The Others: Stories of Unsung Heroes

(These were actually modified homework assignments that I’m posting here, as they are pieces of fiction related to the Gothic and the supernatural. I’m going to title these “The Others.” These will be written from the perspective of agents who could be considered the unsung heroes of the secret societies. The everyday workers who work as hard as our protagonist and favorite characters but never get the recognition they deserve.)

When I stepped into the air-conditioned general store, I was greeted by the scent of pine wood and the vision of several trinkets and small objects being sold by the man behind the counter. There was a lot of memorabilia of the creature known as “Sasquatch” being sold on items such as key-chains. In areas of the United States where there is a lot of wilderness and shrubbery, one is bound to hear stories of the mystical Bigfoot. This creature is supposedly a hominid creature that branched off from Homosapiens during the time of humans coming into being by way of natural selection. This theory goes that something must have gone awry within the genetics of the mammal from the first aeon in which man’s common ancestor crawling out of the sea would eventually begin to morph upright and climb into the trees. Making way for the world’s cruelest animal.

This reminded me of a book I had read on the way up here, that was provided by the mysterious benefactor. According to W Scott Poole author of Monsters in America,

“Contrary evidence however, suggests that such an ambivalent view of the natives had very little traction among the most early modern Europeans. The conquerors of the New World saw,not simply savage versions of humanity, but the monstrous races of their mythology.even significant enlightenment thinkers such as the French naturalist Buffon in his Natural History connected the creation of monstrosities with the etiology of the “darker races.” Monsters represented the progeny of these supposedly savage peoples, a concept that reappeared again and again throughout American history, with a lineage that stretches from Puritan minister Cotton Mather to the 20th century horror maestro HP Lovecraft.” (Poole, 2011.)

I thought about the passage as I purchased a key chain. As the cashier was ringing me up I looked down to the sign hanging on the front of the counter which read, “T.E.A. Taxed Enough Already. No Socialist Welfare Queens Wanted.”
I did, however, take the time to ask about the recent sighting of the creature in the local woods. A hunter had seen what he had thought to be a mammalian bipedal creature stomping about in the woods. He said the creature looked extremely strong and had extremely loud footsteps. He hastily ran away.

Data:
Poole, W. S. (2011). Monsters in America: our historical obsession with the hideous and the haunting. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press.
Posted Jan 26, 14 · OP · Last edited Jan 26, 14

As I entered the Alabama woods, I had brought along several pieces of recording equipment including a parabolic dish, this item is used for catching noises of creatures that are running rather fast. From the report I had read though this hominid creature likes to stomp around. crushing several leaves underfoot. I thought back several millennia ago, knowing something must’ve happened to our fragile evolutionary strains. How lucky we are. Perhaps it is how unlucky we are?

This creature was known to be covered from hair from head to toe. Oddly enough in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, we are introduced to a monstrosity of the same type known as Caliban. This creature is brutal to its surroundings tearing any civilized man apart from limb to limb. I thought of this as I sat in my camp listening for any sounds.

Supposedly the creature would be banging sticks against trees for some reason.

This is possibly be due to the fact that it wanted to cause several smaller creatures to leave the relative safety of the trees. I continued walking around the wood using my infrared for some sort of support visually. I decided not to be armed, as I doubted I would find anything of any value. I continually walked through the woods listening to the sound of crunching leaves and hooting owls. I eventually found my way to a stream that was glistening in the silvery moonlight of the full moon. I spotted what looked large footprints made by a mammalian primate. this however was the only piece of evidence I could gather. I was able to snap a digital photograph of the tracks before leaving the woods. If there were any traces of our evolutionary past to be found in these woods, they were not making themselves manifest on this night.

Data reference : Introduction to Shakespeare’s Caliban from The Tempest. (n.d.).Introduction to Shakespeare’s Caliban from The Tempest. Retrieved January 31, 2014, from Introduction to Shakespeare's Caliban from The Tempest

Looking back at this investigation we can see that through using a myriad of sources we can see by looking at certain incredulous esoteric sources like Blavatsky the myths of these hominid creatures arose out of superstitions about master races and of early America’s racial tensions with slavery. That was only somewhat solved by all of the death in the Civil War. We can see that these theories are still in conservative circles today. Perhaps one might want to look up the subtext of the works written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft in the early 1920s and 30s. This shows us that the horrors of racism still haunt America. White neighborhoods still fear their gene pool being contaminated by an unknown substance. Thus beginning to ruin their so called perfect suburban American dream.
Posted Jan 31, 14 · OP · Last edited Jan 31, 14

This time I was called into sunny California. Everything was nice and warm as the breeze pushed through the greenery of the palm trees. I love the smell of the ocean. It gave me an oceanic feeling of the mystic experience. A great sense of comfort, in knowing that I was going from drop to drop. Wave to wave. Awakening my third eye.

"Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge."
A Divine Image. William Blake. (Blake, 1789.)

I also thought of a passage by Mitch Horowitz from his book Occult America. "The age of reason could seem anything but reasonable for people with unusual religious beliefs- or those accused of them. In 1782, Switzerland was the site of one of the Western world’s last witch trials, which ended in the torture and beheading of a rural housemaid. in 1791, the Vatican sentenced the legendary Italian occultist called Cagliostro to death on charges of heresy and Freemasonry. Although his execution was stayed, the self-styled "high priest of the Egyptian mysteries’ ’ died of disease later in the dungeons of the Inquisition. "
(Horowitz, 2009.)

I doubted that in my trip out here I was going to find somebody as committed to the cause as their predecessors in seeking out the unknown. I was expecting these “New Age.” “Mystics.” to be seeking the spirit of the Almighty power of the universe. The dollar.

Data:
Blake, W. (n.d.). A Divine Image. by William Blake : The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved February 9, 2014, from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175
Horowitz, M. (2010). Occult America: White House séances, ouija circles, masons, and the secret mystic history of our nation (Bantam Books trade paperback ed.). New York: Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks.
Posted Feb 9, 14 ·

I stepped into the domain of the Cartomancer. She was sitting at a small table with a blue cloth over it. Blue cloth was covered with yellow stars. In the center of the table stood a crystal ball. Madame Sophia was her name, she was supposedly the best seer in all of California. She hastened me over to her table and began to ask a series of questions. These were what I recognized as discovery questions.

“I am seeing a lot of water. Did you have any family members that would go boating when they were younger?”

My answer was a definite no.

Sophia seemed rather nervous by the revelation of this negation. She hastily grabbed some candles and some incense, all of this of course was to add to the theatrics of her show. A show with all this was going to be. She was using a technique called cold reading. This was also more commonly known as profiling, how this works is that someone basically looks at a person’s external features like clothing, physical appearance etc. and then makes random guesses about their personality. Eventually they will come across
something.

Madame Sophia turned all the lights down and set several candles around the floor. An orange glow illuminated from below as the candles were lit. She continued with her questioning.

"Did any of your relatives like sports? I’m seeing a baseball bat. "

The answer was again no.

“I’d really like to take a baseball bat to your head.” I thought.

The questioning continued and getting false answers was becoming common. I eventually became irate at the woman and gave her a lecture on morals.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve doing stuff like this. You provide no evidence nor decent data whatsoever. And you do all this to exploit hurting and grieving families. I can imagine the pain that they go through knowing that there is a possibility that their dead loved ones have an ethereal soul floating somewhere in some other dimension , possibly even looking over them. Of course you help them “connect.” With their loved ones. For a fee. This is completely unethical and I have no idea why people keep buying into it.”

I slammed my fist on the table and then removed the hundred dollar bill. This was twice Sophia’s hourly rate. I left the dollar bill on the table and stepped out into the California sunlight. This would be an extremely disheartening experience for anyone who had feelings.
Posted Feb 10, 14

What I learned from this investigation was that these “New Age.” mystics like to use the oldest tricks in the books in order to exploit a few dollars from those who were unable to critically think. This has an extremely negative connotation on the entire movement.

And that made me think back to a study that labeled such a thing the modern religion. “Consprituality.”was what the researchers called it. (Ward, Voas. 2011) this proves that all of this New Age stuff about planets predicting the end of the world is nothing but mere fear mongering in a marketplace for the downtrodden and paranoid that have become that way
because of the world economic crisis.

This amount of paranoia could lead to negative consequences for the United States and the world in the near future. As people involved in this now cult, take as axioms anything that is told to them by the leaders of this new religious movement.

Data: Voas, D., & Ward, C. (2011). The Emergence of Conspirituality.Journal of Contemporary Religion,26(1), 103-121.
Posted Feb 10, 14

(Posting the instructions for the next one as they are very well written. Instructor’s name replaced by KG.)

***** TOP SECRET! FOR YOUR EYES ONLY! *****

Attention all A303 Special Agents –

At some point in the early morning hours of January 21, 2014, Mr. Thomas Dawson of Kokomo, Indiana disappeared. His car was found abandoned just outside Corydon, Indiana on I-64, about half a mile from a rest area on the West-bound side of the interstate. Mr. Dawson is currently 79 years of age.

