The Parker Incident

''The following has been compiled from witness statements, interviews, recovered documents, and various police reports. Some names have been redacted for privacy.''

In the Autumn months of 1977, a group of researchers gathered in an office building in Maryland to conduct an experiment in human isolation. The experiment and it's subsequent events came to be known as the Parker Experiment, or among some groups, the Parker Incident.

The first mention of the experiment comes from a grant request filed at MIT in 1976 by Josephine Parker, a psychology major attending the University. The request detailed parameters to study the psychological effects of sensory isolation on a human subject. As one might imagine, the request was denied by the University. According to the university's records, Parker left shortly after.

Very little information can be found regarding Ms. Parker, with the only significant record being a birth certificate from South Carolina dated to 1948. Other than this, no other records could be located on Ms. Parker. Vehicle licenses, insurance information and voter registration appear to have been expunged at some point following 1977.

At this point, it is believed Parker traveled across the East Coast in an attempt to find support for her experiment. Eyewitnesses indicate she visited a large number of universities and research companies, though it is unknown if any of them actually provided support to the experiment. Attempts to contact the companies she visited have been ignored. During this time, Parker acquired a significant number of followers, many of whom claimed to be fascinated by her ideas. At some point in 1977, believed to be either September or October, an unknown benefactor provided the researchers with six-hundred thousand dollars to conduct the experiment. An office building was procured in Maryland and the researchers went to work.

Excerpt from Interview with Mr. [REDACTED]:

Interviewer: "And how were you able to find willing test subjects?"

[REDACTED]: "That was the simple part. There were a ton of hobos living around the area, so we just offered a couple of them a hundred bucks a head. Hell, once word got around, we had more people than we could ever need.

Interviewer: "Did you ever have to deal with the police? I mean, if there were that many homeless-"

[REDACTED]: "The police were never around. I don't even remember seeing a single cruiser the entire time we were there. I do remember seeing a couple of unmarked cars come around, though.

Interviewer: "Unmarked cars?"

[REDACTED]: "Yeah, these black cars would come through every so often. They were pretty old models, even at the time. The strangest part was that they would always take off if we tried to get close. We, uh, we started staying in the building overnight after that."

With their funding, subjects, and location secure, the experiment was ready to begin. Four test subjects were brought in; two men and two women. The following is an excerpt from one of the documents procured from the building.

EXPERIMENT PARAMETERS:

Subjects #1 - #4 must be kept in locked, padded rooms at all times. Subjects are to be restrained in chairs; said chairs must be modified to contain tubing to allow subjects easy access to food and water. Sustenance is to consist of a basic tasteless nutrient paste containing high concentrations of carbohydrates and protein, along with filtered water. Black-out goggles are to be applied to all subjects; goggles must be thick enough to prevent subjects from seeing through. Additional visual impairment devices may be applied if necessary. Noise-cancellation headphones are to placed on all subjects and must be connected to a audio input in all rooms. Headphones are to play white noise at all times. Subjects are to be requested to vocalize descriptions of any hallucinations, if possible.

Ventilation systems must be modified to prevent potential contamination of test results. Vents must be re-routed from the central system and connected to their own, individual heating and cooling systems. One-way mirrors and microphones are to be installed to allow easy observation of subjects. The experiment continued as planned, though the researchers found it easier to simply stay in the building for the two week duration of the test. Sleeping bags, food, and entertainment were acquired and brought back to the building to make it slightly more hospitable to it's tenants. The experiment is believed to have begun sometime in November. The following is an excerpt from an observation log, believed to have been kept by [REDACTED], a sociology student from New York.

OBSERVATION LOG:

Day #1, 4:00 AM: Subject #1 reports auditory hallucinations. He claims that someone is whispering in his ear, but cannot elaborate on who is whispering.

Day #1, 6:00 AM: Subject #3 has begun crying profusely, she repeatedly states that she "wants to go home." Parker told us to ignore it. Bitch.

Day #1, 12:00 PM: Subject #1 states the whispering has become extremely loud and has begun yelling for the hallucinations to cease. He claims that the nutrient mix is drugged. Day #1, 3:00 PM: Subject #4 has begun singing hymns loudly. Subject #2 screamed for thirty minutes, then proceeded to fall unconscious.

