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THE REPORTER:

 

Good evening, Witherburn. We have a lot to catch up on. Things like the disappearance of Eva Sinanger, a shocking gambling front, and reports of a rabid dog.

 

Of course, we will also be discussing how my broadcast was interrupted last week. Don't worry, listeners, I have made it so that interruptions would be much harder, so we probably won't have to worry about that again. Though the content of that interruption is something we will be discussing as well.

 

So enough lollygagging. Let's get started with this episode of Witherburn Afterschool News. 

 

{Theme Music]

 

Let's start with the most pressing news, Eva Sinninger was reported as a runaway on Monday. The story that the police department and her father are putting out is that she left a note on her nightstand that said specifically that no one comes looking for her and apologizes to her dad for... embarrassing him. Apparently a large chunk of her clothes were missing, as well as her toothbrush.

 

This comes almost immediately after the police department caught her vandalizing the Clarks' house, which is how the whole town figured out that she is the infamous Witherburn vandal. Sheriff Sinanger released a personal statement, so separate from the police department, that said with the stress of all her classmates leaving, Eva lashed out for attention. She decided to become the vandal in a naive attempt to take control of an out-of-control situation.

 

Comments were also made that Eva might be having a psychotic break right now. He thinks that she was so embarrassed, distraught, or worried about getting caught as the vandal that she decided to run away instead. He is confident that she will come to her senses eventually.

 

He then stated that he would support her in whatever way he can, as long as it doesn't interfere with his work as sheriff. Something's off about all that. Running away seems like an overreaction for what would end up being a few vandalism charges.

 

I mean, I'm sure that there would be social backlash, but that's nothing compared to the jail time that she would get from literally running from the law. Though, maybe there's some legal gray area if the law is your father. Mr. Sinanger is distressed, of course, and is taking time off work to process this.

 

And now I don't want to make light of what is obviously a delicate situation, but I don't believe a word the police department is saying. I will admit, the fact that Eva is the sheriff's daughter did almost make me think for a moment that maybe they were telling the truth. However, I was proven wrong because I was informed that it was actually Eva who disturbed my broadcast last Friday.

 

According to listener accounts, what Eva said was gut-wrenching. I couldn't hear her. I'm sure some of y'all already realized that.

 

Otherwise, I would have reacted to the situation in a different way than what I did. Apparently, she made the claim that all the missing people are dead. That she was working with whoever this was.

 

That someone, presumably the police department, was lying about everything. That they were trying to start the apocalypse, but she couldn't tell us more because whoever this mysterious person is didn't trust her enough. Which is just so absurd because you can't actually start the apocalypse, right? That's just stuff that only exists in horror movies.

 

And then there was screaming as she cut off. She was begging her father to help her. And now the police department is claiming this was all part of her psychotic break.

 

But I'm just not buying any more of their lies. I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that they were lying about all the other missing people and now they're lying about Eva as well. It makes me behind all this.

 

God, that idea just makes me sick, and I don't want to believe it. Maybe it's not the entire department.

 

But it would have to be a sizable amount, right? If they are all willing to ignore the obvious evidence that Eva didn't run away. Maybe that would have something to do with the Clarks. She was spray painting their house and Hunter has said some very unsavory things in the past.

 

She was friends with Hunter. Maybe he... Actually, I don't even want to think about what happened to her. She spoke out and now what? She's dead in a ditch?  Maybe worse and it probably has something to do with her own father. And I just... God, this town is fucked. It makes me wonder what would happen if they found out who I was.

 

If they already know. I mean, whoever threw that brick through my window, whether it was Eva or someone else, knew who I was. It's unsettling.

 

It makes me feel... Sorry. Um, let's move on. I... I don't really want to keep talking about this. It's, um, it's creeping me out. 

 

Let's discuss the vote instead. Townspeople are encouraged to vote yes for Prop 2 if they want Witherburn High School to be renovated. This will allocate almost a million dollars of the town funds towards the renovation and will give the school brand new whiteboards, a new floor for the gym, and a whole new wing of the school that will have science labs in it. 

 

Advocates of this are saying that renovating the high school might help the students not associate it with all the disappearances. God, everything goes back to the disappearances, huh? It seems no matter what you do, this town won't allow you to forget.

