Transcript of the Official FRB Civilian Debriefing of Maddie and Peyton Gray, regarding their experience at the Adrian Safari Zone in May of 1987.
Debrief conducted November 19th, 1993 by Liberty Young.
Retrieved November 9th, 2022 at the request of Toronto Branch Director M. Durand, for research relevant to the ongoing investigation into the Calhoun Pocket Reality.
This record is for internal use for the FRB only. Distributing this record to any party outside of authorized FRB personnel without the written consent of Director Robert Marsh constitutes breach of contract and will be punished accordingly.
[Transcript begins:]
Young: Once again, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to meet with me, I know that these may be some painful memories, but I do think it’s important to keep a record of these things.
Peyton: Of course. I’m actually surprised anyone reached out to us, it’s been so long. I thought that the police had dismissed the whole thing outright years ago.
Young: Yes and no, just to be completely transparent, Mr. Gray, I’m not with the police.
Peyton: Aren’t you?
Young: No, I represent an independent organization who’s taken it upon themselves to look into encounters such as the one that you had at the Adrian Safari Zone.
Peyton: An independent organization? Like, a private detective or something like that?
Young: Something like that. We’re a little more of a research organization, although we do have several members who take a more hands on approach to investigating situations such as yours. As of right now, our organization is still fairly small. But, we have an interest in these documenting encounters such as yours so that we can better understand them. Why they occurred, and how to handle them should they occur again. Our goal is to keep people safe from these kinds of things, to prevent people from having to experience the same trauma that you two have experienced.
Maddie: May I ask, exactly how did you get our information?
Young: A colleague of mine actually did some work on your case back in 87. He joined us last year after leaving the police force. He remembered your case and mentioned that it might be relevant to our particular area of study. He was able to get us a copy of the statement you gave the police at the time. But, we like to conduct our own interviews for the sake of keeping an internal record.
Maddie: So what, you’re going to ask us to go through it all again? You have our statement, what else do you need us to discuss? And why does any of this need to be recorded? Who exactly are you going to share this with?
Young: Mrs. Gray, I can assure you that the contents of this tape recorder will not be released publicly without your written consent, as per the legal documents signed by you and your husband. They are strictly an internal record, to be used for research purposes.
Maddie: Oh and we just have your word on that? I need you to understand something, Miss Young. Because of what happened out there, my husband and I have had to leave everything behind. Our friends, our neighbors, our family. They called us murderers! They didn’t believe a word of what we told them about what we saw out there, they thought we’d gone out there to kill Danny and Patricia and that all of the things we said we saw out there were just lies to cover our tracks. We had people vandalize our house. Someone smashed in the windows of my car. They spray painted ‘Killers’ on our garage door. We left Adrian to get away from that, and we can never go back. They won’t let us. So… forgive me if I’m a little cautious about discussing this with anyone, let alone having someone record it. Last time, it destroyed our lives. I can’t go through that again.
Peyton: Maddie, just breathe…
Maddie: I won’t go through that again!
Peyton: It’s okay.
Maddie: Let’s just leave…
Peyton: Maddie, come on.
Maddie: No!
Peyton: Look… we signed the documents. Those documents, those were legally binding, correct?
Young: That’s correct.
Peyton: We signed the documents. They can’t release this. Even if they did… you and I, we’ve been holding on to this for so long. Maybe it’s time.
Maddie: No! Absolutely not, I won’t! Don’t make me do it!
Peyton: Hey… hey… I know, honey. I know what you’re feeling right now, I do. But look at her? That girl there, she’s here to listen. She’s here to believe us, alright?
Maddie: They said that at the Police station too… and look where that got us!
Young: Mrs. Gray, if you don’t mind my interjecting… if there’s anyone in this room, who’s going to believe you about what you saw at the Adrian Safari Zone, it’s me. Trust me, I’ve seen a few things myself. Things that I can’t even begin to explain.
Maddie: Like what? What exactly have you seen, Miss Young?
Young: I’ve seen dead men walk, I’ve seen paths in the forest that are impossibly dark and just go on and on forever. I’ve seen… creatures that the rest of the world thinks are just myths. I’ve seen Gods and I’ve seen demons. I’ve been doing this all my life, Mrs. Gray. If it’s out there, then chances are I’ve run into it before. So, if you decide to tell me what you saw out there that night: you’ll be telling someone who doesn’t just believe you, you’ll be telling it to somebody who already knows that what you’re saying is true.
