Statement 2E

“Yep, right there. Be gentle now, some of these have to be at least 100 years old.”

“Be gentle? Some of these are heavy as sin.” Deven scoffed. Deven carefully entered the room carrying a stack of dusty file boxes, each labled by year. Emma did her best to guide him, though he was having trouble seeing over the mountain of files in his arms.

“You can set them over there–watch your step there’s–”

Deven lost his balance on a puddle of stray folders on the floor and nearly toppled over, only catching his balance at the last minute, files toppling out of the box and tumbling onto the floor around him. He hastily set the stack of boxes against the wall, grunting with effort. “Gods, Emma.”

“Yeah, I know, I may need to tidy up a little bit.” Emma looked around the room. The wall was starting to become wholly covered by boxes and boxes, highly stacked piles of poorly sorted files. “And this isn’t even half of it,” Emma laughed, “I need to figure out a system.”

“There’s going to be more?!” Deven cried, exasperated. “And why can’t Wanda help me carry all of these? Why have I become your pack mule! I’m a researcher damn it, not some archive secretary.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s like 90 or something–-and besides! Chin up,” Emma patted Deven on his back, “You get a free work out!”

Deven ran his fingers through his sweat-laden hair. “I should never have dropped out of law school.” He said as he exited the room, leaving Emma to her musty collection.

Emma stood there sizing up her foe, hands on her hips. “Have to start somewhere.” She went to the pile of file boxes in the corner and unceremoniously plucked the lid off the box. She took the first file she found from the middle of the neatly filled box and brought it to her table. She opened the file and turned to the tape recorder at the far end of the table. “Alright, let's begin,” she said as she reached over for the recorder. But it was already on. Emma shrugged and turned back to the file before her.

“Statement regarding a peculiar encounter with a cat. Original statement taken from Josh Ownes on October 21st, 2022. Audio recording by Emma Thompson, Assistant Archivist at the Usher Foundation, Washington, D.C., Statement begins.”

“I wanted to start by saying I don’t believe in ghosts. Unequivocally, I do not believe in the supernatural. I can tell by your face that you don’t approve. I guess that makes sense, given what you do, but, I’m sure you know as well as I do that most ghost stories are just the desperate desire of someone to believe their own experience despite the facts. Everything has a logical, rational explanation., It’s just most people would rather believe their biases rather than believe the facts of a situation. Hear a noise outside at night? It’s an animal. No matter how spooky it sounds, its always just an animal you haven’t heard before. Thats the thing–sound carries. Even the most well meaning, level-headed people can jump to conclusions in a spooky atmosphere and the heat of the moment. And don’t even get me started on so-called haunted videos on the internet. Almost all of those are hogwash. Even the most strange or otherwise “credible” ones can be explained away so easily. I say all this so you know that when I tell you what I saw…you know I’m not mucking about.

“At the end of last year, I moved out of my parents house and into my own place all by myself. Its a three bedroom apartment but it is still rather quite small. A space for my bed, my streaming set up, and a guest room in case family or friends want to stay over the night. The floor plan is really not big at all–you enter into a carpeted area that leads into the living room that doubles as a dining room. A hallway that goes further back with a small closet immediately to the left, the bathroom to the left further down, and at the end of the hall there are two rooms. On the right side of the hallway is the third room about half way down. Right at the entrance on the right is a narrow kitchen space. Like I said, a really small three bedroom apartment, but its plenty of room for just one person to call home. And I was fine with just that at first—little old me, myself, and I, but a few months in I started to get really lonely.

“ I wasn’t adjusting too well to living alone after living in a family of five and having my parents company every night. No matter how annoying I remember them being, I ended up sorta missing them in the end. A friend of mine suggested maybe I get a cat to help me get around to feeling at home in the new place and I thought, ah, to hell with it, why not? And went the very next week to a cat sanctuary to pick up a little fur ball to call my own. When I got there, I just immediately fell in love with this black cat. A beautiful coat of onyx fur interrupted only by a small white tuft on her chest. Nemmy, I called her. It don’t really mean anything–just a cute name for a cute cat. I took her home and it immediately helped so much. She would sit on my desk while I was streaming, and, eventually, she would sit at the top of her cat tower that I put right next to my chair to join me on stream. The viewers absolutely adored her and so did I. It felt like I started a small little family with the cat as my daughter. God, I loved that cat.

