Bone Dust & Birthday Cheers: A Gower Adventure with Cari

 Let’s get this out of the way first: Cari is an absolute legend. I don’t mean in the exaggerated Internet way, like “oh my god slay queen” (although, yes, also that), I mean in the "get-you-down-a-windswept-cliff-path-without-dying" kind of way. Which, it turns out, is a vital skill when visiting Paviland Cave in South Wales.

But back up a bit. Why South Wales? Why caves? Why am I dusting bone particles out of my boots?

Easy. I was in Swansea visiting Cari—yes, the Cari, from the Raynor and Cari Show on Big Ear Radio, which I may or may not be a tiny bit obsessed with. (I literally made her sign my phone case. Twice.) Cari’s birthday was coming up, and I wanted to hang out somewhere legendary, spooky, and mildly dangerous. Naturally, she picked a Neolithic cave once home to the Red Lady of Paviland — who, plot twist, was actually a man. Classic misdirection. 10,000-year-old gender confusion? On-brand for the universe.

We set off early, armed with sandwiches, a questionable OS map, and Cari’s magical ability to make Welsh weather behave. After a rambling walk across sheep-studded clifftops, we finally reached the edge: the mouth of the cave, yawning open like it was mid-scream. And yes, I took so many photos, one of which may or may not contain an unexplained light anomaly that I’m 87% sure is the ghost of a prehistoric shaman giving me side-eye.

Inside, it was damp, echoey, and totally atmospheric. You could feel the history — or maybe that was just my shorts soaking through. Either way, I was loving it. Cari, meanwhile, was telling me about the burial, the beads, the mammoth bones, and making it all sound like a bedtime story for nerdy goth kids. I was enchanted. Also cold. But enchanted.

We climbed back up (Cari like a mountain goat, me like a gremlin clinging to tree roots), and made our way to the local pub, where she was greeted like royalty. I had the best pint of my life, possibly just because I’d earned it with minor cardio. We toasted her birthday, the Red Lady, and surviving slippery footpaths with dignity mostly intact.

Cari, if you’re reading this (and you’d better be), you are the warmest, wisest, most unflappable person I know, and spending the day with you was the highlight of my entire month. You made Paviland feel like home. With a side of ancient skeletons.

Happy Birthday, Cari. May your year be full of music, mischief, and more caves.
(But maybe less mud.)

Jenna.

(as always, keep feeding)

Print, Panic, and Paranoia: I Broke Into the Kingsmouth Chronicle

 I’d like to begin this post with a heartfelt apology to absolutely no one.

When the public archive fails you, and the town librarian says, “Oh honey, we don’t go back that far anymore,” what else is a girl supposed to do? Respect boundaries? Ask nicely?

No, you climb through the Chronicle’s busted side window with a torch between your teeth and a righteous obsession in your heart. And that’s exactly what I did last night.

Selfie evidence? Oh, absolutely:

So yeah. Kingsmouth Chronicle. Not exactly New York Times, but it’s charming in that abandoned-haunted-murder-den kind of way. Smells like mildew and typewriter ink. I half expected to find a raccoon with a press badge. I felt like a right PI or investigative journalist, or whatever they're called nowadays. Snoops.

The article I found in the Black House — the one dated April 4th, 2005 — turned out to be genuine after all. Tucked away in the dusty archive box at the back of the Chronicle’s basement, just like the librarian insisted. Real paper, real ink, and Jack Boone’s unmistakable signature at the bottom: JB.
Jack. Boone.

Local legend. Professional crank. Probably right about more than we’ll ever admit.

But something about it didn’t sit right. It felt incomplete — like a page was missing, or like the story had been trimmed down for public consumption. Boone was never known for subtlety. If he’d sniffed something strange, he’d have chased it to the edge of madness. So why did this piece feel so… careful?

So I needed to know: What else did Boone write about the Black House?

And so I looked. I looked and looked. Nothing. If there was anything, it didn’t exist in any known database. Not on microfiche, not in the “special collections” box the librarian swore contained all the archived local print.

And that's where things got weird.

Weirder than the dozen half-lit cult flyers pinned to the wall? Yes.

Weirder than the old editor's desk still having fresh matches and a warm mug? Yes.

Tucked in the back room, behind the weather-warped door labeled ARCHIVE, I found a terminal still connected to their internal network.

It was just humming. Like it had been waiting.

Waiting for me? Too weird.

On it? One of Boone’s notes, scrawled on a sticky, just said:

“See internal: KMCNET → /unpublished → CODED/BOONE/06-04-05”

I nearly screamed.
Instead, I took another picture:

Long story short?
The article? The real article? It’s not in the paper.
It’s in the system.

