After Cheat Lake

After the Cheat Lake investigations, I honestly don't remember how I got home. 
I remember seeing Cassandra getting pulled out of sight, and the next thing I knew I was walking through the door of my apartment.

I never spoke to the group again, either. I figured if anything had happened, they would have contacted me. So I guess the group kind of just fizzled out? 
I do wish I knew for sure what happened to Cassandra, and if the rest of them are okay. Thinking about it is something I try to avoid usually. There's just a lot of regret and anxiety and confusion about that night. 

Trying to remember what happened that night is like trying to remember a dream a few days after you've had it. 
You know it happened, but as much as you try to remember it, you just can't sort it out in your head. Nothing's there anymore. 
The memory has left you. 

But even then, the dream has still taken effect. 

Even then, you're aware that something is missing. 

Today's Harvest

Well, although they're becoming monotonous for me, I suppose I should still write about harvests every now and then. But I'm telling you, there's no lack of Iron Oxide here. So there's never any struggle, and I never have trouble meeting my shipment requirement.

I put on my suit in the morning and stay out for about 3-4 hours at a time. I like to get it over with early so that I can get back to the pod and blog or sleep. Honestly, there is NOTHING to do here but that.

I feel like someone in a jail cell. The other day I actually considered marking the days on the wall.

Anyways, today's harvest.
I saw some cool rocks.

What's that Gritty Feeling in My Teeth?

OH YEAH IT'S DUST.

Eff yeah, NASA

You asked for it... Cheat Lake Hautings.

The Hauntings at Cheat Lake were the first event to bring the group together, so we knew it was gonna be a big case. Cassandra, who had first seen the two girls while driving home, brought us together with that post asking for help. So when we finally decided to make the trip, expectations were high.
It was almost like the final piece in our group's story.

I myself trusted Cassandra about what she had seen completely. With all the evidence we were finding throughout Morgantown, I wasn't shocked by paranormal encounters anymore.

I'd been to Cheat Lake a few times, but never hung around for long. It's one of those rich neighborhoods where if you don't live there, aren't a member of the golf course, and don't own a boat, there's not much to do. So yeah, I'd been through.

We went to the same forest where Cassandra had seen the ghosts of the two girls. It was just dusk, and we decided that we should probably hang around for a bit, just so that we weren't walking in and immediately expecting something. So we set up camp, made a fire, and kept an eye out for anything suspicious.
We'd all gotten pretty chummy at this point, so we sat around the fire talking and drinking. General merrymaking early in the night.

This is a picture I got from early on in the night.

Looking back I really wish that moment had lasted a little longer.

I was taking a swig of beer when I felt a pressure on my left shoulder. I figured one of the group members had just brushed by me but when I looked back nobody was there.

I looked across the fire at peter and he was staring, jaw gaping, at whatever had just happened.

Alcyone was sitting next to him and she just looked horrified.

My first thought was to look over at Agnes and Cassandra, but the second I did they got jerked out of their seats.

The last thing I saw that night was Cassandra getting dragged around in the grass, and trying to grab onto something.

I blacked out after that.

All I remember from that night is being so terrified and confused that I couldn't move. Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I still jolt awake after thinking about that pressure on my shoulder. 



To give y'all some background on the other members...

Members

• Alcyone & Fachtna
• Cassandra Evans
• Agnes Cassidy
• Peter Sanchez

Alcyone Waters

Alcyone is a woman of 22 who works as a projectionist in Morgantown. She is originally from Pikeville, KY and the daughter of a pair of fundamentalist Christian parents. Alcyone has always been rebellious, partly because she has always been a curious person and her love of books, film, and learning has taught her that her parents have been wrong on a great many things. Most notably, and damaging for Alcyone has been their belief that her temporal lobe epilepsy is in fact demon possession and their insistence on faith healers who concur with their assessment. Alcyone has fled their grasp to make a life of her own away from the church and manage her condition in a way that suits her own desires. She isn't fond of the usual medicines that she is prescribed, as she found depakote "zombified" her, and is currently on kepra and unofficially a medical marijuana patient.

She is aware that she sometimes hallucinates, sometimes repeats days or segments of days only to find it was a dream. It makes a regular job kind of difficult for her, but she goes to the cinema where she works faithfully because she truly loves movies. She relates much of her experience to film. Part of this is her lack of social experience due to her sheltered upbringing. She tries to seem tougher than she is, but she is a very lonely and insecure person desperate for friends and wanting to be liked rather than pitied.

