SCP-6881 SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT ‘ECHO’

Link to article: SCP-6881 SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT ‘ECHO’.

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[[div class="anchor"]]
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||~ SCP-6881 || **Project: SERAPIS** ||
||||= Supplementary Document ‘ECHO’ ||

||= [[image https://i.imgur.com/Q2TCZnd.png style="width: 150px;"]] ||
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[[div class="meta-title"]]
SCP-6881 SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT ‘ECHO’
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[[div class="pseudocrumbs"]]
[[[scp-6881|Project: SERAPIS]]] >> Supplementary Document ‘ECHO’
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+++ ##900|► Play##

[[div class="blockquote"]]
[[div class="blockquote"]]
**GALLIO:** This is Agent Hector Gallio. The following information is classified Level 5 under Project Serapis. O-5 Eyes Only.

Continued research into the history of Shibbet’s Vale, at the foot of the Mourning Cloak Mountains in Southern Montana, uncovered a significant event in 1981 that occurred on the nearby Lake Apesawa. In the autumn of that year an event was organised for fans of the ‘Big Sky Beauty’ series of historical romance novels by author Gwendoline McCoy. These books were set in a fictional region of Montana inspired by the Mourning Cloak Mountains, and so the event was marketed to fans as a chance to see the world of the books in person.

At the time of the event, the series consisted of twenty-two novels and had a devoted readership who organised themselves via a mailing list. Members of this mailing list booked the Comfort Arms Inn, a hotel in the town of Scarslow, as the base for a three-day event attended by Gwendoline McCoy and a group of fans. Among the attendees was Loretta Parsons, a 53-year-old woman from Kentucky who had flown to Montana for the event. She recorded her activities in a journal, which was in the possession of the Scarslow police and was acquired using Foundation protocols.

Gwendoline McCoy was a pen name for New York-based author Gabriella Zampori. She wrote of her experiences at the Scarslow event in preparation for a memoir that was never written. These notes were acquired from her estate via data intrusion by C-Class computer security personnel. Parsons’ journal and Zampori’s notes for the core of the research into the 1981 event. 

While the events were publicly known and covered in the media, examination of the first-hand evidence suggests the Scarslow police covered up the potentially anomalous aspects. It is becoming apparent the Scarslow PD is consistently involved in covering up anomalies in Shibbet’s Vale, though it is not yet certain if this was part of an ongoing conspiracy or a series of decisions made by individual police officers. In the experience of the Foundation, law enforcement frequently ignores or destroys evidence of anomalous events for reasons of convenience. The Scarslow PD seems a regular offender in this sense. 
[[/div]]
[[/div]]

+++ ##900|■ Stop##

[[collapsible hideLocation="both" show="SHOW —  McCoy Convention Journals [CLASSIFIED 5/SERAPIS]" hide="− HIDE"]]

@@ @@

= **SHOW FILES**

@@ @@

+++ ##900|1992##
+ SCARSLOW 
++ ##900|SHIBBET’S VALE, MONTANA, U.S.A##

@@ @@
----
@@ @@ 
+++++ PERSONS CONCERNED

@@ @@

GABRIELLA ZAMPORI, Female, 40. Writer from New York under pen name GWENDOLINE MCCOY.

LORETTA PARSONS, Female, 50s. Housewife and romance novel fan.

@@ @@

+++++ MATERIALS

@@ @@

JOURNAL TRANSCRIPTS - WRITTEN

@@ @@



[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ PARSONS JOURNAL -- 1/4
----
[[include :scp-wiki:component:image-block
|name=Parsons.png
|caption=Loretta Parsons, pictured at formal reception for husband Gregory Parsons, 1976. Only known photograph.]]

(The journal of Loretta Parsons.)

Arrived at Scarslow this morning! Met a few of us girls at the airport in Billings and we all took the bus together. It’s so wonderful to talk with other fans! I only know them through the letters that get published in the mailing list. We all talked about our favourite characters and what we hoped would happen in the next books. Of course, I love Connie the Schoolmistress most of all, she’s so wholesome and I just hope she finds a nice man to settle down with. I’ll ask Gwendoline if she can give Connie a happy ending. 

