Just Let Us In
It was warm for a December afternoon in Hutchinson, Kan., when Katie came home from work in 2008. Katie’s ride dropped her off across from her duplex, and as she stood in the street, her ride moving slowly away, she knew something wasn’t right.
“I noticed two boys standing in my driveway,” she said. “One had longer dark hair and the other had his hood up so I couldn’t see him very well.”
The teenagers, about 15 or 16 years old, seemed to be watching her – Katie felt they were waiting for her. She steeled herself and walked nervously across the road toward her porch. The boys had lurked around her neighborhood for months, but they’d never been so bold as to stand this close to her home.
“I had seen them before, lingering in the yard, but they always left before I got out of my ride’s car,” Katie said. “I had seen them late at night as well standing across the street when I would go outside to have an occasional late-night cigarette.”
But, although pangs of unease told her to run, their boldness angered her. She stopped and asked them why they were on her property.
“They told me they needed to use a phone and that the neighbors would not let them in,” she said. “That was when I noticed their eyes – they were coal black. Just black. No white and not even a hint of iris or pupil.”
Fear shot through her, but as evenly as she could, Katie told them she didn’t have a telephone. Katie walked up her porch steps and began to unlock her door when the boy in the hood spoke.
“He asked if they could come in for a glass of water,” she said. “I turned to look at them again thinking maybe my mind was playing tricks. But no, when I turned and looked into their eyes they were pitch black as the first time.”
These children with dead, black eyes had spoken softly to her, emotion and vocal inflection absent from their words. As she looked at these boys, whose long hair and hooded sweatshirts she felt hid more than skin, she knew she had to get away.
“I felt panicked and fearful but also very vulnerable and cold,” she said. “It was like I wanted to let them in but I knew there was evil present. I had felt uneasy before seeing their eyes but now it all came out.”
Then one boy said something that turned her fear into complete terror.
“The hooded one then told me they couldn’t come in unless I told them it was OK and that they hoped I would because they were thirsty,” Katie said. “I opened my door and darted inside. At this point I shut the door and locked it.”
She dropped onto the couch, her breaths coming in short, heavy gasps, when something tapped on the window behind her head.
“One of the boys stood there staring through the glass,” Katie said. “I remember his words very clearly; ‘just let us in, miss. We aren’t dangerous, we don’t have anything to hurt you with.’ I was beyond frightened at this point.”
Katie jumped off the couch and ran through the duplex, checking doors and windows to make sure they were locked.
“I did wonder if they really couldn’t come in unless invited but I didn’t want to find out,” she said. “I sat in the living room silently waiting for a sign that they had gone.”
When her boyfriend came home a short time later, the black-eyed teens were still at the house.
“(He) asked if I knew who the two boys outside were and I said ‘no,’” Katie said. “He told me they had been standing in the driveway when he pulled up but walked away when he stepped out of the car.”
He didn’t notice the boys’ eyes, but “they gave him a strange feeling.”
Katie later asked her neighbors if the black-eyed children had asked to use their telephone like they had claimed. The neighbors noticed the teens standing in Katie’s driveway, but never spoke with them.
Although it’s been more than a year since Katie turned the black-eyed children from her door, she knows they’re still around.
“I still see them every now and then standing across the street watching,” she said. “But they have not approached again.”
Dee
For a while I dated this girl named Dee. She was really cool-- a buff on old movies, into very dark literature and horror movies, had one foot in the goth and punk scenes in the city. We didn't have a lot in common, but it was exciting to get a window through her into that world. You know?
In the end the relationship just didn't work. We made a lot of transitions too quickly, and on top of that, she was just kind of fucking crazy. It was my weirdest relationship so far, hands down.
First of all, she had VERY severe OCD, or something, so we never touched. She said she might be ready for it “some day” but that until then we couldn't even hold hands. I tried to surprise her with a peck on the cheek a few times, and she'd jerk away, and get angry, and stormed off. I'd hear back from her a few days later, and she wouldn't even talk about it.
And yet, White Knight that I was, we moved in together after just a few months, when she said her apartment was being fumigated. She didn't move back for the duration of our relationship. Which was when I discovered her second set of eccentricities: She barely ever slept. She always went to bed after me and woke up before, and would spend most of the night reading or sitting on the internet. Which explained why she always seemed so tired-- the pale face and dark circles weren't makeup after all.
