Final Analysis and Group Debrief
We got into Corvallis late last night. The kind of late where the gas stations shut off the overhead lights and the buzz of the tires on I-5 starts sounding like old tape hiss. Everyone was quiet during the last hour of the drive—an unspoken consensus, I think. Too much has happened to summarize easily, but we were all preparing for today: the debrief.
We met this morning at a rented conference room inside a modest hotel just off the bypass—same place we used before when the Santa-Pops first got us all together. A full loop. Nobody mentioned the symmetry, but I felt it when I stepped inside and saw the coffee urns steaming like nothing had changed.
Group Dynamics
Caleb and Jennifer had already set up a few folding tables covered in maps, site photos, and weathered manila folders. Josh had brought the bulk of the artifact photos—blown up and labeled. Robin and Vernon were flipping through EMF logs from the sleeping cattle site near La Pine and cross-referencing with the Tones data. Mathew and Donna kept mostly to themselves, heads bent over the compiled audio waveforms from Kings Valley and the Siuslaw Forest trip. Egiel and I were debating symbolism in Mrs. Landry’s drawings from Brookings. I caught Grandpa (still wearing his same damn corduroy coat) watching the whole scene like he was carving it into memory.
He said it first:
“You won’t find the answer in the files. But keep them. Someday, someone else might.”
Cross-Correlation of Events
We tried to find common threads. Here’s what came up the most:
• Low EMF readings in locations with strong reported experiences. Notable exception: the Tones in Siuslaw, where EMF showed minor but consistent distortion.
• Witness consistency over decades. Mrs. Landry’s case matched cold reports from as far back as the ’50s.
• Silence. Not just literal silence—though that showed up in multiple incidents (the field outside Eugene, the cattle near La Pine, the cave art site at Umpqua). But moments where the environment dropped away. “Dead air,” Vernon called it.
• Non-recurring evidence. Almost nothing replicated, even when revisited. Crop circles gone. Tracks vanished. Lights never repeated.
We marked destinations. Investigated major phenomenon clusters. Collected witness accounts. Ran 80+ hours of field surveillance, nights camping or lodging on-site, and countless hours in vans, cabins, and cheap hotels. And not one clear answer.
What We Know
Josh pointed out something that stuck with me:
“Every time we chased evidence, it moved. Like it didn’t want to be documented.”
Donna pushed back:
“Or like it couldn’t be, not by the instruments we have now.”
Grandpa nodded, then finally offered what might be the closest thing we’ll get to a unifying theory:
“We keep assuming they’re visitors. But what if they’re tenants? Quiet ones. Ones that lived here before we had words for them. Maybe our brains fill in the blanks because that’s what evolution trained us to do—to survive, not understand.”
No one replied.
Planning the Final Log before returning to school
After a short lunch break (pizza, again—some traditions don’t die), we agreed tomorrow’s site visit—our final one until next summer—would be quiet, minimal gear, no over complications. The Professor picked the location. He hasn’t told us much, just that it’s remote, tied to something he “forgot to tell us about,” and “will probably change how we think about everything.”
He smiled when he said that. I believe him, which scares me a little.
This time tomorrow, we’ll be en route. Last investigation. Last entry on this run. Next year can’t come soon enough.
⸻
Mileage from last location: 144 miles
