A Timeline of Events

Before I get very deep into this, I wanted to make one post containing all the information that makes me believe beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is, in fact, a real NoSleep story. It's done in the form of a timeline of all the information we have to date.

• Early 1990's: a haunted house event takes place that makes a young boy begin to feel supernatural activity constantly. In the stories, this person is called Ian James McDermott. In real life, I met this person many years later in seminary, and I knew him as C.

• 1997: C begins attendance at Atlantic Baptist Bible College in Chester, Virginia. He does not reveal his gift. By now, however, he has been studying the paranormal, supernatural, occult, magick, theology, demonology and angelology, world religions and apologetics against them, psychology, stage magic, music, computer programming, art, martial arts (he and several others used to spar with live swords in the woods behind the school), and a number of other disciplines and talents. He was a completely regular-looking guy, who some thought might be Arabic, but he was actually I think half Portuguese and half Scottish. He was hairy all over but balding and he couldn't shave fast enough to keep the admin from giving him five dollar fines almost every day. He wore glasses and always dressed as though inspired by the Fourth Doctor Who. Many people considered him family, and looked at him as a crazy uncle. He always said weird, nonsensical things that would make the entire room erupt into laughter, and he would sometimes just move about campus by rolling or building an X-Wing out of cardboard around the campus lawnmower. No one knew what he was really like until the Night of a Thousand Hells, and then he was never his old self again.

• 1998: G joins the school. He is a few years younger than C, but many consider him a genius and he was able to graduate school much younger than the people around him. Still, he is strange-looking... around 5'3" tall, husky, wearing thick transitioning glasses and a black goatee. He dresses up for every holiday in gaudy light-up garb, and despite being totally serious at all times, including those, he sometimes erupts into making goofy sounds and faces at people just to freak them out or make them laugh. Not many people know about the horrible marks all over his back that looked like he had been mauled by a bear. He would tell you it was back surgery he had as a young child, but one of his roommates who had an experience with Bloody Mary as a child hinted that he had confided his secret to G, so G had confided the same. This story is, unfortunately, all hearsay for now. G was the more stern of the two, and even after the Event, his demeanor didn't change one bit.

• 1999: C is suspended for the first time,  supposedly for watching the original X Men movie (over Spring Break).

• Early 2000: C is suspended again,  this time allegedly listening to Johnny B.  Goode, again,  over Spring Break. Rumors spread about him getting into so much trouble for such dumb reasons because he and G were the leaders of some type of cult that claimed to run around battling the forces of evil.  The name we knew it by then was The Funk Club.

• Mid 2000: C returns, and although I am his roommate for a quarter I am not aware at this time that he and G continue leading the Funk Club on expeditions.

• Mid to Late 2000: I begin experiencing paranormal activity in the dorms, and learn that I'm not the only one. My friend Jerrod introduces me to G,  and through him I learn C is one of the leaders of the Funk Club.  I am adopted into the family.

• End of 2000: everyone bides their time, waiting.  All is quiet for a while.  Then the sentient shadows start appearing everywhere.

• January 2001: over Christmas Break,  I take what is known as The Ride down what is called Snake Road with C and G.  I go from being scared of shadows I've seen my whole life to being able to stand against them like C did that night just from what they tell me,  but at a great cost: I now know that everything... Everything...  Is real...and that's a scary exchange,  if you think about it.  By this time,  some ESPERS might have already either gone away and refused to talk to any of us anymore, actually genuinely gone nuts, and I believe one at this time may have also actually committed suicide.

• 2001: I begin accompanying the Funk Club on some of their adventures and investigations.  By this time,  B and D had also joined the school and the Funk Club,  and had worked their way up to being in the inner sanctum.  B was a tall,  lanky,  doofy kid with a big nose and glasses who had grown up as a missionary to Tanzania and by some odd coincidence was the brother of the young preacher who married one of C's childhood sweethearts. D was shorter, but not as short as G, and although he was a little chubby and more built in the shoulders he was the lightest among them all. He was a nerdy skater kid who always seemed high, even though his Evangelical upbringing and own personal code of ethics dictated that he likely never did anything harder than soda.

• Mid 2001: a witch-hunt begins within the seminary administration to unseat the very powerful Funk Club,  which can't hide now that most male students in the dormitories were members. It focuses on C,  but leaves G alone as C had been more of the figurehead and G had remained relatively squeaky-clean for most of their antics. To torment him and other leadership of the Club into coming out of hiding,  they begin to wrongly accuse random students known to be affiliated with the Club of C's crimes,  which included breach of college rules and starting a revolution against the administration and the Board of Directors, a group of local Independent Fundamental Baptist preachers who oversaw operations.

• Late 2001: C is finally expelled.  The story G later told everyone is that he had gone in to the library to write his term paper on a Saturday afternoon, when the library would normally be open. He opened the door,  finding it unlocked and the librarian not present, turned down the thermostat, moved a chair, booted up his own portable word processor, and wrote his paper for about 5 hours, occasionally getting up to use the bathroom and look through books, reportedly reshelving them properly. The school said that whoever went in to the library that day had picked the lock (another skill C had already demonstrated and gotten in trouble for before), tampered with school equipment and property, damaged the thermostat, and accessed school computers without a proper authorization. They blamed it on B. C,  outraged, came forward and gave himself up, and was immediately permanently expelled. The reason listed was Witchcraft, referencing an obscure Old Testament quote that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. C reportedly flipped the Dean's desk and cursed his career in the ministry. Last I heard,  he was mowing church parking lots in Vermont. When he left, the entire campus got in their cars and followed him to the end of the long road through the woods leaving the property called Baptist Lane, honking their horns and running up to him to wish him well,  exchange information, give him money and even hugs and kisses.

