Hello Reddit, my Grandson told me this would be a good place to anonymously post this story, somewhere where nobody will find it. Many people would not want this story getting out to the public, and for good reason I believe. However my days on this earth are numbered. And this is one secret that I refuse to take to the grave. If “the Men in Black” come zap me, so be it.
My trouble started in 1964 when I was hired at Nasa as a Capcom. I would be in contact with the Astronauts on all the Apollo missions. At first I considered myself the luckiest man in the world. I was able to witness the first men walk on the lunar surface and then watched them visit it once again with no problems. However Apollo 13 would be the mission in which I would quit my job and never look back.
During the Apollo 12 mission they found something very odd in a small crater not very far away from the landing site. It was a Russian space helmet, however, the visor was destroyed. There was nobody or nothing near the landing vehicle (or LEM) except them. The astronauts were extremely confused. As the CSM (command service model) passed over near the landing site of Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, the two men on the lunar surface contacted Richard Gordon, who was the command module pilot. They asked him to look down at the surface near the lander. Gordan saw a small little metallic prick far away from the Intrepid lander. Mission control was sent into a frenzy after the revelation, there was a soviet moon lander on the moon. And the worst part was that not one piece of American intelligence had picked up on it. The higher-ups sent off an order 3 days later. Apollo 13 would be taken away from Nasa and made a military project. Its mission was to see what the Reds were doing on the moon. Officially Apollo 13 never reached the moon. A small explosion in one of its oxygen tanks being the cause. However in reality Apollo 13 did make it to the moon. Jesus Christ I wish it didn’t. Every day I wish I never took that job at Nasa. But as much as I wish I could, the past can’t be changed.
The Apollo 13 splashdown that everyone old enough to have seen it on tv knows, was not the original capsule or crew sent in the Saturn V launched from the pad. The splash down that was witnessed on tv was sent up on a Saturn 1b the day before. The real command module and lander were sent hurtling off towards the moon. A top-secret crew of 3 highly trained air force-men named: Sam Colter, Chuck Burrows, and Jackson Smith were the real crew, and they were going to touch down on the moon. The men had specific military training to find any remains of what the soviets had done on the lunar surface.
The CSM reached a low moon orbit 3 days later. The first problem of the mission came when they undocked the lander from the CSM. One of the LEM landing legs didn’t deploy properly. Sam had to EVA and worked for half an hour trying to get it to extend. This wasted up precious oxygen and made their already tight margins tighter. In the end they had to manually cut loose a malfunctioning bolt. After this they had to wait another orbit and ended up slightly ahead of their targeted landing site. As they were going in for their landing several people in mission control demanded we abort it and should wait and go up on Apollo 15, when the more advanced rover would be fully ready. However the DoD wasn’t about to waste an entire Saturn V and Saturn 1b rocket for an aborted landing. We weren’t given permission to abort and we sent both of our men into uncertain fate.
“300 miles, 200, 100, 50, 10, WATCH OUT, AIM THE BROKEN LEG DOWN!”
The lunar model touched down softly and safely on the lunar surface. It landed within rover traveling distance to the Russian lander, yet it was still slightly farther than what was wanted. Jackson and Sam walked out of the LEM. We all watched them take their first steps. The radio crackled.
“We’ve taken our first steps onto the moon Houston, we’re going to begin rover assembly; we’ll get back to you soon, over.” Sam reported back to us.
“Copy that Aquarius.” I replied.
We were all crowded around the main screens waiting for the first experimental rover to be deployed. Its development had been rushed significantly from its planned first test on Apollo 15. It took significantly longer to assemble than planned. This cut down our Astronauts oxygen margin by half an hour. I leaned over the microphone.
“Aquarius, you’re thirty minutes down on air and your margins don’t exist anymore. You now have half as much EVA time as we originally planned for.” I told them.
Jackson replied with a simple “Copy that Houston.”
Everyone at mission control sat on the edge of their seats for the 15-minute rover journey. By the time that Jackson and Sam arrived at the lander they had an hour of oxygen left.
