As war descends across the globe, a small Cape Cod town confronts hysteria over a mysterious figure said to be tormenting residents. With the town’s children at risk, a group of young “Devil Hunters” take action.

***

At 14 years old, Joey Janard could look back and remember being younger and cat-curious, watching the fire at the school while the flames were still flickering and black coils of smoke poured up into the sky. The police could issue denials until they ran out of breath, but there had been too many eyewitnesses, too many unexplained encounters, and now the fires…

The so-called Devil of the Dunes was here.

Four homes burned. Then the high school went up like a gasoline-soaked candle. Joey stopped his bike and stood with the crowd watching fire Chief Julian Lewis and his men attempt to settle the blaze. The sun was just cooling below the horizon, but the fire kept the area around the building bright as a cloudless noon. Shadows stretched from the school’s playground into the woods. They moved in rhythm with the flames as they jumped, jittered and crashed.

All except for one shadow. It stood frozen at the treeline: tall and sharp. Even though there was a school on fire 40 yards away, Joey found himself staring at the shadow. It moved slowly and deliberately until Joey was certain it was watching him back. In the time it took Joey to blink, the shape disappeared into the forest.

The school survived the fire, but the event took a toll on parents in the town. If the Devil was targeting schools then children were in danger. Many hoped the fire would be an isolated incident, perhaps an unrelated accident. But it wasn’t long before the creature was said to begin stalking students.

Joey lived at 34 Standish St. in the heart of Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the far tip of the Massachusetts peninsula of Cape Cod. It was a postcard of a town, an orderly spread of peaked roofs and clean streets that rippled gently toward the ocean. “P-town,” as the locals called it, was quiet most of the year. A line of lighthouses stood sentry at the shoreline, red-painted reminders of the storms that sometimes hurled ships to break against the coast.

Along with his three younger siblings — Louis, one year younger than Joey, Allen, two years younger, and Elinor, three years younger — Joey spent his childhood on the shore under the high and soft New England sun. He prayed for that same sun to rise early on nights when he thought the Devil might be outside. Like all of the kids in town, Joey was well-versed in the stories surrounding the Devil of the Dunes: A name guaranteed to stir up the darkest fears of the Cape’s old New England Puritans and superstitious Portuguese fishing community alike. The creature, also called the Phantom Flash or the Black Flash, was said to be a ghost like being who stalked and attacked people in the dark. It could also move and jump at inhuman speeds and heights. Joey and his siblings traded rumors with friends like baseball cards.

Early stories of the Devil of the Dunes began to truly catch hold in Provincetown in the fall of 1938. Katy Dos Passos, wife of Lost Generation era novelist John Dos Passos, characterized the mysterious figure as a “prowler,” writing to a friend at the time that “a mysterious stranger appears at windows after midnight… said to wear a black cape and jumps over hedges.” The Dos Passos’ housekeeper cried, “he’s a great leaper!”

While the sightings were peculiar, they didn’t seem dangerous — at least at first. The town had a lot on its mind already that year. One of the deadliest weather events in modern history, The Great New England Hurricane, had just battered Cape Cod. The storm sank ships, cracked homes and claimed an estimated 700 lives.

Overseas, Hitler’s shadow lay across Europe. Germany’s neighbors were terrified that the Nazi war machine would begin to grind across the continent. Americans had mixed feelings about getting involved should a conflict erupt so far from home. But many worried that whatever happened in Europe would bleed across the globe.

With so many troubles, both near and far, it was easy for most of P-town to ignore reports of a monster walking the streets at night. But as dismissive of the stories as the adults might have been, Joey became fixated on the creature. He collected accounts of the Devil of the Dunes, a morbid scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings, fan art and rumors written down like journal entries. The stories came in from all corners, whispers in the schoolyard and overheard conversations between adults. For Joey, the Devil of the Dunes became a fixation; it was both an adventure and an escape from the shadow cast by 1938. The massive hurricane had shaken the town and shown that the safety of the shore was a fragile thing.

Even more troubling for the Janard family was the threat of war in Europe. Joey’s father served in the Coast Guard. If America sent out soldiers to defend her allies, the Janards would have a personal stake in the fight, so Joey looked for any distraction that he could gather. Since the town’s adults refused to take action, Joey and his brothers started a group that quickly grew to 40 members, scouring the town at night searching for the Devil.

