By Geoffrey Lin
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29 May, 2022
In late September of 2019, two members of The Society of New Hampshire found their friend, Mika Patel, unconscious outside a house on Horn Hill. She had been called by someone in the neighborhood to investigate the sighting of a ghostly moose in their backyard. “When it comes to ghostly moose, it’s not a call we get very often, but it’s also not a call that we would send more than one investigator out for. It was all preliminary,” says Brian, the current secretary and spokesperson for the respected volunteer organization which has been in existence for more than two hundred years. “Mika is one of our most powerful [investigators], there was no reason to think she’d be in more danger than she could handle.” An hour after Mika had left for the Horn Hill location, she stopped returning texts. Two hours later, other members of The Society began to worry. Two off-duty investigators who happened to live in the area, Jacko and Carl, circled the neighborhood to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary. They found her unconscious and crumpled beneath a beech tree a quarter mile from the home she was investigating. She gripped a switch from a blueberry bush, a practice customary to the society, in her hand. What happened and who could have had a hand in it has been a subject of speculation ever since. “Whatever anyone thinks of us, this is another example of how dangerous our work can be. We ask that people be careful when checking out paranormal phenomena on their own,” said Carl in 2019. Carl went missing almost a year later in the same Horn Hill neighborhood. Body parts identified by his then fiancée prompted the local police to close the missing persons case but failed to offer any insights as to what happened. The Society of New Hampshire has since been the subject of several police investigations. “The police are doing their job. We have welcomed their questioning and share their search for truth and public safety. People should not take the investigation as a sign that The Society has engaged in any wrong doing,” said the secretary. Mika was initially treated at Cradensburg hospital but was transferred to Dartmouth-Hitchcock for diagnostic care. She was then transferred to a local medical facility where she had been diligently looked after since February of 2020. On early Sunday morning, she woke up. Family members drove up from Manchester when they heard the news. What does a person who has spent two and a half years in a coma have to say? Silva, a cousin of Mika who runs a tiny food and furniture boutique for hamsters in Nashua, has given us some insight. “Like, she’s not talking much right now and a lot of what she says doesn’t make any sense. She keeps saying she was trapped between two worlds and was living in a closet full of pink pantsuits. I’m sure over time she’ll start making a lot more sense. But it’s just great to have my cousin back. She used to make the best s’mores. Perfect ratio of golden burnt marshmallow to white sticky marshmallow. It’s important to get that right and so few people do.”