Dark Corners of the Internet Outline!

Chilluminati: Dark Corners

So I’ve been hard at work trying to get together a nice tidy set of episodes on the ever-elusive JFK series, and I swear that they’ll come out as soon as I’m a little less busy and a little less successful in life, but to be honest, reading a bunch of books about the same thing can wear on your creative enthusiasm, and so to keep my little mystery detecting bone fresh, I’m constantly searching the least-traveled parts of the web for stories I can possibly turn into a full Chilluminati episode.

However, I’m constantly faced with the same problems: Either the story is a little too short for a full episode, or it’s way too disturbing for a full episode. However, like the gust of wind that blew up Bruce Wayne’s window the night he decided to become Batman, a spooky mystery video I was watching online gave me the idea to do THIS show, which I’m calling Chilluminati: Dark Corners, because it addresses both problems- it’s a collection of three shorter mysteries that are way more disturbing, scary, or…adult than the stuff we normally do here. Thought it could be a fun mix up.

Now, as usual with these videos that heavily involve the internet, it’s easy to spoil the story I’m currently telling you with a quick google search, so I ask you, for the sake of my storytelling, save your own investigating til after you finish listening. Let’s hit it. 

CHIP CHAN

-Now, I know that when people hear it’s going to be an Alex episode, they know right away that it’s going be something really weird and probably internet-related, but this is something I’ve been almost hesitant to talk about, and soon you’ll totally understand why. This is the story of a woman most of the internet knows as Chip Chan.

-I don’t think the average person knows her identity, though some people have claimed to, but what I do know is that she prefers to be referred as “Jane” rather than “Chip Chan”, and that she lives in South Korea, where she was discovered via a 4chan opensource livestream thread in 2008, though later, she alleged to have been streaming since at least 2006.

-People would trawl these streams and just share bizarre things that they’d find on their travels.

-Originally, the person who stumbled upon this strange feed of a woman slumped in a corner in an odd position, and assumed she was maybe dead, but as more and more people filtered in to get a look at this strange situation OP had uncovered, they started to realize something WAY more worrisome.

-She seemed to be streaming as close to constantly as she could, she’d sleep for hours at a time, sometimes even in the middle of the day, she was constantly waking up and falling asleep in upsetting positions, and weirdest of all, she had all these weird signs hung around that were visible on camera, and when people began translating them, they started getting some extremely weird messages.

Thinks like “Don’t get tricked, don’t get fooled” “I can’t be stopped”

-According to Jane, she is the daughter of wealthy parents who doesn’t have to work, but she was currently being held captive against her will by a corrupt police officer called “P”, who is extorting her for her money and has injected a mind control weapon microchip under or in her brain via her left eyebrow, and, more famously, in her foot quote “at a cartilege bone 3cm off the anklebone”.

-Apparently, the weapon is called a VeriChip, and it controls her sleep patterns and moods, and if you look up what VeriChip is, you’ll find that it actually is an injectable identification chip about the size of a grain of rice that is inserted under the skin and provides biometric verification through RFID technology the same way you might track like, a tagged pet.

-She has cameras all over her house, which is very messy and sort of looks like she’s camping in her own living room, she got lots of rashes and weird wounds over the years, and she says she can’t ever really leave the house because apparently the cop “P” can make her fall unconscious at will through the device in her ankle, though she has changed apartments a few times.

-According to Jane herself, she’s been living this way since at least 1999, and has continued until as recently as this year. Currently, she doesn’t stream because she says she no longer has the ability to on her computer, but she still blogs every day, still maintaining this regular online presence she’s had for at least 12 years now.

-Now, there are several theories about what the explanation for this behavior could be. Some people think maybe it’s some sort of performance art project, and that she’s trying to make some kind of point about privacy in modern society, or that she’s trying to do some type of narrative outsider art story, but obviously, most people who have stumbled upon this out of nowhere have first taken it seriously, and made attempts to help her or get her in touch with the authorities. However, this is where it gets a little sad.

