An Abandoned Arctic Station Was Hiding A Terrifying Secret Beneath The Ice

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1:00and ready to act when someone they trust makes a recommendation. We're Acast and we put them right in front of you. Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts. Book host reads or run your own ads and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have, brand new results. Acast.acast.com slash advertise. The first face I saw through the ice was a young man with his eyes open. I've been running subsurface radar on the station's lowest maintenance level for maybe 20 minutes. It was routine scanning. The kind of work where your body does the job while your brain runs through what you're going to eat when you get back to camp. The University of Alaska had contracted me to survey ice conditions around a handful of decommissioned installations along the Arctic coast and catalog the damage for reports. A government office somewhere would use those reports to decide whether remediating the sites was worth the money

2:02or whether they should let the glaciers finish what decades of neglect had started. It wasn't glamorous. I picked it because the work was straightforward. It paid well for three months of solitude and didn't require me to manage a team. The station was the third site on my list. Cold War era officially closed in 82 or 83. Prefabricated buildings, sheet metal walls, corrugated roofing were half swallowed by ice that had been creeping through the structures for 40 years. I'd arrived two days earlier and set up my equipment before starting from the top level. Everything matched the survey documentation. The rooms were stripped, the plumbing frozen, only the rate of encroachment was worth noting. Then I took the radar down to the maintenance sub-level, pointed it at the floor, and the return came back wrong. The radar showed dense metallic returns arrayed in a vertical pattern beneath the station's foundation. I could resolve the first several meters clearly.

3:03Below that, the pattern continued beyond the unit's range. I recalibrated and ran it again from another position. The pattern held. Nothing in my documentation indicated subsurface infrastructure. Every schematic I'd been given showed the maintenance sub-level as the station's lowest point, with solid glacial ice beneath. The access hatch was behind an equipment locker someone had shoved flush against the wall. The lockers mounting bolts had been painted over so many times they resembled rivets. It took me 15 minutes with a pry bar to move the thing. The hatch beneath it was heavy hardware flush with the floor. It's handle sat in a recess. The bolts turned hard but they turned. Under the hatch, a metal walled shaft dropped to a landing with a ladder fixed to one side. The construction was better than anything on the surface. I could see maybe 12 feet before the shaft hit the landing. Cold air rose through it, dense with the stillness of enclosed glacial spaces. I climbed down.

4:05The landing opened into a corridor cut through ice. The walls were compacted glassier, smooth where machinery had bored through, rough where fractures had developed over the years. Electrical conduit ran along the ceiling. Military spec corroded but intact. I followed it maybe 40 feet to where the corridor widened into a chamber. That's where I saw them. Behind a wall of ice, clear in patches, clouded in others, the young man stood upright in a metal frame. His uniform was army, his eyes were open. Frost covered his skin in a fine crystalline layer, but his features were perfectly preserved. A cable the diameter of my thumb ran from a port at the base of his skull upward into the ceiling. On either side of him, spaced at intervals of maybe three feet, more frames held men upright, cables running from each skull to the ceiling. Some faced forward. A few had their heads tilted slightly as if they'd turned to look at something in the moment before the cold took them.

5:08I counted what I could see through the clear patches. 22 in the nearest row. The rows continued beyond what I could see into the dark. Most of the embedded equipment was dead. Indicator panels were dark and decades of glacial pressure had severed cable runs. Several green indicator lights glowed in the lower section of the chamber. I stood there for a long time, looking at the young man's face. Then I went back up. Kyle Goss was my logistics coordinator, 26 and fresh out of a master's program in environmental science. He'd been hired to manage base camp communications while I did the field surveys. He was set up 12 miles inland with the satellite uplink, along with our vehicles and supplies. I'd liked him immediately when we met in Fairbanks. He was competent and relentlessly organized, especially about process. Every checklist mattered to him. Every form got filed before anyone did anything interesting.

6:10I radioed him from the station and told him what was below the hatch. The silence on his end lasted about five seconds. How many? At least 20 in the row I could see. The radar says there are many more below. Paul, you need to call the contracting agency. Right now. Once I call this in, people with clearance and authority show up. They take the site and classify everything. I spend the next six weeks in a debriefing room. That's the process, Paul. It's what's supposed to happen. Some of the equipment down there is still powered, Kyle. He didn't answer right away. I could hear the wind cutting across his camp through the radio. Powered how? I don't know, and that's the point. I want to go back down. There's a sealed room adjacent to the upper level that looks like a control space. Filing cabinets. A power distribution panel. Give me six hours before you contact anyone. Don't do this, Paul. Give me six hours. He gave me four. I took six.

