Item #: SCP-562

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Due to the spontaneous and non-physical nature of SCP-562, prevention of its effects is likely impossible. Containment, therefore, is to center around reducing the occurrence of 562-Claim events, identifying unreported SCP-562 incidents, and suppressing public knowledge of the anomalous components.

Common aliases used by SCP-562 have been filed on major sex-offender registries around the world. Evidence suggests that internet safety training also reduces the occurrence of successful 562-Claim events, so this is to be encouraged in European schools.

Description: SCP-562 is the designation for a phenomenon sporadically occurring on internet chat sites. During SCP-562 events, a user is contacted by an entity most frequently identifying itself as “Sylvia Gateman”, “Tom Hedge”, or “Dick O’Dale”. For a complete list of names used by SCP-562, consult Addendum 562-4. Accounts of SCP-562 are non-anomalous and usually discarded after use.

During an SCP-562 incident, SCP-562 attempts to convince the subject to attend a party. After contacting a subject and establishing a rapport, SCP-562 convinces the target that they either attend the same school or live in close proximity to each other. SCP-562 will then tell the subject of a “party”, “dance”, or “revel” in the area, and encourage him or her to attend it. Though SCP-562 is very persuasive, there appears to be no compulsion affecting the contacted individual. If the subject refuses, or terminates the connection without accepting, no anomalous effects are reported.

Persons who agree to go to the party vanish in what is referred to as a 562-Claim event. When next the subject walks through a door, they are transported to an unknown location. Tracking devices on the subject fail, and electronic monitoring reports them disappearing as they pass through the door. Humans observing a 562-Claim event report seeing bright, multicolored lights through the doorway and hearing unidentifiable speech and music, as well as a lingering smell of nutmeg.

Those subject to 562-Claim events are found dead in the nearest old-growth forest at some point between four and eight years later. Autopsies reveal the causes of death to be multiple organ failure consistent with advanced age. In most cases, a large, though safe, quantity of honey, milk, and alcohol is found in their digestive tract. Attempts to trace the origin of this honey have proven unsuccessful to date. These corpses are found dressed in ornate and unlabeled clothing of extremely high quality. Rarely, the subject retains some item they possessed at the time of the 562-Claim event. Such objects show wear consistent with decades of use.

It is estimated that no more than forty successful 562-Claim events occur each year, of which the Foundation is aware of roughly a third within a week of the body being found. The annual number of unsuccessful events is harder to estimate as these generally go unreported, but it is believed number less than a thousand. Demographically, victims of SCP-562 tend to be about 40% male and 60% female, mostly in the age range of 13-22. SCP-562 may apparently manifest in any internet chat site, but tends to target European ones.

Addendum 562-15: In light of the recent batch of seventeenth-century letters published by the Royal Historical Society, it is now believed that SCP-562 is not a new phenomenon. One exchange in the release is between a Lady Marchgrove and a Dick O’Dale, in which the latter attempts to convince the former to attend a ball he is throwing. Lady Marchgrove agrees to go, and historical records indicate her disappearance at about the same time as the last letter is believed to have been written.