Important:
My Sister’s ‘Imaginary Friend’ Stalked My Family for Seven Years (Part 1)
My Sister’s ‘Imaginary Friend’ Stalked My Family for Seven Years (Part 2)
It’s a cold, and particularly vibrant, orange Autumn day on the playground. You’re playing on the bright red monkey bars during your only respite from school, recess. And when you manage to finally take that last swing of your arm and launch yourself toward the end, you climb off feeling victorious. But when you go to rightfully brag about your success to your classmates, you find a few of them huddled up talking about something. Finding yourself interested in the latest playground gossip, you waltz over and nonchalantly ask what your classmates are discussing. The disturbed look that the blonde girl in a pink, glittery beanie is expressing profusely tells you everything you need to know. This discussion is something macabre. And when expressing interest… you learn of something dark lurking within the town you once considered a safe haven free from monsters and ghouls.
The scene I laid out above should feel nostalgically familiar, considering that that’s how a lot of the people reading this have discovered their local horror legends. In fact, that scene I described is how I, Carrie Baker, discovered the local legend of ‘Dr. Bonbon’, my town’s own little boogeyman.
It’s safe to presume that most of you know what an urban legend is. Most people chalk them up to being tales invented to scare kids into listening to their parents. I wouldn’t blame you if that’s your own optimistic belief. But with this paper, I’ve unfortunately (or ‘fortunately’ for my own college studies) discovered that a lot of these legends are all too real.
Now for a formal introduction, as stated before, I am Carrie Baker. I started my school career as a meek girl scared of everything there ever was to be scared about. But by the time I became a history student, that fear grew into a potentially dangerous need for the truth in all of the most obscure fabrics possible of everything that once terrified me. What you are reading now is a paper that documents the strangest discovery I, or anyone for that matter, possibly have ever come across.
Everyone knows at least one urban legend, some popular ones being:
- Bloody Mary: The ghost of a woman who’s said to kill you if you call her name three or five times (depending on the variation of the story that’s told) in the mirror with the lights off. It’s a strange tale that seems to be an amalgamation of three separate things: the protestant-given nickname of Queen Mary I of England; a similar old divination game said to reveal the face of your future spouse; and an urban legend sprouting from the most prolific serial killer, Elizabeth Bathory, proclaiming her to have bathed in the blood of virgins.
- Mothman: A cryptid spawning from the state of West Virginia, often seen at night with glowing red eyes and said to bring disaster whenever he’s seen. But the simple truth seems to be that he was just a plain old Barn Owl who’s red-reflecting eyes in the night sky spooked the couple who said they spotted the cryptid.
- Bigfoot: The ape man said to roam the forests of America and leave oversized foot tracks. When in reality, he was most likely just a dude in a gorilla suit with too much time on his hands.
But the common throughline of all these legends is that they were spread to popularity by kids and teenagers. What with children on the playgrounds daring each other to do the Bloody Mary challenge or the overabundance of kids watching YouTube videos titled “OMG GUYS I SAW BIGFOOT AT 3AM, GONE WRONG!”
Even the onset of Creepypastas like Slenderman and indie horror games like Five Nights at Freddy’s weren’t safe from children spreading them around the playground like disturbing local legends that were real. And because of these children telling them like urban legends, these tales did spread like a plague and became international icons of horror, for better or worse.
And that leads me into the horrifying tale I heard on the playground that cold November day. The tale of ‘Dr. Bonbon’.
*** *** ***
For those of you unfamiliar with this chilling legend, the tale goes:
Sometime within the late-2000s, two young sisters got into an argument in late October while walking home from school. The eldest sister decided not to deal with her younger sister’s tantrum and left her sitting on the sidewalk. But a few minutes after the eldest sister got home, her younger sister strolled happily through the door with a lollipop in her mouth. When questioned by her mother, the younger sister proclaimed to have been walked home by a strange man named ‘Dr. Bonbon’. After hearing his frankly silly name, having not seen him herself, and knowing her child to have an overactive imagination, the mother simply came to the conclusion that the man was an imaginary friend.
