What follows has been edited for content and relevance to the ongoing investigation
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
October 30, 2013
I like to think I'm a pretty logical guy. I don't believe in ghosts, I don't throw salt over my shoulder when I spill it, and I don't put stock in things like "omens" or "fate." I am with Frank Herbert on the subject of fear: it is the little death, the mind-killer, and giving into it for irrational reasons is tantamount to surrendering your status as a higher organism. It's beneath my dignity to be scared of the unknown.
That said, I am ashamed to say that dolls have always freaked me the f___ out.
I can't put my finger on an inciting incident, a "traumatic moment" from my past leading to my lifelong hatred for the things - it's always been the case as far as I know. I just can't stand them. When Randi - Miranda - was a child I used to insist she keep the little buggers in her closet when she wasn't playing with them, way in the back. God bless her, she tried, but you know how kids can be, and I had more than my fair share of mini heart attacks coming into a room and seeing one (or worse, a pack of them) sitting in the middle of the floor, staring up at me.
And I think that's the thing of it, not the dolls themselves but the faces. The eyes, those dead, unblinking globs of plastic that just seem to fix on you, no matter where you are in the room. I wonder if there's something in our biology, some evolutionary instinct that is triggered by the relentless, even predatory challenge in a doll's eyes, raising our hackles in spite of ourselves. We know intellectually that there's nothing there, that it only mirrors the animosity we project onto it. We know this, and yet we don't dare shift our eyes away from it, for fear that it won't be in the same place it was when we look back.
But I'm woolgathering. Enjoy this brief little window into my soul, Dr. V_______. I have more important fish to fry.
I crashed pretty hard following my epiphany by the dawn's early light a few weeks ago, but my sleep was the sleep of the just, blissful and dreamless. I rose a few hours later like the phoenix from my bed of ashes and marched out to seize my destiny, to the blue ash at the edge of the treeline.
I like to think I'm a pretty logical guy. I don't believe in ghosts, I don't throw salt over my shoulder when I spill it, and I don't put stock in things like "omens" or "fate." I am with Frank Herbert on the subject of fear: it is the little death, the mind-killer, and giving into it for irrational reasons is tantamount to surrendering your status as a higher organism. It's beneath my dignity to be scared of the unknown.
That said, I am ashamed to say that dolls have always freaked me the f___ out.
I can't put my finger on an inciting incident, a "traumatic moment" from my past leading to my lifelong hatred for the things - it's always been the case as far as I know. I just can't stand them. When Randi - Miranda - was a child I used to insist she keep the little buggers in her closet when she wasn't playing with them, way in the back. God bless her, she tried, but you know how kids can be, and I had more than my fair share of mini heart attacks coming into a room and seeing one (or worse, a pack of them) sitting in the middle of the floor, staring up at me.
And I think that's the thing of it, not the dolls themselves but the faces. The eyes, those dead, unblinking globs of plastic that just seem to fix on you, no matter where you are in the room. I wonder if there's something in our biology, some evolutionary instinct that is triggered by the relentless, even predatory challenge in a doll's eyes, raising our hackles in spite of ourselves. We know intellectually that there's nothing there, that it only mirrors the animosity we project onto it. We know this, and yet we don't dare shift our eyes away from it, for fear that it won't be in the same place it was when we look back.
But I'm woolgathering. Enjoy this brief little window into my soul, Dr. V_______. I have more important fish to fry.
I crashed pretty hard following my epiphany by the dawn's early light a few weeks ago, but my sleep was the sleep of the just, blissful and dreamless. I rose a few hours later like the phoenix from my bed of ashes and marched out to seize my destiny, to the blue ash at the edge of the treeline.
I can't figure how I (or anyone else) could have missed this: the tree trunk was a road map of antique conflict. Along with the bullet holes, there were gouges and scars from edged weapons, most likely axeheads. The base of the tree was covered with long, deep scratches that went all around its circumference. I confirmed a suspicion I had when I placed the tips of my fingers against a group of them - they were from human fingernails. I imagined a fighter on the ground, clutching the trunk for dear life as a group of his enemies struggled to tear him away, inflicting all manner of grievous wounds on him as they did. There was a savage fight here, and I could barely contain my excitement.
That excitement was tempered pretty quickly when I tried to dig in one of the bullet holes with my pocket knife. The wood was as hard as rock, and I gave up after I nearly broke the tip off in it. (Weird how the wood was hard enough to resist my knife, but had once been soft enough to be scratched up by fingernails? Not sure what to make of that.) Nonetheless, I wasn't deterred. The shot pattern on the tree all pointed in one direction: into the woods. I just needed to be more patient and methodical about how I searched.
I came back the next day ready to conduct nothing less than a CSI-level investigation. OK, I wasn't exactly that scientific about it: I picked a spot inside the trees in the direction the bullets had been flying and laid out a grid on the ground with string. I numbered all the sections and kept careful track of what I found in each one in order to paint a full picture of what had happened. Like most things in life, I expected this to be the same: a lot of work for precious little payoff.
It wasn't.
 |  |
Musket balls. Arrowheads. A bent piece of metal that I'm pretty sure is the butt-plate of a rifle. All manner of coat buttons. I was over the moon with everything I was finding, but then I found this:
This is a button from a from a US military jacket. Undeniable. PROOF! I nearly danced a damn jig right there in the middle of the creek bed. Images of grandeur paraded through my head: the acknowledgement of my find from the OHC, the press coverage, the accolades, the James Arthur Corrie annex of the Sugar Creek Museum of Pioneer History that doesn't exist yet. The promise of future greatness was intoxicating, and it momentarily distracted me from the large number of peculiarities accompanying my discovery.
For one thing, it was all just under the surface. I barely had to dig at all before finding the first musket ball. Second, apart from the corrosion of age, it was in pristine condition. None of the bullets I found had been fired - no fragments, no flattened remnants, just perfectly round pieces of lead. Then there was the scatter pattern: there wasn't one. Almost everything I found was in the center four squares of my grid, like they had been dumped there in a pile.
And there was this f___ing thing right in the middle of all of it:
For one thing, it was all just under the surface. I barely had to dig at all before finding the first musket ball. Second, apart from the corrosion of age, it was in pristine condition. None of the bullets I found had been fired - no fragments, no flattened remnants, just perfectly round pieces of lead. Then there was the scatter pattern: there wasn't one. Almost everything I found was in the center four squares of my grid, like they had been dumped there in a pile.
And there was this f___ing thing right in the middle of all of it:
My soul momentarily separated from my body when I saw it staring up at me from the muck. Once my heart rate returned to normal, I really started to worry. What was this trash doing in the middle of a pile of 200-plus-year-old artifacts? Would this "corrupt" the find somehow? Maybe I can avoid mentioning this when I send the button off to my old buddy N_________ at OHC. Sure, it's a little unethical, but maybe it won't matter in the final analysis? Crossing my fingers on that one.
The artifacts are safely labeled and locked away in my desk drawer. Not sure why, but I also kept the doll head. It's from an older-model Cabbage Patch Kid, with blue eyes and remnants of red yarn hair. Looks like it was an expensive one: there are hints that it may have been customized.
I put the head in a freezer bag. Inside a paper bag. Inside my locked office closet. Facing the wall.
(I still feel like it's looking at me.)
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