When the sun went down, the boys — an informal, junior town watch — could be found hiding behind trees and peeking from alleyways. No doubt, like kids everywhere, they would have debated a name for the group, though none could be more appropriate than The Devil Hunters. Joey’s favorite area to patrol was the playground. He’d stalk through the swings, crouch under the slide and watch the treeline behind the school with binoculars he borrowed from his father. But for all of their efforts, the Devil eluded the group, and Joey had nothing more to show than a growing scrapbook filled with reports of sightings, encounters and attacks

As time passed, Joey collected more and more accounts of the Devil of the Dunes, picking, prodding and examining the gossip. Joey wondered what he’d do if he ever came face to face with the Devil. He had no way of knowing that he would soon find out when his family became involved in the most disturbing encounter yet. On October 26, 1939, the Provincetown Advocate ran a front-page story titled, “Fall Brings Out the Devil of the Dunes. Hard Winter Certain As Cabin Fever Stories Start.”

It ain’t usually until “cabin fever” time that the balmy stories start. After folks have been penned up here for too long a time, in too little space, with just the same faces to look at every morning, afternoon, and evening, then the crazy yarns begin circulating.

But winter seems to be shutting in early this year. Here it is only October and the “Black Flash” [aka “Devil of the Dunes”] has been prowling, scaring kids so that they won’t go out nights and won’t go to bed, grabbing women, jumping over ten foot hedges with no trouble at all. “Chair springs on his feet” is the explanation.

According to police Chief Anthony Tarvers, mental fever may have pushed the local young men into nervous pranks, donning capes and helmets and venting their own unease by trying to scare their neighbors. Tarvers was an imposing figure. Tall and clean-cut, he became chief of the Provincetownpolice in 1939. The son of immigrants from the Azores region of Portugal, Tarvers was terse but well-regarded and respected. Broad-shouldered with a square jaw and dark eyes, Tarvers could stop even the notoriously rowdy Cape Cod fishermen with a hard look. In spite of an intimidating outward appearance, Chief Tarvers was generally viewed, along with his wife Molly, as kind and sociable.

On the matter of the Devil, Tarvers was never open to debate. If there ever was such a thing as the “Devil of the Dunes,” it was nothing more than a prank, and it was one best ignored lest attention bring the jokers back.

“As far as I am concerned, the Devil of the Dunes is dead and gone,” he told the Provincetown Advocate.

Chief Tarvers’ four children were schoolmates of the Janards. With a father for whom the Devil had become an increasingly annoying rumor, it’s not surprising that if the children did participate in the club of junior patrollers, they were never specifically named in public accounts.

Articles about the Devil shared space with updates on the fighting over in Europe. As the war erupted, a restless anxiety infected Provincetown. This apprehension, what the police-friendly Provincetown Advocate labeled “cabin fever,” caused residents to walk home a little faster after dark and to stare at strangers a little longer than was polite.

However, others in Provincetown believed that the area’s anxiety over the trouble in Europe had a rotten core. Fear is a beacon, a signal flare that can attract all manner of malicious, hungry things. As the war raged on across the ocean, residents in Provincetown were about to find themselves under siege; not from a foreign adversary but from a local force.

Joey had learned a lot from his father, Joseph. Beyond passing down a name, Joseph Janard gave his oldest son several gifts: a clever mind, a tactical eye and a bone deep persistence. It wasn’t long before Joey led the town’s youth patrol. He helped the group plan their nightly routes, pouring over street maps looking for the likeliest places for the Devil of the Dunes to strike. The creature had a preference for ambushing people while they were alone and far from help.

The Devil Hunters focused on isolated buildings and empty streets, stretches of forest and shoreline, back alleys and farms. Joey drew lines in red, marking the sites of previous sightings, searching for a pattern. In so many ways, Joey and his friends were playing at war at the same time their fathers and brothers were preparing for the genuine article. There was a gnawing fear in Joey, a concern that his father would soon be called up for duty far from home. At home, his dad was brave, resolute, and ready.

Joey couldn’t control the war overseas, but he could have an impact at home. He and his friends could wage their own battle against a local monster. Even if they didn’t win, Joey at least wanted to face the night and the Devil of the Dunes with the same courage his father showed every day. That bravery was one other gift that Joey hoped was a Janard legacy.