-In the past, she’s done her share of interacting with the stream and answering emails, which never seems like super lucid communication, but at this point, the cops have been called, people have even tried to show up at her house, but the Korean authorities always react the same way: they acknowledge that they are aware of her, that she is just a harmless eccentric, and that she should be left alone.

-Now on the one hand, this kind of makes sense with her story, right? If the cops are in on it, of course they’d say that it’s all good and that she should be left alone, but as you may have noticed, I’ve done my best not to hint at where exactly you can find this woman’s blogs or livestreams, because I think the more likely explanation is a little more sad, which is that she probably has some type of paranoia type schizophrenia.

-More specifically, to many she seems like she experiences a clear set of conditions for something known as persecutory delusions, in which the affected person believes they are being persecuted despite lack of evidence, and that they think harm is or is going to occur, and that the perceived persecutor has the intention of harming them.

-Mental health in South Korea still carries a rather hefty social stigma, and even though they have extremely high rates of suicide and hospitalization for mental illness, people are generally encouraged by their own societal norms not to seek treatment.

-It is for this reason that, while I think the “Chip Chan” story is interesting in its own right, I ask everyone here who is listening to this and getting ready to go quote unquote “save her” to let Jane be, respect people who struggle with mental illness, and look into this weird little internet story from a distance only. We’re not the experts that she needs, and as sad as it is, you don’t want to do anything yourself to encourage these delusions or make them seem any more real.

JIMMY C

-This is a story I that was deleted from reddit. It stuck with me for years and I can’t believe how much it still creeps me out. I have the user name for this /u/therestlessartist but because he deleted the post and all the comments, I’m not gonna share it. Get ready for a trip. Mathas? Will you read this?

This has haunted me for a long time. I was about 19 or 20 at the time and I was living in Savannah, GA. I drank a lot (had a crappy fake ID), I worked this terrible job as a grunt laborer. The kind where you go to those temp labor agencies like AbleBody and LaborFinders. I'd show up at 4AM, work until 5PM, and drink myself to sleep after only taking home maybe $60 for the day.

I was supposed to go into work this particular morning, but I decided to skip (it's a labor agency, they'll just find somebody else). I call the girlfriend and tell her I want to go to the beach (Tybee). I had already started drinking. She comes over, we hop in my big, ugly van, pack up some rods, and head to the beach. I decided to have a drink across from the beach at this little bar. This is where the story gets interesting.

Shortly after ordering my drink, I get this really weird feeling. I became hyper aware of my surroundings. The door opens, and I see this guy walk in out of my peripheral vision. There was a seat between me and my girlfriend - but the bar was empty at like 9AM and he could have sat ANYWHERE ELSE - yet he chooses to sit right between her and I. Then, he starts doing this thing with his fingers. The bar top was reflective. And he takes his fingers like two little legs, and starts just...walking with them "skating" with them on the top of the counter. This isn't something out of the ordinary, but I took notice because when I was in school, I did that all the time. I pretended I had roller blades on my fingers and that I was skating around my desk. I hated school and was always distracting myself.

So I became kind of mesmerized for some reason. That's when he looks at me, and in this really think kind of...Germanic or "Nordic" accent he says, "I notice you're a man who pays attention to detail. I'm also a man who pays attention to detail." Now, before I continue - I have to describe this guy.

He had this short, spiky hair that was bleached at the tips, kind of like a late 90s style. He had REALLY expensive clothes on. Like, a nice Prada leather jacket, nice designer jeans, really nice boots. He seemed like a kind of gay guy with awesome fashion sense and really distinctive taste. I always remember this, because I think to myself, "Some weird homeless crazy guy COULDN'T have afforded those clothes." Anyway, the other thing that stuck out was his eyes -- they were piercing gray. It reminded me of like a Husky's eyes, but his pupils just stayed this disturbing pin-point size. They were just extremely small, which caused his look to be kind of terrifying.

