Statement of Martha Delaney, regarding a Halloween festival held in the village of Brae Hollow. Statement taken 8th of October, 2012.
I suppose I should start with the masks. Everyone wore them that night, not just the children, not just the drunks from the pub staggering up the lane pretending to be ghosts. Everyone. The entire village.
We’d done Halloween before, of course, but never like that. Brae Hollow’s always been small and a bit forgotten, it’s one of those places you drive through once and then can’t find again, no matter how carefully you follow the map. But that year, the council announced they’d “revive the old traditions.” I remember those exact words, printed on faded orange paper and nailed to the noticeboard outside the church. Revive the old traditions.
No one questioned it much. We were just glad something was happening. There’d be a festival on the village green, a parade, a bonfire. People were told to make their own masks — not cheap plastic ones, but proper ones, hand-made. The notice said it was to “honour the spirit of the season.” It sounded quaint then. Harmless.
I made my mask out of papier-mâché, painted white and streaked with gold. A little sunburst, I thought, how cheerful. But when I arrived at the green, everyone’s masks looked… wrong.
Too real. Some were carved from wood, some stitched from cloth, and others… I swear this, looked like faces. Not copies, not papier-mâché, but actual faces, dried and painted, lips sewn into smiles that didn’t fit their shape.
No one seemed disturbed. They laughed and danced under strings of lanterns that flickered like fireflies. The music was strange too, not the cheerful fiddles we were used to, but low, pulsing notes that thudded somewhere just beneath hearing. It was the kind of sound that makes your ribs hum, that sinks into the base of your skull until you forget what silence is.
I tried to ask about it, who’d brought the instruments, what tune it was, but everyone I spoke to just tilted their heads, as though listening for something else entirely.
Then, at nine o’clock sharp, the mayor climbed onto the bandstand. He wore a mask made of wax, so smooth it shone in the lanternlight, featureless except for two eyeholes. His voice came through thick, as though the mask muffled it.
“Tonight,” he said, “we remember.”
He lifted his hands and the music stopped. The silence after was suffocating. The air seemed to ripple, as though it too wore a mask and had just removed it. I looked around, expecting someone to laugh or shout or break the tension, but they were all just still.
Then the mayor said, “Let the Hollow open,” and the ground answered him.
I know how it sounds. But I swear, the grass beneath the bonfire began to sink, like someone pulling a sheet tight from underneath. The flames leaned toward the hollow, bending in the same direction, and the earth gave way. A pit yawned wide, ringed with flickering orange light. And from it came the smell of old things; damp earth, blood, and iron.
No one screamed. Not a single person. Instead, they began to remove their masks. One by one.
I thought I’d be relieved, to see familiar faces again, but as each mask came off, something stayed hidden. The faces beneath weren’t quite right. Their eyes were wrong. Glassy, too wide, or not wide enough. One man’s jaw seemed unhinged, hanging open like he’d forgotten how to close it. Another’s skin rippled faintly, as if something beneath it shifted when she breathed.
I backed away, but no one stopped me. They didn’t even see me. Their attention was on the hollow, on whatever waited inside it.
I think that’s when I first saw it, movement at the edge of the pit, something crawling up. It wasn’t a creature, not exactly. More like a collection of shapes, arms and masks and faces blending into each other. Each mask it wore was different, and yet all of them looked somehow familiar. I thought I saw mine, my little sunburst of gold, near the top.
Someone began to speak then. I think it was the mayor, though his mask was gone and his face looked soft, like clay pressed too hard. “Welcome home,” he said. And the thing… it smiled.
The crowd began to hum that same pulsing rhythm from before, the one that throbbed in the bones. I covered my ears, but it didn’t help. The sound wasn’t in the air; it was inside me. I could feel it tugging, as if something under my skin wanted to answer back.
Then they started walking toward the pit, toward the thing. One by one, they stepped forward and vanished into it, swallowed whole. No screams. No hesitation. Just quiet, obedient movement, like they’d done this before. Like they’d been waiting for it.
I don’t remember running, but I must have. My next memory is of the woods beyond the village, the branches clawing at my hair as I stumbled through the dark. I could still hear the hum behind me, faint but insistent, echoing through the trees.
When I finally turned back, Brae Hollow wasn’t there. Not the bonfire, not the green, not the lights,
Just empty fields under a clouded sky.
I came back the next morning with the police. I told them about the pit, the masks, the music. They humoured me, I think, figured I’d had too much to drink. But when we reached the village green, there was something. Not a pit, no. Just a circle of dead grass, perfectly round, and in the centre, a pile of masks.
Some were broken, others smeared with dirt, but I recognised them all — the wax, the wood, the cloth. And on top, lying like a crown, was mine. The gold paint was flaking, and the inside was wet.
They said it was condensation.
The police wrote it up as a prank, a “Halloween ritual gone wrong.” They never found the mayor, or any of the others. The houses stood empty for a few months, then were sold off cheap to new families. They’ve repainted everything since. Looks like any other village now.
Sometimes, I pass through Brae Hollow on my way north, and it’s always the same; too quiet, too clean. No children in the streets. No laughter. Just a faint hum, low and steady, like someone tuning a radio just out of range.
I stopped once. Parked the car by the green, got out to stretch my legs. The air smelled faintly of smoke, though there hadn’t been a fire. And then I saw something in the grass half-buried, almost hidden.
Not mine this time. But close enough.
I think… I think it followed me.
I keep seeing faces that aren’t quite right; in reflections, in the windows of shops, in photographs. They always seem to be watching, waiting for me to look back.
And last night (Halloween again) someone knocked at my door. I thought it was children, trick-or-treaters. But when I opened it, there was no one there. Just a mask on the step. Wax, smooth and shining, with two hollow eyes.
I didn’t touch it. I locked the door and turned off the lights, but I swear I could still hear the humming. It came from the walls, from the pipes, from the air itself. It said, “Let the Hollow open.”
And when I looked at the mirror in my hallway, my reflection was wearing a mask.
Archivist Noted: No record of a village named “Brae Hollow” exists in county archives. Coordinates provided by the witness correspond to an uninhabited stretch of countryside, though satellite images indicate faint structural outlines matching the described location. Audio distortion present in the recording aligns with previous instances of The Stranger’s influence, particularly those linked to masks and false faces.
Recommend containment measures for any recovered artefacts from the site. Do not attempt to wear or replicate the masks.
Echoes of the Eldritch is a fan made podcast with elements of the Magnus Archives. Incorporating the same elements that sends shivers down your spine, and making the fears your own. If you’re interested, follow this blog and join us through our discord link! We hope to see you there :)
Come help us make a continuing story based of The Magnus Archives! We'll need as much help as we can get :) | 183 members