 

I see what they mean though. I can see there being worry that there will forever be a dark cloud hanging over the school. Another note is that the school hasn't been worked on since the 90s, and it shows.

 

Things break, we still have chalkboards, and overall it just makes it harder for teachers to teach. This is a personal interjection, but I also view this as a positive because this prop would mean you know that a million dollars of your taxpayer money is actually going towards the community, a community that needs it, and not to overfunding the useless police department or the mayor or whoever else.

 

 Critics of the bill are saying that the million dollars should actually be going to mental health services since that seems to be the cause of the runaways.I personally didn't think anyone still bought that story from the police department, but the point stands they believe there should be money going towards preventing runaways and finding those that did run away. It's a cause you can sympathize with. 

 

Honestly, if this was a decision between giving a million dollars to protecting the young people of Witherburn or giving a million dollars to the school, then I don't know which I would vote for.

 

But that's not the vote. There is no proposition trying to give money to the protection of Witherburn youth. It also seems like the mayor isn't too keen to put that kind of proposition on the table.

 

Now, the fact that our mayor is being so blasé about missing possibly dead children annoys you as much as it annoys me, then I encourage you to speak at the next city council meeting and maybe he'll put some sort of youth initiative on the ballot. But for now, we just have the high school renovation proposition, which this is me encouraging you to vote yes on. If not for the students, then for the teachers.

 

People are raising concerns about the local water supply. This is following the experiments done to see why we have fewer and fewer fish in our streams. Many are saying the high rates of iron and decomposing bacteria could be making its way into our homes.

 

You see, the river is Witherburn's main water source, so people are starting to wonder if the fish can't even live in the water, then do we want to be using it? Reports are even filing in about black sludge coming out of people's faucets. Ew. With some saying that there's a rancid smell whenever they use their water.

 

Well, I'm happy to tell everyone that Witherburn actually has a very robust water filtration system, so you're fine. No decomposing bacteria will be snacking on you while you shower. The mysterious sludge is probably a personal plumbing issue, though I feel like this is a decent enough segue to say that we should be treating our river better.

 

Did you know that according to the college kids who found the bacteria and the high iron content in our waters, they actually think it might be due to pollution? So trash, old food, manure even. That's right, Witherburn has farms and those farms often drain right into our waters, think about that next time you go for a swim.

 

This can put a strain on the environment, on our filtration systems, and also the people in Witherburn who have well water. So my simple request is that, as it gets warmer and we start to use the rivers more, we are more aware about our trash. Keep trash in a safe compartment, don't throw even natural waste out into the water such as orange peels, apple seeds, and other similar items.

 

Just be aware of how you're treating our lovely waterways. Let's move on to monster of the week. Some of you might have heard Mr. Pickler talking in church about the monster he saw on his early morning fishing trip.

 

Mr. Pickler was fishing just before sunrise this morning. He said it was a pretty normal morning and he prefaced this by saying it wasn't even foggy so he knows that he wasn't just imagining things. Anyway, the moon was still out, this becomes important later, and he's just fishing doing his thing when he hears this howl coming from the riverbank.

 

Now he assumes this is a bobcat or a fox or a coyote or the myriad of other things that could have made that noise. He keeps fishing. 30 minutes later he moves a little closer to the bank.

 

Suddenly he gets this feeling like something is trying to get him. He turns towards the riverbank and sees this hairy creature wading through the water coming towards his boat only about 30 yards from him upstream. He said at first he thought it was a human walking on all fours.

 

It had this strangely human way of moving. When pressed about it he said that no thing of God should look and move like that. He said he saw the blood-soaked fangs glinting in the moonlight, its eyes glowing a deep dark red.

 

When it noticed that Mr. Pickler saw it, it just slowly moved back onto the bank where it was hidden by the trees. He quickly moved his boat, but the rest of his trip he felt like something was watching him. It sounded like the creature Mr. Pickler saw is the rougarou, a werewolf-like creature from Cajun folklore.

 

Apparently this is a curse put upon people that don't follow the rules of Lent. The rules of this curse vary a lot, so if you find yourself turning into a rougarou every night then I apologize, this won't be a very helpful guide. Some say you're cursed to have this form every night for 101 days.

