Sometimes, people will hear about a dangerous or mysterious place they find interesting. There are clear signs these places possess some danger, but they go in anyway to investigate, thinking they’ll get out without a scar. Then the news reports come in stating they’re missing or in the hospital.
I was filled with curiosity when I first heard of it. My English teacher was the one who brought it up. The whole class was talking about UFO theories. How some of them are made up, and others are satellites or weather balloons mistaken for UFOs.
“… I don’t remember the name right now, I’ll have to Google later, but this person, back in the 90s, said there’s a triangle and Bradford is at the top of it,” he said.
We didn’t go into much detail about it since lunch was starting in five minutes. After the bell rang, I found a spot in the hallway to sit down, then I did a Google search for the supposed triangle. It took about 20 minutes to find, but there was an article in an obscure book, along with a couple other obscure articles, about the thing that was called the Bradford Triangle. It was an area full of UFO sightings, alien activity, and paranormal sightings that would turn ghost hunting shows into unfortunate accidents. An area connecting Bradford, Uxbridge, and Aurora, towns located north of Toronto.
One report was from a man who, according to the report, decided to take a night jog through a quiet suburb within the area.
“…While I was jogging, I saw a flash of white light out of the corner of my right eye. When I turned my head to look at it, I saw this glowing white orb. It was floating around in the place I was jogging past. I stopped jogging to look at it. As I stared at it in pure confusion, it made a nasally humming noise. A few seconds after that, all these sharp needles or spikes grew out of it. It then began to fly in my direction. Right at my face. I ran as fast as I could. As I was running, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. Turns out it was one of the spikes. The police didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t go back to that place for months. When I eventually ended up going back, I didn’t see the orb, thankfully. I never saw the orb again…”
It wasn’t like anything I had ever heard or read being reported before. That report was from 2002. According to another source, there were 200 instances like the one above reported since the 90s. Reading over the other reports, there were many different weird occurrences within this supposed triangle.
“…My kids kept calling for me, saying they were hearing weird screaming. I went outside and heard the most chilling animalistic screaming noises. They definitely weren’t human, but they sounded like a human turning into a wild demonic beast…”
Chills down my spine as I read that. Hopefully it was a hoax. I mean, why wouldn’t it be, right?
“…I was having a smoke on my back porch. It was 6 PM. The birds began to fly like crazy in a way I had never seen before. Then I see a tall head peeking out of the bushes out in the forest. His eyes were soulless and he had a U-shaped mouth. I went back inside, freaked out as hell. Then I tried telling myself it was probably a prank. I went outside and it was still there, eating leaves along with a squirrel. I called the police about an intruder. They saw the thing and told me they’ve gotten four calls about it before, but they’ve only ever seen a video of it until then. As we stared at it, it stared at me. Not the officers. Me. The officers tried to escort it away, but it gave them a stare that made them back away. They didn’t even pull out their guns. They chose to leave and told me to ignore it. Like what? It then gave me an insidious stare that gave me a deep sinking feeling, so I ran inside and shut all my back windows…”
I got an even deeper sinking feeling reading that one. At least there were some less creepy reports, like old fashioned cars popping out of nowhere then disappearing seconds later and bottles with an un-earthly language pasted on their labels appearing in people’s trash bins.
I was skeptical about these types of reports. I needed more evidence then he said she said. These reports were no exception. Most of them came from either one person or a small group of people. Police were supposedly called, but I failed to find any matching police records. There weren’t any major news stories about any of these events, let alone any video evidence of them either.
Then there was one report with photographic evidence included. In 2007, a man got a dozen scars from a supposed animal attack. The man claimed a person with a U-shaped mouth was staring at him with an overbearing glare before attacking him. The description of the creature matched the other reports to a tee, and was just as chilling. The picture of the man’s face though… angular scars, a square shaped cut… for my own sake, I chose not to look at the image for more than five seconds. It was very detailed, very realistic. It was on a local news website.