She is deeply religious as a Wiccan, and believes in spirits, which she may in fact be able to see and interact with. Her unusual roommate may in fact be one of said spirits.

  

Fachtna

Fachtna has stayed with Alcyone from the time she was 11 and living under her bed. He is a form of poltergeist, as he stays with Alcyone rather than a particular location. He's disruptive, sometimes obnoxious, loud, and sarcastic, but he cares for Alcyone very much. He enjoys television and movies, a shared passion of theirs. Previously he liked to disturb her parents, but now has little else to do but talk to Alcyone and annoy the neighbors. 

   

Cassandra Elise Evans

Cassie Evans is a 24 year old biology student at West Virginia University. She usually has a very laid back personality, but occasionally needs some time alone to keep herself from going crazy. She is originally from Sacramento, California. After graduating from high school, Cassie decided to go on an extended road trip, because her large family (which consists of two hippie parents and 6 siblings) was driving her crazy. After traveling cross country for about 2 years, her car broke down in Morgantown, WV and she couldn't afford to fix it. However, after being stuck in the small college town for a few days, Cassie decided she liked it and wanted to settle there for a while. All of the traveling was beginning to wear her out, and she was beginning to fear she wouldn't ever find anywhere to truly belong. She managed to secure a waitressing job at the Evansdale Boston Beanery and applied to WVU a few months later.

Now, four years later, Cassie is a senior biology major with a cat and an annoying roommate. After living in one place for 4 years, she is starting to get restless again. However, things liven up when she becomes interested in the paranormal after encountering the ghosts of a couple decapitated co-eds in the woods near Cheat Lake. Despite the fact she worries she may have hallucinated, she writes about her terrifying experience on her blog. She also searches the internet for anyone who may have experienced  something similar. Eventually, these actions bring her in contact with the other MAPI members.

Agnes Cassidy

Agnes Cassidy is a 19 year-old college student at West Virginia University.

She lives in Dadisman and has had five separate roommates. The first, Amanda, switched to Summit mid-summer. The second, Bridgette something, never showed up on move-in. Colleen was the third, and also the alleged bulimic. Asia was the fourth and probably bathed three times in the two weeks before she transferred to a community college “closer to home.” The fifth is a catty ex-cheerleader named Brooke.

 She’s currently undecided as far as her major goes, but she’s very interested in psychology.

Her mother is Liz, or Elizabeth Cassidy. Liz is your stereotypical erratic author, specializing in science fiction, primarily hauntings. Liz likes to take her work a step further by actually living in haunted homes. Because of this, Agnes has lived in five different states. There is quite a bit of animosity between the pair. Agnes spent most of her childhood resenting her mother, which is referenced early in her blogs.

Agnes became interested in MAPI while perusing through the blogs on blogger and landing on a post by a student at WVU detailing a paranormal experience on Cheat Lake with the headless coeds. She responds to the girl’s post, as does two other individuals and the four decide to meet up.

But Agnes’s interest in the paranormal wasn’t recently founded. In fact, personal childhood experiences both influenced her interest and the animosity with her mother. In the last home she lived in with her mother, she experienced a rather unwelcoming presence in the home. She would hear a ball bouncing down the stairs and a child’s laughter when there wasn’t a little boy living anywhere near them. At the peak of this activity, she was asked to help Liz set up her office in one of the empty rooms on the second floor. She was curious at the small red chair in the middle of the room when she heard the door slam. When she turned she realized that it was gone. The walls started to close in on her and she was screaming her head off. Ten minutes later, Liz finally managed to break her daughter from her panic attack and Agnes realized that she’d been hallucinating the entire time.

While any rational mother would find another home upon their child’s fear of a home, Liz instead drew inspiration from her daughter’s experience, writing her latest novel about it. 

Peter Sanchez

Peter is a 28 year-old living Morgantown, WV. Peter dreams of becoming a big time reporter in a big city. He works for the local newspaper and has accepted his stale/boring lifestyle. He enjoys freelance reporting the most, writing and submitting articles to different news agencies. These articles give Peter a chance to write feature stories that interest him (a lot more interesting then the drunk college kids screaming outside of his apartment on High Street). Peter spends most of his time researching anything that stands out to be interesting to him. He has dark features, black hair with strands of gray that somehow cheated their way out early. He prefers to not shave his facial hair but grooms it neatly. He smokes cigarettes and drinks a lot of coffee, especially when he stays up all night trying to finish a story. He keeps a journal to jot down his surroundings and sometimes mentions his personal (psychological) encounters.

