About a week ago I flew up to Michigan to spend the summer at my family’s cabin. It’s a quaint log cabin on a lake, built in the summer of 1921. I’ve only been there three or so times, mostly as a child, so I can’t say I have a lot of memories of the place.
The trip started off amazingly. Smooth, easy ride to the airport and a flight that landed early. A quick and easy rental car pickup–I was able to beat the line, and I can’t say I wasn’t ecstatic about the minimal wait. I set my suitcase down in the trunk of a nice little Prius and got to driving–you have to take a lot of backroads to make it to the cabin, and it’s about a three hour drive from the nearest city. This part was probably the scariest as I’d gotten warning after warning about the amount of deer who carelessly leap across the road at dusk, which worried me as by that point it was 7 PM. I’ve heard many stories of drivers hitting deer that seemingly come from nowhere.
I figured I’d simply turn on my brights when I got to the two-lane highway, and I bought an energy drink at the airport so I could be extra vigilant. The precaution was somewhat pointless–the only deer I saw the entire trip was dead on the side of the road. I gave it a little salute as I passed its breathless corpse, and turned up my music. At this point it was around 9 and the sun was nearly done setting. You could argue it was officially nighttime, which sent a small pulse of anxiety through me–I read a lot of horror stories, and driving on M-46 in the middle of nowhere (minus the occasional decrepit town) reminded me of a handful of stories I’d recently read.After the deer sighting the trip became pretty uneventful, and by the third hour of driving I started to nod off. At this point I was nearing the cabin and the highways gave way to seldom-paved dirt roads. The slow speed required for dirt roads made me occasionally question bushes and old mailboxes in my periphery, but I never came across any animals or people on my journey.
And then I arrived: the last unpaved driveway, about a quarter mile from the “Hawkins Lake” signage. I giggled to myself as the gravel underneath my Prius shook me in my seat, and slowly pulled into the driveway. It was 11, and I wasn’t expecting the family to wait for me, but I saw their silhouettes in the living room–shadows cast through open windows. I quickly retrieved my bags from the trunk and ran up to the door, tapping on the frame to let them know of my arrival. I was greeted with a collection of familiar “hey!” and “hi!”s as I joined the relatives on the couch. It was just me, two cousins and my aunt. We then spent some time catching up before I headed to bed–by then it was 1 AM. I got some very well-deserved sleep that night.
The next couple of days drifted by wonderfully–we drove out to the nearest town and had a hearty lunch, we swam in the lake, I solo kayaked down to the Duck River (which was more of a creek) and ate home cooked meals for dinner. The cabin seemed to come to life as relics from the 1900s listened to our catch-ups and conversations. The longer I spent in the heart of this lush, foresty retreat, the better I felt.
This was until evening, when my cousin suggested we watch the old family videos. We had a digitized version of spliced clips of the entire family, beginning in the 1920s and ending somewhere in the ‘80s. Originally shot on 16mm film with no sound, they weren’t much to look at, but I was curious to see my deceased relatives alongside those I’d never gotten to meet. The family loaded up on cookies and ice cream (Traverse City Cherry & Superman–my favorite Michigan delicacies) and my aunt booted up the file. To my surprise, it was two hours long. I’d never seen these videos before and was shocked at the technological prowess of my ancestors. It hurt a little more when I remembered my struggle to connect to the cabin wifi.
After the final couple murmurs from my cousins, the video began.I won’t lie and say it was a jarring, screechy and horrific mess from the start. I was a little confused by the blurriness of the black screen, but it eventually gave way to grainy footage of a man with a cigar and three children–my grandfather and great uncles–as they roughhoused and played in the snow surrounding the cabin. The footage seemed sped up, but it was charming and made me reminisce upon my own childhood. And the clips continued rolling–the cabin became the family farmhouse in spring, children began to grow up and the family dog gave way to two more.
The footage stayed grainy throughout the years, but grandparents and grown children kept smiling even through the great depression. Once we’d gotten to 1944 and the children entered the military, things began to change. A clip of two young women grinning and splashing each other with water in the lake. My grandfather graduating from college. A small boy roughly petting an Irish Setter. Two men smoking cigars in unison. Then the videos erupted in color. The orange glaze of the logs of the cabin shone against the green of the grass and trees. A twilight dusk wafting around a New Year’s Eve party. Another brown cigar against a silver fur coat. And then the screen went red.