Perhaps the triangle isn’t a hoax?
I searched for more articles about the victim, but there weren’t any others. He had a social media page, but he didn’t post much. He didn’t talk about the incident or the creature at all. I didn’t want to bother him about his incident, so I just clicked off the page.
The Bradford Triangle didn’t seem so well known. There were no discussion threads about it or any of the initial events at all. With all the reports, I’d think the area would be as well known as the Bermuda Triangle. I decided it had to do with the nature of the reports. People are more likely to believe a ship had disappeared than a humanoid with a U-shaped mouth having attacked somebody. Or even existing for that matter. A lot of the reports could be chalked up to pranks if you thought people were creative enough.
The following Friday, I went to visit my uncle up in Bradford. It was a fitting time to visit considering I had only recently heard of the triangle. I was going to stay away from the forests though, as I dreaded being attacked by a creature like the one with the U-shaped mouth.
I decided to ask my uncle if he knew about it. He always thought the idea of alien beings was interesting, so I thought he’d enjoy talking about it. When I asked him about it, his eyes widened.
“The triangle? Yeah, I’ve heard of it,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything weird myself, but one of our former neighbors went out to investigate it once. He was a huge UFO enthusiast who went out every night to try to find some sign of alien life. He did it for a number of months, but never found anything. Then one night, he went out there again and never came back. He was pronounced missing. They never found any trace of him. His house was sold off to our current neighbors soon after.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “There was absolutely no trace of him at all? There had to have been something.”
“Yep. I checked recently and there’s still nothing. If any trace of him was found, it would be on the local news, right?” he said.
I didn’t know that about the former next door neighbor. The only memory I had of him was a vague one from when I was 7. He came over for a quick visit while I was visiting for the weekend. I couldn’t recall anything else about it though.
Back home, I reread many of the reports I had already read, completely intrigued while also unnerved to my core. As I read on, I recalled something interesting. Back in the fifth grade, one of my friends, I’ll call him Randall, told me about a spot somewhere between Bradford and Newmarket that supposedly gave him a look into different worlds, as he called them, and the future. Now, again, this was back in the fifth grade. Back then, I’d believe absolutely everything I was told. I was a kid after all. So of course I believed him.
He got some of his other friends together and created a group. He told us stuff about him that was obviously not true. He was clearly just a fan of Dr. Who who enjoyed roleplaying, but the stuff he mentioned about that spot was something else. Once a month, he showed us pictures of unnerving human-rabid dog hybrids, talked about Area 51 (he told us they only had super advanced technology there, nothing extraterrestrial,) and showed us a National Geographic book with a page showing pictures of a Zebra-Elephant-Tiger hybrid called a Ziga.
Speaking of the Ziga, I Googled it back in 2017 out of curiosity as to whether or not it really existed. That was well after I had become skeptical of Randall’s ideas. What I found was stuff on a Zebra-Tiger hybrid known as a Liger, but nothing about an animal hybrid called a Ziga. I never stopped to think about whether a Ziga could possibly exist.
I still had one of his photos. A photo of our friend group walking on a dirt path in the middle of a forest. Each of us were holding a small silver handheld device.
I decided to contact Randall and ask him if he knew anything about the Bradford Triangle. I hadn’t kept contact with him due to us naturally drifting apart, but I knew I could just find him on Instagram. I looked him up. When I found a profile that had pictures of him but older, I sent him a message.
He responded hours later. This is what his message read:
“Hi! I remember you! No, I don’t have any of that stuff anymore. And no, I don’t know anything about the Bradford Triangle.”
After some back and forth small talk, I pressed him again. I asked him what happened to the stuff he showed me all those years ago. I expected him to say it was all fake, but who would put so much effort into roleplay? He replied to the question.
“It was fake. The whole thing was a metaphor that you guys took seriously. I don’t want to know what you’re like nowadays if you still believe in that stuff.”
