‘The life cycle of an urban legend is not so different than that of a star. Its birth is something complex enough to be described as chaos and, though we don’t currently have the wherewithal to suss the places where seemingly nothing might become obviously something, it’s easy enough to understand why both occurred after the fact. A star, like an urban legend, will be a light in humanity’s subconscious for a time and when it dies it won’t really die. An urban legend, like a star, will go dark; the branches of the story collapsing into the dense mass of something complete and unquestionable. Take ‘Resurrection Mary’ who, in her prime, was not confined to Chicago but hitchhiked all over the country. Take ‘Bigfoot,’ who has been seen in many climates and many coats. We remember their variation, but they have widely retired to familiar forms and new reports of either are inevitably dismissed as having been inspired by the core (for even dead stars whisper).
‘The Tommy Knocker of Sweet Homes’ is recent proof that urban legends evolve to their environment but are born the same regardless. A tommy knocker is traditionally a type of ghost confined to old mines and identified by the sound of their tools ‘knocking’ on cavern walls (what skeptics suggest is simply the echo of dripping water). When seventies mining technology became too noisy, tommy knockers mostly retired to suburbs to occasionally clatter about in pipes and radiators and eventually faded into relative obscurity.
The thing inside ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ was not made privy to this change.
Sweet Homes, Ohio is technically a suburb- a gated community lacking any form of governance outside of a militaristic homeowner’s association and a paranoid neighborhood watch. ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ is technically the oldest structure there, pre-dating the first house by four months or so- a timetable that isn’t exactly conducive to a traditional haunting but with which ‘The Tommy Knocker’ seems to make do for, starting just one year into the development’s occupation, ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ began to ring.
The phenomenon can be traced back to July 2014 when Benjamin ‘Benny’ Smythe reported ‘a sound like a gong’ to the neighborhood watch. The noise, which Benny described as ‘something new-agey,’ would wake him up at ‘an ungodly hour’ and therefore was likely to be ‘ungodly.’ By the time Benny was able to record the ringing, others began to speak up and the sound began to occur sporadically, day and night. Due to the ringing’s unlikely origin, it wasn’t until three plucky teens were physically shaken off the tower one crisp autumn morning that the source was revealed. The sole survivor of the incident became the unlikely catalyst for a new legend, claiming to have heard something crawling inside tank before the fatal toll.
‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ was drained, inspected, and re-filled, but the ‘Tommy Knocker’ remained- no subsequent attempt has been rid of it. A second tower was eventually built, directly opposite the first and they stand on the edge of town like feuding roommates. ‘The Sweet Homes Tommy Knocker’ still chimes at least twice a day, at sunrise and sunset, prompting most to write the haunting off as temperature fluctuations in the metal. This theory fails to explain why the second tower is silent and why the first remains filled with water. It fails to explain why the first tower is allowed to remain standing at all (the HOA deflects questions like these, suggesting the water is held in reserve for fires).
The truth is succinctly conveyed by two subsequent clips of ‘The Sweet Homes Tommy Knocker.’ The first is static enough that, if it weren’t for a car moving in the far distance, a viewer might mistake it for a photograph.. Camera footage shows a view from the tower’s platform, Sweet Homes visible ahead and construction equipment visible below (placing the clip around the time of the initial draining). A mad scrabbling suffuses the audio of the clip, a sound like a mouse trying to escape a bucket. The tank is confirmed to be the source of the noise as the camera rotates to face it fully. The clip ends when the noise suddenly ceases and the ‘gong’ sounds, shaking the frame into a blur. The second is only three seconds long- grainy footage from the actual draining process. Water pours from the tower in a monstrous stream while workers look on. The flow sputters as something solid emerges from the spout. Several workers begin to shout before the footage ends.
Humanity’s reaction to ‘The Sweet Homes Tommy Knocker’ can be attributed to an evolved reluctance to pry. For better or worse we’ve learned to simply outlive certain problems. We’ve learned to not follow tommy knockers into their pits and we’ve learned to leave ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ sealed and stagnant, bearing its daily entreaty with the closed-curtain politeness Sweet Homes is a monument to.’
There are several precautions to be taken at ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ and I manage to do most at half-measure. I have my phone camera to record the evening knock. I craft ear plugs by tearing the corners off the rag I sometimes use to wipe down the bike. I tie a crude rope harness that may very well become a noose if the chaotic knot I use to anchor it on the platform happens to hold during a fall. For the first time in all these years, I think to leave a note for my family, letting them know I am not seeking out destruction but have dodged it so often the distinction may well be moot.
