ASH: We've been having a great time in Sedona even though the entire team had to make a late night run to find new accommodations because the original place we ran didn't have working toilets. No matter how you look at it, toilets are kind of a necessity. But we got that figured out and we spent the last week or so just looking around the community and trying to decide which things are worth investigating and which things are just kind of silly.

Sedona has a lot of weirdness and none of us really want to piss away our time with that. I think [Sedona is] probably one of the prettiest places I bet ever been to. You must have to be a millionaire to live here though. The town's really nice and [Mist] has kind of been acting like our tour guide because she used to spend so much time here fooling people into giving her money. I think she was probably a really good con woman because she could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. I'm glad she's no longer doing that and is working for us now.

My favorite thing about Sedona so far has been this awesome fresh baked cookie and ice cream dessert we had our first night here at a local pizza restaurant. The suckiest thing I found has been the lack of good coffee shops. There's one in Uptown which is really nice, but good luck trying to find parking in that part of town. Sometimes a dude just needs to take his laptop and have a Café mocha and this town ain't letting me do that. You'd think with all the tourists that this place would be lousy with coffee shops that they're actually really few and far between and the one I've been going to has prettiest bad stuff. In fact, I couldn't even find a Starbucks and those things are everywhere!!! I guess the tourists come to buy other things, like jewelry and pottery and T-shirts but not delicious coffee drinks??

MERIDIAN: Regardless of your opinion on UFOs, Sedona and the surrounding region does appear to be a hotspot for reports of strange aerial objects. I noticed during my first day here that objects in the sky are quite common, probably because the Verde Valley lies beneath so many of the flight paths used by Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix one-hundred and twenty-five miles to the south. On any given day, you can look up into the Sedona sky and it will be criss-crossed with numerous jet contrails. (Some of the more rabid conspiracy theorists actually claim that these contrails are the government spraying Sedona with some unknown chemical, although why you would spray from such an extreme height baffles me?) The flight activity never stops and these theorists have lots of ideas as to why and what’s really up there.

The Verde Valley and surrounding region had reports of unidentified flying objects well before the New Age movement lured in a whole population convinced that the red rocks are alien landing sites. During our research, we found numerous examples of UFOs being witnessed and photographed in the decades prior to Sedona’s popularity as a New Age haven. One of the earliest I could find stemmed from 1953 and involved a Roswell-type crash of an unknown object approximately “one hour north of Phoenix.” No precise location was given of course, but this would roughly place this spectacular event in the Prescott Valley area to the south of Sedona. Was this crash extraterrestrial or some experimental craft created here on Earth? And what about all the strange sightings of objects since?

As you can imagine, theories abound. Some claim that the objects in the sky are extraterrestrial visitors who are drawn to Sedona for the same reason humans are – the region possesses peculiar energies which can be beneficial to lifeforms of all kinds. Other theories are more down to earth, at least in terms of blaming the UFOs on human sources like the US military. For some of these theorists, the UFOs are experimental aircraft being launched from secret underground bases. One such “base” is said to be the Phoenix Cement Company in Clarkdale [see additional photos below], about twenty miles southwest of Sedona. Why the conspiracy theorists are suspicious of this installation isn't too hard to figure out. The plant is a massive complex of ominous-looking buildings set against the stark cliffs of the Cleopatra Hill. You can see it for miles and it seems monstrously out of place in an area known for sleepy cowboy communities and ghost towns. We attempted to get close to the plant to take good photos, but as you approach it on the main road, you are greeted by two giant yellow signs warning away trespassers. The best view of the complex was actually from Jerome, which is located high on the mountainside above the plant. I suppose, if you're in the right frame of mind, you might draw some parallels between the cement company and places like Area 51, except of course for the fact that the cement company is a cement company, not a known secret government complex. Despite the big no trespassing signs (which aren't unusual thing for that type of business anyway) there weren't any ominous white 4x4s patrolling the hills or shoot-to-kill warnings. Did I mention that it's a cement plant?

