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ARCHIVIST
Statement of Saoirse Hawthorne, regarding her experiences of what she believes to be a past life. Original statement given October 23, 2008. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
I've always hated small spaces. I know a lot of people get a sort of claustrophobia if they have trauma associated with small spaces. Not me. When I say I've always hated them... I mean always. It's like an innate fear that I was born with. Even now, this office... It's a little uncomfortable. Not debilitating or anything, it's just a bit smaller than an average room.
This little… event was always something I kept to myself. It was one of those experiences you’re never quite sure if you dreamed or not. There were other people involved, sure, but it isn’t like they can confirm what actually happened. Just, you know, the before and after. And of course… they were involved enough, so they claim they know the story or write it off as imagination and you never quite get to tell the whole thing. Get it off your chest, you know? I got my brother to listen to the whole thing finally, I mean really listen after dropping it for twenty years, and he insisted I come here. Said that even if it did end up being nothing, I let someone else hear it. Don’t know what good that’ll really do… but I might as well.
As a child, my brother's favorite game was hide and seek. We'd run around, trading off who hid and who looked. Sometimes our parents would join in, pretending they had no idea where we were, even as they heard one of us giggling from behind a curtain. That was usually me. I was terrible at the game because I could never quite bring myself to hide in the right places. Not under a bed, never in a closet or cabinet... Despite the claustrophobia, I tried that once. Since that's what led to me being here, I guess you can figure it didn’t go very well.
It was New Year's Day. I was five or six. My brother and I had been playing all day, our parents in the living room, just talking with our grandparents. My brother had been doing really well, it took me at least three minutes to find him each time. In our small little apartment, that was quite the feat. I wanted to beat that though. Hearing my brother start counting, I ran quietly into the bathroom, opening the little cabinet under the sink. I remember being excited, thinking that Jacob would never find me here. He’d long since learned not to bother checking these sorts of places. Maybe that excitement was how my little brain rationalized the spike of dread and feeling of my heart starting to speed up a little bit just thinking about the small area. I shoved everything to the side, clearing a space just big enough for me to sit in with my legs pulled up to my chest. Climbing inside, I sat down. I had just enough time to pull the door shut and get my hand inside before my brother hit zero. There was no hole in the cabinet, no little crack I could see through, so when the door closed, I couldn’t see anything around me. I had never loved the dark either, but I could stand it for a little while. The dark wasn’t what left me with a memory that I still tremble at today. It might seem like the darkness did this... like it was what made me paranoid to sleep in my own bed for the next few years… But it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t.
You know how… when you close your eyes to fall asleep, and you don’t really have anything else to focus on, your brain turns the darkness in front of you into all those fuzzy little colors? Those tiny dots of yellow, red, blue, and whatever other colors floating around right in front of your eyes? The shapes too, of course, the little blobs drifting across your vision. All those fun little colors and stuff you can see, but if you had to draw it, you couldn’t be any more precise than a- a Jackson Pollock painting. You might as well be looking at one when you close your eyes. Yeah… that sort of stuff. I thought I was just seeing that at first. My mind needed something to focus on that wasn’t about my surroundings, wasn’t part of everything that felt so very wrong, so, to try and calm myself down a bit, I just toyed around, trying to pick and follow one of those minuscule dots, though I’d gotten bored faking sleep enough as a little girl to know that you can’t really do that.
