When I was fourteen, my dad would drive me out to my friend's house to play airsoft in the woods near Wells, Maine. We would go into the woods behind the sand pit that was right behind his house, where we built a pretty decent fort that was surrounded by a knee high wall. Inside the fort, we'd made fox holes and we had a fire pit in the middle. We had a lot of fun spending nights out there and doing the stupid things that kids do, like shooting each other with our air guns and throwing CO two
canisters in the fire. On more than one occasion, we spent the whole night huddled up by the fire. We were freezing and waiting for the sun to come up and thaw us out. My friend Greg, he and I had been at the Sea Cadet program together for several years. The Sea Cadets is a youth program for the next that was similar to the Boy's Scouts. He would later serve several years in the military. He was a no nonsense person and that kind of guy, and you could
trust your life with him. That's only one reason why I ended up believing him when he told me this story. On one of the occasions when we were hanging out in our fort with a few of our friends. We decided to do a night maneuver operation. At that age, darkness was our friend, or so we thought. Darkness is never your friend, though. It creeps over the woods and it puts an extra blanket of protection on those things that can hurt you, while leaving mere humans more vulnerable
and in greater danger. During our operation, my squad was in charge of guarding the fort while Greg and his squad spread out and they went around the sand pit and then circled back to try to lay waste to our defense. It was just me and my other friend and we were sitting there waiting for a while. We knew it would take Greg and his squad a little time to circle around the sand pit. I was in the forward fox hole, but something drew my attention to
the rear. I looked back and I saw what looked like a human being crawling over the knee wall at the back of the fort. It was too dark to make out who it was, but when it stood up, I decided that it couldn't be Greg. It didn't look right. Its arms were too long for its body, and as I watched it stood there and silently watched back. I didn't move or speak a word, and neither did this thing. Eventually, it dropped back down on all fours, and it silently
moved off into the woods. I never once believed it was Greg. It didn't match his silho wet, and nor did I think it was any of the other kids that we were out there with. That's why I never raised my airgun and shot at it. Several long minutes later, we heard and his groove walking down the path from the sand pit. The game continued, and I pushed the incident to the back of my mind. Some time later,
Greg came to me with a drawing he'd made. It was a black humanoid figure with what looked like dreadlocks hanging off the back of its head. He said he'd seen it in the woods. I didn't believe him, but Greg wasn't the kind of makeup stories, and besides, I was reminded of something I'd seen crawling over the knee wall. How could I deny Greg's story when I had one of my own. I ask him then if he or any of the others were trying to pull a prank on us that night, and he swore that it wasn't
him or anyone else in his group. Over the years, I've asked him several more times, thinking maybe with time he would admit it was a joke. But he's never changed his story. Neither has he ever changed his story about the thing he drew in the picture. I don't know what lives around Wells, Maine. It's an isolated spot with places that only ten people in one hundred would ever explore. The forests go for miles. I live in
Michigan now, and I work with the Coastguard. I don't get back there much, but sometimes late at night, when I'm alone, I can't help but wonder what I saw croll over the knee wall that night, and if it was the same thing Greg had drawn in that picture. There once was a line from a play written by poet William Concreve in sixteen ninety seven that states music hath charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. The phrase ended up in
the movie King Kong. Roughly translated, it means music has the power to calm even the angriest of beasts, including Bigfoot. I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, and I've acquired what some would describe as a lifetime of unusual encounters. Some stories involve wild animals, they're easy to identify, while others are chilling and difficult to put into words. I often joked that I could write a fiction story and it would not be as crazy as
