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And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear,
You shout, and no one seems to hear --
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes --
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FEEDBACK:
This story is a little bit personal, and for that I apologize. It's based on some actual shit I've dealt with and seen (particularly the bits with the judge). I've never been admitted into a place like this, but I've been in Lindsey's position enough times in my life to get a vague notion of what's going on inside them.
I'm definitely not here to start up a conversation about psychiatry in America — and my heart goes out to anyone working in the field (it's certainly a thankless task, and I've meant enough wonderful psychiatrists to know they exist, they're saving lives, and they need as much support as we can bear to provide them with). But some of these places fucking terrify me. In part, I wrote this SCP to try and show you why.
There's no final twist, no skeleton in the closet, no 'they were ghosts all along!'. Cragstaff is just all the misery I've seen in these places poured into one horrible fucking hole. And that hole will never, ever let you leave.
I have no idea if the two of them made it out. I hope they did.
I was prepared to upvote until the email from Director Browning. I can't really imagine that the Foundation doesn't do background checks or psychological screening. Also there's really no believable way that a Site Director (?) would ever assume that a missing researcher, reporting a kidnapping by unknown paranormal agency, is just having a schizophrenic episode. This is a security risk, of the kind that should require a massive organizational crisis response, and the Foundation has no reason to be skeptical of this, why don't they at least confirm it by tracking her phone?
Prior to that this was tense and scary as hell though.
Julia went in as a teenager. Speaking from real life experience: Tracking down mental health history records for someone back when they were a teenager can be absurdly hard, if not literally impossible. And that's when the person in question gives you permission! It gets even more ridiculous if the mental health institute has since closed. Harder still if you don't know what you're looking for. And on top of all that, states have different requirements for how long they're required to keep these documents — they may have already been destroyed!
I imagine that, yeah — the Foundation has the resources to even retrieve documents which no longer physically exist — but they're not going to pull those resources out to screen every researcher they hire. They'd probably just do your standard screening and call it a day.
Lindsey dug way deeper — largely because she had good reason to.
He's not saying to discount her testimony, he's just being a jerk and pointing out that the logs speak for themselves. He doesn't want to update the article to include direct mention of 'alt-dimension' Cragstaff because Julia's depiction is anecdotal; he brings up the schizophrenia mostly just because he's a fucking asshole.
He's not doubting she was taken by SCP-3054; he's merely doubting that her description of alt-dimension Cragstaff was accurate. Maybe that wasn't clear from his email? I don't know.
They'd probably just do your standard screening and call it a day.
The standard screening for something like Top Secret Clearance at the NSA would certainly uncover this kind of thing. The Foundation is even more covert than that. If you lie about your background to the NSA and they find out later, you go to Federal prison, but if you lie to the Foundation about your background and they find out later you end up a Jane Doe in an amnesia ward or an unmarked grave.
If she really is schizophrenic, then that really ought to be diagnosable, or she is being treated, either way it seems nigh-unbelievably incompetent for the Foundation to have given her a Level 2 clearance at minimum, exposed her to the paranormal, and not have known.
He's not doubting she was affected by SCP-3054; he's merely doubting that her description of alt-dimension Cragstaff was accurate.
He lost a researcher, who is probably being held by entities with unknown abilities and motives, and isn't treating this a a severe security breach (which is almost certainly policy). He isn't apparently even willing to take extremely basic measures to confirm her report. He should be fired (and probably terminated) for gross incompetence.
He also isn't showing the least amount of responsibility or concern for the people under his command, which isn't implausible, some leaders are just bad in any large organization, but if I was on the O5, I would probably want to put the bullet in him myself after reading this…
sirpudding, I don't think you know much about how mental health records work? I can go into more detail if you'd like via PM — but suffice to say — yes, it's perfectly possible a screening by the NSA would not reveal that you were in a mental health clinic for schizophrenia as a teenager.