His teeth were normal, right? But not at the same time. I don't know how to explain it, they were sharper than they should be... as if they were filed slightly. His hands were normal, but his fingernails were slightly long and pointed, as if he deliberately did it. He kept licking his teeth, too, as if he were salivating. The thing about this guy is that, you look at him, and EVERYTHING seems normal, but off at the same time, so you're questioning if YOU'RE crazy for thinking this.

This guy then begins to start talking about the relationship between me and my girlfriend, but really strangely. He's talking about how beautiful she is and how I should pay more attention to her (I was kind of a dick to her). Shortly after he began talking like this, I had this almost "knowing" feeling come over me. Like... I knew this guy was not a human. I look at my girlfriend and say, "You need to leave." She just kind of looks at me like she "knows" too - without a word of protest, she gets up quietly and leaves. Later I learned that she went next door to get a coffee.

That's when this guy literally says to me with the utmost confidence - "You were supposed to go fishing today." He points at the beach across the street. "If you had, I would have drowned you in that ocean" and I shit you not he fucking HISSED. Again, for some reason this overwhelming calm had come over me. I just ask, "Who are you?" He answers back with this crazy guttural language - like "ack back" but it was really long. It sounded Arabic or Hebrew or something? I just - for some reason without skipping a beat, and I have no idea why I was so calm to this day - ask, "say it in a way that I can understand."

He says, "You can call me Jimmy C. I jumped off the San Francisco bridge years ago. And we've been watching you." From there on out he never referred to himself as "me" or "I" but only "we". The conversation became something very strange after this. He was saying things like, "We see you taking a bath - we wish we too could feel the warmth of the water and the comfort of the steam" and other stuff. He kept buying me drinks too - specifically whiskey sours. It was like he had an endless supply of money. He smoked Marlboro Ultra Light cigarettes.

After I don't know how long - because I lost sense of time kind of - I told him I'm going to leave. I walk next door, I get my girlfriend and she's stone silent. We start driving home - don't say a word. Then I just ask, "Do you know what that was?" and she just says "That was a demon". This girl had parents that were scientists, she was really analytical, completely non-religious, and that was the first thing she said out of her mouth. Now, I didn't say this part before, because - to me - this is the most important aspect of the story, so I'll say it now because it's what happened AFTER this that screwed me up for fucking years.

The last thing this Jimmy C. guy said to me before I left, is this: "Look at my car" I look outside, I see one of those newer Volkswagon Beetles. It was white. "What does the license plate say?" I look at the plate and it literally says, "Fierce". He looks me dead in the eyes and says, "The next time you see me, I'll be driving a black Mercedes and the license plate will say Utopia". Stupid, right?

That night I was still calm. I don't know why. I felt like that guy on Office Space after his hypnotherapist died right in front of him and he was weirdly zen. But, my girlfriend started having terrible nightmares of this guy's head just staring at her in her dreams. Weeks went by, and that's when the encounter started affecting me. I found myself becoming paranoid about that black fucking Mercedes! Every black car I saw, I checked if it was a Mercedes, if it was, I immediately looked at the license plate.

I started doing it when I watched TV or movies as well. I couldn't stop. Now, I'm going to fast forward a bit. About 10 years go by... I'm 29 (so this is just recently) and, in silence, when I'm alone, when I'm drinking, I often think about this encounter. I still look at black Mercedes every time they pass, but I'm not so much anxious about it anymore, as curious.

And, I remember that my girlfriend at the time always kept a journal. By now I'm pretty sure that I'm insane, maybe I was drunk, maybe I'm not remembering any of this correctly. After years of trying to find news articles of a "Jimmy C." that committed suicide of the San Francisco bridge, looking at black cars, and so on, I feel like I'd "grown out of it." Yet, still, I had to know. So, last year I track down my ex girlfriend. We ended on bad terms.

