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Base: Mount Pleasant, Michigan, United States

Date/Time: 12/03/10, 2334 hours

Incident: First off, let me say that I have read this site for years; however, the lack of any events around my area tempted me away from any report filing or joining of the provisional FVZA (something which may be changing rather soon).

I am a student at a university near where I live and on the night of this incident I was well into my term paper for a literature course I was taking on early American realism. A good friend of mine, who for her sake we will call Karen (as she did not wish to be mentioned by her real name), is the founder of a registered student organization around campus dedicated to investigating supposedly haunted or supernatural locations. She gave me a call on that night at 10:15. One of her team members had cancelled because of the cold, and she was wondering if I would be interested in joining. I had been at the keyboard for six hours at that point and I was more than ready for a break, so I had her pick me up.

The target spot was the Riverside Cemetery on the west side of town. It had been founded in the late fifties as a place for the local Korean population to bury their dead (the local church had refused unless they converted to Catholicism). Once the churches' bans lifted in the mid-sixties, it became a far more diverse burial spot, and most of the people who have died in town in the last 50 years are buried there. Karen's team had gotten a permit from the state to be there after hours.

Cemeteries like this one are favorite hiding places for vampires

When we pulled up to the location, the first thing I noticed was that there were already two cars parked in the cemetery's lot, and neither of them belonged to Karen's team members. We decided to investigate.

The cemetery is divided into two sections, with one path leading to the expansion they added about 10 years ago, and the other leading to the older sections of the graveyard--specifically, where most of the Koreans were buried. We could just make out what looked like flashlights between the larger mausoleums in the older section, so we set off that way. I remember I checked my phone for the time and saw it was 11:30. As we got closer, we heard men talking. I suggested calling the police, but Karen stopped me; she was afraid if the police had to be called, the city would never allow her to investigate on city grounds again.

Karen then walked towards the distant lights and I followed. At my suggestion, we stayed mostly behind large tombstones.

Now here is where I will pause. I have been a reader of this site for years but never, not once, did I honestly take anything I saw here as serious. It seemed a joke, and a clever one, and I read it because I appreciated the creative mind behind the website. I say this so you will understand at this moment I had no notions of vampires or anything other than a potentially violent encounter with some doped-up kids.

As we got closer, I could make out four figures in the dark. The flashlight we had seen earlier turned out to be a small LED lantern that was sitting on top of a headstone. There were three men and one woman. The woman had her back pressed against the side of a large mausoleum--one of those stone buildings that probably contained a few generations of whatever family had claimed it. The three men were organized in a semicircle around the woman. At first I thought the men were homeless. Of the three, two were white and the other was black. One seemed to tower over the others--I judged him to be about 6'7 to 6'9--and he stood in the center directly facing off with the girl. He wore what looked like a well abused leather coat and jeans, and one of his pant legs was torn off, revealing a thin and sickly pale knee. The man to his left was of a darker complexion and wore a T-shirt and a baseball cap that hid most of his features. The last man was much smaller than the man in the leather coat. Squat and slightly rounded, he was wearing possibly the oldest and most tattered suit I have ever seen. If he had had a top hat on, I think I would have laughed aloud, which considering what we noticed next would have been a very bad thing. The girl was in a lime green tank top with a thick winter coat that seemed two sizes too large for her. She had a mess of hair that could have been either red or brown--it was hard to see for sure in that light. One thing I am sure of is that she could not have been taller than 5'2.

The men's eyes reflected black in the LED light. I could see a great deal of blood around their lips. It was also at this time that I made out a fifth person in the scene. He was curled up at the base of the tombstone that held the LED lantern. He was bloody and most certainly not moving.

At this time, the tall man spoke to the girl, but I was too distracted by his teeth to make sense of what he was saying. The teeth were long, jagged and yellow--right out of that old Nosferatu movie. Much to my surprise, rather than cry or whimper, the girl spoke back, and I got a good listen in on a language unlike any I have heard before. It was guttural, disjointed, and the closest I could come to at the time was Arabic (although after researching many audio files online I found it sounded closer to old Icelandic).

The men moved around the girl and I could feel Karen at my side slowly getting out her phone, I think she had had enough of playing hero girl and was ready to get the police involved.

