Back in 2011, a man by the name of Jack Mayfeld conducted what was known discretely as “The havoc project”. I say discretely because even the participants weren’t aware of the title at first. The only person who called it this was Mayfeld himself. Everybody else was told that there was no official name. That it was just a simple experiment. I’m not going to go into how I knew the guy because that’s not all too important. All I’ll say is that it before any of this happened, I considered the guy a friend. You see, even though Mayfeld was never a secretive man, this whole thing was shrouded in mystery. Everybody, excluding himself, went in with minimal information, and they deemed the whole thing a crapshoot from the start. But I guess adding a decent amount of money into the equation was good enough to keep it going.
There was a lot of confusion and speculation as to why Mayfeld even wanted to do this in the first place. He was no scientist. No researcher. Not a religious man, either. He was just an eccentric entrepreneur. A successful one at that. Nobody understood why he wanted to pour so much money into something that wouldn’t yield further profits. Well… I suppose that the confusion stemmed more from the fact that the goals of this project were incredibly unclear. Again, everybody was in the dark here. We didn’t know what to expect. But even that didn’t stop everybody from being shocked at the ultimate outcome. Including me.
Even though this happened so long ago, I still remember it with vivid detail. More than I thought the human mind would’ve been able to recall.
Somewhere in the northern region of Austria, there’s a mountain range. On one of those mountains, sits a large forest, in a relatively flat area of land. A particularly strange thing about the area was the fact that animals and wild game were extremely abundant. There was also a strange lack of predatorial creatures. That’s what made it such a hotspot for locals to go out and search for fresh meat. Ultimately, it was a hunter’s paradise. But one day… they stopped coming back. Nobody could really pinpoint an exact time, but it was sudden. The family and friends of the ones gone missing would venture into the woods in search of what happened. What they would find was beyond horrific.
The bodies were mangled beyond recognition. Limbs were missing and the damage was unlike anything any creature on earth could’ve feasibly inflicted. They’d search the forest for hours, trying to discover whatever had taken away their loved ones in such a gruesome fashion. But they’d never find anything. A bit of time would pass before other hunters would decide to go back out there and try again. However, it’d always be the same story. Unimaginable deaths and subsequent search parties that went nowhere. But while all these deaths were chalked up to some kind of animal attack or freak accident, there was one thing that could never be explained. Every time a hunter wouldn’t return for the night, the nearby villages would experience something. Something very strange. It was a kind of subtle rumbling in the ground. Almost like an earthquake that was trying to be conspicuous. But nevertheless, it was felt. It was also accompanied by a bizarre sound that echoed through the air. Like a quiet, but deep and guttural screech. Nobody knew where it was coming from at first, but coincidence can only go so far. After a while, they’d figured out that the source had to be coming from the forest. Because of all these occurrences, people eventually stopped going in there at all. A long enough period of time passed that It’d become somewhat of a legend in the nearby villages that resided just a few miles away. The unofficial name of the place had become “Verwustung Wald”, or “Havoc woods”. That’s where the project name came from, you see.
This wasn’t something that gained a lot of outsider attention. The place was so isolated, barely anybody talked about it at all. How Mayfeld knew about it himself was a mystery at the time. He never bothered explaining it, adding fuel to the vague fire that was this whole situation. In fact, Mayfeld never even bothered telling us that the place was nicknamed Havoc woods. I guess he thought that would’ve deterred a lot of people from participating.
Here’s what he proposed:
There were 15 of us in total. 10 were to be sent into the forest for the main experiment. The other 5 were supposed to observe and take notes from the video feed coming from the cameras that were set up around the forest and on the individuals sent to the forest themselves. I was part of the four observing.
The experiment itself was incredibly strange. Now, Mayfeld never told us about the circumstances surrounding the forest until after the project was pretty much over, so we thought he was borderline crazy for making the participants do this. But alas... money's money. So we didn't ask too many questions.
