If you live near where I used to, you will have certainly spotted some strange posters, indicating the photo of a strange man with the title “Have you seen this man?”, which might look at first like a knockoff of a more popular trend, but if you saw the description immediately below you certainly know that it is nothing of the sort. I am indeed the author of those posters, and I have left them in several parts of the region for everyone’s safety. Since I do not have much time for questions and out of a need to atone for my mistakes, I will also leave my side of this story, as I was barely able to gather my thoughts in these last troubled days and based on the notes of the things that have happened.
Google maps is a very powerful software; while this has become apparent only recently with the new Geoguessr trends, it is the best way to explore the furthermost parts of the world without spending a dime; and in this I can also pride myself in recognizing this potential since a very early age, spending hundreds of hours wandering through the Siberian tundras or across the hamlets dotting the coastlines of the Nordics. I may regret not capitalizing on this, but I was in my tens in the group of the so-called “developing countries”, and social media was not a thing yet.
Curiosity indeed leads to many things, and among those we have some which have been hidden for a specific reason. What happened was that by the law of large numbers I believe I ended up stumbling upon one of them.
It was indeed a boring Friday night like many when this happened. Not wanting to play videogames and after a blissfully long time scrolling endlessly through the proposals of the social media algorithm in its long list of choices it somehow decided to propose five shorts in a row on the topic of earthquakes.
As you can guess, it wasn’t long before I wondered how those areas looked in real life in that moment and a raging thunderstorm outside didn’t leave me many other options.
My research had started with the town of Amatrice in Italy, a beautiful and historical place characterized by its medieval church and stone buildings.
This place in particular was completely destroyed after an earthquake in 2016, forcing every survivor in a new neighbourhood nearby with temporary homes in which they live to this very day. Even while going on maps you can see the grid of roads with nothing left and a complete view of the Latium Appennines, only blocked by a couple of bell towers standing alone and permanently enclosed in a stabilizing grid, forever left as one huge tombstone for the dead. In many streets you can also see the two views of 2012 and 2023 compared, with all the buildings and their people gone, even the once walking on the street at the time the photos were taken.
In this moment and unbeknownst to me, the problems started. I could see in one of the 360 views near the main square with the church and the police station a man standing there. It was an old white male, dressed with a smoking outfit and a hat gazing at the facade of the historic building with a strange grin - barely hidden by few remains of a beard on his wrinkled skin - standing while holding together his hands behind his body.
It was strange since the first time I saw him: old men in Italy would use to go in groups and watch with that same pose construction sites, and yet this man seemed as if he was proud of himself and waiting for something to happen. I did ignore him at first but then things became much weirder.
The second destination of that virtual tour was the town of Finale Emilia, a place struck by a similar tragedy in 2012, although less dramatically but still damaging the historical heritage of the region; its symbol being the town bell tower, collapsed in the same fashion with one half collapsing after the other, although its site was also provided with a new poster printed after ten years with its remains left unchanged.
That’s where I saw him again after turning the camera to look at the nearby square. The look of satisfaction remained the same as well as his outfit but the different angle allowed me to see its face and a few more of its features - black and lively eyes spread apart on the sides of his face, small nose dotted with blackheads, a huge grin. His body was small yet average for what I could grasp from the resolution of the Google car. I would say a 1.6 m with a thin body of 70 kilos perhaps.
This far in the story I was more amused than anything. How was that this guy was in those two places in such circumstances? Was it just a coincidence? I had to check it out, boredom reshaped into morbid curiosity.
The third place involved south-east Turkey for what happened the previous year, and soon enough I was in the streets of Kahramanmaraş, and then Gaziantep, although it was more difficult since those parts of the country had yet to be updated and many areas couldn’t have a comparison to see where it hit the most. It was me in search for a black dot on a screen, anything until I found him again after a good hour of research.
I saw him again. He was in one of the footages of the collapse of Gaziantep castle and he stood on the side of the main road, turning his sight towards the camera as the collapse enveloped everything in a cloud of dust. It sent shivers down my spine - it was pure maliciousness, although it was further amplified by the feeling that he was actually looking at me.
Was he also in further footage of other disasters? This was also confirmed as I checked the images of the Amatrice earthquake on the internet, and in each one of them he was there, blending either in the crowds near the ruins of their homes or in the groups of caretakers checking the debris.
It was starting to be frightening, and yet it also felt like a challenge, a spooky “where’s Waldo” in which I would spot him in every tragic earthquake, helped with a Wikipedia page on one side and a folder with screenshots and photos on the other. Every time I would catch him in the act, gazing at his mischievous intent. But what if he could gaze back at me?
It became worse every time I scrolled further the list of earthquake by Mercalli scale intensity. The stronger the earthquake, the creepier his smile, distorting to an unnatural size compared to his face, the sides of his smile reaching the edges of his eyes.
I saw him in many strange places and situations. He was taking a stroll on the seaside of Port-au-Prince harbor in Haiti as everything collapsed around him in 2010, then he was in the historical photos of Messina in 1908, seemingly struggling not to laugh near a man standing with his hat down to honor the dead. He was in Anchorage in 1964, facing away the camera in front of a collapsed section of the road while holding something with his hands, and he was even in Fukushima in 2011, his figure appearing in every footage I could see of the damaged power plant.
I was indeed struck with fear at that point when suddenly I received an email which led me to the biggest mistake of my entire life.
- Unknown sender -
<Thank you for your appreciation, I tend to be proud of my works but I am not accustomed to new fans. I will deliver my thanks personally.>
My brain went into full panic mode as I simply searched my home address on Maps, remembering in a flash the same functionality of dates. He wasn’t there. A few seconds of relief before the inevitable consequence happened.
<Thank you again, I will be there soon.>
That’s what led me to today. I have shut down my mail address, brought both phone and computer to the nearest railway tracks after smashing them to the ground. My valuables have already been gathered in my car as I somehow even organized a last minute vacation for my parents and relatives, gathering in secret their valuables too, to great embarrassment and regret of my decisions. But what else could I do? Even if I could explain everything to the authorities the people in my hometown wouldn’t have believed me.
That’s why just in case I have left a few papers around, hoping to either create an urban legend or at least let this gain notoriety. I took his photo and printed it in several copies with the writing “Have you seen this man? Every time there’s a tragedy in any part of the world, this man appears. If you see him, run away.”
I have never seen or had any new updates on him again since the accident, but the earthquake will happen soon, and if you happen to live near where I do, you will certainly spot the posters. If you do, save yourselves and your family, and save as many as you can from the impending catastrophe.