Halloween – The Eye of Zatara

[SATIRE] The “Eye of Zatara” Investigates –
THE CUBE EARTH THEORY

[Original Article: Sunday, October 31, 2021]

There are some things about the world around us that we tend not to question, things we believe in and cling to so whole-heartedly, we cannot even imagine them being any different– the color of the sky, for instance, or the taste of fresh apple pie. But what if one of these fundamental truths about our world could be challenged, or even proven wrong? What would we say to these facts? Would we even accept them at all?

The earth is a marvelous place, a sphere with a circumference of over 40,000 kilometers. But what if the earth isn’t a sphere at all? What if the earth, that we all know and love, is actually a cube, a wayward dice cast into our humble little solar system by some great celestial being that got caught in the gravity of our friendly yellow Sun and began a small orbit around it millennia ago? What if everything that our government have ever told us about the nature of the earth was propaganda meant to keep us from finding out we are living on borrowed time, travelers on the side of a cube in a massive galactic game of craps? A game that someday soon will continue… rolling our earth and everything on it into some unknown part of the galaxy again as our macrocosmic benefactor struggles in vain to win their celestial equivalent of casino chips using us. Would you accept that?

Those who gamble often, may acknowledge a fickle mistress known as “Lady Luck” when hoping cards or dice to turn in their favor. Similarly, the spirit of wilderness on our own beloved “planet” is often referred by the maternal monicker, “Mother Nature”. What if these two feminine figures of nature and chance are one and the same, the essence of the unique cube-shaped “world” we call our own? Pablo Picasso, when developing as an artist, started with the style of “realism”, but grew to surpass it, turning to a new style that he himself would pioneer, a style known as “cubism” – as “cubism” is apparently the next step beyond our current concept of “realism”.

We see proof of this in more recent events, as well. Why would NASA have to fake the moon landing, when the moon is so very close to our own dear sweet little planet, and should be easy for us to send a ship up, even with 1960’s technology, and land on? Because NASA did not realize that the moon, like our Earth, is also a six-sided cube, and missed the moon with their Apollo 11 rocket, landing instead on the planet of Mars, and forcing them to send faked footage of Neil Armstrong’s landing to television viewers back home while overlaying this footage with the real audio of Apollo 11’s crew landing on what they thought was the moon… but was actually Mars.

Even in fictional media, we see dice at the center of some of our most prominent thoughts about space and time, with a golden dice hanging from the top of the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit in Star Wars, drawing added attention in more recent entries in the franchise, a dice that… unbeknownst to all but the most hardcore of Star Wars fans… says ‘This Is Earth’ in ancient Corellian across it. How could this completely true and completely unfabricated fact be real if we do not, in fact, live on a planet that is known by some to be a cube?

Here is an experiment that you can try at home that clearly proves that the Earth is not round or flat, but is actually a cube. Find a long, flat table in your house that is capable of supporting your weight and carefully climb on top of it after cleaning off everything else on the table that could otherwise invalidate your experiment. Stand on the very center of the table and begin walking slowly to the table’s edge one step at a time, and then continue walking after you reach the end of the table. You fall down and hurt yourself, right? Well, have you ever fallen down and hurt yourself while walking in a straight line on a mostly flat part of the Earth? No, you haven’t, right? Then, the Earth can’t be flat. Next, find something round like a bean bag chair laying around your house and set it down in the center of the table from before, repeating the experiment while starting, this time, on top of the bean bag chair and walking forward until you fall off the end of the table again. OUCH! The earth can’t be round then! Finally, take a small step ladder and set it down in front of the end of the table to simulate the edge of a cubed planet’s surface and repeat the experiment one more time, but when you get to the edge of the table, walk down the step ladder instead of continuing forward off the edge of the now perpendicular corner of your experimental model of Earth. See? You didn’t get hurt this time, just like in real life! The earth MUST, in fact, be a cube!

