The NoSleep Podcast - S17: NoSleep Podcast - Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 10

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

We’re sleepless decomposing while we work on Season 18. Enjoy Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 10“There is a Pit” written by Dirk Ferguson (Story starts around 00:03:52)Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Narrator – Graham Rowat“Elkridge Consumes” written by Noah Lang (Story starts around 00:17:05)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator – Atticus Jackson, Narrator’s Mother – Mary MurphyThis episode is sponsored by:Truebill – Truebill is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying for subscriptions you don’t need, want, or simply forgot about. Start cancelling today at Truebill.com/nosleep. It could save you THOUSANDS a year.ShipStation – ShipStation makes it super easy to manage and ship all your online orders faster, cheaper and more efficiently. You’ll spend a lot less time on shipping and a lot more time growing your business. Go to shipstation.com and click the microphone icon at the top of the page. Enter code NOSLEEP to get a 60-day free trial.Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone“Sleepless Decompositions” illustration courtesy of Kelly TurnbullAudio program ©2022 – Creative Reason Media Inc. – All Rights Reserved – No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks for the intro, Sammy. I am indeed. David Cummings of the No Sleep Podcast. Thanks for joining me for Sleepless Decompositions, Volume 10. And speaking of being sleepless, what's keeping you up at night? Viagra? But seriously, I know sometimes you can feel anxious about things like money. Is enough coming in or is too much going out?

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Start canceling today at truebill.com slash no sleep. You go right now, truebill.com slash no sleep. It could save you thousands a year. Truebill.com slash no sleep. And now, without further ado or a. don't, put your hands together for sleepless decompositions. Bleetings and salivations, dear listeners, to sleepless decompositions, Volume 10. Summer is upon us, and the sheep are not what they seem.

Perhaps they devoured the goats that plagued us for the first half of this year. At the No Sleep Podcast HQ, well, we've been debating the correct word for our woolly weirdos, where cows are bovine, horses are equine, goats are caprine, and pigs are porcine. So far, the frontrunner is that sheep are ramstein. Sheep have always seemed eerie to me. There's something about how a group of them behaves that seems unnatural. There's an emptiness in their vacant gaze that feels different to goats. Goats are calculating.

Goats stand on branches up in trees and watch you. Goats stalk you through the woods and slit your throat. But sheep, well, you never know what they're going to do, only that they'll sweep you up in their tide. Hmm, now are you fully braced for horror? In our first tale, we find ourselves in a town which inexplicably brought sheep to mind. This whole story is shared with us by author Dirk Ferguson and features a deep performance by Graham Rowett.

There is a town, there are streets, there are houses, there is a center, and there is a pit. There's a pit, five feet deep, at the center of town. It's new. It wasn't there yesterday, and you stand at the edge to get a better look, seeming to be the only one marveling at it. It is five feet deep.

You could easily find out. fall in and get back out. No problem. Most people could, except perhaps, a small child. You don't think to turn your back on the pit that is five feet deep at the center of town. There's a prickling on your back as you turn, though, and you think to yourself, it's best not to turn your back on it, and you hardly question where that thought came from or what it is. The pit is new, the pit is old, The pit in question grows. And two weeks later, if time passes at all, it is at least a dozen feet deep. Then a few more, and more, and more.

Until it looks a mile deep and dark at the bottom, and the edges have grown and grown and grown, it takes up the town square. And still, you stand at the edge. You just want a better look. No one notices. No one else exists except you and the growing darkness at the bottom of the pit. It draws you in, and your foot catches on the cliff that makes up the edge of the pit, sending rocks careening down below.

Something might be down there. Something is down there. Something old. Something new. Something that has been there for two weeks. Or just one day. A friend calls your name in a high and reedy tone. You turn away.

Your friends are the same as they've always been. They laugh and joke and hug just the same. You see their hair come out in clumps. Thinning, sinning, thinning. There's nothing unusual. Something about them seems sluggish, tired, like their energy is being sapped away day by day. but at the same time something about them seems more energetic than usual.

There's a bright energy in their eyes that you've never noticed before. The whole grows, and their behavior changes. And yet, your friends are the same as they have always been, except you don't know their faces anymore, and your best friend has eyes you do not recognize. The pit is new. It is one day old. It is five days, two weeks, six months old.

It has been here since you were a child. It just showed up yesterday. You're not so sure what is true, and what you're being told is true. You think you see something at the bottom of the pit one day. You see a shadowy mass only barely visible, and it reaches and reaches and reaches. It calls out. It screams and falls out. It screams until your eardrums burst and start bleeding.

It wails, and you tentatively ask around how long it has been crying. Five days, two weeks, six months, it has screamed. Someone slips into the hole, and it's inevitable. Funny how clumsy people tend to be. Screaming comes from the pit. Screams that are not so inhuman. The rescue team that goes after them, disappears too.

You visit the pit one day after another, even though the day doesn't really happen anymore. The moon came and never vanished, leaving everything in darkness. You wonder how long it has been dark. You wonder how long it has been since you've seen the sun. A year? Two days?

A few hours, maybe, is how long since you've seen the sun. The pit grows in its absence. The town is unconcerned. A house falls into the pit, and another one is built. And the town expands onward, despite the growing despair in the middle of everything. It feels like you're the only one aware of the monster in the pit. At least the electricity still works. Though sometimes it flickers and goes out,

and the power lines fall as the pit grows and grows and grows. Later, the electricity doesn't work anymore. The town can't fix the power faster than the pit grows, and it grows very fast. You sit in your home, the moon shining unnatural brightness through your window, and the lights never do come back on. Your friends keep talking about the pit, but as you try to recall the things they say,

you find your friends never really mention the pit all that. much. But when they do, your friends say there's something bad at the bottom of the pit that is going to kill the town. Then your friends say you should all jump in, get a better look. Your friends are the same as they've always been, but their eyes. Something in the pit screams. Something in the pit has your friend's eyes. Something in the pit reaches out to you and asks you to please come a little closer, just for a closer, better look. You sit on the edge and let your feet dangle out. You cannot see the bottom of the pit. It is one, two, five miles deep. There's something in there, except there's nothing in there, and you can see the bottom just fine. It's only five

feet. The screaming continues, and your friends urge you to jump. But you get up and turn away like you have so many times before every single day, even though day no longer exists. The sun never existed, and a full moon shines overhead constantly now. Something tells you, don't turn your back, and you do not listen. The screaming stops, and it is silent. Is the hold bigger? How long has it been?

Two days, three weeks, a year, on and on and on and on. Your friends say to stay away from the pit. Your friends say to come closer. Your friends are the same as they've always been. And your friends are not your friends. Their eyes shine a collective bright blue. None of your friends have blue eyes. You look into the pit.

