I am a collector of vintage and lost news media. After acquiring a collection of old, small-town papers from a tiny library that was shuttering its doors, one piece stuck out to me. It was not dated and faded like the rest of the collection- it looked like I had bought it that morning. It contained the most unusual subject matter, and I would have passed it off as some work of outsider art, if not for the images contained within, and the unsettling events unfolding in the wake of my attempts to find the source of this article. Perhaps you too, dear reader, will come to believe in the events at Grouse Springs, or maybe you will dismiss it as so many others have. As I had, initially. Maybe it is easier to continue living as if nothing like this could change our daily life. I fear it already has.

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Blast Radius: An investigation into the tragedy and coverup of Grouse Springs

by Douglas Ray Cleavon

Published August 2021

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Part One: an Interview

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Part Two: the Autopsy

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Part Three: a Letter

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In one afternoon, Grouse Springs, Virginia went from being a sleepy farming town to a place soaked in infamy. It is now spoken almost exclusively in the company of names such as Three Mile Island, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. Residents across the East Coast remember June 23rd, 2016 as a day of unique terror, forced to take shelter in Cold War-era bomb shelters, while the rest of the country recalls fear of threats to our capital city, evacuation, panic. 1,437 lives lost, some with bodies that still haven’t been found, even years later. 1,437 friends, children, loved ones. Gone.

The Grouse Springs Nuclear Plant’s official statement claimed that the plant had experienced a loss-of-coolant incident at the hands of some negligent employee who had mistakenly stopped the flow, causing the pipes to burst from heat and the dangerously outdated graphite tips to catch fire and begin a nuclear meltdown. The fire spread rapidly to the town, and due to a delayed warning system, not everyone had time to make it out. All 532 employees of the power plant were killed, as well as 408 first responders, and 497 civilians living in Grouse Springs itself.

Fortunately, as the story goes, military assistance stepped in to assure no more radiation spread, and that no more lives were lost. Video footage still exists on the internet, taken by survivors returning to salvage belongings, of people who had burned to death in their cars for leaving just seconds too late.

Those who died at Grouse Springs died badly. Even those who survived the initial danger weren’t safe, dying weeks later of radiation poisoning, skin sloughing off. Pets and livestock were killed, and acres of beautiful Virginia old-growth forest had to be razed.

Fortunately, as the story goes, the danger will pass. Life will return, eventually. Forests will grow back. Although those who died could not be replaced, survivors were given a hefty sum of government money to try to build a new life, and move on. Many of the survivors of Grouse Springs were reluctant to speak to the media, both civilians and first responders alike. Understandably so; even years can’t do the trauma associated with such a terrible loss of life.

Some alleged witnesses, however, claim that the payout was merely to buy their silence. Lead-lined coffins hide bodies very, very well.

Viral videos posted on social media before technology began to fail depicts scenes of violence not able to be attributed to radiation poisoning or panic. Animals were seen in the days after damaged in ways that seemed closer to genetic defects than the result of injury. Reports of wildlife that had fused, of plants that thrashed and screamed, of figures looming out of fire.

A user on the conspiracy forum TruthSeekrs going by “98765grousesprings” made a post on March 4th of last year, stating “I was at GrouseSprings, no blue light, no cherenkov radiation,” followed five minutes later by “no cherenkov=nowater=no burstpipes.” The account, and subsequently the posts, were deleted twenty-four hours later. However, a second account showed up by the name of “grouusespringsmassacre”, this time on the popular photosharing site Instagram, claiming to be 98765grousesprings, sending screencaps to hundreds of users with the original tweets, captioned, “they deleted my account anyone who says they saw a regular fire there r lying.” The grouusespringsmassacre account was deleted, again, 24 hours later.

Although this user was likely just buying into conspiracy, there was one factor that made this post notable. The image used as the account's profile picture was from Grouse Springs, the day of the massacre, and it had never been published before. Many groups outright rejected my attempts at contact, and others still were cold, hostile, or otherwise disinterested. Still, I persisted. There was something here, so I ran an advertisement, pooling money to run an advertisement campaign.

This remained unsuccessful for months, alternating between long periods of silence and pranksters. That was, until I received a phone call on my personal phone from a man I had never spoken to before. He contacted me around four in the morning and I answered bleary-eyed, glasses still tucked away on the nightstand.