7:13The control room had been abandoned in a hurry. Whoever cleared out left coffee mugs and a jacket draped over a chair. Two filing cabinets remained full of paper. A third had been emptied. Its drawers pulled out. The documents that remained were a mix of military correspondence, procedural manuals, personnel rosters, medical logs. Some pages were stamped classified in red ink that had faded to a dull rust. Others had been redacted with black marker so thick it bled through to the reverse side. I spread them across the room's single metal desk, working under my headlamp because the overhead fixtures had been dead for decades. What I assembled after two hours in a room so cold the pages had gone brittle. The station's official research designation was Project Vurnal. It began in 1961 under the Army's Arctic Research Command. The objective was to freeze a man without extinguishing his awareness, then revive him with no sense that time had passed.

8:14For a Cold War military, the applications were obvious, personnel stored for years without aging, then brought back when needed. The first test subjects entered the system in 62, volunteers. The roster had their names, service numbers, dates of suspension. The earliest were Army enlisted men, then a few Navy personnel, then names without branched designations. The records became progressively more redacted after 68. What I could piece together from the surviving text was that the process worked in a sense. Bodies could be frozen and maintained for years with biological functions suspended. The problem was the other half of the objective. From the subject's perspective, suspension was supposed to pass in an instant. Close their eyes and open them again with no awareness of the years between. Some of them experienced the gap. The medical logs were clinical about it. Frazes like persistent subjective awareness during suspension phase and unresolved consciousness indicators post-induction.

9:20Their hearts had stopped and circulation was absent. Instruments showed no measurable brain activity, yet the men were still awake inside bodies that could neither move nor signal. They remained trapped in the interval, unable even to die. The project was officially terminated in 1979. The termination order was in the file. The stated reason was, anomalous signal persistence. Responses continued from subjects with no measurable neural activity. The equipment was reading consciousness where biology said consciousness couldn't exist. Also in the file was evidence that work continued for at least three more years after the termination order. I put the documents down. My hands were numb from the cold, and I sat there for a while looking at the power distribution panel on the far wall. Then I walked over to it and turned it on. The panel was better built than anything on the surface. When I pulled the main breaker, three of the eight circuits engaged. The corridor lights and wall monitors came on.

10:26Somewhere below, a ventilation fan started running. On the control room's monitoring terminal, a heavy military spec unit bolted to a desk in the corner. A screen I hadn't noticed came on. Green text on black. A cursor blinking. Then, below the cursor, characters began appearing without anyone touching the keyboard, pushed through whatever surviving pathway still connected the terminal to the machinery beneath. At first, the output was crude, with irregular spacing and garbled symbols. The system was old. The connection degraded. But within two minutes, it resolved into something legible. The screen identified November 14, 1983. Tobin Dale SSG US Army. Then a question transmitted in blocky green characters one at a time. How long? I checked the personnel roster. Tobin Dale R. Staff Sergeant. Suspension date. November 14, 1983. Among the last entries on the list. 43 years.

11:29Dale Tobin had been conscious beneath my feet for all of them. I sat down at the terminal. The keyboard was filthy. Its keys stiff with cold when I started typing. This is Paul Denny, a civilian with the University of Alaska. I found this station during a survey. The response came slowly. Each character appeared after a gap of several seconds. Are you military? No. How many with you? I'm alone at the station. I have a support person at a camp nearby. The pause lasted nearly a full minute, far longer than the gaps between characters. I was told the suspension would feel like nothing. We would close our eyes and open them again as if no time had passed. That is what they told us in briefing room C at Fort Wainwright. 12 of us volunteered. I didn't type anything after another 30 seconds more text appeared. It did not feel like nothing. How long has it been? I typed 43 years. 80 seconds of silence. I counted them on my watch then. That is consistent with my count. I have been keeping count though I do not know how. The intervals are consistent and I have counted everyone.