 

Some say you have to transfer this curse to another person before you're able to get rid of it, a twist on the well-known lycanthropy curse. Others say you're just stuck with it unless you can get the person who cursed you to alleviate the curse, whether that be God or a witch. Now that's all about the curse, but what does the curse even do? Well, it causes you to become a werewolf.

 

It's just a werewolf with a Cajun accent. You end up gaining a hunger for human flesh and go out at night to stalk lonely travelers. Sadly, it takes a little less than silver bullets to ward you off as putting things in groups of 13 scares off a rougarou.

 

Though some say this only happens on the full moon, many stories say it happens every night that you have the curse. Now, I think we all agree that Mr. Pickler didn't see a werewolf. So what did he see? Well, animal control has recently put out a warning for a rabid dog in the area.

 

They presume it's a large breed and that it was a stray before it turned rabid. There, that explains it. It probably looked weird because it was sick or something, but someone brought this up to Mr. Pickler and he says that he knows what he saw.

 

He said it wasn't foggy and he could see clear as day that it wasn't a dog. He has seen old and sick dogs before. He has never seen something that looked like this.

 

He said the closest thing he could describe it as was a demon. Plus, it was in the water and animals with rabies are afraid of water. Something was stalking him that morning.

 

He was so serious, so sure. Creeping myself out by telling these scary stories.

 

You know that feeling that you have when you watch a horror movie and now you feel like there's something hiding around every corner? Yeah, I'm starting to feel that right now. It's all in my head though. 

 

The universe isn't out to get me, monsters aren't real. That's just... Fuck, that's not really convincing me anymore. How can I say that monsters don't exist when there's a trail of dead children? Houses that are empty? Clearly there's a monster in Witherburn except this monster doesn't give you the courtesy of looking particularly monstrous.

 

I think I would rather that all this is happening because of some wild beast. Maybe if it was then I wouldn't be so scared. Do you think the people that went missing felt like this? Like someone was constantly looking at them? Like there are people in the bushes that want to jump out and tear you apart? I just... I don't think I feel this way because I watch too many scary movies.

 

It's like I can feel their eyes on me.

 

 They're watching me, aren't they? 

 

I just thought I should be honest with you listeners, but we're all probably feeling paranoia after Eva's message. Let's move on to some news from the community center.

 

The annual amateur basketball tournament is right around the corner. This activity is a town favorite. The community center encourages families and friend groups to sign up for the tournament.

 

Practice, come up with a fun team name, and try your best to take home that coveted trophy. Teams are also encouraged to make their own uniforms. Some notable teams have worn things like tutus, glitter jerseys, and one year the Jamesons wore pool floaties.

 

Which you would think would be a hindrance, but they actually won that year, so I guess I can't really say anything. If you can't get a team of nine then you're also encouraged to come watch a game or two. Tickets will be two dollars and all the proceeds will go to funding the community center.

 

So grab your team of basketball players and head over to the community center to sign up. Spots are limited so make sure you hurry. 

 

Final story, the Suds Laundromat and dry cleaning service is actually a gambling front. That's right, there's a casino behind there. I mean, it makes sense because I literally never see anyone in that place and it must have been making money somehow.

 

If you walked up and said the word jackpot, you got led into the secret back room. Which, jackpot? Really? I'm surprised this whole operation wasn't blown years ago. Anyways, it's a small room in the back with a poker table, a blackjack table, and some slot machines.

 

Nothing much, but still. I mean, it's enough to be trouble because, and here's a well-known fact, gambling is illegal in Alabama. You can thank your bad slot makers for that.

 

Now whether you agree with the anti-gambling laws or not, I think you can disagree with their decision to hire people under the age of 18. I mean, that's pretty despicable. Now, you might be wondering how this all got uncovered.

 

Well, it was infiltrated by the feds. That's right, they sent an undercover fed because apparently that place was just doing a ton of money laundering. So a fed went in for a few days and convinced them to admit to money laundering and raided the place.

 

That's the only information I could get because it's still an active investigation, which is fair enough, I guess. I just personally want to know if the owners were with the mob. Is that too much to ask? So sorry to anyone who needed the dry cleaners, that's going to be closed for a few days.

 

If you need dry cleaning, you're gonna have to go to a Magnolia. That's all our stories for today, listeners. I know I was a bit distracted today.

 

I apologize and I hope you can understand. I also hope it won't prevent you from tuning in next week. I'm the reporter signing off.