Sovereign

Entry 5: Progress Report - 02/12

Date: 12th February 2011

From: Sanders, Zoe; Paranormal Div

To: Allen, Edwin; Internal Affairs

Subject: Preliminary Reports Summary

I first wish to apologize for the lateness of my submission. This was because of the very large volume of documents I had to analyze before I could compose a thorough summary.

These documents were reports spanning the duration of twenty-six days and include all statements, witness accounts and reports filed and intercepted from Police, news media and other independent broadcasters on radio, television and internet forums. The first of these, made on 29th August, largely consist of eyewitness accounts. There were also eleven missing person reports made over the span of eighteen days (from 3rd to 21st September), all within the vicinity of Pine Street. Eight of the disappearances involved adults carrying out morning activities. Six were drivers whose cars were found within eighty feet of apparition. Two were joggers, and both individuals' usual routes, before the apparition, included Pine Street. The final three were a group of hitch-hiking teenagers from Minnesota. The last phone call made by one of them was traced to a cell tower half a mile away from Pine street. None of these people have been found since.

There are also numerous (unreported) stories all from around the time of these disappearances, from news channels and logs from deleted online forums, containing a mixture of rumours, claims from celebrated psychics, and eyewitness recounts of their experiences. Most of them claimed to have felt a strange sensation, like a mixture of dangerous curiosity and overt repulsion, while a few said they felt nothing. One online forum in particular was filled with over two hundred posts from a teenager named Claire James, who lived about a mile away from the apparition. She claimed she had been visited by spirits which came from the enigmatic block of flats, and tortured in her dreams by "blue animal children with horns". She was subsequently admitted in a mental facility and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The follow-up notes on her condition (also contained in the reports) stated that her behaviour while at the facility was seen to be lucid and normal, and all her psychiatric evaluations were satisfactory. However, whenever she was asked about the claims that led to her admission, she always went silent and demanded to be taken back to her room. She also said (during her evaluations) that she did not wish to be discharged, because she was "finally safe" and did not want to return home.

Two weeks after her admission, her family moved to a neighbouring town because (as taken from her brother's social media update) her mother, Cynthia, was "acting crazy". Cynthia was found dead after three days, lying on the front lawn of their new house with a carving knife stabbed into her heart and a "wide smile on her face" (taken from the Coroner's report). There were four other reported deaths, all happening to individuals who lived within a mile radius of the apparition. All the cases were equally bizarre, including a farmer who cut off both his feet and allowed his blood run into the feeding trough for his cows, a seamstress who slit her own throat with her shears, a runner who exercised continuously until he died of cardiac exhaustion, and an office clerk who (from police statements made by onlookers) deliberately jumped in front of an oncoming lumbering truck. Like Cynthia James, all the deceased were found smiling just as strangely after they died, further affirming the view that the incidents  are correlated.

Though these preliminary reports have not brought any progress with regards to understanding the exact cause of the Incident, they show the degree of disturbance that was created by the apparition before it was eventually cordoned by the Esoteric Division after twenty-eight days. But even after their intervention, it still took six days before all other branches of law enforcement (including our Paranormal Division) were made to suspend their investigations before the Esoterics could carry out their "containment" activities (this was in an attempt to eliminate the risk of friendly fire). All of the above reports were prevented from reaching public knowledge by the combined efforts of the Lead Esoteric Scout, Jonathan Mills; Chief Containment officer, Raphael Heath; and Head of Enquiry, Priscilla Chevron. From the Bureau's main records (as mentioned in my 4th Feb. update), the case was transferred to Unit 11, but all other records of activities up to the day of the supposed implosion (which are kept within the Unit's vaults) are sealed.

With the recent declassification of these files, I hope to be able to reconstruct the timeline of events following Unit 11's assumption of duty. I still await their release, but I have been assured that they would be provided soon.

- Zoe Sanders.