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A field investigator's uncommissioned report on House of Eternal Return and the mysterious disappearance of an entire family.
Photo by Kennedy Cottrell
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
On March 17, 2016, at precisely 7:06pm, the Selig-Pastore family executed what can only be described as the most spectacular breach of interdimensional safety protocols in recent memory. They twisted the fundamental laws governing time and space, tore dimensional holes throughout their Victorian residence, and promptly vanished into the ether. Ten years later, the assigned investigators continue to file incomplete reports while I, a humble Los Angeles division operative on my first vacation day in eighteen months, decided to conduct my own recreational inspection.
I should clarify: this is not official business. My current assignment actually involves monitoring the surreal anomalies of Los Angeles. And trust me, trying to distinguish between genuine supernatural events and the routine reality distortions of Hollywood has aged me in ways my health benefits do not cover. I managed to accrue a lavish total of three personal days, so I drove to Santa Fe for a “vacation.”
After a lovely morning at Café Pasqual’s (their huevos rancheros nearly made me file a positive anomaly report), I decided to pay my respects to the House of Eternal Return, the interdimensional catastrophe that’s been giving my colleagues nightmares for a decade.
FIELD OBSERVATIONS:
What fascinates me about this family is their sheer audacity. Most humans, when faced with fissures in reality, respond with either terror or denial. The Selig-Pastores responded with scientific curiosity and, frankly, a breathtaking disregard for cosmic order.
Standing in their dining room (ground zero of The Event) I can still feel residual Chaos humming through the walls. The family’s images are burned into the mirrors here, ghostly afterimages of their final moments. Piper’s artistic visions, Nicolae’s sonic experiments, little Lex’s scientific ambitions, Morgan’s botanical intuitions—all of it still resonates at frequencies most humans can’t perceive unless, of course, they have privileged access to [REDACTED].
In the primary bedroom, I discovered Piper’s journal lying open to March 11th, 2016. Despite her growing confusion about what was real, she kept writing: “This is not my journal. Nic is... Nic, but he is not MY Nic.” Her commitment to recording these experiences, no matter how bewildering, gave us what remains the most revealing first-hand account of what the family endured. As someone who files reports for a living, I have to admire her dedication to documentation under extreme circumstances.
Nicolae’s workshop remains a testament to the dangerous intersection of creativity and cosmic forces. His Laser Harp sits silent but still thrumming with potential. Nicolae’s gift for sensing the physicality of sound led him to build something that could communicate with other realities. The casual way he treated cosmic forces like a science project never ceases to amaze me. Between Nicolae’s Laser Harp and Emerson’s Harmonic Transducer, this family had assembled an entire toolkit for dismantling reality.
I attempted to access Emerson’s safe in the upstairs office (purely out of professional curiosity, you understand). The old scientist’s combination eludes me, but the psychic traces around the lock suggest he stored documentation of his original experiments on young Nimsesku. The creature still manifests throughout the house: I counted twelve different Nimsesku variations scurrying through the walls during my brief visit. Some astute observers claim to have spotted more.
In what was once the children’s bedroom, I discovered one of Morgan’s plant journals lying open beside a wilted succulent. Her ten-year-old handwriting describes Purple Needlegrass: “Its sixteen foot deep roots can be used as an anchor for the soil preventing erosion.” Something about a child writing about deep roots and preventing erosion in a house about to tear itself apart feels prophetic.
Morgan’s twin brother Lex haunts me most. The ten-year-old got caught up in his uncle Lucius’s schemes, manipulated into experiments that sent him phasing into the “fog space.” In this liminal dimension also known as the Tave, he grew less solid each day until he faded entirely. The family's desperate attempt to rescue him is what tore reality apart that night.
Standing among the portals they created, doorways to mastodon caves and faraway fancy towns, I find myself wrestling with the question that has consumed investigators for a decade: did any of them survive? Are they out there somewhere, scattered across the many worlds of the universe? The optimist in me wants to believe they're exploring new realities. The professional in me knows that’s probably wishful thinking. What I do know is that every day, visitors step through these same portals into ethereal forests, bioluminescent coral fields, and animal eye domes. And portals like these have appeared in other locations: Denver, Grapevine, Houston, Las Vegas. The pattern suggests something larger at work, phenomena I suspect we’ll be investigating for decades to come.
ENCOUNTER WITH CIVILIAN POPULATION:
Near the end of my visit, I encountered a small group of civilians—tourists, by their appearance and excited commentary. They moved through the house with the same mixture of wonder and confusion I observe in most baseline humans when confronted with genuine anomalous phenomena. One of them stopped before Nicolae’s laser harp and whispered, “Do you think it actually works?” The innocence in his question struck me as profoundly touching.
I shared a brief moment with them, explaining some of the family’s history. They listened with the rapt attention humans reserve for ghost stories, though I don’t think they fully grasped just how close their world came to annihilation… or how close it still might be. As they headed to the gift shop, I found myself amazed that a gift shop even exists in this place. Somehow Meow Wolf has turned our most confounding containment facility into immersive entertainment operating daily except for Wednesdays.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:
As I write this final entry in my hotel room overlooking the Santa Fe Plaza, I realize I’m composing it on my personal time, using my personal equipment, for my personal satisfaction. My superiors would categorize this as “inefficient resource allocation.” They’re probably right. But for the first time in years, I’m not thinking about protocols or containment procedures or filing deadlines.
I’m thinking about a family who vanished into other worlds and left the doors open behind them. What we classified as catastrophic reality breach, they’ve turned into a top-ten thing to do in New Mexico’s fourth-most populous city. The Selig-Pastores didn’t just break the universe; they made it accessible to anyone curious enough to walk through a refrigerator door.
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE:
Investigator realizes filing reports during vacation defeats the purpose of vacation. Investigator is filing this report anyway out of professional habit.
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