my actual life experiences. My family camped a lot when I was a small child, although very rarely in campgrounds. We packed in and packed out, hopeful to eat fish and otherwise forage for our meals, but we also came prepared with rice and other staples. If necessary, We hiked into places that had fresh water sources clean enough to drink. I was curious about the Tibetaneti from a very young age,
even before I could read. My father told me about sasquatch and suggested to me that they are likely the same species. When I was fourteen, my mother and I went to a weekend bigfoot seminar hosted by a well known indigenous elder. In addition, I happened to be seated next to another popular researcher in the field of cryptid studies, and I found out that both men had a long standing working relationship. Their stories fascinated me and kind of
colored the way I see cryptids in general. Years later, I was in Sedona, Arizona, enjoying my youngest child's first camping trip. We were at a place that was really an RV resort with a tent camping area that was beautiful and wild. I surveyed our surroundings. There was a fence that was mostly overgrown with scrub oak. The meadow on the other side was a vibrant and seemingly untouched green,
flourishing and impressive. I could see a huge living cottonwood about two hundred yards away, and there was a thick and wild forested area to the east with remnants of cave dwellings that remained from a First Nations tribe that disappeared without a trace centuries ago. Well, we carried on until about ten PM. My dog, a sharp ee Cody mix that I named Augie, had run off from the area. As we were the only tent campers in the place. I could hear the jingle from her tags, and I
decided to pull out my dejura. Do think that's how you pronounced that that I had required on one of my many adventures. Now, de juri, do did youI a doo? Digi a doo? That's how you said. Digi a doo is a flute like musical instrument that produces a long, single note drone. The sound can be high or low in tone, depending on the length of the instrument. It was developed by the Aboriginal people in northern Australia one
thousand years ago. If you're really good at it, you can add vocal textures to it, similar to an animal sound, and it takes a lot of oxygen through the mouth and knows. They refer to the technique as circular breathing. I played and suddenly heard Augie running into the campsite at full tilt. She curled up in a tight ball at my feet as close as she could get to the fire. This was abnormal. Something definitely had spooked her, and she expected me to protect her. I went back
to playing my music. After fifteen minutes, I smell something that resembled a skunk. Now, usually a skunk scent does not bother me, but this was offensive and it was faint on the wind. The odor became stronger and playing the digiid requires one to breathe in deeply through the nose. Close to midnight, I heard some snapping in the scrub oak about fifty feet away. Perhaps my music was being appreciated by whatever was keeping watch on my camp site.
Now obliged heartily, but after a while decided fifty feet was close enough. I moved my kiddo into the tent and went to extinguish the fire, and a chill ran through me. So I decided to allow the fire to burn down, and I went back inside the tent, and I zumped only the mosquito netting so I could keep an eye on the flames well. I lie down and closed my eyes, and at that moment I became aware of a distant drum beat with a rhythm resembling the
steady pulse of a heartbeat. It was emanating from across the meadow, and the drum beat did not waver or stop until sunrise, when it ended. I have never known a human to keep a simple beat for four or five hours without a pause or a break. I felt like it was in response to the music that I had offered earlier. It didn't occur to me what I had experienced that night until I documented it many weeks later in my journal, writing it was like a skunk,
but predatory. I looked at my sentence and then drew an arrow down to the bottom of the page and wrote, in big letters, skunk ape. Veronica Amber had no recollection of her first encounter with the wisps. They came as inconspicuous and unexpected, like flurries of indoored dust that float and fly when bathed by a sheen of sunlight. At the beginning of their residence at three point fifteen Copacitic Lane, just before their street transitioned into the main road in town.