A metaphor? It happens a lot. People do create these metaphorical roleplay groups just for fun, then most of the members end up killing themselves because they believe in quantum immortality all of a sudden. But sometimes, it’s okay to entertain the thought of something that hasn’t been disproven. But I still had that picture… and the people looked just like us.
I dug the photo out, took a picture of it, then I sent it to him. I explained I still had it after having found it on my desk on the last day of school.
“What? You’re not supposed to have that. I don’t remember leaving it on your desk.”
“I thought you left it there?”
“This isn’t good.”
“What do you mean?”
No response.
I went to bed, thinking he’d respond in the morning. I woke up to the roar of a car’s engine. A bag was tied around my neck so tight I swore it was about to choke me out. During this rude awakening, I also noticed my ankles and hands were tied together.
It couldn’t be happening. I always feared being held against my will. Where was I? Where was I being taken to? Who was kidnapping me? My breaths got faster and faster as dreadful ideas swirled around in my head.
Half an hour later, the car came to a stop. I heard the click of the trunk opening up. Four hands gripped my torso and lifted me up. The thud of the trunk closing made me jump. Was I going to be locked in a basement for the rest of my life or something? Were they going to torture me? The dread built up more and more as I was carried by the two kidnappers.
Eventually, I was sat up against a freezing hard wall. My heart sinking, I anticipated the worst, but the choking sensation lifted, along with the bag. I was in a liminal room. Just a white board, a padlock beside the door, one long desk sitting below boarded up windows, and a torn up shirt was lying on the edge of said desk. It has stains on it… I felt like gagging.
What the hell?
Two men were standing over me, each holding a baseball bat. Both had dark hair and looked to be around my age. They had looks of both confusion and frustration. I could only feel the sinking in my gut.
What were they going to do to me? Why did they kidnap me?
“Don’t try anything,” said the man on the left. “We just need to talk to you. Give you a warning.”
“Y-yeah?” I asked.
“Randall told us you had a picture of you and him?” he asked, holding up a phone with a screenshot of Randall’s chat with me.
That’s what this was about? They were being quite dramatic over a metaphor.
“Y-yeah?” I asked, confused as hell. “H-he told me it wasn’t good that I had it,” I said.
“We found it and we took it,” said the man on the right. “Randall thought he did what he needed to do with that picture, but apparently you had it the whole time?”
“And the person who gave it to you… are you sure you think it was Randall?” asked the man on the left.
“Y-yes,” I said. “I always thought he left it for me to take.”
“Well that wasn’t his intention,” said the man on the right, glaring into my eyes. As the two had been speaking to me, I noticed something static about their eyes. Like they weren’t real. But I was too distracted by their demeanor to think much of it, but I could feel my hairs stand up. “Now we need to investigate this. Now we need to investigate you. We’ve invited somebody over to talk to you. Be ready.”
“W-who?” I asked.
“That’s for you to figure out yourself,” said the man on the right.
This was insane. Were they friends of the others in the group? I told them all that stuff was just a metaphor. That they were taking it way too seriously. They told me they helped Randall take the pictures, including the one taken in the forest, then they told me to stop talking, or else I’d face consequences. I shut my mouth and chose to wait silently.
The two men paced around, bats in hands. I really didn’t want to start anything. I just had so many questions, especially since this situation was happening. I was told the pictures were fake…
Maybe Randall was lying. They were real. As real as the triangle. The Ziga was probably real too… and the stuff he said about Area 51? The creatures? Why did he tell people that stuff in the first place if he was just going to pass it off as a roleplay fantasy? I’m not heading back to Bradford even if I’d stay away from the forests anyway. I’m not stepping foot anywhere in that triangle. Good thing I don’t live there.
I’ve gotten myself into something. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s definitely important to these guys, along with Randall. I don’t know who’s coming to talk to me, but it looks like I’m going to have to deal with them no matter what. Hopefully I’m not about to be tortured or executed.