The ones sent into the forest were split into two groups. 5 of them were the labeled the “Hunters” while the other 5 were labeled the “Prey”. The hunters were given realistic looking airsoft guns and told to track down the “Prey”, who were given protective gear. The Prey were supposed to be sent into the forest thirty minutes before the Hunters were. After that time had elapsed, the Hunters were told to head in and to shoot at the prey on sight, as well as to pursue them until they’d been hit. But this is the fucked up part:
While the Hunters were aware of the Prey, the Prey were not aware of the Hunters. They were simply told not to worry about the wildlife and that the gear was to protect them if they fell or something. The instructions that were given to the Prey was to simply wander around the forest for three hours before trying to find their way back. However, there was no need to worry if they couldn’t. They had GPS’s fitted onto their belts and would be located if they weren’t back within an hour and a half. They also had radios and would be told about the true nature of the experiment after they’d been shot, as to not stir any additional panic. After that, they were told to simply hide somewhere and wait for the three hours to elapse or until everybody else had been shot as well.
Now, there was obviously a lot of room for fatal errors here. In addition to this, everybody had signed liability contracts beforehand. Clearly, this was not very morally sound. But like I’ve said… money makes us do a lot of crazy stuff. Stuff that we don’t really think about until later.
So, the scheduled first day of the project finally arrives and we were split into two separate private planes. The one with the Hunters were flown out first, while the observers and Prey went afterwards. For some reason, the plane ride held an atmosphere of intensity that we didn’t initially expect. We all went into it fairly happy and somewhat excited. The payout was going to be great, and if Mayfeld turned out not to be crazy, then we were due to see some interesting stuff. But as soon as we took off, nobody really talked to each other. It’s as if this was a time for reflection. Time to think about what we were really getting ourselves into. And I guess the more we thought about it, the more it really didn’t make any sense. I mean, there was really no reason why we couldn’t do this in any other forest in America. Right? But at this point, it was far too late.
Mayfield’s demeanor during the whole ride also didn’t help with our feelings of uneasiness. Like everybody else, he didn’t talk. However, there was also something else that was subtle in his mannerisms. Eventually, we picked up on what it was, but didn’t know what conclusions to draw from it. He seemed… angry for some reason.
As soon as we landed, we set our stuff up in a medium sized cabin reserved by Mayfeld in one of the nearby villages. The Hunters were already in another cabin, but they were told to stay put. The Prey couldn’t know about them.
After we settled, we packed up our equipment into a bag and ventured out into the forest. Keep in mind that Mayfeld never told us about the history behind the place, so we were ignorant to the potential dangers we were facing. The locals also didn’t speak English, so there was no way we could’ve known. The trip wasn’t drivable, so we had to hike there. It took a total of around three hours there and back. Once we arrived, we started setting up the cameras in the various nooks and crannies around the forest. Some in trees, some on the ground, and some in bushes. We must have put up around 12 in total. Something I noticed was that the forest was absolutely pristine. It was filled with wildlife and immaculate foliage. At one point, one of the Observers - who was a hunting enthusiast, stated that we should kill a deer and have a barbeque back at the cabin. As soon as he said this, Mayfeld got dead serious and told him a firm no. In retrospect, this should have been warning to call this whole thing quits right there.
By the time we’d finished, it was almost dark. We made our way back to the cabin and settled in for the night. Most everybody was tired as hell at this point, so they passed out. However, I wanted to walk around the town for a bit. You see, I didn’t get to travel a lot and I've always thought that Austria was a nice place. However, Mayfeld specifically told us not do this, so I had to wait until he fell asleep.
I strolled around the empty village square while taking in the scenery. I was about to call it a night myself when I stumbled upon something rather peculiar. It looked like a child’s chalk drawing on the ground. I bent down to get a better look at it. I remember feeling chills go down my spine as I made out what it was supposed to be:
It was somewhere in the forest, for sure. There were crudely drawn trees and bushes, along with what I assumed were supposed to be deer. In the middle was a small stick figure wearing a dress. I assumed this was the child herself. However… there was also something else drawn in front of her. Some kind of creature. It was tall. About five times the size of her. It also had multiple, extremely large appendages that seemed to end in sharp points sticking out everywhere. In addition, it was extremely skinny, like its arms and legs were literal twigs. Safe to say, this unsettled me a bit. However, I chalked it up to some little girl’s overactive imagination. I didn’t even think about the fact that her being in the forest coincided with Mayfeld’s experiment. I suppose that I didn’t really want to think about it, actually. After that, I just went to bed.
