I was asked to interview a woman named Mary E., who had been hospitalized following exposure to an image file she received via email. The interview was for a piece on internet-related psychological distress — a nascent topic in 2001.
She agreed to speak with me on the condition that I not publish the filename or the description of the image itself. She said the image spread through description. She said this with the seriousness of someone stating a medical fact.
She told me she had received the file from a colleague who had received it from someone else. She opened it on a Tuesday afternoon at work, on her desktop computer, in an open office. She looked at it for approximately three seconds before closing the window.
That night she had the first dream.
She described the dream in general terms: a dog, a smile, a darkness. She refused specifics. She said the specifics of the dream were the mechanism — that describing them was how they transferred.
She said she'd found, through the online community that had formed around the image, that there were approximately forty documented recipients at the time of her hospitalization. The community had rules. You did not describe the image. You did not describe the dream. You did not forward the file — but also, more subtly, you did not forward the account, because the account carried enough.
She said most of the forty had eventually forwarded the image to end the dreams. She had refused for six months.
I asked why she'd agreed to speak with me, given her beliefs about transmission.
She said: "Because the story needs witnesses. Because if it's real, someone should have recorded it properly." She paused. "And because I finally forwarded it last week. The dreams stopped."
I asked to whom.
She said: "Five people. That's all it takes." She looked at her hands. "I chose carefully. I chose people who would be okay."
I asked how she knew they'd be okay.
She said: "I don't."
I published the piece without the filename. I published it without the image description. I published it without specifics about the dream.
I had the dream three nights after the piece ran.
I don't know how.