Peter was born in Brooklyn, New York. His mother and father raised him and his older brother there. He had a hard childhood, both of his parents struggled with alcoholism. Sleepy, mean parents seemed normal to teenage-Peter. He had a lot of freedom and could almost do anything he wanted when times were really bad. When he first started smoking cigarettes at age twelve, his mother found out and responded with giving him a pack of cigarettes. He had wild teenage years due to his need to be the life of the party. Peter always had to be right. He shows his teenage self with his arrogance and stubbornness today.

Peter’s free spirit is what allows him to find purpose in writing about the world around him. He knows things are not always what they seem to be and he hopes to bring larger pictures to light. The stories I want to tell through Peter are stories that are usually left untold. Peter loves solving unsolved mysteries and loves corruption even more.

Peter began to become bored with his reporting job at the local news paper and he started searching around the town for almost anything. He needed a challenging mission and since nothing was right in front of him, he started to eaves drop and search the web. He had heard about "hauntings" that occur around Morgantown but usually just laughed the topic off. After visiting a cemetery, he decided that he must help tell the stories that have not been written. He searched google and landed on a recent blog post by Cassie Evans. Cassie posted about her possible ghost sighting in Cheat Lake and Peter had to get an interview with this girl. Cassie told Peter about the group MAPI, whom Peter will eventually meet with as well. 

Investigations at Boreman Hall

I got good feedback from my last post about the Hotel Morgan that I've decided I'm gonna write more about my history with MAPI. Apparently y'all are more interested in hearing about ghosts than about iron oxide harvesting (big surprise.) But I don't mind, cause I like remembering MAPI. 
 So the group had been getting contacted a lot about hauntings at Boreman Hall, a girls dormitory on the Downtown Campus of WVU. 
It's even said to be one of the most haunted dorms on campus. One of the stories we heard seemed pretty legitimate. A girl emailed us, saying that she had lived there for a year and had all kinds of odd things happen. Once she left her room for a few minutes, leaving her computer on her bed, and when she came back the laptop was in the center of the room on the floor, and the screen was black. Other people have said they've felt a presence, like they weren't ever alone in there. 
 So anyways the group was pretty excited for this one. After our other investigations we were getting a hang of things and weren't so easily freaked out anymore. We were becoming real pros at this stuff. When we got to the dorm we all got out our cameras, hoping to actually see something (a lot of times we only heard things, but everybody is more believing when they actually see it.) 
 We went up to the third floor, cause we'd gotten the most complaints about it. We all definitely felt a presence, and proceeded with caution. When we got to the staircase at the end of the hall, we jumped. I was lucky enough to get a picture, though.

She disappeared as soon as I got the picture.

Still, some of the best visual evidence we ever got. 

MAPI's Investigation at the Hotel Morgan

This was a real turning point for me when it came to believing in the paranormal. Our first investigation is what made us realize we needed to inform people in Morgantown about the hauntings.

I remember we had heard about a girl being drowned in a bathtub of the hotel, and that there had been some sightings. We went there to see what we could find.
When we got to the hotel we split up, looking on different floors and in different places.

I went up to the top floor to look around the restaurant, but I didn't see any ghosts. It was a nice place actually, good place to go blow a paycheck.

The other member's got luckier than I did. They said they had actually seen and heard things, and they took me to see for myself.

It's hard to talk about what happened next. I still feel like people won't believe me.
As soon as I got into the hallway, I started feeling queasy. I started sweating and feeling damp all over, but I had goosebumps. I wanted to get back into the elevator immediately.
When I got near the room where the girl was said to have died, I had the urge to run.

I heard panting, gagging, gasping.

I started seriously freaking out, and whipped around in a dizzy fog to get back downstairs as fast as possible.

It's then when I heard the scream.

Sometimes I can't believe it myself, but that was the first intense paranormal experience I ever had. And, that MAPI ever had.

Lonely Planet

Perpetual Dryness, with a Pinch of Desolation

I never thought I'd miss the color green so much. 

Everything around me is either rock or dirt, with the exception of the contents of the atmosphere dome… not that anything inside is warm or soft or comforting. The second I take off my suit and step onto the tile floor of the dome, I realize there’s just no avoiding discomfort in this place.