Her home knew a time when it was vacant of the wisps, and the only specters filling the inside of their projections from the old films that her father would display on dark velvet walls of the house. The walls of their victorian used to hold no haunting tendrils of their existence. The hallways heard no shrills or cuttle walls from a life silenced by death, and the marble floor of their historic home at one point had less of a tendency to send shivers up one's another regions and
into the spine. The wisps were invisible inhabitants of their home, but to the rest of the world they were simply called ghosts. Veronica Amber's acquaintance with them was far from the horror filled nonsense she'd read about in books and watched in movies. For the more the whists made themselves
known to her, the more annoyed she became. It seemed they were always around, causing mischief, popping out at the most inconvenient times, and filling her ears with macabre groans in the dark in an attempt to inflict fear into her soul when she only wanted to have a good night's sleep, and since then she had scarcely known a moment's peace. Veronica Amber, or Vam as she liked to be called, awoke on Halloween morning with an abrupt opening
of her eyes. She lay on her back in her attic room, watching the warmth of the dawning sun changed the color of her slanted ceiling. She heard a shuffling of feet, moved her eyes to the foot of the bed, and there stood a lady Wisp looking at her with a cocked head, her spaghetti strands of hair falling on to a ghostly shoulder where the clavical and humorous were
exposed underneath decayed and stretched out torn skin. This particular wisp never bothered Vam like the others did, but the gaze she gave her always made her feel uncomfortable because she knew the apparition was trying to say something through those glassy, unblinking eyes. Perhaps it was due to the dislocated jaw and missing tongue that kept her from saying what was on her mind, but regardless, Vam had no time to feel sorry for something that had the same
design as a fart in the wind. It's Halloween today, Paprika Vam said, lifting her head from the pillow and using her elbows to hold her up as she faced the wisp. A Vam named all the wisps after spices, and Paprika happened to fit this specific one. Not only that, but it's my last time as host now that I'm eighteen. After this, I'm relieved of all duties. Vam gave a quick stretched and moved her body into a sitting position
on the side of her bed. She felt the moist hot fogs around her feet, and when she looked down, she glanced at the open mouth of a Regano, an older Wisp who was bodyless and used his old man head to roll around their home. His gurgly, foaming mouth was stretched wide in an expression that would make any normal humans soil themselves in fright. His cracky lips clung around Vam's feet, leaving strands of ghostly saliva on her ankles.
Fam rolled her eyes and wiggled her toes, visible through the rotted eyelids of his head, and she kicked him, making him vanish into nothing. You're disgusting, she muttered, moving toward the bathroom. Before she reached the toilet, time, a young boy Whisp who looked about six or seven, popped up from the floor and shrieked like a banshee. She gasped more from the suddenness of it than from fright, as his face collided into hers, and before she had
a moment to swat him away, he disappeared. Time was the one who bothered her the most, and as many endeavors to frighten her and failing to do so, it made him the one she also felt closest to, almost like a little annoying brother, but with maggots crawling out of his nose and ears. It was in the alone hours of the morning that Vam fell the most connected
to the house. Her parents, who taught night classes at Nickt University, remained asleep for the majority of the day, and it was in their solitude that she learned to speak to the house. Just one touch to a chimney stone or a beam of wood was enough for the house to remind and speak to her about how it was before their wisps had occupied the space. She would get images of her mother and father, and their pale
faces contrasted with the black exterior of the home. The oldest and most abandoned, neglected house on Copaestic Lane was the one they had imprinted on. Could it be genetics, her father, Professor Victor Ambrose Pror, asked one night during dinner over his stake Flombay, many years ago, when Vam had confided in him about the wisps. When we adopted you, we knew at some point your health would become a
source of worry for us. He said, well, that is a possibility, my dear, but we must also not reule out the screen time. Her mother, doctor Vivian Amelia Pryor, had said, placing a cold, pale hand on Vam's forehead. That new iPad we got you for Christmas has become a bit of an addiction for you, darling. Are you sure you aren't hallucinating these images? A young Vam had smiled at them, half lovingly and half disappointed that her parents couldn't see the wisps, She shook her head. No, mother,
I'm not imagining them. Theyre as real as you and I father. I can touch them, I can smell them, but when I try to scream, they disappear. At this point, being scared isn't an option. I just want them to leave me alone. Her mother's plum lipstick stained mouth formed a sympathetic frown. I'm so sorry, dearest, I wish there was something we could do to make it go away.
That had been many years ago, and since then numerous wisps had appeared to her, as real and as vexatious as ever, for better or for worse, but not for long. Comes springtime, when Van was due to graduate, she'd leave her home, seething with wisps, to start a new life and leave the nest, a phrase her father despised and regarded with contempt. Pishposh, he always said when that phrase was uttered. We aren't eagles, for goodness' sake, So I
want no more talk about leaving nest and whatnot. Now, Vam, my darling, I couldn't be prouder of the person that you become and the one you are yet to be. And like any father, I'm disconsolate at the idea of seeing you go, but exhilarated at the prospects that await you. Not flesh of our flesh, nor blood of our blood, but once you were handed into our arms, the darling child with the eyes as dark as coal, who appeared to us as a stranger, suddenly became the most beloved daughter.