Dating Dee was an emotional roller coaster. I think I'd also diagnose her as manic-depressive, because she always looked so tired and expressed a lot of textbook depressive thoughts-- wishing she didn't exist, wanting to just run away or lie down and ignore problems, wanting to shut people out and ignore them. But she also had this kind of endless, borderline-desperate energy that she tapped into when we were going to clubs or when we had a fight (and there were lots of them. Fool that I was, I kept trying to improve her sleep schedule and get her to find a therapist to talk to. I have a hard time dating someone and not helping them improve themselves).
One day, out of the blue, she broke up with me. She said that things just couldn't work out between us. I asked what I had done wrong, and infuriatingly, she kept saying that I was great, I'd been a perfect gentleman, that I'd put up with her bullshit and shouldn't have had to. And in retrospect, I agree-- I invested an awful lot in her for no real return.
But she was gone, and I was definitely in love with her, so it was heartbreaking for a while.
I kept running into Dee, which wasn't surprising, given that we lived in a small town. Whenever she saw me a dark look would come over her and she'd hustle away. This happened once every week or so until I moved about a state away, and never thought I'd cross her path again.
But one day, about two months after moving, I saw her come out of a McDonald's with this really overweight person, arm-in-arm. I did a doubletake; first of all, why was she here? Was she following me? And second of all: She was TOUCHING that dude! I was excruciatingly aware of her no-touching policy; it had tortured me for almost a year. Was she dating him? And what did HE have that I didn't? I was suddenly feeling very insecure.
Then the large person turned their face, and I saw suddenly that it was a woman-- I'd mistaken her for a man because of her size. It clicked in my head that Dee had been a lesbian, which was maybe why she'd been able to conquer her fears with this androgynous person. And then I felt bad for not realizing it, and for making flash judgments about the overweight, so I hurried off.
Didn't explain what she was doing in my new city, though
I saw Dee around town a few more times, never alone, never with the same people, but I didn't think much of it. Like bumping into any old Ex-, I tried to push it from my mind instead of obsessing.
Then I saw her on TV.
It was just after the tsunami that totaled that Japanese power plant. The reactor was definitely melting down, and not even the Japanese government was bothering to cover it up at that point. Any survivors in the area were doomed, the radiation poisoning was going to kill them within a year. And yet there were still Peace Corps volunteers to face certain death in that nightmare, just to fish those doomer survivors out and make them comfortable. Heroism at its most extreme. And I just happened to look up from my textbooks at the news in time to see Dee among them.
It was pretty shocking. I'd known that Dee was often depressed, and wondered if this was her excuse for suicide-- to die doing something really humane and worthwhile. It was a morose thought, and I was perturbed for days afterwards.
The next time I saw Dee in the neighborhood, I decided I had to go talk to her, to say what an incredible thing she'd done in volunteering in the plant meltdown overseas. Anyone brave and compassionate enough to do something like that deserves acknowledgment. I was also just worried about her, and wanted to get a sense of whether she was okay or not.
When she saw me headed towards her, her eyes widened and filled with tears, and she dashed off, away from me. I ran after her, calling her name, but I lost her after a few blocks. That manic energy carried her on while I stood panting.
Her face had been like we'd broken up yesterday, and she was still upset about it. I thought that maybe she'd followed me after all, and worried a little bit about having a stalker like her. But I'd never pegged her as dangerous, just kind of tragically damaged.
I had to rethink that opinion of her when, as I was driving down a rural highway to visit my parents one night, a truck came around a sharp turn far too quickly and slammed headlong into the driver's side of my car. I blacked out for a minute, and found myself on the pavement, scratched but otherwise unharmed. I looked up, and my car was absolutely totaled. The place I'd been sitting mere minutes earlier was now a twisted snarl of metal and plastic. As I tried to work out how I'd survived, I saw the passenger door of the truck open, heard a gasp, and by the dim light of its remaining headlight I watched Dee run out into the woods.
I might have hallucinated the whole thing, or mistaken some other woman for Dee-- again, I had a head injury. The truck's driver had blood on her forehead, but came out, stammering apologies over and over. He said there'd been nobody else in the vehicle, and asked me if my head was okay, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Dee had tried to kill me.