He and the patrol planned, searched and tracked the Devil. However, wars, even small wars between children and monsters, require more than timing to corner the Devil of the Dunes. The kids missed their timing on the night the phantom attacked the Farleys.

Charles Farley woke up in his study to the sound of a scream. He tumbled out of his chair, sprinting into the kitchen. His wife was frozen, pale, staring out the window above the sink. There was nothing there, only empty night on the other side.

He ran to his wife, asking her what was wrong. She told him that she saw a face looking in at her while she was doing the dishes. It was bone white and staring down at her, the face of a tall thing kept out by only a thin sheet of glass. The face was horrible, according to his wife. Hateful.

Charles was dismissive, insisting that his wife had only caught sight of her own reflection. However, he promised to check the yard to ease her mind. He brought a shotgun and a light from the hall and headed outside into the autumn evening. The air already had a winter cut to it, especially after dark. Charles saw plumes of his hot breath escaping in the path of his flashlight but not much else. The backyard was shadow-swallowed, no moon in sight. The cloud cover would break soon after, but, for the moment, Provincetown was dark.

Charles’ beam sliced the dark from tree to shed to, finally, the wooden line of the property’s old fence. That’s when Charles stopped. There was a figure: tall and slightly bent, standing next to the barrier. Mr. Farley called out a warning, once, then again. Whatever it was in his yard, it didn’t respond.

It began to advance towards the house. Charles fired off a warning shot, high and wide. He heard the creature laugh. Then it came on faster. Mr. Farley fired his remaining barrel center mass. Later, Farley would tell police that the shot had no effect and that the shape in his backyard simply laughed and lept away over the fence.

One moment there was a shadow and the next an absence.

When Charles returned to the kitchen, his wife was deeply shaken. She asked him about the shots. It’s unknown whether he told his wife the details of his encounter with the Devil of the Dunes at the time. He was acutely aware of how crazy it sounded, some cackling, shadow thing that moved faster than the eye could follow. Maybe he claimed he’d fired upon a wild animal and scared it off.

Mrs. Farley went to bed but not before making Charles promise to close all of the curtains. He did, suppressing a small tinge of alarm every time he approached a window. At no point did he see any faces other than his own reflection, but the discomfort lingered even after he followed his wife to bed. Closing the curtains before bed became a nightly ritual for Charles, one adopted by most of the town during these years.

Charles shared his account with police, undoubtedly infuriating Chief Tarvers, who as a loyal public servant, was still obligated to take the report. But Charles also went to the press, seeming to kickstart a new phase of awareness. Soon, the Devil became a nightly terror the residents of Provincetown.

Shortly after the Farley incident, Maria Costa, a Provincetown local, found herself face to face with the Devil of the Dunes as she was walking home from visiting a neighbor in the early evening. It was cold that night and Maria was shivering in her jacket, kicking herself for not bringing a scarf or gloves. It was still autumn, but winter was knocking. Wind plucked leaves from the fading trees and pushed them down narrow streets past Maria.

The walk from her neighbor’s was a short one. Maria was nearly home when she heard a buzzing as she passed a long hedge row. She stopped. A shadow unfolded itself from behind the hedges until it towered over Maria. The thing growled.

It wore all black and, according to Maria, stood at least eight feet tall. She reported seeing pointed ears offsetting a deformed face. Eyes like burning houses stared down at her.

Maria ran. The Devil of the Dunes, from what she could tell, didn’t follow.

Maria filed a report with the police the next morning. One can easily imagine Chief Tarvers’ reaction. Just as one can imagine how his aggravation must have grown as her account became just one of dozens of others now flooding the town. Devil of the Dunes sightings were happening weekly, then near daily and the entity continued to become more and more hostile. The stories swirled around the town, told in bars over the tops of shot glasses, whispered between kids who kept a nervous watch out their windows. Locals wrote to friends and family about a midnight prowler, a terrible face that liked to peer in from the dark.

Closing the curtains might fend off prying eyes, but every time a branch or bird touched the glass, the Janards would immediately go silent, waiting. Joey added Maria’s story to his journal, which had become a casebook. The pages were filling quickly. Joey’s younger siblings were terrified that the Devil would come tapping some night on their window.