The pit stares back sorrowfully With eyes stolen from your friends It shrieks and begs and wails You do not listen You cannot listen The pit grows bigger And it stays the same And the thing in the pit that no one is quite certain what it is

Cries louder and louder and louder It is beginning to climb out And you can see it quite well now And you stand at the edge and watch climb and listen to it scream, except when you look down into the pit. The pit that is five feet or ten miles deep, you don't see anything at all. The pit is empty. The thing that whales and whales does not exist. And yet, it is taking people. You're told people are just falling in, slipping on rough edges that crumble and continue to grow.

You're not sure these days what is true, and what you're being told is true. You're not sure if the difference really matters. People are leaving. People are dying. You sit at the edge of the pit every day, or what passes as day for you under a dark sky without even a moon to illuminate your surroundings. And listen. You hear screams, human and inhuman and something in between.

And you whisper to the eyes in the pit and ask how long it has been. It doesn't answer you. That's all you really need. You stop turning your back on the pit when your friends finally disappear. The pit is old. It has been six months. It has been two weeks. It has been ten years, and the pit screamed the whole time.

The pit is old. You're not sure what existed before the pit, if anything at all. The pit is, except the pit is new. It wasn't there yesterday. You look down into the pit that is five feet deep. That is a dozen feet deep. That is a mile deep and more. You look down and see.

your eyes gazing back at you, and you step a bit closer. You just want a better look. Whoa, hey now, let's all take a step back from the edge of that pit and take a short break. I mean, I've heard about falling in love, but that's ridiculous. But speaking of taking something from one place to another very quickly, how difficult must it be for anyone running their own online business, especially when it comes to shipping out products. When you run a business, time seems more precious. Every misplaced moment feels like a missed opportunity,

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That's two whole months of shipping made quick and painless, and it's free to try. Just go to shipstation.com. Click on the microphone at the top of the page and type in No Sleep. Ship Station. Make ship happen. And now, let's return to the horror. This time we're taking you from the edge to the ridge. In our final tale, we join a man as he takes a dark and disturbing delve into the history of a particular town.

Shared with us by author Noah Lang and performed by Atticus Jackson and Mary Murphy, this harrowing haunt will leave you on the edge of your seat. And even long after it's done, you won't be able to stop thinking about it. After all, Elkridge Consumes. Part 1. Elkridge Consumes was written in an entry of a notebook of rambling, disturbing entries and images from a deranged person who will let the poison of the town in. That line encapsulates so much of what I ended up learning this past year

and has, candidly, fucked me up since making a mistake of opening that, crypted zip file nearly seven months ago, this is probably a bad idea. I mean, it's definitely a bad idea. But having been down these sorts of rabbit holes before, I don't see any other way. When I was younger, I committed myself to the truth. It's necessity, its urgency, its impact, and its ability to write wrongs. which is what probably led MBN to me in the first place. I'll explain. And at the risk of saying too much about myself,

which I doubt you care about, I will start with some background on me. I am one of those people who never had a great career passion. I always worked from the time I was legally able to. Bagging at shop right, retail at REI, busing tables, dishwasher, every other job you can think of, and was obsessed with saving money. Watching my parents struggle to provide and the insidiousness of debt instilled a paranoia in me

that stays with me to this day, a resolve to never be a prisoner to life's pressures. So, I skipped the BA route, even though I easily could have gone to any solid school of my choosing and went the community college route instead. There was no great career goal in my life, no great ambition. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed life and its pleasures. I just wasn't driven by some higher career calling. I just was obsessed with unsolved mysteries, and a growing online community committed to solving them.

It started with the West Memphis 3 when I was young, and it stuck with me across the years, So, perhaps that was my calling. Or I am just too nosy to help myself. I earned a couple of certificates and basically spent my 20s living a minimalist frugal lifestyle with my only real hobbies being modestly successful attempts to get laid and hanging out with my family whenever I could.

And, of course, the hours at night, I spent scouring the Internet, building my skill set as an amateur investigator. By the time I was 32, I was able to retire, having followed a lot of the tenants of the financial independence retire early community without even realizing it. So, all of this is to say, I ended up where I wanted. Homeowner in a low cost of living city with retirement, more or less taken care of, if I played my cards right. And a lot of free fucking time.

It was around then that I was approached anonymous. by a group called Missing but Not Lost. MBNL. Don't bother looking it up. You won't find anything. And that's by design. This is faux pa that I am doing this to the group. And I'll have to live with those consequences.

But this can't be ignored. And someone needs to tell it. MBNL is essentially a private and anonymous network of both professional and amateur investigators sharing encrypted casework, archival materials, and circumstantial information in the investigation of missing persons nationwide. It's non-falsifiable, but membership allegedly includes active detectives, highly sought after PIs, and even government intelligence and investigatory officials. I was never told how I was found, but my best guess is that it stems from my work,

on Reddit as an investigator. Now, on occasion, I receive encrypted file caches that include casework and details related to missing persons. Earlier this year, I received a cache that has eaten away at me ever since. Before opening the materials, I was directed to a warning that said the following. The following footage was retrieved from various sources and provided to MBNL by an unknown individual. Certain individuals' identities have been withheld as a precautionary measure while others are identified explicitly. Retrieval of this footage from media sources was painstaking, with a variety of unexplained obstacles and difficulties in restoring the different video materials to viewable form. On the advice of counsel, we must caution and warn you against the dissemination of the footage you are about to watch.

This material should be considered internal, strictly confidential, and not for public consumption. It is provided to you because you are a trusted part of our network. Please consider this message seriously before and after you review the following material. So, off I went, blissfully unaware of what was to come. If you try to find information on the missing person's case of Kelly Hall and Tristan Connolly, you won't find much. Neither had much family or many friends. They only really had one another from what I can gather.

Both were amateur documentarians living in Tennessee, carving out of life making videos for clients and trying the best to find the one story that could break their careers open. The benefit, if you can call it that, of this career path has meant copious amounts of footage and backups of their investigation into the town of Elkridge. Before I describe the contents of the cache,

I will give you some background on Tristan and Kelly that I was able to surmise from the materials. I think it's important, as it gives breadth of both the tragedy that befell them and will allow you to understand why they went so far down the rabbit hole. Kelly and Tristan's story is wrapped in tragedy. They suffered an ectopic pregnancy

sometime before the chronology of the contents of the cat. I have a family member who suffered through that, and it's not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Naturally, this had affected both of them deeply and had damaged their relationship. Not so much their mutual love, which is obvious from the materials, but it created a distance between them. It's unclear from the material how they first learned about Elkridge, but what matters is that they did, And from what I can tell, it was Tristan who was approached somehow and who most doggedly pursued the story. In a nutshell, Elkridge was a town that died about 40 years ago and is also wrapped in its own tragedies. We take for granted the idea of communities and the process is necessary to sustain them.

