"That was a fluke, West, and you know it." 
"Tell that to Ewell." 


"Even I'm going, despite what happened! C'mon, John, don't be a 

Hallowiener..." Eventually, after much encouragement and friendly 
jabbing, West agreed to go. He supposed he could always dig out 
that gorilla costume, even if it was a pain to breathe in. 


For today, though, they'd just have to put up with giving out candy to 
the kids who came around. They kept the best for themselves, of 
course. And through it all, West couldn't help but find himself 
smiling. It had been a long week, but it had also been a pretty good 
one. So what if the place still smelled of egg and there were a few 
scraps of toilet paper on the walls? The anomaly was contained, he 
was appreciated by his co-workers, and he might even get an official 
commendation. For putting up decorations! 


After the trick-or-treaters were gone and most of the staff had either 
gone to their apartments in town or their on-site quarters, he leaned 
against the door to his office, talking with Dr. Reese and chewing on 


some licorice. "You know," Reese said, "If | didn't know better, I'd 
say you're starting to like this holiday, Mr. Grinch." 


"It's nice enough, | suppose." He looked at his watch. "Five minutes 
til Halloween. After tomorrow, this crazy month will finally be over." 


October 31 


"This is Halloween, This is Halloween..." Reese grinned at a rather 
unamused looking Dr. West. At least, he looked unamused because 
of the gorilla mask. "What? Not going to comment on my costume?" 


"...a skeleton in a pinstripe suit?" 
"Jack Skellington! Right, | forgot, you don't watch holiday movies." 


"| do! | watched Charlie Brown Christmas, It's Thanksgiving Charlie 
Brown..." 


"But not the Halloween one, | bet. Now come on. Everyone's waiting 
to see the man of the hour." She dragged him towards the break 
room, where the a techno version of The Phantom of the Opera was 
playing. Everyone was dressed up in hokey costumes, and, thank 
god, nobody was dressed as a skip. Everyone who recognized Dr. 
West gave him a pat on the back, everyone was dancing, and the 
punch wasn't spiked! Well, there was some vodka in it, but no 
amnestics, no chemicals that alter skin color, nothing anomalous. It 
looked like it was going to be a good night. 


And then the containment breach alarms went off, along with the 
music. Everyone groaned, and the site director (dressed as the 
Black Knight from Monty Python) stepped up to tell everyone that it 
was a small breach, only one item, Safe class... 


It was at that exact time that E-5768 flew into the room. Everyone 
flinched at the menacing roll of Charmin floating 3 meters above the 
ground, threatening to throw eggs at anyone who moved. It floated 
over to the DJ booth, and bumped into the record player, starting it 
up again. And then... E-5768 started dancing. If you could call it 
that. It wiggled and swayed about in midair, doing elaborate loops 


and trailing paper behind it. Everyone stared. 


"...should we contain it?" Boris Badenov, AKA Agent Ewell, looked 
around the room at everyone, wishing he had his .45. 


"...well," Doctor West said, "| suppose it's not hurting anything. So 
long as it's not flinging eggs around randomly, | guess it can wait 
until morning." Everyone nodded in agreement; the world wasn't 
going to end because a sentient roll of toilet paper wanted to have a 
good time. 


The party continued long into the morning hours of November 1st, 
after Halloween was officially over. Dr. West and Dr. Reese were the 
last to leave the party, after West had escorted E-5768 back to its 
containment chamber. He held his gorilla mask under his arm and 
sighed. "Have | ever told you how much | love this time of year?" 


Dr. Reese elbowed him in the side and laughed. 


|Hub| 


The Last Word 


In the autumn months, if you walk along the Site-19 grounds and 
you see an old rusted fence, you might want to see what's on the 
other side. Over there, the leaves will all crunch underfoot as you 
walk through the grass. It would seem to be just like any other part 
of the grounds. But look at the ground. Those stones are the tombs 
where many fallen men and women lie. D-Class, Researcher, 
Agent...they're all equal here. So pay a visit to the Site-19 boneyard. 
Read some tombstones. Maybe even find some old friends. 


Margaret couldn't help but fee! a small twinge of satisfaction as her 
saw sliced the last sinews of muscle, ridding her of the ugly fake leg 
some person had swapped for her real leg. Said real leg was lying 
on the table in front of her, glistening with ebony perfection. The skin 
was flawless, and the ankle looked like it was young and rich with 
calcium. The fake one had been gnarled by skin cancer, hideous 
moles, and wrinkled skin. But as she re-affixed her leg to her hip, 
she knew that her long foot pain nightmare was over. 


Margaret Daniels - She always said that her feet were 
killing her. 