Scarslow is… well, I’ll say it’s ‘quaint’. ‘Old-fashioned’. Maybe that’s being kind, but I’m sure the countryside around it is much prettier. The people at the Comfort Arms Inn were very pleasant and have set aside the restaurant for the meet and greet tomorrow. I can’t wait! My shoulder’s bruised from carrying my bag with all the books for her to sign.

There were four little girls in the lobby when I went up. There weren’t any grown-ups with them. I don’t know why that struck me as strange, but it did.

I freshened up in my room and ate with the other ladies. I was surprised that not all of them like Connie as much as I do. Some of them insist that Margaret the frontier wife or even Betsy the ‘fallen woman’ is the best character! Well, I didn’t want to get into anything, but Connie’s journey is the real heart of the series. Still, it was all very civilised. They had breadsticks. 

Tomorrow is the meet and greet! After reading her books for so long I feel like I really know Gwendoline, and her characters are my family. I bet it’ll be like seeing a long-lost friend!

[[/div]]

[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ ZAMPORI NOTES -- 1/4
----
[[include :scp-wiki:component:image-block
|name=Zambroni.jpg
|caption= Gabriella Zampori, pictured 1973 on the Staten Island Ferry]]


(The notes of Gabriella Zampori)

God, this place is a hole. I knew it can’t all be wood cabins and rosy cheeks but Jesus, couldn’t the mailing list people find somewhere a bit more upmarket? There’s no decent restaurants, the hotel barely scrapes half a star and the townspeople look like they’re on heroin, though I can’t blame them. 

I got the organisers to pay for Anton to come with me, thank God. One should never undergo a place like Scarslow without a personal assistant. I sent him out to find a coffee place or a wine bar where I can hide from the fans if it all gets too exhausting, though I don’t hold out much hope. I insisted the hotel staff take me in through the kitchen door so I didn’t get buttonholed by a horde of readers on my way to my room. Thankfully it worked, though I caught a glimpse of some of them in the restaurant. They looked like piles of cream cheese poured into floral print dresses. You could have wrapped the varicose veins around the world. Still, can’t laugh at them too hard. They’re the people paying my rent.

It used to be, for events like this I’d put on my Gwendoline mask. The accent, the gosh-darn homespun wisdom, schoolmarm glasses, the whole bit. These days I just don’t have the energy. They’re gonna have to take me as I am. I’ll still use the name, though, no need to shatter that particular illusion.  

Anton hauled the box of ‘Siren of the Mourning Cloaks’ into the function room. It’s two months before it comes out. The publishers only gave me twenty or so copies so the old dears will be tearing each others’ liver spots off to get one. Should be fun to watch. It’s kind of trash, but I only had three months to get the thing from outline to first draft and they’ll eat it up like valium as long as it has a pretty girl and some nice scenery on the cover, and Gwendoline’s name on the spine.

Once I get a nest egg tucked away from the royalties, I’ll kill the whole thing off and start something I can be proud of. I was proud of ‘Big Sky Beauty’ at first, of course. The first three are good. But now, I’m just treading water until I can escape this damn place.

Funny thing, I’ve never been to Montana before. But even before I got here, I couldn’t wait to leave. 

[[/div]]

[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ PARSONS JOURNAL -- 2/4
----

Today was the day! The chance to meet Gwendoline McCoy! I had to be patient, though. In the morning we went on an excursion to the reservation. The ones in the books were Shoshone while these were Crow, but I guess it’s all mostly the same. 

I thought it would be a little more… traditional. A lot of the men still wear their hair long and there was a historical center with a gift store, and a totem pole, but the rest looked the same as back in Scarslow. I asked the man at the little museum where the wigwams and so on were and he said they lived in regular houses now. Tell the truth, he was a little bit sniffy. You’d think they’d lay on something for the people who come all the way to see them. 

