I could've sworn that I was being watched. But the only person nearby was the security guard, and when I turned around, he was never looking in my direction.
kebby (she/her) 8/22/2023 (Tue) 19:27:11 #28478831
Have any of you heard of Corning, New York? Maybe met somebody from there? If you have, please tell me, so that I can know I'm just being paranoid. I'm on vacation right now, and I have no clue what's going on, but maybe you people can make something out of it.
For the sake of privacy, I’ll give the other two people in this story nicknames. Let's call them Patches and Butter.
I'm a rising high school senior, but the other two are headed to college in the fall. The three of us know each other because we're always involved in the school plays. Butter organized a trip to Niagara Falls for us, and we've stopped in Corning to take a break from driving. If, like me, you've never heard of it before, it’s just another small town in upstate NY, mostly famous for its museum of glass, which has a large display of … take a wild guess.
No, really. Butter couldn't guess. He said it might've been a metaphor for how transparent the museum's information is. Or maybe it was built with a lot of glass. I pointed out that to be fair, the building was made out of glass.
Back to Corning. The town isn't sitting right with me for a number of reasons. Everything was way too empty for two in the afternoon. The giant strip mall parking lot next to our hotel had maybe three or four cars in it.
Pic I just snapped next to our hotel
Butter apparently booked the cheapest hotels he could find that don't look like a breeding den for cockroaches. Personally, I had no complaints about the hotel in Corning, but Patches grumbled constantly about how the plumbing was screwed up and the AC was way too cold.
Patches is just a complainer in general. She's always cranky on car rides, especially when Butter tries to remind us that "it's about the journey, not the destination." She was especially pissed today because I had to drag her out of bed. She's always had a bad habit of scrolling on her phone until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and the checkout time today was 11:00 AM, so I had to physically wrestle the pillow away from her before she gave up trying to go back to sleep.
After we put our luggage in our room, we got lunch from the Wendy’s nearby. When we ordered, the cashier asked us if we would like patties in our burgers. Patches told him yes, we obviously want meat in a hamburger, and asked if he was ok in the head.
The Wendy's earlier. Notice how we're the only car there
The cashier stared at us, and he suddenly got this look of realization, like he just had some sort of epiphany. He told us that he’ll “remember that going forward.”
“That cashier has to be stoned out of his fucking mind,” Patches said. “I respect it.”
I don’t do drugs very often, but he seemed sober enough to me.
As the other two eat, I watched the cashier. He was staring at his phone, but every once in a while he would surreptitiously glance at us for a few seconds. When we were about to finish, he gestured for the only other employee to come talk to him. They started whispering about something. When we left, I saw the cashier point to us for a split second. They kept watching us through the windows as we headed back to our car.
After lunch, we visited the one attraction the town had, the museum of glass. Like every other establishment in this town, there was basically nobody there.
The weird thing was that even though there were no visitors, there were tons of security guards, one at almost every corner. The guards were looking at us funny, but to be fair, Patches is practically covered in tattoos and Butter does not know the concept of an "indoor voice."
There was a security guard behind us here, and another one at the end of the hall
Patches complained about this all the time. She has dragon tattoos that snake up all the way from her knuckles to her collarbone, and while they look very cool, they do put some people on edge. Butter joked that other people are scared they'll get eaten by the dragons.
Halfway through the first exhibit, Butter swore that a brochure said the museum had a large, hyper-realistic cricket made entirely out of glass. Patches thought he was tripping, so the two of them decided that their current objective is to check the entire museum to see whether or not he was right. I'm a bit of a sucker for fine art and I was still interested in this exhibit, so I told them to go ahead.
Shortly after the other two left, I started sneezing. I have pretty bad allergies, even in the summer. The security guard standing next to me suddenly asked me if I was sick. I assumed he just doesn’t want me to infect other visitors (as if there were any), and I said no, I was just allergic to pollen.
He shrugged and told me to “get well soon” anyways. I'd never heard anybody say that for allergies.
I once read a Reddit post about something called the Oz Factor, where sometimes, in rural areas, people will get a strange feeling that something's off. I've lived in the suburbs all my life, so I'd never thought I'd get to experience anything like it until now.
As I browsed the nearby artwork, I could've sworn that I was being watched. But the only person nearby was the security guard, and when I turned around, he was never looking in my direction.