Putting aside what actually goes on in the cement plant (which I suspect is the production of cement and cement-related products) what about all those other UFO sightings from the central Arizona area? There are major UFO cases from areas adjacent to Sedona, including the alleged alien abduction of Travis Walton from Snowflake in 1975 and the baffling “Phoenix Lights” case from 1997. So, no matter what your take on the town of Sedona, there appears to be enough weirdness in the skies over the state to illicit some investigation.

So who’s doing the investigating? Aside from the numerous amateur UFOlogists out there, research has also been conducted by some reputable organizations.

A local but non-defunct organization known as the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) was actually based in Tucson, having been founded by an astronomer with the Kitt Peak Observatory in 1952. APRO was notable in that it had a science-based philosophy that stressed field investigations and forensic evidence. It also had at it’s disposal a contingent of notable scientists including atmospheric physicists, astronomers, engineers and more. APRO’s reputation took a huge blow in 1975-76 when it assisted with the aforementioned Travis Walton alien abduction case. When it was revealed that APRO suppressed the results of a polygraph test that Travis Walton allegedly failed, the group’s objectivity was immediately called into question. It never recovered from the controversy and by 1988, APRO had disbanded with many of its members helping to form the Mutual UFO Network or MUFON. Sedona actually has it’s own MUFON chapter with, according to their website, the expressed purpose of correlating “sightings in the Sedona area and thereby determine likely areas of occurrence and other characteristics of the sightings or other phenomena.” I'm not sure what that means, but there you go...

Certainly the controversy and investigations will continue for years to come. I personally did not see anything I couldn’t account for during my week in Sedona, but that’s really not long enough to tell I suppose. All in all, the debate over UFOs only lends to Sedona’s mystique.

RUNE: You have to love Jerome and here's why:

If you are a ghost-hunter, regardless of your level or resources, then Jerome not only loves you, it caters to you. It describes itself as a "ghost town," although the bustling shops, galleries and cafes would certainly suggest otherwise. But the town residents are savvy to their home's colorful past and unique location, perched one mile high on the side of Cleopatra Hill. Like so many other ghost towns we've visited in Arizona (Vulture City, Ruby, Arivaca, Copper Creek, Tombstone, Twin Buttes, Mineral Hill (Azurite), Olive and Continental), Jerome owes its quick rise and inevitable decline to mining. But unlike most of the aforementioned towns, Jerome reinvented itself during the 1990s as an artists' community, tourist destination and professional ghost town.

Although there are many haunted locations in the town, our primary interest was the old Union Verde Hospital which towers over the rest of the town on a narrow bluff and probably has some of the best views of the Verde Valley you will ever see. The hospital was built by the Union Verde Copper Company in 1927 to service its employees and the other residents of the area. Like most rural communities, the introduction of a hospital was a god-send. Like most hospitals, the Union Verde was a place of both healing and suffering and therefore a fertile breeding ground for haunting activity.

Polaris had been to the Union Verde once before, on a return trip to Arizona and shortly after it had been sold to a private party by the mining conglomerate. The family that purchased it planned to turn it into a hotel, part of the larger community revival of Jerome. He remembered it as being a mostly ramshackle structure at that time, with the top two floors closed to the public and the rooms being both Spartan and uncomfortable.

"I remember having problems sleeping the one and only night I was there," Polaris told me. "I was on the second floor and the third and fourth floors were abandoned, but there was noise coming from them. Banging, thumping, footsteps. It wasn't constant, but enough that you'd just get to sleep and something would bang against the ceiling and wake you up again."

The owner had taken Polaris and a handful of friends into the top floors and allowed them to explore by flashlight (there wasn't any working electricity on those levels at that time.) Some of the old hospital equipment was still in place, covered in dust and cobwebs.

"It was a classic haunted environment," he recalled. "You're creeping around in the dark in a turn-of-the-century hospital, later an insane asylum, and a lot of the hardware and fixtures are still there. We were seeing strange shapes and movement everywhere. I wasn't sure if it was real or just my wild imagination until I went to bed later and had all those noises keep me awake all night."