As the sun started rising the next day, we put the plan into execution. We strapped body cameras onto the Prey and sent them out. We’d instructed the Hunters, also equipped with body cams, to stay back and wait for thirty minutes after the Prey had left. An observer went along with them just to make sure they got there okay. Or that’s what they were told, at least. Once there, the observer would pretend to radio Mayfeld. In reality, he was calling the Hunters, who were already on their way, letting them know that the Prey would be heading into the forest soon. And this is exactly what happened. The five Prey entered and started walking around. The Hunters got there roughly thirty minutes later. It had officially begun.
We watched the surveillance footage intently, waiting to see what would happen. Waiting to see why Mayfeld was so obsessed with this. We observed as the Prey wandered around aimlessly, probably just waiting for it to be over. The Hunters acted like real ones, as instructed. They moved quietly and stealthily, trying to use the element of surprise to their advantage.
Two of the Prey were hit without much issue. They were both body shots, so the damage was also minimized. At first, they were scared out their wits. Once we radioed them and explained the situation, they seemed angry for a bit. However, they eventually calmed down after being guaranteed that they were safe and that the experiment was essentially over for them. However… it didn’t take much longer for shit to start going south.
As the two Hunters who’d made the first shots went to go searching for others, they started reporting an inexplicable feeling of urgency around them. They’d say things through the radio like “I think we should head back, we’ve done what we were supposed to, right?” and “I think I’m being followed. I can’t see or hear anything, but I can feel it.” Mayfeld told them to calm down and that they wouldn’t get paid if they left early. His tone was harsh. More so than I’d ever heard him use before. After some more complaining, the hunters eventually relented. It was only until the 3rd Prey was shot where shit started really hitting the fan.
It was a messy one from the start. From about mid-range, one of the Hunters tried hitting him from the side. However, he missed. The Prey heard this, saw the Hunter, and started running away in panic. While doing so, he tried calling for help on the radio. But despite our protests, Mayfeld insisted that we couldn’t answer. That the Hunter had to get him first. Eventually, the Prey twisted his ankle and fell. The Hunter had caught up but wasn’t really sure what to do. He also called us, asking about it. What Mayfeld told him to do made all of us question his sanity.
“Shoot him in the vest, and then tell him to sit still for a while.”
The Hunter hesitated at first before apologizing to the Prey and taking the shot. Now, the guy was REALLY pissed after we told him what was going on. But there was nothing he could ultimately do. He'd signed the contract, after all. He just sat in some bushes, fuming.
As the Hunter who had shot him started searching for others, he passed by one of our tree cameras. What we saw was beyond explanation. The ground seemed to be pulsating, bulging up and down behind him. One of the other observers tried calling him on the radio, just to let him know, but Mayfeld screamed at him to not do anything. At this point, we were all in shock.
Eventually, something started materializing out of the ground. It was some kind of creature with multiple legs that was entirely made out of dirt. Almost looked like a spider. It was also massive. As the Hunter turned around, it lunged at him before tearing him to shreds.
As soon as this happened, everybody went into collective dismay. Except for Mayfeld, that is. One of the observers tried contacting the rest of the participants in the forest, but was told to stop by Mayfeld himself.
“Stop? Are you kidding me, did you see what just fucking happened?” He responded, sounding extremely shaken up.
However, as soon he put the radio to his ear, Mayfeld stood up and backed away from us. We watched in horrified anticipation as to what he would do. He took a pistol out of his coat pocket and pointed it at the guy.
“Put it down.”
His tone was icy and emotionless. As the observer obliged, the reality of the situation washed over us. This was not good. Mayfeld just sighed and told us to keep watching and taking notes, still keeping the weapon pointed at us.
“It’ll be over soon.” He told us solemnly. “I just need to know.”