The country is littered with towns like Elkridge. The Rust Belt, Pleasure Beach, Centralia, etc. Something causes the widespread abandonment of a once-thriving community, and the town never recovers. For Elkridge, this happened after the railroad was rerouted, and suddenly the flow of goods, the availability of jobs, and the need for Elkridge, itself a small community, evaporated, almost overnight. There isn't a ton I could find, as it relates to what came out.

but from what I gathered, only about 10% of the town stayed behind. And soon after, the railroad station closed. And a cholera outbreak killed a significant portion of who was left. It gets even cloudier thereafter. And what I learned from the material is that a malevolent force began to influence those left. And not long after, no one was left. I mean that literally. The populace disappeared.

And for reasons I cannot explain, their disappearance was never widely reported or spoken of other than from locals in the region who are admittedly uncomfortable even talking about it. But back to Tristan and Kelly. The first bit of material is from a long roll on an industrial video they were producing where they forgot to cut.

This is a recurring theme with them. as clearly they often never had any crew other than one another. Elkridge is mentioned for the first time as Tristan speaks about trying to source archival evidence from local libraries and historical societies. The first image from that clip is the first time I noticed something strange. When they walked out of the frame and the soundstage was empty, standing in the corner, was a dark figure. It was the silhouette of a person.

and after about five seconds, it receded into the darkness and disappeared. Part two. To start, I apologize for the abrupt end of my first century. My descent into the story has been all-consuming. I've spent years as an obsessive investigator, but I've always been acutely able to turn it off. When exhaustion would hit, I could step away. I could detach. I can't detach from Elkridge. It's like a poison that seeps into the groundwater.

I've never been there. I'll never go there. But it's always with me. I'm trying to repair some of the damage that the Elkridge story has caused to my personal life. My family is incensed. as I have missed countless events and plans. There's only so many times you can blame sickness and imaginary freelance gigs before your loved ones become fed up with your bullshit.

Most recently, my sometimes girlfriend finally had enough with my constantly distracted mind and split for good. So it goes. Again, Elkridge consumes. Something I should have mentioned, in the first entry is that the material from the MB&L cache was pretty diverse in terms of media. The pair copiously recorded their day-to-day life as Tristan increasingly saw the two of them as parts of the story, and of the film itself. In the early sections of the materials, recorded Zoom calls, pre-slade interviews from past projects, recorded voicemails, etc., the name David started coming up.

In short, he seemed to be the main source pushing them towards investigating deeper into Elkridge. There isn't much material explicitly from him in the cache, but what was there was strange and unnerving, especially in retrospect. Granted, I'm sure I am projecting my own fears on those materials, but his persistence and monotone voice were unsettling. Kelly and Tristan were recipients of an unrestricted artist grant sometime last year, and for what seems like the first time in their careers, they had some agency and freedom as filmmakers.

So the material abruptly skewed away from other projects. Client work, personal projects, etc., and focused entirely on Elkridge. What became clear is that despite Kelly's reluctance, Tristan pushed them further into investigating Elkridge. Kelly just half-heartedly went along with it. Some of the footage thereafter was early exploratory materials you'd expect from a discovery part of a project. Just fact-finding in their attempt to wrap their heads around what the story was. They went to a few towns and did some of those man-on-the-street interviews with locals. I tend to hate those, as I can't help but recall the beginning of the Blair Witch Project whenever I see them used in a film.

But the material was undoubtedly helpful in getting more context on Elkridge, and includes some early hints of what was to come. One girl talked about how she couldn't even make it up the overgrown road to the town on a dare one Halloween when she was younger. Another older guy talked about extended family who lived in Elkridge that he had never met before their disappearances. They kept to themselves, were insular. His parents complained about never seeing them or their attitude when they did make it up there. Eventually, they had stopped trying entirely. When the residents disappeared, little effort was made to find them. People saw them as white trash living in the hills, unconcerned with being a part of society.

People just sort of forgot about them. And Elkridge became another local curiosity. But, with a glaring and strange lack of interest or investigation, but what really stuck out was one disturbing interview. A strange-looking man was being interviewed and said nothing to their questions other than that his name was Marcus. Then he abruptly looked directly into the camera and said the words, Numa, Nirvana. In further interviews, you could see him in the distance staring into the camera, transfixed, haunting in his stillness.

As far as I could tell, he never appeared again in any of the NBNL materials. I scoured local papers and digital archives in the region, trying to find anything about someone named Marcus. You can guess how well that quixotic task went. I promise that I'll get into this more in depth in the future entries, Suffice to say, those two words, Numa, Nirvana, come to carry significance to the underlying mystery of Elkridge. I believe there are instrumental elements of the belief system of a religious sect called Selahikos Soma. But before I get to that, there was a lot more ground to cover.

At this point in the chronology of the NBNL materials, you could see the degree to which Tristan was avoiding confronting his trauma over the ectopic pregnancy. Kelly was working at it and struggling immensely regardless, but Tristan was throwing himself into the work rather than doing any personal inquiry. Soon after the man on the street interviews was a recorded video call with what appeared to be a researcher they had hired to help track down Elkridge materials. The researcher would screen share with them at various points, showing them materials and insight into his process.

The only real leads he found, other than minor press breaks, usually no more than a sentence, was some evidence of an Elkridge descendant who had moved away in a thread on a subreddit called Tien Locals, which is either no longer active or never existed in the first place. The thread had no comments or upvotes, just a hyperlinked to a file-sharing service I had never heard. heard of and a short scholarly paper by a man named Martin Askelson, who appeared to be a folklorist and

minor professor. The only information the researcher was able to find about him was a PO box. Tristan would later write dozens of letters to Martin, seeking to set up an interview. What happened next in the video was... Disturbing. A third participant entered the video chat. No name. No picture. Just a subtle static-like sound that slowly grew into this grotesque wall of sonic elements.

It was like hundreds of people wailing as metal was stretched and twisted. It got so loud I pulled out my headphones. I wouldn't open the materials again for weeks. The sound invaded my waking hours. And then my nights, part three. Life continues to unravel on my side. I can't sleep more than 45 minutes at a time. And my appetite is completely gone.

And I can usually eat like a fucking trash person. I've been forcing myself to eat soylent, which is helping a little bit. But my working hypothesis is that an all-liquid diet is not what humans were designed to live on. But it's something. And the beta blocker and anti-anxiety prescriptions are welcome new friends. My family aren't answering my calls anymore until I get help. Fucking hypocrites.

