There are dark forces alive in Appalachia. A hotbed of terror and genocide, the region is known for its gorgeous mountain landscapes and insulated people. Its history, however, is quite bloody, and the residual energy remains to this day.
I was stalked and hospitalized by a pre-Colombian Native American ghost in 2017. I realize that this may sound outrageous, but it’s true, and I worry that shedding light on the situation may resume the terroristic happenings. I still find it necessary to expose this hidden threat to the world.
To provide context to the story, my name is Jack and I am from a small town in Kentucky called Ashland. Ashland is a humble town situated on the banks of the Ohio River, and exists in a meager metropolitan area with neighboring cities in West Virginia and Ohio. As far as European settlement goes, Ashland was founded by the Poage family in 1786, and remained an extended-family ordeal for a few generations.
During the settling of the area, the new habitants encountered a complex series of mounds scattered throughout. Upon excavation of these mounds, the settlers discovered their true origins; the mounds were burial grounds for an ancient civilization known as the Adena, who were dispersed among central Ohio, northern Kentucky, and West Virginia.
What the excavators found was truly unbelievable: skeletons with massive jaws, perfect teeth, and otherworldly heights. These were giants, with many skeletons reaching seven feet and a few of them measuring at eight feet, towering over their distant European counterparts. The giant ones were heralded as kings in the Adena culture.
The Adena culture would evolve into the Hopewell tradition, which itself would become the Fort Ancient culture. The people would fall victim to the Smallpox epidemic of the 18th century, thus ending a 2500-year tradition, but one could argue that their spirits stuck around and haunted the land in which they had resided, and in the name of civilization-building, the European excavators plowed through most of these mounds, discarding their remains and artifacts. They quite literally flattened the area to build the city. In the process, they unlocked a whole world of metaphysical trauma.
Ashland today has a general cloud of negativity hanging over it at all times. The metropolitan area was ranked the most miserable place in America last decade, and an opioid epidemic looms over the region. Ashland’s neighbor, Huntington, was called the overdose capital of the world at one point. Cancer deaths are in abundance due to the city’s manufacturing history, which thrived for a couple of decades before dwindling down into nothing. Good jobs are scarce, and the dream of every child is to escape to greener pastures. Ashland is even the home of the parents of famed serial killer Charles Manson.
In 2017, I took a trip to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, otherwise known as the home of the Mothman. Point Pleasant is about an hour away from Ashland, and it too has a general cloud of negativity hanging over it. It’s a barren town, even smaller than Ashland. If arriving in Ashland felt like getting to a party after everyone has already left, then arriving in Point Pleasant must feel like getting to a funeral after everyone has already left. The buildings are decaying, the streets are empty, and smokestacks complete the skyline.
After my return home, I had read about the idea that the Mothman was a myth created by a group of local journalists to revive a dying town and put it on the horror map. I thought it was a brilliant idea and one that could be replicated, but I had no connections in the local journalism industry and no platform of my own to spread the story. The lightbulb blinked one day. As an avid hobbyist photographer and longtime fan of the YouTube series Marble Hornets, I decided to start a YouTube series about a fictional character known as the Adenaman. He was to be unusually tall, with generic Native American clothing and accessories. In retrospect, the concept was a bit problematic, but I was young and ambitious.
I had it all planned out. I spent many hours researching the Adena and trying to get a better understanding of their culture, which has limited information available. I wrote outlines of the plot in my notebook and kept that notebook with me at all times. I had multiple episodes already planned out, some far into the series. I was researching how to build a character like Slender Man.
I remember one day I went to Central Park in Ashland. Right beside an elementary school and a basketball court is a row of multiple ancient Adena burial mounds standing about 10 feet tall. As a child I remember riding my bike over them, and after I grew up they blocked off the bottom of the mound with an ineffective gate.