We were forced to wait for the trucker's triple-A to arrive, and I wound up missing the visit with my folks.
I didn't put it all together until Seal Team 6 assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Towards the end of the hype, Reuters magazine purchased the photos taken during the raid. They're gory, blood-soaked, grotesque-- they horrified a lot of people. But me most of all.
There, in one of the photos, was Dee. Incredibly, she was just wearing her street clothes, sitting on the couch next to Bin Laden's corpse. She didn't seem surprised, she was just smirking down at his body. And none of the seals were acknowledging her.
I emailed the photos to my mom, who'd met Dee a few times during our relationship, and asked her if it looked like Dee to her. But she didn't understand who I was referring to; she said there was no girl on the couch.
Close Enough
A young girl walking home from school found a small pile of Polaroid photos lying
in the gutter. There were twenty in all, neatly wrapped in a rubber band. She picked
them up, and as she walked she started to browse. The first photo was that of a
ghostly white man on a black background, standing just far enough away from the
camera that she couldn’t make out his features.
The girl slid the photo to the back of the stack and looked at the next one. The
photo was of the same man now standing a bit closer.
The girl flipped through the next several photos quickly. With each one the man
in the picture came a bit closer and his features were a bit clearer.
Turning the last corner to her house, the girl noticed that the man in the photos
seems to be looking at her even when she moved the stack from side to side. It
frightened her, but she kept flipping them over, one by one.
By the nineteenth picture, the man was so close his face completely filled the frame.
His expression was the most horrifying the girl had ever seen. Walking up the driveway,
she turned to the last photo.
This time, instead of an image, there were two words: "Close enough".
Hearing a scream outside their house, the girl’s brother rushed to the door and
opened it. All he saw was a pile of photographs lying on the doorstep. The top one
looked like an extremely pale version of his sister, but she was standing too far back
for him to be sure.
The Film Student
Carol was a young film student. She was recently engaged to a nice boy she
had been dating for three years. She liked hanging out with her friends,
going to the movies and listening to music. Really, she was quite typical
for a girl her age.
Every once in a while, Carol liked to take her camera, drive out to her
parents summer home in the woods, and film the wildlife. She entered the
footage in wildlife photography and video competitions, hoping to make a
name for herself.
One spring day, Carol loaded up her car with her camera equipment. She said
told her roommate she would be back in a couple of days, and asked the
roommate to feed her fish. She called her fiancé and let him know she would
be at her parent’s summer home this weekend. She let him know her cell didn’t
get signal out there, and that they didn’t keep a landline. She told him she
would be out of touch for the entire weekend.
-----
The drive up to the summer home was pleasant enough. She got there with no
problems. Her parents were not due to the summer home for another couple
weeks, so she had the place to herself. By the time she got unpacked, it
was getting late so she went to bed deciding she would start shooting in
the morning.
At sunrise the next morning, she gathered her camera equipment and went out
to shoot some wildlife. It was a tiring but productive day. She got some
great footage of an eagle catching a mouse. At one point she nodded off while
waiting for a deer to come to a pond she knew the animals frequented. When
she woke up, she found a pair of young deer drinking the water. She spent a
little bit of time filming a humming bird darting from flower to flower. She
caught footage of a huge rattlesnake resting on a rock. Then she took a long
hike up a hill to try and catch some footage of fireflies lighting up a clearing.
By the time she got back to her parents summer home, it was just after dark.
She had been lugging her equipment around all day and was very tired. She
didn’t even bother showering. She just dropped her hat and camera on the
chair next to her bed and passed out.
-----
The next morning she was reviewing her footage on her laptop. The eagle was
majestic. Probably some of her best work ever. She watched the footage of the
deer. She thought they were very cute. Something in one of the deer shot caught
her eye though. It was only there for a second. She thought she saw a very tall
man with very pale skin in the bushes. It looked like he was watching her.
She rewound the footage, and looked again, this time in slow motion. She could
certainly make out a figure, but she couldn’t tell if there was actually someone
standing there, or if it was just a trick of light on some bushes.