Ignore my uncle's drinking problem for 20 years. But me being a little distant somehow is caused for concern. It's a fucking joke. And of course, the central problem with the get help line of thinking, being that I will quickly be institutionalized if I tried. I mean, at least if I wanted to talk about what is actually happening to me. And if I don't do that, what is the point? But I couldn't even if I wanted to.

After all, and I somehow have not mentioned this. Chalking up to lack of sleep or delirium. All of the Elkridge materials are gone. Not an exaggeration. Soon after I started digging around, the video materials were corrupted. Everything is just pulsing blacks in that awful metallic screaming sound. I tried to recover them on my own and failed. I can't send them off to someone to try themselves.

And I can't poison someone else with this. But the really fucked up part? Even my notes are now useless, literally useless. The words jumbled and nonsensical. What I am about to describe completely from memory at this point will explain. Well, not explain. But at least give you some indication of the forces at work and what I am experiencing. Kelly and Tristan were hitting a lot of roadblocks in their understanding.

investigation where I left off in my last entry. I think I mentioned this, but the available material on Elkridge was slim, next to nothing, really. So any obstacle they hit often left them with no threads to pull or leads to follow. Plain and simple, there is just not enough information that exists. It was at this point that Tristan tried to visit Elkridge and was cited for attempted trespassing. With little framework to build from, they instead widen their thinking to trying to find anyone at all even remotely helpful to interview for contextual and historical purposes. One of those interviews was with a historian named James Turnbull, who agreed to a meeting at his home. I found his info on White Pages, and he hung up on me as soon as I mentioned Elkridge.

He's no longer at the address on White Pages either. Can't blame him. I would have done the same thing knowing what I know now. In the interview, Tristan and Kelly asked about a history of the area. James was conversational, open, and interested in talking about geography and political history. According to him, the region was filled with stories of towns dying, people moving on, economies booming and busting, and a general struggle with adapting to the times. And then Tristan asked him about Elkridge, and James Stonewalled him, almost immediately.

He was uncomfortable and weirdly confrontational in his own subtle academic way. I remember very clearly that he said something like Elkridge's importance to local history and context is marginal at best. But the way he said it was like he was concealing something. Like he was perhaps stating part of a fact, but omitting the rest of it. Tristan, bless the guy. As he was, is a tenacious. We finally coaxed something else out of him, and it was fucking strange. Disturbing, really.

Basically, James had inherited the interests in affairs of another historian. She was a strange bird. all accounts and kept to herself. James didn't even know her particularly well, but she had no one else in her life to manage her estate. She died alone in her office. Her papers strewn about the room in no discernible order. An only child with deceased parents,

what was likely an undiagnosed social anxiety disorder. She was a loner whom he knew from a folklore list serve. Calling what she left James in a state is, being a bit grandiose, as it was really just a couple grand, a dilapidated cottage, and a storage unit filled with filing cabinets and papers. But in that storage unit, he found a medical ledger from Elkridge, as well as financial and town ordinance papers. The ledger outlined the cholera outbreak that devastated the town

and started the final decline of the holdouts who stayed behind after that railroad's rerouting. James told Tristan that he was reviewing the ledger when he fell asleep. When he woke up, he opened the ledger again and every single line was jumbled into nonsensical words and combinations of numbers. Everything he had reviewed was no longer there. Just gibberish. He showed it to a cryptographer friend who confirmed no rhyme, reason, or order to the words. letters and numbers. All of it, except for those words I mentioned in the previous entry. Numa, Nirvana. The rough translation, to the best it can actually be translated.

Numa, a Greek word meaning immaterial or breath, and nirvana. Of course referring to a sort of transcendence or the release of a soul. Her personal papers and writings kept in the storage locker were no different. Previously cogent and thoughtful, albeit oddballed and left of center, her writing was suddenly nonsensical. He rented a U-Haul and burned it all in the field behind his house. Except for the ledger. James then asked Tristan if they had been contacted by someone named Jacob. According to James, Jacob was a persistent individual. His inquiries. His inquiries. bordering on harassment, constantly pushing James to investigate Elkridge and learn more. James didn't answer his phone for months because of Jacob. Police didn't take him seriously

or bothered to trace the call, so eventually James disconnected his phone entirely. Intrigued, Kelly told him about David, their primary influence to pursue the project in the first place after Tristan first started digging around. James nodded. and took a deep breath, saddened to hear it. Something was weighing on him. And perhaps he didn't even know why he was doing what he did next. He went inside, and several minutes later, he returned with the ledger and gave it to Tristan. I can't remember exactly what he said next, but it was something like, yeah, that's Jacob.

He may say his name is David or Lyle. or Matthias or whatever. But whoever he is, whatever he is, stay away from him. Do not engage. As he started to remove his microphone, he told them, don't contact me again. Four.

Thanks for your patience. And to those that have reached out asking to know more or for me to share material, please don't bother. This is me unburdening myself, as I have no other recourse, and I fear that this story will disappear entirely if I don't write it down. Maybe it's really just a diary of my downfall. I hope not. I pray, but I don't believe in God.

I don't want to infect any of you with this obsession. It's toxic. It is in my bloodstream. in the synapses of my brain. I can't shake it. And no one needs to suffer the way that Tristan and Kelly did. In the way that I do now. Reluctantly.

Let me continue what I recall of the story. When I left off, Tristan and Kelly had just met with James Turnbull, who gave them the medical ledger that was allegedly from Elkridge. Soon after that interview, Tristan and his assistant, Max managed to finally visit Elkridge without receiving a citation from the authorities.

From the snippets of their conversation before they reviewed the footage, it sounded like it was entirely unremarkable. Maybe a bit unsettling, but not any different than going to any other abandoned town, home, or building. They taped themselves as they opened the footage to review and transcode the material. This was a recurring theme with Tristan, nonstop filming to the point of absurdity at times. The reflexivity of his documentation, and now my own, is not lost upon me. But the footage was useless. Just throbbing blacks in the slow pulse of the metallic screens.

Max agreed to try to recover the files and admitted he had never seen anything like it before. He had lost clips, of course, and happens. or the occasional corrupted file or broken pixels, but never had entire memory cards been corrupted, all with the same strange malady. And these memory cards were brand new. After this footage, there are a few different pieces of material that I will not get right

in terms of chronology and the folder structure of the footage. But I will do my best to describe them in an order that makes sense. At one point, the use of recorded Nest camera footage started appearing on occasion. While not comprehensive, there were some snippets that were useful. The most heartbreaking of these was a brief clip of a package being delivered to Tristan and Kelly. And the package was a set of two Tibetan prayer flags, and a third one that I can best describe as a miniature of the other two. Kelly broke down upon looking at them.

and it was clear that this was a package they had ordered before the loss of their child, the smaller flag being for their unborn child. I had to stop for a few days after seeing that. But as always, the footage and its haunting addictive quality brought me back. In a later video entry, it became clear that the flags themselves had later gone missing when Kelly told Tristan that she couldn't find them. In a later entry, I'll occur. explain why that was significant.

Kelly's mental health at this point was noticeably suffering. Tristan's almost maliciously comprehensive recording of material led to definite invasions of her privacy, as voicemails left for her therapist were included in the footage cache. The obsessiveness of his investigation went from intriguing to disturbing. I now see glimpses of my current self in Tristan's behavior. insomnia, lack of appetite, mania, just generally unwell and unmoored. I remember distinctly that a recording of a voicemail from David was included. In his trademark monotonous voice, he noted that he knew of Tristan's visit, and if he returned,

he would leave markers for further inquiry. But the worst parts of this section of the footage cache were the two sections that followed. I'll do my best to explain what we see in my best attempt to decipher why the footage exists. From what I can gather, Max, their assistant, was testing a new camera in what looked like a guest room. Our guess what realtors call a bonus room. He was testing a color chart before he heard something from the other room. You could then see that Tristan had set up two go-pros in corners of the room for time-lapse cover. of their office.

From them, you could see Tristan's screen. He was completely transfixed, staring at his computer monitor as it pulsed with disturbing blacks and grayscale colors. That fucking awful, fucking metallic sound. That fucking sound! Always in my fucking head! I can't remember how long this lasted.

But eventually Max entered the room and stirred Tristan from his delirious state. And Tristan just straight up broke down, repeating, what the fuck was that? Over and over again. He sobbed like a child. And Max cut the video on the cameras. I tried to walk away for good after watching that. It felt intrusive and wrong to watch these two people. who seemed like good, but damaged people.

Descendant to despair in what I already knew was inevitable tragedy. When they would ultimately disappear. It was an invasion of their privacy, even if they're gone for good. But after a week or so, I was drawn back. I can't help my nature. And I was dead serious in my first entry when I said that I care about the truth. I care about the work that I do. I don't want accolades.

I don't want recognition. I want to help. And to help means to do things you don't want to do. This story mattered. And I was part of it, whether I liked it or not. So I reopened the files. And the next clip I watched was when I finally acknowledged that what I was watching,

Defied, rational explanation. A devout skeptic and atheist, this was no small change in my persona. It was a complete 180. In what I believed in, and that change remains with me today. I watched as the footage from the camera Max was testing in the guest room continued to roll. Down the hall, you could see into a room that appeared to be a makeshift nursery. It was small but charming. A bassinet.

A bureau with a changing table. A mobile hanging above, etc. The usual indicators of a coming baby. Why they hadn't disassembled this, I don't know. You could see Max guiding Tristan down the stairs from the office. And then nothing for a few minutes. But then, Kelly entered the frame, standing next to the bassinet. in the nursery.

Like Tristan, she was completely transfixed. She adjusted something in the crib delicately and stepped out of frame. And left standing there was the unmistakable silhouette of a small child that slowly receded back into the darkness. Part 5. This has become completely... Unmanageable. I'm now 30 pounds lighter, and my skin is gaunt and pallid. I don't even try to sleep anymore. I stay at my desk or in my armchair with my music blasting,

hoping I pass out for a 30-minute stretch of sleep. I fell asleep driving the other day, literally dozed off and slowly drifted into an embankment. Thankfully, I am such a nervous goddamn driver that there was no more than an embarrassing episode. But my exhaustion was permeating my entire life at this point. I had a tow truck driver dragged my car home and give me a ride. He tried to talk to me, asking me what happened, what I did for a living, and other pleasantries. I couldn't muster more than a few words.

I mind racing with anxiety and obsessive, intrusive thoughts, mostly about Elkridge. I don't want to be responsible for killing someone due to my own negligence. I can walk where I need to go. It's part of why I bought my apartment in the first place. I appreciate all the support and advice about sleeping techniques and natural remedies. But I assure you, I have tried it all.

I am not exaggerating. The little sleep I do get. Give entire credit to a cocktail of magnesium, melatonin, a whiskey double. I never drank until this fucking nightmare started. And a double dose of a billify. Spare me the cautions to my health. I am well aware. Since I last updated you, things have not improved.

And I wish I could say I was capable of dropping the entire story cold turkey. I can't. I've tried. I've started receiving phone calls from unknown callers. I only picked up once. And over the sound of the metallic screaming noises, As if I don't hear it in my head every day, was a voice whispering. There are only two possible explanations.

One. One of you fucking dirtbags has found my information somehow and thought it might be funny to torment a damaged person. I doubt this is the case. I have always been widely paranoid about my online presence in general privacy. Which means it's likely the second. explanation. Two, Elkridge, or its followers, descendants, whatever, has found me and is trying to pull me in.

I promise to explain everything I know, or at least think I know, about the words Numa, Nirvana, and their significance soon. But it's important I do this in order, as it's all from memory, and I can't risk for getting streams of thoughts. My notes continuously become jumbled and nonsensical when I write them down already, so I have to follow my internal compass lest I risk losing track of the story entirely. And no, I don't understand why I am being allowed to post these entries. So I am taking a cue from James Turnbull, and am disconnecting my phone. Anyone that matters or cares knows how to reach me. The footage that followed the nursery

incident. I admittedly will get wrong chronologically. As the further away from watching the material I get, and the more exhausted and broken I become, the harder it is to keep everything straight. The next thing I remember is seeing Tristan recording himself with a number of pages of the ledger blown up and pinned on a cork board behind him. On the cork board, you could see the gibberish language scrawled across a dozen or so pages printed on high reds. resolution photo scan paper. Tristan also finally relented and admitted to the fears he was experiencing. Having gotten to know them in my own strange way at this point, this was sort of a breakthrough for him. And he even admitted that he was not addressing his trauma at the loss of their child.

He wanted to end the project and move on with their lives. And he felt like they were close. I then remember footage that showed Tristan and Max on their way to visit the abandoned house of the Elkridge descendant, where their researcher had been attempting to find. What I could surmise was that the descendant themselves wasn't an Elkridge resident. She lived some 40 or so minutes away from the only entry road to Elkridge, but had close ties to a family there, possibly cousins or second cousins. They arrived at the home, and as always, were filming copiously.

The footage showed them entering the house, ignoring the foreclosure signage and tape, which had clearly been abandoned for some time. Inside, it felt like the descendant had left in a hurry. The kettle was still on the stove, and rotten food was strewn about on plates and pans. The fridge was wide open, and shredded groceries were all over the kitchen.