One day in my pursuit to create the web series, I went to the mounds and meditated, writing down ideas in my notebook. The same day I went to a Catholic shrine in nearby Franklin Furnace, Ohio. I had created a shoulder mount for my camera, and I went with my then-girlfriend to get some benign footage for the series. On each of the pillars in this shrine existed coins flipped in various orders. In order to create a compelling narrative, I flipped some of the coins on camera, hoping that it would develop into its own plot. I went home and laid down for bed.
I’m not usually a heavy dreamer, but I had a vivid dream that night. I found myself in a dense forest surrounded by towering trees. An eerie silence blanketed the area. As I navigated the forest, I heard a faint, but haunting melody carried along by whispers of the wind. I ventured deeper, and the trees parted. I fixated my eyes on the center of the forest, and I saw a massive Native American man towering over the trees. His eyes seemed to hold centuries worth of wisdom, pain, and mischief. He held a flute made from a bone-like material, and he raised the instrument to his lips. As he played an otherworldly melody, the forest came alive, and shadows danced among the trees.
I felt a strange pull towards it. I was drawn in by the haunting charm. As the dream progressed, I grew uneasy. The tall man’s intentions were unclear, and the melody grew aggressive and malevolent. The forest twisted. The trees creaked and groaned. I realized that I had stumbled upon a force older and more dangerous than I could comprehend.
Just as quickly as the dream had manifested, it faded away.
The next morning I woke up for work in extreme pain all throughout my body. My limbs felt like they were going to fall off. I had no energy and a splitting migraine. I had never called off work before, but I did that day. I went to Urgent Care and they sent me home, but when the pain persisted I went to the emergency room. I was immediately given a spinal tap and tested for meningitis. The tests came back negative. What followed was a 10-day whirlwind of pain and emotions, a pure blur and refusal of reality. I saw so many doctors, so many nurses, gave so much blood for a million different tests, had various full-body scans, and generally considered my life over. I had accepted my fate; I was going to die in that hospital from whatever disease I had gotten.
To this day, I still don’t know what I had. The doctors never actually figured it out. I made it out alive, but it threw a wrench into my plans. My depression intensified, and I never devoted any more time to the series.
My life has been a general onslaught of bad luck since then. My mental state continued deteriorating, culminating in me punching a mirror one evening in a fit of unadulterated rage. The blood erupted from the veins on my wrist, and my then-girlfriend drove me to the hospital, where I was stitched up by the same doctor that performed my spinal tap just seven months prior.
I went on medication shortly afterwards, and life was normal for a while. A lot of things have happened in the past six years, and I won’t go into it, but things have gotten very dark for me. I’ve quit my job, reverted into an isolated, hermit-like state, and have stopped taking my medication. I’ve fallen into a lot of rabbit holes, whether that’s on this forum or on websites like YouTube. One of the more popular ideas on this board is that of the Law of Attraction, which states that your thoughts dictate your reality.
This, to me, is living proof of the Law of Attraction. I obsessed over this fictional character that I had created until it quite literally came back to life to get me to shut my mouth about it. In some weird, metaphysical way, I think this makes sense. Time is only one of the dimensions that we live in, and who is to say that a spirit cannot move backwards in time? That is to say, my thought created a spirit that was then able to travel backwards in time and cast its spell of negative energy to set forward the events that took place.
The fact of the matter is that THE ADENAMAN IS REAL. I don’t know what his purpose is. I don’t know what his motives are. But I know that he is real, and he is born from a place of generational pain and trauma. While his people weren’t the ones directly slaughtered by European settlers, his descendants were, and I believe that he carries this pain with him and seeks revenge on those who wronged his descendants. That’s why I believe that my region has been haunted, and that’s why I believe that my life has been so traumatic.
I had all but forgotten about the Adenaman as I moved on with my life, but the Adenaman didn’t forget about me. I usually fall asleep watching ASMR videos on YouTube, and autoplay takes me in some weird directions.
This morning I woke up to flute music and a general pain in the center of my head.
The Adenaman is here.
Written by DeadInternetChronicles
Content is available under CC BY-SA