While local and state law enforcement is working the usual missing person files, there is additional information you should be aware of as it relates to this case:

Mr. Dawson was a former special field agent in our Midwestern territory, having investigated as one of his first assignments the 1955 Hopkinsville UFO incident (his report was not much different from what was reported in the “Kelly’s Little Men” article which we’ll be discussing in a forthcoming briefing). He remained in good standing until his retirement in 1995, and earned the nickname “Agent X” from his fellow workers for his good humor and fascination with crossword puzzles.

Earlier in the day on 1/21, Mr. Dawson was seen with a group visiting nearby Marengo Cave (http://marengocave.com/) This isn’t particularly unusual, given Marengo Cave is a popular tourist attractive. What is unusual, however, is that Mr. Dawson was terrified of enclosed places, having remarked to his friends and family, on more than one occasion, that “to visit a cave would be my greatest nightmare”.

Upon investigation of Mr. Dawson’s abandoned car, a note – written on official Special Agent letterhead – was found in the glove compartment. The note contained a list of three terms, “Philadelphia Experiment”, “Holiday” and “Voyage”. More troubling, the note contained smears of dried blood (we are awaiting further lab analysis, but believe the blood is not that of Mr. Dawson).

Existence of this note has been repressed from the media (when I became aware of it from local authorities, I asked that it be sent directly to our office). Beyond the troubling fact it was smeared in blood, we are concerned that the terms the note contained are potentially indicative of a long-forgotten case file Mr. Dawson might have been working – without authorization – after his retirement.
Continued on next page
YOUR TASK:

Please research the terms listed in the note and the Marengo Cave/Corydon area, and in a short analysis (two pages), I’d like you to speculate as to what you think might be going on here. Please post your analysis to the “Agent X” matrix, in the “Iteration 1/Data” cell, no later than midnight, 2/18/14. I will in turn ask you to respond to your fellow group member reports so that we can continue our investigation.

I will forward additional information from the field as I receive it. Again, please consider this case top secret, and don’t discuss with anyone outside your group/our larger team.

KG.
Posted Feb 17, 14

From what I can gather, Mr. Dawson must have ventured deep into the cave looking for something.

From what I can gather from the bloody notes he left behind, he was more than likely looking for some sort of portal to another dimension. This could perhaps lend credence to the theory that certain caves such as this one are perhaps special energy gateways to another dimension. In order to take this into proper scientific and empirical account, we must look at the theories of quantum physics as well as particle physics. What happened to Mr. Dawson must have been anything but supernatural. I know this seems a bit odd coming from an individual working in an organization such as this.

But take into account for a moment that everything we see around us is nothing but particles bouncing about in a sort of dialectical game. A sort of dialectical game of competing wills if you would. Now imagine, if all the protons and neutrons would not clash into each other but rather expand apart as had occurred with space and time during the moment of the Big Bang. Our entire universe could be destroyed and left spiraling down a long black staircase of an eternal black hole leading us into a bleak cosmic remoteness that we as a species may not be able to return from.

This reminded me of the stories of the Philadelphia experiment well as the stories of vanishing ships like the Mary Celeste. Supposedly in the case of ships, reality itself seemed to turn on the fragile humanity which thought it had control of nature. We can see that this is clearly not the case as sometimes the fabric of nature itself seems to break down in what could sometimes be called a freak storm, that could easily wash a crew overboard similar to the Mary Celeste. Or in the case of the Philadelphia experiment, it could easily cause one to vanish into dark dimensions yet to be discovered.

data: The Philadelphia Experiment. (n.d.). The Philadelphia Experiment. Retrieved February 18, 2014, from Spiritual Endeavors | MANY PATHS-ONE DESTINATION | Explore them... Spirituality Enlightenment Meditation Karma Inspirational Stories New Age
Mary Celeste. (n.d.). Mary Celeste. Retrieved February 18, 2014, from http://www.carter-stephenson.co.uk/celeste.html
Posted Feb 18, 14 · OP · Last edited Feb 18, 14

Attention all A303 Special Agents –

Your investigative work up to this point has been very interesting. I appreciate you keeping the details of this case confidential, yet at the same time obviously working to obtain as much information as possible from local authorities and others who might be involved with this case.

