Outside the City, atop Whiteacre hill, there are the foundations of an ancient tower. Archaeologists estimate that it was built about 1000 years before the beginning of the Common Buentoilliçan Calendar, and would have stood at about 50ft tall. Whilst this has been extrapolated from the scale of the debris and the conical shape of the tower’s base, very little of the tower remains; that which is aboveground is only there because of extensive excavations at the site.
The most popular theory about the purpose of the building is as a defensive structure for the protection of people and livestock. The absence of surrounding earthworks or other defensive features has, however, led others to believe that the tower, made from many small stones dug from a nearby quarry, may have been a beacon tower in an early long-distance communication system, or perhaps a watchtower for the Buentoille Bay it overlooks. There is little decisive evidence either way, nor is it known what eventually felled the tower, which appears to have cascaded down the side of the hill in a rather dramatic fashion. There are other, more controversial theories surrounding the tower, mainly relating to a 1984 school trip.
The notes from Saleph Woefenn’s interview for the position of history teacher at East Hollow Secondary School don’t give any real indication of man’s strangeness of character, which would later lead to his dismissal and prosecution. There is one point in the transcription where, after Woefenn seemingly loses concentration for a few moments, staring out the window into space, the (as yet uncovered) spiritualist apologises and says (in what the interviewers took for a joke) that he was waiting for his ‘energies to realign,’ yet other than this once strange remark, he seemed totally normal.
The first concerns about Woefenn’s teaching style were raised by a teaching assistant who apparently ‘found Mr. Woefenn teaching the children from Dinearis’ Historikal Stupor,’ a pseudo-historical text written by prominent spiritualist Andrea Dinearis, in which she claims to elicit ‘real first hand accounts’ of famous historical events from the ghosts of people who where there. The concerns were brushed aside for a time when Woefenn claimed that he was using the text as an example of an unreliable source, but resurfaced quickly after the events of June the 3rd, 1984.
It was shortly after excavations of the tower first began that Woefenn took his history class out to see the site, ostensibly to learn about the archaeological process. Yet, according to testimony given by all twenty five children, almost the entirety of Woefenn’s year nine history class (excepting Ezrah Berstom, who was ill that day), at Woefenn’s trial, it was then that Woefenn unveiled a strange electronic device attached to a large battery, which he called an ‘electromagnetic modulator.’
Whilst subsequent investigations have found that the so-called ‘modulator’ did not produce an electromagnetic field of high enough power or frequency to do any harm to the children, the verdicts of ‘reckless neglect’ and ‘potential intentional endangerment of children’ found in the original case were upheld, and amongst the other punishments meted out to Woefenn, he was barred from teaching for life. Whilst Woefenn garnered sympathy from some sections of Buentoilliçan society, the general consensus is that it is entirely necessary to protect others from a man who wilfully exposed children to experimental, untested electrical equipment, especially given the effects they claim to experience to this day.
‘I didn’t notice anything strange on the day,’ said Ignatius Repthalm in an interview with The Buentoilliçan Mystik, ‘but I guess it must have done something, because the next year I had a very vivid dream that I was in a room that I could swear I’d been in before, but I couldn’t quite place it.’ The interview, conducted in 1998, twelve years after the incident on Whiteacre hill, was centred around an unexpected meeting of those same school children, now all 25 years of age, back atop the hill. Apparently they all arrived individually, convinced that they had to return, yet unaware that anyone else felt the same way. ‘The dream happened year after year, always on that same day, but I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t want to make them worried. Eventually I realised that the room was part of the tower, and I knew I had to return.’
Strangely enough, the other thirteen classmates claim to have never experienced any such dreams, and disavow entirely the group who still meet each year atop Whiteacre hill today, to dream their ‘electromagnetic dreams,’ as they call them. ‘There is something about actually being here,’ said Wyatt Mandrill, another erstwhile classmate interviewed in the same article, ‘above the tower; maybe it has some innate magnetism, or something, but I see them in my dreams, the people who built it, just as Mr. Woefenn wanted us to, on that trip so long ago.’ Whilst Mandrill has distanced herself from what she said then (only six of the original twelve still return), the sentiment was echoed by every one of the twelve dreamers.
Whilst many spiritualists and occultists have joined the dreamers on each of the nights since the meeting was first talked about in The Buentoilliçan Mystik, none of them have experienced the dream which each is said to experience each year; many believe that the ‘modulator’ wielded so recklessly by Woefenn somehow ‘calibrated’ the dreamers to the space, allowing them to ‘perceive the ghosts of the Constructors,’ so called because they are only ever building in the dreams. Detractors state that this theory has absolutely no foundation in scientific fact, and that there are no known processes which could explain this alleged ‘calibration.’
At one point there was a contingent of experimental archaeologists who became somewhat interested in what the dreamers had to say about these ‘Constructors,’ just in case there was anything of import contained therein which could shine a new light on the physical findings. However, when the dreamers were asked about the building methods the Constructors used, they were vague to the point of nonsense; in fact, the only thing they seemed certain of was the purpose of the walls. ‘They’re not making it to keep people out,’ they told the archaeologists, ‘they’re making it to keep something very big in, although they won’t tell us what.’
Other festivals happening today:
- The Festival of Spoons and Ladles
- The Festoval of Termendos Mispellings
- Municipal Tree Care Day