The four siblings sat together in the dark, passing around a flashlight and reading the journal in the small hours after their parents went to sleep. They’d pile the blankets and pillows together into a fort in the room Joey shared with his younger brother Louis. Allen and Elinor would share snacks pilfered from the kitchen. Deep into the night and early morning, the siblings would gossip about the most recent attacks, casting furtive glances at their windows until the youngest, Elinor, got too scared and had to go to bed.

Joey swore to himself the Provincetown Devil would never hurt the Janards without a fight.

As American troops continued to be called up and sent overseas, Provincetown lost more and more young men to the war. The country experienced a wave of rationing, grief, and paranoia. Life for Joey and other New England children became a revolving door of school, safety drills, work, waiting, sneaking news from parents, waiting, watching the shoreline, waiting. The stories of the Devil of the Dunes grew in parallel to the war, but Joey found stranger and stranger details in each new rumor.

Then the Devil began starting the fires.

That was the rumor, at least, though fire Chief Julian Lewis issued denials similar to those from police Chief Tarvers.

But while Lewis, well into his 70s, did not have his own children in the school, he was a protective father with his middle-aged daughter still living at home with him and his wife. So it must have been no less disturbing for him to watch the school burn. Attacks against adults out late was one thing, but if the Devil had begun turning his attention to younger prey, those who had most aggressively tried to catch him…

Reports circulated throughout town about a boy being attacked by the creature. He was returning home from the library when he was chased by a figure in black “spitting blue flames.” He ran all the way to the police station; his pursuer vanished.

Clinging to the idea that teenage pranksters were behind the Devil sightings, the police did not give this account much credence. A tall figure that could breathe fire sounded like a fairy tale dreamed up by restless kids, maybe the same ones hunting the supposed creature. Joey had also heard the rumors that a group of teens shared the Devil of the Dunes identity, using multiple costumes to appear as if they were able to move across Provincetown instantaneously.

However, the opinion of the police and the public shifted as additional reports rolled in, including a confrontation between a team of cops and the Devil of the Dunes. The prankster explanation could hardly account for the figure’s ability to leap over fences and move at impossible speeds. Plus the idea of a network of coordinated pranksters was farfetched to say the least. While Chief Tarvers maintained that the creature was human, his officers were less convinced. Tarvers was a lean man, practical and efficient. His police force was equally lean, numbering only eight total members, including the chief.

Not long after the anonymous report of the teen attacked on his way home from the library, four of Provincetown’s police officers responded to a call. Witnesses saw a man, or at least a man-shaped figure, prowling around the elementary school’s playground one night. The same school that Joey, his siblings and Chief Tarvers’ children attended.

The night of the playground incident, officers approached the schoolyard with flashlights drawn.

Silhouettes of slides, swings and trees blended together like black cracks in new ice. The officers saw a shadow that was not like the rest, tall and lanky moving across the yard.

One of the officers demanded the figure identify itself. It ignored the command.

Four sworn officers, half of Provincetown’s police force, responding to a suspicious person call would be overkill in most situations. But the Devil had everyone on edge, especially as it had seemingly zeroed in on the community’s children. When the shadow in the playground began to advance towards the men they didn’t hesitate. All four police officers drew their service revolvers. They couldn’t afford to scoff now.

The order to halt was given by the most senior officer. The Devil reportedly kept moving. The beams of the men’s flashlights failed to reveal what was behind the shadow. It was a living, moving being, and it was approaching fast.

That was the moment where the officers paused. As unsettling as the experience must have been, their chief and many prominent members of the town maintained that the Devil of the Dunes was a prank. Kids in a costume. However improbable that seemed, if they fired and found out that the monster was only a teenager with a sick sense of humor…

Perhaps sensing their indecision, the figure laughed then darted back into the playground. Before the officers could pursue, the Devil of the Dunes lived up to its name, crawling over the playground’s tall fence so quickly it appeared to vanish into the air.

The officers were not able to find any trace or trail of the creature.

Joey, his friends and siblings, all would have heard of the confrontation between police and the Devil in the school’s playground. There was an awful intimacy to the encounter, an invasion of privacy. It’s one thing to have a monster standing outside your window, but the Devil had slipped inside. The children now watched the playground with suspicion during the day, expecting to see a leering face with the skin stretched too tight across its skull staring back at them. Or they looked for the razor shine of silver from some dark corner, since at least one officer claimed that the Devil’s face appeared to be metallic.