Maddie: [Silence]
Peyton: Where… where would you like us to begin?
Young: Why don’t we start with a bit of background. How much do you two know about the history of the Adrian Safari Zone?
Maddie: Personally, I know a lot. We… I’ve been going there ever since I was a little kid. It actually used to be the Rankin Mills Safari Zone, right up until that town had its accident.
Young: Accident? Can you elaborate?
Maddie: Rankin Mills was abandoned a few years ago. Some sort of problem at the local power plant. A lot of people like to say that everyone just up and disappeared one night, but I can’t imagine that’s actually true! I mean, never put much stock in the idea, I just thought it was impossible… I thought it was, at least.
Young: The disappearance at Rankin Mills? Did that include the Rankin Mills Safari Zone as well?
Maddie: I believe it did… I remember that when I was a little girl, they closed the place down for a few years after Rankin Mills was abandoned. It was a little past the edge of town, not really in Rankin Mills. It was a lot closer to Adrian. But, they shut it down all the same. Never said why. I’d always figure they’d eventually go and tear it down, like they did with the rest of the old town until someone else bought the land and reopened it as the Alden Safari Zone. They were trying to keep the spirit alive, I guess… they did an alright job of it too. They kept the bones of it mostly intact. They upgraded the cages for the animals from what they used to have and got some better animatronics.
Young: Animatronics?
Maddie: They had a few of them in the old park. Animatronics and wax sculptures. Nothing that fancy. Animals who’d move their heads around. Most of the old ones looked nothing like the animals they were supposed to be. Whoever got rid of those did the world a favor, if you ask me. They really knocked the rebranding out of the park. It was new, but still nostalgic. It’s why I suggested that we go there with Danny and Patricia. Patricia and I used to go when we were kids, and I figured it would be a good place to go for a double date.
Young: Alright. I have to ask, had you two been there since the reopening?
Maddie: We had, yes.
Peyton: A few times, actually. Not as a double date, but we’d gone together.
Maddie: They were doing this ‘Night at the Safari’ thing, where they were staying open later in the evening. It was intended to be a more ‘adult’ experience I guess. Less kids, and all that. It seemed like a fun way to spend an evening.
Young: It kinda does… so, can you walk me through that particular evening? Take me through it beat by beat but please, take your time. I understand that these are difficult memories to revisit.
Maddie: Yeah… [pause]
Peyton: Do you want me to start?
Maddie: Would you…?
Peyton: Of course. We met up with Danny and Patricia sometime around six. We had dinner at the zoo resturant. They had this gimmicky resturant on site, with animatronic animals and stuff in it. It was kinda kitsch, but that was sorta the appeal, I think. Then after we ate, we went to go and see some of the exhibits. We wanted to see the animals while there was still some light, then hit up the rides on the other side of the park.
Young: A zoo and rides… sounds interesting.
Maddie: I mean, it sorta had a discount Disney vibe. But it was nice. The rides weren’t anything that special, nothing you wouldn’t find outside of a carnival. But it was still nice.
Peyton: Yeah. We walked around for a bit together, saw the animals and took some pictures. It was nice.
Young: It sounds nice… if you don’t mind me asking, when exactly did things change?
Peyton: I don’t know… it was… it was subtle. Hard to pinpoint any exact moment.
Maddie: I think the first thing we noticed, was the fog. I saw it around the same time we were at the elk enclosure. We were headed to see the big cats next. There was this sort of bridge, that led to a little island where they kept the big cats. I remember seeing the fog around then, and it got worse when we crossed the bridge. That’s when I first started noticing that something was off, too.
Young: Can I ask what it is that you noticed?
Maddie: Well, at first it was the signs. There were a lot of advertisements for some of their local stuff there. Pictures of animals and stupid puns, like… they’d have a picture of a bear and the words: ‘I Can’t Bear To See You Go Hungry, Check Out One Of Our Restaurants.’ and then they’d have the whole list underneath it. Then there were the advertisements for local events, like how you could rent the place out for a wedding and stuff like that.