He continued: "There were plenty of stories about ghosts and tragedies. Two I remember in particular. The first involved a maintenance man who had been crushed by a falling elevator car while doing some repairs. There was also a kind of "sun deck" on the far end of the building where the mental patients could go and recreate. Apparently one of the patients threw herself - I think it was a woman but I don't really remember - out of the window and dropped three stories. She died and the rumor is that she haunted that sun room afterwards."

[Webmaster's Note: according to other sources, the elevator fatality Polaris mentioned was a hospital orderly named Claude Harvey. His death was ruled a suicide although rumors persisted that it was actually a murder. The suicide was that of a wheelchair-bound mental patient whose name is not known. This victim was male. Outcast Earth was not able to independently confirm either of these incidents.]

The Union Verde was shut down in 1950 when the copper mining industry bottomed out. It sat abandoned for the next forty-four years, but apparently not unoccupied. What few residents remained in Jerome at that time were apparently vexed by strange lights and disembodied screams coming from the old building. Some of this activity was probably attributable to the hospital being taken over in part by vagrants, but other incidents apparently defied explanation.

"When I visited it all those years ago, I remember the few caretakers talking about how unnerving the building was after dark and especially if you were alone," Polaris recollected. "Being there while the building was still in its 'raw state' was pretty cool. You don't quite get the same sense of the place down that the remodel is completed, but it certainly is beautiful."

As Polaris noted, the Union Verde has undergone quite a transformation since he first crept through its halls fifteen years ago. The building has been extensively remodeled and is finely decorated in a kind of Victorian-cum-haunted-house motif. We ate a delicious lunch with gorgeous views at the hotel's restaurant, aptly named "The Asylum." The management wouldn't allow us to roam the upper hallways since we weren't paying guests, but it amused us to walk around the lower floor and see the tourists snapping photos of the murderous elevator. Ash went to the bathroom and came back laughing, saying that they had a gruesome "severed head" on a table in the hallway outside. Echo found a framed photo a vaporous shape that had been photographed upstairs and there were plenty of signs and brochures for the hotel's ghost tours.

Like I said earlier, Jerome caters to its haunted reputation.

ASH: The Gold King Mine is kind of this crazy little amusement park on the side of Jerome only it's totally real. The Gold King was originally called Haynes and it was like a suburb of Jerome with it's own mine and own town. It was much smaller however. In the 1960s, after Haines had been abandoned for a long time, the entire town was purchased by a man named Don Robertson. Don kind of looks like a cross between Santa Claus and a hillbilly. He still around today and I even had the opportunity of meeting him while we were at the gold King. He was working on a very cool old-school drag racing car in a big barn. He's a very nice man and even gave me the opportunity to inspect the car close up and started the engine. The rest of the gold King is a collection of old buildings and old automobiles. Mr. Robertson must've spent years collecting a lot of the stuff because I'm sure it wasn't here when the town was originally abandoned. Most of the town's original buildings are still standing, although it looks like they could fall over if there was ever a strong wind. Some of them you're allowed to go inside but most are still off-limits. The funniest one was a large hotel on the side of the hill which Mr. Robertson claims was the local brothel. He's taken a plastic mannequin and dressed her like a hooker and put her on a balcony where she can wave down at the visitors. It was pretty hilarious to see. The entire town kind of feels like an attraction at Knotts Berry Farm, except that almost everything here is authentic. He's rearranged a lot of it but this was actually a real frontier mining town. In the middle of the town are two mine shafts which are now off-limits to the public. Apparently at one time you could actually go into one of them for about 100 feet but now it's barricaded closed. These are the actual entrances to the real tunnels that the miners used when they were excavating gold from Haines. Nearby is a small petting zoo with some goats and ducks and on the other side of the town, near the old wood mill, is the town's mascot, a grumpy old burro named Pedro. I have no idea if the Gold King has any ghosts. No one on our team was able to find any haunting legends or descriptions of paranormal activity here. I should have totally asked Mr. Robertson about it but I forgot at the time. Even so, if you're in the Jerome area, I highly recommend that you stop by the Gold King. It's not very expensive to get in and it's definitely an interesting way to spend a couple of hours if you're interested in the history of the old West and mining in Arizona.