Butter and Patches were long gone at this point, and I suddenly noticed how silent it was around me. Every step I took echoed off the walls. I listened to my gut instinct and left that exhibit.
I caught up to the other two. At this point, they'd been looking for the cricket for a while now with no luck. I reminded them that the museum had a map. We found the statue pretty quickly after that.
Apparently, they'd made a bet. When we found the cricket, Butter started demanding that Patches pay him ten bucks as she promised. However, Patches argued that she technically didn't lose the bet, because Butter said the statue was made entirely out of glass, while in reality it also contained materials like cloth and plastic. Butter has a habit of taking bets he absolutely cannot win, so he was fighting for those ten bucks with tooth and nail.
As the two of them were arguing, I read the placard next to the artwork. What was weird about it was that instead of giving background information about the sculpture or an artist's statement, the placard only had a nature fact.
Chlorobalius leucoviridis, or the spotted predatory katydid, is a species in the bush cricket or katydid family. It mimics the calls of other insects, often cicadas, in order to lure members of that species and subsequently eat them. It has a remarkable ability to imitate multiple different insects, even those it has never heard before.
No artist was credited for the work. That weird Oz Factor feeling was back again, and I didn't stop the other two from rushing through the rest of the exhibits.
It wasn't even 8:00 yet when we returned to the hotel, so Butter suggested we go take a walk outside. The other two had noticed the strange lack of people in this town, and Butter was convinced that we'd be able to find something creepy.
The construction site
We went past the strip mall and found ourselves in front of what seemed to be an abandoned construction site. The first thing I noticed were the carcasses.
There were several deer corpses lying by the side of the road, in various stages of decomposition. Having lived in the mid-Atlantic, I'm no stranger to dead deer, but I'd never seen so many of them in such close proximity. Some of them were so bloody that you could barely even tell they used to be alive. I asked Patches and Butter if they wanted to leave, but they seemed even more determined to investigate further.
I'm currently making this post as we're headed deeper into this weird construction area. I'll follow up if something happens.
kebby (she/her) 8/23/2023 (Wed) 14:31:25 #60681019
Sorry about the slow update. I've felt too sick to post until now.
We were getting closer to the deer carcasses when we heard laughter. It seemed almost human, except for the fact that it was too high-pitched. The closest thing I could describe it to was an old, poorly recorded laugh track, made by someone who'd never heard actual human laughter before.
Some wild animals do have laughs that sound almost human. But it was accompanied by this sickly sweet smell, like the chemical flavorings they put into candy jacked up to eleven. It was so strong that it managed to cover up the stench of the rotting deer.
They walked down here
Bravery is not my strong suit. I made some sort of excuse about wanting to stay here because the weather’s so nice (doesn't make a lot of sense, I know), and Patches mumbled something about me having no spine. The other two disappeared behind the trees while Butter was making some joke about fighting demon Winnie the Pooh.
A few minutes later, the laughing stopped, and everything went dead silent. The smell got intense, almost suffocating at this point. I yelled out their names, but there was no response.
I’d just tried calling their numbers when I heard Butter in the distance, discussing some stupid hypothetical (this time about why he'd rather be 10 inches than 10 feet tall).
Where I waited for them
They didn't look any worse for wear, at least. They said that the laughing was probably some animal, and that the building’s doors were locked anyways. According to them, the smell was just a bunch of soda that somebody spilled nearby. They agreed to turn around and go back to the hotel.
When I came out of the shower, Patches was staring at the blank television screen. I asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was watching TV. I pointed out that the television wasn't on, and she let out an “oh.”
She picked up the remote on the table, inspected it for a moment, and eventually pressed the power button. It was currently broadcasting a golf tournament. Patches had never set foot on a golf course before, but she didn't bother to change the channel. She seemed entranced by the PGA tour.
I asked her about it. She told me she was trying it out. Maybe she’d like it, she said.
She stared at the TV for two full hours, keeping her eyes glued to it even for commercial breaks. At 11:30, I asked her to turn it off.
I wasn't eager to stay in the room anymore. I told her I was going outside to get some fresh air. Just as I started walking towards the door, she rose out of her seat and grabbed my arm.
“I turned off the television so you could sleep,” she said. “Why'd you decide to go out now?” Her grip on my arm was really tight.