Boone started writing something bigger. Something that didn’t make it to print. Something he buried in the Chronicle’s internal website.

There’s more there than words. Far more than words. I've never heard of steg tools, but I checked it out.

Oh.

My.

God.

Not telling that here. Not after they already hacked me. You can find that out for yourselves.

I don’t know if anyone ever made it out of that office. I don't know if what I felt watching me was the story… or the thing behind it.

But I do know this much:
The house didn’t burn because of the storm. Or the mob. Or even the fear.

It was something else.

Something beneath all of that. Something that wanted out.
And I’ve seen what they buried behind login walls and blacked-out files. I followed the trail far enough to know I shouldn’t have. And maybe that’s why I can’t say it. Not all of it.

But ever since that night... I can’t stop hearing it.

Carrie is still here.

Not a rumour. Not a legend. Just a truth no one wants written down.

Stay strange,
— Jenna 🕷
keep on feeding the moths

The House That Hates You: My Night in the Black House

 You know that feeling when a place doesn’t just feel wrong — it wants you gone?

Yeah. That.

That’s the Black House, and I made the excellent life choice of going inside it. Alone. At night. With a half-charged torch and a deep-seated belief that I’m immortal because I have good hair.

So here’s your backstory, served hot and a little scorched:
April 3rd, 2005 — fire guts a twisted little cottage out on the edge of Kingsmouth. Locals say lightning struck. Locals also say the grocery store freezer aisle is haunted, so… salt that generously.

But this wasn’t just a fire. It didn’t end. The place didn’t crumble and get bulldozed into history like a normal crime scene. No. It stayed — scorched and stubborn, like the earth itself refused to forget. Even now, it feels wrong. Like walking into a bad memory that isn’t yours. The air doesn’t move right. The shadows breathe funny. And something — someone — watches.

Yeah, yeah, insert horror-blogger eye-roll. I get it. But screw you, I was there. And the house knows when you’re lying.

Now here’s where the rabbit-hole creaks open:
Buried under a pile of soot and ruined timetables, I found a Kingsmouth Chronicle clipping. Not birdcage-filler. Not souvenir-shop tat. This thing was real. Singed edges. Faded ink. But still readable. The headline?

“Woman Burned to Death in Fire — No Apologies Necessary”
Dated April 4th, 2005. One day after the blaze.
No byline — just initials scratched in at the bottom: JB.

Jack freaking Boone.
The town’s resident conspiracy magnet. Unofficial mayor of ‘Don’t Trust the Water Supply’. And now? My newest obsession.

The article was weird. Rambling quotes, odd little spiral symbols, a side-rant about local witchcraft. The woman in the fire? Carrie Killian. Loner. Bookworm. Maybe a witch. Maybe just unlucky enough to piss off the wrong crowd.

And here’s the kicker: that article? It doesn’t exist.
Not online. Not in the Chronicle’s back issues. Not even in the dusty librarian-only folders they swear haven’t been touched since MySpace was cool.

So, obviously, I did what any curious, slightly unstable person would do:
I broke into the Chronicle office.
Details coming soon — probably after three coffees and a minor existential spiral.

Stay tuned, creeps. The paper trail’s still smoking.

Spoiler alert: I found Boone’s original draft. Jack Boone. The conspiracy-chasing, chain-smoking journalist with a paranormal complex and a grudge against authority. He’d been investigating the Black House long before it burned — and what he found didn’t exactly scream "act of God.”

Anyway, I’ll let you dig through that yourself. I’ve got ash in my boots and possibly a ghost in my backpack.

Stay tuned, weirdos. There’s more under Kingsmouth than we’ve dreamed.

— Jenna
feeding the moths

Same Moths, New Flame

 

Well. That didn’t take long.

Barely six months into this new chapter and already the ghosts are nipping at my hard drive. For anyone wondering where my older posts went — yeah, that’s not me scrubbing my tracks. That’s someone else trying to.

About two weeks ago, my old blog (RIP Echoes Beneath, we hardly knew ye) suddenly locked me out. Total freeze. Then the archive started vanishing — one entry at a time. Weirdest part? It wasn’t all the posts. Just the ones where I dug too deep. The Academy, the Lighthouse, that freaky static loop I picked up near Blue Ridge? Gone.

I managed to pull a few from my personal backups, so you’ll start seeing reuploads. Don’t freak if timestamps are weird or the comment threads look stitched together. I’m doing my best to Frankenstein the old data.