Based on your work and a separate communication from Thomas Dawson (he sent me a cryptic message, which I’ve asked him to forward to you as well), here is what we now know:

Dawson never truly gave up on the Hopkinsville case. In fact, from the moment he first visited the scene of the “little green men”, it became his life-long obsession to understand not so much why they picked that particular location (in a joking aside, he said he didn’t like Kentucky), but rather who they were and where they were from.
The “Philadelphia Experiment” refers to the alleged attempt by the U.S. Navy to cloak or otherwise make invisible the U.S.S. Eldrige in October of 1943. Could the Hopkinsville UFO investigation possibly have led Dawson to information – obtained from an extraterrestrial source – that would provide instructions on how to make an object as big as a warship invisible?
Thomas Dawson had communicated at least once with Morris Jessup (also an Indiana native) about his (Jessup’s) role in researching the “Philadelphia Experiment”. Jessup was found dead on April 20, 1959 (four years after the Hopkinsville event), his death being ruled a suicide although we have reason to believe he might have made a breakthrough discovery regarding the “Philadelphia Experiment” and was killed (by whom?) because of it.

We have reason to believe the word “Voyage”, in connection with the word “Holiday” might refer to “The Voyage” roller coaster at Holiday World, an amusement park not far from Corydon, Indiana. Moreover, based on your investigative work, we’ve uncovered the following interesting, possibly related details about this roller coaster:
The Voyage uses trains manufactured by “The Gravity Group”, based in Philadelphia, PA

The Holiday World Web site suggests that visitors “save a ride on ‘The Voyage’ for after dark” (why?)

The Voyage allegedly provides the most “air time” (feeling of zero gravity) of any wooden coaster in the world
Upon further analysis of the pictures sent to us by Thomas Dawson, our lab has determined there is some type of opening in the ground below “The Voyage”. This would seem to imply a connection to Marengo Cave, where Dawson was last seen (i.e., some kind of work related to his investigation is occurring underground). Moreover, one of you, in your analysis of the first note, suggested that operation of “The Voyage” would generate strong electromagnetic effects: the area surround Holiday World/Marengo Cave is rich in limestone, a rock that supposedly has certain “energy properties”. Might a cave (a rich limestone environment) be an ideal receptor for some kind of energy field “transmission” by a ride like “The Voyage”? Also, several of you suggested that such an energy field could be used – in context of earlier studies like the Philadelphia Experiment – for time/dimensional travel.

Based on your outstanding research and field work, we believe that Dawson – possibly using information obtained from the aliens he encountered in the Hopkinsville investigation – is using “The Voyage” roller coaster as the absolute perfect cover for his experiments. What might these experiments be? One possibility is that he wants to use the ride as a mechanism for teleporting individuals (unsuspecting riders) from the ride to an underground location. Moreover, we believe that some type of invisibility cloak is being randomly deployed on some riders of “The Voyage” so that – as they leave the ride’s loading station – the cars they are riding in appear empty (in other words, to avoid obvious suspicion of passengers seen getting on the ride but not returning).

YOUR TASK:

Based on the above details, we must uncover who (or what) is behind these experiments, , and if Thomas Dawson is a willing participant or rather is trying to warn us/otherwise blow the cover of whoever (or whatever) is behind this mystery. Please post your analysis to the “Agent X” matrix, in the “Iteration 2/Data” cell, no later than midnight, Tuesday, 3/11. For this iteration, please provide a two-page (minimum) analysis.

IMPORTANT: Please also be on the lookout for the note from Dawson, as that might provide additional clues (quite frankly, we here at the home office are stumped). Again, please consider this case top secret, and don’t discuss with anyone outside your group/our larger team.

KG.
Posted Mar 2, 14

Nevada:

As I stood there in the desert, the burning sand choked my throat somewhat as I tried to inhale the Nevada air. I had thought through a small passage I read from “Monsters in America.” " We know now Americans had more to fear from radiation than they ever realized. Secret tests by the US government and major institutions of American medicine, not an all-out nuclear exchange exposed thousands of American citizens to sickness and death" (Pool 2011)

I was here to investigate the mysterious military base that did not even exist. Groom Lake also known as Area 51 was supposedly home to many terrifying mysteries. I was determined to discover some during my time here. I was not expecting to find any extra terrestrials though. This was more than likely a place used for secret military testing, it was a game of imperialist one-upmanship that had been won by letting the other team destroy themselves. I found it quite odd that during the Cold War not a single shot was fired between the two main belligerents. They had to use proxy and satellite states in order to do their bidding for them. I thought that area 51 was sure to be the most bloody tool of modern-day imperialism. A perfect waste of taxpayer dollars.

Poole, W. S. (2011).Monsters in America: our historical obsession with the hideous and the haunting. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press.
Posted Mar 5, 14 ·