I found it at a Goodwill in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in the summer of 2015. I want to be precise about that because the details matter to me even if they won't matter to you.
It looked like a prop replica of Journal 3 from Gravity Falls — the kind fans make, detailed and convincing. Worn leather cover, embossed hand symbol, the six-fingered imprint on the front. I collect show memorabilia so I paid four dollars for it without looking too closely. I assumed it was someone's art project, abandoned or donated.
I didn't open it until I got home.
The first twenty pages matched the published Journal 3 almost perfectly. The handwriting was different from the official prop replica — looser, more natural, the kind of variation you get from someone writing quickly rather than transcribing. The entries covered the same creatures, the same warnings. I thought it was a well-executed fan recreation.
On page twenty-three, the entries stopped matching.
The new entries described a town I recognized. Not from the show — from my own life. The town where I grew up, about forty miles from Coeur d'Alene. The author described the layout of Main Street accurately. The entry mentioned the old water tower on Route 9 that was painted over in 2008. There was a sketch of a house that I spent ten minutes staring at before I understood why it was familiar.
It was my grandmother's house. The house she lived in until she died in 2011. The sketch was detailed — the porch railing she had fixed with zip ties, the rose of Sharon bush at the corner of the yard, the way one of the upstairs windows was always slightly crooked in its frame.
The accompanying text did not mention my grandmother by name. It described someone in the house. It described the hours they kept. Their habits. Their patterns of movement through the rooms.
The observations were dated. The earliest was 1979. The latest was 2009.
The author's name, written in the inside front cover in the same handwriting as all the entries, was not the Author. It was not a pseudonym I recognized. It was a full name — first, middle, last — that I have looked up extensively and cannot find any record of. No birth certificate, no death certificate, no property records, no social security trace.
I have contacted Alex Hirsch's representatives twice. The second time, I received a response from someone on his team who said he had seen my description and wanted me to know that the journal was not something his office created or sanctioned, and that he did not want to see photographs.
I have kept the journal in a box in my closet. I have not opened it since I read past page twenty-three.
My grandmother's house was sold after she died. I looked it up last year. The current residents report no issues. I didn't tell them what the journal said about the upstairs window. About what the author claimed to have watched through it.
Some things you keep to yourself. Some doors you leave closed.