Day #1, 5:00 PM: Subject #2 has started screaming again.

Day #1, 8:00 PM: Subject #1 reports that the whispering has stopped. He states that he now feels as though he's being watched.

Day #1, 10:00 PM: Subject #2 finally stopped screaming. Subject #3 has repeatedly attempted to escape his restraints. Subject #1 states that something "touched him". [REDACTED] is taking over observation for the graveyard shift. I need to get some sleep. The following morning, the researchers found that Subject One was displaying increasingly bizarre behavior. He claimed that he could, in fact, see his surroundings despite the efforts of the researchers. He described the room around him accurately, despite the subjects being provided blackout goggles prior to being placed in the room. He did, however, describe the room as decrepit. He said that the one-way mirror was cracked and shattered, the walls were covered in moss, and that there was a hole above him to the outside. He couldn't move his head far enough upwards to describe the sky, but said that there was a cold chill coming from the hole.

The researchers were skeptical, but they sent someone in to investigate. The room was completely secure and it was concluded that the man was simply having a psychotic episode. The following is an interview conducted with Mrs. [REDACTED] regarding the incident.

Excerpt from interview with Mrs. [REDACTED]:

Interviewer: "How did the team respond to that?"

[REDACTED]: "We were skeptical. Well, most of us were. Parker was ecstatic, I'd never seen her so excited before. She had us double up our shifts just so one of us could keep an eye on Subject One 24/7, then she ran off to make one of her phone calls. Interviewer: "Phone calls?"

[REDACTED]: "Yeah, almost every day she'd wander off to use the payphone down the road. At first we thought she was just taking really long smoke breaks, but then [REDACTED] said he followed her and found her whispering into the payphone. He said that she stopped as soon as she saw him and gave him this BS story about calling her parents. We knew she was full of it, though. You don't just conjure six hundred grand out of thin air without some help upstairs.

Interviewer: "Right, and what about Subject One?"

[REDACTED]: "Oh, yeah, sorry. I get sidetracked sometimes. Yeah, so I got stuck doing the night shift watching One. He was this older guy, big ol' bushy beard and everything. He talked about what he was "seeing" constantly. How he'd watched the moss growing on the wall, how he saw flakes of peeling paint come off the walls, that kinda thing. There was this one night, though, that really got to me."

"I was just sitting there, getting a sip of coffee, when all of the sudden he belted out this horrible wailing scream. Subject One had gotten loose from his head restraint. He started yelling that the 'sky wasn't the right color'. He screamed for the better half of an hour before he eventually pissed himself and passed out. I wanted to send someone in there to clean him up, but Parker told us no. I told her that I didn't give a shit if it contaminated the experiment, we couldn't just torture people like this. She said it was all about 'scientific advancement' and a whole load of other crap."

Interviewer: "And that was when you left?"

[REDACTED]: "Yeah, I couldn't deal with working under a sociopath like that. Apparently, I wasn't the only one. About half the researchers left with me." It was at this point that finding information regarding the experiment became exceedingly difficult. Records from the county's Sheriff's Department had apparently been "lost during remodeling". However, I was able to procure a cassette tape, supposedly recovered from the building by the police. The benefactor of this tape, whom must go unnamed for legal reasons, was an investigator at the time. They stated that they had found the tape and had hidden it away, as they had discovered evidence missing from the station following the incident. They claimed that the tape was recovered from Subject One's cell, but I am unable to corroborate this. The following is a transcript of the tape's audio.

Transcript of Tape Audio:

-unintelligible-

"Oh, oh my god. The sky is wrong. It shouldn't be like that. There should only be one moon, goddamnit!"

-audio is distorted-

"Christ, oh, Christ. Something's in the sky. It's-it's huge. It's like a-a giant spider, but it- oh, man, it must be two stories tall. There's, like, ribbons of slime hanging off it's body and-and birds or something flying around it. It's huge, but, It-it's gone."

-silence, speaker can be heard breathing-

"Wait. What was that?"