The historical center was kind of interesting. There’s a recreation of a big wooden lodge with feather headdresses and tomahawks and so on hanging on the walls. Lots of pottery and arrowheads. There was an old Indian man there who was replacing one of the exhibits and I got to talking to him. I said I had read so much set among the Mourning Cloaks that I felt I knew the place already, and he said the Crow didn’t live near the mountains. The reservation grounds were as close as they ever got. 

He said the Crow didn’t really come over to Shibbet’s Vale, it, alongside much of the Yellowstone area, was considered neutral land between nearby tribes. But in the late 1800s, settlers first moved into the area. They kept to themselves.

Then, at some point, things got bad and they got sick, or something. At some point, they resorted to coming down to the valley and trying to steal from other settlers, or the nearby tribes. But they always avoided the Crow tribe. He wasn’t really sure why. 

It’s not at all like the stories I see on TV, or read in books.

I asked if these other sick settlers left anything behind. He said they didn’t know the area well, so the things they did build all rotted and fell apart. They weren’t great builders but there were a couple of things the museum didn’t show to the public. One was a thing made of skulls and twigs, and he said it was an image of the god they believed in, but it wasn’t the Christian god most white folk believed it. I think it was shaped kind of like a woman, but it was hard to tell. 

The other thing was a roll of tree bark this other tribe used to write on. I was surprised it hadn’t just crumbled to dust. The museum kept it in a glass case out back of the lodge. It showed this lady being hunted by men with swords, and swimming across a river, or maybe the sea, then lying down in the earth and the Indians coming to live where she lay. The old man said the pictures at the end were the dreams the strange tribe had about her, but honestly it was so strange and jumbled up it could have been anything. 

The guy at the front desk came and talked to the old guy in their language, and of course I didn’t know what was said but I think she wasn’t happy at all. He said to excuse him because he had to see to some maintenance elsewhere on the reservation and I thanked him for showing me such interesting things, even if I didn’t really understand it. The front desk man apologised and I said not at all, it was quite fascinating, especially about the Mourning Cloak Mountains and the strange tribe there, and he seemed a little alarmed. I felt kind of awkward about it all so I bought a dreamcatcher from the gift shop and left.

[[/div]]

[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ ZAMPORI NOTES -- 2/4
----

Last night’s book signing went as well as expected. They queued up and wittered away, and told me how much my work meant to them. I told them they were welcome and how much it meant to hear how reading ‘Big Sky Beauty’ had got them through this bereavement or that divorce. They all have their favourites, I’ve noticed. One lady even liked Connie the Schoolmistress. I can’t even remember if Connie is still alive. Did she get run over by the stagecoach or was that Sally-Ann the Prospector’s Daughter? I should have kept better notes.

There were four little girls there, too. They had a copy of ‘Siren of the Mourning Cloaks’ between them. Pocket money, I guess. They couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve. I was surprised because the books get a little racy sometimes. Plenty of blouses getting ripped and heaving bosoms over the years. Still, I guess if they’re reading they’re not off scoring reefer or getting pregnant, or whatever kids do these days. 

They asked me about bears. There were bears in the mountains, they said. I said yes, one of them attacked Jedediah the trapper in ‘Desperado Trail’. They told me bears hibernate, and I said I knew. They wake up sometimes, they told me. Sometimes even when they’re asleep, they have to wake up to feed. I don’t know, kids are strange. One of the reasons I never had one. 

[[/div]]

[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ PARSONS JOURNAL -- 3/4
----

Then we went back to the hotel in time for afternoon drinks and then, then meet and greet! I finally got to meet Gwendoline McCoy!

I guess she was still tired from her flight. I mean, she was very nice, but not at all what I expected. She sounded like she was from New York. She said hi to everybody, and thank you for coming, and how much it meant that we loved her books so much. Then the little man who accompanied her opened a box with the new book and we all queued up to buy it, of course, then lined up to get it signed.

I had all the other books with me, and so did a lot of the other ladies. I thought I saw her face fall when she saw the first one bringing out all twenty-one books - well, twenty-two now - from her luggage, but maybe I was mistaken. She talked and answered questions while she signed all those books and the little man brought her bottled water and cups of coffee from the hotel bar.