MIST: Fort Verde is a small state park located in the town of Camp Verde about thirty miles to the south of Sedona. As historical parks go, there's relatively little to see here compared to the installation that once stood on this site. The fort (which originally was little more than a tent city) was established in 1868 to provide protection for white settlers and farmers whose property and crops were being raided by the Tonto-Apache and Yavapai Indians. Construction began on the permanent post in 1870. The complex had a roughly rectangular shape with a series of wooden and adobe buildings surrounding a large parade ground. The fort provided enough room and support for two infantry and two calvary companies. Curiously -- especially in light of why the fort was established -- there was no defensive wall or other fortifications. But apparently the fort didn't need it because in the two decades that it operated it was never attacked by any hostile force. However, the fort was a key installation in the various Indian wars and the U.S. government's push to resettle Native Americans on reservations. Its last significant action took place in mid-1882 in what is known as the Big Dry Wash Battle, when units from Fort Verde help hunt down and destroy a band of renegade Apaches who had jumped off the White Mountain reservation and had returned to their traditional raiding practices.

With the Indian nations pacified, the fort quickly outlived its usefulness. It was finally abandoned in 1891 and its land and resources sold at auction eight years later. Over the next seventy years, the twenty-two buildings that had originally stood on the site were dismantled, destroyed or ignored. By 1956, when a group of local citizens decided to turn the administration building into a small historical museum, there were only four buildings left. These are the same four buildings which we toured earlier this week. They include the commanding officer's home, the surgeon's home, the administration building (now a museum and visitor's center) and one of the barracks for the enlisted men. Most parts of these buildings are accessible to the public and have been decorated with period-specific furniture, clothing, tools and artwork.

By far the most interesting was the commanding officer's home. Its dim lighting and high, thick adobe walls gives one the feeling that you are touring through a mausoleum. As you enter, you come into a large foray with a zigzagging wooden staircase that leads to the second floor. I stood on that staircase for a long time, just absorbing the energy of the building. I almost felt like a psychic fly on the wall, looking in on the home life of soldiers and their families long since gone. Upstairs, the early afternoon sun was pouring through the narrow windows and landing is warm puddles on the dark wooden floors. The master bedroom was to the right, a child's bedroom to the left. Between them was a small semi-circular window that looked out over the parade ground. I squatted down and for the longest time had the image in my head of a small boy sitting there, watching the soldiers drill on the grass below. Somehow, the name Samuel kept running through my head. Could he have been the child of one of the camp commandants? Or was it all just my wild imagination?

Ironically it wasn't until later that I discovered this was the buiding with the most unconfirmed paranormal activity. According to other accounts from other investigative teams, a sad-looking or crying woman wearing a blue dress has been sighted many times in this residence. There are also cold spots, which might be explained in an non-metaphysical way if you consider how the building was constructed. I could not find any records of a ghost of a child. Strangely, I also couldn't find any reports of phantom soldiers but this may be due to the fact that the fort never came under fire. The other buildings (the enlisted men's barracks and the surgeon's quarters) didn't seem to create any strong responses from our team members. Ash and Polaris did think that the administrative building was very "creepy." The corridors are narrow. There are lots of blind corners. The floor and ceiling creak incessantly. I don't know if the admin building is actually haunted or just has a whole lot of character.

We were anxious to visit the post cemetery but found out from a very talkative volunteer behind the welcome table that the grave yard was emptied out nearly a century ago. Most of its former residents were reinterred in the San Francisco area. We weren't even able to figure out where it was originally located.

I wouldn't call Ft. Verde a hotbed of ghostly activity. If there is any spectral activity there at all, it's probably limited and the encounters would be few and far between. Even so, it's a pretty interesting place, especially if you are a military buff.

MERIDIAN: We received news through our grapevine of friends and associates yesterday that our old foil, Jeremy Riposte, dropped a bombshell in the recent edition of his self-published newsletter entitled ANCIENT FOOTPRINTS. This is a publication he puts out several times a year to promote his paranormal / adventure tour business in Kaua'i. In it was an article entitled "Back from the Dead: When Paranormal Investigators Turn to Fraud." We have posted a link to the article in PDF form below.