Young: That sounds fairly mundane.
Maddie: I guess, but I’d thought they’d gotten rid of those signs after the new owners bought it. They used to be all over the place back when I was a kid, but they’d phased those things out. At least, I thought they did.
Peyton: I noticed the signs too. I never really grew up with the place, but I remember thinking that the advertising was pretty excessive. It was weird since we hadn’t seen that many ads in the other parts of the park.
Young: I see.
Maddie: That was the first thing we noticed… the second was the cages. They’d changed.
Peyton: Yeah, back when we’d come before they used to have this big cages for the animals. I think it was the leopard that we saw first, and it used to have this huge cage. There were branches, and stuff for it to perch on, a place where it could go if it didn’t want to be seen, stuff like that. But when we got there, the cage was so small. Like… it was barely bigger than the living room of our apartment and there wasn’t a hell of a lot in it either. It just looked… bare. I can’t imagine anything living comfortably in there.
Maddie: Not that there was anything in there…
Peyton: No… the cage was empty.
Young: Empty?
Maddie: Yeah. Empty. There wasn’t any damage to it, but it was just… there wasn’t anything in there. We looked, but we didn’t see anything. We figured that maybe the leopard just wasn’t on display for some reason so, we all just moved on. The next cages weren’t any different, though.
Peyton: No. Next we were supposed to see the lions, and that cage was empty too. It was the same size as the leopard cage as well. Small. There was supposed to be a pride of fucking lions in there and it was tiny. I don’t know how the hell that’s supposed to work out… I actually was wondering if maybe we were lost at that point. The fog had gotten really thick. Danny thought we were getting all turned around. He said that maybe we’d taken a wrong turn and had ended up in some back area that was supposed to be off limits.
Maddie: I remember that… at the time, Patricia and I had said we couldn’t have. We’d been there so many times before, we knew the way. But Danny didn’t want to go any further… maybe we should’ve listened to him.
Young: You kept going?
Maddie: Just to one more exhibit. The next one was supposed to be a tiger. We could see it just up ahead and we could see that there was something in that cage.
Young: Something… not a tiger?
Maddie: I honestly don’t know.
Peyton: It was pacing, we could see it through the fog. Just pacing back and forth and I was sure that it kept looking up at us. It looked like a tiger, but… I dunno… something was off.
Maddie: It was the sounds it made. This heavy, sort of panting… it almost sounded like laughter. Christ… I still remember it. I remember that at one point, it had stopped pacing and just stared at us. I could see its eyes through the fog and they didn’t look right. They were too close together. The fur looked too shaggy… and it kept making that noise.
Peyton: I think that’s the point where Danny got really freaked out. He didn’t really want to keep going after that. I didn’t say anything at the time, but honestly, I was kinda creeped out too. I figured it was just the fog but there was just something off about whatever was in that cage. I don’t know why but I just kept thinking: ‘That’s not a tiger.’
Maddie: No… I don’t think it was either.
Young: So, you left the big cat section, then?
Peyton: Yeah… we told Danny we’d come back if the fog cleared up, and I mean, we hadn’t seen a lot of animals anyway. I think that tiger thing and the fact that the other cages were empty just put us off, though. Plus, we hadn’t seen any other people since we’d crossed the bridge. So…
Maddie: Yeah, up until then it’d been fairly busy. So we went back and crossed the bridge again. That’s when I saw the Rooey the Kangaroo.
Young: Rooey the Kangaroo…?
Maddie: Yes, he was sort of the mascot of the place back before it closed down. The new owners had gotten rid of him. But back when I was a kid, there’d used to be statues of him everywhere. He was on a lot of the advertisements… and there’d been this statue of him holding an ice cream cone right acoss from the bridge to the cat island. In his other hand he was holding this sign that said: ‘Hop on down to the ice cream parlor.’ We hadn’t seen it when we’d crossed the bridge the first time. I hadn’t seen that statue ever since I was a little girl.
Young: But somehow it was back?
Maddie: Yes… don’t ask me how. I know that the new owners had gotten rid of it. I knew that for a fact. They’d gotten rid of just about all of the old Rooey ads. But this one was just back where it had always been, looking like it’d always been there. The paint was worn, Rooey’s eyes had faded to white. There was even ivy growing up along his arm. He looked… run down.