12:45I wanted to ask him what that meant, what counting felt like inside a frozen casing, aware but cut off from his body and every sensory input. I didn't ask. It wasn't the right question and he wasn't offering the information. He asked whether the United States still existed, whether the army was still operational, whether anyone had been looking for the project's records, whether there was a plan to extract the subjects. I answered what I could. I'd found the station by accident, had no authority and didn't yet know who to contact. He moved on to the next question. Other channels began registering as the restored power propagated through the system. On the monitoring terminal, new ones opened. Most were incoherent with garbled text and repeating character strings. Some dissolved into fragments of words that never resolved into meaning. A few produced intermittent bursts of what might have been language corrupted beyond readability. One channel output the same six digit number on an endless loop.

13:52It's fall in Jeep country and during the drive into fall sales event get a great deal on four by fours that refuse to be contained like Jeep Wrangler, confidence built into every drive with the most awarded SUV ever Jeep Grand Cherokee and freedom that can't be denied with the open air freedom and Jeep gladiator. After 85 years, it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand. Get a great deal during the Jeep drive into fall sales event. Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand, Jeep and the Jeep Grill or Register Trademarks of FCAUS LLC. Tobin told me the lowest experimental levels had never been shut down. The termination order covered only the upper rows. The machinery below the documented installation was still running. I radioed Goss. I told him that the car was not a car. I was just a little bit more careful.

14:56Tobin told me the lowest experimental levels had never been shut down. The termination order covered only the upper rows. The machinery below the documented installation was still running. I radioed Goss. I told him everything. I called the contracting agency two hours ago. He said they're sending a communications engineer with military clearance, some kind of signals specialist. He'll be there in 18 hours, maybe less. There's also a military liaison coming, but he's farther out. You called them two hours before my six hours were up. I called because you found bodies connected to machines, Paul. That's not a six hour situation. Goss was right. I also knew that the signals specialist and liaison would arrive, assess, classify, restrict and remove my access to the site. He was giving me information I needed. Frank Lowell came in by helicopter the next morning. A civilian signals engineer with Department of Defense clearance carrying two cases. Late forties, sunburned across the bridge of his nose. He shook my hand.

16:01After one look at the station, he asked to see the bodies. I took him down. He spent about 10 minutes in the first chamber studying the cable runs and chamber housings, pausing at the indicator lights. Then he opened one of his cases and connected a signal analyzer to the junction where the main cable trunk entered the ceiling. Your contracting office told me you'd found an active signal source in a decommissioned installation. He said, they didn't mention people. Goss knew about the people before he called, but I don't know what reached your briefing before they sent you. So somebody above us has been told there are conscious human beings frozen into this glacier. Goss reported it, whether anyone had read that part before you left, I don't know. Frank set up his analyzer while the men stood behind the ice at his shoulder. Within two hours, he could separate those transmissions cleanly enough to identify who they came from and where they originated.

17:01Tobin's channel was the strongest. A few others registered as partially coherent. Some gave names or dates, others managed only fragments of sentences. One man asked for his mother. Another produced long numerical sequences. Frank thought the man might be repeating them to keep some part of his mind ordered after decades in the dark. Three signals produced no language despite active indicators. Frank flagged them but didn't attempt contact. A damaged junction in the ceiling cable run was fouling two of the transmissions. Frank disconnected it. Both signals vanished from their positions on his display and reappeared seconds later, deeper in the installation. Frank reconnected the junction. They stayed below. He tried a second subject. One whose channel had carried only faint background activity. When Frank broke that connection, it disappeared upstairs and reappeared lower down.

18:01That shouldn't be possible, he said. These systems aren't connected in a way that should let anything I do hear move a signal 20 meters down. I radioed Tobin. Can you explain what happens when equipment fails? His answer came in pieces spaced by long pauses. When your connection breaks, you do not stop. You fall to the next level and whatever is below catches the signal. I do not know how. The machinery is not designed for it but it happens anyway. Some of the people in the lower rows did not start there. They fell from above when their equipment degraded. Some have fallen many times. Frank's map made Tobin's description visible. The upper rows were sparse while transmissions crowded deeper in the installation. I checked the subsurface scans from my original survey. The glacier was fracturing around the upper works, squeezing the failing chambers hard enough to crush them.

