Where the hell are the mods???
Multiple Victims
Suspected Foul Play
90's
Suggested IRL Solve
Posting this because I feel like I'm going crazy. Where is everyone? Whilst this forum wasn't exactly the height of activity at any given time of the year, doesn't it feel like half the frequent posters just... up and vanished? Some of them are key members of the mod team too. I don't want to @ anyone as I know y'all have lives but... it's weird. Anyone know what happened?
Glad you brought this up. I'd just been brought into the mod team when @L_awfulthrowaway and @DUHASTMILK suddenly stopped answering. A few weeks is normal for most people, but it's been months now. And they used to answer within a few hours... as for the other moderators, JordanpeanutB left the forum last year and K had that epic flounce and nobody's heard from them since. I don't think people realise it's just me on the mod team and with no-one to change my permissions, I don't even have all the privileges to do the job properly.
Seriously? You're the only mod left?
Yep. Stuck with this flair until they come back too.
Oof
Never thought I'd be getting a lecture on common sense from an adam ant fan. When's the last we heard from them?
Stand and deliver! Heh. I think they were last active on one of the unsolved threads, either the Sailsbury stuff or the Millhaven massacre.
It was the Millhaven thread. They had a meetup for that too, the ten year anniversary of the killings. 3rd March, 2017.
@NorfolkingChance what a way to celebrate... anyone heard from them since?
@thanksalotrachel Not sure. Let me check Signal. Will take a min.
Just read through the Millhaven thread. Some user was trolling them with cryptic messages. I'll avoid tagging them as we don't want them here, but if the mods were planning a meetup, and now they've gone silent, doesn't that seem like too much of a coincidence?
It's not just the mods either. Some of the users on that thread haven't posted in ages. @snapitlikeitshot in particular was in my DMs all the time. Which is hilarious because I imagine he wasn't aware I'm an old, hairy rey-haired biker who made their username for this forum after watching that meme of the angry iPad kid.
Isn't this a bit of an overreaction? People go AWOL online all the time.
I just checked, there are nine users whose last posts are in that thread. At least six of them said yes to the meetup too. It can't be an accident that they're all suddenly missing. @EggsBaconEggsBacon I think we're underreacting. We're so high and mighty in the other threads about people being slow to act, and yet here we are.
Just read through my messages. The last message I received was from DUHASTMILK after their flight to the UK and arrival at the Millhaven train station, which I believe was the agreed meet-up spot before they all went to the asylum. I'll write it in a new comment for visibility because I am now seriously concerned something has happened.
😬😬😬
We were talking about this on a separate thread, but I'll reply in the main thread as I think it's important. I haven't heard from the moderators of this forum since they left for the IRL meetup. L_awfulthrowaway and DUHASTMILK are both not answering their messages, either via this forum or our Signal GC for mods. Last message I got said the meet-up had nine people in total from the forum, the six of them were waiting at the station for the stragglers and then they were going to head to the asylum. After that the line of communication goes dead. I've privately contacted the two older moderators who left the forum before this happened and both of them haven't heard anything either. Which is worrying. I don't know what to do
isn't there a... mod wiki or 1something? Someone you can call? Doesn't it feel like this is one for the cops?
@kindflayer ... of course we can't call the police. Do you even use this forum?! Half of us would be arrested before they even opened the case.
@kindflayer As much as I wish there was some moderator-of-the-secret-crime-solve-forum hotline. it's literally just me at this point.
Ouch. Fine. Shouldn't we at least start investigating where they could have got to?
@kindflayer Yes.
L_awfulthrowaway mentioned she'd been contacted by a tipper before deciding to visit the site of the case. Seems to me like that's a sensible place to start. Any ideas who that was?
There was a survivor of the murders, right? The Hadleigh son? Should we start there?
sounds like that's one for @EggsBaconEggsBacon
On it.
Dug up all I could from my end on the Hadleigh family. There isn't much, but from what I can tell, the Hadleighs are an aristocratic family who've fallen from grace in modern times. Their family tree is like a who's who of historical crackpots, honestly. Esotericism, alchemy, witchcraft... there's a lot of arrest warrants, bail grants and accusations of foul play in the public record. And from what I can infer from the records, they always had the money to dodge jail time or anything more serious than a slap on the wrist. Take a look at this sales document for instance. That much at that time would have been a lot of money for a house, but they bought a book with it. Absolutely crazy.
Woah.
OMG. Hurrah for my extremely niché area of expertise finally being useful! I KNOW that book!!! If you're into early mysticism and weird Mediaeval occult, that title is recognisable from a mile off. It's SUPER famous. Basically the blueprint for every treatise and pamphlet on witchcraft and magic thereafter. And they had this in their possession?! Wow. Just wow.