Of course, when it was my turn I talked about Connie and whether she would find love. She said every character has their own journey, and some don’t even have it planned out yet, she has to wait for the characters to tell her where the journey should take them. Connie isn’t in the new book but plenty of characters have gone away and come back again, so I wasn’t worried. 

It was such a busy day I turned in after dinner. We were all excited about the new book. I couldn’t help but read a couple of chapters of ‘Siren of the Mourning Cloaks’ before I fell asleep. It has that feeling I love, the reassurance of something familiar. Something predictable. It looks like Betsy the ‘fallen woman’ is the lead character which I admit isn’t my favourite, but the rest is all there. The big sky, the quaint little town, the mountains, the meaningful looks and longing sighs. It all seems so comforting when you know what’s going to happen.

[[/div]]

[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ ZAMPORI NOTES -- 3/4
----
This morning I could happily have stayed in bed. Signing is always exhausting. Still, I had the faintest reminder of why I started writing. These people really love what I write. And if it brings them happiness, why shouldn’t they read my books, and talk about which frontier widow should end up with which rugged cowboy, and drag themselves halfway across the country to meet the author? I felt bad about making fun of them. They’re just trying to be happy like everyone else.

We sold out of ‘Siren of the Mourning Cloaks’ and after I’d perked up with some coffee I mentioned we should do something to celebrate. Anton suggested we join the ladies on an excursion to Shibbet’s Vale, and I actually said yes, although on the condition he drove me rather than me taking the tour bus they’d hired. I’m not feeling quite that generous of spirit. 

The countryside here isn’t what I’d imagined. I’d seen plenty of photographs back when I still did research, but they didn’t capture the Mourning Cloak Mountains or the forests around Shibbet’s Vale. And if I’d seen them first hand, I couldn’t have written about them, not while making it all sound cosy and wholesome. The beauty here isn’t of an unspoiled and verdant America. It’s something less welcoming. The trees crowd up against the mountains like waves crashing against rocks. The land rears up and folds around the roads and pathways like it’s only yielding to us grudgingly. I wish I was good enough to encompass the feeling of it. Beautiful, threatening. Unknowable. Like a wild animal. It made me wish I’d set ‘Big Sky Beauty’ in a different part of the state, where it was more like a chocolate box and less like a different world entirely.

The group had organised a nature trek starting at a summer camp there, Camp Apesawa. It’s seen better days, but the Mourning Cloaks looming down above made even the tumbledown cabins look like they were full of stories. 

I didn’t really feel like the nature walk, so I stayed at the campsite with Anton. Bless him, he’d brought a cooler of drinks and snacks. I watched the ladies toddle off into the forest and it felt like Shibbet’s Vale was swallowing them. I remembered the little girls at the signing, and the way bears sometimes wake up to feed.

Just when I thought of them, there they were. Those four girls. They were dressed the same, all cute in summer dresses. Three were white and one was black, the youngest maybe nine and the oldest twelve, I’d guess. Anton was off trying to find a working faucet, he’s better with kids than I am.

The oldest one asked me if I wanted to see the forest. I explained that I was fine just where I was and she said no, the real forest, not the one all the ladies were headed. 

I don’t know what happened next. I mean, I know, of course. I went with them. I held the oldest one’s hand and they led me into the trees. What I mean is, I don’t know why. It just seemed the right thing to do, like it was always going to happen.  

They led me through the trees where there was no trail. I kept stumbling over the roots and scratching my arms on the low branches. It was so close and dense I couldn’t see the sky. It was like writhing through a warren of bark and pine needles. The girls giggled and laughed, skipping along, dragging me behind them. The trees were covered in moss, twisted and split, and looked thousands of years old. 

They came to an opening in the trees, where the branches met overhead and made it feel like a cave of dark green stone. Where the branches split from the trunks, there were bunches of fat white fruit, like swollen pears. Their flesh was pale and veiny. The oldest girl picked one and took a bite out of it. 

It was good, she said. The other girls picked one each, too, and started eating. The smell of the fruit made me dizzy, like a heavy sweet perfume. 

