It’s the late 90's, and an Air Canada flight
experiences severe malfunctions while traveling from London to Vancouver. The pilots are unable to do anything and the
plane crashes into the woods of Northern Alberta. The crash was devastating - only 10 of the
nearly 300 people on board are alive. And even though they survived the initial
disaster, their battle for life has only just begun. It’s late autumn in Northern Canada and
there’s no telling when help will arrive, if at all. If the survivors want to make it through the
night they need to find shelter, and fast. As they trudge through the freezing woods,
the group finds a path that looks like it might lead them to civilization. After all, if there was a path in the woods,
that meant they were probably in a national park, and if they were in a national park,
there had to be a ranger's station around somewhere where they could warm up and call
for help. They didn’t have many other options, so
they followed the path which opened up to a clearing, but instead of finding a ranger's
station or campground, they found something none of them could have expected. It was a pond, but there was something off
about it. As they got closer they saw that this strange
pond wasn’t filled with water, but blood. The survivors were horrified. That couldn't really be blood, could it? It must be a weird algae or a chemical reaction. But one member of the group, a man named Thomas
Dean, who had been on his way back to his hometown of Prince George, British Columbia,
thought there was something strangely familiar about this. He remembered being a boy and going to visit
family in Alberta, and hearing an urban legend from the older local kids. According to the stories, somewhere out in
the wilderness, in the northern part of the province, there was a pond full of human blood,
and what made it even worse, was that some said the pond was a gateway to hell. The SCP Foundation was also aware of this
legend, and had been trying to pinpoint the exact source of it for decades prior to the
Air Canada crash. They would finally receive definite confirmation
of the blood pond when Foundation personnel intercepted a radio transmission from a ranger's
station located within the Wood Buffalo National Park. It was the survivors of the crash, who had
managed to make it through the night, and they were about to be escorted out of the
park by rangers. The Foundation mobilized quickly to cordon
off the pond, as at this time they were unsure of what potentially harmful properties the
pond might have had. They set up Watch Station Epsilon-38 and put
staff on guard to deter travellers from the area. The pond was given the designation of SCP-354
and classed as Euclid. Foundation scientists made a number of interesting
discoveries about SCP-354 when they collected samples for testing. First, the pond was not in fact full of blood,
merely an inorganic liquid that closely resembles blood in color and consistently. Second, and even stranger than the red liquid,
is that the pond doesn't seem to have definite banks or a bottom. Instead, the liquid in the pond increases
in density as the radius away from the center increases - the liquid congeals at the edges,
becoming more solid and blending into the surrounding soil. It also becomes thicker as one descends deeper
into the pool, and a bottom of the pond has not yet been reached, if it even exists. Initially, the foundation found no signs of
life within the blood pond. But that would all change at 2:03 PM on the
day following the opening of Watch Station Epsilon-38, when the science team noticed
an unusual level of activity on the pond's surface. Security footage feeds showed a shape rising
up out of the pond, followed by a deafening shriek. After that, the feed was cut and Foundation
lost all communication with Watch Station Epsilon-38. Fearing the worst, a Mobile Task Force was
dispatched to the location. When they got there, all personnel at the
watch station had been killed by what could only be described as a gigantic bat. The task force was able to neutralize the
entity, and as soon as they could, the Foundation moved in to increase security around the SCP,
creating Area - 354 and installing a permanent security detail. After this point, the pond started to regularly
spit out a variety of monstrous entities, almost as if it was reacting to the SCP Foundation's
increased security measures. After SCP-354-1, the giant bat came SCP-354-2. 354-2 was an echidna-like monster the size
of a bear, that was virtually bulletproof but unable to escape Area 354. The foundation neutralized this anomaly with
napalm. SCP-354-3 was a floating black sphere capable
of firing deadly beams of concentrated energy. The area's head scientist was able to hit
it with a sledgehammer, causing the sphere to malfunction and self-destruct before it
was able to escape the area. The Foundation wasn't as lucky with SCP-354-4. This creature was a reptilian humanoid that
stood roughly 15 feet tall and was unable to be put down with gunfire. This was the first creature from the pond
to successfully escape containment, and was only able to be neutralized when the Foundation
sent in Mobile Task Force Omega 7, also known as “Pandora's Box.” The data on pond incursions is partially corrupted,
so a complete list of creatures is not available, but some of the other monsters that came out
of the blood pond included a killer robot, a set of gigantic tentacles that dragged several
D-class personnel into the pond, a pair of panther-like creatures - one made of ice and
the other of magma - that ignored foundation staff and instead fought each other, and one
seemingly normal human man who was executed as soon as he emerged from the pond. Tests on his body revealed that he was, in
fact, totally normal and would have posed no threat. These anomalies came out of the pond at fairly
regular intervals for several months, before the pond went silent for an unprecedented
22 months. The head scientist at the time noted, “I
suspect this means one of two things. Either the Red Pool has ‘died’ or ‘powered
down’ or whatever the correct term for it is; or it is ‘charging up’ for something
big to come through. O5 believes the former is the most likely
explanation, and has recalled 30% of our total personnel and cut 25% of our funding. While I can only hope that they are correct,
if the latter situation is true, we're soon to face some terrible monstrosity and we won't