Carol put the strange image out of her head and kept reviewing her footage. The
humming bird footage didn’t come out well. The little guy was moving too fast,
and the light was bad. The rattlesnake was cool though, even if it was a little
boring. After she watched the bit with the fireflies, she was pretty sure she
was going to win some kind of award. The natural lighting was just perfect. When
the firefly footage cut off, she noticed that she still had one video file left
to watch. Curious, she opened it. It was a video of her, sleeping in her bed.
Her insides turned to ice when she noticed the reflection in her bedroom window.
There was a very tall, albino man wearing a suit. She couldn't seem to make out
any facial detals. He was breathing heavily.
Carol slammed her computer shut, not wanting to see any more. The video stopped.
The heavy breathing did not.
Japanese Game Show
It was late, very late, and Ted still couldn't sleep; jet lag from the flight left him with little to do but lean against his headboard and flick through the upper channels of his hotel room's TV. Japanese television broadcasted some weird shit, especially in the early AM hours, and at least that gave him something to do while he waited for the city to come back alive for the morning.
The game show had been interesting enough, full of enough abject humiliation and public nudity that it seemed rather ridiculous for anyone to accept a spot on it for the paltry prizes given to those who successfully completed a challenge. Some of the contestants even broke down in tears when it was revealed what they had to do on what was presumably nationally-broadcast television. It became obvious that the only "winners" were the audience, and admittedly Ted was happy to be a part of it. There was a pure voyeuristic thrill in watching some idiot desperate for free stuff part with all dignity for a cheap toaster. What came on after the clock rolled into 4am and the credits finally ran, however, was even more disconcertingly addictive; apparently, the Japanese had seen "The Blair Witch Project" and decided they could go one better.
-
There were no subtitles - not for something this far into the broadcast downtimes - but the premise was easy enough to figure out. Grainy shots from "hidden cameras" placed in various locations captured voyeur shots of people in every day situations... as they were shown being silently stalked by men dressed in a variety of hilarious costumes. Some anime-twisted version of Mickey Mouse haunted an elderly woman's visit to an almost deserted supermarket, a weird bug-thing in a thong snuck through the empty halls of some fancy resort, and a Village People reject crept up on some sad drunk stumbling around a park. It was entertaining enough like that, but became positively captivating once Mickey pulled a knife. Sometimes the chosen victims managed to escape - the old lady spotted her pursuer around an aisle and managed to flee to her car, speeding off into the distance with the oversize mascot still struggling to make it through the small door of the marketplace. The drunk wasn't so lucky, and a distant camera shot showed him being gruesomely set upon by a bad copy of a Cherokee in full headdress wielding a tomahawk. The rough camera angles, cuts of static, and green tint of nightvision made the whole thing seem freakishly real - sick voyeurism at its peak of perfection.
-
And then, Murphy being Murphy, the television cut out mid-broadcast. Ted felt around for the remote, contemplating throwing it straight through the damn thing as he stared at his reflection in the now dead glass of the screen. Before that, however, he tried the power button - maybe he'd sat on it again accidentally - and his reflection suddenly changed position. The Ted on the TV immediately became its own mirror image, shifting everything from the lamp on the bedside table to the hand holding the remote. Trying the power button again flipped the image once more, restoring it to its original position and leaving the owner of the reflected image staring at it in complete confusion. It was only then that he noticed the tiny camera set on top of the screen.
Let Us In
My Internet Service Provider used to have offices in a shopping center before
they moved to their (comparatively) lush accommodations elsewhere. There was
a drop box at that original location. The monthly bill was due, and thus, there
but for the Grace of the Net I went. It was about 9:30 p.m. when I left. From
my relatively isolated apartments, it's about 10-15 minutes or so to downtown
(Abilene has a population of about 110,000).
Right next to Camalott Communications' old location is a $1.50 movie theater.
At the time, the place was featuring that masterwork of modern film, Mortal
Kombat. I drove by the theater on the way into the center proper and pulled
into an empty parking space.Using the glow of the marquee to write out my check,
I was startled to hear a knock on the driver's-side window of my car.I looked
over and saw two children staring at me from street. I need to describe them,
with the one feature (you can guess what it was) that I didn't realize until
about half-way through the conversation cleverly omitted. Both were boys, and
my initial impression is that they were somewhere between 10-14.