Of course, I had to eat one. There was no question. It didn’t even occur to me to hesitate. I can’t even regret doing it, because it felt like I was a different person.

If I was a better writer, I could describe what it was like to eat that fruit. The girl was telling the truth. It was good. It was more than good. It melted in my mouth and I melted with it. While my body stood there, my body dissolved into the earth. I felt the mountain and the lake as a part of me, and the roots of the thousands of trees like fingers raking right through me. I came apart and was remade far down below in the warm, damp dirt.

I didn’t see what was down there, but I felt it. It was huge, and alive. It was sleeping, but it was also aware. I had the impression of a huge cocoon, something protecting an immense power inside it. 

When it spoke, it wasn’t in words, but in thoughts it forced directly into my head. It told me it wanted me to stay with it and serve it. It was an honour, a new existence, a whole life beyond the understanding I had of the world. It was sacred. It was forever.

I wanted to. Oh god, I wanted to so much. But you know what the stupid thing was? I’d have to stop writing. If I stayed there in Shibbet’s Vale, serving whatever this thing was, I would never go back to my apartment and my office. I would never sit there typing until three in the morning trying to think of new ways to say how big the sky looked. I never understood how much writing meant to me until that moment, when I saw an eternal life ahead of me without it.

The being showed me a world with lush beauty from one horizon to the next. Civilisation had rotted away and only purity was left. No more pain. No more hatred or fear. Just uncorrupted nature, until the end of time.

But it was too late. I was scared, and the fear didn’t let go. I could feel myself rushing upwards, through the layers of the dirt and mulch, through the thousands of years that lay on this place. Past the rocks and the tree, roots, the old bones.

I was back with myself again, in the hollow in the forests. The girls were still there but they weren’t smiling. They just stared at me. I dropped the remains of the fruit into the dirt. They watched as I walked backwards, away from them. I was shivering and sweating, and there was a taste in my mouth like it had been filled with gravel and mud.

I ran away from them. Four little girls and they were suddenly scarier than a crazy guy on the subway. I tripped again and cut myself up on the branches. Thank God I hadn’t got turned around. I don’t know how long it took but I stumbled out from the trees back into the campsite.

Anton was looking through the windows of the cabins, trying to find me. He ran up to me and said I’d been gone for more than two hours. He didn’t know if I had gone on the damned nature walk after all, or if I’d got hurt somehow or was in one of the buildings for whatever reason. 

I had to make up an excuse in a hurry so I told him I was answering the call of nature behind a tree and got lost. He said the bathrooms were right by the camp’s mess hall. I said something dumb about wanting to get into the spirit of the great outdoors for the first time in my life. He didn’t buy it, but he knew not to push.

The bathrooms had a mirror and I looked like I had just survived a plane crash. I was a mess. The scratches were mostly on my arms so I could cover them with a sweater I’d left in the car. I fixed my hair as best I could. I just looked exhausted, not traumatised after fleeing through the forest from God knows what.

I sat not saying much until the ladies got back from their hike, gabbling about some butterfly they’d seen or a deer that had looked at them. I was so grateful to see them. Aside from Anton, they were the only piece of normality from there to Billings. 

I talked with a couple of them before their coach driver said it was time to go. They all said they understood how Shibbet’s Vale had inspired me so much. I didn’t say I’d just read the name off a map at random, of course. But when I told them it had made emotions in me beyond just being a pretty stretch of country, it was true. It’s as if actually seeing it justified setting my writing there, like I’d been inspired retroactively somehow, and what I saw there had always been locked away in ‘Big Sky Beauty’ waiting for me to decipher it.

Stupid, I know. But it made a sort of magical sense. 

I keep a couple of sleeping pills in my purse in case I really need to knock myself out. I needed to that night. I took one as soon as we got back to the hotel, and thank God, I didn’t remember my dreams. 
[[/div]]

[[div class="report-box"]]
+++ PARSONS JOURNAL -- 4/4
----

The nature walk was very pretty. It wasn’t like the pictures on the book covers, though. I wasn’t disappointed, it was just… different. It felt dangerous somehow. I thought if I strayed off the trail I might fall down a gorge or be eaten by a mountain lion. Just me being silly, of course.

