Incredible..

I wouldn't believe this myself, if it wasn't staring me in the face with its creepy little pink eyes. I don't know what to say; I'll elt you look at the pictures and decide for yourself.

I suggest reading the entire blog in chronological order to get the most benefit - click here to go right the way back to the beginning!

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tin coffin...

ITS A COFFIN. I found bones in there, a whole freaking skeleton, carefully laid out.

This is just... so far beyond the realms of bizarre that I'm .. stuck for words.

It's not just bones though, there's four little trinket-type things in there with it.. offerings? mementos?? and the whole thing's on a little bed of... get this.. HAIR.
Human hair, I think - loads of matted clumps, like you find in a hairbrush or that gets caught around the hoover spools.


The little objects are an aged mustard spoon, a brass button, a tiny pearl and a 5 cent French coin.



The coin is especially useful, as it dates the creature - 1917.

I think I'm beginning to be able to connect a few dots... it's getting more and more strange, yet exciting.

1. There's essentially a whole graveyard under the house, which shows that these creatures have been around for a good half a century, at the LEAST.

2. They seem to have developed complicated customs involving burying their dead that seem to indicate a strong famial or community-based attachment. This makes me think they are far more intelligent than your standard rodent, perhaps even self-aware

3. Yet to have survived so long in what seems to be an isolated group/area is very surprising and baffles me.. I keep coming back to what Mr. Lyman said in passing in that first conversation.. about Mr Kimball leaving his possessions 'to the pixie folk'.. Maybe he was aware if them, and how special they are. That would explain the (justified!) wariness of dogs, and the fact I was unwaware of them until his death - they would have to come looking for food if he was no longer a source..

hmmm... I need to know more; the curious part of me wants to rip up the floorboards and hunt them down, but at the same time I don't want to disturb this habitat of theirs that has provided their home for so long...

All I know is that I must find out more. I want to go back to the basement and have a proper look, see if I can find any evidence for any of this. It would be great if I could find a better-preserved body as well...

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BURIED TREASURE IN THE BASEMENT!

It worked!!! I suspect this is more to do with the amazing pink doughnuts than my incredible charm, however.. heh. anyways.

This is getting more and more bizarre. Noone can say I'm just getting carried away now.

What happened:
- after bribing befriending the furniture clearers, they unlocked the basement for me.
Wow, that place is scary.
Think bare floorboards, cobwebs everywhere, pervading damp. The fact that the light switch wasn't working just enhanced the feeling of impending doom. I had to go fetch a torch, AND use the light on my phone, AND keep the door open just so I could keep myself calm enough to stay in there!!

- the space was obviously used as a storage area - there were boxes upon mouldy boxes of god-knows-what, stacks of books, even a big old dusty mirror.The worst thing was the SMELL, though. It wasn't just damp, it was like... I don't even know, like something rotten...



I seriously felt like i was being watched, like the creatures were all gathered in the shadows, scampering past when my back was turned. or like the ghost of Mr Kimball was standing just behind me, disapproving. shudder.

so, i'm kind of slowly making my way through the room, half looking for a flutter of movement somewhere in the shadows, when I manage to trip over a loose floorboard. Ouch. Torch goes flying!! Not one of my finest moments, admittedly, but it actually turns out to be a stroke of serendipity, because the dislodged board allows me to see into the space below the floor.

now i only have a crappy light from my mobile phone, but I can see something glinting from down in the depths.



...AND I FIND...



..TINS!!.... (sorry about the terrible washed-out phone-flash pic, I took another one with better light nearer the door..)


There were loads of them, stacks of these old, crusty tins, and a few jars..!
It's THE WEIRDEST THING.
I took a whole bunch - most of them were sealed with wax, but this St. Julien tobacco one wasn't, so I can have a look inside. It kind of rattles... I'm gonna clean it up a bit, then crack it open and update...!

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Silence is broken, strangest noises yet

As you can see, it's pretty damn early in the morning. I've just got back from documenting the weirdest noises yet..



so, yeah, I am pretty excited. Now I know that they TOOK SOMETHING to the basement, and I plan to find out what it was.