Young: I see.
Maddie: Patricia recognized it too. She was just as surprised by it as I was. For a moment, we almost thought we’d crossed the wrong bridge, but there was always only one bridge to the cat island. We even looked at the map to confirm. One bridge!
Young: So you were positive that you couldn’t have ended up anywhere you weren’t supposed to be?
Maddie: Positive… Patricia and I figured we’d head over to the other side of the park after that. We were kinda done with the animals. We figured we could try out the rides. And we were just getting ready to move on, when we noticed that Danny was missing.
Peyton: He’d been right beside me a few seconds ago. Then we’d stopped to look at that fucking kangaroo statue. I’d taken out my map so Patricia and Maddie could take a look at it, and when we looked back he was gone. We started calling for him but… nothing. It was weird, Danny wasn’t the kinda guy who’d just wander off.
Young: And you saw nothing out of the ordinary… aside from the Kangaroo?
Maddie: No. He was just… he just disappeared entirely! We were yelling for him and everything. We even went back across the bridge, but we couldn’t find him!
Peyton: Halfway across the bridge… not all the way.
Maddie: We looked! And Danny had wanted to get away from the cat island! You remember how freaked out he was, right? He was the one who kept asking us to leave! He wouldn’t have gone back there! We looked, and we found nothing!
Young: So what did you do next?
Maddie: Patricia was starting to get worried at that point. She suggested that we go and get help. Peyton thought that maybe Danny had just gone on ahead, maybe he hadn’t noticed we were still distracted by that fucking kangaroo. So, we agreed we’d keep heading back the way we came and see if we couldn’t find someone who worked there to help us look. So… we walked. We went back the way we came. At least, I’m pretty sure it was the way we came.
Young: There was something different about it too?
Maddie: Yeah. The trail was similar, but the cages were different and empty. They looked like the small cages that the park used to have, back before it got bought out. A few of them even looked broken. Like something had forced its way into them.
Young: Into them? Not out?
Maddie: In. The bars were bent inward. It looked like something had forced its way inside those cages. I remember seeing those and feeling this… this sense of dread in my stomach. I just knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what!
Peyton: I think we were all good and freaked out at that point. We tried moving faster, heading back to the main pavilion. We saw more ads on the way there. More broken cages. It was like we were in an entirely different park!
Maddie: Yeah… and there was that fucking kangaroo everywhere too. Holding ads, posing for photographs with kids. Stuff like that. It all hadn’t been there when we’d come that way before. I’m sure of that much! Then of course, we reached the main pavilion… and I saw the sign. The same fucking sign that I saw when I was a little girl in the ugliest yellow letters I’d ever seen. ‘WELCOME TO THE RANKIN MILLS SAFARI ZONE’. It even had that stupid kangaroo right behind the logo.
Young: That sign, it was gone before?
Maddie: Of course it was gone before. They’d scrapped it when they’d renovated the park, but there it was again. The paint was faded and scratched. It was overgrown with ivy and looked like it’d been through hurricane. But it was there. The moment that Patricia and I saw it, we knew that whatever was going on here wasn’t all in our heads. We knew that something was terribly wrong, we just couldn’t even begin to understand what! I remember looking around the main pavilion, and seeing all the old things that they’d cleared out of it. The pathway leading to the zoo side of the park had this wooden gazebo that used to have this statue of some safari girl underneath it. They’d gotten rid of the gazebo when they’d done their renovations, but now it was back and so was the safari girl. Her clothes were worn and a little tattered. Her face had mostly faded away entirely. There was just the shape of it left. An open mouth, her eyes, her nose. Her hat was gone, along with one of her arms. But she still had that creepy, overly enthusiastic smile she’d always had when I was a kid and right beside her was another statue of Rooey the Kangaroo. Then on the other side, was another gazebo with another statue of Rooey and another girl. This one was supposed to promote the rides. She used to be dressed in this shiny outfit, like something out of a circus. I don’t remember as much about her… her statue looked like it’d been torn apart. It wasn’t the same as it had been when I’d last seen it, it looked like it’d all just been sitting there, abandoned for all this time.