“Now, I think its important to cover some bases. As a skeptic, for weeks after it happened, I ran through every single possibility. I had neighbors beside me, across from me, and below me. I lived on the top floor of the building, you see. So nothing above me. The neighbors below were old folk with no pets. They were always quiet as a mouse. Every once in a long while I can hear the thumping of the pipes against the wall as they started their showers in the morning, but other than that–not a peep. Across from me were some college students—really well meaning people. Not the partying type, and also did not have animals. The folks next to me were a nice family, just had a baby–a newborn. But when what happened…well, happened, they were out on holiday, so them and their baby were not around.

“I started to notice something strange at first when Nemmy was acting oddly. She isn’t a very talkative cat–friendly, but quiet. Like I said before, she tends to stick around me when I’m in the apartment, never too far out of reach, but that night, when I got home from work, from the second I got through the door, she was meowing. As I opened the door, she greeted me with meow after meow. I greeted her in kind with some scritches behind the ear–she really likes that–and put my coat on the rack beside the door. I kicked off my shoes and went into my stream room where her food bowl and water bowl happen to be. I fed her and went to start stream. I heard her eating away and before long she was at her usual place beside me on her cat tower. I booted up a video game and while I was playing, she started meowing again and again. Non-stop. I thought, I dunno, maybe she’s still hungry? And gave her a little bit more food in her bowl. Of course, as any cat would, she ate it right up, but when she was finished, she hopped back up on my desk and started meowing again. Over and over again, almost like she was trying to get my attention for something, but I couldn’t figure out what. And she would sometimes just stare off in the distance to some corner of the room or toward the closet for a period of time and no amount of petting or making sounds at her would break her trances.

“Now, this isn’t entirely what one would call compelling evidence of the supernatural, I’ll grant you. Any pet owner at this point would just be downright concerned. Did she eat something odd? Did she get into something? Is she feeling well? All of these thoughts and more raced through my mind. For a cat to be meowing more than what they’d usually do, and acting strangely is cause enough for a visit to the vet. Something I had begun to consider by the end of the night. It was getting around two, maybe three in the morning at this point. After a night of gaming, I decided to cook myself up something to eat so I went into the kitchen and started boiling a pot, Nemmy following dutifully behind me, meowing away the whole time. And now, I just remember waiting for the pot to boil, and, in my concern for my cat, was just sort of sizing her up. I was in the middle of the narrow kitchen space looking at my cat who was just sitting at the doorway looking further inside the apartment, gazing down the hallway, meowing when her meow changed. The tone was wholly different than any sound that had ever come out of her mouth. It was a gutteral, low tone that shocked me and put me off for sure. “Nemmy?” I remember saying in shock. Then, another meow, just like the first. I was so taken aback. I needed to get her checked out by a vet for sure. I began to approach her–she was silent now, still looking down the hallway when I heard it. Another meow came from deeper within the apartment in the direction my cat was staring. It wasn’t my cat. It sounded completely different. I felt my heart drop and my skin felt like ice—all the hairs on my arms standing to attention. And then there it came again–a meow from the hallway, maybe my stream room.

“I froze and my eyes followed Nemmy’s to the hallway. The apartment seemed quiet now–quieter than usual as I tried to train my ears to catch what I may have heard. I’m going to be honest, at this point I was spooked. I knew my neighbors did not have pets. I knew the neighbors next door were out on holiday. I knew at this hour the old couple downstairs would be asleep. There was nothing to account for the cat that was not mine meowing in a space they should not be. And I knew it was not my cat, she was right next to me and she was silent. So like an idiot, I had to investigate. I turned on the flashlight of my phone–my apartment was dark at this point. No lights were on except for that of the kitchen light behind me. A habit I had made for myself to conserve on electricity. And perhaps from shock in the moment, I didn’t really think of turning lights on as I went. Or maybe deep down I was scared to see what had made the noise. Even so, I slowly made my way through the living room, step by careful step. I looked back and saw my cat did not move, she just sat next to the doorway of the kitchen, watching me.