But as all these types of stories go, ‘Dr. Bonbon’ was not so imaginary. It’s said that he came and threw rocks at the girls’ windows every night, asking them to play with him. Every night, terrifying these poor young girls. And to make things worse, on the eldest sister’s birthday that November… he began to call their house phone. Non-stop. It’s said that he called every second of the day, not allowing a second of peace and quiet within their home. An almost supernatural feat if you ask me. This would continue for a year, until things got worse during one December when the girls moved to their grandma’s mansion.
The legend continues that when they initially moved to their grandma’s house, things seemed peaceful. There was a distinct lack of being harassed by this strange man. The girls befriended their elderly neighbor Janice’s grandson (his name changing depending on the variation of the tale being told) and during their stay, they played with him in the woods every day. But during one particularly cold winter evening, they got lost in the increasingly darkening, snowy woods after straying too far from their grandmother’s house. And as the children searched desperately for their home in the murky depths of the nightly forest, they began hearing someone trail them in the vast darkness surrounding them, snapping twigs as they walked.
It wasn’t long until their grandmothers discovered and rescued the lost children, but it’s said that the boy vanished during the night when he went home. An effort was put into finding him, but no leads were ever uncovered. The boy just simply… vanished… seemingly into thin air. That was until Christmas Eve when the girls were trying to sleep… but were stirred awake upon hearing something at their window… only to discover the missing boy. Confused at what they were seeing, the eldest sister got up but as she inched closer to her window, she screamed at the sight of a man standing behind the little boy.
The grandmother rushed in and listened to the girls’ story, but for whatever reason was unable to dial the police. Due to this, she opted to double check all the locks in the house and protected her granddaughters in her bedroom until Christmas Morning. The ending of the story deviates depending on who’s telling it, but one constant remains. The dead body of the boy is found under the window of the girls’ bedroom, and spelled out in broken twigs next to him is “Merry Christmas, your one and only true friend.”
But the story doesn’t end here. You see, the stalking from ‘Dr. Bonbon’ lasted a whole entire seven years. Another famous part of the story that’s often told is what’s usually referred to as “The Christmas Cards”. The year after the incident with the missing boy, the mother and father both moved into the grandma’s house to provide extra protection to their daughters. But that did not change anything in ‘Dr. Bonbon’s’ behavior. Because you see, for that whole December, ‘Dr. Bonbon’ would harass the family by sneaking Christmas cards into the house. These cards started innocent, with compliments toward every family member. But these cards would quickly become more menacing as the mail boxes were shut. The cards became threatening in nature, angrily annoyed as the points of access for them were denied, yet still managing to somehow enter the house. It eventually got more disturbing as candid polaroid photos of the family were included in the threatening cards. But as the cards were sent off to the police and more points of access were denied, the ending of the tale describes an unsettling scene.
As the family prepared to open Christmas presents on Christmas morning, a single envelope slipped down the unlit chimney. Each family member staring in dread at the piece of unwanted mail laying atop the fresh wood of the fireplace, that Christmas’ feeling promptly became one of unease. The father apprehensively approached the chimney and opened the envelope. Inside the envelope, there were two things:
- The first item being a simple Christmas card that read “Dear girls, come play with me. Please don’t make her lose anymore. Sincerely, your one and only true friend.” including a picture of their next-door elderly neighbor… Janice.
- The second item being a small, thin, long, red pouch with something inside.
Deciding to open the pouch, the father, to his horror, found one of Janice’s severed ring fingers. After dropping the finger in terror, the family heard creaking footsteps coming from the rooftop of the grandmother’s Victorian mansion… followed by a faint sound, maniacal giggling.
While there is a lot more to the story, I’ll cap it here or else we’d be here for days as each year of the stalking has plenty of stories and legends to tell.