Boy No. 1 was the spokesman. Boy No. 2 didn't speak during the entire conversation
-- at least not in words.Boy No. 1 was slightly taller than his companion, wearing
a pull-over, hooded shirt with a sort of gray checked pattern and jeans. I couldn't
see his shoes. His skin was olive-colored and had curly, medium-length brown
hair. He exuded an air of quiet confidence. Boy No. 2 had pale skin with a
trace of freckles. His primary characteristic seemed to be looking around
nervously. He was dressed in a similar manner to his companion, but his pull-over
was a light green color. His hair was a sort of pale orange.
-----
They didn't appear to be related, at least directly."Oh, great," I thought.
"They're gonna hit me up for money." And then the air changed. There I was,
filling out a check in my car (which was still running) and in a sudden panic
over the appearance of two little boys. I was confused, but an overwhelming sense
of fear and unearthliness rushed in nonetheless.
The spokesman smiled, and the sight for some inexplicable reason chilled my blood.
I could feel fight-or-flight responses kicking in. Something, I knew instinctually,
was not right, but I didn't know what it could possibly be.I rolled down the window
very, very slightly and asked "Yes?"The spokesman smiled again, broader this time.
His teeth were very, very white.
-----
"Hey, mister, what's up? We have a problem," he said. His voice was that of a
young man, but his diction, quiet calm and ... something I still couldn't put
my finger on ... made my desire to flee even greater. "You see, my friend and
I want to see the films, but we forgot our money," he continued. "We need to
go to our house to get it. Want to help us out?" Okay. Journalists are required
to talk to lots of people, and that includes children. I've seen and spoken to
lots of them. Here's how that usually goes: "Uh ... M ... M ... Mister? Can I
see that camera? I ... I won't break it or anything. I promise. My dad has a
camera, and he lets me hold it sometimes, I guess, and I took a picture of my dog
-- it wasn's very good, 'cause I got my finger in the way and ..." Add in some
feet shuffling and/or body swaying and you've got a typical kid talking to a
stranger. In short, they're usually apologetic. People generally teach children
that when they talk to adults, they're usually bothering them for one reason or
another and they should at least be polite. This kid was in no way fitting the mold.
His command of language was incredible and he showed no signs of fear. He spoke as
if my help was a foregone conclusion. When he grinned, it was as if he was trying
to say, "I know something ... and you're NOT gonna like it. But the only way you're
going to find out what it is will be to do what I say ..." "Uh, well ..." was the
best reply I could offer.
-----
Now here's where it starts to get strange.The quiet companion looked at the spokesman
with a mixture of confusion and guilt on his face. He seemed in some ways shocked,
not with his friend's brusque manner but that I didn't just immediately open the door.
He eyed me nervously. The spokesman seemed a bit perturbed, too. I still was
registering something wrong with both. "C'mon, mister," the spokesman said again,
smooth as silk. Car salesmen could learn something from this kid. "Now, we just want
to go to our house. And we're just two little boys." That really scared me. Something
in the tone and diction again sent off alarm bells. My mind was frantically trying to
process what it was perceiving about the two figures that was "wrong."
"Eh. Um ...." was all I could manage. I felt myself digging my fingernails into the
steering wheel. "What movie were you going to see?" I asked finally. "Mortal Kombat,
of course," the spokesman said. The silent one nodded in affirmation, standing a few
paces behind. "Oh," I said. I stole a quick glance at the marquee and at the clock in
my car. Mortal Kombat had been playing for an hour, the last showing of the evening.
The silent one looked increasingly nervous. I think he saw my glances and suspected
that I might be detecting something was not above-board.
----
"C'mon, mister. Let us in. We can't get in your car until you do, you know," the
spokesman said soothingly. "Just let us in, and we'll be gone before you know it.
We'll go to our mother's house." We locked eyes. To my horror, I realized my hand had
strayed toward the door lock (which was engaged) and was in the process of opening it.
I pulled it away, probably a bit too violently. But it did force me to look away from
the children. I turned back. "Er ... Um ...," I offered weakly and then my mind
snapped into sharp focus.
For the first time, I noticed their eyes. They were coal black. No pupil. No iris.
Just two staring orbs reflecting the red and white light of the marquee. At that point,
I know my expression betrayed me. The silent one had a look of horror on his face
in a combination that seemed to say "We've been found out!" The spokesman, on the
other hand, wore a mask of anger. His eyes glittered brightly in the half-light.