I find out she's a school teacher in Wisconsin, has married a woman, and is actually trying to have a child. I figure she's not going to talk to me, but I send her an FB message anyway. I ask her if she can find the journal from that day, because I have to know if her events line up with mine. Sure enough - she had it. And it contained even more detail than what I remembered, because she had literally written it at the coffee shop next door RIGHT after it happened.

Here's what she sent me:

“Notes on what happened at Tybee Island, GA on the first Tuesday in December 2005: 

Drove there during the day and the sunshine was getting me down - kept thinking about how earlier I had gone to Mathas’ house after waking up there - and he woke up early, took a shower, came back and woke me up, acted very sweet. Then I went home, took a shower, came back to go with him to Tybee, and he'd gotten drunk already and was teasing me, being sort of an ass. I even threatened to go home once, but I stayed, feeling that I really should go to Tybee with him.

But I was excited to show Tybee to Mathas during the day since I knew it well and he'd never seen it. He talked about how it all reminded him of his childhood as we drove through the salt marshes and over bridges - the sun, the palm trees. I'd grown up in fog. 

Got to Tybee and he wanted to get a couple of beers even though we had rum in the trunk. Well really, the back of the van. The first bar we went to carded him, and so we left, remarking that everyone in the place had given us strange looks as soon as we walked in. Went over to Fannie's a couple of doors down, all in the area of the beach by the pier. I decided I didn't want beer after all and told the woman I'd just like a glass of water. He had a PBR. Only cost a dollar.

Noticed the VW Beetle (white) parked outside when I came in, but did not see Jimmy enter. Mathas pointed out a man sitting one stool down from me drumming his fingers strangely on the stainless steel bar, more like dancing with his nails, stretching his long fingers. Thought immediately that he was gay. He and I watched and talked in whispers about it for a few minutes before he - the stranger - spoke.

He first talked about how I had noticed him dancing with his nails (the words he used) then looked at his nails, surprised, and said they look like shit. I laughed, getting a weird feeling about the guy. He then spoke about how it's important to notice details and he likes it when people pay attention - that he pays attention to everything - that he knows that I do too. His eyes are (some word I can't decipher), blue/grey, he has blonde hair and a narrow pointed nose above pale lips that cover crooked teeth, not very white, almost like fangs.

His teeth are all I can look at until I look him in the eye, something I normally won't do until I know a person at least a little, and he seems to evade me. He asks if I love Mathas (doesn't use his name or mine). Without hesitation, I nod and say yes. He asks him, "do you love her?" And he looks uncomfortable, laughs a little bit, says, "Yeah, I guess so." then the guy says that I am beautiful, that if he won't love me, unconditionally, as I do him, someone else will.

He touches my hair and says that I am a creature of God. He then tells us that he walked three miles up and down the beach and it sucked... said some things about "God's green earth" ... told a story about a scorpion that asked a frog for a ride across a river... who then stung the frog, told the frog it was in his nature, and then they both enjoyed their last minutes of life because they both would then die. He told Mathas he knew him and kept trying to get to him through me. He'd say "I'm not hitting on you girl," but continually told me I was beautiful. He tried to piss Mathas off - kept saying that he knew him, said he is in his room at night, he's what crawls on Mathas’ back.

Told Mathas his glasses (the aviator sunglasses that I gave him) were cheap - that my glasses were perfect because I see through them rather than hide behind them. Then he said that I was perfection, that I was "one step away from becoming myself." Earlier he talked about fashion - thought my glasses might be Armani, said Prada was his favorite person, when I noticed that his orange leather jacket had a red rectangle of fabric on the left breast that said PRADA. He said to Mathas] that he knew who he was, to which Mathas replied that he knew who HE was.

