can't sleep

Been doing a lot of research. Read the blog Jeanette recommended (creepy, and I might never watch the Puppet Show episode of Buffy again), and on Roberts suggestion I read Jeanette's own blog as well. Jesus Christ girl, all that shit actually happened?!?! If I hadn't seen one of my students get kidnapped by a puppet I wouldn't believe it. I also did some research on the "Puppet Empress" she mentioned (which appears to be better known as someone/something called the Wooden Girl) and believe that may be the "Puppet Queen" Percy mentioned on the show. After that poster with all the numbers mentioned it I looked into "Slenderman" as well. That . . . that was the Birch King Percy got the map from wasn't it? But how the hell did he know where to find Janice? Doesn't look like there's much to be done to kill these things, I've even heard of the Slenderman thing being attacked by someone with a baseball bat and being hit by a car to no effect. Even if I can't kill these things there has got to be some way for me to rescue Janice. No one fucks with my students, not even things straight out of a Lovecraft story. Next I'm going to research the history of Candle Cove, see if I can find anything that will let me track them down.

It gets stranger

I just got back from the police station. I didn't try to tell the cops what was on the card, implied that I hadn't even watched it yet. I just told them I'd had a suspicious note taped to my door. I had to bite my tongue when they played the video because even though I still saw exactly the same video I described to you all they saw was static. They say the note was probably some sick prank by a kid. There are child sized fingerprints on the note, but they're to smeared to tell if they're Janice's or not. So either the title of my last post was right, or something strange is going on with the video.

I have a week of combined sick leave and personal days. I'm going to take that time off and do some research on Candle Cove and decide what I'm going to do from there.

Got it uploaded

Here's the video that was on that SD card.

I think I'm going insane.

I came home from shopping tonight and found an envelope taped to my door. It was about at Janice's eye level. It had a note, and an SD card in it. I scanned the envelope and the note to show you all.

Normally I'd go to the police with this, since it looks like it's connected to Janice, but what was in the video . . . it can't be real! If it is, then what that person on my blog claiming to Percy said . . . it's true. She's sailing on the Laughingstock with a pirate puppet. I'm going to try to upload it to youtube so you guys can tell me if you see what I did when I watched.

When I played the video I saw what looked like a rough cut of a new Candle Cove episode, but the Laughingstock wasn't sailing on the high seas. She was sailing down a street, hovering about an inch above the blacktop. A street in Muskegon, I recognized Rykes Bakery when she sailed past. She sailed straight up to Janice's house, put down her gangplank and out came Percy, with his mismatched dolls arms and his porcelain face set in a permanent smile. He was walking up the sidewalk to Janice's house. I know why he and the other puppets look life sized now. They are. It's not a puppet costume, I can see his strings but they don't go anywhere they just float upwards into nothingness. There's no one holding them but all the same I see a string pull his leg up with each step he takes. I can see him shaking like he's fighting against whatever is pulling his strings and loosing. Whatever Percy really is he's alive but he's not in control right now. He stops at her door and for a moment I think he's about to knock, instead the door opens and there stands Janice wearing her Cinderella pajamas and carrying the case she keeps her colored pencils in. She's moving oddly and her face is blank but when she sees Percy she smiles. No, that's not really right. It doesn't look like she's smiling, it looks more like someone tugged a string at each corner of her mouth and made her smile. Unlike Percy though I don't see any strings. Her arm rises as if attached to a string and she takes Percy's hand. Together she and Percy walk - no someone else walks them - away from the house hand in hand, right up the Laughingstock's gangplank. The whole time Janice is smiling that fake looking smile. The camera zooms in on the door to her house, standing open just like her parents found it when they called the police.

This is completely insane. It could be done with special effects, but why would someone do that? I'm going to upload the video as soon as possible and see if you guys see the same thing I do, and I'm going to have to think very hard about if I should go to the police with this or not.

oh no

I don't believe it. I just saw on the news, one of my students is missing. Janice Jasinski. You guys know her as Jennifer, I figure it's worth spilling her real name here in case one of you runs into her. She's eight years old, four foot five inches and has shoulder length brown hair, and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing Cinderella pajamas. If you see her call the police, her parents are very worried. No one knows what happened, everyone had gone to bed around 10 then her parents woke up to a banging sound, aparently the door was hanging open and blwoing in the wind. They went to check on her and she was gone. No ones suer if she ran away or was taken.  The only thing that was missing from the home other than her were her colored pencils, she doesn't even have her jacket. God I hope they find her safe and get he home soon!
Sorry for any typos. As you can probably guess I'm very worried about her.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick automatic update to tell everyone reading my blog Happy Turkey Day! Hope everyone's meal is wonderful and all your families are well! Having dinner over at my aunt's this year. I doubt you'll hear from me again until at least after school starts again Monday.

