Please Help

I’m going to start this off the only way I know how.

I’m being followed by something I’m not sure is human.

I know that whoever reads this is going to ask, “WTF?  Why is this guy making a blog about himself being stalked instead of calling the cops?  A blog?  That makes no fucking sense!”  You’re right, for the most part.  I know this is a sudden slap in the face.  I’m pouring my own issues out into the dark abyss that is the internet without seeming to have any right to.  I do have an answer to that question, but it’s a bit long.  The short version is that I need your help.

Do I know you?  No.  You are one among many who may have found this page through means I do not know.  You don’t know a thing about me, and I almost feel uncomfortable addressing you as ‘you’.  But you are a you, and you can help, whoever you are.

So here’s the long version.

Ten years ago I was enrolled in a summer program at a local park.  It was your usual little-kid shit.  We’d play team games in the woods and do leadership activities.  Stuff to get a kid going on the right track after a couple years of school.  None of you have probably heard about this because the local news did as much to cover it up as the could (called it a horrible tragedy and didn’t want to publicize it) but there was a fire one night.  It was during the scheduled sleepover in the rec building.  Only a few kids made it out alive, and most of them died in the hospital.

I was awake that night because I’d seen something in the woods earlier that day, and it scared me so much that I couldn’t go to sleep.  Every time I closed my eyes, my thoughts strayed, and eventually this image was right there waiting for me.  It’s still hard to put into words… but if you’ve ever imagined what it would be like for a person and a tree to become the same thing, it’s close.  Stick thin, tall, looked like it -was- the woods.  But it wasn’t.  It was only a glimpse, far in the distance, but I knew that it was wrong.

So I couldn’t sleep.

27 kids died in that fire, 4 of them in the hospital.  27 kids whose parents would never see their babies grow up to live their own lives.  27 deaths, and I made it out.  I was awake when it started.  The moments before I found myself sitting outside, staring it wide-eyed horror at the blaze are still hazy to the point where I barely know that it happened in the first place.  But there I was.

I know by this point, many of you have stopped reading.  What few are left are wondering what the point of all this is.  I’m begging you to give me a little faith and continue, please.

My parents took me to a therapist in the months that followed.  They thought the event had traumatized me, and I suppose it had.  What really bothered me wasn’t the fire, or the death.  That bothered me in later years, still bothers me.  What I couldn’t get out of my mind was that image of a pale face swaying among the trees.  I never told any of this to the therapist.  A few months later, I was out again, a normal child.

Now it’s ten years later, and I need your help because I need information that I can’t get.  The ten year anniversary of the Iverson fire had me bedridden with the worst fever of my life, and after forgetting that image at long last, there it was again, resting on the backs of my eyelids just waiting for me to close my eyes.  Vivid visions of a man who was not a man, who did not have the face or form of a man, gazing at me from wherever I looked.

It’s two weeks later, and I swear to God Almighty that in that time, I’ve seen it.  A flash here, a quick glance there, from across the street or across the farm fields that dominate Wisconsin.  I don’t like going outside anymore because woods surround my house, and they all… look like it.

A couple years ago, I read about a phenomenon on the internet.  People called it .  Now I know that some of you reading this have heard of it, because as I recall, it was a pretty big thing.  Some people thought it was real, and I’m starting to think it could be too -- I never made the connection at the time because my thoughts had been far, far away from that fire for years.  But now my situation has taken a turn for the bizarre, and I need your help.  I can’t find this information on my own anymore.  Any site I try to access with those words will not load.  I’ve tried Firefox, Chrome, Opera, I’ve cleared out my cookies and run anti-viruses, but I can’t find any explanation.  I know there are pages upon pages of this thing, and I know there were blogs that drew the attention of others, but I can’t get to any of them.  This is why I’m writing this out.  I’m sure there’s a connection, maybe an explanation, but I need you to share it with me.

Please leave anything you have in the comments.