The climb itself isn’t bad and the wait is pleasant enough, a warm autumn day yielding to a cool autumn night. I spend it resting atop the tank itself, more dangerous than the platform but also more hidden from below. When the sun finally sets and the tower begins to click and groan with contraction, I brace myself, rigid for nearly an hour until I give up all at once, my body sore from the effort. I (stupidly) remove my makeshift earplugs and (stupidly) place my head against the tank before (stupidly) knocking, realizing only afterward the parenthetical idiocy of my actions. It comes as some surprise when I am answered not by the deafening chime of the tower, but by a cautious knock from inside, a muffled voice, and something like a deep gurgle. When I try again, the knocking become more frantic and I follow its urgency to the latch at its highest point.
There is a hatch there, operated by a wheel and before I’m able to turn it I see that someone has welded the entrance shut. Someone has burned a message there as well, presumably with the same torch. It says: ‘You’re Welcome.’
Luckily, I’m still gripping the wheel when ‘The Sweet Homes Tommy Knocker’ crashes against the inside of the tower. It flattens me, rattles my teeth, and leaves my ears ringing in a way I’ll likely hear for the rest of my life. It sounds, to me, like an explosion and my panicked animal brain wonders how cars can possibly still be driving along the highway, how a man calmly walks under a streetlight in the distant suburb when my own personal world seemed to be ending just seconds before.
My descent is shakey and slow; each movement is a concession between planting myself firmly and minimizing contact with the tank. I leave the rope harness hanging there when I drive away, realize three miles later that someone like me would arrive at a place like ‘The Sweet Homes Water Tower’ and assume whoever tied the harness would know what they were doing and that they might risk their life in it. ‘The Sweet Homes Tommy Knocker’ chimes again as I struggle with the knot and one last time at the very edge of hearing when I’m miles away, ears still thrumming from the abuse.
Whatever pickles in the water above Sweet Homes deserves the prison it finds itself in.
-traveler
At some point in my traveling I’ve visited enough of Oregon’s rest stops to realize there is always a weathered sedan in a corner of the parking lot and it isn’t until I’ve stumbled across a throwaway sidebar in Shitholes regarding the statewide program that places them that I take the time to look over the accompanying signage. Before I have a chance to read anything, however, a man shouts from behind me:
“Stop right there!” he screams, “Put your hands up! Up where I can see’em!”
My hands are in the air before I realize what I’m doing.
“All right,” the voice says, “Now, turn around slowly.”
I turn and find the parking lot empty.
“Not bad,” the voice says, “You have an 86% chance of surviving an interaction with the Oregon State Police. Press the button on the side if you’d like to try again or hop in the car to begin the Helping Hands experience”
My hands are still shaking as I lower them. This thing is about as stupid as Shitholes suggested.
‘Following a series of routine traffic stops that ended with the fatal shooting of civilians, Oregon moved forward with an initiative to provide free training to those who might find themselves dealing with the Oregon State Police. The simulation, dubbed ‘Helping Hands,’ focuses mainly on the player’s ability to follow orders in quick succession- placing one’s hands on the wheel of the car, waiting for the right moment to roll down the window or to find the insurance papers underneath the passenger seat, and generally maintaining a calm demeanor throughout.
The ‘Helping Hands’ software modules have seemingly been abandoned and several user-noted glitches persist. The first causes the officer (a simulated voice) to escalate an encounter without prompt, resulting in the occasional no-win situation. The second is a not-uncommon camera glitch that fails to accurately capture the movements of a ‘small minority’ of players.
Asked about the future of the ‘Helping Hands’ simulations, the committee in charge has insisted that they will continue to monitor the machines and that they strive to expose the public to ‘the most accurate representation of the Oregon State Police as is feasible with current technology.’
-traveler
‘Like over-sized, socialist mailboxes, neighborhood ‘libraries’ have appeared along small-town American streets for decades, each with a sign that patronizingly details the honor system with which they lend out surplus paperbacks. Recognizing some potential in the idea, the town of Blocksberg dedicated a portion of taxpayer money to the construction of, what might only be called, a large-scale, free-standing library. It towers over the local park, a building in its own right, and is capable of housing thousands of books in carefully organized sections. City employees are paid to maintain the ‘library’ and to facilitate the lending policy at the scale to which it has grown. Asked about ‘The Blocksberg Public Library,’ residents become cagey, insisting, with cult-like zeal, that there is nothing strange at all about it.’
“What?” the librarian says, “No. No, that’s stupid. Why would anybody think that’s the order of how things happened?”
-traveler
The sidewalks of Bennet, West Virginia are invisible under a layer of carpeting. Much of it is the coarse, durable stuff one finds in the hallways of corporate offices but I note that manholes sport the sort of outrageous shag reserved for toilet seat covers. An attempt at irony? Given the state of Bennet, it’s hard to know what is a conscious choice and what is a symptom of the disease.
I stop for a while to help a man tear the carpet from his driveway. We haul it into the backyard and toss it into a fire burning there. Smoke, greasy and black, rises from the pile and seems to hasten nightfall.