Now that you have this knowledge, the question for you then is what to do with it. Many corrupt forces in our world such as the United States government, China, Bigfoot, Facebook, the international “Big Five” companies, Blockbuster Video, and my Great Aunt Gertrude will belittle, insult, or even threaten you if they hear you speaking the truth about our six-sided planet Earth. They may even block you from Facebook or, worse, coerce all your friends into un-Friending you like they did all of mine! (I know it was YOU behind that, Aunt Gertrude, and don’t expect me not to bring it up this Thanksgiving!!!) Knowing that our world is not round (or even flat) like many around you will constantly assert may lead to nothing but trouble for you, maybe even causing you to second guess (or even abandon) your new beliefs so the hatred and mockery you experience will end.

However, I believe there is value in knowing the truth, value that goes beyond “popular” and “unpopular”, beyond “likes” and “dislikes”, beyond even “friends” and “enemies”. The truth is the truth no matter how Facebook, Bigfoot, Blockbuster Video, and your extended family respond to it. And, the truth is, the Earth IS a cube, believe it or not. They may say there are two sides to every story, but there is only one side to truth… and that side says there are six sides… to the truth about Earth. What will you choose to believe?

~The Historian

***

A wonderful article by The Historian! Way better than that stupid one you wrote about wolves a few years back that was so unpopular it forced us to fire you for a while. You might actually last on the payroll a whole year this time! Here’s hoping, old friend!

~The Gatekeeper

***

You talk as if any of us actually get paid for this…

~The Watchman

***

😛

~The Gatekeeper

[SATIRE] The “Eye of Zatara” Investigates… ZOM-BEES

[Original Article: Saturday, October 23, 2021]

When I was a kid, I used to be deathly afraid of bees. I wasn’t allergic to them or anything, but the threat of something so small, so unintrusive that could slip its way into my world and fill me with what seemed at the time to be unimaginable pain for simply happening upon it at an unfortunate moment… I think that’s what really frightened me as a kid.

Now, I respect bees for what they are – an essential part of our ecosystem that pollinates the plants that make our human habitats beautiful and healthy, something which is now disappearing from our world at an increasing rate. I’m sure you’ve heard about the decreases in the honeybee population, but I’ve come to find out a little more about it than you’ll ever hear in your local media news hour. CNN, Fox News… they don’t want to talk about it, either. It’s true that bees are dying at an almost alarming rate in some parts of the country. What you’re not being told is what killed them, and, even more terrifying, what happens to them after they die. They don’t simply rot on the ground like they were squashed under a human shoe. No, they come back with a vengeance against the cold mechanical world that so cruelly extinguished them… they come back as zom-bees.

The year is 2017. Unsold DVD copies of the 2016 movie “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call” were just beginning to pile up in city garbage dumps after retail outlets gave up on trying to hawk them in their discount movie sections and finally let them be hauled away as refuse. Workers at a dump in Seattle, Washington, noticed a peculiar phenomenon that occurred after Seattle’s constant rain poured down long enough on a 1 mile square radius section of unsold Ghostbusters DVD’s in a corner of the refuse yard. All the insects in that part of the dump were laying dead around the DVD’s, apparently killed by some sort of toxic, unfunny chemicals that seeped from the unwanted movies after being eroded away long enough by Seattle’s acidic rain. In that moment, a new pesticide was born.

Known to exterminators testing the chemical in the area as “The Just Won’t Be Silent Killer”, the chemical seemed to stimulate deep-seated mental and emotional pain receptors in any living being that came into contact with it, overwhelming them in a way that many insects, having never built up any immunity from previous exposures to Melissa McCarthy, had no tolerance for, causing them a rapid, horrifying death. The chemical was a godsend, able to kill tough pests like bedbugs without fail, and was set to begin a much larger, countrywide test run before being officially approved for international use when the first bees began to come into contact with the substance… and it changed them.

