#in loving memory of pee sauna

[archonfurina]

I'm really bored this evening so I decided to answer the questions I sent my taglist earlier. (If you want to be tagged in quizzes, picrews, etc, like that post!)

𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭…

01. a character you love. — her secret loneliness really struck a chord with me. she's used to putting on a cheery front & pretending everything is okay, which i can relate to.

02. your favourite food from your culture. — karelian pies originated from the karelia region, which russia took from us. the pastry is made from rye dough and stuffed with rice porridge. they're best served with egg butter, and it's really delicious.

03. what your dream apartment / room / house is like. — a small apartment that's easy to clean, but still has enough living space and is modern and minimalistic. i want a bedroom, a balcony for my cats, and maybe a sauna. i would love to have a couch, but because of my cat's peeing i probably can't.

04. your personal style or aesthetic. — i'm pretty basic most of the time. i wear leggings and a top and a cardigan. sometimes i actually put some effort into my looks and wear a skirt or a dress. in other things my aesthetic changes a lot. i like cutesy style but i'm also into witchcore.

05. a happy memory. — it was either mallorca or cyprus, our hotel had stables close by and me and my sister went riding a couple of times. instead of someone else guiding the horse and walking in a big circle like i expected, we went free riding on a forest trail. it was the first time i ever rode in the nature and it was amazing. the trail wasn't the easiest one, it had several steep climbs, which was also surprising.

06. your favourite way(s) to spend time. — playing video games, making gifs or graphics.

07. story behind your url / title / quote / description / icon. — everything else is self-explanatory (i like furina) but my title 'you're the brightest star in my universe' is something i came up myself. it's about a thai actor i used to like a lot, plan rathavit.

08. something that comforts you or brings you joy. — my otp. furina and neuvillette.

09. what you’re looking forward to. — SUMMER! i've had enough of winter. i want to see the sun every week. i want to go swimming in a lake. i want to wear shorts and sandals. i want to use sunscreen and a big hat. i want to feel the warmth on my skin, and see the beautiful nature blossom.

10. something else that’s important to you. — you reading this.

#personal #💚.txt

[socially-awkward-noodle]

So the videos today got me thinking (beyond the fact that I had to have my phone and laptop running at the same time to get both sides of the conversation instead of disjointed sentences and long silences 👀)

My interpretation of the meaning behind Unus Annus

The channel in and of itself became like a living breathing human. We saw laughter, we saw pain, we saw joy and terror. Many complex human emotions wrapped up in dumb little videos like brick soccer and pee sauna 🤣

Through seeing these videos and having that experience with Mark and Ethan we got attached to them and the channel. The channel became a friend that we could call up at 1am and go do stupid things with for the sake of doing them(in a sense). Small moments in time captured in a year of life, slowly creeping by. Each video a memory, each dumb joke or profound word became poignant the closer the end came. Much like losing a loved one or a best friend we became attached to the idea of it or the emotions, or both. It became in a sense alive.

When channels and content creators become big like this (even though Mark and Ethan had and still have their own substantial following) a parasocial bond is formed (blame us being pack animals or some big brain sciency thing if you want) that allows us to become attached to something intangible.

Mark and Ethan created a person out of this channel that was born, grew up, and died in front of us and all we have left are the memories that were created. There were millions of us watching this and it bonded us closer together experiencing this and having a quasi friend in it, we mourn together over its death.

So while yes the content itself that was on the channel may have not been ridiculously meaningful, the feeling it created throughout and especially the closer to the end did. Ephemeral as it was it was a friend who taught us about death, we cared for it, we cried with it, we rejoiced with it, and now we mourn without it.

Memento Mori, my friends.

Unus Annus

#markiplier #crankgameplays #unus annus #two year anniversary #memento mori #I hope this makes sense I haven’t slept yet and it’s 5:30am just got done watching their videos and I’m feeling a little sad #I had to write this down before I forgot what I was trying to say lmao

[septic-dr-schneep]

Only Unus Annus fans can have a casual conversation about purchasing piss bottles while waiting in a line XD

#crankgameplays #unus annus #in loving memory of pee sauna #i have to do this show

[chaoticfvckingdisaster]

Hello.

It is the Unus Annus anniversary and I am fuCKING EMOTIONAL

So I will be ranting.

Proceed at your own risk

Unus Annus was such an inspiration to me, and I'm sure a to lot of other people. I never got to finish all of the videos, and that is something I will probably always regret. I was a fan of Mark and Ethan before, but I would've never considered this. I didn’t find Unus Annus at the beginning, I stuck in the middle and rode out through the end.

