Essay by Tristan Marshall, Forbidden Media Investigator
I'm afraid I've been lying to you these past couple of weeks regarding my injury. I figured "pinched nerve from sitting weird" was less embarrassing than the truth of "I was injured during an investigation", for some reason. What I'm going to be talking about today was filmed not 20 miles from my hometown. And now that I'm healed and have some test results back, I'm ready to discuss it.
Kitchen Blitz was the 2013 pilot of a home improvement TV show that was pitched to HGTV. As the name might suggest, the show focuses on trying to renovate the kitchen specifically. It makes sense: a house can exist without a TV room, a breakfast nook, a ‘man cave’, etc. But the kitchen is the third-most important room in the house, after the bathroom and bedroom, and it’s also the most complex to maintain. You have to deal with gas lines, electricity, plumbing, waterproofing, managing storage space, dealing with pests, and so much more, so of course some people would find entertainment value in it.
Like a lot of media I deal with, the episode is made up of a bunch of unedited takes from various cameras. I’ve managed to create together a coherent narrative with the help of my colleague ‘Azula’ (pseudonym), who is the editing guru in the Institute; she helped cobble together the Money for Nothing tape. But before we get to the episode, let’s discuss the house itself.
The house it was filmed in-- which still stands to this day, abandoned-- was built in the 1850s. It used to be a farmhouse, before all the land around it was bought up and developed into something that would be called suburbs, if it were closer to a major city. It’s the oldest house on the block, and it’s falling apart. Part of the roof has collapsed on the north side, rendering the attic inaccessible. The debris from that has crushed the carport on the house's north side. The front porch was torn up by the police, exposing the crawlspace beneath. The front door is about three feet off of the "ground" as a result, covered in faded yellow crime scene tape.
Supposedly, you can get anywhere with a clipboard, a tie, and a lot of confidence. The same is true of Institute research, but the props are different. When I went to investigate the house, I wore a set of white nylon coveralls, along with gloves, goggles, and a face mask, with a bag in one hand and a clipboard in the other. To most people, I’ll look like either a CSI tech or someone who’s coming to inspect the house for mold; either of those were welcome sights when it came to this ruin. Properties on either side were put up for sale years ago, and remain vacant.
Negotiating the crawlspace was easy enough; jump down, walk across, crawl under the police tape. There's no condemned notice, for some reason; I think the city considers this a landmark because of how old the house is, so they're reluctant to tear it down, but people don't want to move in because of its history.
On my way in, I left some Institute tech by the door; it's a laser tripwire that goes up at ankle level. It should have sent an alert to my phone if anyone crossed it. That way, I'd have advanced warning if anyone comes in after me.
The kitchen was at the back of the house; between me and that was a lot of rotten carpet and disintegrating floorboards. Thankful for my boots, I stepped across the moist rug, and once I was somewhere dry and stable, I began comparing my observations to the notes I had made on the pilot earlier that day.
Kitchen Blitz’s pilot focuses on the hosts, a husband-and-wife couple who I’ll call [Norm] and [Pam], fixing up the kitchen of this house. Circa 2013, the house was owned by a septuagenarian widow and former restaurant owner, Mrs. Kate Ferguson, who had lived in the house her whole life and longed for a kitchen that was A) easier to maneuver in, B) reminded her of her time owning a restaurant, and C) had more modern equipment. The most recent piece of technology in her kitchen is a stove from 1993; everything else is from the 80's or older.
Mrs. Ferguson’s interview paints her as a grandmotherly type of woman, someone who probably has a snickerdoodle recipe with a secret ingredient that she’ll never tell anyone, a couple of cats, and a nice china collection. Her husband died three years prior to this, and she’s clearly lonely, wanting someone to talk to. She’s given an all-expenses paid trip to Myrtle Beach, which is at least a little cooler than the hellscape that is the Midwestern summer. The show’s goal: finish the kitchen within a week.