Not seeing a way out of this, we just did as we were told. We kept watching the horrific footage in front of us. The two Hunters who had shot the first Prey were now sprinting like hell, claiming that something was definitely following them. However, they weren’t in view of any of the cameras we had set up around the forest, so we couldn’t see what they were referring to. We could only see what was in front of them. Eventually, one of them seemed to be tackled from behind, falling face-first into the ground. We heard him screaming, which was overlapped by an inhuman, primordial roar before the body camera was flung into the air, hitting a tree and breaking. We lost the footage to that one. The other Hunter eventually seemed to find a hiding spot inside a bush. As he sat there trying to catch his breath, we noticed that it was becoming more and more labored. Eventually it sounded like he was suffocating. We soon realized why. The bush seemed to be crushing him. Foliage began engulfing the camera as we heard him violently sputter out blood. We lost footage to that one as well.
I guess the other two Hunters were far enough away that they didn’t hear what had just happened. They kept on searching for the remaining prey as if everything was okay. Mayfeld could’ve prevented all of this from happening. He knew what was lurking in that forest. But for some reason, he felt that all of this death and suffering was warranted. And we couldn’t do anything about it.
We watched in abject horror as another one of the Hunters tagged its Prey. Once this happened, Mayfeld radioed and started to explain the situation. But in the middle of his message, a fucking tree started moving right behind the Hunter. Both he and the Prey looked up at it in absolute shock. From out of nowhere, the tree seemed to sprout arms and legs. In one foul swoop, it picked up the Hunter and crushed him to death. The Prey started scrambling backwards, eventually getting up and running away from the monstrous work of nature. However, it didn’t follow him. It just stood there.
At this point, the last remaining Hunter seemed to have finally heard the commotion. He picked up his radio and told us that he was getting out of there. That there was something very wrong and he couldn't stay there anymore. As he was running towards the forests edge, he tripped on something and went tumbling to the ground. The camera had fallen off his belt and was now pointed at a skeleton, which was still wearing a dirty, worn-out jacket. He cursed before running off again. Soon after, the rest of the Prey started heading out of the forest as well. They also all called in, claiming to have heard strange and unnatural sounds in the distance, in addition to feeling an ever-growing sense of vague dread.
We looked at Mayfeld, wondering what his next move was going to be. In fact, we were a bit frightened that he was going to kill us on the spot for what we had just saw. But he didn’t say anything for a while. He just kept staring blankly at one of the screens. At the skeleton. I looked at it closer myself. I suddenly understood why he was staring. There was something stitched onto the breast pocket of the jacket. It was hard to read, but I could make out “-feld”. Could it be? I thought to myself. I recalled that Mayfeld did have a younger brother, Owen that he used to talk about. But he hadn’t mentioned him in years.
After a while, Mayfeld let out an exhale and started pacing around. He eventually laid everything out to us. He told us about the forest, including how hunters went missing there all the time, along with the reverberations in the earth and screeching in the air that followed. But the thing is, it was the only ever the hunters. Nobody else. The search parties would always yield no further incidents. One time, a local child had gone missing. They found her about ten hours later, wandering around the woods. She was absolutely fine, even talking about a nice “wooden man” that she had met. The villagers soon realized that if you weren’t trying to kill anything in the forest, nothing would try and kill you. That also explained the lack of bears and other natural predators.
“The place is alive.” Mayfeld exclaimed. “And it killed my fucking brother.”
As it turns out, Owen had gone into a travelling and exploration phase around 2008. At some point, he’d made his way over to one of the villages near the forest by pure chance. There, he was told about the circumstances surrounding it and he found it incredibly fascinating. So he decided to go test it out himself. I mean, you can’t really blame him for not believing the stories. It was incredibly far-fetched after all. I guess he just thought it was another legend.
After a while of zero contact with his brother, Mayfeld started getting worried. He checked out the last messages that he’d received from him. They were pictures of Owen posing in front of the mountains and in the village. Mayfeld decided to go down there himself to figure out what had happened. Once there, he was also relayed the stories by the locals. They also told him that they pleaded for Owen not to go and hunt there. That he wouldn’t meet a good fate.
Unlike his brother, Mayfeld took these words to heart. You see, he was always a man driven by passion. Sometimes, this was to the extent where he lost all sense of reality and his moral compass went out the window. Let’s just say that he’d been involved in a couple of lawsuits prior to this. Whenever somebody messed with the people closest to him, he was always quick to act. Even if they were the ones that started it in the first place.
