### JON [[Russo, Joseph|Mr. Russo]] was found dead in his home on [[2003-06-05|June 5th 2003]], two days after his statement. Cause of death was found to be blood poisoning from a wound in his hand. Given that the medical records [[Not-Them|Sasha]] dug up seem to indicate the putrefaction was far more advanced than the timeframe would reasonably allow, I have a suspicion that [[Russo, Joseph|Mr. Russo]] may have gotten a far closer encounter than he realised with a very dangerous book. A [[Leitner, Jurgen|Leitner]], I would guess, though some slight charring around the edges of this statement leads me to believe that [[Robinson, Gertrude|Gertrude]] may have made a somewhat unilateral decision about disposing of it, rather than committing it to storage. Beyond that, all the details seem more or less accurate. [[Treeves, Frederick|Sir Frederick Treeves]] did indeed work in a field hospital during the [[Second Boer War]], and did write a book about it titled *[[The Tale of a Field Hospital]]*, published in [[1900-01-01 - 1900-12-31|1900]]. [[Stoker, Timothy|Tim]] hunted down an online version of the text, and it certainly doesn’t match up with what [[Russo, Joseph|Mr. Russo]] reproduced here. Interestingly, the official text makes no mention whatsoever of the concentration camps used to imprison Boer civilians during the conflict, where sickness and hunger killed tens of thousands and, indeed, it is perfectly possible it was not part of the war [[Treeves, Frederick|Treeves]] encountered or engaged with. Odd, then, that whatever thing it was that haunted him would choose that as its final message. [[Amherst, John|Amherst]] is rapidly becoming one of an uncomfortably long list of names that I dread seeing in a statement. Could this be an ancestor of [[Amherst, John|John Amherst]]? Or, given the many apparent deaths of the soldier in the book, might it be the same being, well over a hundred years old? If so, I wonder how many times it has died of sickness and disease. Another point is a link that [[Treeves, Frederick|Treeves]] brings up which I had not considered, that of [[Amherst, John|Jeffrey Amherst]], an 18th century baronet who is most remembered for deliberately providing blankets infected with smallpox to Native American tribes during the so-called [[French War|French]] and [[Indian War|Indian Wars]], leading to a devastating epidemic. A connection to a very different sort of monster, but still one that has the trappings of disease. I had assumed that [[Amherst, John|Amherst]] was something similar to [[Prentiss, Jane|Prentiss]] in his connection to insects, but that may not be all. Insects and disease. No clear connection, other than the fact that they somehow feel similar. They both make one feel distinctly unclean. End recording. **\[Click]**