As a kid we would go to upstate New York on vacation to meet up with extended family members.
My Grandparents owned a house which was passed down from their parents.
I loved playing with my cousins. The area was completely remote. You had to drive a mile down a private road to get to the house.
We went at least once a summer, but that tragically ended in the later 1980’s when two of my uncles and my nine year old cousin vanished one day.
As I recall the story, my whole extended family about 30 people were staying the weekend in the house. Some of the older kids would sleep in tents outside because there just wasn’t enough room and the kids liked camping as well.
It wasn’t uncommon for my uncle’s to look for an excuse to get drunk and pretend to hunt deer.
We were all city dwellers and none of my uncle’s really knew anything about hunting rather than put bullets in rifle; aim at deer; and shoot.
One Saturday afternoon, my two uncle’s and cousin ventured out into the woods. Typically, they would get drunk and return after a couple of hours. That Saturday, they didn’t return. I recall about supper time the adults joking that we will see them returning through those woods at anytime with no deer.
As nighttime approached and still no signs of their return, then I remembered the mood had changed and the adults started to freak out.
The adults went out searching for them. I remember being able to hear my family members yell their names through the woods.
Eventually, the police arrived and they formed a search party. They searched all night and the next day with no sign of them.
We extended our stay at the house so my parents could assist in the search.
We stayed for a week and there was still no sign of them. We went back to NYC and my dad would go back to upstate NYC every weekend to search for them.
Understandingly, we stopped going there as a vacation retreat.
Two years went bye, then five years went bye, then eventually 20 years with no bodies being found. There was nothing. No clues at all.
It really changed everything in my family. None of the adults ever seemed happy again.
Fast forward to just a few months ago, I was perusing through free horror movies on demand. You know the ones where you have to watch commercials and really weren’t good enough to be featured on say Netflix.
I read the previews for one of the movies and it was eerily similar to what happened to my uncle’s and cousin.
I decided to watch the movie and the coincidences were extremely unsettling.
There was a long road to the house, there was about the same amount of people who were at the house that Saturday, even to the smallest of details on how three of my male cousins would play on this large boulder in back of the house.
I was glued to the tv because this was literally going to explain what happened to my lost family members.
Then it eventually got to the part, where one of the locals who lived in the woods kidnapped the three of them and sadisticly killed them.
I immediately phoned my brother and in turn he contacted the rest of the family members.
Eventually, we contacted the police and they interrogated the writer of the movie.
Based on the police investigation, it was determined that the actual writer who took credit for the screenplay didn’t write the movie. He actually payed a ghostwriter through bitcoins for his ideas on Reddit.
My family and the police watched the movie for any clues on where the bodies could be.
Another search party was assembled and the bodies were found buried in the basement of a remote cabin about 10 miles from my grandparents upstate house.
The whole family was just perplexed. Who wrote the movie? Who knew all of these intimate details of our family?
The police were unable to figure out who sent the story through Reddit. The ghost writer went through great lengths to hide his computer/phones IP address.
My whole family went through every possible suspect including everyone in the family. Everyone agreed it couldn’t be anyone in the upstate house that day.
Then, weeks went bye and I must of watched the movie two hundred times and still no suspect.
Then one day,I was watching old home movies and something extremely sinister occurred to me.
My grandfather back in the early 1980’s would draw lines. He would draw the lines on paper, on wood with the pointed end of nails, basically on anything as a nervous tick. Then after my uncles and cousin disappeared he stopped doing it, so I completely forgot about it.
Those lines were important because I remembered seeing two of them in an indiscreet area on the inside door of the cabin.
I knew I really had to sit and think before I accused anyone of anything.
Then, I came up with a possible scenario. My grandfather told my two uncles and cousin to go to the cabin and he would meet them there. Then, when the search party went out to look for them, my grandfather went out on his own to the cabin and killed them.
My grandfather then went back to burry the bodies in the cabin.
I explained the scenario to the rest of my family and most of them agreed with me and were in shock and horror.
My grandfather was dead so he couldn’t be held accountable, but I knew the motive.
He wanted the upstate house for himself. My grandparents were the only ones who continued to visit the house after my uncles and cousin vanished.
Still the mystery remains,who actually wrote the story? My grandfather was dead when the writer of the movie received the story from the ghost writer.
I don’t think whoever wrote the story was actually involved in the plot or the actual murders. I think the ghost writer just wanted to tell what they knew.
Talking to the rest of my family, they remembered my grandfather veering off from the rest of the search party only to return hours later. They also remember my grandfather returning from one of the searches covered in sweat and dirt.
Everyone who was there that week corroborated those events regarding my grandfather and everyone agreed it was virtually impossible for anyone to have assisted my grandfather.
Also, everyone agreed that someone who was there that Saturday was the Ghostwriter. Potentially, even my grandmother, which would really be dark because there was actually bitcoins exchanged for the story.