This has to be the creepiest episode yet . . .

I must have missed the episode where Percy met Mr. Smiles, this one opens with him studying a flower that Mr. Smiles gave him. It was the strangest rose I've ever seen, the stem and the leaves, even the thorns (longer and crueler than on any rose I've seen, I swear they were barbed) were pure black and it looked like someone had shredded the leaves so that they looked like tentacles or skeletal branches dangling from the stem. The flower was a tightly closed white bud, but it didn't seem attached very well. Every now and then as Percy examined it the bud would flop to one side as if it were a person cocking his head. He was asking the Laughingstock (I didn't know by the way that she could make a face inside the ship, I thought she only talked through the mouth on the bow!) if she was absolutely sure Mr. Smiles gave them the flower to tell them that they needed to see the Birch King. "M-maybe he just wanted to get rid of me!"Percy stammered. You could tell that this Birch King was the last person that Percy wanted to talk to.

"Now . . . Percy . . ." the Laughingstock told him "You know . . . Janice needs us . . . We have . . . to try."
Percy straitened up, tossed the flower aside, and said "You're right. Set a course f-for the Black Path."
"Percy, we're . . . already there." At that Percy started so hard his pirate hat fell off his head. I almost felt ashamed for laughing at that given how scared he looked, but it really was comical. He leaned over and picked his hat back up asking the Laughingstock if she could just "Sail around the entrance a few times . . ." She got a really stern (no pun intended) look on her face and told him "Percy . . . you have . . . to go . . . inside!" "Y-you're right." he said 'I just - I just have to man up and go face . . ." he cracked up here but there was an edge of hysteria to it. I didn't understand that until later in the show. "S-sorry. I'll have to go f-face Him." Percy buckled his sword on, climbed up on deck and looked at the newest port his ship had brought him to. His knees started knocking at the sight and I don't blame him. Before him was a dense forest with only one very narrow path leading into it. The odd thing about the forest though were the trees. Every tree, both it's bark and it's leaves, were jet black. The trunks were twisted and gnarled, some of them looked like they had faces on them. Faces contorted into a horrified scream or a grimace of pain. Here and there were branches, bare of leaves, that stretched to the sky like skeletal arms. This was a forest bound to give anyone nightmares and I'm not sure I would be brave enough to set foot in it. But Percy did what he had to do.

As usual the second he disembarked the shows Calliope music was replaced with a new theme, the sound of branches scraping together and the wind howling through the trees. Percy began walking down the path, trying very hard to avoid the trees. I nearly jumped out of my seat when one of the bare branches actually reached out and grabbed his arm! Percy, with more courage than I would have credited him for, quickly drew his sword and severed the branch. It started to leak a dark red sap that looked disturbingly like blood. The only signs of fear Percy showed were them switching to his paler head and the extra tight grip on his sword. He set down the path at a quicker pace, swatting aside any other branches that reached out for him with the flat of his blade. I thought he'd reach his goal with ease until suddenly there was a creepy laugh and out of nowhere dropped the Skin-Taker. The only differences between him and the puppet Patrick brought to school last week were that both his eyes stayed in their sockets and the fact that he had a sword. His jaw made that creepy side to side grinding motion as he spoke to Percy.

"You won't get past me Percy. You were never half the swordsman Milo was and you know how he ended up when he crossed me. I'll get to Janice first and GRIND HER SKIN!" Even though I know he's a puppet I winced at the cracking sound I heard when Percy tightened his grip on his sword even more. "I-I'll never let you do that Skin-Taker! Y-you'll hurt Janice over my dead body!" The Skin-Taker let out another wild laugh and replied "Dear Percy, that's the whole idea!" and he slashed at Percy with his blade. They launched into an amazing sword fight, I mean I've seen human actors who did a worse job than these two puppets. Oddly their fighting seemed to acknowledge that they were puppets as they would occasionally slash at each others strings. Surprisingly Percy seemed to be gaining the upper hand, the Skin-Taker was starting to look concerned (well, as concerned as a puppet of a skeleton can look, like Percy he's remarkably expressive but there's only so much you can do with a bare skull). He quickly made a signal with his left hand and Horace Horrible came out of the trees holding a huge black tree branch as a club. For those of you who've never seen the show, Horace's face is completely obscured by a huge bushy mustache except for his huge teeth and a single monocle. He creeps up behind Percy stealthily, but ruins it by giggling maniacally when he winds up to swing the club at Percy's head. Percy dodges to the left and the club connects with the Skin-Taker's head instead, which spins around three times and ends up facing backwards. Horace drops his club and begins to apologize and beg for forgiveness.  "Thanks for the help, Horace!" Percy shouts as he runs down the path. Before they're out of the shot the Skin-Taker re-adjusts his head and picks up the club. For a few minutes, until Percy is far enough down the path, all you can hear is a steady "Thwack . . . thwack . . . thwack . . ." and Horace pitifully sobbing "Master! Master!" God, it actually made me feel sorry for the bastard.

