Content Warnings: Animal Death, Animal Body Horror(*Recorder clicks on.*)DAMIEN:
Right, so. Welcome to, uh… “unnamed podcast”, episode 1. Yeah, sure. I’m Damien Bachman, and this is me reading through my uncle’s old stuff.That’s not a good intro. Maybe I should start with some background? My uncle Mark got his master's degree in Parapsychology back in the ‘90s and then moved out here with my aunt. They lived here for, I wanna say, 15 years before he died, (a stroke or something, I never got the details). According to my aunt, when he wasn’t with her, his time would either be spent wandering around the woods, or up here, in his study. Once he died, she never touched this room. Said it… wasn’t her place.Two years go by, blah blah blah, Enter me. Since moving here with her, I’ve had a lot of… time on my hands, and I’ve been spending a lot of that time up in my uncle’s old study, going through his old files and things. There’s a lot of real wacky stuff here, I don’t know if he was actually doing real research up here or if he was just into writing science-themed horror fiction. Anyway, since he bit it, it’s just all been gathering dust up here, so I figured why not catalog it into a fun little podcast thing? Preserve his legacy or whatever. It could be fun.The file I thought I’d start with is really interesting. A lot of these are collections of other people’s eyewitness accounts, but this one is almost entirely my uncle. Its label says “Case A-95: Serial Roadside Phenomena.” A real eye-catching title, eh? Well, let’s see what you think of the actual story.Ahem.“October 24th, 1997:I’ve been taking a lot of walks as of late.Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve always found that taking a walk is the easiest way to clear my head. And recently, I’ve had a lot on my mind, so I’ve needed to clear it a lot, so to speak. It also helps that this is not an unpleasant town to walk through. The fall air has a pleasant chill, and the neighborhood is perfectly picturesque. It’s like walking through a mid-century fall-themed postcard.It’s not just the houses I walk past, though. There’s a road I like to walk down– Gossamer Lane– that cuts through the woods. It’s not very long, probably about 100 feet or so, but it’s enough that when you’re in that wooded road section, you feel like you’re in another world. The trees sway back and forth from the breeze, and the whispers of the leaves drown out any sounds from civilization. It’s very peaceful. Or, at least, it used to be.One other important detail to note is that this forest is almost entirely oak. Northern Red Oak, specifically. According to my research into the town’s history, this is not accidental. The town’s founder, Emmanuel Sorenson, was a bit of an amateur arborist, and purposefully seeded the forest with Red Oak to create some kind of… consistent pattern. This fact always stuck out to me– an interesting quirk of the town’s founder is an easy conversation starter or icebreaker around here– so it struck me as odd that one of the trees by the patch of road was birch. A very unsubtle birch, too. The white bark stood out like a sore thumb among the dark red sea of the forest. I could never figure out what species of birch it was, either. It didn’t seem immediately distressing or harmful, though, so I filed it away as a potential oddity to explore later.
Now though, something has been happening. Something… interesting.
It started about 3 days ago. I was walking down the wooded road section, lost in my thoughts as usual when I saw something on the road. Something that wasn’t moving. I’m no stranger to seeing roadkill. It’s an unfortunate truth about our car-dependent society that a certain number of animals will be killed by collisions with or being run over by cars. And that’s especially prevalent when the road is by a forest, where animals tend to hang out. But it’s still upsetting.When I got there, I kneeled down to examine the body. it was a rabbit. I won’t go into too much detail, but it was safe to say it was definitely dead. Poor little thing. It reminded me of the rabbits I would see outside my window when I was a boy. They always seemed terrified of whatever was lurking around the corner, even if they were all alone.Still, I couldn’t sit there looking at a rabbit corpse all day long. I made a mental note to come back with a shovel later and was just about to leave when I looked up at the trees. I stopped. The rabbit was right in front of the singular birch tree. It was exact, too, not like it was in the general area. No, it was perfectly aligned with the trunk of the tree.This wasn’t enough for me to be scared, or anything. Coincidences like this happen all the time, they’re usually not a sign of something paranormal. All this would really mean would be that it would be really easy for me to find the rabbit when I came back with the shovel. But even so, it was somewhat… disquieting.Afterward, I walked back home, greeted my wife, and then immediately took the shovel and went back out. The image of the rabbit lying on the road was still fresh in my mind, and I didn’t want to put this off.The walk back seemed quieter, somehow. It was later in the day, sure, but we’re still in fall, and there should have been at least some frog croaking or crickets chirping or even birdsong. But yet, it was eerily silent. I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but I was still a little spooked by the tree and corpse encounter, so this wasn’t helping ease my mood.When I finally got to the spot again, the sun was starting to set. It was hard to see in the forest, but I could still see the bright white bark of the birch in the fading light. I set my shovel against a tree, pulled out my flashlight, shook it, and turned its beam toward the body.Or at least, where the body had been. It was gone now.