Unus Annus really had two main messages that stick out to me. They both help different people. One is that the clock is always ticking, and you will never get a single second back. One quote from the final live-stream really struck me in the gut when I heard it the first time. "Seconds turn into minutes that turn into hours that turn into weeks that turn into months that turn into years." And now that I'm thinking about it, that point was so properly explained when a whole year went by without me even really noticing. It's been a year since I stayed in my room all day to watch that live-stream. It feels like 2 months ago. It feels like 50 years have passed. Another quote really got into my head.

"Imagine if you gave yourself one year. To do one thing. Not the craziness that was Unus Annus, but one thing. One year can change your life."

Idk who knows this, but I'm an author. I've been working on the same book series for... 2 years now? And I don't even have a decent outline except for a vague idea. So, purely because of this quote, starting at new years (2022), I will be dedicating 1 year to work on my book. 

The second meaning didn’t really apply to me personally. The main idea of Unus Annus was that you have to enjoy something while it lasts, because it will always end and will only exist in your memory. It was really a reality check for people who were used to forms of media (books, shows, movies, yt channels) that lasted forever, cause in this day and age things just don’t go away. But that was the thing, Unus Annus was gone. Everything around it was being painstakingly and carefully paved into cement,  but it was scratched into a random piece of wood by two 12 year old boys out playing in the woods. Its not forever, it’s not going to be set in stone, just like everything else. Nothing is set in stone, everything will leave or die or be forgotten eventually, and that’s what Unus Annus taught people. And I think that’s beautiful. It helped people dealing with losses in their own lives. I’ve so many stories online of people who had a loved one pass away that hit them hard, and Unus Annus helped them by both being hilarious and consistent, but also talking about the inevitability of death and how we can’t stop it, we can only accept it. 

Unus Annus was by no means a dramatic, poetic masterpiece of a channel. It was a shit-post channel, was what it was. It was two idiots with a camera doing as much as they could in one year. You expect this to be poetic? These idiots stuck themselves inside a cryo-chamber, made molds of each others faces, put fake feet into their pants and made a fucking pee sauna, for goodness sake. This channel was a disaster. And that’s what was amazing about it. It was brilliant, it wasn’t beautifully put together by geniuses focused on only humanities mortality. This was created by two best friends laughing in a restaurant. This was two chaotic man-childs trying to summon demons, messing around with sex toys, and singing bullshit songs. (”iT’s tHe dAnCe oF iTaLy, wOaH WoAh woAH”) It doesn’t have to be Deep™ and Old™. It was beautiful the way it was, ADHD bastard having-a-mental-breakdown-half-the-time Ethan “S- skittle-? skrittle-? no-” Nestor and  I-literally-hate-you-so-much-but-only-i-can-insult you Mark “dOn’T tOuCh mE” Fischbach. 

Unus Annus’s message is really amazing. They made me view everything in a different light. If a death can bittersweet, no death was more then that of Unus Annus. It’s like an old friend I lost but instead of them reaching out to me or asking for help, they’re gone, and that’s all there is it to it. They’re content and I’m content. Now I must live my life like they taught me.

My greatest accomplishment in life is that out of the 8 billion people on this planet, I was one of the only 1.5 million people that were watching when the clock struck 0. I’ve heard so many stories about that night. People watching it on their tv, people in a video call with their friends all crying, people sitting together in their living room, screaming the countdown. For me, I was sitting alone in my dark bedroom at 2 am. I wasn’t supposed to be awake, but how was I supposed to miss this? I was crying at the end, I think. It’s kinda blurry. I remember leaning forward, my clasped hands pressed to my lips, as I intently watched my phone screen. My world was ending. And yet, my world was just beginning. I still remember the first words that came out of my mouth when the channel was gone. The first thing I said, after all that. 

“You motherfuckers. 

You motherfuckers. You did it. You actually did it.” 

Because they did it. They followed through. And not like ‘oh wow you actually deleted it’, but they followed through. Do you know how much determination that takes? They posted a video everyday, a majority of the time needing them going over to Mark’s house, during the middle of the pandemic. And they posted every day for a whole year. Not to mention having to be consistent on their own channels.  And then followed through with their promise to delete everything. That takes a level of determination you just don’t usually see in youtube today. 

Anyway, this post has gotten way too long.  Unus Annus touched my soul and changed me in so many ways. It was and still is such a big and amazing part of my life. It truly was a masterpiece that meant so, so much to me and a lot of other people. Truly, nothing will ever compare to it. It cannot be recreated. It was a first, and it will go down in youtube history. And I really, really hope people don’t forget about the miracle youtube channel that was Unus Annus. 

#unus annus #memento mori #ethan nestor #crankgameplays #mark fischbach #markiplier #camp unus annus #i wish i could write research papers with this much passion

[grungepoetica]

Memento Vivere: a reflection on Unus Annus

I’ve never mentioned this on Tumblr - hell, I’m a nobody on this site anyway - but I’m a huge fan of the YouTube channel Unus Annus. I saw Mark and Ethan’s introduction video right when the channel started last November, and it fascinated me. A channel made by two gamers I like, with the explicit purpose of being deleted after a year? And a mostly serious pitch? What could it possibly be?