At first, the bees simply died like all other insects (and some humans) when exposed to concentrated, liquified Melissa McCarthy humor. But, then, everything turned quickly for the worst. Perhaps something deeply naïve and innocent in the gentle, flower-loving little creatures fought back against the sudden influx of darkness into their tiny insect souls, clinging desperately to life out of sheer rage of how their existence was being extinguished. Perhaps other factors were involved. All we know is from that moment on, the DVD-laced chemical was never used again, and all the bees that accidentally came into contact with it during its test run came back from their initial bout of death… as creatures that could no longer experience death. Furious, comedy-loathing, human-hating, swords of inconsolable, unkillable, unstoppable stinging that attacked in swarms anything that moved… and then ate the brains of whatever they killed, apparently seeking fresh brain tissue to regenerate the parts of their minds forever scarred from their contact with liquid Ghostbusters 2016.

Roaming through the Pacific Northwest, these swarms of zom-bees now sting and infect their own kind, killing off the normal honeybee population and turning their sacrificed former kindred into more of their own stinging zombie legions. A quick excuse about “murder hornets” from Asia helped to distract the population from the true threat for a time, but, now, many in our country are beginning to again awaken to the truth that swarms of stinging, slaughtering, human-hating, brain-eating zombie honeybees are wreaking havoc all along America’s west coast. As they spread into California, wildfires were started to try to exterminate the bees and keep them from infiltrating the state, but to no avail. Zom-bees are real, and they are winning the fight with humanity. One painful sting at a time.

So, if you find yourself on the western side of our beautiful US of A, and you see a swarm of oddly grey-colored bees moving about from an oversized hive of pinkish, grayish goo that looks like human brain tissue… don’t worry! You have nothing to fear. Because it will all be over for you shortly. The only thing you have to worry about now is what you will do to keep your mind off the pain in the 60 seconds of being stung all over at once you will experience when the zom-bees see you… and come for you in vengeance for being exposed to Ghostbusters 2016.

You have been warned!

***

Throughout the month of October, the “Eye of Zatara” is continuing to investigate the strange and paranormal in our community, bringing to light mysteries that could question and unravel everything we know about the world around us. Keep in mind that this story is REAL, according to everything we were told about it by this one guy we met at Starbucks the other day who seemed really credible, although he wouldn’t give me his name. Or maybe he did, and I just forgot it. Was it… Frank, maybe? He ordered a mocha white hot chocolate. I do remember that. How can you possibly question anything being told to you by a man with such a fine taste in drinks? Well? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

If you have any reports of zom-bees sightings in your area to pass along, or other paranormal encounters you’d like us to investigate, please reach out to the “Eye of Zatara” today through our Comments section or through my P.O. box, and by P.O. box, I mean unfinished bird house sitting on a bench in my backyard waiting for me to do something with it. That I’ve taped a sticky note to that says “P.O. Box”. Trust me, it’s very secure. So, reach out to the “Eye of Zatara” today!

~The Gatekeeper

[SATIRE] The “Eye of Zatara” Investigates – PUMPKINFOOT

[Original Article: Monday, October 18, 2021]

As I came to the edge of the mostly unheard-of little town of Lyre, Louisiana, I looked for the signs I had been given by locals to find a creature that was said to reside there. A curious soul by nature, I have spent many a weekend traveling throughout central Louisiana – investigating haunted houses, searching for cryptozoological creatures, and taking guided tours at the very site of the most infamous crimes of the century. But now I was on the trail of something more elusive, a local legend of a creature said by many to resemble the stories of “Bigfoot” found throughout North America, but a creature that can only be found in the cool months of autumn when orange and brown are everywhere, and when Halloween decorations and Thanksgiving celebrations spread like a plague of strange contentment throughout the families of the land. I was searching for the strange and oddly scented creature known only to a few local fishermen as… “Pumpkinfoot”.

