Scarlet Forest

In 1904, the small town of Felicity Village was established just outside of present-day Cameron, South Carolina. With a population of 92, it was a quiet, pleasant little village. The residents, mostly comprised of the elderly and small families, lived in compact wood cabins arranged in a circle around an even smaller shack, where the town's eldest resident lived.

Franklin Carver, a retired carpenter, lived in the central cabin. At the age of 79, he was known for being Felicity Village's wisest resident. Townspeople would often visit him for a cup of tea and a pleasant chat about anything ranging from global events to town gossip to get his mind off his deceased wife Gloria. Bringing up Scarlet Forest, however, was not recommended.

Scarlet Forest was an enormous expanse of maple trees that sat outside Felicity Village. The reason behind its name was due to the almost blood-red hue that painted the leaves year-round. An omnipresent air of a peculiar nature encompassed the forest and was immediately noticed by anyone who came within a five foot radius of the first trees. The eerie feeling the air gave was enough to repel any Felicity Village residents for a few years. The citizens continued on with their quiet lives, too preoccupied to even think about Scarlet Forest.

The forest was over half a mile wide, most of this area being occupied by tall maple trees that reached for the heavens. In its heart stretched a large, grassy clearing where every inch of the ground was covered by vermilion leaves. At the center of this field sat a small, perfectly round pool with crystal clear water. The curious element about this pool was the lack of leaves on its surface. Not once had a slight breeze blown foliage into the pond. The depth of the pool, for its size, was also incredible, extending down sixty feet.

In October, 1907, a group of three curious teens decided to enter the forest at night, for the thrill of exploring the unexplored was too much to keep them away. They snuck out of their houses at around midnight and met at the forest's edge armed with flashlights and bottled water. The mysterious air made them uneasy, but they pressed on, not wanting to return with nothing to their friends, to whom they bragged to for days about their brave expedition.

Eight hours later, the three of them wandered out of the forest, their irises a brilliant orange and their pupils small and empty. The seals on their water bottles were broken, but filled to the top. The bulbs in their flashlights were shattered, but the rest of the flashlights were in perfect condition. The boys, as described by their families, were unresponsive, refused to eat or talk, and never left their rooms.

The first boy was brought to a psychologist out of town for only one session. As expected, the teen didn't speak, only stared blankly out a window. The psychologist stared back into his orange eyes for an extended amount of time, silent. She saw something so horrible in his blank eyes she immediately canceled any further meetings with him.

What she and anyone else who looked into the three boy's eyes long enough eventually saw was a deformed creature with teeth like knives and white, glazed over eyes. Its body was shiny and looked moist, leaving some to speculate that the ugly creature is some sort of demon fish. Scarlet Forest became a high point of interest to the town and tourists.

Eventually, the teenage boys were found dead in their rooms one morning with flashlights drilled into their foreheads so deep it pierced through their skulls and into their brains. The metal ends of the flashlights, the parts used to carry out the act, were sharpened to a keen edge. They appeared to be suicides. Another disturbing detail was the untouched bottles of previously clear water, still sitting filled on their nightstands, had become a faint pink hue. These gruesome discoveries caused an uproar in Felicity Village, and a full investigation of the forest was launched.

A team of four police officers from out of town were sent into Scarlet Forest in late November. They were ordered to drain the pond and kill whatever was in it. When they tried to do this, however, the brand new suction tube was clogged with a large mass of seaweed. When the confused officers eradicated the seaweed, they dipped the lip of the tube into the water and began draining it out...or at least they thought. The water level wasn't changing at all, but the tank was filling at a fast rate. Before they could turn it off, the tank overflowed and leaked onto the electrical control panel, rendering a $500 machine useless.

The officers exited the forest soundly, so two volunteer men were sent in to record their surroundings. 44 hours later, they wandered out of the forest in the same way the teenage boys did, their eyes a frightening orange. Their notes were legible at first, describing tall trees with red leaves and dead grass. The last intelligent bullet was of the clearing and an estimation of its width. After this point, the notes are illegible scribbles and gibberish. The notepad itself was wrinkled, as if it had been dropped in water and dried out.

After the discovery of the two men with foreheads impaled by flashlights, Scarlet Forest was restricted to all townspeople and visitors. The suicides were eventually forgotten by the residents of Felicity Village and just about everyone besides the families of the unfortunate victims. The creature that the psychologist and others saw was never seen face to face, and many thought it never would be.

Thirteen years later, however, a scientist living in a cabin at Felicity Village decoded to scrambled notes taken over a decade ago. This is what the notes allegedly said:

silver fish...white eyes...light...needle-like teeth...eyes stare...soul...

The notes led the scientist to conclude that the creature living in Scarlet Forest was an unusual angler fish with eyes that apparently stared into a person's soul and slowly induced extreme paranoia that eventually led the victim to suicide. The change of eye color and the pink water, however, could not be explained, nor could the clogging of the vacuum tube with seaweed.

A few days later after these discoveries, the scientist received news that his brother had been killed while deep sea diving on vacation. The cause of his death was still under investigation at the time, but his arms, legs, and neck appeared to be bitten by an unknown creature. This tragedy led the scientist to drop his research altogether. The coincidence was just too much to handle.