“It’s a real pain,” he tells me, “The new stuff’s all fire retardant.”
‘39th Street in Bennet, West Virginia is theorized to be the origin of ‘The Great American Living Room.’ Formerly a neighborhood devoted to off-site college housing, a particularly friendly cohort of students extended their couch-on-the-porch lifestyle into a cozy, cross-street ecosystem of pillows, floor lamps, and shelves of donated books one spring, hosting LAN parties in yards and projecting sitcom re-runs on an off-white garage door. Much of the set-up eventually drew back within property lines but, by then, the damage had been done. Just as cigarette smoke and violence tend to linger in a place, the archetypal living room imprinted on the street and became the catalyst for the current nation-wide epidemic.
Swollen, ragged couches are estimated to exist on the streets of at least 17% of American neighborhoods; that number jumps to 25% if porch couches are included. Lamps and coffee tables are rarer, though not at all uncommon. The CDC has requested that rental leases include clauses regarding the removal of outdoor furniture but this has only slowed the spread of ‘The Great American Living Room,’ its epicenter theorized to be the small, southern town.
Bennet, meanwhile, has transformed beyond saving and a strict furniture quarantine has been implemented there while experts study the area. To tour Bennet is no different than patronizing the tasteless ‘freakshows’ of yore- it amounts to gawking at disease.’
Shitholes says a good deal about the physical changes of Bennet but skims over the psychological impact of the place. The man who burns the carpet in his backyard does so with a vengeful sort of glee. When he speaks, he speaks as though ‘The Great American Living Room’ spreads with intelligent purpose. He believes it’s alive. He warns against buying lawn chairs, says he won’t even keep houseplants or pets.
“We don’t know what set it off,” he says, “But now we gotta keep the outside out and the inside in.”
Several blocks down, I find the families that are more commonly represented in articles and documentaries about Bennet- those that choose to live in ‘The Great American Living Room.’ All of the houses past a certain point have thrown their doors open or removed them entirely. Window frames are empty and furniture spills from the porch. Entertainment systems trail cords into the yard, lending an umbilical eeriness to the people with their feet up on sofa, faces glowing with starlight and the evening news.
When I try to speak to them they chase me away, screaming as though I were an intruder in their home which hurts, a little, because it’s the first time in three and a half years that I’ve been in anything like a living room. The man from before sees my downtrodden retreat and offers me a night on his sofa, a kindness that immediately brings tears to my eyes. We’re careful to leave our shoes on the porch.
“Just in case,” he says.
-traveler
‘Deep in Redwood National Park there is a trapdoor. It is wooden (and red) but not made of the redwoods (as one might suspect). Anyone who has visited an old-growth forest will tell you that the trees, there, cast shadows on the ground like hastily discarded clothes and are so haphazardly crisscrossed that the earth is practically piled in darkness, even in the daylight. In this instance, the shadows make it difficult to find ‘The Red, Wood Trapdoor.’ More difficult than one might suspect. One might suspect that the trees try to hide it.
No, GPS doesn’t work; the signal gets lost in the canopy. Radio fairs better, assuming it doesn’t have to pass through the foliage to get to where it’s going. Signs are roundly gobbled up. When they’re not, they eventually become vandalized by something that suggests it might be the trees, that seems to want a wider audience to believe the forest has learned to purchase and utilize spray paint. One commonly finds the word ‘WEED’ stenciled across the signage in the deep woods. Environmental activists or immortal middle schooler? Difficult to say.
The only reliable way of finding ‘The Red, Wood Trapdoor’ is by following a printed map, which rankles the trees. Having no conception of printers or even, really, of the written word, they’re upset to see one of their own give up the secret so easily. Younger forests understand technology in way that the redwoods likely never will.
‘The Red, Wood Trapdoor’ is known to the government. The Park Rangers have installed a deep, cement well around it and a thick, metal gate over the top. The bars are close and crisscrossed like the shadows, leaving only enough room to carve one’s initials. So many people have left their mark that the door is thinning and one must pack longer knives each year to cut even a few splinters away.
A fellow named Owen Pearl has been given special permission to study ‘The Red, Wood Trapdoor’ following years of careful observation between the bars. He carries ‘A Red, Rusted Key’ on his belt. Sometimes he opens the gate and he kneels there, on the ground, with his hands on ‘The Red, Iron Ring’ and he raises the trapdoor up an inch or so and when it sticks he kneels further to dig his nails into the exposed rim. Pearl is a thin man and the vein of his arms swell to intricate gilding as he pulls. Pearl struggles, until he doesn’t. He invariably lowers the trapdoor again, the anticipation- the fear of anticlimax- too much.
‘It itches like a scab,’ he says in an interview with the local paper, ‘Can’t heal if you keep picking at it.’
-excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside