The Claiborne Herald is the oldest business in Monroe County,
and its offices are housed in one of the oldest buildings in downtown
Claiborne, an imposing Victorian edifice on River Street. Three stories of the building
loom over that shadowed street, and employees often take their breaks on the
roof, which affords them with an impressive view of the muddy Alabama River.
Below street level, The Herald building features not only a basement but also a
subbasement, which most employees never visit.
The subbasement level serves as the newspaper’s morgue,
where back issues of the paper, dating back to antebellum times, can be found
between the covers of heavy bound volumes. Despite climate-controlled
air-conditioning and heavy-duty dehumidifiers, the subbasement is dirty, damp
and dark. While most employees avoid this part of the building, I was drawn to
it because those musty bound volumes contained secrets for those willing to search
them out.
As the newspaper’s nightshift reporter, I had no set hours,
but my editors expected me to be on duty from roughly 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. This
particular night was a Tuesday night, and things were slower than normal. It
was on nights like these that I often disappeared alone into the subbasement to
explore the dusty stacks of old, forgotten newspapers.
Beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, I walked among
the shelves until I found the volume containing the November 1988 editions of
The Herald. For the past six months, I’d been compiling information about Claiborne’s
many unsolved disappearances, many of which date back to before I was even
born. The November 1988 editions contained a series of stories about the
unsolved disappearance of a teenage girl who had been forgotten in the passing
years. While turning the yellowed, brittle pages of these papers, my eyes fell
on a front-page headline that made me forget all about the unexplained
disappearance I was investigating.
----- 0 -----
Claiborne teens die on ‘Kill Devil Hill’
By Giles Proctor
Herald Reporter
CLAIBORNE, Nov. 2 - Five Claiborne teens were found dead and
another was transported to Claiborne Infirmary with severe injuries after a
Halloween camping trip went wrong atop the infamous “Kill Devil Hill” in southwestern
Monroe County.
According to Monroe County Sheriff Ben Putnam, the teens had
established a campsite atop “Kill Devil Hill,” but something went wrong after
sunset. The group consisted of three young men and three young women, and only
one of the young men was found alive Tuesday morning by an outdoorsman who was
tending to a nearby food plot. The names of the teens involved in the incident
had not been released at press time, but Putnam confirmed that four of the five
were students at Claiborne High School.
Putnam said the incident remained under investigation, and
he declined to say how the teens died. He noted that three tents were found in
disarray atop the hill and said that the bodies were recovered at various
locations on and around the hill. The teen who was found alive was located at
the camp site atop the hill by first responders, Putnam said.
“The investigation into these deaths remain ongoing,” Putnam
said, noting that the investigation was somewhat difficult given the remote
location of the incident. “Every effort is being made to determine exactly what
happened out there, but it’s going to take time. We have not ruled out foul
play.”
Putnam noted that investigators suspect that the teens were
playing a roleplaying game that may have gotten out of hand. Investigators also
recovered a Ouija board, candles and other items that may have been used in
some type of ritual. Putnam declined to say more, citing the ongoing
investigation.
----- 0 -----
I flipped through the remainder of the bound volume, but didn’t
find any additional stories about the incident, which I thought was odd. Why
were there no follow up stories? Why were the obituaries of the dead teens not published?
My eyes played back to the top of the story and settled on
the byline: Giles Proctor. Proctor was one of The Herald’s most storied
reporters. A World War II veteran, he’d worked at the paper from the early
1950s until his retirement in the early 1990s. Best of all, he was still alive.
Last I heard, he was living at an assisted-living home off Dellet Street.
A glance at my watch told me that it would be several hours
before the nursing home opened for visitors. When it opened, I planned to be
there with an eye toward joining old Giles Proctor for breakfast. Maybe he
would be able to provide more answers about what happened atop Kill Devil Hill
on Halloween night 1988.
(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or
locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)
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