I figured this was just a glitch–it was still extremely early to bring color into the footage, and perhaps the red of the screen indicated an environment too dark for filming (it didn’t take much for an environment to be too dark then), or simply a hardware malfunction. It had only been about three seconds since the red began. But then the red continued. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. The music playing alongside all the footage had stopped back when the red began, but it tended to do so whenever a new clip was introduced. I turned to look at the family. My aunt sat nonchalantly, waiting for the movie to continue. My cousins were looking at each other with perplexed faces.
I turned back toward the screen. It was still red. It was so quiet at first that I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. My mind immediately jumped to whispers and I felt my heart accelerate, but as the noise continued to grow louder I realized it was just static. It had been two minutes since the red began, and there was still an hour left on the video. My cousins started to question what it was, and my aunt mentioned not remembering an “intermission.” Perhaps it wouldn’t be so unnerving if it was light outside, but the late evening timing bathed the entire living room in red. The cabin walls looked like they were covered in a thick coat of blood.
The static got a little louder, to the point where I began to consider leaving the room, but then it stopped as abruptly as it began. White light flickered on the walls as three men walked down a street. A Packard drove down the street behind them and the driver waved to the camera. It was the ‘50s, alive and full of color. The family went back to calmly watching the video, with occasional remarks about the timing or which family member was where in the scene. I decided to take a break and grab another serving of ice cream, my head hurting from the intense red and static I’d had to endure earlier. I left the room and went to the freezer in the utility closet. The Superman tub was underneath the others so I had to do a little digging, but eventually I dislodged it and began scooping. I could hear laughter emanating from the other room–this happened whenever someone was hit by a snowball or tripped on film. I paused, halfway through a scoop and looked outside.
I could see the living room window from the utility closet as well as the ground it illuminated outside. I bit my tongue to stifle a gasp. The ground was red. Red, crimson light filtered through the window panes leading to the TV. I couldn’t see their faces, but my relatives looked absorbed in whatever was on the screen. I hadn’t heard them laugh since the red reappeared. And then there was the screen. Listening closely, I could hear the static again. And just as before, it slowly crept louder. I quietly put the bowl of ice cream and the tub in the freezer and carefully, silently closed the lid. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew not to make a sound. I crouched down by the window and looked at the screen. The red was shifting, staticky, morphing into VHS-like stripes and fraying spots of tape. At the speed it was moving I could almost see the figures of my ancestors and deceased relatives stretching their arms out through the wavering lines. I thought I could hear crying in the static. For what must’ve been milliseconds, a face reminiscent of the “tragic theatre mask” flashed on the screen, its iridescent pupils trained on me. At this rate I wasn’t sure if I was going insane. My relatives continued to sit motionlessly, silently.
Then the static consumed them. Long, film-like tendrils began sprouting from them and gradually blackening as they creeped toward the TV. The static became unbearable, whispering, pleading. “Come here,” I could almost hear. “Join us.” I was frozen on my knees, eyes as wide as they could possibly get, watching my cousins disintegrate as their eyes and limbs stretched to fit a 16mm canvas. My aunt no longer had arms or a head, her neck splitting into at least six different strands of tape. She coiled into the TV, reforming as a grainy weightless mass. I was stuck and couldn’t look away as ancestors slipped their arms through the cracks and splits in the footage, gripping the tape of my cousins… And pulling. The clumps of family inside the TV began disappearing into the seams of redness and the entire screen gradually went back to resembling a shifting, hallucinogenic wall. The couch and chairs were now empty, and the static began to die down. I bit my tongue again, attempting to wake myself up. I tried to scream bloody murder but I couldn’t move, not even my larynx.
I must’ve sat there for hours, because the static quieted and I saw light begin filtering into the windows. The red had dissipated by that point, giving way to a mixture of black and white VHS lines and tape glitches. And then the footage returned. My grandpa held a cigar, a Packard rolled down the street, two girls played on a swingset… My aunt and cousins grinned, toasting to another new year. They smiled as if the war had just ended, but their eyes were wide. I saw the same iridescent eyes that looked at me for a frame in the red. Then they were at the cabin again, shocked as two boys pushed them into the lake. They stood around the living room TV and knocked on the glass. They played fetch with a dog. The movie continued.
To say that I don’t know how this happened is an understatement. To explain that I’ve never seen anything of this sort is sugarcoating with a pile of cherries. I finally gained the courage to move, and I’m in a hotel as far away as I could go–the city 55 miles away. I don’t know if I’ll go back. I need to get my belongings, and someone needs to maintain the cabin.
But I bet that movie is still playing. And I can’t risk joining my ancestors in film.