We were all quiet on the trail. Believe me, that’s not like us at all! Once you get into the forest with the trees all closing in around you, it seems wrong to get too loud.

There was a point where we reached the top of a ridge, where the ground dropped away suddenly, and I could see down into Shibbet’s Vale and the lands around it. That was when I understood why Gwendoline had set her books here. In that moment, it was as if the modern world had never happened. I could almost see the schoolhouse and the saloon, the sheriff's station and the homesteads all over the far hills. I imagined I was Connie, seeing the valley that would be her new home for the first time, and all the years of romance and heartbreak that would follow. 

When we got back to the campsite, suddenly we were all talkative again. I was sorry to see Shibbet’s Vale go when the bus pulled away. I wish I’d been born back then, when things were simple.

The ladies wanted to find a nice place to eat but I guess Scarslow isn’t much of a dining out kind of town. While we were discussing where to go at the hotel, I saw those little girls in the lobby again. They said they knew we were from out of town and asked if we wanted to see the lake. Now, the lake looked real pretty, too, but I’d only seen it from a distance, so I said sure. They had this strange way about them, those girls, this odd kind of confidence. When I was a girl and a grown-up talked to me I would just stare at my shoes and say yes ma’am, no ma’am, but these were rather precocious!

They told me there’s a man in town who would hire out his boat to take us around the lake. I mentioned it to the other ladies and they said it would be just the thing to cap off the last day of our trip. After all, we all remember when Rodrigo proposed to Martha on the lake in ‘Homestead Hearts’. I can’t wait!
[[/div]]

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+++ ZAMPORI NOTES -- 4/4
----

I was hung over. I hadn’t drunk anything the night before, but whatever was in that weird fruit had given me a mother and father of mornings after. Anton fetched me coffee and aspirin, which was all I could stomach for breakfast.

The readers were off on another trip. This time it was boating on Lake Apesawa. Anton said I really should go since it was the end of the event and it would give them a chance to say goodbye. I’d rather have just high-tailed it to Billings but that would mean sitting around in the airport for God knows how long so I decided I might as well go along. I wasn’t about to get on a boat in my state, but the fresh air might help. 

This time, I took the coach. I forgot to get Anton to arrange a car. Thankfully I was sat next to the lady who loved Connie the Schoolmistress and she did all the talking for the two of us. I just had to listen as she told me about all her favourite scenes, how she thought she should have been born in frontier times instead of now, how my books had given her something predictable and cosy when her husband got ill. It was strangely relaxing, just listening to it all pouring out of her. I looked up the names after it all. I think she was Lottie Parsons.

I sat in the shade on the shore of the lake while an old guy from Scarslow loaded seven of the ladies onto his boat at the jetty the old summer camp used. The rest stayed on the shore for a picnic. The boat looked a little suspect but it was a calm day and Lake Apesaway isn’t much bigger than a decent-sized pond, and I figured how dangerous could it be?

When the boat pulled away from the jetty, I was more concerned with looking out for those four girls than I was watching my fans having their lake adventure. I’m not sure how long they were out there for when I heard Anton say it looked like the boat might be in trouble.

He was right. It was pitching side to side and the passengers were having to hold on. It was strange, because there was barely any wind and most of the lake was calm. But the water around the lake was churning. I thought it was some kind of engine trouble, and that the boat would be stranded until another boat could come out and rescue them. 

Then the boat heaved up all the way out of the water. The prow was lifted up into the air and the boat went near-vertical. A couple of the passengers fell out. It slammed back down into the water and the front went under for a moment, swamping it. People on the shore cried out. I could just make out the boat’s owner trying to get the boat bailed out, but the water churned again and the boat was pulled down by one side.

I saw something underneath it. Brown-grey muscle, shiny and wet. Masses of it, scarred and blubbery like a whale’s. A length of it rose up and curled up over the boat, wrapping around it. A tentacle. A tentacle as thick as a redwood trunk. 