That was the first time something felt truly off. I don’t know how or why, I’d gotten the feeling before, but I am absolutely certain that once I was able to pick and follow this one pinprick of a little yellow dot in my vision, slightly larger than the rest, I realized I wasn’t safe. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was the strangest progression of thoughts, one second I was just messing around, trying to quiet my breathing should my brother happen to walk in the bathroom looking for me, and the next… I was completely filled with this acute stab of fear and I started yelling. Trying to yell. All thoughts of the game were left behind at this point, but… I couldn’t even open my eyes, let alone my mouth. My situation was really starting to set in fully and my brain began rapid-firing signals to every part of my body to move, flail, kick, hit anything I could. Make noise, alert someone to my presence. Nothing in my body moved. Not a twitch, not a sound. I couldn’t even shift my focus away from that little yellow dot. Only it wasn’t so little anymore. It was slightly larger. Closer, maybe? It twisted, just getting brighter. It didn’t move in any direction I can describe. Like I said before, it's like those little fuzzy particles. You know you can see them, but you can’t describe how they move. It seemed to glow, actively giving off light. It got brighter, and brighter, closer to my vision. So bright and close, in fact, it began to hurt. Like… like staring towards the sun for too long. No. More like staring directly at the sun. It felt like I'd go blind if I looked at it any longer. I wanted to pull away, needed to close my eyes against the sudden light that was stemming from the darkness, but they were already closed. I avoided directing my focus directly into it, up until the moment it fully enveloped my vision and I couldn't look away any longer.
From there, the brightness just stayed for a moment. Then it began to warp. The light, or whatever it was, began to pull back into a small dot, but less of a dot. It was a distinct shape now. The moon. I could see now, but I hadn’t opened my eyes. It was the strangest sensation. I felt my eyelashes against my face, felt my eyes staying closed… but I could see. I still couldn’t move myself either, but I was moving. I was being carried. Looking up, I saw an old man holding me, staring straight ahead. His chin was covered in white, graying stubble, and his face was weathered and ashen. The trees passing above his head looked just as bad off, their branches bare and completely devoid of leaves. The light from the moon shone down just enough to be able to see that. I think that was when I noticed. It was like I wasn’t the one he held. It was like I was looking through someone else’s eyes, watching a movie from another perspective, but it became more than looking… I was becoming slowly aware of all the other sensations surrounding me. The cold wind brushed against my skin, blowing light, dirty blonde hair in my face. Even in the dark, with only the light of the stars and moon to show me, I knew that wasn’t my own long red hair. I also felt his arms trembling slightly as he held me, though it wasn’t as though I was heavy. Maybe he was shivering. It was cold.
I began struggling, but again, it wasn’t me. I hadn’t made the decision to move. Perhaps the person I was watching through had just realized where they were and what was happening. Maybe they’d just returned to consciousness or woken up from sleep. I just watched, helpless as they- I-? struggled to escape the man’s grip which had tightened suddenly. He made the strangest expression. It seemed like he was suddenly afraid of me? Like he didn’t want to be doing this. He wouldn’t look at me still as I struggled. Something felt slow and sluggish like I’d been drugged, and I wasn't able to pull myself from his grip. As my new senses fully came to me, I felt rope binding my arms to my sides and my legs together. Apparently, I was wearing short sleeves because I could feel the coarse hairs of the rope scratching and digging into my arms even as my struggle slowed. I think I just gave up after a minute. I was trapped entirely, and yet I still had no idea how much worse it was about to get.
The man stopped walking after a few minutes, looking down at me finally. His eyes were this light, ghostly blue. It almost seemed unnatural. There wasn’t much light, even with the full moon, but I remember that. He wasn’t smiling. In fact, if anything, he now looked almost sad. Then he spoke for the first time, and I remember his voice as clearly as if he had just said the words. “It’s a pity you’ll be conscious. I wish you hadn’t woken up.” His voice sounded rough and gravelly, and he had this thick accent. Polish or something I think. A surge of panic rushed through me. It wasn’t mine. I was scared, sure. Panicked even. It just felt wrong somehow, unfamiliar. I guess I was feeling this person’s internal emotions too.
Suddenly I was falling. He’d let go. I didn't hit the ground as soon as I thought I would. It took an extra second, and when I was where the ground should be… I just kept falling, the ground passing me. By the time I’d registered this, my back slammed into something hard, knocking the wind out of me. It wasn’t dirt, it felt too solid for that. I tilted my head a little and realized I was in a coffin, six feet under ground level… I thought for a split second I’d hit my head too because the man began speaking again but in another language. Over and over… it was like a- a chant or something. I didn’t move the entire time he was chanting. He must have said the same thing maybe… forty or fifty times.
