Observation: The Choir

Possibility:

The Choir is the only Fear or at the very least is the only Fear involved in multiple Fear encounters.

Observations:

Many of the Fears have been encountered with such frequency and variety that most have formulated ways to defend against them and/or evade them.

But The Choir still retains a large aspect of mystery to it. No one can fight back effectively against something that is practically paranoia itself.

The journals of that Runner I encountered first led me to suspect that there was a possibility The Choir was more dangerous than many give it credit.

Out of all The Choir sightings mentioned and documented by fellow bloggers, there are always examples of its power over our senses.

We see what isn’t actually there but we fail to see what IS there, we hear things that can’t be real while the sounds of what are real become mute, tastes begin to alter, smells begin to modify…and we begin to sense far more than we need to but simultaneously far less than we should.

It makes us question the reality around us; it drives us to a level of paranoia unknown to most individuals.

But maybe some of you believe you have a stronger grasp on reality than most, believe that The Choir is easy to fight against…and perhaps that is how it beats us.

The girl referred to this Fear under the personal title of “A Chorus of Delusions.”

Delusions, many would like to believe that we are deluding ourselves when we claim to be chased by these eldritch abominations we call Fears.

Perhaps they are right; perhaps we are only being targeted by one.

The runner’s journal, she spoke about how The Choir would manipulate her senses constantly. It would sometimes do something as simple as not allow her to hear the sound of a car coming around the corner, giving her barely any time to register it’s quick arrival.

Other times it would up the ante and not allow her to even be aware the car was in existence, if not for a passer-by she would’ve been run down.

When her journal began to feature other Fears I noticed a recurring pattern.

She never came under direct threat from any of them, for example: her first sighting of The Slender Man details her seeing him just standing there and little else.

Her next entry explains how she came across all the blogs about The Slender Man, she notes down that many bloggers feel like reality around them is wrong when in his presence, that something is…off.

However she notes that she didn’t feel anything so she chalks this up to the fear overwhelming her.

Her next encounters change to have her adamant that she felt it, insisting in repeated lines that she definitely felt a weird pressure in the air.

The Choir lives within the air around us, perhaps the pressure and eerie feeling in the air is merely you becoming aware of its presence.

One of her Rake encounters did involve it attacking her but she then grew confused when she could find no injury despite how she recalled the feeling of pain. She rationalised this again to fear and that she must’ve dodged it.

If you truly believe without doubt that injury has happened to you, your mind can make you feel pain…especially if a being that manipulates senses is playing with your mental state.

So the possibility is that many sightings are simply The Choir, they fuel the paranoia of each individual by making them imagine things they EXPECT to find.

In their paranoia, in their fear…the runner convinces themselves that this is real and The Choir barely has to do anything else.

It only has to nudge the paranoia, to set our imaginations off and we continue the rest of the self destructive path.

“But surely imagining most of the Fears is a far safer alternative” some probably wonder.

Not necessarily.

If it built up your paranoia of EAT enough, you may avoid all sources of water completely. This would be a dangerous problem if The Choir leads you to locations away from civilisation and you still persist in avoiding water.

Even the act of convincing you to leave home, to leave your loved ones behind and go on the run, this in itself is a danger to your safety if the majority of the threats were not actually there.

The danger lies not just in trying to survive on your own under this delusion, but dealing with the problems of the law and the “normal” world around us.

Think about it. Think about every time certain Runners have achieved impossible feats against The Fears. Stood before them and openly taunted them, survived the encounters.

Think about how many Runners are “important” enough to be targeted by multiple Fears and still survive them for lengths of time.

What if they’re not?

What if it is all a long game by The Choir?

Analysis:

The truth is that this is very much a hypothesis and requires a large amount of testing. Testing that would be practically impossible to ever complete.

The chances of multiple Fears targeting one individual is as high as it being The Choir responsible for most of it, one cannot fully decipher their motives, their natures.

However it is an interesting and horrifying thought to dwell on. If The Choir is capable of this, it is indeed a dangerous embodiment of paranoia.

Until there is an accepted fact, we must never expect this to be the true scenario for all encounters.

