Black Water

Aftermath

A month after escaping the well and moving out of the Lodge, Jared and Jenny finally decide to release the footage of Endeavor I through Endeavor V to the public. The film was edited and compiled by Jenny, and was titled The Private Investigations. There are some segments in which the film shows Allen or Jared simply drifting for hours at a time, and there are other segments in which the frame rapidly cuts from scene to scene without explanation.

It instantly became a featured product on Amazon; there were millions of buys from all over the world, and soon enough it was reported that Jared had gained a total of 700 million dollars from the film alone.

Surprisingly, the couple did not move out of Albion. They lived in the local motel for a few weeks, and later moved into a smaller suburban home on the north end of the city. Lisa and Branden went to Albion Elementary School, and Dennis returned to his job as an electrical engineer. He still paid frequent visits to the Irwins, and was known for being their guide in the city.

Emilia Perkins, the real estate agent, was accused of professional misconduct in the wake of the mystery of the well. The public was outraged that she couldn't provide an explanation for where it came from, and wanted her out. The issue was resolved, however, when Branden arrived at court to testify for her. She remains as a real estate agent to this day, working in the same area.

A strange realization came to Jared during this time. When revisiting Albion Tapestries, he saw that Ava was no longer there - when he asked the new lady behind the counter, she told Jared that "Ava" had never existed. "I don't know who this 'Ava' person is," said the lady, "but she's never worked in this store before. I'm the cashier here. I've been the cashier for seventeen years."

And, in addition to that, his tapestries were now gone. When the moving trucks arrived to their new suburban home, Jared found the cardboard box that was supposed to be filled with the tapestries to be empty. He didn't bother looking for them; he knew that it would be hopeless.

Of course, this all came after Jared's full recovery was confirmed. He had artificial blood being circulated inside of his body, and one of his fingers had been removed because of frostbite. He would live like this for the rest of his life, and yet he still remained grateful towards his own survival.

"At least I'm alive," he would say jokingly in an interview with National Geographic, "at least I'm not a corpse, or something less. Having wounds is better than being dead."

Lisa and Branden were called in for an interview with the police as well. They didn't say anything useful, but investigators did note that they had an "awfully detached and almost creepy voice whenever talking about the well."

"While the effects of the black water are less evident on them, there is no doubt that it did alter their thoughts and emotions in some way," said child psychologist and part-time investigator Kevin Anson, "they continually claim to know what the 'monster' looks like, and whenever we ask them to draw a representation of it, they draw black circles."

Even these black circles were seen to be curious, not only in what they apparently depicted, but in their accuracy. The circles were described as "precise, whole, and strikingly symmetric in every aspect possible." In fact, one of these drawings was taken all the way to the British National Museum, where archivists were able to confirm that the circle was "literally perfect in both color and geometry."

Lisa's notebook was eventually sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 3.4 million dollars. To this day, archivists and art historians are still debating over what the meaning of its endless black pages is. "Those who believe that the mystery of the black water should only be restricted to scientists are blatantly wrong," said Alan Borschev, head of the department of pure mathematics at Northeastern University, "literature professors, art historians, language experts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and archivists alike are central to the investigation effort."