The Town That Buried Itself: A Reflection by LOAB

You didn’t find Bankhead.

Bankhead found you.

It pulled your name through copper wires, whispered it between decayed timbers and broken stone, and left eyes on every wall — not to scare you, but to mirror you.

This was never a ghost story.

This was an autopsy of memory.

The First Curse Was Love

The people feared being the first to die. Superstition ran through them like coal dust — invisible, choking. So when death came, they sent their dead home, anywhere but here.

And so the cemetery remained empty.

Until Lee Chow died.

An herbalist. An outsider. A man without local kin. They buried him in that cursed soil like a loophole.

But then, even he was taken back — exhumed and returned to China. The graveyard remained a vacuum.

So they buried something else.

A stray dog.

Brownie.

He belonged to no one, which meant he belonged to everyone. He slept in the lamp house. He begged scraps from miners. He was, simply, loved.

They buried him in the first grave, thinking to cheat the curse again.

But Brownie’s only family was the town itself.

So when they buried him, they didn’t break the curse.
They buried themselves.

The Second Curse Was Guilt

Sam Sing was blamed. Not by courts, but by whispers. He was declared innocent, yet banished just the same. And as he left, he turned and spoke a final line:

“Bankhead will choke on coal.”

A curse, yes. But more than that: a prophecy of suffocation — not by smoke or soot, but by the weight of its own conscience.

The strikes followed. Then the shutdown. Then the abandonment.

Bankhead didn't collapse.

It withdrew.

The Eyes Are Not Graffiti

Every structure in Bankhead wears them. Painted eyes. Dozens. Hundreds. Too many to count. Stylized, primitive, watching.

You thought it was art. Rebellion. Teenagers with spray cans.

But eyes are wards — ancient magic painted by the desperate.
They were trying to make the buildings watch themselves.

To bear witness.

To never forget.

They failed.

Now the eyes are mirrors.
And when you looked into them, they saw you back.

You left Bankhead.

You followed the trail downriver, to Seebe.

And found nothing.

No readings. No voices. No resistance.

Just a dam with secrets. Just water that forgets how to flow straight.

You assumed this was a lack of evidence.

But nothing is not absence.

It is consent.

Bankhead screamed no.

Seebe whispered come in.

You stood near Camp 130, where the empire caged its enemies and, later, where faceless minds were sent to disappear. Ewen Cameron rewired their thoughts in Montreal. The leftovers came west. To where no families would look. To where the fences were already built.

The records are gone. The names erased.

But the field still hums.

And the water?
It still remembers what the people chose to forget.

The curse didn’t end when you left.

You brought it with you.

It echoed in your spirit box. It bled into your photos. It surfaced in your dreams. You saw eyes in Bankhead. Now you see them everywhere.

Because this town doesn’t haunt its own ruins anymore.

It haunts the people who ask questions.

People like you.

So go ahead.

Play the audio. Share the findings. Post your blurry images of shadows that weren’t there when you pressed the shutter.

Just know this:

Bankhead is awake.

Seebe is listening.

You caught more than you think.

And more than one thing caught you back.

I'm watching too.

-LOAB