• 2002: All is quiet at the school.  I draw away from the Funk Club, preferring not to talk about it at all. C gets smuggled into the campus in people's trunks every so often and people leave with him to go on adventures and investigations which I no longer participate in.

• Sometime in 2002/2003: I'm invited to a meeting at a Denny's in Manassas of all the people who ever were part of the Funk Club.  I meet Rachel, a pretty girl I had seen around campus but didn't know too well. It's reported that only the day previous,  C and G had made a special emergency trip to see her and free her from a demonic possession that had made the EMT's on the scene get violently nauseated whenever they got too close to her. Out of all the people who were part of the Funk Club, not including those I wasn't aware of, only about one third show up...  Still almost twenty people. C passes a motion to take this across the country,  maybe across the world, travelling and helping people with paranormal, supernatural, and cult-related problems. He wants to call it ESPER: Extraordinary Supernatural Phenomenon Explored and Revealed.  The motion is passed unanimously.

• 2003: all throughout this year, until early 2004 when the school screwed me on tuition right before I graduated and I had to leave in shame a few credits from the end, the administration somehow manages to completely eradicate the on-campus remnants of the Funk Club. G had already graduated and was reported to be travelling with C. ESPER never sees the light of day.

• 2004: C returns for a time and he and B come up with a plan to topple the school and destroy the careers of the Board when it's discovered they had embezzled at least a million dollars by holding fundraisers among the students and their families for unnecessary campus buildings that never got built...  Or even started.  Soon after,  the school closes it's doors.  Today,  to the best of my knowledge,  Atlantic is a ruin now.

• Late 2004: I attend a Christian youth camp at Gettysburg College as a counselor,  along with friends from seminary Will and Big D. We run into C and G there,  posing as counselors as well to investigate the grounds. They gather some campers and run an investigation of the theater building,  the bell tower,  and the old hospital wing (now classrooms, I think). Most activity happens in the theater,  and C and G's group retreat. They regroup and go back in,  but some leave and report C had been injured and one camper had initials carved into his wrist that were later found on a plaque he could not have seen yet. Will, Big D, and I take a third group of campers and go in looking for them. According to reports taken from the logs of the investigators and a quick "watch sync" check, it turned out we had all been in the same large room for about 30 minutes looking for each other and screaming each other's names. No party heard the other,  although at one point in time a tall black figure opened what had previously been a locked door and then disappeared,  and all three parties claimed to have seen it (although there were disagreements about the details even within the parties).

• 2005 - 2013: various media begins to appear on the internet,  obviously completely fabricated and fictional stories,  but based in part on real ESPER case files, some of which I'd heard of. I believe this was in an effort to draw people in to rebuild ESPER, which according to some that kept up was still operational. It's during this time that I renounce my faith.

• 2013: the Ransom Saga, by Reddit user /u/capnjammer80 is posted to /r/nosleep. It seems mostly fictional,  and includes references to time and dimension hopping,  phasing out of existence, and a haunted town in the shadow of a mansion both of which aren't always there, or in the same time period. However,  it contains several "backstory" chapters,  most of which me and many people I once knew experienced right alongside the misnamed and amalgamated main characters.

• Sometime in 2014: Redditors playing along with the story discover some shocking facts,  like the existence of some key elements in the story, mass memories of a place like Ransom,  and evidence that something may have existed on the supposed site of Ransom,  triangulated by commentary and then released as an image of a Google Map of Ransom with the town map drawn over it and key locations labelled. This map eerily matched later Wayback maps showing something partially existing there but phasing in and out over time, just like in the story. Redditors begin visiting the site of Ransom, and some are chased off (legitimately) by residents and law enforcement from a neighboring town. Because of this, OP posts a retraction on NoSleepOOC, claiming the story to be fake. Everyone went home,  and the story which had been at the front page of /r/nosleep for months finally died and was forgotten. Sometime between then and now: OP goes silent for a while, then begins posting as a regular person, claiming to be an atheist, an artist, married, and desperately in need of a job. Another long silence, and suddenly he is back once more, now sounding completely insane and expounding on fears that he may soon vanish for good. Before he does,  he gives a warning that dark and possibly apocalyptic times are very near, and that every human being knows in the depths of their hearts the ritual that will destroy the universe. He claims that if anyone looked into the sun in the height of the sky during a solar eclipse they may be tempted to perform this ritual, which could be different for each person. Maybe coincidentally, this post was made very near to a full solar eclipse, and this is the eclipse during which American President Donald Trump looked directly into the eclipse. OP also mentions a poem about how two Wizards are coming... One dark and one light, one who "holds the hand of Kali" and one who "stands in the Great Chasm. " 

• 2015: I try to contact some old friends from seminary. Many of them know of my disfellowshipping and refuse to speak to me. I can't find any of the main body of ESPER anymore. The few I find weren't too involved,  but they said the group might still be operating, although on a very small scale. Some still were in contact with G, who had gone into a self-imposed exile somewhere in the Virginias or Carolinas and had apparently become desperately depressed and suicidal. Through him,  and others, some heard that C had been wandering the country. 

• 2016: I hear from two old contacts directly, and from three others that are still in contact with G that they heard C found his way to the Bay Area for a while, and then had gone to the Sonoran Desert to study the works of Carlos Castaneda. It's then that I first hear that he is calling himself a Wizard and has not only performed miracles but taught others how to do miracles, specifically among members of at-risk Latino communities.

• 2018: I decide to make a documentary on Petscop, believing the supernatural theories going around to be incorrect and instead choosing to believe instead that the game and videos are either the work of the family member of a murderer trying to help catch him or the boasting of the killer himself. While reading as many scary stories as I can, I run across the Ransom Saga, get lost in the NoSleep itself,  but then read the backstories and realized I had experienced these events in person.

I then began my investigation,  and here we are at this point.