I went to the channel and saw that the only other video that had been posted was called “Cooking with Sex Toys,” and I subscribed, thinking it was just going to be a silly source of Markiplier Makes-style humor with a healthy side of “we can be edgy and do whatever we want because it’ll be gone soon.” But now Unus Annus is about to be deleted, and I’ve realized that that’s not what the channel was at all.

It’s more than that.

A few months before Unus Annus launched, I was watching Into the Spiderverse at a local summer camp for young writers with a bunch of my friends. It was the last night of my last summer at the camp, my last summer as a teenager. My mom had been sick with cancer for several years, and by this time, we knew that she would be gone by Christmas.

While watching the movie I was painfully aware that I was living through the end of a huge part of my life, an end that I never thought would come. But it didn’t scare me. I didn’t want to change anything. I was with people I loved, we were enjoying ourselves and each other’s company, and in that moment I had complete confidence that I had the entire world in front of me, and no matter what happened, even when the movie ended and we all had to go home and face our normal lives, I would be okay.

I think that’s the lesson people should take from Unus Annus. We all discovered the channel at different times in a crazy, world-shifting year, and we made a community around it. We found a group of people to laugh and share memes with, created a safe place to crash and make some memories. The ending didn’t feel like it would ever arrive.

And it’s alright that the end is here now, because we’re at the end with each other. The channel will die, but we get to appreciate the little things that happened along the way.

Obviously, in the grand scheme of it all, appreciating the little things is much easier said than done. My mom’s death was hard to handle, and COVID quarantine and the renewed presence of police brutality in the media have re-triggered a lot of issues from my past. I've been thinking about changing my major, asking myself why I'm truly in college and why I’m running on autopilot even when I'm happy. I’ve spent most of my life wanting to stop the clock and rewind, make things different. But my mom lived the same way, and it made her miserable, and if there’s anything this year has taught me, it’s that life doesn't wait for you to make it happen. It marches on whether you like it or not, and it's your job to find something enjoyable within the dark.

And you can enjoy stupid things. Make breakfast with sex toys if you want, do the Dance of Italy at random times, build all the pillow forts you can, drink a can of Del Monte corn, sit in a pee sauna. Be so unapologetically alive that people think you’ve gone feral. See what you can handle.

Because yeah, you will die. You’ll die a hundred times as one part of your life blurs into the next. But in between each death, you get to be present in the world and live. You get to hold onto the memories you’ve made and keep going. And when you die permanently, the people you’ve shared your life with get to carry the memory of you.

In other words, just like Annus said in Accepting the Truth, “you will go on.”