Dr. Vang waited impatiently by the elevator doors, key card in hand. 
He had some important tests to run, and he wasn't going to be held 
up by some creaky old equipment that couldn't open the doors on 

time. After what seemed like seasons, the doors opened. But where 
was the elevator? Grumbling about how these things don't work the 
way they used to, Vang stuck his head into the shaft to look around. 


Looked up the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the 
way down - It was. 


Agent Ekblad checked his watch. 15 minutes, and still no sign of 
anomalous atmospheric conditions. The commander was going to 


want results from tonight's tests - they would be necessary for 
seizing it away from the Foundation. Juggling a connection to the 
Insurgency while working on a high level testing facility hadn't been 
easy, but when he was able to escape with the Insurgents after the 
gator was captured, it'd all be worth it. 


The head of a traitor, eaten by an alligator - Hope to find 
the body later. 


Paul felt a spike of pain shoot up his leg. These damned "heels" 
were excruciating. It would've been at least bearable if the skin and 
muscle hadn't been cut away, but Mr. Marshall had decided to do an 
"experiment". God, his bones were bending. He needed to sit. Get 
down. the pain in his ankle was beginning to break him he could feel 
it cracking and it hurt and it hurt and snap. He tumbled forward on 
broken, useless legs. 


Here lies Paul: he was tall, he had a fall, and that was all. 


Dmitri felt a bitter cold at the edges of his nostrils. The climb had 
been arduous, but soon he would be the youngest man to conquer 
Everest alone. The thoughts of fame and fortune could wait: he 
needed to actually reach the peak. As he dug his pick into a rock, he 
heard something. Who was that? How had he gotten up here... 


His foot did slip and he did fall. 
Help! He cried. 
And that was all. 


Bell Weather 


Outside, there is a slight chill in the air. Somewhere, costumed 
children flicker from house to house, squealing with the anticipation 
of a potent, yearly sugar rush. Candles gutter in the wind from 
behind carved faces. The bars are full of the sloppy, intoxicated, and 
underdressed, a casualty of the marketing genius who had first 
decided that Halloween could be an excuse for nominal adults to 
dress like streetwalkers. Some festive soul had even hung a bucket 
of candy on the automated chain gun emplacements out front; it was 
a juxtaposition of the light-hearted and lethal that made my skin 
crawl. Before this was Halloween, it was a holiday where it was said 
the dead would walk, where the veil between the world and the 
underworld gave way like a haunted-house cobweb. 


For me, this was never a fun-filled holiday. It was serious work — one 
of the more serious nights of work that | had every year, serving the 
Foundation. 


My name is immaterial. They call me ‘Padre’, which is fine with me; 
there is a certain forced jocularity to it, reminiscent of bluff country 
folk and bad cop shows. | am — was — a priest, though I’ve left my 
Orders for a more important mission. | was one of the ones affected 
when SCP—oh, the number doesn’t matter, it’s long since 
neutralized. But | was recruited rather than made to forget; | found 
myself wanting to help, as if I'd been waiting all my life for an enemy 
| could name, a threat to souls that | could see and touch and 
protect humanity from. In another age, perhaps I’d have been a 
Templar or a crusader, a saint or a martyr; instead, | found myself in 
charge of SCP Task Force Psi-11, “The Gods Squad”. Our technical 
responsibility reads, in part: “an ad hoc team to deal with any 
religious or religion-related crisis or issue in the Foundation, either 
external or internal”. What it means in plain language: if the 
Foundation has a chaplaincy corps, | suppose we're it. 


And that is why, on a chilly night in October, | am alone with a million 


faces. 


ITEM#: SCP-1446 

Object Class: Safe 

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1446 is only active once per 
calendar year. Originally part of Sector-38 (located in an unmapped 
cave complex under the Texas Hill Country), it is now considered an 
immobile SCP in containment at Sector-38. During its inactive 
phase, SCP-1446’s only point of entry is to be locked with a dual 
complement of locks equal to or exceeding Class Six. During its 
active phase, the locked doors are to be opened, and the following 
additional procedures are to be initiated: SAMHAIN-026 (including 
salt, powdered cold iron, and running water) and TOCSIN-003. 


1446 is an underground chamber, so the temperature is an even 18 
degrees. This part of the system is dead, dry, so it is an excellent 
place to preserve things. Things like photographs — which is perhaps 
why someone or something, in the first few months of 2000, started 
posting photographs on the strangely smooth walls. Each 
photograph was of a Foundation operative killed in the line of duty; 
each shot a candid picture of one human life given in service to the 
greater part of humanity. Perhaps more to the point, each 
photograph just — appeared on the limestone walls of the chamber. 
Cameras showed nothing, audio showed nothing. There would just 
be more photos, every day — a mute testimony to lives cut short. 


