Case File JL024-R
Unfortunately for us — and even more so for you, out there — the concept of society, group mentality, or even the desire for companionship and inherent need to be part of something bigger aren't traits the human race alone possess.
In my job working for M.A.D I — and many others — have found, during our many years of research and on the field, that some anomalies can be prone to the same needs and traits. This is a very clean and clinical way to say that some of the weird things you see in your nightmares and horror movies sometimes like the bond and form their own little dark clique. It's rare. Very rare. But when it happens it's bad. Really bad.
I have worked in this department for many years now and during all this time I have tracked one of those "cliques". Even now only some of the anomalies forming it have been contained and some remain at large, unable to be located or stopped. They are dangerous, they are insidious, they will get in your life, in your mind, in your heart until they consumed everything they need or want. And chances are, they'll share stories of your death over whatever version of a 'good cup of tea' sentient anomalies have afterwards.
I would tell you to be extra careful if you run into one of those, but you'd be incapable of realizing what sort of thing is after you to begin with anyway. So let me say it again, if anything weird happens around you: you know where to find me. The only other option is death.
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Case File #JL024-R: The Bone Collector Researcher: [REDACTED] Phenomenon Type: Sentient Interaction Risk: Persistent Threat Level: Crimson Containment Classification: Contained. Predatory. (conducted by Containment Team Bravo, led by [REDACTED], see case file #MH045-C) Research Priority: Critical
This anomaly’s origins remain speculative at best. Historical records from [REDACTED] detail folklore concerning a malevolent entity referred to as 'Ossa', described as “the one who collects what was stolen.” We have found, amongst other things, lost historical accounts going into great details about rituals presumably performed by villagers in the 1700s to ward off this presence after unexplained deaths and disappearances. These accounts suggest a correlation between the anomaly and a string of disturbed and desecrated burial grounds that had been plaguing the area at the time, though no verifiable source confirms this connection.
The entity those accounts named as 'Ossa' has been confirmed to be the anomaly colloquially referred to as 'The Bone Collector'. With its' successful containment from Containment Team Bravo led by [REDACTED] (see case file #MH045-C), the Directorate's Containment Facilities now houses two out of the four anomalies forming the quartet of entities we have taken about calling the 'Hollow Court'.
To date, the Agency has documented six notable incidents attributed to the 'Bone Collector' including:
- 1887, [REDACTED], England: A local historian reported human bones appearing in his locked study over the course of three nights. The bones reassembled into a complete skeleton before his sudden disappearance. - 1993, [REDACTED], Italy: A hiker discovered disassembled skeletal remains arranged in ritualistic patterns deep in the [REDACTED] woods. Victim remains unrecovered, presumed deceased. - 2012, [REDACTED], Texas: A farmstead owner encountered a skeletal figure pacing the property line. Two family members vanished shortly afterward; only their skeletal remains were recovered, arranged neatly on the farmhouse porch.
Although none of those apparitions led to successful containment efforts due to the elusive nature of the anomaly (as are all the 'Hollow Court' members known for), the statement of the anomaly's latest victim did, in fact, aid Containment Team Bravo in tracking down the 'Bone Collector' for good. Said victim's story, one Lauren [REDACTED], came to our attention via an online post — now expunged from the internet by our experts — shared by the victim herself on a forum where it appeared to have found virality as a 'creepypasta'. Unfortunately the tale seemed to resemble what we knew the 'Bone Collector's MO to be. It took very little investigation into both the settings described in the story and the current whereabouts of Lauren [REDACTED] to verify that our suspicions were correct.
Ms. [REDACTED] shared her encounter following a series of unexplained events that befell her in the rural settlement of [REDACTED]. Initial reports suggested a pattern of localized disturbances involving skeletal remains appearing in private residences and public spaces. Subsequent investigations have confirmed the anomaly exhibits properties of self-reassembly, environmental manipulation, and psychological fixation on targeted individuals. Her account, detailed in this report, is the most comprehensive firsthand documentation of a direct encounter with the 'Bone Collector'. Following her recent arrival to [REDACTED], she was targeted by the anomaly within days of her relocation. What began as what she believed to be harmless pranks escalated to increasingly invasive and hostile manifestations, culminating in her escape from the scene and subsequent forum posting. Her experiences provide critical insight into the anomaly’s methods and behavioural escalation.
Although thoroughly erased from the web, we have kept in our possession a copy of Ms. [REDACTED] story for the sake of our research and this report. You can find this account of event added underneath.
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My name is Lauren [REDACTED] and until a few days ago, I thought I was making the best decision of my life.
In a world were everyone and everything seems to be chasing after the next adrenaline rush, I was trying to float against the current for once. So I didn’t move to [REDACTED] for excitement. That was the last thing I needed after the burnout of city life and the continuous onslaught of friends, family and strangers trying to tell me about all those amazing, crazy things I, apparently, needed to try. A quiet town tucked away in the woods, a one-street grocery store, and neighbors who mostly kept to themselves—that what sounded like paradise to me at this time in my life.