When he finished, he leaned down to grab something. As he straightened up, I had only a second to process before registering that it was a coffin lid. My coffin lid. He threw it down and I heard it click into place. Something heavy landed on it and I assume he’d jumped down onto it. Not like I could have sat up anyway. The lid had been loud when it landed and it seemed heavy, pushing air into my face and blowing my hair around as it fell into place. I heard him get off of the coffin after a minute, and then there was just… silence. Silence until the first shovel of dirt I heard fall onto the coffin. It sounded dry and there seemed to be lots of little rocks and pebbles in every shovel of dirt he tossed downwards. I hadn’t gotten a good look at my surroundings, but wherever we were, I don’t think the ground was meant for burials.
It wasn’t until the next few that I felt it. The coffin… no, that's not right. The ground started closing in, starting to press in on the coffin, and in turn, me. I know I'd had room at first. It wasn’t a lot, just enough to be able to shift a bit. It felt like each time a pebble clunked against the side, the wood got... closer. It felt like it was being dragged downwards, the wood splintering under the pressure. I froze as the wood just behind my head was ripped out. A hand closed around the back of my neck. This slimy, wet, cold… thing. The fingers were long, and the nails were too sharp, digging into the side of my neck. I might have been small when I watched- felt…? -when all this happened, but I know that whatever that hand belonged to, it was not human.
Another hand reached through, grabbing at my forehead. I heard the wood start getting ripped away in other places, hands clamping onto my feet, legs, torso, shoulders. And they just stayed there for a minute. Then they pulled. They yanked downwards and I felt the splinters stab into my back as I got pulled through. That was the last thing I felt before my eyes open up. My own eyes. They snapped open at the feeling, and I immediately began crying. As soon as I registered that I could move of my own accord again, I burst out from the little cabinet, running to find my parents. As soon as my crying had slowed, I explained to them what had happened, but jesus I was like five, can you blame them for not believing me?
It's a weird feeling. Not being able to move your own body, then having someone else control something that isn’t quite you… while you just watch through what feels like your own eyes…? It’s messed me up. Especially back then. I would zone out for a long time, almost thinking someone else was going to move for me, then I’d remember I had to do it. My parents chalked it all up to my claustrophobia getting bad and thought I’d just psyched myself out, you know? They started me in therapy for it. All that really did was start to convince me they might be right. That I might be crazy. But I never could forget it. My therapist’s eyes were the same shade of blue as the man’s had been and that didn’t help. They made me feel like the office was about to swallow me whole. Like those cold, wet hands were going to grip at my neck again…
I think when I die I want to be cremated. Then I won’t have to worry about how far down they’ll pull me.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
Hm. You know I’m actually inclined to side with Miss Hawthorne’s early therapist here. It seems a lot like the ramblings of a child. A frightened child, certainly, one who made a bad decision in triggering her own fear, but a child nonetheless. Then again, this statement was made twenty years after this occurred, and I find it odd she’d hang on to every detail of that story this way.
That said, Sasha did do some follow-up into this statement, and there were… interesting results. She was able to find Miss Hawthorne and speak to her. Miss Hawthorne, though happy to try and help, didn’t remember much other than what was already in the statement, so that was a dead end. Her family, on the other hand, was able to provide something additional.
They were also surprisingly willing to cooperate, according to Sasha, especially her mother. She said that about a day after all of this, Miss Hawthorne began repeating the same phrase, over and over. Speaking, writing… anything she could. I assume this is likely the same one from the chant. Her mother wrote it down for Sasha. According to him, the phrase was “Nakarm swój strach moim bogam.”
Though I didn’t ask him to do so, Martin looked it over. Apparently it's Polish… I'm not sure how much I really do trust his translations, but the one he gave was “Feed your fear to my gods.” I don’t really expect that’s normal for a six-year-old native English speaker. So that does raise concerns.
In a little bit of further investigation, Tim was able to find something else. There was a grave marker found in some part of a Polish forest, reading simply "1911-1983-201-” There was another investigation done into it relatively recently and they intended to dig up the coffin that should have been placed there. All that was found in a twelve-foot by twelve-foot area around this marker were broken bits of wood.
End recording.