A wild animal had gotten into the house and made themselves comfortable. Tristan and Max were noticeably terrified at this point, and I would have bailed basically immediately, so no judgment. But they kept pushing forward. Further into the house, the camera was trembling, and the focus was spotty. This was glaring as both Tristan and Max were excellent camera operators in all other circumstances. In what appeared to be the den, they stumbled across what I can only describe as a crudely drawn dark figure on the floor.

It looked like it was created from smeared ink, ash, paint, and perhaps even human waste, given the smell that Tristan and Max described. It was silhouetted, facing forward in terms of the shape of its outline. Next to the silhouette, there was a blanket and a pillow. Someone had been sleeping next to this gruesome etching. Further into the house, they located the master bedroom where they found a diary or notebook of some kind. Inside the notebook were dozens of pages of writing and normal sketches. But the further they flipped the pages, the more deranged the entries became.

The writing and imagery descended into sketches of dark figures and violent scrawling. There appeared to be dried blood. and gore on some of them. Then, the pages slowly morphed into the same words over and over again. Elkridge consumes. Part six. My family is on the verge of having me committed, or at least trying to. Disconnecting the phone was a red flag, but even worse,

my ex reached out to them saying she was worried about me. She bailed on me, but somehow cares about what happens to me now. Fuck that. I don't need her concern, and I certainly don't need my family's misplaced sympathies. I said I would tell the truth. So here I am. When I am done, come with May, I will deal with the ramifications. But I am not done.

Not yet. I started receiving letters with no return address other than the name Victor and Elkridge, Tennessee. I have not opened a single one, and I won't be anytime soon. I feel that I can now understand what Tristan was going through. He was trying to reconcile the need to finish something with the desire to return to normalcy. Perhaps like me, he thought the way to move on was through finishing the project. But perhaps that's a fallacy in and of itself. I'm not concerned with meeting his fate,

as I won't be pulling the threat as far as he did. But I can't deny that the consuming nature of Elkridge has me in its claws. I'm under its influence, even if only insofar as I cannot help my nature. I have to see things through. When I remember next from the cash, is that Max abruptly quit. Smart, son of a bitch.

Got out of Dodge before he went too deep. I've tried finding him, but there's no online footprint. I presume that's by design. I searched assumed names and scoured Facebook and archived.org for any clues. But he was pretty early in his career. So his web presence was minimal to begin with.

Max left Tristan a pretty long voice. voicemail, and he indicated what Tristan maybe already knew but wouldn't admit. They were caught in something dangerous and malevolent. There were hands at work pushing and influencing them that they could only refuse to acknowledge for so long. It was around the time I was watching these materials that my sleep started to really suffer. So perhaps this was when I myself had gone too deep, and there was no turning back. It may have been later in the chronology of the media folder structure, but it was around then that a recording of a computer screen showed an archival news clip.

The clip was about a fire that had burned down one of the last important buildings in the Elkridge region, a hunting lodge that doubled as a hotel. Then an email from a nonsensical address popped up on screen that said something like, You need to visit Elkridge again. And soon, access will be completely. restricted soon enough. Undoubtedly from David, I am certain. At this point, I can finally get to outlining what I believe was happening to Tristan

and Kelly and why it was happening. I can finally tell you what I know about the Siliaco Soma. Tristan finally met Martin Askelson, the folklorist whose scholarly article has since disappeared at his homestead. He relented to Tristan's non-sustin's nonsense. stopped letters and decided to meet with them, if only to convince him to stop pursuing the Elkridge story. He told Tristan about his connections to the area, how the people of Elkridge had stopped communicating entirely, and ultimately he never heard from them again. The only one interested

in digging deeper, he was on his own, diving into the folklore of the region, putting together pieces no one else would find. I will do my best to brain dump what I remember from what he told Tristan, but will undoubtedly bastardize plenty of it. Essentially, Elkridge was almost like a colony of sorts for a long time, filled with a variety of immigrants and multi-generation old families with obscure religious affiliations. It was remote and left to its own devices. Spirit, spiritually, the town was filled not only with Judeo-Christian believers, but also unaffiliated indigenous natives and other pagan influences. It's unclear, when, or how it happened.

But ultimately, a new religious and dogmatic influence beset the town. It was some version of a mystery school that was founded largely on a subverted version of catharist beliefs. Mystery schools, for those that don't know, date back to Greco-Roman times and existed in insulated secrecy, passing down protected spiritual practices and beliefs with esoteric sets of principles and deistic philosophies. And no, that's not a misspelling of Catholic. I'm not a theologian, but essentially it's not unreasonable say that catharses believe there were two gods. a benevolent one that created the spirit world and a malevolent one that created the material world.

But the belief system in Elkridge was the opposite of that duality. They believed that the material creator was the benevolent one and was meant to enlighten humanity across millennia. The material god would pull spirits into a sort of in-between realm existing between the material world and the kingdom of heaven. They called this realm, the Numa Nirvana, which sounds okay at first blush, but Martin's digging was comprehensive. And what tiny morsels of information he could find on the Seligisosoma was that this realm was accessible on Earth through the consumption of earthly minds and bodies. It was like a spiritual virus locked into certain places, structures,

and communities. And it sought and infected those damaged by trauma and loss. Those that condemned the spiritual creator, even if they did not realize they were doing so. This realm was supposedly a dark place where unspoken desires could be realized. Traditional morality was gone and trauma could be erased, replaced by extant. allowed to run free to dangerous and brutal ends. He told Tristan that the Elkridge sect was just one of several in existence, operating like independent splinter cells without direct communication,

but who are in contact through cosmic and astral means. They called the process of reaching this realm Siloiko Soma, which roughly translates to the collective body. All the bodies and minds consumed would exist in a shared cosmic consciousness with their deity, a deity at odds with the spiritual creator, whom they saw as their adversary, drawn only to the weak and simplistic kingdom of heaven, ruled with absolute authority by the spiritual creator.

The way you access the realm was through a ritual wherein a totem from your life, along with any other followers, was buried at an access point. In this case, Elkridge. Martin then warned Tristan to drop his investigation. He admitted that he had written none of his down nor recorded any of it in any way. He wished for its secrets to die with him, and he pleaded with Tristan to do the same. Before the video cut, he asked Tristan if he had suffered any loss.

recently, Tristan didn't answer, which was an answer in and of itself. Seven. I am running out of steam. I can't keep doing this to myself. And this would be my last entry if I felt I could power through the remaining parts of the story without internally fracturing entirely. I may be a danger to myself, maybe others. Hard to say at this point.

The emotional and mental toll of this process has been devastating. I can hardly muster the energy and motivation to shower, let alone write about the one thing causing me such turmoil. It's exhausting and terrifying to see yourself unravel. I've lost 17 pounds in the past month. I fainted on a walk the other day. Nothing feels right. I don't believe in ghosts, but this must be what it's like to be hunted. Followed.