The stranger left to go to his car to get money for more drinks - he'd offered to buy us all a shot of tequila and already bought Mathas a beer. As he walked out he pointed to the license plate. His car was the white Beetle outside. The license plate read "FEIRCE." While he was gone, Mathas asked me if I knew who the man was. I nodded, saying I had an idea. "Yeah, but you think you're crazy every time you think it, don't you?”

I was thinking the man was the devil or something close. [then I wrote that I missed some things - here they are:] When asked where he was from, he didn't asnwer. We thought he could've been from Tybee, but he said he didn't live there. Asked him where he lived and he just started talking about his other car, a Mercedes Benz with a plate that said "Utopia." Asked if he live din his car, he said no, "Utopia's doors are closed to me." Mathas asked him where he learned all he was talking about. He'd said he could speak 5 languages, English being the most important because it is "trained" and often spoke a few sentences in a language I could not recognize. And he said he had lived in San Francisco, where he jumped off a bridge and died.”

This is the point where I told her to leave. That's when he said he would have drowned me in the ocean, started referring to himself as "we" and finally told me that the next time I would see him it would be in that black Mercedes. When I read what she had written - literally THAT day - I knew that I wasn't imagining the details wrong. That this ACTUALLY happened. This is probably the single most frustrating and scary thing that has ever happened to me. I want to imagine it's just a normal crazy guy, but unless you SAW it and FELT it and heard him talk about all the little details of what you were supposed to do that day when only you knew it, you just can't understand the impact of it.

It's been 10 years, and my only solace really is that my ex-girlfriend was there to corroborate. That communication - where I reached out to her - actually caused us to be on good terms again after a decade. It seems to have been something that bothered her just as much as it bothered me. And still, to this day - even though I'm living 10,000 miles away in Southeast Asia. I can't stop looking for that car. I can't stop thinking about Jimmy C's twisted face. I wonder if he's still "crawls" on my back, and if the fear I feel at night - often to where I must drink myself to sleep or find a one-night-stand just so I don't feel alone - is him, or "them", watching me.

-And the kicker. There were two edits to the post:

EDIT: Somebody sent me a site where I can lookup California license plates (I tired this earlier in GA, don't know why I didn't try it in California). The license plate "Utopia" is registered to a Mercedes, but it won't say the color. I'm kind of freaked out to say the least: http://imgur.com/zoig3dR

EDIT #2: This is the site: http://www.vindecoderz.com/EN/California/license-plate-number-lookup

EDIT #3: Somebody found another more reliable source, still shows a 2000 Mercedes as having the license plate "Utopia" in California. Yet, this one had the vin number if anybody is good at looking that up: WDBHA29G7YA818700

METCALF SNIPER ATTACK

-This next one is definitely a mystery, and a very disturbing one at that, but it’s the kind of thing I typically avoid because like certain episodes of Black Mirror, it kinda gets a little too real at the end. Not gonna be a problem in this episode, though. This is the Metcalf Sniper Attack.

-At 12:58am on April 16, 2013, AT&T fiber-optic telecommunications cables were cut not far from U.S. Route 101 just outside south San Jose, California.

-At 1:07am, certain customers of a local internet provider called Level 3 Communications experienced a loss of service, and cables in their vault near the Metcalf Substation were also discovered to have been cut.

-At 1:31am, a surveillance camera pointed along a chain link fence at the substation perimeter recorded a streak of light that was eventually determined by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office to be the beam from somebody making a signal by waving a flashlight. And that makes a lot of sense, because whatever it was, it was immediately followed by muzzle flash from several rifles, and sparks from bullets hitting the fence.

-At 1:37am, Pacific Gas and Electric received an alarm from motion sensors at the substation, likely from bullets grazing the fence.

-At 1:41am, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s department received a 911 call from an engineer at a nearby power plant that shit had phone service, reporting the sound of gunfire.

-At 1:45am, the first bank of transformers, riddled with bullet holes and having leaked 52,000 gallons of oil, overheated. This caused the Pacific Gas and Electric control station 90 miles to the north to receive an equipment-failure alarm.