A few minutes later Percy bursts into a clearing, and immediately began to cough. Not sure what was up with that. At first I thought the center of the clearing held another tree, very tall with all it's branches bare and reaching for the sky. It seemed to have an odd white bit on the trunk and the moon rising over it. Then it moved. I realized it was a man, or something like a man, in a suit (the white on the "trunk" was the shirt underneath his suit jacket) with multiple branch like arms raised to the sky. What I had mistaken for the moon was it's head pale, round, and faceless. No wonder Percy found some humor in the thought of "facing" him. He looked down at Percy and cocked his head to once side. Despite the lack of face you could tell he was looking straight at Percy and concentrating on him. "Y-your M-m-majesty!" Percy managed to stammer out. "I-I've sailed f-far and wide asking all the Lords and Ladies of the Realm if they know where to find the girl I've b-been looking for. Mr. Smiles, he-he said you would know where Janice is. I know how much you like kids, so I thought maybe you . . ." The man cocked his head to the other side and Percy stopped speaking for a moment. One of the mans branches reached into the breast pocket of his suit and drew out a folded piece of paper that it passed over to Percy. Percy unfolded the paper (don't ask me how they rigged that with a puppet) and found a map. Oddly it looked like a modern city map, not a map a pirate would follow. The camera didn't get a good enough view to tell what city it was, but there was water on the west coast. For all I know it could be a map of Muskegon, although I don't know why they would use that. Like a pirate map X seemed to mark the spot, although the X had a circle drawn around it for some reason. Percy folded the map back up, somehow bowed deeply without tangling his strings, and stammered out thanks before taking off for the Laughingstock at a dead run with the map under his hat. He passed by the spot where his fight with the Skin-Taker had been, he and Horace were long gone but the club was sitting in the path. Once more I think someone exercised poor taste for a kids show in covering the club in red paint.

Percy quickly reached the Laughingstock and boarded grinning ear to ear (that has to be at least the third head I've seen them use for him! If they have a budget that big why are the rest of the puppets and effects so crappy?). "I've found her!" He crowed. "I've found Janice!" "That's . . . great . . . Percy!" She replied. "Soon she'll . . . be with . . . us. Safe . . . and sound!" Percy reached under his hat and retrieved the map. "Set sail for these co-ordinates!" He said, and then the credits rolled before he could let us know where they were going next. According the ads the next show scheduled was "The Jeanette Experience" starring Jeanette Cotton, Tara Tillinghast, Alice Mason, and Alison Mason. I've never heard of those actresses but I might give that show a watch some other time. I've got to prepare for the party at school tomorrow. It's our last day before Thanksgiving break.

Poor Jennifer

Remember how I mentioned how terrified she is of the Skin-Taker? Today Patrick smuggled a Skin-Taker puppet to school in his backpack and chased her around the playground with it until she was in hysterics. We really need to get more adults to supervise the playground before school begins. I confiscated the puppet and kept it in a cupboard out of Jennifer's sight until school was over and told Patrick that if he brings it back to school again I'll keep it until the end of the school year next time. He also had to stay in for recess. Not only did he smuggle the puppet in to scare Jennifer, guess what he took out of his backpack to make room for the puppet?

That's right. He left his school books home so he could scare his classmate. I only took the puppet out of the closet once, on my lunch break, so I could take this picture for those of you who haven't seen any Candle Cove episodes with him in (none of the episodes I've seen this season have for some reason!).

I apologized to Patrick for the fact that one of the eyes fell out but he said it just does that sometimes. He also apologized to Jennifer for scaring her with it. I was glad to send it home with him. All day I could swear I kept hearing noises from the closet that damn thing was in.

Good News.

Just got done talking with a friend who works at the hospital. Apparently there haven't been any new cases of that nasty strain of chicken pox reported in the past few days. I think it may have blown over. There were unfortunately a few more deaths. No kids luckily, but some kids lost a parent, a grandparent, or an adult sibling. None of the kids in my class lost anyone thankfully and no one else I worked with besides poor Elisabeth died. A few of my other colleagues were hospitalized, but they're recovering.

My only worry now is that some idiot might have sent infected lollypops all over the country thinking they were "helping".

Candle Cove is getting weirder.

I managed to get home in time to watch another Candle Cove episode today. They're still on the story arc where Pirate Percy is searching for Janice and he's getting more worried than ever. There's a scene early in the episode where he's so stressed out he's chewing his fingernails. Whoever had the idea to put red paint or ink or whatever that was on the end of the puppets fingers to make it look like he'd chewed his fingers bloody went too far though, I mean this is supposed to be for kids. Today he says he's going to go visit the Bird Man and ask if he knows where to find Janice. Wasn't the Bird Man who Kelly said she saw in the woods on our field trip? Maybe he was in an earlier episode I missed and he frightened her, I guess that explains why she might see him lurking in the shadows in an unfamiliar place.