But there is one thing that’s always piqued my interest about this legend.
It’s always told in conjunction with the legend of the town that pops up every seven years.
As for that story, it’s a pretty simple tale that says a town called ‘Nowhere’ appears someplace in the midwest every seven years. It’s said that the town’s layout is completely impossible, twisting and turning in ways that break the laws of reality, as it leads to areas that simply should not exist considering its layout. It’s also said that you’ll know when the town will appear, as strange phenomenon will happen months in advance and residents of your town will mysteriously disappear.
How does this interconnect with ‘Dr. Bonbon’? Well, you see, the tale is always recounted with the insinuation that ‘Dr. Bonbon’ is one of the disturbed residents of Nowhere. And as far as I can tell, there’s no variation of the story that doesn’t include mention of the town near the grandmother’s house. Sometimes variations tell the story with the grandmother warning her granddaughters to not play in the town, some tell it as Janice mysteriously warning the kids about the town’s occupants when she helps rescue the kids in the woods, and the most popular telling being that the little boy warns the girls during a game in the woods of the town across the creek. But as stated, the town is always mentioned.
*** *** ***
Now, with legend out of the way, here is the main theory that people believe spawned the tale.
During the late 2000s, records reveal that the town did once have a doctor named Gerald Bonnie Bonner who went by the affectionate nickname “Bonbon”. Now, if the tale is to be believed, it’s safe to say we know who our suspect is. But the problem is, Dr. Gerald Bonner died on October 29th, 2009. So, the framing of the story having taken place in the late 2000s into the 2010s just doesn’t make sense if it were real and the doctor was the stalker, because, well… dead people can’t stalk your family for seven years.
Most adults take this information with the lack of public identity for the girls and their family as proof that the legend is fake. They end up concluding that the legend spawned as a simple ghost story about Gerald Bonner’s restless spirit. But you might be wondering “if it’s all fake, why are you sitting here telling me this?” Well, the people who assume that because Dr. Gerald Bonner was dead before the story took effect, clearly haven’t looked past a surface level when investigating the legend. How do I know this? Because I dug further than most people and met with a certain contact who divulged protected information. What’s the information? Oh, well it’s only seven whole years’ worth of police files going into an investigation involving the stalking of a family (2009-2016) where the perpetrator was never caught or identified. The legend was TRUE.
And now the real question comes into play, who was ‘Dr. Bonbon’? At this point you might be wracking your head for plausible answers. Surely it was a neighbor, surely it was a distant family member, or maybe it just had to be a random creep. You might even be suggesting that Dr. Gerald Bonner faked his own death so as to not be a suspect in this case. But all of those explanations are wrong. With everything I’ve uncovered, ‘Dr. Bonbon’ was not a human being. Is he a ghost? Is he a monster? Was he really an imaginary friend that came to life? I still don’t know, but what I do know is that he was never a human. I’ll explain in a second how I came to know this.
But first, let’s get into a bit of backstory about how I even came to know of this tale. As I stated in the intro to my essay, it was November during recess in second grade. I went to go find classmates to talk to and play with when I noticed a group of girls huddled under the tall and luscious orange-leafed oak tree that dominated the back of the playground. I went to investigate what the discussion was about, sure I’d be filled in on the latest playground gossip. But what I found were a group of girls telling campfire stories and creepy things they witnessed. One girl talking about an experience with a ghost in her house, another talking about a supposed monster in her basement. But one really stuck out to me; the freckled, red-headed girl who sat in front of me in our little recess coven, Abigail, began to tell a disturbing tale she heard from her older brother.