The house was full of rustic charm, a cabin facing the one, singular, main street that crossed the entirety of [REDEACTED] and surrounded by luscious woods at the back. Wooden walls, wooden floors, wooden porch. Wooden everything, as far as the eye could see. It was cozy, it was quiet and most of all it was mine. A place where I could rebuild in peace, by myself and for myself, without the input of a million people that shouldn't have a say in how I chose to live my life. In one word, it was perfect.
Until it became the scene of my personal nightmare instead.
The first bone showed up three days after I moved into my new house.
I was up early, unpacking boxes, still marveling at how quiet mornings here were. I was so used to the bustle of the city, the yelling seeping from the upstairs apartment, the incessant honking. But here they were no car horns, no rumbling trains—just the soft rustle of trees in the wind and the lovely chime of a bicycle bell when the local paperboy whooshed down the main street to continue his route. When I stepped out onto the porch with my coffee, I leaned onto the railing to admire the view for a minute.
That's when I noticed it. Right there on the railing, laying next to my elbow, was a small, white bone, about the length of my finger, perched perfectly at the edge.
I picked it up, turning it over in my hand. It was smooth, pristinely clean, like it had been polished with great care by time and the elements combined. Probably some bird bone, I figured. I was a city girl but from what I had seen on TV and online, it wasn’t unusual to find animal remains in a place like this, with nothing but nature all around. It was a weird thing to find first thing in the morning but I wasn't particularly alarmed. I tossed it into the woods and didn’t think about it again for a while.
The second bone appeared the next day.
This time, it was on my kitchen windowsill—i thought it looked like a rib, thin and slightly curved. This was slightly more alarming. I could understand animal bones scattered about outside, but how did one land in my kitchen? I checked but the window was closed all the way and the sill was on the inside. I looked around but nothing seemed like it had been ransacked, stolen or even remotely touched. It would have been hard to tell exactly, with boxes still strewn about most rooms, but after some time to calm my nerves, I was pretty confident I hadn't been robbed and I chalked up the bone to a prank. Maybe the local kids wanted to mess with the new neighbour. [REDACTED] didn't look like the kind of place that saw outsiders joining their ranks often.
“Very funny,” I muttered, tossing it into the trash with a forced chuckle.
By the time the third bone showed up—a vertebra left on the driver's seat of my car—I wasn’t laughing anymore.
I started locking everything religiously. Doors, windows, even the shed out back. Whether I was inside or out on an errand, it didn't matter, everything was always locked. Double locked, if I could. If it was a prank to scare me off, it had the desired effect, I was scared. Not enough to run me out of town, I had sunk a good chunk of money into buying this house and burned one too many bridges in the city to return with my tail between my legs, but definitely enough to not let me feel safe in my own home anymore. I thought that upping my security would deter the little pranksters from sneaking in or around my house to leave their 'gifts' but the bones kept coming.
A femur leaning against the mailbox. A scapula on my pillow when I got home from a grocery run. More and more, at least one each day for over a week straight. The bones were getting larger, so much so that I was starting to fear they may not all be animal bones — or that any of them ever were in the first place. I sucked at natural sciences, always had. I hated blood, gore and anything in between unless it was in the pages of my favorite crime novels. So I'm not ashamed to say I couldn't tell the different between a cow bone and a human one at first glance. Still some of those bones seemed too human for me to shrug off the idea as easily as I had done so far. Regardless where they came from, each one was pristine, like they’d been scrubbed clean of every trace of flesh and blood. Like they had never even been inside a body.
I finally called the sheriff.
Sheriff [REDACTED] was a stout, middle-aged man with kind eyes and a voice like a gravel road. He looked exactly like I would've imagined the local authority of a place like this to look. And more importantly, him standing in my living room made me feel a bit safer for a few minutes. He took a long look at the femur I’d saved for evidence, his face scrunching comically as he inspected it.
“Looks old,” he said finally. “Probably from a deer.”
“I don't care if it's a deer, a cow or a dog,” I argued. “It was in my house.”
He shrugged. “Kids pulling a prank, most likely. I can assure you we don’t get much trouble around here, Ms. [REDACTED]. I'll find the troublemakers and tell them to stop spooking ya'. There ain't a thing for you to worry about.”
Maybe it should have, but his words didn't reassure me. Something in my gut told me it wasn't going to stop just because the nice Sherriff gave a bunch of local kids a scolding. Maybe it had been a prank at first but it felt more malicious than that now. Like I should be scared of what would be coming next. And I was scared. But I stuck it out.
