I’ve spent almost my entire life on the family farm. We’ve always been the first to adopt modern equipment and farming techniques and I was the first in the family to attend college. Needless to say, I studied agricultural science. My skills save us a lot by not having to hire outside experience.
Things have always been kind of weird in the region. Some say our wheat fields were ploughed in over an ancient burial ground and others say that a witch cursed the local region before being drowned in the local lake that we get our irrigation water from.
What I do know is that things seem to be growing weirder ever since my grandfather was forced to retire and move to town. I would like to visit him more but there’s always something new to do. Things break down, and livestock get spooked. Things do seem to be easier when I bring Betsy with me. Betsy is Grandfather’s favourite shotgun which he passed down to me before having to move into the home.
My parents are out of the picture for the next year. They’re taking an around-the-world cruise for their 30th anniversary. It’s not easy to contact them. International phone calls are expensive, and they are limited in time when out at sea.
Some of the workers are spooked too and refuse to spend the night on the property despite having access to spare houses for far cheaper rent than they pay in town. Not that I blame them. I spent the night in one of the houses since it was close to where I had to work late and get up early for a job, working on a broken irrigation pump. That night I slept poorly as I heard all kinds of strange sounds.
Most would say it’s probably an animal and I would say the same if I did not hear it myself. I know what the local wildlife sounds like, and this was not that. It sounded like the Nazgul scream out of the Lord of the Rings movies.
We’re a high-tech farm and I’ve got plenty of cameras for monitoring. I went through the footage and got nothing but weird shadows and glitches on half the cameras. The other half were battery-operated and were dead. Not usual but also not unusual considering the quality of lithium batteries out of China these days.
After I fixed the pump, I went out with Betsy and swapped in fresh batteries from a good brand and made a note to throw the bad ones in the battery recycling bin the next time I was in town. Things seemed to change for a while. The strange sounds stopped, and all the cameras were working normally with no glitches or other failures.
The good times didn’t last. Things started to quickly get weird again a few days later. I’m hearing strange sounds. The workers are also hearing strange sounds while working in some of the more distant fields. The livestock are all spooked.
Sometimes the workers report seeing shadows out of the corners of their eyes and are easily spooked. I’ve seen the same shadows; they resemble some kind of creature that doesn’t belong in nature.
Some of the families who decided that farming was not for them but still like the great outdoors have become park rangers and timber workers. Some of the stories they have shared at gatherings remind me of what I’m dealing with now.
Their stories about strange creatures of the night, mysterious staircases and the like sounded farfetched at the time but, maybe I should contact some of them for a bit of help. If it’s something spooky, they might have the experience and if it’s more mundane then we have a chance to hang out and shoot some beers and maybe some targets.
Honestly? Looking back, I think this all started when we bought out the Cain farm, they had been doing bad for years. We never really hung out with their kids.
They were weird and not in a fun way. A school rumour went around saying that one of their kids drowned another. Other rumours say that one of the kids tried to burn down the bar. All I know is that they were in and out of school.
Grandfather did something with some of his older friends, something he never told me about only that the matter was settled any time that I asked. I fear that with him off the property ever happened has come undone, but Betsy’s presence offers reassurance and hope.
I read some online forums and discovered that sometimes supernatural entities like spirits can change the temperature of an area or even show up on infra-red cameras, so I ordered a bunch of smart farming sensors to monitor the ambient temperature, pressure and humidity levels and the temperature and moisture content of the fields. I even installed some thermal surveillance cameras in places where workers reported seeing the strange shadows the most. These cameras also work in the dark to show if people are trespassing.
The data from the sensors made no sense. Weird temperature drops that seemed random until I plotted the data on a map of the farm. I could see that things were moving around at night, and even during the day causing local temperature drops. I filled in gaps with more sensors to better track the mystery and repointed some cameras.
These cameras showed mysterious shadows and glitches at the same time the sensors reported drops in temperatures. Some even caught videos of strange floating orbs. Of course, I’m freaked out now. Something strange is going on and if the data is correct, it’s starting at the old Cain farm and slowly spreading into the rest of the property.
I’ve read that inviting the supernatural into your home is granting permission for them to have a wild party. Did we inadvertently do that by integrating the Cane property into our own? Is what caused their madness now infecting me?
I tried to call my grandfather, but he said that he couldn’t talk over the phone about that. He’d talk to me in person but, did not want to risk sounding crazy enough to end up in the dementia ward. I fully understand his concern. I’m worried about ending up in the psych ward if I talk about this to the wrong person.
Things started getting more intense as the staff reported that they felt like they were being watched and not by the cameras that they used as much as I did for their work. They even noticed the shadows and glitches.
It all came to a head when one of the staff working alone on the old Cain block was attacked. They managed to radio in for help and we called an ambulance while rushing over all armed. The beast had him trapped up a tree. It’s like something I’ve never seen before. It was some strange furless beast covered in scales like a blend of a dog and a giant lizard. Saul swore it was a Chupacabra.
We all fired at it and our shots did nothing. We were panicking as it started to approach us. I remembered that Betsy warded off the entities before, ran to my truck, and grabbed Betsy which was loaded with slugs. The first shot missed the creature but the second shot hit true and did massive damage. The third shot finished off the wounded creature.
Strangely the beast didn’t die like a normal coyote or wolf. It seemed to dissolve into oily shadows that faded from existence. We were all shocked to see that it faded from existence.
