I grew up in Pasadena, California, back in the 1980s. My father often worked late as

a construction worker to provide for us, leaving me home alone from the age of 8, leading

up to when I moved out at 22. My father never asked much of me. He let me wear whatever

I wanted, especially through multiple phases. He let me smoke weed at 16, bought me alcohol

for parties, but he always had one strict rule. Never go near the gates of hell. I didn't

think that applied to me, now there in 42. The gates of hell, or more commonly known as

the Devil Gage Dam had gotten his name from locals due to the natural forming of a horn

devil's face in the rock of the dam. It had been named long before my time and its stories

whispered before even my father was born. Although he never spared me the details, my

childhood friends Mark and Patrick told me tales of cult and rituals mainly performed

by some sort of scientist and founder of a lab called JPL, or at least that's what I

can pull from my memory. In 1989 I remember talk of children going missing

around the gate, mostly teenagers, but there was one, age 11, just like me, who'd wandered

down to the dam and never returned. My father stayed home for a few days when that happened.

I didn't think it back then, but now that I look back, perhaps he was making sure my

curiosity didn't get the better of me. And I think if he hadn't been there, I would

have gone. The gates have been closed ever since, or at least that is what I heard from

my friends who frequently visited. So, when I headed back to my childhood home following

my father's passing, the last thing in my mind was a dumb dam of hell. For the first

few days of being in Pasadena, I spent a majority of my time listing my father's furniture

on Facebook Marketplace. I had considered donating it, but he insisted in his will that

I get as much money from this situation as I could. It also made a request that I burn

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