“Houston, this is Aquarius. We have visual of the Russian lander.” Sam spoke through his radio.
“Copy that Aquarius, you have confirmation to head in for inspection.” I spoke through the radio to both men.
We all watched from their helmet cameras as they both moved over a small crater hill and arrived next to the lander. Jackson opened the door to the Module and looked inside.
“Jesus this thing is trashed.” Jackson mumbled through his radio.
And it really was, random personal effects were scattered around the Pod; The most disturbing part was no space suit lying around in the pod, we had been expecting this as the entire reason we found it was due to the helmet. But it was still quite upsetting to know that the Cosmonaut was still lying on the lunar surface. We all thought how horrible a fate this would be.
Sam had been standing at the base of the ladder for several minutes watching the grey lunar surface. He suddenly started yelling.
“JACKSON! JAC-“ As his screaming stopped his camera immediately cut out.
His two loud screams instantly triggered Jackson to jump down the ladder and out of the lander.
“SAM, SAM WERE THE HELL ARE YOU!?” Jackson was screaming through his radio.
“Jackson stop screaming you’re running through your oxygen, Calm yourself down soldier.” I calmly spoke through the radio.
Although in the room I was sitting, my hands were trembling for a cigarette.
“Right, sorry Huston.” Jackson responded out of breath.
I pressed the mute button on the microphone. “Do we still have vitals on Sam?” I asked the room.
“Negative!” somebody yelled back at me.
“What are the oxygen levels on Jackson?” The flight director yelled out.
“He’s burning through oxygen two times faster than we have planned!” Yelled back one of the flight control members.
All conversation was cut off by Jackson chiming back in.
“Uhm Houston there’s no tracks out here, I can’t see anything for miles.” Jackson started panting again.
“Oxygen levels rising!” the same man as before yelled out.
I unmute the mic. “Jesus Christ Jackson get your breathing under control! You’re going to suffocate up there.” I yelled into the microphone.
“Abort the EVA and get Jackson back to the lunar module! We can’t lose two men up there.” the flight director yelled out to me.
I capitulated. “Jackson, get back to the Aquarius. You’re chewing through oxygen too fast!” I quickly spoke into my microphone.
“I’m not leaving Sam to die out here Houston.” Jackson sounded almost insane. His voice was toneless.
“Jackson, that is a direct order, get your ass back to Aquarius base!” I yelled at the soldier, I never got his response.
We, at mission control, had been looking through Jacksons helmet cam as he slowly walked around the lander. For 15 minutes it’s all he would do. Now everyone was extremely disturbed. There were a set of footprints leading away from the lander, presumably the Russians. But no set belong to Sam.
Jackson finally spoke “Houston, I see a cave due east following the Russian footsteps, I’m going to investigate.” Jackson’s voice was still emotionless.
“Jackson, please, you’re going to suffocate if you keep going like this!” I yelled out into my microphone.
He hadn’t responded to any of my attempts to reason with him.
A voice yelled out behind me, “Flight! He’s got 20 minutes of oxygen left, He’s going to die if he goes spelunking!”
“He’s not listening to us, There’s no point trying to convince him.” I responded sadly back to the man.
With nothing left to do the entire mission control room stared up at the large screen with Jackson’s helmet camera plastered across them. This was giving us our views of Jackson entering the cave. He had been heading down a shallow slope following the Russian’s footsteps down the pit. Suddenly Jackson’s radio started to lightly crackle.
“Any reason for the interference Houston?” Jackson asked me, a small bit of concern in his voice.
I hit the unmute button on the radio and replied “no idea, unsure why there would be any interference.” I replied
“Copy.” He replied back to me. Any emotion once again gone from his voice. Finally he reached the bottom of the cave, and Jesus Christ it was so wrong.