Young: I see…
Maddie: We’d talked about just leaving at that point, but Patricia wanted to find Danny. She kept saying we needed to find someone to help us look for him. She wanted to check the storefronts. They had this gift shop there, and that tacky themed restaurant we’d eaten at earlier. That was still part of the old park, so we’d checked there first… I don’t suppose I need to tell you what we found?
Young: The old look?
Maddie: Everything almost exactly the way it used to be, more or less. Just a little worse for wear. They had these animatronic elephants on one side of the room who’d look around. The skin had come off of them. You could see the machine underneath. They were rusted and didn’t look like they’d work anymore, but they were there. All of the animatronics were there. The gorillas, that broken lion who kept jerking its head like its neck was broken… most of their skin had rotted away. There was just metal, plastic and exposed parts underneath.
Young: That sounds… unsettling.
Maddie: You’ve got no idea… it was like walking into some kind of hellish version of my childhood. I didn’t want to stay inside, but Patricia was adamant. She wandered through, almost like she didn’t want to believe what we were seeing. She kept calling out for someone, anyone… but nobody answered.
Peyton: We hadn’t seen a single person since we’d crossed the bridge the first time. We hadn’t even heard anyone… hell, I remember catching a glimpse of the rides on the other side of the park through the fog. None of them were moving. The lights weren’t on. There was no music… this whole place was just… dead.
Maddie: But Patricia still wanted to look… and we let her. I couldn’t stay in there so, I told her I’d check the gift shop. We were still in the same building, we weren’t that far away from her… I figured that if she ran into any trouble we’d hear her… she was just one door away from us!
Young: Mrs. Gray… did you see anything happen to Patricia Sirriani?
Maddie: No.
Peyton: Neither did I.
Maddie: We were in the gift shop. We called to see if anybody was there and when we found nobody, we went back to the restaurant to rejoin her… and she was gone.
Peyton: I went back toward the kitchen, calling for her. I thought that maybe she’d found someone back there but… nothing. There was this smell though. Like something rotting. The kitchen looked like it’d been abandoned for years. The back door was open, there were dead leaves everywhere. But no sign of Patricia… not until I saw the blood.
Young: Blood?
Peyton: I could see a trail of it, leading to the open back door. Like something had been dragged out of there. At that point, I called Maddie over. I wanted her to see it too. Then, I remember I grabbed one of the knives off the counter. It was rusted to shit, but it was better than nothing and tried to follow the blood… I made it out the door, and that’s when I saw it.
Young: It?
Peyton: I don’t know how to describe it, not really. I think… I think it was the same thing that we saw on the cat island. Maybe it’d been following us this whole time. Or maybe it was something else. Either the same thing, or something different. I really can’t say. I just remember seeing it, and screaming… it looked sort of like some kind of big cat. A lion, or maybe a tiger. But there was just so much wrong with it. The fur was scruffy and falling out in places. The neck was bent at a weird angle. The head… Christ… it looked like somebody had crushed this things skull with a hammer. The teeth were jutting out at weird angles. The eyes were small and never blinked. I’d never seen anything else like it in my life! I remember that Maddie came up behind me and…
Maddie: I saw it… and I saw Patricia too…
Peyton: God…
Young: It had killed her?
Maddie: It was eating her… it’d… it’d torn open her stomach and it had… it had its head in her entrails and Patricia was just staring at us and… oh God… I… I’ll never forget her eyes. I’ll never forget looking into her eyes and knowing that she was already gone. It had almost torn off her… her head. I could see the bones in her neck. She hadn’t even had a chance to scream…
Peyton: And it was looking at us.
Maddie: I don’t remember which of us started running first… maybe it was me. Maybe it was Peyton. We just… we didn’t even try to help her!
Peyton: We couldn’t have helped her! For Christ’s sake, she was already gone!
Maddie: We just… we ran… we ran, and we hid like fucking children. There was this bathroom. And I could hear that thing nearby. I could hear that sound it made. That raspy breathing. It almost sounded like it was fucking laughing at us! I just… I didn’t even know if hiding in the bathroom would help but I didn’t know what else to do. We ran inside, and we locked the door behind us…
Peyton: I remember throwing my weight against it, trying to keep it closed. And I could hear that thing walking around outside. I could hear it clawing at the door… I could feel it pushing at it, trying to get in. I didn’t know if I could hold it. I kept thinking: ‘Any minute now, it’s going to break through and it’s going to kill us.’ I said to Maddie… I told her to run if it got in. I told her to run as fast as she could to the car. I even gave her the keys.