-At 1:50am, there was a repeat of the apparent flashlight signal caught on film, and immediately after, the attack ended. They found over 100 expended casings at the site.

-One minute later, at 1:51am is when law enforcement finally arrived, but by then everything was quiet. They couldn’t get past the locked fence and couldn’t see any reason to stick around, so they left.

Here’s a link to the video: this video on YouTube

-This attack left seventeen transformers with enough damage that it required over $15 million worth of repairs, and to avert a full black out of the area, energy had to be rerouted from other power plants in Silicon Valley. This resulted in most people not even realizing any attack happened until they turned on the news the next day, though a few people lost power for a little while.

-Now the reason this is so scary is that military experts said this attack looked like a quote “professional job”. No fingerprints were found on any of the shells, and even though there’s a housing development less than 500 ft away, none of those residents reported hearing 100 rounds being fired. In fact, this one dude Jon Wellinghoff, who used to be the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, called it quote “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred”.

-In fact, most people don’t even realize how vulnerable our electric grid is. Henry Waxman, a dude from the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce was quoted as saying the attack was “an unprecedented and sophisticated attack on an electrical grid substation with military style weapons. Communications were disrupted. The attack inflicted substantial damage. It took weeks to replace the damaged parts. Under slightly different conditions, there could have been serious power outages or worse”

-So what was it? As of October 2015, the best official lead we have is that the FBI do not think it was a terrorist group, and that the Department of Homeland Security stated that they have reason to believe the attack have been committed by quote “an insider”, but theories abound.

-An article in the Atlantic questioned why THIS PARTICULAR substation was targeted out of the 1500 in just the regional network, and suggested that maybe hitting that particular station allowed some other more serious crime to be carried out elsewhere.

-Other people point to the fact that as a direct result of these attacks, PG&E spent $100 million over three years to upgrade security at all the substations, suggesting that maybe that “insider” could have called a hit in on his own company in order to force them to get better security.

-And finally, the scariest theory of all, which is based off the fact that the casings found were for 7.62 rounds originating from the Soviet Union. This theory suggests that possibly Russia, or China, or some other rival of the United States, is probing our grid for weaknesses, testing out the strengths of our extremely complicated and vulnerable power infrastructure, and adding it to their notebooks for later, just in case they ever feel like taking us down while things like COVID and chaotic leadership have us weakened and unstable.

-Allright, and finally, this last one, another story from reddit, that’s a little racier than what we usually cover here on the show, and no less creepy. Jesse, will you do me the complete honor?

VAGINA ISLAND

by rowsdower03

Back in 2009 I got a call from my friend K.  This was two years after we went our separate ways for college.  I was 20 at the time.  He had began to tell me of this island that we had to go to.  We had grown up together and spent our youth exploring the ends and outs of our small Midwestern town so I was all for it.  He had explained to me that him and some of his friends had found it when they were exploring in the river.

He had told me all about it and was excited to share his find with another person.  I was jealous that I wasn't there when it was first discovered but I got over it and got pumped to see what he had unearthed.  

It's been a running joke that I don't know how to swim, never did, probably never will, and the island lay in the middle of the river.  Usually the waters weren't high so he reassured me that all I had to do was wade behind him and our other friend S would be behind me in case I hit a sink hole.  Sucking up my nervousness of aquatic things, I agreed and we popped off our shirts and sunk into the muddy waters.  

The island looked close from the banks but took some time to get to in the chest high waters (See pic 1).  As we floated with the current we made jokes and spent our time bullshitting.  None of us had a camera due to the fact that we didn't want to get our phones wet, and who really cared, he had already taken pictures from his last quest, now was just time to show us.

