In a week and a half, he gets through over fifty statements; they're mostly bottlenecked by the follow-up research, which is primarily the job of his assistants. Lots of them are entirely discredited; lots are entirely anecdotal, with no proof either way; a sizable minority are suggestive, with strange details or circumstances but nothing conclusively paranormal; only two are confirmed to be paranormal.
Six of the statements refuse to digitize, including both confirmed-real statements, three of the 'suggestive' statements, and one with no proof either way.
The first statement is by Joshua Gillespie in 1998, who was offered £10,000 to look after a package. He agreed; the package arrived a year later. It was a large wooden coffin, with the words 'DO NOT OPEN' carved into it. It was closed and locked, but the key was with it. Occasionally, there would be scratching noises from inside it; whenever it rained, there was a low moaning noise. Whenever he slept, he began sleepwalking, getting the key and walking towards the coffin; to prevent himself from opening it, he stored the key inside the freezer, where the cold would wake him up. He lived with the coffin for a year and a half, at which point the same men who had delivered it came to pick it up; their van read "Breekon and Hope Deliveries". The two delivery men were tall; other than that, he could recall no distinguishing features of them or of the man who made him the offer. There is no evidence supporting the existence of the coffin; however, Tim's research found that--despite living in a large building with eight available flats--during the two years Joshua Gillespie lived at the address given, nobody else lived in the building, and it was demolished shortly after Joshua moved out.
The second statement is by Amy Patel in 2007. While walking home from a university course with an acquaintance, Graham, she felt like she was being thrown into the street despite nobody else being on the road. She got a concussion from it, and agreed to go to Graham's flat for a few hours to recover; when she arrived, she realized that Graham's flat was across the street from her own. She began to stare at his table, which seemed hypnotic, with the pattern on it almost like an optical illusion, drawing her eyes towards the center, where there was nothing but an empty square hole. Over the next several months, she began watching Graham when they were both home, and noted strange behavior: he panicked over every noise, wrote frantically in journals that were already full, and ate all the pages of one of his journals. One night when she was doing this, she saw a monstrous figure crawl through Graham's window and called the police. A man who looked very different from Graham (several inches shorter, with curlier blond hair contrasting with Graham's straight dark hair) answered the door; the police checked his identification, and seemed satisfied. In follow-up research, all photos that were found of Graham appear to be photos of the short man with curly blond hair, except for a few polaroids which match Amy's description of her memories of Graham. One of Graham's journals was also found. It says nothing except the words "keep watching", over and over again, even on top of each other.
The third statement is by Dominic Swain in 2013, about a Leitner-owned book he temporarily had in the winter of 2012. The book was titled Ex Altiora; it gave Dominic a strange feeling of vertigo when he looked at the pictures it contained, as well as the smell of ozone. He walked randomly for several hours, feeling that "walking felt as natural as falling", until he ended up outside a bookstore, Pinhole Books, where he had previously been told he might be able to sell his book; here he encountered Mary Keay. Mary Keay was bald, very old, and painfully thin; every inch of her body seemed to be tattooed with words. Death metal music blasted from upstairs. It was at this point that he realized he had been walking until 2am. He followed Mary Keay inside, where he noticed a painting of an eye while she searched her book collection. She then pulled out a Leitner; when she passed it through shadows, animal bones dropped out of it and to the floor. Passing Ex Altiora through those shadows revealed the image of a Lichtenberg figure in the picture that caused such dizziness; it caused Dominic to think of his childhood friend, Mike Crew, who had been struck by lightning and marked with that same branching pattern, the same smell of ozone. Dominic went home with his book. Later that night, a man in a black leather coat with poorly-dyed hair introduced himself as Gerard Keay, who bought Ex Altiora and then burned it. He discovered at this time that Mary Keay had been murdered in 2008. Photos of Mary Keay matched the woman he saw, though at the time she was untattooed and had a full head of hair. Large swathes of her skin were peeled off and hung up with fishing wire; Gerard was tried for her murder but acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Tim's research with the police revealed that these pieces of skin were also written on in permanent marker.