You may have already guessed this, but the "fraudulent paranormal investigators" listed in the article are the Outcast Earth team members. Jeremy claims to have found alive "Meryl," the step-sister of our former team member Trespass whom we were told was killed in a boating accident years ago. The following is the biographical information we have posted on the website about Meryl:

(Born June 12, 1970 - Died August 6, 2003) Trespass’s step-sister. Meryl was the only child of Trespass’s stepfather, Patrick. Trespass and Meryl met when he and his mother relocated to Patrick’s hometown of Dry Tree, Louisiana, and they quickly became fast friends. Both were frequently the target of Patrick’s drunken rages and would take comfort in each other's company. Sadly, Meryl accidentally drowned in the swamp outside of Dry Tree in 2003 and was buried in the local cemetery. It was this loss that prompted Trespass to finally flee Louisiana and join the Outcast Earth project a little over a year later. [For more about Meryl, see Trespass's Return to the Bayou | Into the Wilderness | Enewsletter: Outcast Earth's Invisible Member]

According to Jeremy's article, the rumors of Meryl's death were very premature indeed, as she is very much alive and apparently went to Kaua'i searching for Trespass. Of course, the team's first reaction was anger. Clearly, Jeremy is trying to get his revenge on us after our encounter with him in the Grand Canyon late last year. [See Jeremy Riposte's Bogus Journey for details.] But, he has produced photos of a woman who looks very much like Trespass's dead sister. So, there are several possibilities here:

1. Jeremy is perpetrating another hoax as an act of revenge against Outcast Earth.

2. The woman he claims is "Meryl" is perpetrating some kind of hoax and Jeremy is being duped.

3. Trespass lied to us all along about "Meryl."

Since none of us have seen or heard from Trespass since he left Outcast Earth in 2008, there's no way for us to ask him. We were planning on leaving Arizona in the next few days to head for Montana, but it looks like we'll be making a side-trip to Kaua'i first. Apparently "Meryl" is still there as a guest of Jeremy's, so we are very anxious to meet with her and see if she's legit. Naturally, I think it's hysterical that Jeremy Riposte, considering his reputation, would accuse us of a hoax! Gimme a break!

We will be posting updates as we gather them!

POLARIS: After several days of anxiously waiting, Jeremy Riposte finally returned my many phone messages today. I'm sure the delay was all a part of Jeremy's profound sense of "theater." In any case, we were able to confirm that the woman identifying herself as Trespass's step-sister, Meryl, is still in Kaua'i as Jeremy's guest. He told us that she was refusing to speak with us by phone, but would consent to a face-to-face meeting as long as Jeremy was present as well.

Why do I suddenly feel like we're a bunch of lambs being led to the slaughter?

In any case, it's not really an offer we can refuse and we have few other options. Meridian and Rune have been making a hard-press effort to find Trespass, but he's been off our radar for over two years and we haven't found any way to contact him or even determine where he's living. Internet searches, including of social networks, have all come up empty. We did, however, use the few photos we have of the woman Trespass told us was his sister to compare to the photos that Jeremy published in his newsletter. We present them here for your inspection. We all agree that this is either the same woman or an amazing lookalike.

If we return to Kaua'i to meet with her and Jeremy, one of the things we are insisting on is that she is able to show us proof of her identity, including producing family photos or other keepsakes she would have of Trespass when they lived in the same town in Louisiana. If they agree to these terms, we are most likely to fly back to Kaua'i at the beginning of next week.

More updates will follow as we get them.

POLARIS: The Outcast Earth team met with Meryl at Jeremy Reposte’s house outside of Princeville, on the northern shore of Kaua’i. Jeremy's paranormal tour business appears to be doing well as his house is gorgeous and certainly a big step up from the tiny bungalow he used to live in. Despite my initial concerns, the meeting with very pleasant and cordial. Everyone had lunch poolside and discussed the common and somewhat muddied shared history of Meryl and Trespass.