@kindflayer ... As much as this might be Old English Harry Potter, I have never heard of this book and I imagine many users of this forum haven't either. Care to elaborate?
@DandyHiWaveMan Haha, well it's super famous if you exist within the Venn diagram of 'knows Old English' and 'has an academics library card'. I actually used some scans in my dissertation back in the day. I'll go dig them out. Stay tuned.
Back. Here's the front cover and some pages I recovered (esoteric exploration and some sort of device that helps one "navigate the spaces between" apparently) The gist of the book is that the author had collated different accounts of people who believed that there were some bored cosmic space gods living between different realities, waiting to destroy us all if we weren't entertaining enough. It's pretty cool because it inspired Crowley, Quantum Physicists and Lovecraftian theories alike, a sort of Ur-History-Channel where every spooky theory was combined. Of course, the church at the time immediately banned all copies of the book and ordered it burned, which is why it's super rare and expensive.
@kindflayer Wild to see those pages. Can't believe they paid all that money for some nutjob's imaginary diary
@kindflayer How is this relevant? People are missing. This isn't a joke.
@kindflayer
Wow.
Yeah, honestly I'm done here. The hostility in this forum is so toxic.
@kindflayer Don't flounce. Sorry. Everyone is just stressed because half the users have just up and vanished.
@kindflayer but if this is the sort of thing the Hadleighs were into, doesn't this mean they're dangerous and we should be concerned for everyone who went to that meetup?.
@Thanksalotrachel You're right. The book stuff sounds kooky as hell but L mentioned "some raving lunatic talking about rabbits and wormholes and third dimensions" so I suppose it's good to have confirmation that that's what the Hadleighs were into. @kindflayer if you're reading this, come back. We'd love to see more pages.
they've deactivated
🤦🤦🤦 another dead end.
Dead end? Or a new beginning?
@Wh1teRabbit You're the troll from the Millhaven thread. Who are you? How'd you even get posting rights? I don't remember approving you.
@Wh1teRabbit Do you have something to do with the disappearances?
@Wh1teRabbit ???
@NorfolkingChance You're wasting your breath. This thread is compromised. I think we should switch to PMs, considering the above. @NorfolkingChance @Thanksalotrachel @DandyHiWaveMan I'll PM you a signal link. Any other users want to join, inbox me. I'll only accept 5-year flairs.
Sorry if this post comes as a bit of a shock, or if you're reading this thread and can't make heads or tails of it or why the forum is now closed for posting. I'll try and summarise as best I can.
We strongly suspect the nine forum members active in the previous Millhaven thread and who agreed to meet at the Millhaven Asylum are now missing and totally uncontactable. In the best case scenario, the meetup inspired them all to open a phone-free bakeshop together. In the worst case... well. We don't know, and we're seriously concerned. We've gathered some evidence visible in this thread and upon private discussion with some of you active here, we're going to take it to the authorities.
Now, what does this mean for the forum? Well, it's worth stating that I'd barely started learning the ropes of moderation before the entire mod team disappeared or left. Seeing as I've already caused one flounce, I think it's best in the meantime to lock the forum entirely. This protects the members' information and shared sensitive documents as much as I humanly can without being a presence on every thread. I also think its important to keep things here as secure as we possibly can whilst we go to the police and file the missing persons report. I'll leave this thread and the Millhaven thread open, but without the ability to add new comments. This means any lurkers of this forum can piece together what's going on without pissing each other off and me having to step in to intervene.
In the future, I'm going to re-open the threads we suspect the tipster was referring to (see the Millhaven thread: references to a lumberyard, a forest and an arctic location were mentioned - we have corresponding threads that we think match up) so keep an eye on your mail. Discussion will be limited to trusted 5-year users only, so we don't have to handle trolling or hurt feelings. We want to stress the following: if you're contacted by the forum user Wh1terabbit, do not engage and please don't go to any location that they recommend you visit. We believe they are dangerous and linked to the disappearances in some way.
Finally, I'm sorry if you're unhappy that I've closed the forum and you're unable to post. I know many of us consider this place somewhere we can make a difference, helping people to move on from horrific crimes and bring culprits to justice. I certainly do not want to stand in the way - but I'm just one guy, and I don't have the bandwidth to be the sole moderator of the entire forum. For now, I have to keep things on lockdown as we proceed with the right channels as discreetly as possible. This is for your safety. Usual reminders about digital privacy apply; if you want to clean up your presence on this forum, now is as good a time as any.
I'll be in touch if we have more updates on the Millhaven missing. In the meantime, stay safe out there.
From, The Mod Team (aka me at this point)