-speaker begins to breathe heavily- 

"I can see...something behind the glass. It looks like a...man? I think? Wait, oh god. Oh god, oh god it just looked through the glass. It looked through the crack in the fucking glass! Someone help me, please, god, someone get me out of here!"

-speaker begins sobbing-

"Please...I just want to go home."

-Tape was heavily distorted beyond this point-

Accounts of what occurred after the presumed events of the tape are sketchy at best. However, I was able to locate one of the researchers who remained through the entire experiment. While he was initially unwilling to be interviewed, he eventually met with me at an undisclosed location. The following is an excerpt from our interview.

Excerpt from Interview with Mr. Miles Clarke:

Clarke: "I know I really shouldn't be telling you about this, but I haven't talked to anyone in the press since it happened."

Interviewer: "That's understandable. Can you tell me anything about what happened?

Clarke: "Well, after One started having his freak out. We had to pad his restraints."

Interviewer: "Why?"

Clarke: "He'd tried to chew through them. Made a mess of his face doing it, too."

Interviewer: "Right, now, can you describe what happened then?"

Clarke: "Things were pretty normal after that, but there was this air of unease about everything. Everyone was really on edge. Parker was the worst, I'm pretty sure she hadn't slept in days. I remember her freaking out so bad once that she broke a plate over Samuel's head. He left after that."

Interviewer: "Did anything strange happen afterwards?"

Clarke: "Not really, I mean, I remember a couple of times in the hall outside the cells when I felt like I was being watched but that was about it."

Interviewer: "And can you tell me about the last day of the experiment?"

Clarke: *sighs* "Uh, yeah. We were all just milling around the observation room when One started yelling that something was in the room with him. He was screaming that it was looking right at him. Obviously, we didn't see anything. He yelled that there was a man in the room, but that the man was 'all dark' and 'covered in eyes'. He said the eyes all were looking at him and that it was starting to get too close."

"We all thought he was having another episode, so Parker told Blake to go to the store room and grab a new set of restraints. Before anyone could move, the lights in the room flickered, then died. I got this chill, like someone had ran their hand down my back. William and I went down to check the chamber, but when we opened the door, it was empty."

Interviewer: "He was gone?"

Clarke: "Yeah, and the chair was totally mangled. The two of us looked at each other and then, I swear to god, I heard something growl. Now, I know that sounds crazy, but that room was empty and I know heard something growl."

Interviewer: "And then?"

Clarke: "I got the hell out of there. I pushed past Parker and I bolted down the road. I wasn't more than twenty feet from the building when I heard her screaming. I ran down the road to the payphone and I called the cops. They held me in questioning for twelve hours straight. Hell, they even had two spooks, black suits and everything, come down and talk to me. They told me that if I ever told anyone what I'd seen, that I'd be in serious danger. I followed that order for a long time, but now, maybe someone'll know the truth."

According to witnesses at the scene, police raided the building shortly after Mr. Clarke fled. Witnesses reported that after several hours, paramedics removed a series of bodies from the building. While the majority of the officers involved in this raid declined to be interviewed, I eventually located a heavily redacted after action report. It indicated that the building had been completely ravaged and that at least six sets of remains were recovered, each identified as one of the remaining researchers. Among the dead was Parker, whom had apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

It was stated that the remaining test subjects were recovered, though they had to be placed in a nearby mental institution shortly thereafter. They have all since disappeared or died of natural causes. The report also stated that a suicide note had been recovered, but it's text was not included. I eventually tracked down a transcribed copy from a conspiracy theorist living in Iowa. He claimed to have acquired the text from another theorist in Washington D.C. However, I have no way of corroborating this information, nor can I definitively prove the text is genuine. Regardless, It reads as follows:

"One wasn't hallucinating. The compound *unintelligible* too well. He couldn't just see them, they could see him too. They could see all of us. I don't know why the others didn't respond. *unintelligible* should have worked! I hope *unintelligible* saved one last bullet for myself. I can't listen to them scream anymore."

The building was demolished shortly after the incident. The remains of Subject One were, as far as can be determined, never recovered. Miles Clarke died shortly after our interview from sudden cardiac arrest; his autopsy was not released.