And before anyone says “You probably just got phished, dummy,” I’d like to point out that the IP activity on the admin panel was bouncing through seven countries and had a ping echoing inside the site before anything even changed. One of the headers just read “13” in the auth log. No context. No domain. Just that.

Maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe it’s just some jerk with a grudge. Or maybe it’s Thirteen.

Either way — we’re live again. Same moths. New flame.
Let’s see how long I get to keep the lights on this time.

🦋
— Jenna

Campfire Cults and Creeping Fog: The Forest Wants You Dead

I went for a walk to clear my head.

I know. Hilarious.

Two miles past the bridge out of Savage Coast, there’s a barely-marked trail that slinks uphill into forest that isn’t on most maps. No trail markers. No signs. Just an opening in the trees and that little voice in your brain that says, “Go on. It’ll be fine.”

It was not fine.

I found the campfire around dusk — burned down to embers, still warm. Four stumps circled around it. No people. Just silence and the smell of old smoke.
There were bones nearby. Clean, arranged. Not animal bones.

They’d drawn something in the dirt. A ring of strange sigils with a five-sided shape in the centre. Some kind of rune that seemed to shift when I looked at it too long. I stepped back. I’m not stupid.

But the fog had come in. Thick, cold, fast. And that’s when I heard the voice.

It wasn’t behind me.
It was… under me.

I started walking back. I didn’t run — you don’t run in fog like that. You’ll turn around and the trees will be wrong.

I passed the fire again. It was cold. Ash scattered.
Like I’d imagined it. But my boots were still warm.

If you’re hiking near Blue Mountain, and you see a broken sign with a red handprint — turn back. I didn't, and I’ve had headaches ever since.
Not normal ones. I mean ones where I hear footsteps when I blink.

I don’t think they’re cultists out there.
I think they’re something older.

And I think they miss the fire.

Stay cautious,
— Jenna 🔥
keep feeding

The Ground Moves Here: Blue Mountain and the Thing in the Quarry

 I’ve had dreams about falling lately. Not from anything — just falling, into a place that doesn’t want me.

No end. No bottom. Just weightlessness and static.
The kind of dream where you wake up sweating and convinced your floor moved a few inches while you slept.

Which brings me to Blue Mountain — the part of the map where Kingsmouth whispers go to scream. The locals won’t talk about it unless they’re drunk, and even then, you’ll get words like “thin,” “bad vein,” and “don’t go alone.”

Naturally, I went alone.

🪨 The Quarry (Or: My Brain Got Rearranged by a Rock Pile)

I started near the old mining road, where the signs were more rust than metal and the fences looked like they were losing an argument with gravity. Beyond them was the quarry — carved deep into the side of the mountain like something chewed through it from beneath.

Nothing moved. No birds, no bugs. No wind. Just that kind of silence that has texture.

Halfway down the slope, I felt the pressure. Like altitude sickness, but internal — as if my thoughts were being pulled sideways. The ground under my boots felt soft, like walking across a dream stitched onto a memory.

And then… the time slip.

I checked my watch — yeah, I wear one, I’m that kind of nerd — and it was 14:42. I blinked. Took a few more steps.
Checked again. 15:04.
Twenty-two minutes.

Gone.

There were marks. Faint indentations along the quarry wall that didn’t match any mining tool I’ve ever seen. Deep gouges in a spiralling pattern, with a residue like old oil but with flecks of something… red. And warm.

Yes, I touched it.
Yes, I regret it.

Later, I found a chunk of metal embedded in the gravel — maybe part of a mining drill? But it was bent in a curve, like it had melted and reformed. I picked it up and dropped it immediately. It hummed.

As in, actually hummed.

Here’s the part where I stopped feeling brave.

🌀 The Spiral and the Sound

At the lowest point of the quarry, there’s a hollowed-out pit. Perfect circle. Something was dug — or birthed — there.
And in the dust, I saw it: a spiral stain, maybe 8 feet across. It looked like rust at first, but it smelled… wrong. Like iron mixed with old honey. I crouched to photograph it and—

I blacked out.

Just for a second, I think. But when I stood up, my knees were wet. There hadn’t been any water.

My camera roll had seven new photos.
Two were just black.
Three were of the quarry.
One was me, mid-step, walking away.
And one… one was me from behind. From about fifteen feet back.

I was alone.
I know I was alone.

Was I?

I don’t remember leaving. I just remember the road being there, and my legs moving. I didn’t think. I didn’t talk to myself out loud like I usually do (yes, I do that). I didn’t listen to music. I just walked, like something was walking through me.

