Ruby Fontaine

Switchboard operator

Hollowfield exchange, night shift.

On 12 January 1952, Ruby took an emergency call from a man who would not give his name, reporting something standing at the end of his driveway.

She took the same call twice more that night, from two other exchanges, in two other counties. Same voice. Same words. The three exchanges were not connected to one another and could not have been.

She kept the log sheet. It is the oldest document in the archive and the only one whose authenticity nobody has ever questioned, because it is simply a record of three calls.