Archive Item 76 concerns the destruction of St. Cleer Police Station in 1983.

The official report claimed no survivors. That was inaccurate.

One woman, the station stenographer, Judith Hallowell walked out of Interview Room 1 moments before the entire building ignited from within. She gave a witness statement during medical observation, describing a heat event that began inside the bodies of those present and then leapt from person to person like a living force.

Three days later, Mrs Hallowell was found dead in her flat. Her body exhibited extensive burn trauma. The flat showed no signs of heat, flame, or ignition.

Her dictated statement, and a fifteen-second fragment salvaged from the fused remains of the interview tape, form the entirety of this Archive Item.

According to the official inquest, the fire began inside Interview Room one and spread with such speed and intensity that no one inside the building survived. That, however, is not accurate. One person did survive. Mrs. Judith Hallowell.

The station's stenograph walked out of the building moments before the roof collapsed. Her survival was described at the time as miraculous. The coroner's report used the phrase physically impossible.

She provided a witness statement in the early hours of the following morning while undergoing medical assessment. Three days later, she was found dead in her flat.

Her body showed extensive full thickness burns, yet nothing inside the flat had been touched by flame. No scorch patterns, no smoke damage, not even heat distortion on the air vents.

Her statement is the only surviving account of what occurred Inside Interview Room 1. All other paper records were destroyed. The magnetic tape recovered from the scene was fused into a single glassy mess.

Only 15 seconds were salvageable. The following is the post incident witness statement taken from Mrs. Judith Hallowell, the sole survivor of the St Clair interview room inferno.

Statement begins

He looked exhausted and soot stained. His clothes smelled of burned wiring. I began typing the interview as normal. For the first several minutes, nothing unusual happened.

The first sign of the problem was not visual but auditory. The wall lights made a faint clicking sound, like the filaments were straining under pressure. I noted it mentally, but continued.

At 09 19, Mr. Trevivic said, it lives in the wires. It breathes in them. When I typed his words, the typewriter ribbon trembled. Not mechanically. It pulsed as though something beneath the keys shifted.

The temperature in the room rose sharply. Inspector Thorne became irritable. Thinking we were just being unprofessional, I removed my cardigan. The heat continued to climb.

Inspector Thorn raised his voice to regain control. When he raised it, the hum intensified. The room grew hotter still. I saw steam rising from the radiator pipe, though the radiator was off.

When I tried to pull away, there was resistance, as if the machine itself was holding me there. The message that appeared was not mine. Thorne asks what light is. Light is hunger. Light is a mouth.

Light is the shape that waits inside burning things. Inspector Thorne accused me of mocking him. I tried to speak, but I couldn't. My jaw would not move.

The hum resolved into a voice, not in the air, but through the typewriter. Each word came as a vibration through my bones. Arthur listens. Arthur warns. Arthur is mine.

The overhead lights brightened far beyond safe levels, the metal housings discoloured to orange. I smelt burning fabric. Inspector Thorne's jacket began to smoke across the shoulders. He didn't notice until the heat was visible.

Mr. Trethivic screamed that the typewriter was moving. I saw it, too. Keys rising and falling with no contact. Then several at once. A frenzy of motion. The machine gripped my hands.

Heat surged through the keys. My skin blistered instantly. When Inspector Thorn tried to pull me away. My fingertips stretched, tearing free the voice. The thing spoke again.

Burning makes shape. Burning makes door. Open the door. The heat became unbearable. Inspector Thorne staggered, his hair crisping. Mr. Trethivic collapsed.

The last word the machine forced onto the pages was ignition. I smelled my own flesh burning. Regarding the fire, Inspector Thorne and Mr. Tretheric did not burn. Normally, they ignited from within.

There was no initial spread to the furnishings, walls or ceiling. For a few seconds, the flames clung only to them, as if their bodies were the fuel. Only after they collapsed did the fire move outwards.

It did not travel along the surfaces like an ordinary blaze.

It leapt from them in Sudden bursts from their mouths, from their eye sockets, from the cracks in their skin, straight into the ceiling panels and wiring. The room went from contained heat to full inferno in moments.

When the heat touched me, it felt as though something was testing my skin, pressing, seeking. It paused, then withdrew. I felt watched, assessed. It chose not to take me. I don't think it was mercy. I think it wanted me alive.

A witness or a messenger. I left the room while the station burned behind me. No sprinklers, just the hum in the wires.

As I stepped into the corridor, choking on the heat, I saw Officer Patel running towards Interview room one. He must have heard the screaming. I tried to warn him. I remember shouting for him not to enter. But the fire moved faster than my breath.

The flames did not follow the walls or the ceiling. They did not roll outwards. They left the room in a single shape, like a stream of white orange light. Passing beside me.

Without touching me, it went straight into Officer Patel. He ignited instantly. Not from his clothes, but from inside his body. His scream was brief.

The fire burst out of his mouth and eyes before he collapsed. Then I heard the others. Screams echoing through the whole station. Offices, corridors, the holding cells.

One voice after another, each cut short by a burst of heat so intense it warped the air. The fire. It leapt from person to person, traveling by proximity alone. It was choosing them, but not me.

It passed me again as it moved deeper into the station. A rush of dry, blistering heat close enough to scorch my hair, close enough to pill my skin. But it did not touch me. I do not know why.

Even here in the medical room, I can still hear the hum faintly in the wires. It comes and goes. Sometimes it feels like it is waiting for me to stop speaking. I do not want to return to my flat.

I am afraid the humming will follow me. I still don't know why it chose me. Why it kept me alive and allowed me to be the only one that walked out. Judith Ann Hallowell dictated PC Rowan.

Statement ends.

There is, however, an additional fragment.

The only surviving 15 seconds of the interview room recording recovered from the fused remains of the magnetic tape. The audio is severely fragmented and degraded. I have spliced together what was recoverable. Pay attention to the voice that is heard throughout.

Please be advised that the following segment is disturbing and may be distressing for sensitive listeners.

Recording begins.

Mrs. Halliwell, please just stick to the typing. They burned, you see. They all burned.

Recording ends. Mrs. Hallowell's.

Death has never been satisfactorily explained. Her flat showed no sign of fire, no heat bloom, no structural compromise.

Yet her body bore the same pattern of thermal trauma seen in the victims inside the station ignition from within, a heat event without a source.

The phenomenon she described, fire leaping person to person, choosing its victims, aligns disturbingly with other archive items that suggest the entity does not simply inhabit electrical systems. It moves through them, it feeds on them, and in rare cases, it uses human beings as conductors. Mrs. Hallowell seems to have been spared for a time.

Whether she was meant to witness, to carry something outward, or simply to prove that the fire could choose, I cannot say.

If you have encountered unusual electrical interference, unexplained heat events, or patterns in static, you may submit your reports@ tavernent.com listener accounts remain crucial to the ongoing preservation and understanding of this archive. If you have questions or theories, join the discussion@discord.

Tavern end.com and if you wish to support the digitisation and safeguarding of these recordings, you can do so@patreon.tavernend.com Please remember to like this entry and leave a comment. It helps the archive remain discoverable and ensures that these events are not forgotten.

Before I close this entry, there is one more item currently undergoing preservation.

But there is a segment 15 minutes in length that survived the final transmission of coxswain Braden Holt and his crew, the rescue that never came, the storm that sang back, and the song that pulled them under. End of entry. It.