Home | Virtual Academy | About The FVZA | Dr. Hugo Pecos, Director Famous Cases | Historical Tales | Vampires | Zombies

Base: Worcester, Massachusetts

Date/Time: June 20, 2005

Incident: As part of the assumption of my new "deep cover" identity as an employee of a local wholesale lighting distributor, I recently moved into an apartment in the Highland Street neighborhood of Worcester. Worcester is a city of 200,000 people, with several colleges and universities. This means a large population of students - young, often transient, and often foolish with their own safety as well. Not only do they frequently entertain to late hours, but the area is full of businesses that stay open late to cater to them - all night pizza restaurants, convenience stores, coffee shops, etc. With new students and workers coming and going all the time, new faces don't arouse suspicion. Neither do disappearances - the perfect environment for a vampire pack to hide out for a LONG time.

My apartment is located strategically between the campuses of Becker College and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (generally referred to simply as WPI). I have spent the past three weeks since my arrival in background investigation. I need to get to know the inhabitants of the neighborhood, and to gain their trust, if I hope to succeed in my mission. Being only one man, I can only be one place at a time. But the students, the delivery drivers, the waitresses, the cashiers - they're everywhere, all the time, at all hours of the night. They see clues I have no hope of getting otherwise, and their cooperation should prove crucial to my investigations.

My other initial act has been the "fortification" of my new home. Moving into a neighborhood strongly suspected of vampire activity may seem foolhardy, but I think the precautions I have taken will serve me more than sufficiently. In the same way that the Army Corps of Engineers knew when they had to build the Panama Canal that before they could begin work in earnest, their first priority was to control the mosquito problem so the workers would have a safe base of operations, I decided to make the physical security of my "base" an immediate priority There are two doors to my apartment, and I have replaced them both with steel-reinforced fiberglass doors, with deadbolt locks. For the windows, I hit upon the idea of installing steel shutters. They are painted white to resemble ordinary decorative shutters, but when closed and barred they make my apartment, for all intents and purposes, impregnable to any vampire.

I now also have three secure "crow's-nest" observation posts - one on my side porch (second floor!), one on the roof of a building at the intersection of West and Highland streets (overlooking the "Sole Proprietor" restaurant parking lot, the shop/restaurant/bar entrances along Highland street, and a major access road to the WPI campus), and a third one in a tall tree behind an old mansion at the corner of Sever and Williams Streets (disguised as a tree house, and with a clear view of the Worcester tennis club, the Northern portion of the Becker campus, and the Park Avenue side of Elm Park). The building has been converted into private offices, and so I will attract little attention.

My plan is to begin surveillance tonight. I can't risk stretching my time too thinly - this is going to have to be a long term operation. I need to factor in time for both covert surveillance and personal interviews, as well as enough regular exercise and sleep to stay fit and ready. I hope that by randomizing the times and locations of my observations, and by combining them with face-to-face interviews with local residents and business owners, I can develop the leads we'll need to proceed successfully.

Wish me luck.

Comments from Dr. Pecos: You certainly are well prepared. But I'm curious: besides the transient population, what makes you suspect that this area is a hotbed of vampire activity?