19:01How long before the upper shaft becomes impossible? Frank asked. A few days at best. Maybe less if the ice keeps moving like this. The military team. Tomorrow morning, Goss said. Frank packed his portable analyzer into a shoulder case. I've worked on signal problems for 30 years including work I'm not allowed to describe to you and I've never seen this. Whatever is catching them is deeper. And you want to go down. Do you? I want to understand what I'm recording before someone with stars on his collar shows up and tells me I never recorded it. I told Goss we were descending into the lower installation. This time Goss took a moment before answering. The response team will be there by tomorrow morning. He said. They expect to arrive before noon. Paul you can wait. You can let the people whose job this is handle it. The glacier is closing on the upper levels. If the access shaft collapses before the team gets here nobody gets back in and the whole place is buried.

20:04And if it collapses while you're inside, then we'll have a real problem. I'll keep the relay open. Goss said. Check in every 30 minutes. If you miss two consecutive check-ins I'm calling for extraction. I'll check in. Nothing about this is fair Paul. I'm sitting in a tent 12 miles from you watching instruments while you climb into a glacier full of frozen people. The radio hissed after he stopped speaking. I pictured him 12 miles away in the tent, surrounded by monitors that could tell him when the site shifted and no way to tell him whether I'd come back. Frank was already at the ladder with his equipment case across his back. His headlamp cut a white line into the dock below. I followed him down. The upper row was worse when you were standing in it. From above through the ice the bodies had the distance of an exhibit. Down here walking between the frames they were men. Dog tags hung from frozen necks and regulation haircuts showed beneath the frost.

21:05Dates stenciled on each chamber housing ran from 1962 through 67, the earliest subjects. Some of them had been conscious in the ice for more than 60 years. Frank moved through the row checking which chambers were active. Most were dead. In the ones that weren't green indicators cast a dim wash across the frozen faces behind them. One channel repeated a woman's name. Carol. Every four seconds the same five letters came through without variation or pause. That name kept passing through corroded hardware from a man who had once been a soldier. Another channel looped a single date March 9, 1963. The same date stamped on that chamber's housing. The man inside had been telling the system what day it was when they froze him over and over for 63 years. Frank recorded both and kept moving. I kept up because we were losing time and I'd already seen the upper rows. The layout changed around the fourth level down.

22:14Individual chambers gave way to shared platforms. Long metal trays mounted horizontally each holding four or five bodies wired together. The cables ran upward to the central trunk but additional lines connected the subjects to each other. The improvised wiring linked skull ports directly with chest leads looped between adjacent bodies. It looked ugly compared to the clean installations above. The people on these platforms were different. They wore pale green hospital gowns instead of uniforms. They're bare necks without dog tags. The nameless chamber housings made me check Frank's roster. The one he'd brought from the contracting agency which matched the one I'd found in the control room upstairs. These subjects weren't on it. Some looked too young for military volunteers. One man's face visible through a gap in the frost could have been 19. Frank saw it too. At the platform he studied the wiring before looking at me.

23:19They're off the roster, he said. Some are too young for what this was supposed to be and the wiring was added later. We kept descending. The interconnected rows behaved differently. A transmission from one platform began with a man's name and a hometown in Ohio. Then came the car he'd been driving before he ended up here. Without warning the contents slid into another life. The name changed first. A different place followed. Then a kitchen memory with a dog and a brother who owed money. The channel had not changed but the memories had. Frank replayed it once and wrote something in the small pad he kept inside his jacket. Below the interconnected rows we reached sealed laboratories with heavy doors and gasketed frames. They had been built to keep something in or to keep the rest of the installation out. The project files had called it signal contamination.

24:19Frank's analyzer picked up a transmission from the laboratories below us. It described a room we hadn't entered yet including eight platforms and a floor to sealing fracture in the North Wall. We opened the laboratory door. Eight platforms stood where the transmission had placed them and the fracture cut the North Wall exactly where it had said. Frank stayed in the doorway looking from the room to his screen. That hardware has no sensors or cameras he said it can't see this room. I gave Goss our depth and described the room. He acknowledged then stayed on the relay while we moved on. He'd stopped arguing. A shaft narrowed below the laboratories. The walls changed with it and this was the one thing down there I trusted myself to read on site. The glacier above had carried the usual bubbles and seasonal bands around the lowest shaft those markers vanished. The wall was dark and almost glassy under my glove compressed past anything that belonged in the history of this glacier. I couldn't date it by touch but I knew it wasn't part of the ice we'd been descending through. Whatever the borehole passed into had been there first. The bottom row was empty. The chambers and their equipment were intact.