The tale had me shaking in fright. Two young girls from our town had been stalked by a vicious child killer and they had to move out of town. At this point, the stalking had only happened for roughly three years. But of course, you know the rest of the tale and how it divulged into madness. But soon after our coven was broken up to go back inside, I didn’t think much of the story despite its initial impact. That was until the next day at school. It seemed that every kid in class was now talking about the villain of this tale… the soon-to-be infamous ‘Dr. Bonbon’. Overnight, the legend seemed to have spread to every living soul in town. Playground talk was now only ever about ‘Dr. Bonbon’, but the strange part was… it wasn’t retellings of the original story, it was now personal anecdotal accounts.
Kids left and right were talking about their experiences with this supposed ‘Dr. Bonbon’ for weeks. During this period, Abigail and I became great friends. But she too told me that she had an encounter with ‘Dr. Bonbon’.
Our conversation went akin to this:
Me: “Does everyone know ‘Dr. Bonbon’? Everyone is talking about him.”
Abigail: “Literally, Daniel Tramer said he came to his house last night-”
Me: “That’s so dumb! They know it’s just a story, right? Dr. Bonbon isn’t real.”
Abigail: “It is dumb, Daniel’s a liar but…”
Me: “But…?”
Abigail: “I wouldn’t say… that Dr. Bonbon isn’t real.”
Me: “What do you mean? I thought he was just a story.”
Abigail: “No, Daniel didn’t see him last night… … … because I did.”
Me: “Abby, stop messing with me! I know he’s fake.”
But the look that Abigail gave me told me everything I needed to know. Her distraught expression and terror-filled eyes told me that she did in fact encounter this mysterious being. And the next words she spoke, with a grave seriousness, sent ripples through my heart.
Abigail: “He… isn’t.”
Abigail began to unveil the happenings of her previous night. She was getting ready for bed as the snow blanketed the ground outside. As Abigail settled under her warm blankets, she decided to fall asleep to the sound of her radio’s Christmas station. It had only been a few minutes since she fell asleep when she was lightly awoken to a strange sound. It almost sounded like something squeaking. As Abigail fully came to, her eyes couldn’t help but focus on something splayed across her window. Written into the fog freshly breathed onto her window was “Wanna play with me?” and under it, a smiley face. Abigail then crept slowly from her bed to the glass, and just ever so faintly… she could hear a slight metallic screeching noise coming from her backyard. And with Abigail’s room being on the first story, she was able to view the source of the noise. Scanning the snow-ridden darkness… she was just barely able to glimpse her swing with a silhouette gliding back and forth in the snowy, pitch-black void. Needless to say, Abigail woke her father who stupidly dismissed her as having a nightmare. Feeling defeated and scared, she ended up sneaking into her older brother’s room and sleeping on the floor.
Abigail’s story horrified me, and it honestly still does. But what confused me so much back then, is why when I asked everyone else about their encounters… they all had extremely similar stories. Daniel Tramer said Dr. Bonbon was at his window asking to come inside so they could be friends. Lisa Cutler said she heard taps at her window the night before and looked out to see snow angels, and written next to them in the snow… “Wanna play with me?” Darren Samuels said he received an envelope from his open window, and written in it was “Come outside Darren! I wanna play!” with a smiley face drawn next to it. But the part that convinced me of all of their stories was that they were told with such distinct seriousness and Darren actually provided evidence, having brought the envelope to school with him.
But even after hearing these believable testimonies, the question never escaped me. How did this ‘Dr. Bonbon’ visit almost the entire class, in fact almost the whole school, in such a short period of time? I mean, he should’ve just been any creepy guy… It wasn’t like he was Santa Claus or anything. But I didn’t have too long to ponder this question, because, as you’re probably piecing together with my obsession with this tale, I myself… have encountered this terrifying and enigmatic figure.
*** *** ***
It was a Saturday morning just two days after this conversation with Abigail. I woke up early in the morning, excitedly waiting for my dad to help me put up the Christmas decorations in our front yard.
“Sup, youngster! You gonna help your old man with the lights?”
I eagerly turned away from my pancakes to see my dad walking in from the backyard, carrying the trunk of decorations from our shed. Looking as disheveled as always, he kicked off the snow from his boots and looked at me quizzically.