Once we pulled our bodies up onto the land we took a minute to breathe.  K had taken his shoes off to keep them dry and left them with our tshirts but it wasn't a place to be without feet protection.  Wild bushes and branches lay strewn about everywhere.  The island looked fairly untouched.  It was in the river next to a state park, but still deep enough down where people wouldn't bother it.

We followed K's lead into this thistle and after four or five minutes we found a clearing towards the center.  In it lay what we were looking for.  There was a giant cement ass of a lady sitting next to a lawn chair.  This wasn't just some art project; it was well detailed.  There was a marble stuffed in her to resemble a clit and was massive.  (See Pic 2).

We laughed and romped around but I had a strange feeling on the island.  It felt weird.  My other two friends seemed a little creeped out but generally blew it off.  It stuck with me.  

A few weeks later I decide that I have to go back to Vagina Island (Appropriately coined by K), but my friends had no real interest in going again.  About that time I was living in my first apartment with a roommate during college and had a few friends back home.  My college was only an hour and a half away, so the travel was no big deal and was always worth it when I pulled into my old driveway.  

I had been talking to a girl online and decided that her, my friend E, my roommate J, and I would meet for the first time, and that I would take her to Vagina Island.  It had a mystical pull to it and those that I told didn't seem to believe me, so we agreed.

J and I picked up E and eventually met up with A who uneasily got into my car but we all hit it off quick.  The drive was about forty minutes so we stopped to buy basketball shorts that we could wear into the river, E had my wetsuit from my trunk that I had carried around for a couple years because I was young and it was humorous, and we picked up a waterproof disposable camera.

We get ready to go and make it to the island.  I'm unfamiliar with the layout since K led the way so we wondered around until we were able to find where we needed to be.  The first thing that caught my eye was that it was different than last time, just a few days before!  The bottom of the lady is still there (See Pic 3), but this time there is more, and it has grown in creepiness in an intense manner.  

Next to the bottom half is a full bodied women, laying in a pale white cement, staring up at the sky.  This immediately freaked us all out, especially after I had hyped up the vagina.  She looked ghostly (See Pic 4, 5, and 6.  6 just so you can see the size of it in comparison to me).  She was wearing nothing but rain boots and her nipples had been painted gold.  

We each shot glances towards each other and then to her.  Our first reaction was that it was a real person so we inched slowly towards it and swiveled the rain boot.  She cracked and showed wire reinforcements under it.  I let out a huge sigh of relief under my breath and we continued to look around.  I still had a weird feeling and joked about setting up a camera to catch this guy to see who he was.  When looking through the trees to find a place for our imaginary camera is when I saw more.  A vagina hung from a tree just over our shoulders.  (See pic 7)

At this point we all start getting a bit freaked out and notice that there are candles by the chair.  At the time I couldn't remember if I was so caught up in the excitement the first time or if these were new too.  All it took was for one of us to say "Let's go" and we all followed suit behind.  It wasn't quite the fun carefree romp that I had promised.

It wasn't long until the next afternoon I was sitting with E and we had decided that we needed to go back to Vagina Island.  Perfect.  Someone as intrigued by it as I was.  We called up a different girl S.  S was a small girl and wasn't too thrilled about going, since we decided to go at 5 in the morning and see if we could catch the guy in the act.  

Upon packing up, we grabbed a couple of baseball bats and set out into the dark woods to make it to the river.  Once reaching the water we realized how badly we had underestimated the temperature of the river when the sun wasn't warming it up.  We felt the chills go through our legs and up into our chests.  S wasn't having it.  We took turns carrying her on our shoulders to keep her dry, which did nothing to make wading any easier, but at least she was a small girl.

We made it and pulled out a flashlight and began to go through the thick of it.  I felt an ominous fear grip me but said nothing.  I couldn't be the friend that was too scared.  I had grown up being that friend, so this time there was no backing down.  