Memento mori. Memento vivere.

~~~~~~

I know this was really sappy and probably more dramatic than the channel was ever intended to be, but @markiplier and @crankgameplays, thank you so much for being your goofy selves and making such fun content, both on Unus Annus and on your own. I have a feeling we’ll all remember it for a long time. I know I will <3

#unus annus #memento mori #markiplier #crankgameplays #mark fischbach #ethan nestor #i'm just really going to miss unus annus okay #my thoughts #expect more of this #memento vivere #unusannus

[kae--art]

Dear Ethan & Mark,

It has been one hell of a year. Let's just put it at that. I've been there since the beginning. Well, since the first month, but I watched the first four weeks in less than a week. Your videos were just too funny for me to not watch and procrastinate while watching them. I would have typed this last night, but even Twitter has a limit to how much you can write down at a time.

No words can express how I feel when I think about Unus Annus and the last moments we all had together during that live stream. I missed three hours, I never saw the end of the stream, I never saw the inside of the casket, but that's okay. It's okay that I missed it because it's my fault I fell asleep. It was inevtiable and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Through this letter I give to you, as I write this on the way to Kingston, ON, Canada, I am finally able to accept that Unus Annus is now gone.

There are so many memories in my head from the videos I have watched and frantically watched in the last week. I finally got to see Pee Sauna on the live stream, so I say thank you for that (but seriously, I feel so bad people were hounding you to do it). I would love to mention some of my favourtie videos, but I can't remember every single title. I wish I had a better memory sometimes, but I just got to accept that, right? So let me list my favourite videos. Some of them I remember the title to. Some of them I don't, so I will describe those videos to you and maybe you will remember them too.

Some of my favourite videos were 'We Bought A Camera That Can See Inside Us', 'Goat Yoga', 'Cooking With Sxx Toys', 'We Got Pepper Sprayed" (I couldn't watch you guys go through that. It looked so inceredibly painful and I wanted to cry a little), 'We Create A Sensory Deprevation Tank', 'Blood Bath', 'We Look At Your Unus Annus Memes", "The Good Kind Of Cupping', 'The Bad Kind Of Cupping', etc. Wow, I guess I could remember some of the titles. It just took me a bit.

Like I said at the beginning, it has been one hell of a year and it probably has been one of the best years I have experiened with the crazy shit you posted everyday until yesterday at Midnight (1am where I am from). It defenitley cheered me up during this time and it cheered up other people as well I bet. You guys made this one heck of a year and I'm happy I got something out of this shitty year.

You guys as Unus and Annus made me realize that no matter where I go, wheither I'm watching Youtube, doing school, heck even as I write this letter while I'm on the road, time passes by and there is no way to stop the clock. It's impossible. There is no such thing as the past, just memories.

I watched the stream around 4-11:05pm yesterday before falling asleep. There were some really funny moments, tear jerking moments, and moments that made me burst into tears. The live stream was amazing and I'm so happy that you guys have made yesterday the best and only closing to Unus Annus.

Your inspiring words have helped me to move foward. Accept Unus Annus is gone (Ethan how dare you compare the channel dying to your dog being put down! That made me cry because I had to put my cat down last Christmas Eve and it hasn't been a year yet and I still haven't let go of him yet). Your words inspired me so much during that stream, I started crying because I knew it was true and it was hard to accept.

You guys have no idea how much you have inspired me this entire year and especially during that first and last live stream on Unus Annus. Like I said, your words moved me so much. Your words moved me to the point I started crying. That's how much you inspired me throughout this last year. I was inspired so much, I decided to expand my Youtube channel and start something new with it when I can as soon as possible.

Thank you Ethan. Thank you Mark. Thank you Amy. Thank you to everyone who made Unus Annus as amazing and humourous as it was. I even say thank you to Chica and Spencer for adding adorablness to every video they were in. Thank you my fellow Portuguese (I'm Canadian - Portuguese as my Grandpa and Great Grand parents are from the Azores) Vincent and Lixian for inspiring me to continue to practice my editing skills. Your editing skills are amazing and funny. The horror elements both of you added to the videos along with Rachel and Marcus were amazing. I loved every part of those editing compilations yesterday. Vincent, your song was awesome! I loved it!

Anyway, there is so much more I would love to say, but like the end of Unus Annus, this letter has to end as well. Like I have said twice already, it has been one hell of a year. I keep saying it because it's true. You all did crazy shit, but that's what made Unus Annus special and Unique. My memory lies within my pocket watch that I will carry with me everywhere now. I am sorry this letter is so long, but I cannot express my words even if I posted a thread on Twitter. It's just too much for Twitter honestly. I will be posting my final Unus Annus fanart no matter if I'm a day left. You're in my memories, and I can refrence from that and all the memes that the viewers created.

I hope you get to see that fanart along with this letter. All I can say now, is thank you. I'll put a link if you want to check out my Youtube channel and for any viewers for who would like to visit my channel. I would really appercitate it if you could check it out.

Unus Annus

Momento Mori

From,

One of Your Viewers, Kaela

#unus annus #memonto mori #youtube

[starrdustkitten]