Everywhere. Thoughts. Your every waking moment consumed by something you can't see or control, I could go on and on. It's painful, and I have no one to turn to. I've alienated everyone. Like always. I haven't spoken too much about the personal element. of Tristan and Kelly's story other than some offhand comments.

Hopefully a good portion of that was prescriptive from the descriptions of certain elements of the footage in the events of their life before and during the materials from their footage cache. The main unifying theme of what was deteriorating in their relationship was really their own pseudo-estrangement from one another. each suffering in their own way from the loss of their child. I know what it's like to drift away from someone you care about and love. You see them slip farther away and feel helpless to the current. Lives diverging.

Whether through trauma, hurt, betrayal, or just the simple fact that we sometimes become people. we never envisioned. People sometimes drift away from you. Everyone has drifted away from me. And, of course, there's the influence of Elkrich. Having lost track of the cadence and chronology of the footage entirely in my mania from lack of sleep, dehydration, and near starvation due to a lack of appetite, I am scattered. to say the least.

What I recall occurring before the most horrific elements that concluded, the NBNL materials, will be described below. First thing I remember is a clip of Tristan that at first felt completely unremarkable. He was in their office filming a self-tape interview. He spoke about one last shot at the Elkridge story. He would go there. And whatever may come, he would be done. He would repair his relationship with Kelly

and put this period of their lives behind them entirely. Then I noticed the enlarged medical ledger pages from the historian James Turnbull in the background. But it looked different, and at first I could not place exactly why. As the footage was shot at 4K resolution, which meant it had taken goddamn forever to download way back when. I pulled it into Adobe Premiere,

and punched in to see more clearly. All of the pages just said Elkridge consumes over and over again. Different handwriting this time. Some in different languages. Like hundreds of hands had written it. I can only assume that Tristan simply did not notice because of his preoccupation with his deteriorating personal life. and his own lack of sleep, appetite, and motivation, outside of the obsession with Elkridge.

He cut the camera, and from there I believe he left for Elkrich, his last known location. What I remember next and most clearly are two pieces of video involving Kelly. One was shot on her iPhone, late at night. Sleeping in what seemed to be their guest room again, the two had become near stranger, to one another. She was inconsolably weeping in filming her torso. Her shirt was lifted up. Her olive-colored skin filling nearly the entire frame as it occasionally trembled from her anguish. She wept and sobbed as she held the camera as steadily as she could. She continued to film her stomach. I remember so vividly what she was saying.

Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. She then fell over to her side, sobbing even harder than before. Those sort of ugly tears that you experience only a few times in your life. When you fall completely apart at the seams. And for a brief moment firmly, believe you'll never recover. But then I saw it. And I rewatched it countless times before the years. entire cache corrupted into pulsing black colors and shapes in those fucking metallic screams. The phone in her hand, limply at her side, was still pointed at her torso. And I swear to you, the pulse of a baby kicking was obvious. It was there. As much as I did not

want to believe it, there it was. But what I saw next floored me. Even the anticipation of writing these next sentences is me feeling ill, and more light-headed than usual. The nest camera angle showed the empty front deck of their house, and suddenly a figure stepped into the far top corner of the frame, barely visible. He muttered words I could not make out, and moved his hands in a series of strange gestures I had not seen before. minutes passed as he stood there silently until Kelly stepped out into the porch. She stood there in her pajamas, transfixed by this figure.

Suddenly his hands opened outwards as if gesturing to a grand table of gifts for her. And then her stomach expanded rapidly to the size of a full-term pregnancy. She turned to the camera and stared into it. It, it, it seemed like she was staring. I'd, I'm... But, I'm writing this final entry from inside the Massapeth Institute for Mental Health. It happened. My family had me 51-50ed.

And, as expected, I... sound like a fucking lunatic to the doctors. I have no doubt I'll be here for a long time. Have you had to convince someone that you aren't crazy? Hot take! It's fucking impossible! Especially when trying to convince a doctor about Elkridge without a single file or piece of reference material to back up what would be absurd claims, even with evidence.

I overheard one of my doctors telling a colleague that I likely suffer from some bastardized combination of schizophrenia and narcissistic personality disorder. I'm self-involved for sure, but narcissist as a label for me is laughable. I've definitely never been my own biggest fan. Anyone who knows me can tell you that. But again, try pleading with someone that you aren't what they think you are. It would be funny if it wasn't. so disturbing, demoralizing, terrifying.

So here I am, just like every inmate at Shawshank, innocent. But by virtue of even saying as such, my case is further devalued. Lucas lent me the android on typing this on. I have no idea why he's allowed to have one, but I'm not asking questions. He's mostly on the level, and unlike the majority, of the patients here, he isn't a drooling idiot. He actually listened to what I had to say. Doubt he believes me, but not like I believe his story either.

Anyway, he lit me his phone so I can finish the story and hopefully not let it die. As he probably gathered from my last entry, I passed out at my keyboard. I would have hoped to have edited it, but the next day was when this whole 51-50s, Fiasco started. I didn't even realize it had posted until I was being driven to Massapet by my father. The first thing they did when I got here was confiscate my phone. Don't bother editing it now. It happened.

The physical toll of the Elkridge story is upon me, and that entry is part of what's happening to me. I am what happens when you pull the strands. I now understand why Martin, the folklorist, was so adamant about dropping the story, and why James the historian wouldn't engage. The town is a fucking disease. It eats away at you, even if you haven't suffered loss or trauma. Though I wondered to what extent anyone can escape its grasp. After all, didn't I lose my twenties to my my myopic worldview?

Didn't I ignore every significant relationship in my life in pursuit of fighting? financial and existential freedom? What else have I lost to the years spent on the sidelines of my life? What could I have been if I had even bothered to try to figure out what my passions were? Well, if I loved investigating so much, why didn't I pursue that as a career? Not as a hobby that distracted me from the real world, but an actual pursuit of truth. Maybe my loss is the loss of my life. than my potential.

I told myself a story that I didn't need the grind and I was above climbing the ladder or being defined by work or passion. But maybe that was just a clever way of ignoring my own insecurities.

Maybe I am an Elkridge candidate after all. I can't predict how long I'll have so I need to finish the story as I remember it. I am in more of a cloud than I have ever been. So, I suspect this will have to be brief.