Re: Browning's assessment, that isn't what I wanted the reader to take away; he's definitely taking it seriously, and he's definitely planning on running some tests (by having people enter SCP-XXXX through SCP-XXXX-A with video equipment and more, for example) to confirm her report. He just doesn't want to update the article before getting additional confirmation.
If you took away a different conclusion than that, then maybe I need to reassess the email itself? I'll give it some thought.
(Also, I don't think the Foundation terminates people for incompetence, but that might just be a difference of opinion!)
sirpudding, I don't think you know much about how mental health records work?
I don't think that you know how background checks for security clearances work. They don't need her sealed records (although they can require you to provide them yourself), because they will have interviewed her parents, teachers and so on. Furthermore, this is for legal background checks and the Foundation isn't bound by law.
They certainly would have asked her if she had a history of mental illness, and she would have agreed under oath that the information that she gave was true and complete.
Besides this isn't addressing the problem of psychological screening. If she is taking medication for schizophrenia, the Foundation would certainly know, and if she is an untreated schizophrenic they would probably have diagnosed this. The Foundation has an interest in the mental health of employees, even more so than real life espionage agencies do. Not only can a Foundation employee leak, but they can also be possessed, mind controlled, infected with anomalous memes, ect.
If you took away a different conclusion than that, then maybe I need to reassess the email itself?
He comes across as extremely dismissive and the impression that I got was that he thinks she is somewhere totally mundane and delusional and because of this isn't going to do anything about it. He could track her phone. He could insert an MTF to recover her. He almost certainly should call the Foundation equivalent of a DUST-ONE (which should be mandatory). He could do a lot of things, but instead he sends an email to her supervisor indicating he doesn't give a shit about the people under his command.
(Also, I don't think the Foundation terminates people for incompetence, but that might just be a difference of opinion!)
The Foundation is an extralegal organization, and effectively a massive (and impossibly successful) criminal conspiracy. They can't just fire people for the same reason mobs can't just fire people. The options seem to be either kill them or make them into amnesiac vegetables (and the latter assumes a confidence in the effectiveness of amnestics that seems implausible).
I… okay, I think there's a lot of levels of miscommunication going on here?
Way less important, but:
I'm kind of not feeling this whole conversation; it's giving me a super-hostile vibe. It's okay that you downvoted the article, I don't mind that you dislike it — I'm mostly just responding to what feels, to me, like a lot of misconceptions about schizophrenia, mental health, and mental health records in the US.
If you want to continue this conversation, then maybe we could do it on PMs, or in IRC? Maybe I'd feel more comfortable there?
I'm kind of not feeling this whole conversation; it's giving me a super-hostile vibe.
I apologize, I don't intend any hostility. I really don't like Browning, but I gather that was your intention, so that is fine. I just don't find the email itself very plausible.
It's okay that you downvoted the article, I don't mind that you dislike it
I don't dislike it. I really liked it, up until that email, which kills it for me.
I'm mostly just responding to what feels, to me, like a lot of misconceptions about schizophrenia, mental health, and mental health records in the US.
Yes I understand that the records of minors are sealed, or often even destroyed. I think you have some misconceptions about how background checks work. For high level clearances they don't just rely on public records and self-reporting. They actually talk to people who know you. If literally no one living exists who knows her, they simply wouldn't be able to clear her.
If you want to continue this conversation, then maybe we could do it on PMs, or in IRC? Maybe I'd feel more comfortable there?
I don't really like taking critique to PMs. It doesn't really help anybody else and is therefore kind of pointless. If you PM me, I will respond though.
(Continuing the conversation in PMs, but just wanted to mention here)
After some thought, I've made several significant changes to the letter from Director Browning. I don't agree with all of your points (sirpudding), but I agree with enough of them to prompt some rewriting.
(Also, I again apologize for taking your tone to be hostile; I think this piece is a little personal for me, so I'm maybe a bit sensitive about it!)