A most beloved daughter rang in Vam's head, and she dressed herself for the day. In the mirror, a young girl, Wisp, whom Vam had named Coriander, manifested herself beside Vam. She opened her mouth and let out a shrill scream that penetrated the ear drums with a searing intensity, and Vam covered her ears, but ignored her, and quickly placing a clip on her hair before making her way downstairs to
finish the preparation for the night's Halloween party. A most beloved daughter, she thought to herself again, and a most beloved host. And when Vam was a young girl, shortly after the Priors had adopted her, she was given the responsibility of hosting a Halloween evening in their home. Mommy and Daddy have to sleep, dearest, and can only join later in the evening. Once we awaken, who will be there to entertain? Ain't our guest? Well, that is where
you come in, said her mother. But I'm only a child, Vam had objected, Well, that works to our advantage, darling, her mother had said, kneeling to her level and pressing her pale forehead to Vams, they are more likely to trust you, and so they did. Every Halloween evening, the Priors would appoint Vam to welcome guests and passing trigger
treats to their home. At the beginning, guests would question her on the whereabouts of her parents, to which Vam would reply, no worries, they are resting and we'll be with you shortly for dinner. In the kitchen, Vam started the ord'eures baked brye made to look like mommy, and she's in cracker platter, with bat and Jack o' lantern cutouts, a bowl of checks mix and candy for a monster munch, and guacamole with vegetables arranged to look like the face
of a witch. It was all coming together, and it was still hours to go until lunch time. By the time it was sundown, Vam had decorated and set the food in the dining room. A meat loaf shaped to resemble the anatomy of a human body was left cooling on the counter when she went upstairs to change, and she opted for a simple black dress that hugged her slender frame. And putting on the final touches of her makeup, she heard a wheezing, echoey sound behind the curtain of
her shower. Pushing the curtain back, Time jumped at her, squealing and laughing. As she went through her body and exited out the bathroom door, another wisp, A young looking male around Vam's age, stood staring at her underneath the showerhead. A harsh cut to the throat revealed a sliced trachea. Vam sighed and crossed her arms. Do you think you can keep it down, Nutmeg? Our guests are due to
arrive soon, and the wheezing is distracting. Nutmeg said nothing but nodded, watching Vam roll her tube of lipstick back in. You're lucky. You're a handsome one, even more of a looker. Before Vam turned back to him, her hand on the light switch of the bathroom. You know, she used her index finger to swipe under her throat in a slashing manner.
The sound of the doorbell below made Vam return to her responsibilities, and with a clap of her hand, she turned off the light and clambered down the stairs, remembering
the meat loaf and placing it on the table. Before reaching the entrance, she stopped in the fourier, where above the grinning candlelight Jack o' lantern hung pictures of the hosts that came before her, The other priors, her sisters, the sisters she had never met, the sisters who had left to start a new life at eighteen once the new host was chosen, just like she would in the springtime, The sisters who had taken the same val their parents had taken when they were each adopted into the family.
We will take care of you if you will take care of us, they had said. None of the previous prior daughters had been hosts at three point fifteen Copestic Lane when their nomadic parents staked a claim on the property. Vam had been the first one. With each passing year of Vam's life, she was slowly coming to terms with the truth about why the wisps were part of their
home and why they were visible only to her. Vam doesn't remember her first encounter with a wisp, but she remembers when Peperika, who in her previous life was called Monica, entered in her fleshly human form as a guest in their home. And Oregano, who was once Mister Franks her English teacher time, used to be Spencer, a classmate she would play with in elementary school, and was the first guest she entertained in her first year as a host.