They have fought off the medication as much as possible. Discreetly vomiting the pills up when I can. Hiding them behind my molars, etc. But I can't avoid them all. Soon enough,

I'll be blissfully drugged into a trance. My own Numa Nirvana. The last parts of this story will be kind of erratic in nature. It was an incredibly uncomfortable and ultimately horrifying experience to endure. I wasn't able to reopen those specific files until weeks later, and by then they had corrupted

along with everything else. Tristan ended up going back to Elkridge, and he made it all the way into the main part of the town with no trouble at all, oddly enough. You don't think about how strange it is to see a once-thriving town completely abandoned. until you've seen one that has been left behind by time. Elkridge was reclaimed by the wilderness rapidly. Houses were overgrown, old businesses and complete disrepair. And the railroad station was genuinely frightening to look at. The overgrowth grotesquely sinister and engulfing the cladding and roof like a parasite,

especially in the waning hours of the day that Tristan was shooting during. The sunset was rapidly approaching. And even just watching on my monitor, something felt wrong. Tristan was filming handheld at this point. Other than the occasional grunt, he was largely silent. He filmed everything he saw, mostly finding nothing of particular interest or meaning. Just debris and tritis. But then he found something.

Tied to a post off in the distance was his Tibetan prayer flag, swaying gently in the wind, one of the three that had gone missing weeks prior. Next to it was a shovel shoved into the ground. Tristan placed the camera down and began to dig at the base of the post. Inside, he found an enormous pile of aging personal artifacts. Clocks, watches, shoot. clothes, necklaces, photographs, books, and anything else you can think of.

And then he pulled up the remaining two prayer flags. Kelly's and their unborn childs. I could barely breathe at this point and was pacing the room, unable to look away. But the final image is what haunted me the most. As Tristan picked up the camera to leave, from off-screen you could hear Kelly speak. Tristan, turn around, join us.

And when he turned towards her, the entire frame was filled with dark silhouettes, figures that I can only assume with the lost citizens of Elkrich. The black voids of their bodies filled with pulsing black, grays in what seemed almost like static.

And then, the metallic scree. The screaming sound began as Kelly's body became consumed by the same darkness. The sound was louder than I have ever heard it. And the silhouette of a small child started walking towards Tristan. Hi, Reddit community. I don't know much about Reddit. Well, I guess I don't know anything about Reddit.

But I don't have anywhere else to turn. All the leads we thought we had were dead ends. No sign of him. I am here because my son was posting here, and it seems to be the only record of his manic episode. Months ago, he started spiraling, and his communication slipped even worse than was his trademark. Eventually, we stopped hearing from him at all.

Then his sister used her spare key to get into his apartment when he was out, and what she found shocked all of us. Trash and papers littered the apartment. Squallings on scrap paper were nailed to walls. His pantry was filled with rotten fruit, surrounded by fruit flies. It was horrific. He came home unexpectedly and threw her out. He screamed at her.

His saliva in vitriol followed her all the way to her car. She managed to sneak some photos and video inside his place, as well as his verbal assault. We were able to use that to get him institutionalized. From all reports, he had finally stopped fighting the treatment and was doing well at Massapith. But here we are. This page was open when I managed to figure out the password to his laptop,

so maybe whoever reads us can tell me where he is and why this is happening. From what I see, this is a community message board, a place to share stories and information, I suppose? I struggle with all of these new platforms. Candidly, my son was a person who helped me navigate all of this sort of stuff. I just want to understand my son. I thought I did. Maybe I really don't. Or maybe I just know the parts of him he wants me to see. He was in Massapeth Institute for mental health

because he was obsessed with the idea that he was going to solve a missing person's case. He had mentioned before that he was a bit of an amateur sleuth online, which I thought was great. I always encourage him, because I'm his mother, and what harm could it possibly cause. He has always wanted to help people, but has struggled to figure out how to do it. He's never cared much about reaching his potential, but he's smart as a whip, and I like that it makes him happy. My son went missing a week ago. He had been institutionalized for ten days prior to that. He had fought the meds at first, push back in counseling,

grew angry at suggestions that he was manic, and generally was confrontational with the staff. He would not allow us to see him. But by the doctor's own accounts, he had turned a corner, had been more cooperative, was taking the medication, and had become much more docile. He had even acknowledged that he needed help. But I also know my son, and that he could be manipulative when he has to be. I can't help but wonder if he was putting up a facade as he carefully plotted to escape. I would not put it above him, and he's too smart for his own good.

His apartment was pretty sparse when the detectives managed to get inside. His hard drives were encrypted, which means they're secure. They are trying to get those working for any further information. We haven't been able to track down any friends who might have some intel and what has been going on with him. He was always a loner, but I didn't know he was as isolated. The day he disappeared, evidently, was normal. It was quiet in group therapy, but that's not uncommon. He's quiet in general. I was told he participated in the paper-making therapy program as well, and nothing seemed any stranger than usual. Apparently, he froze up briefly while pulping paper, but he had been acclimating to the new medication regimen, so that was likely the culprit on that front. He went to

dinner and barely ate, but he hadn't been eating much anyway, spoke with a fellow patient named Lucas, who had been the closest thing to a friend he had at Massapith. Lucas hasn't said anything about where he might have gone, not sure if he is withholding information, or genuinely doesn't know. At 7 p.m., my son went to his room, and lights out was at 8 p.m. like every night. He was in bed on both bed checks. But then at 7 a.m., he was gone.

Inside his room at Massapeth was nothing. No trace of how he got out or where he went. He had a stack of books and journals, but he had not been using or reading them. Pages were torn out of a number of them. Not sure what, if anything, that means. Not sure what any of this means, really. There were no clues.

Nothing except for something he engraved deep into the tile on the walls. He carved it with his hand. chips of his fingernails and blood from his cuticles stained the floor of the room. The police that came to investigate had never seen anything like it before, and then they had nothing. They were perplexed

and found no evidence of how he managed to escape a secure facility virtually unnoticed. The only thing they did find out of the ordinary was video surveillance from outside the gates of what appeared to be a homeless man making strange gestures and muttering chipperish. He disappeared, and they have not located him yet. I'm hoping someone who reads this can tell me what the words my son scratched into the floor mean. Pennevma Nirvana.

I've tried Googling, but nothing shows up. It seems like it's Greek. I haven't really been checking my phone the past several weeks because I've been wrap up in trying to find him. But when I did check earlier today, I had several voicemails, all from the same man, someone named Marcus. He says I need to learn about Elkridge. It's in Tennessee, so I booked a flight. Does anyone know anything they can share with me before I head there? Our devilish decompositions are in transition to their final position. We hope you enjoyed our audition for this nocturnal admission.

Just ignore your suspicion and give us your complete submission. Visit the no sleeppodcast.com to learn more about the people who bring you this show and how to become a Season Pass 18 member. Thank you for joining us for Sleepless Decompositions, Volume 10. This audio production is copyright 2022 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for the stories are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted

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