Evening. I wanted to call about something that's been happening near where I live. I've told a few people and nobody believes me, so maybe your listeners will. I live about a quarter mile from a nuclear power plant. The generating station outside Braidwood, south of Chicago. Been here eleven years now. Bought the house cheap because, well, not everyone wants to live next to a reactor. Doesn't bother me. I worked maintenance at a coal plant for twenty years before I retired, so I understand how these facilities operate. Nothing scary about it. At least, nothing scary about the plant itself. My property backs up to a cornfield, and beyond that is the plant's perimeter fence. Maybe two hundred yards from my back porch to the fence line. On certain nights, when the cooling towers are running heavy and the temperature drops, this thick mist rolls off the towers and settles over everything. Can't see ten feet in front of you. My wife hated those nights. Said it felt like living inside a cloud. She passed three years ago, and now it's just me out here.
The first time I saw them was October 2017. I was on my porch around midnight, love being out int he darkness - Beth' couldn't sleep because the arthritis in my knee was acting up. The mist was heavy that night, that thick white blanket hanging over the field. And I saw something moving out by the perimeter fence. I swear to you, I could see them clear as day even through all that mist, three figures, walking slow along the fence line about two hundred yards out. Humanoid. Tall, maybe seven feet. But wrong somehow. The proportions were off. Arms too long, legs that bent at angles that didn't make sense. I watched one of them walk straight into the chain-link fence. Didn't stop, didn't climb, didn't go around. Just walked into it and kept going. Through it. Like the fence wasn't there. Like it was walking through smoke. The other two followed. One after another, passing through twelve feet of razor wire like it was nothing.
I've seen them six times since then. Always on the misty nights. Always near the fence. Sometimes three, sometimes more. The most I counted was nine, moving in a line like they were following something I couldn't see. Last month, I swear to you, one of them came closer. I was standing at my back fence, the one that separates my yard from the cornfield, just watching. And one of them stopped. Turned toward me. I couldn't see a face, just this smooth, dark shape where a face should be. And it started walking. Toward me. It passed through three rows of dead corn like they weren't there. Then it reached my fence. Four-foot chain link, nothing special. And it stopped. Just stood there on the other side, maybe twenty feet from where I was standing. I could hear it breathing. This wet, clicking sound, like something was loose inside its chest. We stood there looking at each other for I don't know how long. Then it turned and walked back into the mist. Like I wasn't worth the trouble.
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