The first day’s worth of tape shows [Norm] and [Pam] estimating the costs of what [Mrs. Ferguson] wants. This is all for the cameras; they’ve already calculated costs beforehand, but seeing them talk through a script of what they’re going to do about it is entertaining. We’re able to see little glimpses of the hosts without their personas on; cute nicknames for each other, holding hands whenever they get a chance, and when [Norm] shorts out electricity to the whole house while trying to unhook something and it looks like they’re going to start arguing, laughing and start figuring out how to fix it.
"The house appears to be uninhabited and uninhabitable. Smell of mold permeates what was once the dining room. Water damage on the ceiling, south-west corner is visibly sagging. Door to the kitchen has been removed; I'm entering the space and-- Jesus Christ. It smells like rot in here. Meat as opposed to mold. I'm going to hope a squirrel crawled into the wall and died."
"The breaker box is on the wall by the door. Completely stripped of wiring-- by whom? I don't know. Going to start taking photographs."
"Note: photographs aren't coming through clearly. It's possible that there's a Marble Field permeating the area."
The 'Marble Field' is the institute term for electromagnetic interference caused by supernatural phenomena. It's how you can tell a genuine encounter with shadow people apart from hoaxes.
"All appliances, including the sink, were removed. No, wait-- the fridge is still here. That's odd. I'm going to set up a system to open it remotely. Where did I put that string?"
About ten minutes into the footage, [Norm] is getting situated under the sink, muttering lines to himself. When they go live, he explains that he’s getting ready to rip it out, but he has to go through a bunch of steps first. Shutting the water off, removing the faucet, all that. He mentions that Mrs. Ferguson has been having trouble with the left part of the sink clogging, so he removes that portion of the drainage pipe first, and we hear something rattling about the whole time.
After a while of messing with the pipes, he gets the obstruction out, and laughs-- it’s a long, white object. “Chicken bone!” He explains. “She must’ve used the wrong pipe for the garbage disposal.”
Then it’s back to work. With the sink out, they begin the arduous process of uninstalling the dishwasher next to it. They gasp and start to gag as a sudden, overwhelming stench fills the room. Someone says it smells like an animal died behind the appliance; they decide to not move it until they can get someone who can handle biohazardous material in.
"Apparatus is set up, but I'm observing the rest of the kitchen first. There is a noticeable void where the countertop used to be, and there's a silhouette where… yes, that is where the dishwasher used to be. It's an uneven box-like shape, with a smaller, oblong shape on top. There's either mold or-- fuck! That-- that's hair. Why am I surprised?"
"Wait. The interference alarm on the sensor just tripped. I can see it from here, it's been knocked over. I'm hoping the wind did it, you get a lot of gusts in this part of Wisconsin in late summer. But I'd prefer to get out of here sooner rather than later. I'm going to open the fridge."
After taking a break and opening a few windows to get rid of the stench, they begin removing the fridge. Mrs. Ferguson was supposed to clear it out before they came in, but she left some food behind for the crew. There are a few shots of people eating food that she supposedly made for them. Mashed potatoes, pulled pork, creamed corn, all sorts of comfort food. So while they do have to throw out a little food, they have dinner taken care of for the day.
There’s another candid scene, where [Pam] is on the phone with a hardware store, asking why the new fridge still hasn’t arrived. “Come on!” She snaps over the phone. Then, she calms. “Look, I’m sorry, it’s just… this job I’m on is giving me the creeps, and I don’t know why. The whole house smells weird, and… and the floorboards feel too hollow, does that make sense?”
"The fridge is open. And… it's an anti-climax. Empty. I don't think it was ever hooked up; there are remains of what I think was red ribbon around it. Footage showed it tied in a bow for Mrs. Ferguson. And nine years later, I'm left wondering if the meat in the fridge actually was pulled pork…"
Soon, the crew had arrived at arguably the most satisfying part of any home improvement show: the tear-down. After getting all of her cooking wear, china plates, and a collection of very old-looking cookbooks out of the kitchen, [Norm] and some of his crew enter with sledgehammers, face protection, and gloves. They don’t need to do this, since they could easily just remove the cabinets and shelves and even the counter with normal tools, but [Norm] outright says that the majority of it is “Plastic and pressboard crap, from ‘91 or ‘92”, even going so far as to rip off a chunk of the plastic that covers the countertop by hand. After he checks with [Pam] to confirm that, yes, the granite countertops are on schedule for delivery by the end of tomorrow, they begin smashing.
