Stereograph

Written by Nathan Lamar Jr.

Sometimes, events unfold in history that stretch beyond the bonds of normal reason. Such moments in time are so mysterious, so drenched in abnormality, that they can only be explained as simply unexplainable. A reverend cursing childbirth through his television spot, a strange and long abandoned Disney park; A small town pizza parlor with a sinister secret. These kinds of things happen all around us, yet we never see them. We never hear about them, or even so much as catch a glance at the aftermath. Why? Because no one wants us to know. No one wants us to realize that these things are happening. No, they just want us all to feel...Safe...This story, is no different.

It was on a crisp, sunny day; April 12th, 2012, in a small town in Oklahoma, that our story begins. You see Oklahoma wasn't exactly the most well known for anything, other than a winning College Football program. The residents here were mostly farmers, or small town folk. They kept to themselves, and enjoyed living their quiet lives. That was something about Oklahoma. It was quiet. Other than a few rodeos now and then, maybe a county fair or two; It was mainly calm, and serene. Not the kind of place you'd imagine such a strange event would take place, but as they say, if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. For on that day, county police were awoken to a strange anonymous tip. The man wouldn't state his name, only that he believed something had happened to a "Friend", of whom he referred to only as J.C. He didn't say much of what he may have witnessed, instead simply giving them an address.

Officers in such a small town were skeptical of the call, taking it as another prank by some teen who had too much time to waste, but when they arrived at the address they'd been given, they concluded perhaps there really was a cause for alarm. The address in question was the location of an abandoned railway station, one that hadn't been used in decades. The decaying bricks and expected look of disarray was only surpassed by something that seemed off. A strange, and fairly unpleasant smell, coming from inside the condemned building. It wasn't until they entered through a broken window that they found their culprit. A slightly decaying body, sitting upright in the darkest corner of the building. On the wall beside him, scrawled in dry and peeling blood: "The Eyes!" Of course such a happening was unsettling to the residents of such a quiet, friendly town. There hadn't ever been a crime anything above petty theft in their history, and now a strange death? The police were nervous; What if this was a murder? The body was taken to the morgue, and coroners began their work. Meanwhile, the strange man that had tipped them over the phone was nowhere to be found. They put ads in the paper, and even over television air time, but they got nothing.

The confusion was only just beginning for them, however. Shortly after the official statement was logged into the police servers, the county sheriff's department was approached by a man claiming to be from the F.B.I. His angle was an ongoing case involving several unsolved deaths across the Midwest. The agent didn't offer much information, but he left a number for a technicians office. When asked what for, he responded cryptically. "You'll see." In the county morgue, the coroner and his assistants had almost lost hope for finding a cause of death. This man had no physical bruises, scarring, or any damage consistent with any type of struggle or fight. They had almost hung up their efforts, when an intern noticed something strange lodged in the victims throat on an x-ray. The cause of death was discovered shortly after cutting into the man's esophagus, just above the entrance into the stomach, where a rolled up peace of photo paper was jammed. The man had died from asphyxiation, but the coroner was still at a loss. There were no scratches or scars in the esophagus to show it had been jammed down. It was as if it had just...Appeared there, in his throat. The paper was sent to the sheriff's office, where upon its unwrapping, it was identified as a Stereographic photo. On its own it looked like a bunch of static, but if viewed the right way, an image would be revealed.

Realizing now why their F.B.I visitor had left that number, they sent the image in to be uncovered. However, after two weeks of silence from the technician they'd sent it to, they became suspicious; Calling the manager of the office they'd hired. The manager immediately looked into the matter, only to find that this particular technician hadn't shown up for work in almost two weeks. Investigation into the matter lead to the technicians best friend and assistant, a man they would only name as "Craig", for privacy reasons. The man's statement only added to the current cases mystery. He told the investigators that he had been helping his friend to uncover the image in the Stereograph and convert it to a normal photo, when his friend offered to just take it home and work on it personally. In the days that followed, by Craig's account, his colleague seemed to become increasingly stressed, and seemed to be nervous for some reason. When asked about the last time he'd seen his friend, he said it was four days after the photo arrived.

"He seemed as if he was on edge." He told the investigators. "He was a little jumpy, and his eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn't been sleeping. I asked if something was wrong, if I could help him out somehow." Craig rubbed his temples as he confided in the investigators that his partners last words to him were extremely unsettling. "He only told me...'What I have seen, cannot be unseen'. He yelled Those eyes...Those Damn eyes! And then he took off." The information they obtained was enough to bring the F.B.I, along with a full crew of agents, to investigate the man's disappearance. Meanwhile, his partner Craig, decided he would finish converting the photo. He disappeared also shortly after, and the F.B.I abruptly terminated all investigations, giving no reason as to why.

Two months later, a family member of the original victim rolled into the small town in Oklahoma, claiming to have gotten a strange package from a distraught man. When asked who the man was, she described his appearance exactly to what Craig looked like, adding that he was covered in dirt, and smelled as if he hadn't showered in weeks. She told the sheriff that he 'Acted as if someone were chasing him.' He was 'There and then gone.' She said the only thing he would tell her was, "The eyes...They're watching me..." After such an abnormal and uncomfortable encounter, she continued, she couldn't find it in herself to open the strange package. The sheriff's department confiscated it, and gave it to a local investigator who had "Shown Interest" in the case.

The investigator, who chose to stay anonymous, seemed to have quite a story to tell. "When I got the package, I immediately ran home, and sat in my office. I inspected it, looking for any strange signs, but it looked normal enough." A police report of the interview read that at this moment the anonymous investigator seemed to get uneasy. "I opened the package, revealing a cassette tape, and a piece of paper. Lucky for me I had an old VCR connected to a small television in my office, so I plugged it in and put in the tape." Sitting back in his chair, the interviewer noted a deep pattern of breathing, as if the man were keeping himself calm. "It was just static...At least, that's what I saw at first." After inspecting the piece of paper, however, the investigator said he realized that this static was more than it seemed. In his account, the paper was a set of instructions. "Watch the video to the end, then play it backwards at normal speed." He also revealed that there were a set of instructions for how to view it with your eyes. "Stare blankly through the screen until the two arrows at the top, become three, and make sure all lights are off. That's what it said."

After following the instructions, and watching the video through, the investigator said he turned off the lights and did as the paper said. What he saw next, in his words, was ungodly. "When I played it backwards, the white noise began to sound more like whispers. I couldn't understand, I think it was in some other language." In the interviewers notes, he made it clear that the investigator was now sweating. "A 3D image started to pull out of the static, as if a face was lifting from the screen. It looked like...Like a man's face, but deformed. It looked as if it had been beaten...And the whispering. It got louder, and louder." The report recorded that the investigator suddenly became very still, and quiet. "Then, it looked right at me. It was almost like it's eyes were staring straight through me...They were black, evil...And then...It said my name..." After this, the investigator said he ripped the tape from the VCR, and threw it into the pond behind his house, then burning the paper. The interview was then dismissed, and the man went home without question. Two days later, he was found dead in his home, his face and body brutally beaten, but no weapon or suspects were ever found.

The sheriff's department tried to follow up on the case, but we're shutdown by the F.B.I, with unclear reasoning. A report says that a group of teens scuba dived in the pond behind the investigators house, but no tape was ever found, and as for the strange man that had given the police their first tip; Rumors have been spreading that he'd been seen at payphones close to the sights of all the deaths. To this day, he remains a mystery.