I backed down and told her I'd start getting ready for bed. When I came out of the bathroom, she was staring at me out of the corner of her eyes. Her gaze followed me as I climbed into bed.
When I woke up the next day, it was barely 8:00 AM, and Patches was already gone. I texted her, and she replied that she was in the cafeteria with Butter.
I got dressed and met them there. When I asked Patches why she was up so early, she looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, "is seven-thirty AM not an acceptable time to wake up?"
She went back to staring at her phone. I looked over and noticed that she wasn't actually reading any of the posts. She kept scrolling through her feed at the same rate, never bothering to speed up or slow down.
I tried to look towards Butter for help. He was currently trying to pour grape jelly out of a tiny plastic tin by holding it upside down over a slice of toast, and seemed confused as to why it wasn't flowing. I suggested using a knife. He grabbed a plastic knife off of the table behind him and told me that he'll "keep that in mind."
I wanted to leave ASAP. I told them I felt sick and might hitch a ride home.
Patches furrowed her brow. She said she thought I looked fine yesterday.
I said that I started feeling a bit unwell last night, but I'd thought it was just allergies as usual.
Patches suddenly put her hand over mine. She was just holding a glass of orange juice, so maybe that’s why it was icy cold.
She looked me in the eyes and told me that they’d been planning this trip for so long, and it would be such a shame if I had to quit now. She said that we could just buy some Advil or something from the pharmacy down the street, and then we could continue onwards as we planned.
Butter interrupted our conversation and told Patches to let me go home. He turned to me and said he was sure I would “get well, sooner or later."
I finished breakfast and hastily packed my bags. They waved to me on the way out.
I got an Uber. The driver asked me why I ordered an Uber trip worth more than a hundred dollars, and I told him I felt too sick to continue my current vacation, which was why I needed to get home on such short notice.
I didn't say another word for the rest of the drive. I just nodded or shook my head whenever he asked if I needed to go to the bathroom or something. When he dropped me off at my place, he smiled at me and told me to “get well soon.”
Nothing else has happened so far. Patches and Butter haven't sent me anything either.
I'm hoping that they go off to college quietly and I never have to think about this again.
kebby (she/her) 10/01/2023 (Sun) 13:34:07 #99287600
Hey guys. I have an update.
Some people DMed me saying the two of them could've just been high, and for a while I thought that might've been the case. I knew that both of them often used edibles, though I hadn't seen them pack any.
I kept checking their social media, looking for proof that I hadn't been seeing things, but from what I could tell their accounts were completely normal. Nothing but regular stuff about starting college, what their dorms looked like, the new friends they were making, etc. There were photos too, so I knew that it was actually them making these posts.
I've kept tabs on Corning. A strange article came up yesterday: it said that the Corning police had found "suspicious remains" in an abandoned construction building. It told anybody that stayed in Corning in the month of August to go to their local police station.
I’m headed out right now. Wish me luck.
kebby (she/her) 10/01/2023 (Sun) 14:02:51 #43017748
I showed the article to the officer there and told him I might have relevant info. I asked him if I could get some more details, and he said he'd have to call the Corning Police Department. He told me to wait in the lobby as he entered his office and shut the door.
The officer had some sort of conversation on the phone. I couldn't hear it very well from the lobby, but I distinctly remember something about "limbs" and "tattoos."
When he came back, he told me that my information wasn't needed. The case had already closed. He mumbled something about "new hires" and said that "the problem had been dealt with."
I talked to him about the strange behavior I saw that morning in the hotel, and he insisted that I "wouldn't have to worry about that anymore."
I suddenly noticed the police station was curiously empty. In fact, the officer talking to me seemed to be the only one there. There was no one else at the front desk, no one inside the office. The only sound besides the two of us was the ticking of the clock.
I asked him where everyone else was, and he told me there was a cold going around that he'd just recovered from. He said (quote) "my colleagues are still under the weather, but I'm sure they'll get well soon."
My house and this police station are over four hours away from Corning, but both of my parents are out of town right now and I think I'm starting to lose it. When I got back to my house, I could've sworn I saw something move upstairs.
kebby (she/her) 10/01/2023 (Sun) 22:47:09 #91341348
Hey guys. Turns out I was worrying over nothing. I no longer need any advice, so I'm closing this thread.
