Joe

The **Joe** is a supporting character that is featured in *Fears to Fathom: Norwood Hitchhike*.

## Background

After leaving the gas station, Joe can be seen getting out of Holly's car, presumably sabotaging it, and quickly leaving using his white van.

After regaining her consciousness in a few hours, Holly realizes that she has been sedated. She subsequently hears creepy squeaks and sounds coming from her room, when suddenly, she's startled by knocks on her door. Joe, the receptionist, informs her that loud strange noises have been coming from her room, disturbing the other guests, which makes Holly become confused, as she was passed out and not making any noise. Joe notices Holly's unusual red eyes to ritually pleads that the coffee machine was tampered with. Joe confused to what she's talking about, as they don't have a coffee machine. He follows her to see what coffee machine she's talking about.

Being confronted with no coffee machine at sight, Joe as the result starts acting strange or daring calling to go back to her room quickly, where she could find some medication to relieve her symptoms, indicating as if he knows of what might have been happening, possibly someone installed a tempered with coffee machine just to drug and use the guests.

After some time staying in the room, starting to drift away on the bed, Holly hears someone with a soft voice trying to attract her attention. He then proceeds to knock on the door, asking Holly for help. Holly tries to ask who the person is, but he dismisses the question and tries to persuade her to open the door. Holly creeped out by the person behind the door gets threatened that he just wants help and that he's not police, that's when Holly tells the man to go away before she calls 9-1-1. Losing his patience, the man starts kicking on the door with all of his power, making Holly run to the closet and hiding there.

The man manages to quickly break the door and look for Holly inside the room. He inspects the bathroom when Joe from the reception quickly gets to her room and knocks the man out, taking him by surprise. Highly unsure to what just happened, with Joe withholding to give her any information and asking her not to call the police, he starts believing that this man might have belonged to a drug ring or an organized cult who dwelt within the area. The strange sounds Joe heard thinking he might have been Holly and with the squeaks coming from the room are soon revealed that they're from the strange man who was in fact hiding in the closet, with Holly being narrowly saved by Joe. When knocking on her door, the logs that were barricading the road and Holly's car breaking down seemingly all were due to call tampering, including the coffee machine with spiked drinks, therefore the cashier talking about this appearance is Jason talking cryptically about the mysterious people who wouldn't bother her, as long as she didn't bother them.

With Joe acting strange, when Holly told him about the coffee machine, all indicate that they all knew about the presence of this cult whom they were seemingly afraid to talk about, just in case they would get targeted as well or in case of them giving Norwood a bad reputation. It's not mentioned what the cult is capable of and what they do to the people, they kidnap with myths and stories believing they might be mythical monsters hanging their victims on trees upside down, which could possibly hand out that the victims were in fact found that way before with the call to conducting such gruesome rituals.