I made a point to be extra nice to every single one of the locals for the entire week after that, smiling at everyone at the store, making small talk with the elderly residents, the whole nine yards. I thought that maybe if whoever was doing this saw that I belonged in their community, that I wouldn't be an 'outsider' forever, then they would stop and leave me be.
I was wrong.
If anything, my attempts to ingratiate myself into the community seemed to make things worse. More bones were showing up daily now and it wasn’t just my house they were targeting. No, it was everywhere I went. Even when I escaped my house for a few hours to shop or get a coffee, it was like I found them anywhere I looked. Even at work. On my desk, under my chair, inside a drawer. Once at the gas station, a vertebra rolled along the floor as I walked out of the store. I even found a jawbone resting in my shopping cart the next time I was out to restock my fridge.
It was a waking nightmare and I had no clue how to escape. I didn't know who was behind it and more importantly, how they were capable of knowing where I would be everyday well enough to leave bones for me — and only me — to see day after day. I couldn't take a step out of my bed without feeling dread filling me wondering where and when my eyes would catch on the next shiny, smooth bone.
By that point I was pretty sure most of those bones were human. I could mistake a human femur for a deer one or a phalange for a bird leg, but a whole jawbone, the exact shape my own jaw formed, was harder to mistake for anything else. But I had tried asking sheriff [REDACTED] for help again, and every time he had told me the bones were old, probably from a museum exhibit, or they were fake because they looked too clean or even that it was — for sure — simply coming from the waste disposal behind the taxidermy shop in town. "Nothing to worry about." closed the conversation every single time.
By the time I had received and discarded enough bones to form a complete skeleton, I had stopped sleeping.
On the Saturday of my third week in [REDACTED], I was laying motionless in bed, staring at the ceiling, willing my own body to fall asleep. It had to be past 3 AM and I couldn't remember the last day I had managed to get more than an hour or two of proper rest. That night wouldn't be the night to remedy that, however.
While I tried for the third time to count sheeps until boredom took me under, I heard a faint scraping sound, like fingernails dragging across wood. My heart jumped in my chest as I sat up, straining to hear. I knew they had to come in my house somehow to leave the bones, but I had never heard anything or seen anything amiss other than the bones themselves so far. I stopped breathing entirely, blinking even, focusing only on the quiet of the room. The sound came again, soft and muffled, from somewhere inside the house.
Gripping the aluminium baseball bat I’d started keeping by my bed for protection, I crept downstairs, careful to avoid the creaky steps. I was hoping I could catch whoever was doing this red handed and scare them enough to make it stop once and for all. The sound led me to the living room, where moonlight spilled through the windows.
That’s when I saw it.
The bones I’d thrown out, discarded, or ignored had all returned, neatly arranged on the rug covering the living room floor. A skull sat at the top, its hollow eyes staring up at me. The skeleton was incomplete but there was no mistaking it this time, the human form — stripped of anything but bare bones — was clear as day, almost shining under the moonlight. This was the most unsettling, most terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life, even after weeks of finding bones left for me at every corner.
I was pretty sure the sherrif would be of no help again and I didn't know what to do. So I left it there, sat on the floor and stared at it. I stared and stared until the sun was up. Nothing happened but I was too shaken to make it to work that day. Truthfully I was out of it for most of the morning, tiptoe-ing around the neatly placed skeleton while going about my routine, scared to even touch one bone off of it. By the time half the day had gone in a blur, I realized I started feeling more angry than scared. Enraged even. I had uprooted my whole life for the peace, quiet and safety that this place offered, but I had been terrorized day in and day out, enough to make me reconsider quitting my new job, abandoning the house and crawling back to my mother until I could get back on my feet somewhere else.
I was so angry I didn't think twice. I grabbed the baseball bat I had abandoned on the couch and I smashed it against the bones. Again and again and again, hearing them crack under the blows, seeing shards of them scatter across my rug, bone dust settling all over the place. I only stopped when I was too out of breath to continue. I don't know exactly how long I stood there, going at it but my arm ached and the disturbed silhouette of a skeleton was barely recognizable anymore.
Then I gathered the pieces into a garbage bag, drove out to the deepest part of the woods, and buried them.
I should’ve left town then. I didn't.
I went back home, slept for the first time in days and in the morning I went to work as if nothing had happened. The bones were gone and for the first time since moving to town, I didn’t find a single one of them anywhere during the day. For the first time, my day was peaceful, the house was quiet and nothing happened.
I was stupid enough to take that as a sign things were over. They weren’t.
I was nearly asleep the next day when I heard it. The distinct click-clack of bones scrapping against each other, tapping on my bedroom floor. I froze, my breath hitching. Silently I hoped it was my imagination, my sleep deprived brain preventing me from escaping the nightmare that had finally ended when I buried those bones. But I knew better. Slowly, I turned my head toward the noise.