Even my bed is unwelcoming. I lay down every night on a set of sheets that are coarser than a burlap sack, and look almost radioactive in their sterile whiteness. In the beginning, before I broke everything in a little bit there was a constant, subtle crackling sound coming from my pillow when I laid my head on it.

So yeah, I’m really sitting in the lap of luxury here. Tim Grandy- a real success story.

The conditions have definitely made me feel more alone; which is saying something, because I’m on another planet. I dunno if I like having all this time to think. I just start remembering everything I miss back home. Not anything material-like, mainly just people.

Just the other day… I had gotten in from a harvest, and I sat down to look at the stats on my blog. For some reason I was reminded of the time I found Cassandra’s first blog post about a paranormal encounter. I can’t believe I didn’t think more of it then.

That group gave me something to hold on to in a really… I dunno if I can say dark time… maybe blank time is better. Yeah, I just literally had nothing going on and felt like I had wasted a major part of my life with my previous job. The group gave me something to do, and it was something like I’d never experienced before. When we met at Jay’s for the first time they were just strangers I met on coincidence, but by our final job I couldn’t stand the thought of it ending.

I don’t get emotional about things usually.

I just can’t believe something so significant happened to me, and now that part of my life is over.

-Tim

InDesign

Thinking about MAPI

When I lived back home in Morgantown, I used to dabble in some paranormal investigation. I guess what got me thinking about it is just my recent experience with the unbelievable...but I still think back on my time in MAPI (Morgantown Association of Paranormal Investigators) like damn, that was so intense.

I remember I got involved after this college girl Cassandra posted on an online forum. She was just looking for some answers cause she had a pretty scary time on a haunted road in Cheat Lake. It was pretty interesting. I myself hadn't had any run-ins with ghosts before I saw her post, but I always kinda believed in ghosts (kept that one to myself.) Living in Morgantown, I'd get spooked walking by really old buildings.

It's kinda like, when you're in a really old place the history is almost palpable. But when you think about the history in terms of people, you realize the possibility of spirits being left behind too.
Anyways, I got in touch with this girl Cassandra cause I was interested in hearing more about what happened to her. I dunno if that counts as exploiting the situation, but what can I say. I can be curious and apathetic at the same time, right? So sue me.

Turns out I wasn't the only guy interested. A couple other people turned up when I met up with her for the first time. There was Peter- a reporter, and the only guy who might have been exploiting the situation more than me, Alcyone- a girl who was definitely in it for the ghost chat, and Auden- there was definitely something up with this one.

All of us had our different motivations in the beginning, even though we weren't completely open with each other, but by the end of it we were a tight-knit bunch. To be honest I think what we were doing got us all really involved on a level i never expected. It was like.... I dunno, taking your work home with you. Even after we got together, I'd keep thinking about what we talked about. I mean paranormal activity became something I thought about over coffee in the morning, weird.

I have to say though, I didn't mind that it took up so much of my time- mentally and physically. In terms of being a group, we were organized as hell. We drew out maps of what we found, linked 'em together, wrote out documents for each site... The group gave me a sense of accomplishment I wasn't used to. I was really sad to say bye to those guys, but the group was coming to a kinda natural end anyway. I think in a way the closer we got to solving all of Morgantown's mysteries, the more aware we got of the association breaking up.

As someone who didn't have a lot going on before it, I hit kind of a low point after. But goddamn, the times I had with MAPI...
Well, it's late and I gotta pass out. Possibly more details of MAPI later.

-Tim

My old stomping grounds

View Tim's map in a larger map

Talk About Jet Lag

First day on the Red Planet, and I'm already homesick. There's a serious lack of "cool" colors here, and it just doesn't sit well with a being accustomed to luxuries like water, plants, and breathable oxygen. Thank Earth for the atmospheric simulation model (ASM,) which I guess I can consider my home for the coming years. 

I suppose you'll all be wanting some background as to how I came to this planet. 

Being a single man with no real direction in my life, I signed up for..... well you could call it an internship, but it's looking more like a paid life sentence. Electronics manufacturers started seeking additional sources of Iron oxide a few years back, and so they recruited long term harvesters. There weren't many folks willing to give up significant chunks of their life, so the pay is good. 

Basically, I'm here to do two things:  harvest iron oxide from the surface, ship it back to earth, and not die while I'm at it. 

I'll be posting updates from home base about everything from daily harvests, to inevitable self reflection, and maybe even a few discoveries. 

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end." 

-Hemingway