The fourth statement is by Timothy Hodge in 2014. He picked up a girl, Harriet Lee, at a club. She was very jumpy, very quiet, and scratched a lot at her skin. At his house, she confided that she had been attacked by a woman in a red dress who moved strangely; Harriet felt as though she had been stabbed, and lost consciousness, but when she awoke she could find no trace of any injury. Since then, she was intensely nauseous and itchy, as well as having the feeling that she was being followed. Her and Timothy Hodge had sex; afterwards, Timothy felt something squirm underneath her skin, and she experienced a bout of intense pain. He was just about to call the ambulance when he heard a strange sound, like an egg breaking; he turned on the light to see a pile of flesh, covered with pale, writhing worms, and claims that immediately afterward he set fire to the flat. In followup research, it is found that the police found no evidence of arson or human remains, though they did find nonhuman organic matter. Lev's assistants reported that the Institute is aware of a woman named Jane Prentiss, a parasite-infested woman who has killed multiple people; she was wearing a red dress and in the same area as Harriet and Timothy when this statement took place.
The fifth statement is by Staff Sergeant Clarence Berry in 1922. He reports that, during his time fighting in WWI, he heard the sound of a piper playing music. He served with Wilfred Owen, who is hit by a shell and found several days later clutching the tags of a man named Joseph Rayner. Wilfred claimed to have "met the war" and described it playing pipes; he begged to remain, and it gave him a pen and told him to write its tune. After that, Clarence began to notice that some men seemed distant, listening to music that nobody else could hear, and those men would always be the ones to die. One day, suddenly, a bullet hole opened in Wilfred's forehead, and Wilfred fell dead, though he was not shot; later, Clarence discovers that Wilfred had died at the same moment the overtures of peace began. No follow-up research was able to be done, due to when the statement was given.
The sixth statement is by Ivo Lensik in 2007, about his experience working construction on a house on Hill Top Road. He saw a large dead tree in the garden, which cast strange shadows; he dismissed this until a man named Raymond Fielding entered the house. Raymond Fielding claimed to be its owner and then vanished in a fire that didn't damage anything else. Ivo fell and got a deep cut on his temple, at which point he went to the hospital; the nurse there, Annie Willet, explained that the house used to be a halfway home for teenagers with nowhere else to go. A girl named Agnes, much younger than the rest, moved in; there was speculation about her relation to Raymond Fielding. She behaved strangely while she was there, staring at people and refusing to talk, and, in 1974, several years after her appearance, many pets and one five-year-old disappeared from the neighborhood. A week later, the house burned down, and the body of Raymond Fielding was found, missing a hand. On the nurse's request, a Catholic priest (Edwin Burroughs) met up with Ivo Lensik to bless the house. While he was blessing the house, Ivo Lensik uprooted the strange tree in the garden; it bled, and beneath it was an intricately carved wooden box containing an apple, which rotted and burst with spiders as soon as it was removed from the box. The statement giver also discussed his father's schizophrenia, which manifested as an obsession with fractals and a terror of a tall man with strange hands and too many bones who was following him. The father refused medication and committed suicide. Ivo Lensik worried that his experience was also a result of psychosis, but after the incident, he has had no further symptoms and was told by his doctor that it was highly unlikely he was developing schizophrenia. There is a note in the files saying that Father Burroughs also left a statement elsewhere in the archives, though it does not say where. Martin's follow-up research discovered that, the same day Ivo Lensik uprooted the tree and Father Burroughs blessed the house, a 26-year-old woman named Agnes Montague committed suicide by hanging. A severed hand was attached to her by a chain.
(He doesn't get any strange feelings when out at lunch with any of his employees. The feeling of being watched doesn't go away; when he reads the non-digitizable statements, even just to himself, it gets the slightest bit more intense before weakening again when he finishes. He has the same sensation of getting into character, but if he's made exhausted or satisfied or curious by it, it's much fainter.)
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