The reason that he flew us out here in order to conduct this fucked up experiment was to find out what was really going on in that forest. He didn't have us simply go around and shoot bears because he thought that would have been too suspicious. Instead, he passed it off as some kind of experiment that was suppose to test how humans would react when faced with somebody trying to kill them in the wild. In reality, all he wanted was to see what was really lurking in the forest. He also wanted revenge. Hesitantly, I asked him how he hoped to accomplish this. With a twisted smirk on his face, he picked up a radio.
“I have somebody on stand-by.”
We watched as he put the phone to his ear.
“Hello? Yeah... yeah. As it turns out, you’re going to have to drop it after all. Yes. I’m sure.”
It took me a second, but I finally realized who Mayfeld was talking to. He’d always had connections to the military. In fact, he was extremely good friends with a lot of the higher ups. He could’ve asked them to do a favor for him whenever he wanted. He was going to try and drop bombs on the forest.
Suddenly, we started feeling a soft rumble below our feet. A little while later, the screeching had also filled the air around us. We stared at the monitors to see what was going on in the forest, but we had lost signal to all of them. That’s when I realized that there was no way we could let him go through with this. If mere hunters could cause such a reaction, what would straight up bombing the place result in? I didn’t want to find out. While Mayfeld was an extremely smart guy, he was a bit insane sometimes. And right then, he was off the fucking edge.
Without thinking, I rushed him as soon as he looked away for a second. He took a reactionary shot, but luckily the bullet only grazed my shoulder. As we fell to the floor, I yelled at the other guys to help me pin him down. Eventually, we managed to subdue him completely. He was yelling and resisting up a storm, so we eventually decided to just knock him out. After that, I scrambled over to the radio he used to call the bombing.
I frantically yelled into it, trying to grab somebody’s attention. Eventually, I got through.
“Hello?” the crackly voice asked on the other side.
I pleaded for him not to do it. That it would probably lead to some disastrous consequence that nobody wanted to deal with. At some point, he cut me off.
“Alright, alright, I know! God, you didn’t think we were actually going to bomb a fucking forest in Austria, did you? How the hell do you think that’d look?”
Relief washed over me. The man on the other side of the radio followed up by asking me where Mayfeld was. I explained the situation to him. He explained to me that he was lying when he told Mayfeld that he was going through with the plan. In reality, he’d already sent people over here in order to arrest him. They were going to be arriving soon. Now, I didn’t know who I was talking to. It could've been CIA, FBI, or… whatever. But at that moment, I did not give a shit.
About two hours later, the Prey and the remaining Hunter had also made their way back to the cabin. After explaining what had just happened to them, we waited in silence. Roughly three more hours passed before they finally arrived.
As men in suits took Mayfelds body away, others started questioning us. We told them everything that we had saw, expecting them not to believe a word and that they were going to take us into custody as well. However, that never happened. They just nodded and listened intently. Afterwards, they thanked us and told us to hop back into the planes that we came in. That we were going home. They never told us not to tell anybody, however. I just assumed that they thought nobody would believe us. As I was about to board the plane, a question was still lingering for me. Surely Mayfeld had set up the air-bombing before we flew out here, right? If that was the case, why wasn’t he stopped right then and there? I asked this to one of them. He just chuckled when he heard this.
“In all honesty… we wanted to figure out if it was real as well. This forest could be a very valuable resource heading forwards. But hey, I didn’t tell you this, alright?”
He gave me one last smirk before walking off. As the plane started taking off, I noticed that the men in suits were already halfway towards the forest.
So you might be wondering what the point of me telling you any of this even was?
Well, it's quite simple. This shit's been nagging at me ever since I got home that night, and I need to get it off my chest. What the hell could they possibly use that place for? What the hell was really going on in there anyways? But… I suppose that I’ll never know for sure. And I suppose it’s ultimately better that way. All I hope is that I never have to hear about Havoc woods again. It might seem benevolent, protecting the life inside it and all… but that might not be the case for sure. I wish that I'd never signed up for the fucking Havoc project.
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Credits
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