25:40Every restraint frame stood open with its harness hanging loose the connection cables had been pulled free and the people were gone. The cables from the empty chambers converged into a single thick trunk sheathed in a material I didn't recognize then disappeared into a smooth drilled borehole in the old ice. Our headlamps couldn't find the bottom. Frank set the analyzer beside it and the display flooded with overlapping transmissions rising from below. His hardware couldn't separate them. This isn't human Frank said I mean the way it's built not the content I know what a human signal looks like even when it's degraded and this is different I radioed Goss his report was the one I'd been expecting for hours the upper shaft is buckling the station just shifted again. How long do we have I can't give you a time Paul it could hold for hours or start closing sooner and I can't predict which from here. The military team still hours away they won't make it before morning frank and I looked at the borehole neither of us spoke for a while we've recorded enough to prove what this place is frank said if we go back up now we take that evidence with us to prove to whom they'll take the data and classify it everything we brought out goes in a vault they probably will but the evidence exists going down a borehole on a cable trunk with two headlamps doesn't give us more.

27:09It gives us a burial Frank was right the same way Goss had been 12 hours earlier it didn't change what I wanted. At Verbo we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support so we plan for the plot twists every booking is automatically backed by our Verbo care guarantee giving you confidence from the very start whenever you need help it's ready before you stay through the moments in between and after your trip because a great trip starts with peace of mind and maybe a good playlist but we've got the peace of mind park covered. It's fall in Jeep country and during the drive into fall sales event get a great deal on four by fours that refuse to be contained like Jeep Wrangler confidence built into every drive with the most awarded SUV ever Jeep Grand Cherokee and freedom that can't be denied with the open air freedom and Jeep gladiator. After 85 years it's no surprise that Jeep became America's SUV brand get a great deal during the Jeep driving to fall sales event Jeep is one more awards over its lifetime than any other SUV brand Jeep and the Jeep Grill or Register Trademarks of FCA US LLC.

28:17The best time to recommit to your gut health goals right now take charge of your gut with nature made are clinically studied ingredients support digestive health digestive enzymes break down nutrients probiotic and prebiotic fiber nourish good gut bacteria and super greens with probiotics in power daily digestive health try to full lineup of good health support from nature made the number one pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration these products are not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any disease. The answer was somewhere below us and the fact that I couldn't survive reaching it felt like an obstacle rather than an argument. I haven't decided I said I know you haven't that's why I'm talking I was rigging a descent harness to the cable trunk when Frank's analyzer registered something new every surviving channel I'd heard since restoring power activated at once Tobin came through with the others including the man repeating Carol and the subject who had been building numerical sequences every coherent transmission we had recorded in the installation activated at once.

29:27All of them pushing one message Tobin came through cleanest he'd been the strongest from the beginning the most intact after decades awake in suspension his words arrived in blocky green characters like the ones I'd first seen on the control room terminal relayed to Frank's portable screen do not descend get out of the installation with your recordings until someone what you found here you have enough whatever is below us is beyond your help you should leave without seeing it. I have been connected to this system for 43 years and I have felt what is below me for most of that time leaving is the correct decision this is the most important thing I have said since you arrived. The other transmissions repeated get out in broken forms the man who had only ever transmitted her name produced get out once then return to the name every surviving subject in the installation speaking with one purpose except one then a clean transmission rose from the opening unlike the degraded human channels above Frank's interpreter resolved it almost immediately it identified James Allen Myers and dated him June 2nd 9th.

30:42There was no rank or service number he was listed as civilian Frank checked every document we'd carried down the name appeared once in the oldest file a water stained folder I'd taken from the control room a single entry predated every other record in the project by 12 years subject zero initial consciousness preservation trial date of induction June 2nd 1949 recovery status consciousness indicators persist body unrecoverable further contact pending the station wasn't built until 1961 Myers had been under for 12 years before the first wall went up above him the files gave no explanation for those years Myers's words arrived slowly with long gaps between them you are Paul Denny I have heard your transmissions along with everything sent through this system since it was built the men above me are right to tell you to leave their experience has been suffering and they want to spare you that their understanding of what lies below them is incomplete they know its effects but not its nature the people above me were the method each one was an attempt to extend the signal deeper toward what I found when I went under and did not come back the project believed they were preserving volunteers in practice they were building a transmission path each