Jack, one of my long-time friends turned employee suggested that we go into town and get the pastor to come out and bless the place. Saul suggested that we call his church and ask for the priest to come out and perform an exorcism.
When the emergency services arrived, the injured employee was loaded up on an ambulance and taken back to town. We told the police that it was a coyote that ran back into the forest, frightened by the rest of us arriving. If we told the truth, we’d be laughed at or worse, locked up for discharging firearms while drunk.
That night we went to my grandparents’ old house. One of the few places that the entities seemed to avoid. Our map data of their movements told us this, they also said that multiple entities had converged on the main road out of the property.
We all felt better even as we lit the old fireplace and got to chatting. After a while, our conversations turned to talking about what we encountered and what could be stalking the farm. We discussed if it could be demons or devils, the Jinn, Yōkai or even Wendigo.
The next day things calmed down. None of our sensors or cameras reported any anomalies. All the crew went back to town that night leaving only myself on the farm. It was another quiet night. Seems like that activity drained the energy of whatever was haunting the farm. The one strange thing was a storm warning for the area that night despite no long-term storm predictions. I wasn’t too worried; every farmer knows that the weatherman can get it wrong.
Despite the weirdness seeming to be reduced I did notice things to be very quiet. Most of the bird life seems to have vanished leaving behind a few flocks of corvids and even the flocks of crows and ravens are huddled tightly, wary about something. I was worried that it could be something to do with the supernatural but, more likely they’re making their own preparations for the storm.
I called one of my brothers who is a park ranger at one of those national parks known as a hotspot for missing persons and rumoured to be haunted by some of the entities I discussed with the workers. I shared my findings and even some of the discussions with my workers with him. Luckily one of the workers got a picture of the beast.
As I talked to my brother the predicted storm rolled in, flashes of lightning illuminating the windows. I spot the weird shadows again in the lightning flashes but figure that it’s just the flash overwhelming my eyes since everything was so calm.
He grew more alarmed the more I told him on receiving a copy of the photo that he’d take a few days of emergency leave from work and be bringing a coworker with him. He sent me a phone number for a government department that I had never heard of before. The Bureau of the Occult.
After I hang up on my brother, I check on the cameras and sensors. Some of them are down, likely due to lightning strikes and trees falling on cables, I’m not too worried. Cameras and sensors can be replaced in the morning. I do notice that the cloud backup hasn’t run since I started installing the extra sensors and sigh in frustration.
I plug in a portable disk and start the backup process before calling the Bureau on the number that was given to me. I’m greeted by a professional voice and after I explain my situation, I’m told that my brother opened a case on my behalf. The Bureau did request that I send them all my data and I agreed to email it to them.
I wrote up an email on my laptop with the details of when I first started to notice the weirdness. The contact details of my grandfather who knows more details including remote access credentials and the different accounts for the different software I use on my farm server that runs all the data gathering and analytics. I don’t store it all on my laptop, I’ve got a dedicated server for that.
Moments after I sent the email, I was both blinded and deafened by a nearby lightning strike that hit the power pole for the house. The force of the lightning strike makes the pole transformer explode in a shower of sparks.
I grab Betsy and run over to the server that runs my monitoring infrastructure only to find flames coming out of the power supply. I pull the hot-swap solid-state drives only to find the chips physically blown. I groan in frustration, This bureau if they are real will think it’s a hoax. The portable backup drive seems to be intact and cool to the touch, so I grab that hoping that an archive of the data is on there then grab Betsy.
With the power out to the house, it’s not safe to stay. I don’t trust shadows or darkness and I doubt I’d have enough batteries for my flashlight collection to last the night. I spot the lights on in my grandparent’s house and then remember that Saul was going to spend the night on the property so he could get an early start.
I quickly called him to let him know that the power was out in my house after the transformer took a lightning strike and he agreed to use a spotlight light the way for me. I load the drive and my laptop into a bag with some boxes of shotgun shells. I wear a flashlight on my head, attach another to Betsy and make my way out into the darkness outside.
It’s cold and rainy outside. The ground is muddy. I make my way to my grandparent’s house and find that shadows are swirling around in the wind. Sometimes the shadows group up around something like a tree or fence only for it to fall over or get struck by lightning. The shadows make their way towards me, and I find myself wielding Betsy to drive them off. Just pointing light at them seems to deter them.
Saul spots the same and uses his spotlight to help drive the shadows away from me. He’s well-lit by my grandparent’s house. It’s got a generator with plenty of fuel so it’s a perfect safe haven. I run over to the house as fast as I can but slip in the mud. I look up and spot what seems to be some kind of enormous bird lit up by a bright flash of lightning. I scramble the rest of the way to my grandparent’s house and hear a clap of thunder that sounds almost like a cry of frustration.
Once in the light I immediately feel safe. Saul grabs my hand and leads me inside. Once inside he tells me that he spotted the same strange bird in the storm. If whatever is haunting the farm is strong enough to summon that, I have no idea what to do. Maybe my brother and this mysterious Bureau of the Occult can help.
All I know is that help will arrive in the morning and that I need to hold out until then. I’ve got Saul as backup, my grandparent’s home as a safe spot and a gun safe that might hold more special guns like Betsy’s. The data could be wiped, or I might have a copy of enough. All I know is that tomorrow will be a better day and until then Saul and I will take turns sharing guard duty and sleep.