The lab coats moved in, of course. There was nothing unusual about 
the photos, nothing unusual about the cave. Tests were 
inconclusive, unresponsive, mute. Summer came and went, and 
after the 116C Incident in August, Sector-38 was short on personnel. 
Somehow, the wall of photos didn’t seem as important. 


Description: SCP-1446 is a stone wall 8.2 meters high and 37.8 
meters long, the south wall of a dead cave located at [EXPUNGED], 
part of Sector-38. % of the wall is covered with a mosaic of 
identical, 5-cm square photographs of individuals identified as 
Foundation personnel killed in the line of duty. New photos appear 
irregularly, within [EXPUNGED] of the individual’s death. Pictures 


only appear for those personnel killed; natural deaths do not result in 
manifest. 


| am not wearing any priestly garb tonight — it’s tank top, running 
shorts, good shoes, and a pair of heavy canvas gardening gloves. | 
check my watch — 9:36 pm. The trick-or-treaters will be retreating 
now, returning to their homes with their mask-gotten booty, just 
ahead of the darkness that will finger its way quietly down the 
streets as porch lights are extinguished. It will be the day before the 
new moon tonight; the spook squad says that 1446's yearly activity 
cycle is made more or less active by moon phase. A waning moon, 
just before new, means that only ice and Oxycontin will let me raise 
my arms tomorrow morning. 


This is the sixth time | have done this. The bell above my head 
gleams in the dim light; | can see the old seal of the city of Glasgow 
on its side, lettering below spelling out ‘St Mungo’s’ and ‘1641’. It 
was rung for two hundred years and more at funerals; it kept the evil 
spirits away and helped the dead rest easy. | grimace at that 
thought, a humorless smile that does little to cheer me. For the sixth 
time, | check the great hemp rope; it will hold through the four hours. 


INCIDENT REPORT, SECTOR-38, 10/31/2000: 

Precisely at 2200 hours, standard security audio reported activity in 
the hallway outside Chamber 091, colloquially known as the ‘Photo 
Room’. Security Detachment Gamma responded per protocols, and 
failed to check in at the required five-minute mark. Detachment 
Epsilon was dispatched, and found the five members of Gamma 
[REDACTED], along with an estimated twenty-three liters of human 
blood. At that point, Epsilon was attacked by [REDACTED] and was 
forced to retreat with casualties. 

In the next four hours, % of the staff at Sector-38 were killed in the 
same manner as the members of Team Gamma. This included nine 
staff members who took refuge in a standard Foundation Class 
Three panic room. All activity ceased at 0200 hours on November 1. 


So does a photograph trap a mortal soul? 


| can’t answer that, any more than | can tell you why a Scottish 
‘dede bell’, rung constantly during the four hours of SCP-1446’s 
active phase, keeps the monsters at bay, keeps the dead operatives 
— or something that looks like them — trapped in their photographs. | 
try not to think about why — why is for the lab coats and the 
Overseers. What | do is pray, shut up and listen, and do my job. And 
tonight, that means | will ring a bell, once every five seconds, for four 
hours. 


But, in the shadows of Halloween night, in a cave lit by pitiless 
electric light, | can’t help wondering — is this an illusion? An anomaly, 
a random interlocking weave of energy and time and human belief? 
A phenomenon with a rational, scientific answer — even if we don't 
know what it is? 


Or are the souls of those killed in the line of Foundation duty not 
allowed to rest, even in death? 


Memorandum 10/31 


ATTENTION ALL SITE PERSONNEL 


Due to the unique circumstances that have traditionally surrounded 
the date of October 31, and the allegations that it acts as a catalyst 
for anomalous phenomena, all Site staff have been placed on high 
alert and all available agents and MTFs are to be put on a 24 hour 
standby period. 


Since its founding, the Foundation has experienced or recorded 
anomalous phenomena on an estimated 72% of dates correlating to 
October 31. While there is no conclusive theory or explanation for 
this high rate of anomalous occurrences on this particular date, it is 
highly encouraged that all Site staff exhibit a heightened state of 
alert and vigilance. 


For your reference, listed below are several excerpts of previous 
anomalous phenomena that had occurred on this date in order to 
give you an idea of what to expect. Note that this is not a 
comprehensive list of incidents. 


October 31, 1955 


Sightings of what appears to be an American warship 
occur simultaneously at over thirty six coastal areas 
across the globe. Cross referencing of eyewitness 
accounts of the ship in question point out the exact same 
identifying remarks, and testimony suggests that it may 
possibly be the USS [REDACTED]. This conflicts with 
records showing that the ship in question had been 
transferred over to the Hellenic Navy and was confirmed 
to be in port during the time of these events. 


Due to skepticism about the plausibility of such an event, 
it was determined that no amnesic measures were 
necessary.