Everything that was creepy in the daylight, was even worse spotted by the moon. But we had made it.  We stopped for a photo opt before looking around (See pic 8).  The first thing that caught my attention was the dead stare of the statue in the dirt.  Leaves had fallen on her and we kicked some of them away.  She looked different though.  My heart started pounding as I realized that her vagina had been painted gold since we were there yesterday.  We crept closer and kicked away some leaves. Once moving some, we noticed something that had been covered.  (See pics 9, 10, and 11).  There was a cement plack next to her that read EQUSTRIEN which we made out to be Equestrian.  I inched away from the statue and tried to regain my cool composure.  Had I smoked the way I do now, a pack may have already been gone.

We all quickly looked around us to make sure that we were alone.  There weren't any other sounds but the two of us gripped our bats tight, hoping that we wouldn't have to save the lone girl trapped on an island at five in the morning.  We caught the vagina hanging from the tree again and shivers climbed up each spine individually.  (See pic 12)

This time we noticed that it wasn't the only thing strung up from a branch.  Right over my left shoulder was a collection of feathers, what appeared to be some kind of charm, and a shotgun shell. (See pic 13).

At this point we had all decided that there was no need to be the bigger man and said it was time to go.  First the vagina, then the chair and candle, then the things in the tree.  We had seen enough.  This was all capped off by the fact that in just the short 20 hours we had been gone, somebody had been there working.  I think E and I had made up our minds that we were no longer alone on this island.  

We started looking for something to take with us for a trinket that would go unnoticed and scounged around for a few minutes before I noticed a piece of bark next to the chair.  On it was a very detailed picture of a vagina and written in black in it said "Looking for 40+ year old models."

We were all pretty satisfied and filled with fear by this and took off back across the river.  We stomped through, carrying S on our shoulders, and making a lot of noise.  With each splash came the thought that someone was behind me.  The current of the water and the dark of the night made putting sounds to a specific spot.  The cold of the water and struggle of the extra weight made my knees buckle and S and I toppled into the river.  We had never been so happy to be back on the other side.

A few months went by and E sent me a text message.  He had been walking through a park by his college, about an hour driving distance to the bank of the river.

"Holy shit!" Was all that the text message said.  It had a picture attached.  It was the same guy's handwriting, paired with the same statement looking for models.  Where E was at was deep in the woods of a park known for hiking by college students.  It was a college park.

I remember my mind jumping when I saw that picture.  I had thrown away the tree bark about a week prior, due to just that.  It was tree bark.  

None of us had gone back for some time.  We spent a lot of time sharing our story with people, but never telling them where it was pinpointed.  "An island in the river by the state park" gave a wide variety of options.  It was our little secret.  

By now it is 2012 and E and I no longer talk.  I had talked up vagina island with my friend Ky from Colorado and when she came to visit for a week, I knew what we would be doing during one of the days.  

Pumped due to the fact that I hadn't been back in years and so much more could be there, I sped to the park and we broke off the trail towards the river.  The summer was very dry last year and the tips of our shoes didn't even get wet, the entire river had been dried up for the season.  It was the first time I had ever seen the Platte River this low.

As we walk towards the island I am talking it up, the sun is up so I'm a bit braver, and we get into the thick of the woods.  It didn't take long to notice that it was all removed.  The giant vagina, the tree decorations, the chair, the candles, all of it.  All that was left dangled from a tree.

I walked up to it and saw that it was a bone of some sort.  I assumed it was an animal's and got closer to see that a dollar bill had been rolled up tightly and stuffed through it.  I pulled the dollar out and we left disappointed.  

Until this day I have never found out any more about it.  E and I had spent a lot of nights discussing calling the police or the park rangers and have them check it out, but we enjoyed our little secret.  I regret not calling and curiosity continues to eat at me.

The Platte River is not thin and these statues were not small.  We often bounced ideas back and forth of how he would get the cement there, or if he did his work on the island by simply hauling a bag of cement across and adding the water upon arrival.  

All of it will forever remain a mystery and that may be the most difficult part about it, but also the most beautiful.