But we must remain vigilant with any dangers we encounter, we must think up new ways to defend ourselves and stay safe on the possibility that it could be all a trick.

I will continue my research and observations; science must soldier on if we are to ever expand our knowledge of survival against The Fears.

Introductions

I suppose the accurate way to introduce myself would be to tell you that I am an observer.

Once I was merely an employee in a library, whiling away the hours organising the many shelves of books. One day I came across a suspicious looking youth.

The girl would step between the aisles of books hesitantly, would frequently look around corners before stepping out into the open. A level of paranoia that showed she believed in the possibility of attack at any moment, a paranoia that to the casual eye would appear as a potential miscreant up to no good.

The only time she began to feel more at ease was when she made use of the library’s open-to-public computers, something I am now aware of as a shared trait amongst bloggers.

Perhaps it is as theorised; a compulsion brought on by the effects of encountering The Fears? Or perhaps the companionship of similar victims brings a sense of calm? …perhaps it is both?

 It will have to be something else I observe, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The girl did not linger, in her haste she had abandoned –or left intentionally- a completed notebook.

My original plan was to deliver it to our lost and found, but I felt a sense of wonder as I looked at the worn and beaten cover, gazed at the symbols scratched into it.

I took it with me and delved into the contents, she had been using it as her support between reaching computers. Some pages were simply times logged in, no doubt an attempt to notice any possible lost time.

Other pages were simply a typical diary for her to vent some of this horror off her chest.

While the remainder pages detailed what she had seen and discovered of each of The Fears so far, her experiences being on the run, along with a collection of website urls, resources for her to continue learning and surviving.

She referred to her main danger as “A chorus of delusions.” My studies lead me to believe that she is referring to what many would call “The Choir.”

It was through this journal that I discovered the existence of these beings beyond our complete comprehension. Entities to which our laws, morals and physics did not apply to.

My curiosity was peaked and my pursuit of more knowledge led me to my own encounter. For you see, it had stopped being a simple interest, it had become my obsession.

I had been telegraphing my obsessed investigating so clearly that the one referred to as EAT retaliated.

…no, retaliated gives our species far too much credit.

It was more like how a human would lazily swat at their arm upon feeling a fly land upon it. No thought, no care, just a minor distraction.

Maybe that still gives us too much credit; to even imply that we are a distraction to them? But I digress.

It was by luck that I had momentarily abandoned the water I had poured at work, and that a parched colleague would pick it up.

We were the only two on break at that time, I watched as the infected body struggled to adapt to the sudden ownership of a bipedal form; legs shaking as it slowly slumped into a sitting posture on the floor.

A more cautiously prepared individual would have ran and not looked back, but I saw my moment to truly discover the depths of what I was witnessing.

I sat down on a chair in front of the infected individual; I stared at it and watched as its vacant eyes slowly looked back to me.

I greeted it with “hello there” the most I got was it managing to stutter out “hel” eight times and “th” a further five times.

I audibly displayed admiration to it, explained that I had heard it took far more of the “ink” that replaces water to reach even this stage. I wondered aloud to it whether this was a concentrated dosage or if EAT was getting stronger.

It tried repeating my first sentence again, but mixing in random syllables from my other words, still adjusting to our minds, our way of speaking.

Much to my misfortune, I got no further than seeing it begin to actually formulate complete sentences with its imitations of my words. Suited men entered the room and took it away, showing different government identifications to me and claiming the “suspect” was in possession of dangerous toxins and was a high-priority threat.

I accepted their story, knowing full well that I had encountered one of the organisations that try to fix problems with these types of situations.

That was two months ago, since then I have been far more careful with studies. I am now here to gather even more information; particularly I plan to investigate why the actions of each Fear differ from individual to individual.

In doing so I will gladly dive more into the understanding of time and space, explore the potential of different universes and of this ‘dimensional bleeding’.

In the end I shall discover as much as possible about The Fears, I would like to think that I may revolutionise the field of science…simply by actively researching and documenting all I can on the existence of these eldritch beings.

My greetings to all who come to this blog, you may call me Dr. Clover.

I am here to observe, learn and fight.