As I approached Ficton Pond, a mossy little fishing hole that served as one of the few “landmarks” of note in the mostly swamp and wilderness of Lyre, I saw unusual footprints in the mud along the pond’s north-facing edge – large footprints, resembling those of a man, but much bigger, and with a strange scent clinging to them that I recognized immediately as a steady purveyor of Starbucks lattes in the fall – it was the scent of pumpkin spice. Suddenly, I heard a sound. An inhuman growling like that of a wounded beast which shook me to my very core, for I could hear in that bestial roar, an almost human undertone to the screaming that told me I was on the verge of meeting something terrifying. Running from the pond out of instinct, I tripped over a limb from a fallen log in the underbrush, only to look behind and see the silhouette of the very creature I had foolishly come to this little town to uncover. It seems that instead of me finding and investigating it, Pumpkinfoot had, instead, come to see and investigate ME.

Tall and imposing, with a large ragged red beard like that of a man, the creature towered over me in the waning afternoon light, his visible teeth gnarled and yellow, his fingernails long and dirty, and a faded Metallic shirt and torn up old blue jeans, obviously “borrowed” from humans he had killed, covering up his otherwise mostly hair-laden body. He walked barefoot through the brush towards me, his cold amber eyes staring down imposingly into my own baby blues, as he opened his mouth to speak or consume me, I wasn’t sure which, but I feared the worst, and searching inside myself for any hint of ingenuity and courage with which to get out of this terrible situation, and finding none, I turned to prayer to find comfort in my final moments.

“This is private property, Man. You can’t just be coming in here on my land and poking about. It’s not a public fishing spot.”

I opened my closed eyes in shock. The creature speaks! And not just in a vague, incomprehensible mix of human and beast, but clear, concise, albeit a little informal, human English! I was too startled, at first, to even respond.

“Look, you got $20? You give me $20, and I’ll let you fish here all you want today. Just come to the front door of my house next time, and ask. I was trying to carry my team in another lousy match of Overwatch when I saw you poking about from my window.” the beast pointed to a rudimentary, almost abandoned looking, dwelling on the other side of the pond, a clouded window facing exactly in my direction. “I REALLY don’t have the patience for trespassers today.”

I reached for my wallet. I couldn’t remember… had I brought any cash with me today? Would this strange creature let me live even if I did? Does he possibly have CashApp?

“You don’t have any money, huh?” the man-creature roared, taking a sip of something, most likely fresh human blood, kept warm in an old cracked tumbler in his hand. “Hmmm… well, those are some pretty nice shoes you got there.” The creature smiled a hearty, gnarl-toothed smile, the scent of pumpkin spice and coffee wafting out from his otherwise foul breath as his mighty lungs exhaled.

“S…Sure.” I said, taking off my tennis shoes without realizing what I was doing and handing them to the creature, who immediately grabbed them and put them in place on his large, mud-stained old feet.

“How nice. A perfect fit.” The man-creature smiled again, an oddly satisfied look in its cold amber eyes. He took another drink from his chalice of warm human blood. “Alright, you’re free to fish. Just don’t try to connect to my Wifi…”

“W…Wifi?” I asked sheepishly, crawling slowly through the mud away from the creature in the general direction of my silver Ford pick-up truck just outside the small woodland clearing.

“Yes, my Wifi. It’s not secured. And I need it to play Overwatch.” the creature smiled sweetly, a bestial glint flashing briefly in his eyes as he tracked my cowardly movements in the opposite direction of him. “The last guy who connected to my Wifi while fishing here and made me lose a game because of lag… well… HE’S what I’ve been mixing in with my pumpkin spice coffee each morning the last couple of weeks. SEE FOR YOURSELF!”

The creature laughed, throwing coffee from his old tumbler in my face which was, indeed, mixed with some kind of thick reddish liquid and also what appeared to be small bits of human flesh and bones! Screaming, I ran off with my hands over my face, despite the coffee being lukewarm at best, frantically racing to my nearby truck and driving hastily away from the area as quickly as I could. The man-creature just stood there, watching me without breaking his gaze, not even seeming to move a muscle throughout the entire length of time that I fled from his vicinity.

