Richard loved anything dark and twisted.

It began during his adolescence when he discovered the horror films of George Romero, Dario Argento, and Herschell Gordon Lewis on VHS tapes. He’d turn off the lights and snuggle close to the television, bathed in the blue, flickering light from the cathode ray tube. His eyes darted around the screen taking in every gruesome detail. And when he finally went to sleep, the images came with him, filling his dreams. 

In his free time, he’d scour library shelves for books on zombies, satanic cults, cannibals, and serial killers. The librarian scrutinized him with open contempt when he suggested they stock more of them.   

As a skinny, young adult, with early onset of male-pattern baldness, he embraced his obsession and produced an online video series called “Exploring the Macabre with Richard Savini.” He’d cultivated a fan base of several thousand followers, all sharing his interest in the grotesque. His most popular episodes included one on Anatoly Moskvin, a Russian historian who mummified 40 dead children he dug up, and then kept them like dolls in his house. Another featured the horrific details of Delphine LaLaurie’s torture mansion in New Orleans, where she brutalized her slaves in 1834.

But the one story he believed would be a true blockbuster and eclipse all the others, kept eluding him.

It dealt with the mysterious and legendary traveling freak show known as Doctor Enoch’s Atrocities, Terrors, and Horrors. Many people claimed it was nothing more than an urban legend. But others swore it was real, and candidly confessed what they witnessed inside it, still haunted their nightmares. 

Almost nothing could be found about the group’s origins or the man responsible for it. Supposedly they traveled around New England, appearing at random carnivals and festivals, with no promotion or fanfare, and set up far off the midway, away from prying eyes. Only adults got access to the tent, and they permitted no photographic or recording devises of any kind inside. Of those people claiming to have seen the exhibit, all conveyed similar stories of images too horrible to believe, describing damaged, writhing, and mutilated bodies, caged and displayed under harsh lights. One person reported seeing a man with his entire lower jaw hacked off, leaving his tongue dangling and flopping on his chest. Another claimed to witness a woman whose skin was covered in razor blades buried in her flesh. 

A detail common among the testimonies revealed none of the exhibited individuals could speak. Instead, the tent filled with a numbing cacophony of inarticulate moaning and anguish.     

Richard had long wished to see these things for himself, wondering if the atrocities resulted from well-crafted prosthetics and special effects, or something more sinister. He labored to discover all he could find about it. A detailed search of medical schools and facilities across the Eastern United States turned up no reference to a Doctor Enoch. But he uncovered so many online posts referencing the freak tent, he determined the show was real, even if the exhibits were likely not.

That summer he mapped out the locations of all the fairs, festivals, and carnivals scheduled across New England, and monitored posts on social media, for mentions of Doctor Enoch and his freak show. Using location data provided by those postings, Richard honed in on the group’s movements and set out to intercept them at their next appearance.

It took three weeks of crisscrossing New England before he found them, about ten miles North of Concord, New Hampshire, in a small town called Boscawen. Appropriated by a traveling amusement park, a temporary festival set up on a vacant plot of farmland for the Fourth of July weekend. Positioned at the far corner of the property, was a dirty canvas tent, with a massive devil’s head, whose open mouth provided the entrance. A hand-printed sign off to the right identified it as Doctor Enoch’s Atrocities, Terrors, and Horrors.

Richard waited until nightfall and positioned himself about twenty yards away from the tent. He took out his cell phone and began live streaming to his audience. 

“You will not believe this,” he said, his eyes flashing with excitement. “But I am only a few feet away from the entrance of the legendary freak tent of Doctor Enoch.”

He turned away from the camera and glanced over his shoulder at the tent. 

“I’m about to see for myself what so many of you have claimed to experience.” Then he lowered his voice and leaned closer to the camera. “But I will bring you with me!”

Richard reached into his coat pocket and pulled out another cell phone. 

“This is my dummy phone. I know they will ask to take my phone when I enter, so this is the one I’ll give them. And once I’m clear, I’ll covertly activate my real phone and begin live-streaming to you the real contents of Doctor Enoch’s Atrocities, Terrors, and Horrors. So call your friends, call your neighbors, hell, you might even want to mention it to total strangers. Log on to Exploring the Macabre with Richard Savini, and you will all get a glimpse of something you’ll never forget.”

Richard Savini was never seen again.