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Something smells fishy.. (or at least unpleasantly pungent)

There's definitely something not quite right about all this. I know, I'm doing the looking-for-trouble thing again, but just hear me out:
- it's DEAD. It's in the humane trap! It's not supposed to DIE!?! And not only that:
- I just removed it from the trap, and it SMELLS. I know dead things do that, but it smells like it's been dearly-departed for a good few DAYS. it was really horrible, I thought I was going to gag.
- I already decided that the evidence points towards larger critters (see the footprints in the bloodstains, amplitude of noises)
- there's no way this tiny little thing created the pawprints in the blood trail - it has three toes, for a start! (though I suppose blood stains aren't the most accurate guage of this)
I took a photo, for your viewing pleasure.. it looks way too NEAT, you know? it just seems... weird.
WARNING: FOLLOWING PHOTO NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART


So where does this leave me...? I guess I'm going down the 'something planted this mouse to put me off the trail' route. Which sounds ridiculous, but think about it:
the run-in with Scamps means that I'm aware of the existence of these creatures, they know this and are getting scared I'm going to realise they're more intelligent perhaps than your average mouse. They're worried I'm therefore going to get more proactive in my hunt for them, so they plant a dead mouse they found somewhere in their travels in rodent-land to make me second-guess myself and believe that the measures I already have in place are enough.
That suits them because they're clever enough to avoid all that, so as long as they sporadically feed mice into my traps, they can go on living their merry little lives while I think I'm tackling the problem.

Very clever! And it nearly worked! But I'm a step ahead..

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CAUGHT A MOUSE!!!

LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN THE DINING ROOM TRAP JUST NOW!!!


Well.....
I feel kind of embarrassed, now. Like, I've been making all this fuss and entertaining all kinds of ideas about exotic rodents and communities of humanoid creatures, and... they're just MICE after all.

It's kind of an anti-climax, you know?? I was almost hoping it would be something different and exciting... oh well. At least now I KNOW, and can stop getting all sentimental and just get rid of them like I know I should.

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feeling sympathy for the creature?!

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DRAMA!

Oh my GOD, today has been exciting.

My best friend Claire came round for a study session - she brought her (adorable) golden retriever puppy Scamps, which she wasn't able to do when Mr Kimball was still living below. He was really strict about pets, he said they were vicious & uncontrollable, and a danger to all living creatures.. it sounds a bit extreme, but I guess he had bad experiences as a child (my mum did and now she won't go near dogs, even if they're those tiny ones with legs about as long as your hand).

That's Claire and Scamps - isn't he gorgeous??
So, today was supposed to be a nice, leisurely day of chatting with my BFF and doing some much-needed studying, but it ended up including a high-speed chase, fighting and blooood!!!
Scamps, who's always a bit like a four-legged Red Bull, was a bit jittery from the beginning, I guess he could sense the wall-critters even though they weren't making any noises - or at least, not on their previous scraping-bumping-scratching scale. But about an hour in, he just went BESERK - he started barking & growling and suddenly careered off into the kitchen. Claire and I, bumbling humans that we are, were too slow to catch the action, but there was a pretty shocking crime scene in front of us.

Scamps was sitting in the middle of the floor, whining. He'd obviously actually caught a rodent that was in my kitchen, because there were blood stains around his mouth and, more shockingly, this double line of scratches on his nose:

Claire says they're fairly deep but nothing too serious, apparently he's a serial cat-botherer and has been scratched much worse. I still feel TERRIBLE though - and it makes these creatures a lot more real (and kind of scary).
The blood trail left (now I know for sure how they're getting in) was pretty interesting, it gives me a vague idea of the scale of creature I'm dealing with.. it seems like whatever-it-is was dragging a leg, but the footprints I can see are WAY bigger than what you'd expect from a mouse or rat. This would make me think squirrel, except that there are line marks that indicate a thick, rat-like tail.


Oh, and another weird thing - there was a blood-stained hunk of hair on the floor that Scamp must have dislodged (I feel kind of sorry for the creature), which is quite baffling. Am I dealing with some exotic long-haired rodent?

Maybe it's giant mutated rats O_O

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