“You can come out now, Ma. The intruder’s gone.” the man-creature whispered, drinking down what remained of his mostly lost cup of coffee before spitting out a finger bone that got caught in his mouth. In response to these words, a nine foot tall naked bestial creature whose features were concealed entirely in several layers of a very thick coating of dark black fur like a bear’s stepped out of the shadows behind a nearby cluster of trees near the man-creature’s house, walking barefoot over to her smiling son and hugging him sheepishly in thanks for warding me off. The hairy thing growled contentedly before letting off a strange aroma of pumpkin-like musk from somewhere in a gland along its back that quickly filled the whole clearing around old Ficton Pond with the scent of autumn spice. “I know, I know. You get scared when humans come around here looking for you. I understand. Don’t worry, the old Koolaid and fake skin and bones trick worked like a charm again this time.”

The man-creature smiled.

“And, not only that, I even got some nice new shoes out of it.”

Upon seeing the second creature out of the corner of my eye while flooring it out of the little town containing Ficton Pond, I never again resumed my hunt for the legendary creature known to its locals as “Pumpkinfoot”, or even returned again within 50 miles of the frightful little bump on the road remembered forever in my nightmares as Lyre, Louisiana.

***

While difficult to believe, the “Eye of Zatara” stands behind this story, following countless long hours of not investigating it and interviewing unrelated passersby. All throughout the month of October, we will continue to investigate the strange and paranormal. Stay tuned here for the latest supernatural news, fact-checked by honest, reliable writers and journalists who always, for your benefit, take every possible step to watch YouTube instead of investigating anything. Have you, too, seen a creature resembling “Pumpkinfoot” in the wilds of Louisiana? If so, contact the “Eye of Zatara” today, and you just might be the subject of our next 100% true, completely unexaggerated, right as rain, Snopes-verified (for whatever that’s worth) news story in… “The Eye of Zatara Investigates”!

~The Gatekeeper

This story is ridiculous. I’m going to get a latte.

~The Watchman

😛

~The Gatekeeper

[SATIRE] The “Eye of Zatara” Investigates – MEN IN GREEN

[Original Article: Monday, October 4th, 2021]

“You may have heard the rumors about the men in nice suits that show up whenever you see something that… shouldn’t quite exist in our world. The hushed whispers of secret government cover-ups, inhuman infiltrators of our society, and magic-like occurrences that defy modern civilization and its technology. Heck, you may have even seen a movie about these, so-called, “Men in Green”. Well, I am here to tell you that they are very real.

It was a rainy St. Patrick’s Day in the town of Meadup, Louisiana. The precipitation had finally let up, and a rainbow could be seen leading just over a nearby hill to something I could not quite make out. I had taken the week off work to celebrate my wife’s birthday with a cruise we were leaving for tomorrow, so I had the leisure to walk a few minutes forward until I could try to see what was at the end of the little rainbow by my house. That’s when I saw it.

They call them “UPGO”, or “Unidentified Pot of Gold Objects”, small black kettles of otherworldly locomotion that float impossibly above the ground while surrounded in an array of otherworldly lights, all centered around the end of a rainbow, as if the bridge of many colors led, at its far point, to another world beyond imagining, one which I was not supposed to be aware of. A shadowy figure emerged from within the golden metallic coins that littered the top of the floating kettle, a small green-clothed humanoid with a ragged hairy red beard and a hat with a four leaf clover on it. I had seen an honest-to-goodness “little green man”. The minute it saw me, it disappeared. Down into the end of the rainbow in a flash of light with the rainbow disappearing a few short seconds behind it, and I thought that would be the end of my story. Until the next day, when the men in nice suits showed up.

I was almost finished packing for the cruise when I heard a knock at the front door a few rooms away. Tossing another polo shirt into my suitcase, I then hurried over to my home’s threshold and opened the door to be greeted by a suspiciously serious looking middle-aged man in a green suit and tie, along with another man that looked a lot like Will Smith. They flashed some kind of ID in my face, something strange that looked like they had gotten it from the bottom of a cereal box, and started asking me about hearts, stars, horseshoes, clovers, and blue moons. I told them I knew nothing of these things, but had seen a strange pot of gold at the end of a rainbow in my front yard yesterday. They frowned.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.” the more serious-looking man said in a somber tone, taking… something… out of his jacket. The strange cylindrical device looked like one of those pens from grade school that could write in any color depending on which button on the top of the pen you pushed first. But on the top of the thick, pen-like machine was what was clearly some kind of plain brown potato. I was more than a little confused.