32:10body pushed the signal farther down but none reached far enough they are suspended between the surface and where I am because the path was never completed Frank screen filled with text faster than either of us could process it Myers continued transmitting I am not suffering I need you to understand that what I found is different from the pain the men above me experienced their state is a failure they were caught between two states frozen and wherever I am and have been there for decades because the system could move them no farther what is below this borehole was here before the ice or the project before anyone drilled after 77 years of trying I still lack words that will translate what I remember of language gives me nothing for it after a pause the transmission resumed one character at a time do not come down you would fail to arrive long before danger mattered the path is incomplete you would stop somewhere between here and there the way they did then there would be one more man in the ice unable to reach me or go back I sat on the floor of the lowest documented level beside the opening holding the harness I'd been rigging to the cable trunk the project had kept sending people down because the answer was there a minute earlier the

33:33that had almost been enough for me to I put the harness down Frank watched me set the harness aside he powered down the analyzer before packing it the ascent was bad sections of the shaft we'd used hours earlier had shifted two mid-level corridors had narrowed until their metal supports buckled and we had to crawl through one of them ice grown around us deep sounds that came from everywhere at once as the glacier moved we lost Frank secondary case when the floor dropped without warning it fell through a fracture before either of us could grab it and Frank kept moving without looking back the upper shaft was the worst the ladder had talked sideways against a cracked wall and re-frozen melt water covered every rung with a slick crust I went up first Frank followed twice a rung gave under my weight and I caught myself on the ones above arms burning feet scrabbling against ice that gave my boots no purchase we came out through the hatch into the station's maintenance level the floor had tilted enough to send the equipment locker I'd moved two days earlier across the room where it had wedged against the far wall

34:44on the surface the station's main building had sunk farther into the glacier the corrugated roofing was peeling back from the frame goss was on the radio before I could raise him I can see the station from my scope and the west wall just dropped get out of the structure we got out and reached the helicopter that had brought Frank from there we watched the station settle into the ice the glacier swallowing what remained of the surface as it had been swallowing everything underneath for decades response team arrived the next morning six men in a transport helicopter they found the access shaft sealed the glacier had closed it during the night and the station's main structure had sunk deep enough that the hatch was no longer accessible they spent two days attempting to reopen it the glacier gave them nothing I was debriefed at isle and air force base outside fair banks by two men in a room without windows they made me go through what I'd found twice then took Frank's signal data and my survey equipment the documents I'd recovered went with them too

35:51everything except the pages that had fallen out of my jacket during the ascent which was most of them my handwritten notes went with them they thanked me for my cooperation and told me nothing Frank's debriefing was separate I saw him once in a hallway between sessions he looked tired he told me he'd been asked to sign non-disclosure paperwork covering everything below the station's maintenance level did you sign it I signed it did they ask about my eyes they asked about all of it they wrote everything down including my eyes he shook my hand I didn't see him again I went back to the university filed an abbreviated survey report covering the station's surface conditions I wrote that glacial encroachment had damaged the site and recommended no remediation let the glacier have it my contracting agency accepted the report without questions nobody called three weeks later a manila envelope arrived in my department mailbox

36:54there was no return address or postmark I could identify inside was a single photocopied page the page was from a project file I'd never seen it's classification markings and agency headers were different from the documents I'd recovered from the station at the top a subject entry name James Alan Myers date of induction June 2nd 1949 facility redacted status unrecoverable signal integration confirmed below the text was a black and white photograph of a man in his 30s dressed in civilian clothes and standing in front of a low concrete structure in a flat landscape that looked unlike Alaska desert maybe or high plains behind him partially visible at the edge of the frame a borehole its diameter and smooth drilled walls match the one under the station the photograph was dated 1947 two years before Myers's official induction the landscape couldn't have been farther from glacial ice

38:00I put the photograph on my desk I looked at it for a long time someone had sent it to me someone who knew I'd been at the station and had access to records older than project vernal I never learned who sent the envelope Frank Lowell never appeared in any directory or record I could access the station sank into the glacier over the following winter satellite imagery showed the surface structures gone by February I don't know what survived the winter if the system kept running after the station vanished those men could still be conscious in the dark waiting on the unfinished path between the surface and whatever Myers had reached