“I moved into the narrow hallway, my stream room approaching on the right. And then I heard it again. A third meow, closer this time. It was coming from my stream room, I just knew it. Like a cold sureness that crept up from deep inside me. I shined my light at the doorway of my streamroom and somehow it seemed…I dunno….darker in there than I remember. And I felt this pit in my stomach like something was in there…and I’m not sure I wanted to find out what it was. I reached my arm into the room and quickly flicked on the light. Nothing. There was nothing in the room. It was just as I had left it. I had let out a sigh of relief and turned back to see my cat sitting right where I had left her. It must have been my imagination, I had told myself. It was late and I was tired–I must have been hearing things.

“But then I heard it again. But it…I dunno how to describe it…it wasn’t a cat. But it wasn’t animalistic either. It was, I’m going to sound crazy for this, but it sounded somewhere between human, and something wretched. I spun around to where I thought the sound was coming from. The closet. It was coming from the closet. I approached slowly, so slowly. Inch by inch. I reached my hand out toward the closet and whatever that…thing was. It must have heard me as the closet door opened just a crack. My heart went into my throat. At this point I could feel the cold sweat on my brow and my breathing become shaky. I shined the flashlight on my phone into the crack. I wish I hadn’t. I don’t sleep anymore thinking of what I saw.

“As the light met the crack in the door of my stream room closet, I saw a hand. Humanoid. But with long fingers with daggered claws. And something pale crouching. It seemed to me that it had fur. Completely black. Onyx, even. And when it started to right itself, I saw on its chest a white tuft of fur. My blood froze—I froze. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It meowed again, and it sounded vaguely like my Nemmy. It hit me then. It was mimicking Nemmy. Or at least the closest approximation it can muster of Nemmy. Her voice, her fur–all there but off like when you try to remember a dream a few hours after you wake up from it where the details go all fuzzy. I saw it look up at me then as I dropped my phone in shock–its eye darted to mine and I just remember running. I just remember picking up Nemmy who stood staring at the entrance of the kitchen, grabbing my car keys, and leaving. All the while as I ran, I heard the meowing from my stream room over and over and over again. I’ll never forget the sound of that wretched thing meowing like my Nemmy.

“In the end, I moved back in with my parents. I ended up having to pay a nasty amount of money in a lawsuit from my landlord since, well, leaving boiling water in an apartment that early in the morning unattended caused a bit of a fire and I had to pay for the damages caused to my apartment and the ones beside and below mine. I feel really bad about it, but if you had seen what I’d seen…well, you wouldn’t stay a single night longer, now would you. Anyway, that’s my story. I don’t know if you guys will do anything about it or look further into it, but, honestly, it’s just nice to finally have someone to tell about this, so thank you for listening.”

Emma let out a long sigh and sat back in her chair. “Statement ends.” Emma clicked her pen in and out over and over again as she looked back over the details of the statement. Her eyes met the worn penning at the bottom of the statement. “Huh, oh, I guess the archivist who wrote the original statement added a bit of an addendum. It just says “Not-Them” whatever that means. This assistant archivist, however, has a few thoughts of her own. I am not seeing any additional pages included of an investigative report, so it is unclear if this particular statement ever had any follow up. It was only two years ago, so its highly likely that some leg work was done on this one, especially if this statement was originally taken by Archivist Nicholas Manhiem, as I suspect it was.

“Nonetheless, I’ll have Deven follow up with Investigations to see if anything was ever found to be credible in the follow up, if one was done. Personally, I don’t see this statement as credible. As the subject points out, credible incidents are exceedingly rare and the human mind has a way of connecting dots that have no business being connected. An animal making odd sounds is not at all unusual, especially, as subject suspected, there is an underlying cause for the noises. I fear this incident can easily be chalked up to the late night ravings of a tired man after too many hours in front of a screen. As subject says, most everything can be explained by animal noises–this case, especially so.”

Emma closed the file and pushed it to her right. She stood from her seat and smoothed her hands on her pencil skirt. “As stated, I will give Deven the file to follow up to see if there is a record of a follow up investigation or anything that is otherwise missing from this file, but otherwise, I am labeling this case as “non-credible incident”. End of recording.”