Tarvers never publicly changed his stance that Devil of the Dunes was a gruesome prank, but soon he stepped down as chief of police. He was replaced by John Rego, one of the officers at the time of the playground incident, who was much more inclined to believe that the inexplicable movements of the Devil could not be explained by teenage pranks. In replacing Tarvers, it seemed as though the town had spoken. 

Nearly every night, local pool shark Eightball Eddie made the rounds of Provincetown’s smokey pubs, drinking and gambling his way through the regulars. A small guy with a chip the size of Plymouth Rock on his shoulder, Eddie was a hustler, a conman, a cardsharp and a gambler. The only thing faster than his hands was his mouth, and he was about as humble as a main street parade. He’d brag about anything when he was drunk, which was often. As rumors of the Devil began to dominate barroom discussion, Eddie told anybody who would listen that he thought the whole tale was bullshit.

If I ever run into the son of a bitch, Eddie would mutter while lining up his shot, I’ll sort him. Let that bastard jump out and say ‘boo.’ I’ll break my cue over his head. Let me run into him. Let him run into me.

But even as the local children began coming home from playing outside well before dark, and parents drew the curtains after sundown as the town prepared for a new siege every night, and the Devil Hunters exhausted themselves on patrol, Eightball Eddie continued to refuse to take the Devil of the Dunes seriously. He certainly didn’t need any kids to try to protect him from a phantom.

Eddie’s theory was that the Devil was a very large man wearing a black dress who got his kicks spooking the locals. At every possible occasion, Eddie would mock the so-called creature and the fear it spread across Provincetown. He called the creature slurs, made threats and bragged about what would happen if he ever ran into the Devil of the Dunes.

Eddie would take long walks alone after the bars and pool halls closed at night. On one such outing, he noticed a shadow following slowly in his wake like a shark gliding behind a boat. Given his reputation as a hustler, Eddie’s first thought was probably that he was being stalked by another pool player, somebody looking to get even after an ugly game. Eddie stopped and turned to confront the figure. Finally getting a clear look at the thing, he was startled.

Eddie found himself face to face with the Devil of the Dunes. Or, face to stomach given the reported height of the creature. Before Eddie could say a word, the shadow slapped him. Hard. Again and again the creature struck the pool shark, laughing its buzzing laugh but never speaking. Bruised and humiliated, Eddie was able to escape, sprinting the rest of the way home without looking back.

While the hustler got away, the event apparently left him shaken and nervous. Eight Ball Eddie claimed the Devil of the Dunes was dressed in a thick hood and cloak, with burning silver eyes but… human. Whether the Devil was flesh and blood or something stranger, Eddie didn’t mock it again after his encounter.

His account filtered through Provincetown’s bars and watering holes until it was common knowledge. The story was supported by Eddie’s swollen bruise of a face and uncharacteristic silence. Joey added the run-in between the pool shark and the Devil to his journal. It was followed by a string of similar assaults. Instead of jumping out of hedgerows and startling people, the Devil had graduated to physical attacks. It was like a wild animal that had acquired a taste for violence.

Joey could track the escalation. In many ways, it seemed to match the increasing bloodshed overseas. The uglier the world became, the nastier the phantom got. The police continued responding to calls and taking reports, likely with more attention under the new leadership. Joey and the other boys in town diligently kept up their informal watch, even as it seemed the Devil could never be caught.

Provincetown was a lonelier, quieter place as the war came to a close. While the United States was spared many of the horrors seen by Europe and the Pacific, towns all across the country were decimated by the loss of so many soldiers. Though the Devil of the Dunes still appeared at night, sightings seemed to be drying up. Maybe the Devil, whatever it was, had moved on or, worse, lay in wait for its ultimate strike.

One afternoon while their mother was out working, Joey and his three younger siblings were playing in their yard on Standish Street. Fog covered Provincetown like a cloud shot down to earth. The sunlight was strained as it came through the mist, giving the afternoon a washed out quality. Still, it was daylight and sightings of the Devil of the Dunes while the sun was still out were rare. The Devil Hunters could find reason to relax with the sightings trailing off, but Joey could never quite stand down. If he had to be the last line of defense for the moment, so be it. Still, with war and their demonic nemesis fading, maybe it was time to be a kid again. It came as a bone-sick shock when Joey spotted the Devil at the edge of the yard.