"Cmon, mister," he said. "We won't hurt you. You have to LET US IN. We don't have a gun ..."
That last statement scared the living hell out of me, because at that point by his
tone he was plainly saying, "We don't NEED a gun." He noticed my hand shooting down
toward the gear shift. The spokesman's final words contained an anger that was complete
and whole, and yet contained in some respects a tone of panic: "WE CAN'T COME IN UNLESS
YOU TELL US IT'S OKAY. LET ... US .... IN!"
-----
I ripped the car into reverse (thank goodness no one was coming up behind me) and tore
out of the parking lot. I noticed the boys in my peripheral vision, and I stole a quick
glance back. They were gone. The sidewalk by the theater was deserted. I drove home in
a heightened state of panic. Had anyone attempted to stop me, I would have run on through
and faced the consequences later. I bolted into my house, scanning all around --
including the sky. What did I see? Maybe nothing more than some kids looking for a ride.
And some really funky contacts. Yeah, right.
A friend suggested they were vampires, what with the old "let us in" bit and my
compelled response to open the door. That and the "we'll go see our mother" thing. I'm
still not sure what they were, but here's an epilogue I find chilling: A close friend
of mine recently moved to Amarillo, but at the time this happened was still living in
San Angelo. I called him and talked to him briefly. He had two friends with him at the
time, both professing some type of psychic ability.
-----
I started telling him the story, leaving out the part about the black eyes for the kicker.
One of the women (we were on a speakerphone) stopped me. "These children had black eyes,
right?" she asked. "I mean, all-black eyes?" "Er ... Yes." I said. I was a bit taken aback.
"Hmmm," she said. "One night last week, I had a dream about children with black eyes.
They were outside my house, wanting to be let in, but there was something wrong with
them. It took me a while to realize it was the eyes."
I hadn't even gotten as far as them wanting to come in. "What did you do?" I asked. "I
kept the doors and windows locked," she said. "I knew if they came in, they would kill
me." She paused. "And they would have killed you, too, if you had let them into your car."
Gateway of the Mind
In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God.
They believed that the five senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who claimed to have “nothing left to live for” was the only test subject to volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain was surgically severed.* Although the test subject retained full muscular function, he could not see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. With no possible way to communicate with or even sense the outside world, he was alone with his thoughts.
Scientists monitored him as he spoke aloud about his state of mind in jumbled, slurred sentences that he couldn’t even hear. After four days, the man claimed to be hearing hushed, unintelligible voices in his head. Assuming it was an onset of psychosis, the scientists paid little attention to the man’s concerns.
Two days later, the man cried that he could hear his dead wife speaking with him, and even more, he could communicate back. The scientists were intrigued, but were not convinced until the subject started naming dead relatives of the scientists. He repeated personal information to the scientists that only their dead spouses and parents would have known. At this point, a sizable portion of scientists left the study.
After a week of conversing with the deceased through his thoughts, the subject became distressed, saying the voices were overwhelming. In every waking moment, his consciousness was bombarded by hundreds of voices that refused to leave him alone. He frequently threw himself against the wall, trying to elicit a pain response. He begged the scientists for sedatives, so he could escape the voices by sleeping. This tactic worked for three days, until he started having severe night terrors. The subject repeatedly said that he could see and hear the deceased in his dreams.
Only a day later, the subject began to scream and claw at his non-functional eyes, hoping to sense something in the physical world. The hysterical subject now said the voices of the dead were deafening and hostile, speaking of hell and the end of the world. At one point, he yelled “No heaven, no forgiveness” for five hours straight. He continually begged to be killed, but the scientists were convinced that he was close to establishing contact with God.
After another day, the subject could no longer form coherent sentences. Seemingly mad, he started to bite off chunks of flesh from his arm. The scientists rushed into the test chamber and restrained him to a table so he could not kill himself. After a few hours of being tied down, the subject halted his struggling and screaming. He stared blankly at the ceiling as teardrops silently streaked across his face. For two weeks, the subject had to be manually rehydrated due to the constant crying. Eventually, he turned his head and, despite his blindness, made focused eye contact with a scientist for the first time in the study.