“Look into the potato please, Sir.” the man said very seriously, while his assistant mumbled something under his breath about making pancakes for Shrek. I refused. Why would I stare at a stupid potato, and what did this have to do with the UPGO I saw the day before?

“We’re from the government, and I need you to look into this potato.” the man said more seriously, reaching for something else inside his emerald suit coat… possibly a weapon? His partner reached for a weapon as well, while whispering to me something about finally being able to make up for “After Earth”. At this point, I’d had enough. I slammed my front door in the face of these strange “Men in Green” and looked for my cell phone to contact the police when, suddenly, some kind of talking dog, a pug, was in my house in front of me, holding the same “potato pen” device as the others. I saw the strange sight for only a moment before a bright emerald light filled my eyes and I woke in my bedroom, laying on the bed beside my still only half-packed suitcase, having apparently fallen asleep while preparing for my cruise.

I sighed with relief, happy the strange series of events had turned out to merely be the musings of my resting mind. Then, I heard it. The sound of… something… perched on the open sill of my nearby bedroom window.

“If you thought that was bad,” a multi-colored toucan carrying a box of “Froot Loops” under one arm mused in perfect English. “Just wait ’till you see what agents they send now that you’ve seen me.”

My startled scream could be heard all the way to the other side of another fleeting rainbow in the little town of Meadup, Louisiana.”

***
As per our usual standards, “The Eye of Zatara” confirmed the above account with its usual rigorous filtering process before posting it to this website (AKA we asked our ‘Magic 8 Ball’ if it was true and it said ‘Probably’.) Stay tuned for more in-depth investigations into the strange and paranormal as “Halloween Month” continues on “The Eye of Zatara”!

~The Gatekeeper

[SATIRE] “The Eye of Zatara” Investigates –
ALLEN ABDUCTIONS

[Original Post: Sunday, September 26, 2021]

“The first thing I remember was the lights. I woke up, and there they were… shining through my window bright as the sun. I tried to shield my eyes, but it wasn’t enough. I could still see them even with my eyes closed. Bluish white, piercing impossibly through my body and my mind. I should have been scared, but something compelled me instead to follow them. To seek out that unfathomable glow. To see what was creating such otherworldly brightness. To see what wonder of heaven or of earth had invaded the dark little shroud tucked around my early morning bedroom. Curiosity had gotten the better of me. Inexplicably, I watched myself as, a moth drawn to a flame, I quickly threw on a jacket over my T-Shirt and stepped outside, expecting… something.

Metallic. The lights were coming from something metallic. I strained to see more through the brightness as a loud sound like the foghorns I remember from the lighthouses that dotted the little beach east of my childhood home startled me out of my own head. Then, I saw the shadows. The little shadows of what appeared to be humanoid figures stepping out of tall rectangular hatches on either side of the glowing metallic silver mass. They were wearing strange clothing, old rustic American jumpsuits like those worn by mechanics of several generations gone by. And, there, over the breast of their uniforms I saw a patch that was identical across each of the barely visible figures now standing darkly in the glow of a halo of bluish white radiance behind them – a name patch that on each and every one of them that said, in faded red cursive lettering, simply… “Allen”.

They grabbed me and tied me to a platform on the back of their silver metallic mass. I saw a strange symbol engraved upon the front of their giant machinework out of the corner of my eye as I screamed in objection. The face of a horned ram staring back at me. And near it, in almost human looking writing, what appeared to be the English word for… “Dodge”? The Allens took out some fishing line and tied me to cold metal, a kind of flat rectangular storage bay on the back of their oversized silver conveyence, a trail of smoke leading up from the end of a long, loud exhaust tube sticking out from the back of their machine. Laughing, they opened small cylindrical containers of some kind of foamy beverage and took sips from their unusual refreshment before climbing into the control chamber at the front of their otherworldly vehicle and driving me down the road away from my home… away from everything and everyone that I ever loved… and into a cornfield from which I feared I might never return. A cornfield known for having strange animal mutilations and aluminum can litterings occurring overnight.