Anyway the Laughingstock pulls into a port where the water is stagnant and brown, considering that the "water" looks like what came up in my basement when the sewer backed up I don't want to think about what that is floating in it. The Laughingstock's facial expression tells me more than I needed to know about how the water tastes and smells too. Dead alewives line the shore where they're picked at by vultures and rats. You know, I don't blame Percy for putting on a hospital mask before stepping off the boat, this place doesn't seem very sanitary. As soon as he steps off the boat Candle Cove's calliope music is replaced by the buzzing of flies. In the distance is a crumbling castle, it looks a bit like Count von Count's castle but with the dial turned from Sesame Street to Nightmare on Elm street.  As he heads towards the castle he starts to shake. At first I thought he was shaking with fear, as we all know Percy isn't exactly the bravest of souls, but when I saw that he looked like he was sweating (How do you make a puppet sweat? Did they spritz him with a spray bottle or something?) I realized he seemed to have a fever. By the time he was about half way to the castle he seemed to be getting delirious. He kept saying the strangest things, "But Mommy, I was playing pirate. I had to bury a treasure!" or "No, mistress, I'll be good. Don't send me to the Tower again!" but the one that creeped me out the most was "No Janice, you have to do what She says. You're one of us now. You can't be Charlotte anymore." What the hell was that all about? 

After that last statement he kind of shook himself (again, I'm impressed what his puppeteer can do without tangling up his strings), reached up and slapped himself, and marched determinedly to the castle. When he got to the gate he reached up and knocked and the man who answered the door . . . well he looked almost exactly like Kelly's drawing. I was right he must have been in an earlier episode. He was on the tall side, dressed in a black robe with an odd, almost medieval looking, hat and a white bird like mask with a long beak and carried a slim cane in one hand. I'm not sure how or why but I got the impression that he was smiling under that mask. Percy visibly steeled himself and asked "D-do you know where Janice went, Mr. Bird Man?" the Bird Man looked at Percy and slowly shook his head.  I thought maybe the Bird Man was mute but as Percy's shoulders slumped and he turned to walk away he spoke up in a firm, calm tone. "Percy. Tell your mistress that if she sends you or that pile of bones and the walking mustache here again without my permission I will personally give her Dutch Elm disease. And termites." Wow, that was an odd threat. Percy turned towards him again. "Th-the Skin-Taker was here? He was asking abou-about Janice too?"


"Yes Percy, he was here yesterday. He said that he would have to try Mr. Smiles next and if he did not know, perhaps the Birch King would." Percy paled (seriously, do they just have different heads they swap in and out or something?) and took off for the Laughingstock at a dead run.


Wow, for Janice's sake I hope the Skin-Taker doesn't get to her first, but I'm starting to wonder if Percy finding her would be good either. I think the show's even creepier than it was when I was a kid.

Goddamn it.

You remember how I said chickenpox could be nasty in adults? One of my colleagues, Elisabeth Smith, died today from complications of fucking chickenpox. They say the antivirals weren't anywhere near as effective as they expected them to be. It eventually lead to Encephalitis. I don't know what her adopted children Luke and Sky are going to do without her. She's going to be missed by the staff and the kids. 


They're saying now that this strain is some weird mutation, more infectious, harder on the victims body. The kids are all fine, it's lasting longer than a normal case of the chickenpox but none of them need to be hospitalized. Some of my other colleagues and some of the kids parents though . . . God, I just hope this blows over soon before anyone else dies from it.

Crap!

Not poison ivy from the field trip. Chicken pox. Seems like half the school is out today, she must have exposed everyone. A few miserable days for the kids but I'm worried about some of the teachers that came down with it, chicken pox can be serious in adults!

The bird man

Today I asked the kids to draw something they saw on yesterdays field trip. A lot of them drew flowers, or trees, or the mess-hall where they ate lunch. One smart aleck drew the bus we took to get there. Kelly though drew this creepy robed figure wearing a bird mask. I asked her where she saw him and she said he was in the woods. Now I know I would have noticed a strange man out there, especially in a weird get up like that. Maybe she saw some sort of bird in the shadow of the trees and her imagination filled in the rest. That must have been what scared her though. I noticed she seemed to be itchy today, I hope she didn't get poison ivy on the field trip.

First feild trip!

The class had their field trip to Camp Pendelouan today. I think they learned a lot about nature on the little hike we had and they had a lot of fun. Except for Kelly, she saw something in the woods that scared her but she doesn't want to talk about it.