The identity of Meryl is not in dispute. She was able to show us plenty of identification and many family photographs of her and Trespass in the days before Outcast Earth. She is clearly the woman whose photos have been posted on the Outcast Earth website for years.

But before I get into the details of how a dead woman ends up alive and well and eating lunch across the table from me, I feel a recap about Trespass is important:

My association with Trespass began with a phone call out of the blue and then him showing up in Kaua'i uninvited and unexpected. He was a tall and well-spoken kid just out of his teens. We were never sure how Trespass knew about the Outcast Earth project as this was long before we had gone public. He always claimed that he had read about it in an Internet chat room, but we couldn't figure out how this would have happened. In the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter. He knew about the project and was keen on joining. Although he was a stranger to all of us, we gave him a shot and over the next few months he really demonstrated his value to the team. He was with the team starting with Easter Island in 2006 and ending with the Los Angeles investigations in 2009. Trespass liked to be known as the "bad boy" of Outcast Earth. Between his tattoos, body piercings, sarcastic wit and temper issues, he was an often intimidating person.

What we knew about his personal history was sparse. In short, we understood that Trespass's mother had married a man named Patrick who moved them to a tiny rural community in the middle of the Louisiana bayou. The town became a prison for Trespass, especially as his step-father's alcoholism began to manifest itself in abuse. Patrick had a older daughter from a previous marriage. This was Meryl. Trespass always told us that he and Meryl were very close, bound together by the terrible situation they shared. According to Trespass, however, Meryl met with a tragic end in 2003 when she became drunk and drowned in the swamp. She was buried in the Dry Tree town cemetery. [Read more about Meryl's fictional history, as told by Trespass, in the newsletter Outcast Earth's Invisible Member.]

The town of Dry Tree was virtually wiped off the maps by Hurricane Katrina in September 2007. Trespass and Rune returned to the area in 2008 to search from his mother, but no sign of her or Patrick was found. They also spent part of a day in the Dry Tree cemetery where Trespass made a feigned attempt to find Meryl's grave among all the dislocated and destroyed tombstones. It would be revealed a year later that Patrick had murdered Trespass's mother in the chaos that followed the hurricane and was living in Florida under an assumed identity. It was this revelation that prompted Trespass to leave the OCE team and we haven't heard from him since. Patrick was ultimately convicted of the murder and is living in a Louisiana penitentiary.

Meryl's version, as was partially detailed in Jeremy’s newsletter article, is much different.

Although she agrees that her father was an abusive alcoholic and murderer, she claimed that she and Trespass were never that close. By the time Trespass and his mother arrived in Dry Tree, Meryl was living in a separate home with her soon-to-be husband, Cliff. Trespass, she claims, became infatuated with her.

"At first I thought it was kind of cute," she told us, "like a puppy-love crush. But after a while, it began to feel more like an obsession. Cliff and I would often find him loitering around our trailer or he was hanging out at the restaurant where I waitressed. I felt bad for him because there weren't many kids his age in Dry Tree and he just seemed desperate to have a friend. But I was engaged and not interested. He would have never been someone I got involved with..."

Meryl and Cliff ultimately put an end to Trespass's obsession when they eloped and left Dry Tree forever several months before Trespass joined Outcast Earth.

"I don't know if my eloping is what prompted [Trespass] to leave Louisiana and move to Hawaii, but the timing seemed significant," Meryl stated. "No one really knew what he was doing. All we knew is that he had left for Hawaii to become a ghost hunter."

Meryl didn't think much about Trespass again until it was revealed that Patrick had killed his wife. She was surprised that Trespass never showed up for the trial.

"It would have been an awkward reunion for sure," she said, "but it was really weird that he never came to court. After all, it was the trial of his mother's killer."

Shortly after Patrick's conviction, Meryl's marriage with John ended and she found herself becoming more curious about what happened to Trespass.

"I wanted to make sure he knew what happened," she said. "I didn't want to encourage his interest in me, but I thought it only right that he knew that my father had been held responsible for what he had done.”