I'm honestly not ready for unus annus to end.. The more I keep thinking about it and knowing that we only have less than two weeks left, the more I keep realizing how I'm still not ready to let go?

I am excited to see what happens next and everything that is to come afterwards but still.. I know I'm going to cry when the channel is deleted. There were so many fantastic, funny, cursed and wholesome memories made through ua - from the very first video to "don't tell Amy" to pee sauna to the quarantine videos to camp unus annus to the abandoned house videos and to now. Plus, seeing everyone's concepts and creations (edits, gifs, art, writing, memes, etc.) after an upload was always really lovely!! I know I'm going to get extra gushy™ but I've met many absolutely wonderful people through the channel as well and I wouldn't have had that any other way. Seriously, I'm super grateful to this channel for not only the memories we made there and how it's been a source of joy, but for being able to meet some absolutely amazing, fantastic, caring, supportive, wholesome, heart-warming, talented and wonderful people!! :') I am getting more gushy™ by the second but seriously, that's the truth. 💜 I'll be forever grateful for all of that. 💜

I know that once the channel is gone, it's going to be so weird at the start. I've always looked forward to seeing a notification for a new upload or scurrying off to YouTube at around 8PM GMT to see what they got up to on unus annus and it became a routine to always make some time to watch the videos. However, after the channel ends it's going to be so different..

I'm definitely going to miss unus annus, when the time's up and it ends, but I am honestly and will forever be truly really thankful for all of the memories we all made through the channel. Also it will be really fun to always see the phrase "Memento Mori" and constantly think of unus annus or see something which reminds me of the channel - even if it's simply just a black and white spiral shdhshdhs

I'm still not ready for it to end but the good side is that we'll still have the memories we all made through the channel, together. 💜

#//the void rambles #unus annus #long post #me getting emotional and gushy? it's more likely than ya think #I am once again still not ready shdhsjdh :')

[charlottecoven]

My Top 10 Favorite Unus Annus Videos

1.) Ethan Finally Becomes a MAN

2.) Pee Sauna

3.) The Unus Annus Space Program

4.) 2 Idiots Get Crushed by 18-Foot Giant Snakes

5.) 2 Truths & 1 Lie - Waxing Edition

6.) We Eat Bugs

7.) DIY Boob

8.) We Attempt To Make Pottery Without Amy’s Help

9.) This Is The Most Dangerous Children’s Toy Ever Made (Bloonies)

10.) Mark Breaks His Nose On An Arial Hoop

I love these videos so much, it was hard to pick these to rank. This was pretty much based on the videos I gravitate toward when I’m just browsing the channel. I’m so thankful for the memories myself and my dad and brother have made watching these videos together 💞

#unus annus #team unus #team annus #markiplier #crankgameplays #mark fischbach #ethan nestor #amy peebles #amy nelson #memento mori #camp unus annus

[sending-the-message]

Case #2- Youtube's Most Mysterious Vlogger Part 2 by JacobMielke

(Note: this is an update to my second case. To read Part 1, click here )

For the first two days, Moxxy didn’t answer my texts. Unusual for her, because she is very much a phone in hand kind of gal, but I let it go. Everyone needs space sometimes, right? On the third day she didn’t show for our coffee date and I tried calling her phone. A recorded message told me the number was disconnected. Then I began to worry. On day seven, after spending every minute I could at her favorite hangouts in hopes of seeing her, I decided something was definitely wrong.

I went to the police station to file a missing person's report and ended up making a fool of myself. We’d only known each other for about a month and a half and I’d yet to learn her address or any of her family’s names or even her last name. All I had was a defunct phone number, first name (Molly, which she hated, hence why she went by Moxxy) and description. I hoped that would be enough as Moxxy’s red hair and distinctive tattoos (of things like pokemon and Linda Blair’s face) stood out in a crowd, but apparently not. Without more information, there was nothing the police could do, though the sergeant promised to keep an eye out for her.

It didn’t matter anyway because I realized that night this was something the police couldn’t solve. They dealt in the material and their monsters were flesh and blood villains who followed the strict rules of the physical world. My monsters were more unpredictable.

I’ve never been the type to pay attention to dates unless I need to, and when I got home that day, I looked at a calendar for the first time in about a week. Then it clicked. The day Moxxy stopped texting me was July 11th, 2015. The anniversary of Scott Eric Cranston’s murder. And we’d wrapped up the case of Opperyke, the ghostly Youtuber, the week before. Or so I thought.

It was a hell of a coincidence, and I was rapidly losing my belief in coincidences.

I did fret at first that maybe I was wasting time chasing a supernatural explanation but what else could I do? Though I called myself an investigator, I wasn’t trained in any way. If the cops couldn’t find her, how could I? But I was the only one who could put the supernatural clues together, and I had to do something, even if Moxxy’s disappearance turned out to be a horror more suited to the world of police and sex traffickers and psychotic murderers.

The first step was to comb through the data we’d collected and see if there was anything relevant. It was a long shot, but thoroughness is a virtue. I made a to-do list on a sheet of paper (yes, I know that’s ridiculous given the context. I have mild ADD and a physical list helps keep me focused) and at the top I wrote the name of Opperyke’s hometown. Maybe I could find his address or family.

Next I opened the copy of Opperyke’s last video to see if he’d mentioned anything that could lead me. I’m not ashamed to admit revisiting the video filled me with dread. The last time I watched it, I had disturbing nightmares that turned out to have real world implications.