Maddie: I remember hearing it breathing out there… I remember seeing its shadow under the door. It felt like it was there for hours. Maybe it was there for hours… I don’t know. Even when it finally left, I wasn’t sure if it was really gone. Peyton offered to check but, I told him no. I told him not to open that door. So he didn’t…
Young: Did you two stay inside the bathroom?
Peyton: Yes… we were there for hours. Probably all night. We slept with our bodies up against the door in case that thing came back.
Maddie: Or in case something worse came back.
Peyton: When we woke up… I could hear voices. People outside. Maddie was still asleep, but I had to check. I opened the door and… well… everything was different.
Young: Howso?
Peyton: We were still in the restaurant but, it was the restaurant the way it’d been when we’d eaten there earlier. There were people in there now. Workers… they seemed confused as hell to have seen me just stumble out of the bathroom, with Maddie sleeping on the floor. But they were people. I almost fucking cried the moment I saw them.
Young: I see… so when you woke up, you were back? Patricia and Danny, did any evidence of what had happened to them come back with you?
Peyton: No. When we filed our report to the police, we mentioned the spot where we’d seen Patricia’s body. They found nothing there. No evidence of blood, nothing. No proof of any escaped animals either… we did a full walkthrough of that park with one of the officers. Nothing was the same as it had been that night. The advertisements were gone, the statues of that fucking kangaroo were gone. It was just… normal.
Young: I see.
Maddie: Danny’s father reported him missing the next morning. The police spent hours questioning us. There was this one fucking detective. I just know he was trying to pin Danny and Patricia’s deaths on us, but we told him we had nothing to do with it! Something in the park killed them! Not us!
Peyton: In the end they said we were making up a story to get attention, or that maybe we were covering for Danny and Patricia. Her parents had never really liked him. A bunch of people figured they’d run off together to elope. Others just heard about the murder accusations and figured that the detective got it right… they treated us as if we’d killed them. Even our own families wouldn’t look us in the eye anymore.
Young: That must’ve been hard for you.
Peyton: You’ve got no idea.
Maddie: We moved out here to leave the memories behind. Put it all in the rearview mirror.
Young: Then I’m very grateful that you were willing to come back to it for me… I know this must have been difficult.
Maddie: Difficult doesn’t even begin to describe it. Most nights, I still dream about that thing we saw out there. I still see its face… I still see Patricia, staring lifeless into my eyes… God. The nightmares haven’t ever gone away.
Peyton: Mine either.
Maddie: Can I ask you something, Miss Young?
Young: Of course, I’ll answer it if I can.
Maddie: You said you’ve seen things before… have you seen anything like what happened to us before?
Young: To be completely honest… no. I don’t believe that I have. I don’t know what happened to you that night, or why it happened to you. I don’t entirely know what it was you saw out there.
Maddie: You don’t?
Young: Even if I did know, would telling you change anything? Is there any answer I could give you that would put your mind at ease? That would make the nightmares stop?
Maddie: No… no, there isn’t.
Young: I don’t mean to be blunt, Mrs. Gray… all we can do is keep a record of things like this so that maybe someday, we can figure out a way to make sure they don’t happen to anyone else. I can use what you’ve told me here to help people. But I can’t undo what’s already been done and I can’t help you understand the why of it. In my experience… usually there is no why. No reason behind these things. It’s all just bad things, happening to good people.
Maddie: I see…
Peyton: Hell of a cynical approach.
Young: I don’t mean to sound that way. I do believe that something good can come out of archiving encounters like yours. I think that archiving them is probably the only way any good can come out of encounters like yours. But I also don’t want to tell you that what you’ve been through is anything less than a tragedy… For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your friends. I feel like that’s a hollow sentiment coming from me, but I do mean it.
Maddie: It’s more than what the police gave us… and what we got back home.
[Pause]
Maddie: Do you have everything you need from us? I think I just want to go home.
Young: Yes, of course. Thank you again! Let me just-
[Transcript Ends]