Once they got me to the field, I tried to scream but they simply laughed, and continued to drink out of those strange cylindrical vessels whatever it was they relied on for sustenance. They took out a rusted, red metal box filled with all kinds of cruel, otherworldly torture devices and began hitting me over the head with what I can only describe as some kind of tiny bent metal rod. The humanoids responsible for my abduction called it an “Allen Wrench”. Soon the hitting me over the head with a wrench was joined with what appeared to be human screwdrivers, pliers, claw hammers, and whatever else my sadistic benefactors could find and retrieve from within the horrible depths of their cold metal box. A receipt from a human “Human Depot” store spilled out puzzlingly from the accursed red container as they reached for a especially vicious looking “Hex Key” (their language, not mine – I have no human word equivalent to offer for it) and begin poking metal parts of it up my nose while drinking more of their frothy chilled space juice and laughing.

Eventually, I must have passed out from terror, because the next thing I knew, I woke up alone in the middle of the cornfield with circles of tire-track-like impressions forming a geometric design in a pattern all around me, several dozen unlucky possums found mutilated (squashed) on the small country road leading away from the field back to town forming a red trail of truth – a small lingering evidence that my humiliation at the hands of the Allens was real. It was a long time before I felt safe enough to reach into my pocket for my smartphone and call for an Uber to get home. Longer still before I told my family back home what had happened that night after returning to my humble abode and forcing myself back to bed even knowing I wouldn’t fall sleep while recounting in my head all the horrible, otherworldly things I had heard and seen.

Many of my friends think the entire incident was simply a dream. Something I made up in my mind, to make myself feel special in some way, as I live out my otherwise boring and uneventful life. But I and my Uber driver, Diego, know the truth. I didn’t drive myself out to that cornfield. And I certainly didn’t tattoo ‘Get ‘Er Done’ and ‘Here’s Your Sign’ on my own back that night. I encountered something otherworldly and supernatural that will stay with me my whole life… until my very last day on this humble little planet that we call Earth. And I say humble planet very earnestly, because if that strange night of torture with the Allens taught me anything… it’s that we are not alone in this world. Allens, in whatever backwoods you find them and in whatever giant pick-up truck they are riding in, are not a trick of the light or an experimental weather balloon to be dismissed. They are not some new governmental aircraft, or angels, or time travelers, or swamp gas, or wolves.

They are very, VERY real. And, maybe… just maybe… without you even knowing it right now, there is a slightly sober Allen waiting and watching over you right now, too. Waiting to shine his lights into your bedroom. Waiting to take you out into that cornfield. Waiting to stick a Hex Key up your nose and laugh.

Waiting to shakily tattoo ‘Get ‘Er Done’… forever… in broken, illegible letters on your back.”

~The above account was submitted to the management of “The Eye of Zatara” by a reluctant and trustworthy witness, a man who may or may not have been the ACTUAL cover-up artist who removed the “Get ‘Er Done” and “Here’s Your Sign” tattoos from the back of the anonymous, tortured victim of our story. As Halloween season approaches, the “Eye of Zatara” will continue to investigate paranormal phenomenon reported to us by various bored employees at businesses we frequent, spending at least thirty minutes verifying the details of these stories before posting them forever on the internet as indisputable fact.

We at “The Eye of Zatara” have an ironclad commitment to finding out the truth about our reality, and sharing that truth with you, our readers, so you can better understand the horrors that could face you in the otherwise innocent world all around you.

Watch the skies, dear Reader. Or, um… the roads. Or something. (Your driveway, maybe?)

~The Gatekeeper