The Last Lantern of Løken

I have always prided myself on being a rational man. In my forty-seven years, I have seen the mundane and the monotonous, and I have never once believed in the ghost stories that old folks whisper over coffee. But what happened to me in the autumn of 2018, in the small Norwegian town of Løken, has shaken that certainty to its core. I do not know if what I experienced was real or a product of a mind pushed to its brink, but I cannot explain it away with logic, and that terrifies me more than any monster I could have imagined.

I had returned to Løken after a decade away, having taken a position as a night watchman at the local hydroelectric plant. The plant was a relic from the 1920s, a labyrinth of rusting turbines and dripping pipes, nestled at the edge of a dark, still fjord. My job was simple: patrol the facility every two hours, check the gauges, and ensure nothing went wrong. The previous watchman, an old man named Erik, had retired under strange circumstances, but I paid no mind to the rumors. I was just grateful for the steady paycheck and the quiet solitude.

The first week was uneventful. I walked the same corridors, listened to the same hum of machinery, and felt the same chill that seeped from the concrete walls. But on the eighth night, something changed. I was in the control room, sipping coffee from my thermos, when I heard a sound that did not belong. It was a low, rhythmic tapping, like a finger drumming on metal, coming from the turbine hall below. I grabbed my flashlight and descended the spiral staircase, my footsteps echoing in the darkness. The tap-tap-tap grew louder as I approached the main turbine, and for a moment, I thought it might be a loose panel or a dripping valve. But as I shone my light across the enormous machinery, I saw a figure, small and hunched, crouched in the shadows.

My heart lurched. I called out, ‘Who’s there?’ but the figure did not move. It was wearing what looked like a tattered, gray work uniform, its back to me. As I took a step closer, the tapping stopped, and the figure slowly turned its head. What I saw made my blood run cold. The face was not a face, but a smooth, featureless expanse of skin, like a blank mask. And where eyes should have been, there were just two dark, empty sockets that seemed to drink the light. I stumbled backward, my flashlight clattering to the floor. The figure began to rise, its joints cracking like tree branches, and it took a single, jerky step toward me. I turned and ran, not daring to look back, and I did not stop until I burst through the plant’s main door into the cold, damp night.

I drove home in a state of shock, my hands trembling on the steering wheel. I told myself it was a hallucination, a trick of the light, a lack of sleep. But the next night, I forced myself to return. I had to know. I checked every corner of the turbine hall, but there was nothing. The control room was still. I began to think I had overreacted, that my mind had conjured a nightmare from the oppressive silence of the plant. But as I was about to leave, I noticed something on the floor near the main turbine: a small, brass lantern, old and rusted, with a candle stub inside. It was not there before. I picked it up, and as I did, I felt a sudden, overwhelming dread, as if a thousand eyes were watching me. I dropped it and fled again.

The next morning, I went to the local archives, hoping to find some explanation. I spoke to an elderly librarian, a woman named Ingrid, who had lived in Løken all her life. I told her about the figure, about the lantern. Her face went pale, and she whispered, ‘You have seen it. The Wrong.’ She explained that the plant was built on the site of an old logging camp, where a tragic accident had occurred in 1919. A worker had been crushed by a falling log, and his body was never found. Some said his ghost still wandered the place, searching for his missing lantern, which he had been carrying that day. But what I described, the faceless figure, was not that ghost. It was something older, something that had been drawn to the site, perhaps from the depths of the fjord.

Ingrid warned me, ‘Do not go back. It will find you.’ But I had to understand. I returned that night, determined to confront the thing. I carried a new lantern, a modern one, but as I entered the turbine hall, I felt the temperature drop. The air grew thick with the smell of wet earth and decay. The same tapping sound began, but this time it was faster, more insistent. I walked toward the main turbine, and there it was again, the figure, now standing upright, its blank face turned toward me. I shouted, ‘Show yourself! I am not afraid!’ But its head tilted in a way that was unnatural, and it raised a hand, pointing at me. I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, but when I spun around, there was no one there.

That was when I saw the lanterns. Dozens of them, floating in the air around me, each one with a tiny, flickering flame. They formed a circle, and the figure began to speak, though its mouth did not move. The voice was a chorus of whispers, layered and distorted, saying, ‘You bring light, but you bring no soul.’ I realized then that the figure was not a person, but a manifestation of something primeval, a guardian of a threshold that should never have been crossed. The lanterns began to extinguish one by one, and with each one, I felt a part of myself being erased, a memory, a feeling, a fragment of my identity. I fell to my knees, desperate, and I screamed, ‘Stop! I will leave!’

At that moment, the figure paused. It tilted its head again, and the lanterns relit, one by one. The whispers faded, and the figure took a step back. I scrambled to my feet and ran, not stopping until I was in my car. I did not look back, and I did not return. I quit my job the next day, and I have not been back to Løken since. But the fear has not left me. I now carry a lantern with me wherever I go, a small, battery-powered one, as a reminder of what I saw. I do not know if what I witnessed was real, but I know that the fear was. And I know that there are places in this world where the veil between us and something else is thin. The plant was one of them, and I have crossed it. I only hope that something did not cross back.

I write this now, hoping that someone, somewhere, has seen the faceless one, or the floating lanterns, or felt the cold hand on their shoulder. If you have, please know that you are not alone. But if you have not, then I beg you to heed my warning: do not seek it out. Let the dead keep their secrets, and let the lanterns burn only in your dreams.