“Finally, it’s about time!” I happily sighed with relief as I threw open the hall closet to grab my parka.
My dad quickly scooped me up into a piggyback ride as he raced me outdoors and into the chilling winter air. Lifting me off his shoulders, he joked “Psshht, this is United Carrie Airlines, we are now landing… ZOOOOOM!”
I laughed as he gently placed me in the 20 inches of fluffy snow covering our once green front yard.
“I’ll be right back, missy… don’t go flying away without me.” My dad then rushed inside and brought out the tub of decorations, a giant blue box filled to the brim with lights and blow-ups.
I helped him unlock the plastic tub, and began, in vain, to attempt detangling the small roll of lights sitting on the very top of everything else. As I pulled and pulled to detangle the lights, it felt like I was just making it tighter. Eventually giving up and offloading my hard work to my father, I began digging for the collection of Grinch decorations that I could just haphazardly stake into the ground. As I trudged through the packed tub, I felt something hit my back and fall to pieces at my feet. Turning around confused, I saw my mother all bundled up, holding in her arms a bevy of misshapen snowballs. Recognizing my soon-to-be snowball killer, I ran away to accumulate my own snowball army, completely forgetting the decorating task at hand.
Our little winter war had many snow casualties. But eventually the middle-aged brunette who dared to invade my snow kingdom fell under the weight of the massive snow talent victoriously posing before her.
“Oh no! What are you going to do to me, Ms. Snow Queen, now that you’ve defeated my army and I?” My mother feigned defeat, throwing her hands into the air.
“I’m going to subjugate you and your army to 1,500 years in my ice prison!” A harsh sentence coming from somebody who didn’t even know what subjugate meant.
Eventually I did get back to helping with the decorating, my mother joining us. Soon enough after a few hours, the sky began to darken and dinner was being made as the bright Christmas lights lit up our yard. The smorgasbord of a dinner laid before me might as well have been our Christmas feasting. It was even accentuated by a creamy pumpkin pie for dessert. The pine-scented candles enveloping our dining room with their aroma only made our dinner stand out as that much more special to me. Everything was getting me excited for Christmas, with the scents, lights, dinner, and decorations only reminding me of the 12 day anticipation before me.
“So Clyde, how many calls were there today?”
My father dropped his fork and gave my mother a look that even expressed to me “Way too fucking many.”
“I got about 13 today.” My father professed with an arched brow, sighing under his breath.
“Holy crap! And it’s all just the same thing?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” My father then looked at me with a tiny indication of a smile. “You know, Carrie, if you ever grow up and wanna become a PI, I’m telling you, it’s not the most interesting job. I get to go and sit outside of the Dorriss’ house for a few nights and do nothing.”
“Why do the Dorriss’ want you sitting outside of their house?”
“Because they seem to think somebody’s peeping in their windows at night, trying to get in. But I’ve had so many of these types of calls and there’s never anything! I think this town just has a bad case of mass hysteria.”
After finishing my chicken, my mother served the pumpkin pie… smiling, knowing she’d made the ultimate masterpiece every other mother’s pumpkin pie wanted to be. But as I took a fork-full of the pie, something caught my attention outside the window. It looked like Mr. Danvers was rushing out of his yard, but I couldn’t tell why. Eventually I went to my room after dinner and started watching Elf on my tv. I fell asleep around when Buddy starts singing Baby, It’s Cold Outside. It was around 3AM when I woke up to use the bathroom.