Nutmeg was a package delivery worker who thought Vam looked rather pretty standing on the porch of her house in her black dress. Last Halloween. He went up the steps to introduce himself and entered, and unbeknownst to him that he would not be coming back out. The whiffs were who they were because they had all made the decision to be guests at three point fifteen Copacetic Lane. What bound them together other than death was their decision to trust Vam. Another ring of the doorbell sounded in the
furyer coming, Vam called out, straightening her dress. Opening the door, she came face to face with a group of tricker treaders, young and old, friend groups and families. No one wanted to miss out on the opportunity to sneak a peek inside the old, creepy Victorian house that sat like a tempting siren on Copastic Lane. Hello, she exclaimed, putting on an unnaturally inviting as she opened the door. We've got candy for your buckets, and if you'd like to stay,
we have snacks and food. We hope you can join us for a while this evening. Stepping aside, she allowed the group of guests to walk into the fourrier, directing them with her arm toward the parlor in the formal
dining room. A murmur of excitement washed over the crowd, and they stepped over each other and pushed bodies away to be the first one to explore the house, and within a few minutes the parlor was full of guests socializing with each other, stuffing their faces with Vams snacks and cooked meals and taking pictures with their phones of the interior of the house and ooing and eyeing like
museum lovers. Vam stood and watched the energy that filled the room, and with no friends or relatives to invite over, the prior house was for the most part empty and deprived of visitors. Halloween night was the only time when people wilfully invited themselves over without arousing suspicion. Outsiders who saw the crowd beckoning to the front door of the prior house didn't have to think twice about coming to a conclusion to explain the number of people entering the abode.
It's Halloween, they'd say, with a shrug. Halloween's for friends and strangers to come. A knocking a perfect cover up. As many of the moocher played in the room, causing an uproar with people singing along, Vam slinked away from the parlor and ambled over to a door leading to the basement. Pitch black darkness swallowed up any traces of the light from the main floor as she squinted in her eyes to see what was below. Father, Mother, she called out quietly, it's time to wake up. Our guests
are here. The early bat catches the worm. She heard a stirring in the darkness, and then heard her father speak, Hello, darling. Is the black tarp laid out in the parlor? Yes, sir. Every year I get compliments about the noise that it makes when they walk on top of it, But no grievances from this group so far. They're a pretty good crowd. Not a drop of blood will make its way to the marble floors and the doorbell, camera and projector. Have
you tested that out? It works like a charm. I tried it earlier, and the projection of myself passing the sidewalk and coming up the steps was reversed perfectly to make it look like I came back down. Anyone watching our home, we'll see our guests leave after the evening is over. Her mother spoke, now, have you prepared the needles and the collection bags? Yes, mother, they're beside the plastic bins that hold the peroxide, bleach and enzyme solvents
we use for cleanup. All the backup freezers have been up and running since this morning. I counted at least forty people who arrived once we break apart ligaments. It should be enough to fit everyone without tacking up space in the basement. It's quite a bit of Burger's and steak flambays ready for us to enjoy for another year. I hope we have more oh negatives than we did last Halloween. The flavor and the sauces we made just wasn't the same without their kick. Her father gave out
a dark chuckle. Should we wear the fangs I got for us three years ago? My love? He spoke to his wife. Why ever would we want to do that? She responded. Vam couldn't see her father shrug, but felt him do. So. It's Halloween. If the people want to see Count Dracula, then who am I to deny them that pleasure? They'll be busy screaming, Dearest Veronica Amber. Has everyone sipped their refreshments, Vam nodded yes. Mother. In about
three minutes, the anesthetic solution will take full effect. If you and father want to make a show of your entrance, it had better be quick before you lose them. Well that's a good girl. Now run along and see that our guest are enjoying. The party will be there very soon. Vam closed the door, and walked to the kitchen. She opened a drawer that held all the knives she had used in previous years. She grabbed a hold of a meat cleaver. This baby was her favorite, made it easier
to cut through the skin and bone. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the wisps of her home had gathered around her, all the ones she conjured by the work of her own hands. She gave them a sly smile, ready for some new roomies. Shutting the drawer with her hip, she walked past the wisps who were protesting. Hiding the meat cleaver behind her, she clenched it behind the shoulder blades of her back, used her free hand a mute the music. All the eyes of her guests
looked at her, with their ears perkedin bodies frozen. Vam smiled at them and gave her final announcement of the night. I just wanted to give you all the big thanks and a grand welcome to our humble little home. My name is Van Pryor, and I'll be your host for the evening.