When I got back to the safe zone near the inn, my boots were red. Not mud. Not blood. Something else.

I don’t think Blue Mountain is haunted. I think it’s aware.
I think it’s remembering things through people like me.
And I think it’s getting closer to remembering everything.

Next time I go back, I’m bringing a compass, a canary, and three exit strategies.

Until then:
Don't go near the quarry alone.
Don’t trust the ground.
And if something offers you a spiral? Don’t take it.

Still here. Still shaken.
— Jenna ⛰️
keep feeding

Tiny Terrors: I Found the League of Monster Slayers (They’re Real)

 Let me set the scene:

I’m cutting through a patch of cursed forest (as one does), chasing whispers about a “shattered ghost cat” haunting the bike trails near Innsmouth Academy.
(That’s a separate post. I’m still emotionally processing the meowing.)

Anyway, I duck under a fallen pine, nearly faceplant into a tripwire, and before I can say “booby trap?!” I’m surrounded. By kids. Armed to the braces with homemade weapons, monster-worn backpacks, and more attitude than I thought possible under five feet tall.

Welcome to the League of Monster Slayers.
Kingsmouth’s deadliest preteens.

At first I thought it was just some LARP group — very Stranger Things but more caffeinated. But no. These kids weren’t playing. They had codewords, lookout rotations, a working crossbow (!!!), and a binder labelled “Field Intel: Category Reds.”
I flipped it open expecting Pokémon.
I got sketches of ghouls. Real ones. Ones I’ve seen.

Their leader — a girl named Ellie with a slingshot and no patience for adults — asked me, deadpan:

“Are you infected, or just clueless?”

I replied, “Can’t I be both?”
She didn’t laugh.

These kids know more than most adults in Kingsmouth — and unlike the adults, they’re actually doing something about it.

They’ve tracked patterns, identified hotspots, even mapped out “Zones of Low Reality Integrity” (I’m stealing that term). They showed me a cave where “bad dreams come out of the walls.” I lasted five minutes in there. Ellie calls me “Softcore.”

They’re unclaimed, unaffiliated, and possibly the last line of defence between Kingsmouth and utter oblivion.

I gave them my contact info. They gave me a walkie-talkie, tuned to Channel 7.
I haven’t heard anything yet…
But I leave it on.

Because here’s the thing:
They believe the monsters are real.
And I think the monsters believe in them too.

Stay scrappy,
— Jenna 🧃
keep feeding

Dead Men Ride Again: Trespassing at Atlantic Island Park

 If you’ve never broken into a condemned theme park at midnight, I’m not saying your life is meaningless… but I am saying you haven’t lived.

Welcome to Atlantic Island Park — Kingsmouth’s answer to the question: What if Walt Disney lost a bet with the Devil?

---

Quick facts:

• Abandoned in 1980-something after a string of “accidents.”

• Home to derelict rides, a mouse mascot with murder in its eyes, and something that still powers the lights at night.

• Official status: closed to the public.

• Unofficial status: wide open if you’re dumb enough, which I am.

---

So I slipped through the busted fence (pro tip: use the gap near the rotting churro cart) and spent two hours creeping between haunted bumper cars, dead-eyed mascots, and the single worst Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen.
The place moans. I don’t mean creaks — I mean moans. Like wind through teeth.

First ride I approached? The Tunnel of Tales. No power, no staff, no reason for the soundtrack to be playing... and yet:

“Once upon a time, near a deep, dark forest, there lived a woodcutter with his wife and two children. Their names were Hansel and Gretel...”

Coolcoolcool.

And the lights. Oh God, the lights. No power, no reason. No lights? Think again.

I followed the tracks on foot, because I love bad decisions, and ended up in the Funhouse. Not fun. House, yes. Full of cracked mirrors and water-damaged screams. Something ran behind me, fast. Too fast for a rat.

I left. I left.

Which brings me to the real gem of the night:
The mascot storage shed.
Inside, I found costumes hanging like dead skins, and a wall covered in staff IDs — faces scratched out. One name was still visible: G. Winter.
And behind it, scrawled in red:

“THE PARK REMEMBERS.”

I didn’t stay to ask questions.

Look, I’m no stranger to spooky. I grew up on Lovecraft, creaky basements, and back-masked vinyl. But this place? It watches. It waits.

And it doesn’t want to be forgotten.

Still, 10/10 aesthetics.
Will absolutely return with more snacks and a spirit box.

Ride or die,
— Jenna 🎡
keep feeding them