Now, here I will pause again. I understand from my readings of this site that much of what was done and is done by the provisional FVZA as well as the original FVZA was scientific in nature, i.e., viral agents mutating human beings. What I am going to describe below I cannot explain within the realm of science, even the somewhat strange science in which the undead exist. I write this story here in hopes that what I saw may be known, and documented, so it may be studied further later (hopefully, when the FVZA is reinstated). I politely ask you to bear with me and save your cries of bullshit for after, as I do not seek belief; only acknowledgment that this is what I believe I have seen.

The man in the middle--the large one in the leather--spoke back in that odd language. The girl responded, and whatever she said must have pissed him off because he lunged at her. The girl was fast, but somewhere in my panicked mind I think I had already recognized the men for what they were--vampires--and subconsciously I was putting the girls chances at between zip and nothing. But she was so fast, and in a blur of movement the creature/man stopped. The girl had simply extended her hand and placed it against his chest and had stopped him cold mid-lunge. The other two looked concerned for a moment, and then the large one screamed.

Upon later thought of that night I realize she may have had a lighter I didn't see, or there may have been some sort of accelerator on his clothes. But in the light from the LED I saw fire spread across the man's chest from where she had touched him. There were bright orange flames and in an instant I saw light pouring through the man's eyes and mouth. He was engulfed and fell to the ground, a smoking burning mess. The other two creatures lunged at the girl and took hold of her, ripping off her coat and biting savagely at her arms before they too began to scream, that same Jack-O-lantern orange flame spreading from their mouths down through their bodies.

Needless to say, I was close to pissing myself, but I stuck around, if only because I didn't think Karen had the strength in her knees to run. We watched as the woman knelt down and touched each smoldering mess, lighting them again and again. I cannot be sure but I think I could hear her talking while she burned the last man. Then, she calmly pulled her coat on, gathered the LED and walked out towards the back entrance of the graveyard. After 10 minutes of waiting, I got up the nerve to go up to the mausoleum where the event occurred, and found nothing more than four black marks on the ground where the bodies had been. Either she took the bodies with her and we somehow didn't see it, or she reduced four men to nothing more than ash and cinders.

Karen called off the investigation that night, and I resolved to return to look at that spot in the daylight. One more odd thing struck me on our way out of the graveyard: both of the cars we had seen parked in the lot were gone.

The next day I went back and took measurements of the mausoleum that allowed me to guess the heights of the woman and the creatures. During the night a swift breeze must have kicked up because much of the ash and cinder that had been there was gone with the wind.

I understand there are glaring holes in my story. Where are the cars? What did the woman do? Who was the man crumpled at the base of the tombstone? How long did the incident last? To all these questions, I pose the same answer: I do not know. I am no investigator, just a scared guy who happened to be in the right place at the wrong time and saw something wholly unnatural. I don't know how to feel knowing that the woman is out there. If there is anything in the FVZA record about something like this, or there is any advice you can give let me know. I will try to keep a closer eye on my city and report any further goings on.

As I said, I do not seek belief--only the acknowledgment that this is what I believe I have seen.

Comment from Dr. Pecos: Thanks for sharing your story, Ben. The descriptions of the men in your account do match those of vampires. As you probably know, vampires can be destroyed by immolation, but this usually requires an accelerant. I have seen vampires burned to death, and it typically takes a considerable amount of time. What you witnessed appears to fall into the realm of the supernatural, and as such is out of my area of expertise.

We received many reports of supernatural activity in the days when the FVZA was operational. While I do believe there are supernatural elements at play in the world, the FVZA focused on so-called "viral vampires" and never devoted significant resources toward the study of psychic vampires, ghosts and other supernatural beings.

Please keep me posted on your findings. In the meantime, I would recommend you stay out of cemeteries at night. Vampires often use mausoleums and crypts as hiding places, and some vampire cults like to use graveyards for indoctrination ceremonies.

One more thing. When you mentioned the Korean cemetery. I instantly thought of a Korean monster known as the Kumiho, or nine-tailed fox, that wanders cemeteries at night. In legend, the Kumiho can morph into other forms and often appears as a young woman. It's said to dig up bodies and consume the hearts.