It was standing at the foot of my bed, propped upright as if it had assembled itself. It was grotesque, misshapen. Some of the bones didn’t fit quite right, like they’d been stolen from different bodies and all stuck together by this black, dripping, goo.
More bones spilled out from the shadows, everywhere in my peripheral vision, all over my room, crawling toward it like insects. They snapped into place with sickening cracks and squelching sounds, merging with the goo to keep in place, fusing together into something larger. The skeleton didn't look human anymore, didn't look like anything but pure nightmare—it was a towering, grotesque amalgamation of limbs and spines, with too many arms and a skull that seemed to grin down directly at me, its' head tilted, dark substance dripping from its hollow sockets as it stared.
It took a step closer. I screamed. And then I ran.
I don't know how long I wandered the woods, I ran and ran for what seemed like hours, never looking over my shoulder, too scared it would be right on my heels. When the sun filtered through the trees and I tried to make my way back to town— to find the main road so I could get as far away as possible, I couldn't see to find it. No matter how far I went or in what direction, I just couldn't find [REDACTED] again. I wandered the woods for a day, maybe more, before I stumbled upon a road and was picked up by some truck on the way to the big city.
I don't know how I'm still alive to write this, but I know it won't last long. I heard it this morning. The click clack. It doesn't stop anymore. It's close and it wants me I think. And I don't think I can outrun it again. But I wanted someone to know what happened to me. I wanted to warn you.
If you find bones anywhere… run.
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Lauren [REDACTED]'s remains were discovered in a [REDACTED] motel room five days after her post was shared in the online forum. Her body was found collapsed on the bed, entirely devoid of skeletal structure. The skin, musculature, and organs were intact but displayed significant deformation due to the absence of internal support. Her flesh was pale, marked with faint, branching fractures suggestive of some corrosive force. On a desk nearby, her laptop remained powered on, displaying said post, as if she met her demise only instants after uploading it to the web.
The anomaly’s exact method of extracting and relocating Lauren’s skeletal structure remains unknown, but it is consistent with previous manifestations. Her bones have not been recovered to date, but we are gearing towards more invasive methods of research on the 'Bone Collector' once his containment status is confirmed to be more stable by the staff of Site-12's containment facility and the safety of research staff in proximity to the anomaly can be guaranteed. It is my belief that some of her bones, as well as many others, will be found within the anomaly itself.
Theories regarding the 'Bone Collector' suggest the anomaly exhibits an intent-driven behavior pattern, fixating on a single individual at a time until its' purpose — supposedly to collect their bones for its' own use or collection — is completed. There is no evidence amongst all events related to this anomaly that would prove it to be capable or willing to split its' focus between multiple victims at once, making its' dangers very narrow and concentrated. Additionally, I noted a striking resonance between the anomaly’s activity and regional folklore, particularly the figure of 'Ossa' mentioned in historical texts about the [REDACTED] area. The rituals described in those accounts suggest a localized cultural awareness of the anomaly, though it remains unclear whether these practices were defensive measures or inadvertent catalysts for its activity.
Containment Team Bravo was deployed to scout the surroundings as soon as Lauren's account was in our hands and we linked it to the 'Bone Collector' and the 'Hollow Court'. They established a perimeter around [REDACTED], employing high-frequency resonance emitters to deter reassembly of its form and managed to keep it in this transient state long enough to escort the anomaly to the closest containment facility, on Site-12. However maintaining safe containment remains complicated at present. The 'Bone Collector' had to be moved to a cell on the complete opposite end of the facility from the 'Red Gentleman', the second member of the 'Hollow Court' that is contained on the same Site. Close proximity to one another, paired with a form of psychic communication we haven't been able to understand or prevent as of yet, seemed to enrage both of them as well as surrounding inmates leading to increasing dangers for the staff and higher chances of containment breach. You can find a detailed account and explanation of the entire containment process and status in case file #MH045-C, written by Investigator [REDACTED], leader of Containment Team Bravo.
As of now, Lauren [REDACTED]’s account serves as a critical document for understanding the psychological and physical escalation of the 'Bone Collector'. It has, thus far, provided invaluable insight into the anomaly’s nature. Future research will prioritize isolating the mechanism by which the anomaly selects and harvests victims, with emphasis on identifying potential countermeasures against its reassembly processes in order to make its' containment safe and secure in a long term capacity.
Signed, Dr. [REDACTED] Researcher, Research Division of [REDACTED], Site-16
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Off-the-record notes: I know it's not my prerogative to pick and choose, but would it be possible to fill an official request not to be assigned to the Containment Team Bravo cases from now on? Nothing against them, they work very efficiently but MH keeps putting targeted and antagonistic notes and asides in his reports. I find it unprofessional and I don't know what sort of grudge he's nursing. He even hinted at having done research about my… circumstances. Surely you can understand.