Conway receives a water-logged manuscript from a midwestern monster hunter of questionable character. 

(CWs: mild drug use--cannabis, fire,)

TRANSCRIPTS:

CONWAY: This is Conway, receiving clerk for the Dead Letter Office of ***** Ohio, processing the national dead mail backlog. The following audio recording will serve as an internal memo strictly for archival purposes and should be considered confidential. Need I remind anyone: public release of this or any confidential material from the DLO is a felony. Some names and places have been censored for the protection of the public. 

Dead Letter 10609, a manuscript for some kook’s autobiography or memoir, sent to a less than reputable publishing company that shut its doors years back. It was flagged for inspection before it could be delivered due to some unknown fluid leaking from the package. Inside the package was the previously mention manuscript and a broken test tube. The most pertinent excerpts from what remains of the water-logged manuscript read as follows. 

NARRATOR: It started, as so many terrible things do, in rural Ohio. You drive out deep into the flat midwest farmland, past the intersection of McCutcheon and 199, down narrow roads covered in gravel and framed by a split sea of cornstalks. You take the turn onto Holcomb road, and one way or another you’ll eventually hit Holcomb Woods--regardless of which way you’re going. Holcomb road cuts a straight line through the foliage. You can see one end from the other, given clear enough conditions.

Every kid in the area’s heard of Holcomb woods. The legend varies from school to school, vivid details emerging when the tale’s in the hands of a particularly clever storyteller, but some commonalities emerge: a vehicle, an accident, a tree, and some ghostly headlights. Some say it was a bus full of kids and a mad driver, others whisper of intoxicated teens. No matter the details, the story ends with a warning--or dare, depending on who is listening--drive down Holcomb road at night and you’ll come upon the passage through the dense trees. Before you pass under the arced branches, you’ll see a pair of headlights coming at you from the opposite direction. You can try to swerve out of the way, but they’ll pass right through you, then disappear. Some say you can still see the driver’s face in one of the trunks if the moon’s angle is just right. 

Growing up, I wanted to work with animals. I was fascinated with animal behavior, with their taxonomies and eccentricities. I planned to go to the nearby state university after high school, study biology, zoology, whatever it took to get my dream job. That was until three friends and I took a trip down Holcomb road.

It was the final day of our last summer break before graduation. We were bumping along the rough country roads in an old Buick, blaring the kind of music specifically designed to make our parents wince. We slowed down when we saw the woods ahead, the black void in the center of the trees inviting us in. Of course, we’d all heard the stories before, each of us with our own personal vision of the fateful event that we would passionately defend. We stopped at the very edge of the trees and shut off the engine. Mosquitos tapped at the windows in the humid air. The only sign of our presence that remained was the gentle clinking of empty beer bottles rattling around in the backseat. We sat and waited. Somebody cracked wise about a ghost driver needing a ghost license. We were haughty and skeptical in the headstrong way that only teenagers--so sure of their own immortality--can be. 

The driver was getting impatient, eager to return the rusty sedan to his parents before midnight and get inside in the central air. He reached for the keys, fixed to run the engine again, when two points of bright light emerged from the other end of the woods. We all went quiet, transfixed by the glow. The two points were close together, and smaller than headlights. They drew closer at a startling pace. The driver fumbled with the keys while the rest of us shouted at him to get it together. The keys hit the floor with a pathetic clink and we fell silent again.

The lights were right in front of us now, standing about seven feet in the air. Each was about the size of a baseball, casting an eerie pall across our stunned faces. These lights were attached to something bigger: they looked like the eyes of some strange creature. The hulking beast stood on two thin legs, leading up to a wide body covered in dense fur. It took a step toward the driver-side window and tilted its oblong face. Two long feathery tendrils twitched atop its head. A hooked claw tapped at the door.

I made eye contact with this thing from the passenger seat and felt a deep churn in my gut. Dread crept through my body. I could see every anxiety, every worst case scenario I’d ever imagined, play out in my head at once. The others burst into action simultaneously, all scrambling and reaching to find the keys under the seat. This entity seemed unsettled by our sudden movement and stepped back on its spindly legs. A huge pair of powdery wings spread out behind it. It flapped several times, then took off over the pale moonlit trees and disappeared. The driver snatched the keys from below the seat and we sped home.

After what felt like a century of silence, somebody in the back made a joke about the fuzzy bird man, assuring ourselves that it was probably just an eagle or local crackpot in a costume. I didn’t say anything the whole way. I was replaying the horrible visions in my head over and over. Classes would start next week, our last year of mandatory schooling before we all went our own ways in the adult world. That Wednesday, the high school caught fire, taking the lives of the driver, the two passengers in the backseat, and several other students and teachers.

From that moment, my interest in zoology vanished, and I became deeply fascinated by cryptozoology.

I’ve been all over this great state searching for signs of the paranormal and the cryptozoological. I’ve taken a dive in Lake Erie looking for Bessie, the South Bay monster. Didn’t find much there apart from some sunken boats, a lot of trees, and a weird skeleton with a human skull and fish tail. I’ve journeyed into forests and nature preserves for sightings of the grassman, also known as the skunk ape or the woodland sasquatch.

There are places here that are almost supernatural on their own. Small towns isolated in time, one-road-hamlets with ice cream stands across the street from stark white churches, 50s style diners and cash-only single pump stations. You’ll meet some of the friendliest, most earnest folk in the world in these towns. You may think you’ve finally died and gone to heaven. I’ve also come to know that a lot of places here in Ohio are about as close to hell as we humans will see. Little pockets of distilled hate, of insular folk hostile to anyone or anything different, rotting from the inside. Places that drain your spirit and crater your faith in humankind. Pretty towns full of mundane demons who would rather bleed their kids to death in plain view than acknowledge the world outside. Horrific poverty and destitution wrought by business and encouraged by politics with no fix in sight. Of course this isn’t isolated to any town or any state. It spreads and it festers across the midwest, through the rust belt, from coast to coast. With enough time on the road, you learn to keep mostly to yourself until you’re sure which you’re dealing with. 

It was at one of these previously noted ice cream stands on one of the aforementioned grassman journeys that I overheard a possible sighting. It was early August, hot as all get out. I was about 15 minutes out from the largest nature preserve in the state. Sitting on a bench under a big plastic cone, I was trying my damndest to keep my chocolate vanilla twist from dripping onto my hand. Church was just letting out across the road. According to the sign out front, next week was chili week. A small family in dated formalwear trotted over for a post-worship treat. The kids squealed and ran off with their cones. Their parents sat on a bench not far from me. The father said he had a friend who went hiking yesterday and came across a strange clearing. It seemed to be a campsite, but there was no camping gear, no sign of a fire. The clearing was surrounded by odd broken branches, tangled and tied into dangling arcane symbols like wicked Christmas ornaments. Then there were the weird indentations in the dirt. Throughout the site was a sour, skunky smell. He didn’t give many clues as to where this site was, but given the description, I could narrow it down to a couple square miles of land. Besides, what other leads on the midwest bigfoot did I have?

As any seasoned hunter knows, sasquatches, swamp apes, Ohio dog men, the Loveland Frog, and other paranormal phenomena are most active in the early morning. I loaded my camouflage, german-engineered tactical backpack full of the usual supplies: a 1978 Canon F1 with several lenses (which many experts attest is the best camera for capturing the paranormal), 6 rolls of monochromatic