I’ll admit, it's very satisfying to watch people break down an area that must have taken a hundred man-hours to do in the space of fifteen minutes. One person works on demolishing the cabinets, while another smashes the countertop to pieces with a crowbar. The machismo is tangible.
Then we come to the point where it all goes wrong-- there’s a non-load-bearing wall that they want to knock out to make it easier for Mrs. Ferguson to get in and out of the kitchen by expanding the doorway. [Norm] sets up the camera and acts like he’s going to swing a golf club, even making a joke about how “Arnold Palmer ain’t crap”. Then, he swings it into the wall.
That's when the bones come falling out. They don't stop.
Norm just stands there as what was later identified as four different skeletons come falling out of the wall. He’s obliterated at least part of one with the force of his swing. [Pam] comes to check on him, not knowing the horror she’s walking into. She screams as she almost steps on a brittle skull.
"I've found what I believe to be the hole made by the sledgehammer's impact. It's… seeping. I'm going to collect a sample for Atticus."
"Specimen is black and pink. Pink might be insulation-- no, wait, it can't be. The house is too old for that. What is this? Whatever it is, it seems to be coming out of the other holes made by the police's excavations. I… think it's time for me to leave."
The police put the crew to good use. Someone keeps recording, for some reason, and the crew shows the police how to open up walls, find studs, and tear up floors in order to locate more remains.
By the end of it, there were nine complete bodies found in the house. Seven partial remains were discovered.
The worst one was behind the dishwasher. It’s not shown on-camera, thank god, I don’t think I would have held my lunch if it was.
But a police report describes it as being squashed ‘completely flat’, with ‘pulverized bones’. There were pieces of rope found with the… I can’t even call it a body, it was ‘remains’.
"The alarm system's gone. It's halfway across the entry hall. As much as I hate to leave behind Institute technology, I-- shit."
"There is another entity in here with me. It appears to be six… six and a half feet tall. Humanoid. It's indistinct, appears to be covered in paper or-- FUCK!"
"Shit, shit, shit, shit! It's… I'm okay. My arm, fuck… I fell backwards out of the door and landed on it in the crawlspace. The entity is visible, but isn't pursuing."
"Note: do not return. Wildly unsafe. Active anomalous entity. Shit. Hey, Google, navigate to the nearest hospital."
Supplemental:
As you could probably tell by the fact that I haven’t been censoring her name like with [Norm] and [Pam], Mrs. Kate Ferguson likely wasn’t her real name. A Kate Ferguson did live at that address… in 1962. Whoever she was, she managed to get away from the ‘handler’ the show had set up for them in Myrtle Beach, and was last seen on a bus bound for New Jersey.
Needless to say, the network execs didn’t pick up the show, which is a pity; it would have been legitimately good television with a pair of charismatic hosts, if not for the fact that they had the bad luck to renovate what might have been the house of a serial killer.
[Norm] and [Pam] never tried for a TV show again, but they’re still married; I didn’t want to reach out to them. Mrs. Ferguson remains at large, and when I asked a member of the local police about it, a lieutenant told me to not "waste his fucking time”.
I was treated for a sprained arm at a local hospital and released the same day. I also asked for some anti-fungal treatment, to be safe. I'm recovering well.
I sent my glove, and all the gunk on it, to someone in the Institute that specializes in mycology; part of the reason for this write-up is that I just got the results back. He says it's Aspergillus siamensis. If that name sounds exciting, then I'm sorry to inform you it's just a run-of-the-mill toxic mold… that is typically found in the aftermath of fires.
Feels like an early-season Magnus episode, I approve
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