I quietly snuck out of bed and tiptoed over to the door. As I crept open the door, my heart sank looking out into the murky darkness of the hallway I would have to traverse. I took my first step, creak, then my second step, creak. But it was around my third step into the hallway when I swore I could hear my tv turn back on, with Buddy singing Baby, It’s Cold Outside again. It nearly sent me flying out of my skin, promptly causing my little legs to carry me into the bathroom as fast as possible. After doing my business, I began to feel the Saharan dryness infesting my mouth. I begrudgingly reentered the nebulously black hallway and made my way to the hardwood stairs. Every creak from the stairs sent my heart into a panic, certain that a monster would hear the creaks and mistake me for its midnight snack. And as I reached the loudest creak on the platform, I was sure that I’d see something maliciously pop its head out from the corner behind the wall. Thankfully nothing did and nothing was going to, but the overactive imagination of children pretends otherwise. As I exited the last set of creaky steps, I quickly made way across the freezing tile floor to the refrigerator. Opening it, flooding the dark kitchen with light, I took out the gallon of milk and made myself a midnight drink.
However, something did catch me a bit off guard. I was still hearing Baby, It’s Cold Outside despite being nowhere near my room and downstairs. But after finishing my glass and putting everything away, I walked out onto the carpet of the living room… and something outside caught my attention. Just barely illuminated by the faint lights of the decorations and lurking behind snowfall… was a strange snowman just on the verge of visibility. We never made a snowman. But that’s when it clicked, the music was coming from outside… Buddy wasn’t the one singing… the person behind the snowman was.
The snowman was a relatively big one, fitted with a top hat, scarf, carrot nose, and coal for its eyes, buttons, and mouth. But the part that sticks out the most was its lack of stick arms, instead… someone was standing behind the snowman pretending to be its arms. And even stranger, the person… was pitch, and I mean pitch black. Almost like a solid living shadow, with these… unnaturally long and pointed fingers. Whoever the person was, they were waving their arms up and down as if to make the snowman look like he was doing the Wave all by himself. For some reason, even though I should have been terrified out of my mind, I found it strangely amusing. As I continued to look on at the strange display, in a jester-like fashion… the snowman’s “arms” began to wave around like he was composing an orchestra. I laughed at the sheer silliness of what I was seeing, and recognizing my amusement at its jests… it began to point at me, brought its finger to its mouth like it was shushing me, then slowly beckoned me over with a few waves of its fingers. I shook my head ‘no’, not wanting my parents to get upset with me leaving the house.
The snowman’s arms then began to gesture as if it was confused by my response. It then elevated its hands out straight, and they slowly shrunk behind the snowman. Confused, I began looking for the hands, only to find the solid black arms revealing themselves from behind the now flickering lamp post at the edge of my yard. It was impossible. It was as if the arms were sprouting directly from the lamp post with no body attached to them. One of the arms lifted its finger as if it was telling me to wait. Then both hands collided outstretched from the lamp… and the arms began making shadow puppets. At first, the arms jested with a shadow dog barking, then a bird flying off. Eventually the shadows turned sillier, showing two crude shadow people kick boxing each other. And soon enough, the hands became even sillier yet more extravagant with their shadow puppets. They somehow managed a shadow puppet story about a little girl coming out of her house, meeting a tall man, and running off into the woods where she met the tall man’s friends who were other children. It should’ve been impossible, no human being is capable of providing the shadow puppet show that those hands had put on. Gazing in awe at what I just witnessed, the arms retreated behind the lamp. But after merely a second… fingers emerged from one side of the lamp, and a head began to peek out.
I stared at it with amazement as a whole tall being emerged from the tiny stick-thin lamp, seemingly materializing from nothing. It was a real, tangible, solid, living shadow. The being raised its hand and waved with its fingers… and it beckoned me to come outside again. But again, I refused, knowing my parents would punish me if I went outside at this time of night. The being then gestured a confused emotion again… and it continued to jest with me. It raised its arms into the air and began to wiggle its whole body, clowning with me pretending to sink into the snow. It eventually sank all the way down to its head, its body seemingly disappearing entirely under the fake snow ocean it was drowning in. I giggled as its head sank under the snowy waves and it waved its sinking arms like it needed a lifeguard to rescue it from its snowy ocean demise.