Following up on the meager leads she had on Trespass, Meryl began to research paranormal investigation groups out of Hawaii and ultimately found Jeremy Riposte. Jeremy immediately knew who she was seeking and sent her information about Outcast Earth including our website address.

"I was outraged to find not only my photograph on this website, but this entire hair-brained fiction about how I had gotten drunk and died in the swamp years earlier. I was pissed!" Meryl confessed. "Jeremy was convinced that Outcast Earth was defrauding me somehow so I agreed to interview with him for his article [Click here to read Jeremy's article entitled BACK FROM THE DEAD.] Now I really regret that the article was ever written, since it's obvious that [Trespass] was lying to everyone."

For the remaining original members of the team -- myself, Ash, Rune and Meridian -- the revelation that Meryl was alive felt like a betrayal.

"Trespass was always a little bit of a shady character," said Meridian, "but this seems even over the top for him."

Rune, who was also the focus of Trespass's unwanted and unreturned affections, deduced that perhaps it was Meryl's rejection that prompted the elaborate fiction. "Maybe, in some weird psychological way, Trespass was 'killing off' someone who had hurt him?"

Ash's reaction was more blunt: "It's messed up."

Since we haven't had any contact with Trespass in over two years, we have no way of ascertaining what his actual motives were. Rune said a long time ago that Trespass was the first and greatest mystery that Outcast Earth could ever investigate. That is so true. Even years after he's left the team, he continues to confound us.

"I think [Trespass] always carried this bag of demons around on his back," Meryl told me after the lunch. "And I don't think he'll ever figure out a way to get rid of it."

MERIDIAN: It has been an unusual week in paradise. The sun is still bright and warm. The prevailing winds are still cool and refreshing. But our time on Kauai during this trip has taken us to places as an organization that I never thought we would go. As the team's resident (and unabashed) skeptic, I volunteered to summarize the past seven days. And not because I wanted to throw doubt on what has happened, but because the team as a whole felt I was the most likely person to give a balanced account. I will endeavor to do so.

After our meeting with Trespass's very alive sister, Meryl, the team continued to linger around the Princeville area to enjoy her and Jeremy Riposte's company. I write this with some sense of irony, as "enjoy" is not an adjective that I have historically applied to any time spent with Jeremy. I cannot say that Jeremy has been our enemy or our rival, only that his approach to the investigation of the paranormal has been different from OCE's and we have frequently bumped heads over it. This most recent incident with Meryl is just the latest example and it has underscored the often antagonistic approach Jeremy has had toward us... and that we have had toward him. So, color me astounded when the team voted overwhelmingly to include both Jeremy and Meryl as the newest members. Rune and I were the only dissenting voices, but we have agreed to abide by the vote. We have been jokingly referring to this as the "Princeville Accord."

Certainly, the inclusion of Meryl and Jeremy offers the team some new resources, including the infusion of additional income to continue our work. Plus, Jeremy is a walking encyclopedia of paranormal facts, especially as it relates to myth and legend. Meryl is an engaging woman, who despite her lack of experience with ghost hunting, is an adventurous and extremely well-organized individual with natural problem-solving skills. They are also a challenge for the rest of us. New members always take some adjusting too, and both Jeremy and Meryl have very large personalities. For Rune and I (and I speak for both of us), the major concern is that it may ruin the team member’s otherwise efficient, respectful and cordial relationships. I think it was Sigmund Freud who said (to paraphrase): “Insanity is rare among individuals but normal among groups.” I hope these changes won’t lead to that! To keep old problems from resurfacing, agreements have been struck and everyone has been extremely forward-looking. I will only offer my voice to encourage diligence and compromise.

The inclusion of Jeremy and Meryl is notable for other reasons as well. Jeremy is the first male to join the team since Cipher and will help balance out the team dynamic which has been rather female-heavy over the last two years. Meryl’s inclusion has the distinction of bringing our numbers up to eight, the largest the team has ever been in its history! Their memberships will become official in the days ahead and, like the rest of our members, they will assume an Outcast Earth pseudonym under which they will be identified from this point on. More info will follow as soon...