“Cleavon Residence.”

I heard shuffling on the other end of the line, before a quiet voice said, “Is this Douglas?”

“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m uh- my name’s Pete Kitts. I saw your ad online a while ago and I could use the money if you still got it,” he was so quiet that I could barely hear him, but I was instantly awake, quickly grabbing my glasses and a pen and paper to write down a time and place to meet.

—-

Peter J. Kitts, or Pete, as he styles himself, is a big guy. Not in stature, but in everything else. Pete has a big laugh, a big personality, big boots, and at the age of thirty, a big gambling problem. That’s why he contacted me, he said.

“Well, I was out rent money for the week, since I was down at the tracks all day the Sunday before and uh, I saved your number just in case I needed something on the side,” Petey explained, as he showed me the paperwork proving that he indeed received settlement money from the Grouse Springs accident. “It’s all gone.”

We ended up meeting at a hotel cafe, neither of us wanting to introduce stories of Grouse Springs to our homes. The idea still felt taboo, as if we would be invoking it at our place of living if we so much as mentioned it there.

I started my tape recorder, setting it between us.

Pete Kitts arrived at a local bar owned by a couple who happened to be out of town on July 23rd, around 7pm the day of the accident. By 9:45 pm, everyone who remained in the bar was dead. The fire had spread to the town proper, through the thick trees and undergrowth surrounding the powerplant, and by 8:12 pm, beginning to engulf the businesses and homes of the residents of Grouse Springs. Emergency services had begun moving people out as quickly as possible. Kitts himself was rescued by a civilian vehicle, a good Samaritan trying to fit as many people in as possible. Exiting the building, Pete could see the smoke trailing from the direction of the trees, accompanied by a smell he described as “metallic.”

“I was in this bar, y’know? Nailhead’s, right by the corner of 52nd and West, out with my buddies after work. And I’m looking, well- nothing’s wrong with looking at the girls, right? As long as I’m not buying drinks for them. And my coworker Dave says to me, ‘Why don’t you buy that brunette over there a drink?’ I’m sitting there thinking, man, Angelica would be so pissed if I did that, so I tell him, ‘My girlfriend, she doesn’t want me doing that shit.’ So then Dave says, ‘Oh, so you’re letting the Titless Wonder make decisions for you now?’ That fucking pissed me off, so I was about to say something, but then I notice…”

With this, the previously animate Pete set his jaw and looked out the window, like he was struggling not to cry. He furrowed his brows, hard, and put his hand on his chin.

“What did you notice, Pete?”

He swallowed before continuing, voice shaky, “...I notice, that brunette went real still. Not just like, standing still, but real still.

She wasn’t even breathing. Her hair was frozen too, like someone had set her on pause right in the middle of dancing.

And then there was this… bulge in her stomach. Like a pregnant lady. But it wasn’t there before. And I’m staring at her, and Dave tries to get my attention before he sees what I’m staring at and then he’s staring at her too. And then her friends notice and they’re all screaming and the music cuts off and nobody knows what the hell to do because something is obviously wrong with the chick but how are you supposed to call an ambulance when you don’t even know what’s happening to her? And the bulge starts moving- moving up, like traveling from her stomach up to her chest, and you could see her bones cracking, and her friends are shaking her, trying to get her to unfreeze or wake up or whatever, and they’re crying and screaming, and Dave just whispers, 'What the fuck, man?'

So I called 911. Nobody answered. I think that was about the time the rest of the town was going to shit, too, so ain’t nobody there to answer the phone… but I doubt’d made a difference anyway, with what happened to her.

See, that bulge just kept growing up, up her neck… God, it was fuckin’ awful. And these hands just, came out of her mouth, one grabbin’ each jaw and it-... they just, peeled her. All inside out, blood everywhere, her guts spilling all over the floor. Smelled fucking awful, too. Few of her friends threw up, hell, I wanted to throw up.

It felt like it was going on forever, her body just opening and opening and opening. And nobody could see what was inside, and I was thinking shit, it’s a fucking face-hugger, now we’re all gonna split in half and die.

But it was just her, man. Once all the skin and meat was on the floor, it was just that same brunette, covered in blood, unfrozen. It was just her. And she was still dancing.”