All the people in Mission control gasped and yelled. Some started crying, and some started yelling in fear. There were so many of them, corpse’s. Thousands of them lined the walls. Most were naked, but some had clothes on that had not been worn in century’s. I don’t know where they came from, but Jesus none of them were in one piece. They all had these odd points on whatever was left of them. All with strings leading towards the abomination sitting at the far side of the room. The thing looked horrifying sitting in the very edge of Jackson’s flashlight beam. It looked somewhat humanoid, but it was wrong, all the things that made us, well, human gone. There were no joints at the legs or arms and it looked like some abominable doll from hell. It had Sam, what was left of him at least, in his long arms. His torso was ripped apart on the back and his limbs were missing. He was only a torso and a head. His shattered visor revealed eyes bulging with fear no other human had ever felt before.
Jackson didn’t speak and neither did anyone else. Everyone was frozen, staring at whatever that freakish horror that defied everything humanity knew was. It was several seconds before the thing looked up, its hollow eyes looked glazed over and blind, but I knew from the smile the crossed its face after seeing Jackson that it could see perfectly fine. Then it spoke, but not from its own mouth. It was using Sam’s mouth and voice somehow, but it just wasn’t right. It was staticky and deeper than what Sam sounded like. Sam was a softer-spoken man, he still sounded similar, the main difference being he sounded as if he had chain smoked a pack every day since God created the earth.
“Hello Jackson, I found out where we all go when we die. We go here with him, he takes us.” The thing spoke through Jackson.
The calm disposition of the voice dropped from his tone “YOU WILL JOIN US NOW!” It screamed.
None of us knew how the sound was traveling in space, but that was the last of our worries. The creature stood up at its full height, his head brushing the roof of the tall cave. It was using what was left of Sam as its sock puppet. Everybody was above questioning any of the details at this point.
I yelled at Jackson, though my microphone, to run. However, the line was just static. It seemed that the creature was using the microphone in Jacksons helmet to block all radio connections. Jackson had stood there frozen for several seconds. As that thing approached him He started to run, or as best one can in zero G, but his arrogance in terms of his oxygen was starting to show. I could hear his breaths getting shallower, as he slowly collapsed in a small side tunnel of the cave. It was only a matter of time until that abomination found him, and a shorter amount of time before his small amount of oxygen expired. Mission control hadn’t spoken a word since he began running. We were all as scared as our man on the moon.
We confirmed the death of Jackson 10 minutes later. Even after his dramatic visit to the moon, his death came due to his own foolishness. His trip down the cave ended in a slow death sitting down.
“Get Chuck back to earth” were his last few words.
After that the flight director started yelling out orders. I felt numb as I leaned back in my chair. I could feel the tears spilling down my face. I hadn’t overseen communications with Chuck, the higher ups thought best to compartmentalize most things. But even still, I couldn’t help but feel for him. Listening to his two friends dying horribly on the surface of the moon while helplessly floating above them must have been awful. The whole room began working silently with the calculations, and presented them to the flight director who gave them to my co-worker who was speaking to Chuck until he was on his way back to Earth.
By the end of the mission, there were several grown men running out of the room. Several throwing up in the bin and crying, some panting with relief that at least Chuck was home. I think, in the 3 days that we all locked ourselves into that room, waiting for our last astronaut to make it home we never talked about what happened. We just worked the problem, Chuck did his correction burns and we all waited for the splash down. Unlike most successful splashdowns there were no cheers and no happy yells, just pain, pain further brought on as only one man climbed out of the 3-man capsule. After the incident, we investigated the caves. There were 20 confirmed entrances to their own human pits. There were millions of dead bodies inside the moon, and we never found out why. Back on earth after we saw what we saw, odd things began to happen. At first, it started with the one man from our team going missing. Alex I think his name was, he was the flight leader. He reported to his post at NASA, and never came home. I think most of us got the message after that. Another man present also went missing. I think I can make a good guess about their fates. One which I will probably meet once I have posted this. To get to the point, this is a warning for anyone who returns to the moon on the Artemis missions, don’t go into the caves. We kept the rest of the Apollo missions away from them. However, with new NASA leadership, I cannot guarantee the same for you, be safe.