I thought I had eventually upvoted, but apparently I didn't. Anyway this definitely deserves it. Thank you for listening to my criticism.
As far as Browning is concerned…
…isn't that what the Ethics Commission is for?
Sirpudding did raise a good point, but since I didn't notice until after it was pointed out, I'll let it slide. +1
I'm settling on an upvote. The logs develop nicely and are immersive. However, it is also fairly predictable in terms of the way in which Owens progresses as a character, as well as the resolution. The notion of a place with a constantly shifting internal layout has been done before on the site, and this doesn't offer anything new in that regard. Nevertheless, it is a well-crafted yarn.
I've been thinking about this, and I think you might be spot-on. I think I'm going to edit it to remove references to shifting geography, or waking up in a different bed:
The only reasons I added that in was to get across that the building contains way more people than is immediately obvious… but I think seeing the different faces every day gets that across just as well.
(Also, I want this place to be as non-anomalous as possible. The horror isn't that it shifts around, or that the place is spooky; that makes it seem way more interesting than it is. The horror is its banality — its sameness — that this is where you spend the rest of your life. A series of faces you'll never recognize, living in a fog without hope, waiting to die. Enormous stretches of crippling, crushing boredom and tedium punctuated by tiny, acute bursts of terror, paternalism, and cruelty. The shifting geography and waking-up-in-a-new-bed don't really add to that horror, I don't think, and therefore should probably be cut. I can still have her bring up the different faces, which can still be used against her in front of the judge.)
And on a final note: Without that spatial manipulation stuff in the beginning, it makes the moment when she ends right back up at the front doors just a liiiiiittle bit harder to see coming.
Thank you for bringing this up!
Without that spatial manipulation stuff in the beginning, it makes the moment when she ends right back up at the front doors just a liiiiiittle bit harder to see coming.
That's why I accepted the use of shifting geography here. It played a part in the resolution (even if it was a predictable part) rather than simply being tacked-on for the sake of it. Considering that this anomaly is in an alternate dimension/reality though, the ending is still believable and fits the narrative themes without it.
This is suitably nightmarish. It strikes me as a twist on the Unreliable Narrator. There's also an echo of the Rosenhan Experiment, except that the facility is unreachable and unwilling to release anyone. Maybe unable to release anyone? Where would they even be, were they to be released?
This is much more frightening than a generic Thing What Kills You could ever be.
I've once had a dream of a mental institution. It was hazy, as lucidness usually is, but quite more vivid than is often with me. A large brick style building surrounded by twilight where the staff were faceless and the admitted always stricken with fear. I remember seeing needles. Injections that left patients for all intents and purposes clinically dead or worse.
This article brought that memory back to me, and for that reason among others, I absolutely love it.
+1
Jesus. This is the first SCP that's gotten to me in a while. Easy +1, although I think the ending wraps things up a little too nicely.
Even more important: The diagnosis of schizophrenia may have actually been completely wrong!
So, this thing doesn't actually operate on whether or not the person is actually mentally ill, just whether or not someone has put in writing that they're mentally ill (or autistic, or whatnot)? The skip made me sick to my stomach before, this addition does not help my feelings right now.
I mean, great job? I'm pretty sure my reaction was what you were going for here! You really hit me in the gut there. But I'm not going back and reading this again.
Yeah, it doesn't care if you're actually suffering from mental illness (that's partly what I wanted to get across with Lindsey's method of gaining entrance). All it cares about is that someone, somewhere, at some point officially decided that you are mentally ill. And put it in writing.
Which is kind of the point, because — that's one of the fucked up things in psychiatry this thing represents.
I'm sorry that it made you sick to your stomach! It's kind of supposed to (obviously!), but I don't want to make people feel too much like crap (I was hoping the ending might alleviate some of that, but it's still pretty messed up stuff, I know). Thank you for the feedback!
I just about cried reading this. Won't elaborate too much; just take my upvote.
(account deleted)
