NOCTE INTERROGANTIS – Known alternatively as “the midnight questioner” or “that which whispers in the dark,” NOCTE INTERROGANTIS is an apparition of the order CONFUSUS – those spirits which cause mental disquietude, invoke feelings of dread, or otherwise baffle their victims. Such beings are almost always malevolent. In keeping with the behavior of most injurious spirits, visitations occur almost exclusively at night (the FRIENDLY MAN, described below, is a notable exception to this rule).

Only three sightings of NOCTE INTERROGANTIS have been conclusively confirmed, though similar reports in the literature suggest that the being may be more widespread than is currently believed.

HISTORY & NATURE OF INTERACTION. The earliest known report dates to 1774 and the small hamlet of Cotuit, Massachusetts. There, a local cobbler named Harold Born reported to authorities that he and his wife had been visited by a “cloaked traveler” sometime after midnight, whose entry was not heard or otherwise announced (though Ms. Born insisted that she had heard a faint rapping at the door in the moments leading up to contact).

This figure proceeded to stand silently at the foot of their bed, apparently staring at the couple (its face was never seen) for “hours that seemed like years.” The report goes on to state that the entity was “slumped over in such a pitiful state that he proved too awful to look upon,” even as Born and his wife “dared not look away.”

Born further tells that the apparition seemed to “cast some spell” over both he and his wife, for neither was able to speak or move (such induced paralysis is a hallmark of contact with spirits of this order) and that the apparition itself “hissed only a single question” over the course of the many hours in which it remained motionless in the Born’s bedroom.

Born could not relay the content or nature of this question, only stating that he was certain that “the words were still inside me” and that he was “ever-after terrified of those words.”

OTHER REPORTS. The two other known sightings, both in the modern era (and both, intriguingly, in the town of Cotuit) share similar features. These two reports come from a man and woman, unrelated and to-date unidentified, who asserted that they had been visited by the figure of a man in a “black coat” in the small hours of the night, with both visitations occurring in the late summer of 2017. Each victim reported that their inquisitor had spoken only a single question, which, like Born, they understood perfectly at the time but could not recall once released from their visitor’s company. Again, like Born, both reported that this clouded memory caused lingering mental anguish, as with a nightmare that never fades.

There are only two additional details worth noting: both victims reported the sound of a doorbell shortly before the apparition appeared (the female victim reported that she had no doorbell) and the male victim – at least according to rumors from locals — disappeared under mysterious circumstances in late 2018.

The re-appearance of NOCTE INTERROGANTIS after such a long period of time may indicate a resurgence of the being, possibly related to the continuing decay of THE TORTUOUS GATE. Alternatively, it may simply speak to inconsistencies in the historical record