have anywhere near the force necessary to deal with it. I worry for all of our safety.” His words would prove eerily prophetic following
the events of Exploratory Mission 354 Alpha. The Foundation's research and development
team built a specialized craft to explore the pond. Because of the strange properties of the pond's
density, the craft was essentially made to be both a submarine, for parts of the pond
where the contents were liquid, and a drill, for when the liquid congealed into a semi-solid
towards the bottom. The exploration team consisted of Agent Swanson,
Agent Turquoise, Agent 86, Dr. Jay Macarthur, Chris Simmons, Leroy Tucker, and a pilot named
Marty. With the team assembled, the ship was sent
down into the pond. Nothing eventful happened for the first two
days of the mission, but at 4:30 AM on the third day, gravity suddenly reversed for the
crew of the ship. This seemed to indicate that they were approaching
the halfway point, though what would be on the other side, nobody could say. On the fourth day, the ship surfaced, proving
definitely that the pond was in fact some sort of portal. The crew looked out of the portholes to see
the darkness of night above them. While sensors outside the ship detected nothing
harmful in the atmosphere around them, the crew were wary of exiting the craft. The other side of the pond was nothing like
the world the crew knew. For one thing, the night lasted for 28 hours
before dawn came, and when the sun finally rose, it was much larger and redder than the
earth's sun. Under the light of that strange, red star,
the crew could see that the pond on this side was massive compared to where they'd come
in - more like a large lake. Surrounding the lake was sand and rocks that
were covered in a kind of moss that disappeared under sunlight and regrew during the night. The team left the ship and started to explore. During their time in this strange world, they
found that the day lasted just a few hours shorter than the night, meaning that whatever
planet they were on had roughly a 43-hour-long rotation as opposed to our own planet's 24. The team found a number of anomalous elements
on their expedition, including razor-sharp grass that can puncture skin and streams of
liquid carbon dioxide. They heard some loud roars in the distance
once or twice, but other than that the planet was eerily silent, with seemingly no animal
life and not even wind. When it rained, the soil remained dry, and
based on that, the scientists theorized plants in this world were more efficient at absorbing
moisture. On the 25th day, the team ran into a huge
metal wall that appeared to be artificially constructed. Luckily, Leroy Tucker, a quick-thinking researcher,
was able to rig a blowtorch from camping supplies and melt a hole through the metal. On the other side, there was finally wind,
and odd black grass. That's the extent of what is known about the
other side of the wall, though, because the expedition logs are heavily corrupted after
that point, but we know that whatever was in there wasn't good, because the team never
returned. Strangely, there's no record of any of the
names mentioned in the ship's log - almost as if being killed on the other side completely
erased them from history. No other expeditions into the pond were launched
after that. On an undisclosed date, a year following the
discovery of the blood pond and construction of Area 354, the site was completely evacuated,
and the power was cut to the area. Mobile Task Force Theta-12 was dispatched
to investigate the cause of the evacuation, but before contact could be established, the
area's on-site nuclear warhead was detonated, completely destroying the site. MTF Theta 12 was then attacked by a convoy
made up of D-class and other low-ranking staff who had evacuated Area 354. It was apparent that there had been some kind
of mutiny within the site, and that a dissolution of the chain of command had led to its evacuation
and destruction. The convoy totally annihilated MTF Theta 12,
and no further contact with the former personnel of Area-354 has been made since. Following the site's detonation, a new site
was constructed, called simply the Red Pool Containment Site. Unlike the previous facility, which focused
on research and neutralization, the new site is entirely concerned with containment. The shift in directive came as a response
to the pond's apparent reactive nature - each creature that emerged from the pond seemed
to be in retaliation to the Foundation's actions, and it was theorized by some that the mutiny
at Area 354 was triggered by some kind of psychic attack from the pond itself. An interview in the SCP file on 354 reveals
that there was one more disastrous attempt to control and understand the blood pond. According to an interview with a Foundation
agent, the head doctor proposed a scheme to drain the blood pond using a system of pumps
and hoses. All non-essential personnel were evacuated
in case of emergency, leaving only the pump technicians, D-class personnel, and a few
agents for security. However, as soon as the pump was scheduled
to be turned on, everyone at the site experienced a mass dissociative episode. The agent described the feeling they all experienced
as like being in a dream and suddenly realizing that you're asleep. He said “Everything stopped being real. It was like we had to escape right now.” When asked what happened when the pump was
turned on, he simply explained that it “wouldn't let them”. This interview confirmed the theory that the
pond is not only capable of releasing monsters out into our world, but also that it's capable
of powerful but much more subtle, psychological attacks. This suggests a chilling possibility - that
the pond isn't just blindly reacting to being attacked, but it's fully sentient, and the
actions of the SCP foundation have only served to annoy it. And worse, studies of the pond's banks have
provided evidence that the area of congealed liquid around the perimeter of the pond has
been steadily expanding. That's right - the pond is getting bigger. The last thing the Foundation agent stationed
at the site said before being dragged out of the interview and sedated was “It gets
bigger and stronger every day, and now we've made it angry!” Now go check out “SCP - 087 - The Stairwell”
and “SCP - 096 - The Shy Guy” for more classic Foundation foes!