It dragged the boat down under the water. The last I saw of it was the stern sticking straight up, and one of the passengers clambering onto it and holding onto the boat’s engine. Then they were gone, too, with the water boiling around them and lengths of dark tentacle surging back under the surface.

We all stood and stared. What were we supposed to do? Anton found a phone somewhere and called the police. He was the only one who wasn’t completely paralysed by what he’d seen.

He told the cops on the phone the boat had got into trouble and gone down. He didn’t mention anything else. Neither did we. Everyone who saw it agreed without saying it that we hadn’t seen anything other than the boat go down. They cops talked to us, but it wasn’t an interrogation or anything. The guy’s boat was rickety. It had struck a hidden obstruction or the engine had blown, it took on water, and went down faster than it could be bailed out. Simple. 

While we filed onto the bus back to Scarslow, I’m sure I saw those four girls watching from the edge of the woods. It wasn’t a surprise to see them. They were a part of Shibbet’s Vale, just like the forest and the lake.

They had told me there were bears in the woods, and bears hibernate. And sometimes, the bears have to wake up to feed.
[[/div]]
[[/collapsible]]

[[collapsible hideLocation="both" show="SHOW — COMMENTARY — DR. GALLIO: McCoy Convention Journals [CLASSIFIED 5/SERAPIS]" hide="− HIDE"]]

**GALLIO:**

Following the loss of eight people, including seven tourists and the boat’s pilot, Lake Apesawa was searched by county police working with the search and rescue service. They focused on the area the boat was last seen. Nothing was found except for some floating debris. It was speculated the currents in the lake might have brought the bodies into the White Tail River, but no bodies were recovered from the river, either. 

If the authorities suspected any anomalous elements to the loss of the boat and its passengers, they were never written down anywhere. The deaths of Loretta Parsons and the seven other victims are officially recorded as accidental, with contributing factors being poor oversight of pleasure boating and failure to enforce licensing and safety inspections.

‘Siren of the Mountain Cloaks’ was the last in the ‘Big Sky Beauty’ series. Gabriella Zamproni is not known to have written again, though her accumulation of notes suggests she intended to write an autobiography, or perhaps her own account of the Lake Apesawa boating incident. She died in 2019, at the age of 80, having lived off royalties and the licensing fees from the early 1990s TV adaptation of the series’ early novels. There is no record of her ever having spoken officially about the 1981 incident.

It is likely the creature Gabriella Zamproni witnessed attacking the boat was SCP-6881. If not, there are two separate monsters connected to Lake Apesawa, which the Foundation has established is statistically unlikely. Given its long-term inhabitation of Shibbet’s Vale, it makes sense the entity would have to emerge to feed occasionally. More intriguing is the possibility it has entities that can interact with the local population, such as the four girls seen by both Loretta Parsons and Gabriella Zamproni, and who can act on its wishes. 

That concludes my research into the events in Shibbet’s Vale during 1981. This information is classified Level 5, for O-5 eyes only. Agent Hector Gallio, signing off.
[[/collapsible]]


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|author=Ben Counter, Pacific Obadiah, & edited by LordStonefish, Lt Flops]]
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> **Filename:** [https://i.imgur.com/Q2TCZnd.png Q2TCZnd.png]
> **Name:** Overwatch Command Logo
> **Author:** [http://www.wikidot.com/user:info/estrellayoshte EstrellaYoshte]
> **License:** [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)]
> **Source Link:** [[[desk-of-junior-designer-s-yvonne|Desk of Junior Designer S. Yvonne - SCP Foundation]]]

> **Filename:** Zambroni.jpg
> **Name:** 1970s
> **Author:** daves_archive_1
> **License:** [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 International (CC BY-SA 2.0)]
> **Source Link:** [https://flic.kr/p/2jfZd1q]

> **Filename:** Parsons.png
> **Name:** Ford B2410-29A NLGRF Sandra Eisert 1976-12-06.png **Author:** Karl Schumacher
> **License:** [Public domain]
> **Source Link:** [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_B2410-29A_NLGRF_Sandra_Eisert_1976-12-06.png]
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SCP-6881 SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENT ‘ECHO’

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