This puzzled me. It was possible that it had been picked up by a scavenging coyote or something similar, but usually, they didn’t come this close to the road. It was just another strange occurrence in this whole event. I walked home, still uneasy about the whole situation, but not quite thinking that anything paranormal was afoot.By the next afternoon, I had almost completely forgotten about the incident, and I went on my walk as usual. The day was perfectly pleasant, once again. The slight fall chill made for an enjoyable atmosphere, and I noticed there were some more Halloween decorations up around the houses. It was all very effective in luring me into a false sense of security.As I reached the wooded road, the memory of the previous night’s encounter started to come back. It didn’t really impact my mood, but it did make me wrinkle my nose at the thought of the dead rabbit. But nothing too unnerving. At least, not until I looked up ahead, and stopped dead in my tracks.There was a motionless pile on the side of the road. Another body. I slowly moved up to get a closer look. This time, it was a raccoon. It was lying limply on the asphalt, its limbs twisted and stretched into horrible positions. I noticed something else that stuck with me, but I didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t seem to be at all crushed. Almost like it had been hit, but not run over. At least, I thought it had been hit. How else could you explain the twisting?A twig snapped. I jerked my head up, scanning for the source of the noise. Looking back, it couldn’t have been something other than a squirrel or another rabbit, but I was starting to get on edge. And that wasn’t helped by what I did see. The birch tree. Once again, the raccoon’s corpse was laid out directly in front of it. Out of all the other trees, in the last 24 hours, I had seen two animal corpses in front of this one birch. Like clockwork.This couldn’t have been a coincidence. My mind started racing with all the possibilities, but one thing was clear: there was something to be studied here.I raced back to my house. I needed equipment, and I knew that time was of the essence. But when I made it back to the wooded road, the corpse was once again gone. It had been less than 20 minutes.I knew now that I had to be proactive. The next day– yesterday– I set out on my walk an hour earlier than usual, and took my equipment straight to the wooded road. This time, there was no corpse in front of the birch tree. So, I was early. I started setting up measuring equipment: Cameras, thermometers, barometers, whatever data I could gather. Paranormal events are unpredictable, after all.Just as I was putting the finishing touches in place, I heard leaves crunching. When I looked up, I saw a doe, standing next to the birch tree. It was looking directly at me. I’ve seen deer before, and usually, they look at you. Trying to see if you’re a threat and all. So, I stayed still and tried to make myself as nonthreatening as possible.The doe didn’t move. I looked into its eyes and something seemed… wrong. It was looking at me, but not in the cautious, wary way most deer did. No, this one didn’t even seem afraid. And something else about its gaze, the way its eyes locked on me. There was a kind of… hunger in its eyes. It made my blood run cold.We both stood still for a very long time, a kind of unspoken staring contest. Every time I thought to move, something about the Doe’s unblinking gaze stopped me. An image popped into my mind of the way a cat looked at a mouse, moments before pouncing. Logically, I had no reason to be afraid of the doe, it couldn’t have weighed more than 200 pounds, and they aren’t exactly known for their predatory behavior. But still, the image lingered.After what seemed like ages, the doe suddenly started moving. Small at first, like swaying from side to side, but it very quickly grew into something more erratic. It was pacing, legs jumping around, muscles spasming. It started banging its head against the trees, very forcefully too. Almost like it was trying to cave its own skull in.The most unsettling thing was how silent this all was. The doe wasn’t screeching or moaning, its mouth was just open as its tongue convulsed and its jaw jerked around. It managed to gain some kind of balance, and as it did, it looked at me one last time. But it wasn’t that hungry stare, no. It was more like it was pleading, begging for help.I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what I could do, but even if I did, I didn’t have time to react. Right after it looked at me that last time, horrible cracking noises rang out as its limbs violently twisted and snapped. It was all I could do not to yell or vomit as the doe’s mouth stretched in a silent scream.It all reached a crescendo with something that… I can’t describe as an implosion or an explosion, because that would imply inward or outward motion. It was as violent as an explosion, but nothing actually exploded. The doe suddenly just… wasn’t a doe anymore.It was over quickly. The snapping stopped almost as suddenly as it started, and the doe collapsed in a pile on the road. Right underneath the birch tree.I don’t remember a lot after that. I do know that after I could move again, I sprinted back to my house. When I came back an hour later to retrieve my equipment, the body was, as you probably guessed, gone. None of my equipment was missing, though, so I took it home and then tried my hardest to sleep.By this morning, the whole thing seemed distant. Almost like a bad dream. But once I reviewed the footage the cameras had caught, it all came flooding back. I saw the doe’s episode replay in the same agonizing detail, and I saw it collapse in exactly the same way. But now, I realized, the cameras must have caught what happened to the doe after I ran off. So I started to watch.During the hour or so after I left, the body lay motionless. Nothing peculiar happened for 30-odd minutes, which just meant I spent 30 minutes staring at the mangled doe. After that though, the footage starts to crackle and glitch, and when it finishes, the body is gone.I’ve gone through the footage countless times, and I’ve only been able to get a few frames that aren’t completely distorted. And out of all of them, there’s only one where you can see the doe’s carcass. And in that one frame, there’s something… grabbing it. Something black, and unnatural. Something that extended itself out of that singular birch tree.I’ll investigate this later. For now, I need to rest. Try to make it all make sense.”And yeah, that’s where it ends. Spooky stuff, right?There are some other notes attached here. Apparently, Uncle Mark didn’t find any more animal carcasses under the birch tree after the encounter with the doe. No other investigation could find anything, so he considered it a dead end.I did a little bit of digging myself, now that I live in the modern era with the vast knowledge of the internet at my fingertips. Looking into stuff that makes deer act weird, I found a webpage about this thing called Chronic Wasting Disease. Essentially it’s a kind of sickness where once a deer gets it, after about a year or two it starts to waste away. It doesn’t eat, or socialize with other deer, stops being afraid of humans, and its behavior generally gets more and more erratic until it just… dies. There’s no cure. And looking up the results is not for the faint of heart.Fortunately, though, it doesn’t seem to be able to be caught by humans. Admittedly, it doesn’t explain everything in this story, but there is precedence for weird stuff with animals in non-paranormal contexts. Other questions remain. What about the other animals? Why did they all die in the same spot? And what’s the deal with the birch tree? I might want to see if that tree is still around, actually. It’s definitely within walking distance, and I’ve started hearing rumors of dead bobcats showing up on the wooded section of Gossamer Lane…This is Damien Bachman, signing off.(*Recorder clicks off.*)