Archeological Records Suggest UMass Amherst is An Eternal Constant
This is the Purple Hermit, with some interesting news from another of the Five College Consortium. An American History professor from Mount Holyoke College was reported missing Wednesday. She had informed her regular lecture classes that the online reading for this week would be a paper she was planning to submit for academic review and that the contents were, according to one of her students, “quite disturbing”. Reportedly, several of her students had been concerned about her mental health, as she frequently showed up late to class extremely pale and haggard. The professor’s presentations posted online were edited as well, with severe spelling and punctuation errors, as well as every third word being replaced with “SAM”.
Following her disappearance, all copies of her paper on the class website were deleted. Shortly after that, the entire class website was deleted as well. Luckily, some students managed to save copies on their computers beforehand. This reporter is lucky enough to be one of the few million people reading copies uploaded to Reddit.
Within the introductory paragraph, the professor mentions that most of the information in the paper was from secondhand sources and urban legends, and cannot be independently verified. Nevertheless, as a History professor, it was her job to compile this information into a semi-coherent account. The following is a summary of the paper.
The professor explains that the area that is modern-day Amherst has always had a strange history surrounding it. Numerous strange archeological discoveries have been exhumed here, most notably multiple unusually shaped humanoid bipedal skeletons. Reconstructions by computer models show similarities to a human, with the exception of large, rectangular teeth, a large foot with a lack of toes, and an oversized head topped with a bizarre bony shape resembling an 17th-century militia hat. Notably, these skeletons date back much further than the emergence of the first human precursors.
The history of human habitation in the area only adds to the mystery. A Quonquont tribe took up shelter and made a settlement in the area that would become UMass Amherst. When the Puritan settlers came across this area in the late 1600s, local Nipmucs repeatedly mentioned what was later translated as “number one dining settlement”, although were evasive on topics such as warfare, craftsmanship, or anything else. They allegedly did have very solid cuisine according to written accounts, but the area was later sold to settlers in Springfield anyway.
Strange occurrences continued in the area once it was purchased by Springfieldians. Settlers would repeatedly mention the quality of food in Amherst, often in letters written to other settlements. Every year, but only ever in the calendar month of October, a majority of the men of the settlement of Amherst would go into maniacal fits of varying intensity, smashing bottles, hooting and hollering about “the red socks”. When they became lucid the next morning, they would have no recollection of the previous night, and often had a headache.
The settlers also discovered a psychological anomaly confined a certain area within Amherst. The men living in this portion of Amherst were largely unaffected by the “red-sock hysteria”, as it was deemed, but all living there seemed utterly unaffected by anything and totally listless. As a result, latrines would often go uncovered, and trash dotted the landscape. Settlers would disappear as soon as they were out of sight, and it often seemed as though as little as 8 people were present in the entire area at any time. This area would later become the Northeast Residential Area.
“It was here from the beginning and I don’t know how I didn’t see it before,” she concludes ominously, breaking the third person in fear. “There must always be a UMass Amherst. There always will be a UMass Amherst. Fuck. I see that goddamn militia bastard in the corner of my vision, right now. He’s sitting in my armchair, with this stupid shit-eating grin. I don’t think it’s actually there. I could be wrong.”
This reporter has professors who are crazy enough for him and is glad he doesn’t go to Mount Holyoke. This is the Purple Hermit signing off.
POST A COMMENT
See Also
Want to read more news? Click here for a random article.