He whispered “I have spoken with God, and He has abandoned us” and his vital signs stopped.
There was no apparent cause of death.
Tower of Silence
January 19, 2003 --
Indian officials ventured into a deep jungle, investigating several missing persons reports from a nearby city. What they found was a "Tower of Silence," or dakhma. Zoroastrians use these sites to dispose of bodies in the open air.
While sites like these are not uncommon in certain parts of india, several peculiarities hint at something more unusual...
None of the bodies depicted in the photograph were identified. Villagers from nearby, though initially surprised at the sheer number of corpses in the dakhma, proved unable to recognize the bodies. The corpses also do not match the descriptions of the missing people. There were no animals around except for maggots and flies. Zoroastrians rely on birds (i.e. buzzards) to dispose of the bodies, in the belief they are contributing back to the Earth. Officials found the corpses relatively untouched by any sort of animal. There is no official count of the bodies. In fact, little work was actually accomplished at the site and, perhaps, this is why only one photograph has emerged. Officials avoided the spot - not only because they felt uneasy looking at it, but for the following, as well: The deep pit in the center of the photograph was filled with several feet of festering blood - far more than the bodies on the outside could ever supply. The stench was so unbearable that many of the officials began to get nauseous when they first approached the dakhma. The expedition was ended when a villager accidentally kicked a small bone into the pit, penetrating the coagulated surface of the pool. A massive burst of gas from the decomposing blood erupted from the pit, splashing those looking into it, along with the photographer.
Those caught in the explosion were immediately sent to the hospital, where they were quarrantined for possible infection. They became delirious with fever, shouting about "being tainted with the blood of Ahriman" (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite never having admitted having any familiarity with the religion.
In fact, many of them had no idea what the dakhma was when they had found it. Delirium turned to insanity as many began to attack hospital staff until they were sedated. The fever eventually killed all of them.
When officials returned with HAZMAT gear the following day, the site was empty. All the bodies had been removed and, astonishingly, the pool of blood inthe pit had been drained. All that remained of the incident was this photograph.
The Keyhole
A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. Especially no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed. The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye.
What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to. This disinclination saved his life. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.
At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, "Did you look through the keyhole?" The man told her that he had and she said, "Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red."
666 Messages
It's early in the morning. The sun won't be up for another couple of hours. You're fast
asleep in bed, lost in a dream, when the phone rings. Rather than waking up, you roll
over and cover your head with a pillow. Hours pass. The sun rises. The phone is ringing.
When you wake up, your alarm clock is blaring and the phone is ringing. By the time
you will yourself to turn the alarm off, the phone has stopped ringing. You realize
that it's been ringing all morning. You slide out of bed and press the blinking red
button on your phone as you stumble into the bathroom. The phone beeps, followed by
the friendly, electronic voice. Hello. You have six hundred and sixty-six new messages.
Message one. The phone beeps again, and you're not prepared for what comes next.
Screaming.
You spin around, thinking that she's standing right behind you. There's pure terror in
her screams, accompanied by other disturbing noises. You stand there, horrified, for
about ten seconds. Screaming gives way to hysterical, garbled crying before dying out
with the sounds of spilling meat and tearing flesh.
The phone beeps again. You're shaking.
Message two.
Guard Dog
A young girl is left home alone with only her dog to protect her. When night approaches, she locks all the doors and tries to lock all the windows but one won't close. She decides to leave it unlocked and goes to bed. Her dog takes its customary place under her bed.
In the deep of night she awakens to a dripping sound coming from the bathroom. The girl is too scared to go check so she reaches her hand under the bed. She feels a reassuring lick from her dog and falls back to sleep. She reawakens to the dripping sound, reaches her hand down to the dog where she feels the reassuring lick and falls back to sleep. Once more she awakens to the dripping sound. She reaches her hand down and feels the lick of her dog. Now curious about the dripping sound, she gets up and slowly walks towards the bathroom, the dripping sound getting louder as she approaches. She reaches the bathroom and turns on the light. She is greeted by a horrific sight; hanging from the shower nozzle is her dog with its throat slit open and its blood
dripping into the bathtub.
Something on the bathroom mirror catches her eye she turns around. Written on the bathroom mirror in her dog's blood are the words "I CAN LICK TOO".
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