The creature was moving toward the Janards slowly, a predator stalking through the fog, hunched against the gray, greasy sunlight. Joey’s world froze. All of the nights spent combing through the town with his friends, flashlight beams bouncing through the dark. All of the stories and sightings and attacks carefully collected. Every hour spent preparing to face the horror… all of that for nothing. Joey was rooted to the spot. He wished his dad was there, standing between him and this gaunt, crooked thing.

But Joseph Janard was still deployed, far from home, so, so far. The Devil was walking quietly and carefully until it was spotted. When it noticed the Janard children staring, it dropped to all fours and sprinted towards them.

And it was fast.

Joey remained frozen. But when he saw the creature’s face, its hateful eyes, that was enough to make him move. The thing, whatever it was, would not hurt his family.

At last, the Devil that Joey had pursued so obsessively had come for him. A grueling, drawn-out war had come to a final battle. And like so many of the town’s residents before him, Joey found himself facing an enemy as evil as it was unbeatable.

Joey managed to pull his terrified siblings into their home, slamming the door with the Devil of the Dunes only steps away. There are no reports of the creature trying to break into a home previously, but that day, seconds after Joey turned the lock, the Devil tried the knob.

The Janards were alone with a demon at the door.

As the Devil attempted to force its way through the front door, Joey and his siblings rushed through their home, securing doors and windows only moments ahead of the creature. Somehow, the entity seemed able to attack multiple entries at once, rattling door knobs, pounding on the walls, scratching the windows. While Allen, Joey’s 12-year-old brother, took the two youngest to hide under their parents’ bed, Joey had to stand tall. Thrashing, thumping, clawing, the Devil of the Dunes was moments away from breaking in.

To Joey, the attack felt like a manifestation of all of the anxiety from the past several years. Ever since the hurricane ripped houses out of Provincetown like rotten teeth, Joey felt a shadow hanging over his world. The war, his father shipping away, the rumors of the Devil of the Dunes; now it was focused into one singular terror that was currently trying to break down the door.

There wasn’t anything Joey could do about the storms that raked the coast or the hard men who shot and killed each other in battle for reasons no child would ever understand. He couldn’t bring his father home. But there was one thing Joey could do at that moment to protect his family.

He turned on the oven and began to boil a pot of water.

It only took a few minutes but with all of the pounding and scratching against the house, it felt like years. Once it was finished, he went upstairs, creeping from room to room, looking down from windows.

Thick fog made it difficult to find the creature, but Joey was patient. He opened the window and poured the boiling water down. The Devil of the Dunes reportedly shrieked when the water hit. Then it crawled away into the mist.

There were no documented sightings of the Devil of the Dunes of Provincetown after Joey’s triumph.

After that winter, the Devil, whatever each resident believed it had been, apparently slunk away, perhaps to the dunes, and life in town returned to a new normal. The entity was gone and the war was over, but the marks from both remained. Many of the young men who left Provincetown to fight never made it back home. Those who did carried the memories of violence with them.

Provincetown did its best to forget.

The Devil of the Dunes of Provincetown shares many similarities with stories of other almost human creatures from across the globe with England’s Spring-heeled Jack being the most famous. Like the Devil, Jack was often described as demonic in appearance, with burning eyes, wrapped all in black. Both creatures have been called phantoms, demons, or even extraterrestrials.

Stranger still are reports of Pérák, the Spring Man of Prague. Like the Devil of the Dunes, Pérák was first spotted in 1939 with his last sighting in 1945. While the Devil roamed New England, Pérák was said to haunt Czechoslovakia during its Nazi occupation, leaping impossible heights, startling and slashing at residents of Prague with razor blades at night. The timelines match up almost exactly between Pérák and the Devil of the Dunes, as do the descriptions from witnesses.

In Mattoon, Illinois, just over 1,000 miles away from Provincetown, there were reports of a man or creature dressed all in black terrorizing the town in the summer of 1944. The Mad Gasser of Mattoon was described as a tall, thin thing and was accused of several chemical attacks against residents of the town over a period of two weeks.

Some families to this day still close their curtains at sundown in Provincetown.

If you look out into the New England night there’s no telling what might look back.

TRAVIS BROWN spends his days working in public affairs and nights doing his best to scare the internet with short horror stories. Big fan of dogs and tacos.