And that was before I knew I was watching and listening to a dead man speak.

I played the video but something was wrong. The image distorted, breaking Opperyke’s face into dozens of different colored lines on the screen. The audio was completely shot as well, just sounds and tones. I was about to click away when I heard a more discernible voice. It was quiet, but it clearly wasn’t Opperyke’s. I rewound that part again and again at maximum volume, trying to make it out.

“...how did...where...you and...I...help me...me, please!...Jacob!”

It was a woman’s voice. With the distortion, I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure it was Moxxy… but come on. It was Moxxy. I think anyone would have known the same in my shoes.

I didn’t know how, but there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind that Opperyke was responsible for Moxxy’s disappearance. What baffled me was the sheer scale of the act. As a rule, ghosts are mostly harmless. They can barely work up the energy needed to open a door. For one to kidnap Moxxy, even if it’d somehow been in her exact location when it happened, defied reason.

Of course, that led to a possibility I really didn’t want to consider: maybe Opperyke wasn’t a ghost at all.

It wasn’t difficult to track down Opperyke’s next of kin. There weren’t many people living in Marietta, Ohio with the surname Cranston and I tracked down the Facebook profile of Melinda Cranston, Opperyke’s mother, within minutes. She didn’t post much; most of what I saw on her timeline were memorial posts for her deceased son and husband (how horrible for her to lose her son and husband in so short a time) and the occasional shared pie recipe. She wasn’t very cautious with her personal information. Her “about me” section contained her address and phone number, among other things.

I called her number and she answered on the first ring, which wasn’t nearly enough time for me to overcome my social anxiety.

“Hello?” Her voice was raspy and I hazarded a guess that she was at least a two pack a day smoker. That, or she had laryngitis.

“Hello, Ms. Cranston. My name is Jacob Mielke, I’m an author and I’m researching your son for an article I’m writing. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions?”

There was silence on the other end of the line and I almost thought the call dropped before Ms. Cranston angrily retorted: “My son’s tragedy is not some piece of gossip for you vultures to jump on. He isn’t a gimmick, or an urban legend, or a true crime story. He was a person. Can’t his memory get any goddamn respect?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Cranston, I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“This is the real world. What you mean doesn’t actually mean shit.”

“Please, this is important. Someone’s life is at stake and I think your son may be involved.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Please, I want to know your son’s secret!” I don’t know why I blurted that out. It was an even more inappropriate thing to say to a grieving mother than the rest of the conversation (which was poorly handled, in hindsight). But it worked. Ms. Cranston was silent for several moments and when she spoke again, the anger was gone from her voice.

“Why did you say that?”

Things started to piece together in my head. “I think you know why. You’ve heard your son say it before, haven’t you?”

“That thing is not my son!”

“I know. I think it took my friend. I need to know more about it. Maybe if I figure out what it is, I can stop it. Maybe I can get her back.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know. Do you know where I live? You have to come here. There’s things you need to see.”

She refused to give further information than that over the phone, so there was no choice. I bought a Greyhound bus ticket (which wiped out my savings due to the short notice) for the next day. I called off work and told everyone I was going on a fishing trip. It was a tense journey and the longest part of it, Chicago, IL to Cleveland, Ohio, was spent in the company of a young man who didn’t believe in showering more than twice a month and had spent the entire previous night at a rave (and if I had to wager a guess, I’d say they raved in a sauna).

I had to hike part of the way to the Cranston house once I’d exhausted every possible public transportation option. When I got there, I found the door had been marked off with police tape. I spotted a man walking his dog on the road and asked what happened.

“Melinda Cranston had a heart attack. She called 911 and when the ambulance got there she was already dead. Damn shame, she was a great lady.”

Ms. Cranston was getting on in her years. It wasn’t unusual for a woman her age to suffer a cardiac arrest. As for the timing, well… coincidence? You know, that circumstance that I was sure didn’t actually exist?

Someone knocked on my motel room door later that night. There was no one there when I answered but a book was left in the hallway. It was bound in purple faux-leather and the first page identified it as Melinda Cranston’s diary. Someone had scrawled on the page: DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MY SECRET?

Some of the pages were marked with post-it notes. I turned to the first one.

Dec. 20th, 2012 One day until the end of the world apparently! I’m so glad Scott doesn’t believe that nonsense. He still insists something major is going to happen but at least he’s not throwing away his savings or anything foolish like that. Misty from down the street said…

I skimmed through the rest of the entry, which read like a love letter to a neighbor from a closet lesbian. Interesting, but not what I needed. I turned to the next posted page.

Dec. 21st, 2012 The world didn’t end! What a surprise! Not a thing happened… though Scott doesn’t seem to think so. He says that on days like this one, different worlds are closer together and sometimes things can come through. Like Halloween, I guess? I don’t know. He’s watching too many weird movies or something.

