Nameless Dread on Theodore Roosevelt Island

I have been receiving more email lately from many of you who are curious about this blog. As I assumed, many readers question my sanity and believe that I am fabricating these ‘stories.’ No matter, my documentation is real and I continue to be afflicted with horrible nightmares of a creeping eldritch nature.
In many of these lucid dreams, I see a bizarre man resplendent in a yellowish threadbare robe, his face hidden by some sort of glossy mask, sitting upon a great and ancient onyx throne. He points a grotesque finger at me and laughs at me in a horrible, high pitched maniacal voice. The dream always ends with me being shaken awake by my wife. The voice… it’s loud piercing, insane laughter still rings in my ears. My wife claims that it is me, while asleep, who makes the laugh but nothing human could emit such a sound! She begs me to see a sleep specialist; I know it would be pointless, these are not night terrors.

I recognize I am not alone in experiencing these nameless horrors. While perusing my inbox yesterday, I received a curious email from another fellow Washingtonian, who also has a weird tale to tell. Once again, I shall present the email in its entirety and allow you to be the judge, is he insane or has he stumbled across something frighteningly incredible which needs to be told as well?

Dear Sir,

I came across your blog while researching a strange and upsetting phenomenon which I have (unfortunately) recently experienced. First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is F.G. (name edited out for the sake of privacy) and I have lived in the Washington, D.C. area all my life. For many years, I worked as an archivist at the Smithsonian on the National Mall, specifically in the National Museum of American History. Although I am now retired, I still teach classes, on occasion, about how to properly catalog museum pieces at George Washington University. I consider myself a freethinker and a man of science.

In my spare time, I have a hobby which I practice with assiduousness fervor. You see I am a geocacher, who belongs to a geocache society of other retired professionals such as myself. We have a website (which I will not name in order to protect the anonymity of the other members). Specifically, each member of our little community is expected to go out once a week and search for a hidden ‘cache’ or item somewhere in the Washington, D.C. area and also hide a ‘cache’ for another member to locate.

We do this through the use of GPS receivers and the coordinates of the various caches are placed on our website for the other members to find. It is a thoroughly pleasurable activity and allows me to stretch my legs as the ‘hunt’ usually involves a bit of hiking and skulking around. I am always looking for outlandish and unique places to lay my ‘cache.’ Last week, I thought I found the perfect location, to my horror, something much worse found me.

It was not long after the first day of the new year, I found myself on a crisp and cold winter Sunday walking on to the small wooden planked pedestrian bridge which allows ingress to Theodore Roosevelt Island, on the Potomac River. I had my GPS receiver with me and was prepared to find a suitable location for my ‘cache’, a small tin box with an inexpensive ornament hidden inside. As I walked on to the island, the dirt underneath my boots was frozen solid and a cold, eerie silence hung in the air like the icicles hanging from the tree branches. I felt conscientiously alone on that little island in the Potomac.

As I walked around the outer perimeter of the island, I could hear vehicle traffic moving across the Potomac River on a bridge nearby, traffic moving in and out of the District. I decided to move off of the common walking paths into the interior of the island, hoping to find some secluded area that was not frozen, in order to bury my ‘cache.’ I came across the large seventeen foot statue of Theodore Roosevelt, standing majestically in the middle of the island and its surrounding memorial plaza in stone. Not wanting to desecrate the grand commemorative plaza, I walked towards the barren northwest part of the island, where it is more secluded and not prone to disturbances by idle hikers. I found more than I bargained for…

While wading through a particularly vicious inhospitable area overgrown with thorn bushes and other ferocious undergrowth, I spied an incredible hole in the ground. The dimensions of the hole appeared a little over five feet in circumference. Before I even approached the hole, I was filled with a feeling I can only describe as dread. From inside the hole came a shrill, peculiar buzzing sound, as if a large hive of frenzied bees were animated inside. Although I am no biologist, I know enough that bees simply could not be active in such temperatures as we are experiencing. For no apparent reason, I felt all the hair on my body stand on end and my heart began racing and my breath quickened, still…against better judgment…I leaned forward, towards the hole to get a better view!

What briefly came into view, I will never forget and shuddered my sanity to its very foundations. Some sort of hard, scaly appendage, a few feet in length, arose out of the hole. The appendage was distended and crablike; its color simply cannot be described with human vocal cords. My God…it...it...moved towards me! My mind simply broke at that instant and I screamed a blasphemous wail and turned my back to that horrific…thing. I ran blindly through the thorn bushes and tree branches, not caring about the scratches I was accumulating on my bloodied face and hands. I did not stop until I reached the parking lot across the pedestrian bridge. Just recognizing the normal Sunday traffic moving up and down the George Washington Parkway brought me back to a sense of customariness in my now fractured world. I sat on a curb in the parking lot, breathing heavily, exhausted, I began to weep. A few curious onlookers, probably assuming I was some sort of lunatic released from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the deranged, gave me a wide berth as they walked by.

“Are you feeling alright, Sir?” a deep, authoritative masculine voice asked me. I looked up to see a uniformed U.S. Park Police Officer in a dirty dark blue winter parka, probably the officer assigned to monitor and patrol that part of the parkway and specifically the island.

“On the island…a hole…this thing came out of it…like a giant crab…” I sputtered, regretting that I could not articulate fully what I saw.

“Sir…maybe you should just go back home and forget what you saw…I’m sure it had nothing to do with you. You wouldn’t want to bring yourself undue attention and trouble, now would you?” the officer asked in a voice which before I realized it, had gone from sounding concerned to dramatically menacing.

I looked up at the officer, suddenly afraid. His eyes steadily stared back at me without blinking, his jaw clenched tight. For the second time that day, my hair stood on end. A subtle threat had been registered in my broken mind. The officer gave me a predatory smile, reached out and picked a foot high metal cylinder which he had been carrying but put down when he was talking to me apparently. The cylinder was really remarkable with three sockets in a triangle shape raised from the surface of the smooth surface, with a single typed label. I cannot be sure but I believe the label said ‘Akeley’ on it. The officer turned his back on me and with his strange cargo in hand, walked towards the pedestrian bridge and the island. As for myself, I gathered together my frayed nerves and I walked back to the Rosslyn metro stop. I traveled by metro back home, not before stopping in a corner liquor store and buying the most potent brandy I could locate.

I have now given up my hobby and prefer the pavement and concrete of the city to the woods and fauna of the parks and wilds. For now on… I shall stay close to the civilization of man.

Sincerely,
F.G.

A strange tale indeed. I know the area of Roosevelt Island well, having walked around the perimeter of the island on many occasions, even picnicking by the monument. Since receiving this email, I have toured the park myself, taking some pictures for my readers benefit. I have even discovered a curious hole described by F.G., which I took a picture of and placed at top of this entry. I dared not investigate any further, in case something sinister was revealed to me at the bottom of that covered hole. The island is maintained by the National Park Service and more information can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt_Island

To my knowledge nothing strange or usual has ever been reported on the island (until now). If you can add any information about strange occurrences on the island, please email me the particulars.