Its arms fully submerged into its frostbitten grave… and the being was nowhere to be found. Worried, I began to scan the front yard for this seemingly friendly nighttime visitor. I looked over at the snowman: Nothing. I looked back at the lamp post: Nothing. I looked at our decorations: Nothing. And then I heard it, he tapped on the window right above me… peeking at me from upside down. I laughed and touched the window where his face was and he disappeared. He then popped up from the right side of the window with his hands covering where his face should be. As I noticed, he unveiled his face as if playing peek-a-boo, and slinked out of view. He then popped up on the left side and repeated the process. As I was giggling, wondering where he’d pop up next, his fingers appeared on the bottom of the windowsill outside and he slinked all the way till he stood taller than the window. He playfully crouched down and covered his mouth as if he was girlishly giggling. I continued to study the strange being who stood before me, until he got closer to the window and, despite not having a visible mouth, he breathed fog onto the frosty glass. But what initially started out as an amusing nighttime visitor, became my worst fear… because as he wrote in the fog “Play with me, Carrie”… I realized who I was looking at… ‘Dr. Bonbon’. And from right behind me, nearly making me croak from a heart attack, was my mother who woke up and came downstairs for a midnight snack.
“What.. The… Fuck…” she whispered under her breath as she dropped a mug, glass shattering everywhere… staring at the horror outside of our window. I looked at my mom, nearly dying from heart failure, and turned back to the window only to see the arms waving goodbye from behind the snowman, then disappearing. My mom, convinced she just saw a demon, woke my father up from his deep sleep. My father didn’t believe at first until he too witnessed the strange snowman and the writing on the window. But unlike my mom, my dad was convinced it was the creep being reported by the townsfolk, and took his gun outside… and promptly found nothing. That night, my parents let me sleep in their bed. But I could swear that as I fell asleep, I heard what sounded like creaking coming from the rooftop, almost like footsteps.
*** *** ***
Needless to say, ever since that night, I’ve never questioned anybody’s stories about ‘Dr. Bonbon’. This event would later implant the seed that became my obsession with learning about these types of urban legends. Because if the one from my town is real, then who’s to say all the others aren’t real either? Growing up, I just had to know.
It was only a few days after this event where Abigail and I formed an unofficial club named after our school… ‘The Warner Horror Society’. We were convinced that we would be able to hunt monsters, our most sought after trophy being ‘Dr. Bonbon’. A few others had joined the club, such as Gary Dorriss, a nerdy kid who loved photographing things; Chauncey Danvers, a young girl who was an aspiring journalist; and Ben Kramer, an athletic kid who had a strange obsession with the macabre. The common throughline between all of us was that we had experiences with supposed urban legends. Abigail and I both had encounters with the ‘Dr. Bonbon’; Gary had supposed photographic evidence of a wolfman; Chauncey believed she lived in a haunted house; and Ben said when he visited Occoquan, Virginia, he had an encounter with a man with a horse head.
Our days were spent going around town for the whole Spring asking people if they needed monsters to be dealt with. Most of the adults nicely laughed us off or played along, but we were dead serious. The obsession all of us had, got us labeled as the weird kids. But it didn’t matter to us. All five of us were convinced that we would uncover the truth about monsters and become famous urban legend hunters.
And with mention of our group, that leads me to the discovery. The town that I mentioned before, that strange town that pops up every seven years… it too is real. Our town can only have so many missing people and so many strange phenomena (unexplained lights, disembodied screaming in the valleys, strange behavior of animals etc.) before it becomes too evident where Nowhere will show up. Everything is falling into place.
Before I send off, I wanna ask. How many of you experienced unexplainable phenomena? What are your stories?
Because there may be a simple yet unnerving explanation, and when that explanation appears near our town… ‘The Warner Horror Society’ intends to find out what’s lurking within Nowhere.
I’ll update you all when it shows up… and it will… very soon.