Feb. 3rd, 2013 I thought Scott let his little fantasies go. He didn’t talk about them at all last month but today he said he found a place where something came through. Apparently he was in Noonan Park walking the trails earlier and he found some creepy stone house or something. I swear, I don’t know how his mind works anymore.

There was something in my room with me. Call it my sixth sense or whatever, but I could tell I wasn’t alone. It came with the diary, I was sure of it.

March 13th, 2013 I’m so worried about Scott. He doesn’t talk, he barely eats. He just stays in his room all day. Lately he’s been talking about doing all the things he always wanted to do, like skydiving or starting that video channel of his. Should I talk to a doctor about this? I’m so scared my baby’s going to take his own life. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened.

May 20th, 2013 There was someone in Scott’s room last night. I woke up and needed to pee and while I was walking down the hall I heard him crying. Someone was talking to him. They asked if he wanted to know a secret.

That was the last entry in the diary. It was enough to piece together a rough estimation of what happened. Scott had a fixation with finding entities from other dimensions and believed something would happen on Dec. 21st, 2012 that would allow those entities passage to our dimension. He also believed he tracked down a location where one of those entities crossed over, a house in a park. Smart money was on him being correct in his theory, only the entity he found followed him back. From the sound of it, it was malevolent enough and strong enough to kill him and perhaps others (like Ms. Cranston).

There were still things I didn’t understand, like why did the entity carry on Scott’s dream of having a Youtube channel? And why was it leading me to the house in the park (it was clear to me by now this was the case)? If it wanted to kill me or teach me it’s “secret”, why the convoluted plan? It was strong enough to kill a human being and abduct another (I refused to believe she dead. Her absence didn’t make sense unless she was alive). Couldn’t it just come to me?

I looked up directions to Noonan Park. It was about ten miles from the motel, easily reachable on foot. I’d follow the trails and find the house. Whatever came next, I’d deal with it and hopefully at the end of the tunnel, I’d find Moxxy. Alive and safe.

The story of Mielke Investigation’s second case will conclude in Part 3. Read about our first case here . If you’d like updates on when the next posts are up, follow my author page here .

#reddit #nosleep #scary #story

[themaraudingmisfits-blog]

The one with all the camping

Bucket lists, that pretty piece of paper filled to the brim with things we want to do, places we want to see, fears we want to conquer…most of them end up resembling a pinterest board full of pretty things and then there’s that ominous deadline of to do before I die which kinda really lessens the chances of us ever doing any of those things, what with most of us vying to be a better procrastinator than the other…BUTT if you have mad urges and a restless spirit and if your throw in some crazier than thou friends into the mix then CHEEEHOOO!!! You cupcake are gonna be ticking things off that list faster than your chubby hands can touch the base of that big tub of gooey caramelized popcorn!! And that is eggactly how we ended up going CAMPINNNGGGGGGG!!!(Hopefully your heads are still reverberating from the screechy echo that made).

Now y’all gonna be like, “Oh gawd, she’s gonna bore us with more gibber gabber about her trip and tell us how to set up a campfire without roasting off that perfect perm and how to not get entangled in your own tent and not to follow the poop trails with little grizzly bear bells in them”. BUTTT WEIGHT, I’m not gonna do that folks. Instead I’m going to bore you with swoon-worthy accounts of my camping trip which was completely poison ivy and bear attack free.

After a week of mid terms which were seriously messing with our long periods of doing nothingness, that brochure from Campper** was a godsend, it was just the kind of break we were looking for, a camping trip to Mankulam (near Munnar, Idukki), by the waterfalls overlooking never ending hills with bonfires and tents , all those goody goody treats my childhood backyard camping trips with moms shawls (masquerading as my tent) didn’t have.

We set off at about my post breakfast siesta time so we could make it in time for the complimentary lunch(raising eyebrows in that cool way).  The drive was along narrow roads, the hillsides lush and glistening under the sun, baby monkeys playing peekaboo and miles and miles of unending tea estates. Three hours and winding roads,  Ashik in the driver’s seat and the horrendous no siesta situation got to me though and I was a woozy nauseous mess by the time we got there but as soon as they opened their gates I was pretty gung ho about camping again.

We got out of the slightly stuffy and air conditioned insides to the fresh, breezy and clear air of the mountains, a welcome relief for us city dwellers. We oohed and aahed at the view, entranced by the witcheries of the misty mountains, the beckoning breeze and the trees dancing to their music, bubbling little brooks sparkling blithely nearby, the adorable homely tents and wait….the sounds of a roaring waterfall!! Wowieee!! EXPECTATIONS??? EXCEEDED!! We had our qualms about camping after our last “incident” and we dared not expect anything more than a plain old vanilla flavored ice cream situation but these guys gave us an ice cream sundae with our pick of toppings and a smear of chocolate!!

Ain’t the view pretty?? 

The gorgeouus waterfalls at our campsite!!

