SCP-378

Item #: SCP-378

Object Class: Safe

Special Containment Procedures: SCP-378 is stored in a standard containment locker located at Site-19. Any personnel with Level 1 clearance or higher are allowed to view SCP-378 as part of their training. No personnel who have contact with SCP-378 outside of supervision are to be expelled from the Foundation.

Description: SCP-378 is a full-size model of the ship of Homeric legend, the Hero, Ulysses. Originally all wood, SCP-378 has been reinforced with steel over time and is currently constructed from reinforced plastic and filled with sand. Despite this, SCP-378 will not fracture or fracture under normal testing conditions.

Any person that touches SCP-378 becomes affected by its anomalous properties. Anyone affected will begin to exhibit signs of a mental illness affecting their ability to speak. This mental disorder manifests in a variety of ways, the most common being:

SCP-378 was originally discovered on ██/██/1986 when an anonymous tip led Foundation agents to investigate a house located in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Inside they found the body of Thomas █████████████ (nicknamed "Tom" by his family). Tom had been missing for a week before his disappearance was noticed and he was declared deceased at that point. His home had been ransacked and heavily damaged; police believed it to be a burglary gone wrong.

During their investigation, agents found the body of Tom's father, Charles █████████████ (nicknamed "Chuck" by his family) lying in his bed. He had died from [DATA EXPUNGED] before his home had been broken into and his son killed. Both bodies were severely decomposed and covered in severe burns; it is theorized that both victims were burned alive. The bodies were taken for autopsy but during this process, Agent ████████ came across a red envelope in Chuck's desk drawer containing SCP-378.

The envelope itself appeared intact other than some minor stains; however the message inside was unreadable due to it being partially burned upon inspection. All attempts to recreate the message have failed, as no one who has seen it can recall anything other than appearing blurry and "unfocused".

Addendum: Interview Log 378-1

Interviewed: Agent ████

Interviewer: Dr. ███████

Foreword: Agent ████ was assigned to investigate the case of Tom and Chuck, as well as the discovery of SCP-378.

Dr. ███████: Good evening, Agent ████. Please introduce yourself.

Agent ████: Thank you, sir. My name is ███████, I\'ll be doing the interview for tonight.

Dr. ███████: Very well, please begin by telling us what you have discovered in regards to the deaths of Tom and Chuck.

Agent ████: Well, as I said, we found a red envelope in one of Chuck\'s desk drawers. It was… charred, like it had been burned. Inside was a letter written in pencil, the ink was smeared. The closest I\'ve ever seen to it is when my mom used to write with a pencil on paper napkins, but they were all wet at the time and were kept dry. Regardless, I copied down the letters and here they are:

\'I am sorry, son. When I wrote that letter I did not think it would be my last. I expected to live another five years or so, and when I finally died, I thought this would be a pleasant change of pace. But it was not. I had not been able to make peace with myself before passing away, and now I find myself headed straight into Hell. The only thing that makes me happy anymore is watching the world burn and all of those who live there suffer under its flames. All I have done is watch it happen from Hell and now you\'re going to watch it happen from Heaven.\'

Dr. ███████: …Uh… that seems rather… depressive…

Agent ████: Yes, sir. That\'s why we called for a psychologist for the interview - we didn\'t want him to slip into depression himself and miss something that could help us figure out what happened back then. We also gave him a tranquilizer just in case he did become distraught enough to reveal things he wouldn\'t say normally.

Dr. ███████: Very good. Please continue with your report.

Agent ████: Alright… Well, he wasn\'t too upset about anything from his past life that I could tell - he was upset about his family dying but nothing else; he seemed rather normal until he saw this note which made him remember everything about the past three years up until that point, even if it wasn\'t important at the time since he was already dead. He became angry about being dead and unable to do anything about it; he couldn\'t even mourn properly for his mother or father because he was already dead himself and could do nothing about it when they died from their illnesses before his death in bed. He started crying while talking about how they would\'ve hated him for what he did - how they\'d tried their best to take care of him while he was alive, but now he felt like he couldn\'t even come back and say goodbye to them because he\'d be stuck in Hell all alone with no where else to go - just watching everything burn while others were having fun on Earth. He kept talking until he passed out after a while, apparently screaming out loud while sobbing at the same time without realizing it at first. We took him back to his house and put him in his bed until something \'seemed off\'. His wife came home from work and started yelling at him for acting strange since she knew something was up since he hadn\'t told her about any of this beforehand. She was questioning him about what had happened in their house during her lunch break and somehow got him to explain everything from start to finish which got her upset again - she yelled at her husband for "ruining her day" again by making her worry about meaningless things when she had a family she needed to take care of instead. She left home again and we didn\'t see her again until she showed up at our office afterwards - missing her husband completely and saying that she wanted to divorce him since he had "ruined everything" by telling her what happened those three years ago and how he couldn\'t get closure with his family at all anymore since they were both gone now - not even their graves meant anything anymore because they were both "dead". She seemed fine after that but we still haven\'t heard from her since then…

Dr. ███████: That sounds pretty bad… Are there any more details you can give us?

Agent ████: Well… there isn\'t much information on this part of the case because it basically never happened - according to Chuck\'s wife she just disappeared after telling us all that stuff after she came back from work one day; she never showed up again so we just dragged Charles\'s body back into his house for autopsy (he was already dead anyways) and sent Agent ████████ back home where he could get some rest; his wife never showed up again either but nobody saw or heard from her after that point anyway so maybe she just went missing? Either way though Charles died 8 days later from an overdose on sleeping pills which caused us to have to confiscate all his medication since we didn\'t know what else he might have taken; Agent ████████ returned home after that and hasn\'t left since then even after retirement so we can assume Charles\'s death wasn\'t related to Chuck\'s disappearance at all… yeah - that\'s pretty much the entire case file now that I think about it… what can I say? It\'s not really important anymore…\'