When I was six years old, in 1999, I discovered a local-access television channel that broadcast children's programming late at night.
The channel didn't appear in the guide. I found it by accident, surfing past the end of the listed channels. The picture quality was poor — that specific soft-static quality of public access, a slight color bleed, a hum in the audio. But there were children's shows. Brightly colored, cheerful, apparently normal.
The host of the main show was a man in face paint. Clown-style, but less structured — the paint was applied oddly, thicker in some places than others. He called himself Mr. Bear. He spoke very quietly and very directly, always to the camera.
I watched every night for about three weeks before I noticed anything wrong.
The first thing was a child on the show who looked uncomfortable. In these sorts of low-budget shows, the children are usually performing — laughing too loud, looking off-camera at parents. This child sat very still and watched Mr. Bear. When Mr. Bear spoke to the child, the child answered in a flat voice with very short answers.
The second thing was when Mr. Bear said my name.
He looked directly into the camera — directly at me, or so it felt — and said my name and said I should keep watching because the show was just for me. I told my mother. She said the TV was talking to everyone and it just felt personal. I went back to watching.
The third thing was the last show I watched. It began normally. Then Mr. Bear turned to the camera and explained, in the same quiet voice, what was going to happen next in a way I didn't fully understand. He used words I had to ask my mother about later. She told me not to watch that channel anymore.
I asked her what the words meant. She went very white and turned the TV off and called someone. I don't know who she called. I was sent to my room.
I found the channel one more time, a few months later, late at night when I should have been asleep. The screen was black. Mr. Bear was in a dark room, barely visible, facing away from the camera. He sat there for the fifteen minutes I watched before I turned it off.
I have since found four other people who grew up in that area who watched the same channel. Two of them don't want to talk about it. One says she has no memory of what she saw, only that her parents forbade her from watching and she was glad. The fourth person described Mr. Bear exactly, without my prompting — the face paint, the quiet voice, the direct address to the camera.
She said he'd said her name too.
We've never identified the channel, the broadcaster, or Mr. Bear. The FCC records for that frequency in that area during that period have a six-month gap. No explanation has been filed.