While my heart was doing a triple flip they brought in the complimentary lunch (I should stop saying complimentary right?). The owner’s grandmamma had cooked us up an amazing traditional Kerala meal much to the great skippety doo daa of our hungry tummies. She even sent us a huge bunch of bananas from her backyard thinking either that it’d be a nice wholesome snack for weary travelers or she just spot on guessed that we’re a bunch of monkeys. While our insatiable hunger was being soothed with the wholesome food, plans were bing made for us by the sweet people at the campsite. They were all ready with a jeep and loads of towels and some more bananas, ready to whisk us off to Some “secret” spot nearby…After an an unforgettably bumpy ride in an indestructible jeep with an amazing driver on a road which was more uphill than your average Joe steepy ones( the jeep was basically making its way up a non-existent hillside path), we finally got to our very own private multi-million dollar Jacuzzi/ shower/hot tub/…..faainnee…we didn’t get there but what awaited us was a secluded waterfall with pristine clear water, cold enough to make your teeth chatter, deep into the woods cloaked by a deep silence only broken by the sounds of our revelry.

How we got there: And we made several stopovers on the way, by rivers and hanging bridges and we even rode through a rivulet…

My very own sauna….If this were mine forever I’d take more baths…

Us water babies goofing around….

As much as I love places like Athirapally and the lot, I hate the tourists, the snack munching, giggling, loud, overly dressed up tourists. It sorta takes the joy out of going places. This, this was a different cup of tea by itself, covered by dense foliage, no prying eyes, the clean freshwater… We splashed about and frolicked to our hearts content till dusk and headed back to the base camp.

What awaited us was pure magic, as dusk turned to shadowy darkness and our tv-addicted eyes adjusted themselves, we were greeted by a bejeweled sky.

Calvin sure got that right…They’re like little bits of magic strewn all across the never sky…We just sat there, stargazing, losing all sense of time, normalcy and reality seemed a figment of our imagination. I for one was all warmed up inside being surrounded by some of the best people in my life and open starry skies and entrancing music, it was way better than all the dreaming  of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings I’m prone to doing at all times to the annoyance of everyone I know.

Our reverie was broken by a shout out to go check out aanakulam, a sort of teen hangout spot for elephants. Driving through the same places we went by daylight was just super spooky at night, the friendly mountains now took us back to instances from The hills have eyes and that my dears is not something you want to recall when you’re out at that time   on stranded hill roads.

When you’re pee-in-your-pants sacred think of funny puddy tats

We got to Anakulam though without any blood curdling incidents but it turned out to be a disappointing night ride coz there were no huge herd of elephants at the watering hole only a lone baby elephant who was pretty shy what with all the noise we were making and the glaring headlights of our jeep . But we were told that locals have  have seen a herd of 90 on certain moonlit nights, I guess we’re not the lucky kind. Sigh…But we got to take a nice snack break to quiet our rumbling tummies from the little tea shop nearby and we went back as a happy troop humming old tunes and thinking happy thoughts.

B y the time we got back we were ravenously hungry and gorged on the flavorsome and gravilicious chicken curry and fluffy rotis   meanwhile, the men were busy setting up the bonfire. Soon there was a blazing fire and we were drawn towards it, what followed was a night of mirth and frolic, with dancing and games of charades (which I lost miserably) . The embers turned a pretty shade of glowing reds and oranges, and there were tiny spurts and burps of flames trying to lick our little toes which were getting all warmed up…there’s something about fires which wakes up sleeping dragons and roaring phoenixes and unfulfilled dreams and they all march on with blazing spirits in your mind and these thoughts lingered on in my mind as the fire died out and I was back to bracing myself against the cuttingly cold winds which came in with their whoosh noises, rocking the dear pine trees and our little tents back and forth.  

There were yawns and shivers and sleepy eyes from the most of us and we turned in for the night. We were lulled to sleep by Mommy nature herself, the misty moonlit night, the chilly breeze and the roaring waterfall humming it’s night song, the cicadas chirping away to glory…the best sleep I’ve gotten in ages I’d say.

Our very own tent!! And yea… us smiling away goofily….

Sadly, there was no beautiful sunrise to wake up to, coz most of us sleepyheads never woke up in time for that and those who did missed out coz it was way too misty but we did squeeze in a morning walk before breakfast to the waterfalls and got a closer look at the valley with its rivulets and forests.

Morning walks and loads of sunshine …

Soon the sun was up in all its fury, the heat getting a bit prickly while we were in a rush to pack up and head back to our humdrum lives in the city. The drive back was with a bunch of subdued reminescy  people in the car who only had Moti’s moms biriyani to look forward to but then again biriyani makes everything better…

Coz happiness is biriyani!!

Camping out at Mankulam is something I’ll never forget, what with it being my first time and it certainly was an amazing one at that and I can’t wait enough for the next time out on my own in the wilderness, with haunted woods and unstable tents and  grizzly bears and no plumbing. What funnn!!! If anyone’s ready to brave the wild with us just shout out to us and we’ll be there bags, tents, grizzly food and all!!

A bunch of happy campers!!

Before you go-go: For all you wild wanderers looking forward to camping, ring up camper or mail them. They’ll whip up an unforgettable camping experience for you and your chums and all you have to worry about is getting your lazy asses to the campsite!! Get those monster trucks out, or your cute rides or RENT a car but do go for you’re sure to have loads of fun!!

Check out the link if you’re up making some memories!!

https://www.campper.com/

#hopscotchingacrosswanderland #camping #travel #starryskies #friends #memories