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Most legends start with the occurrence of something strange and unusual.

Many of those stories that have happened in more recent times are a little easy to speculate on

because they may have the benefits of being observed by modern science and technology.

In today's day and age, the unexplained is a much more difficult time staying out of sight.

In theory, institutions are good at

solving the mysteries that take place within their walls. Hospitals, coroner's offices, state health

departments. They're built around the premise that things can be named, categorized, and filed.

And when something comes along that won't cooperate with that

premise, the pressure to name it anyway and do it quickly is significant. On the

night of February 19, 1994, in an emergency room in Riverside, California, something

happened that nobody in that particular institution had a name for.

It started with a smell.

Two smells, actually.

One fruity, biological, strange, and one sharp, and similar to ammonia, like the inside of a

cleaning supply closet, both coming from the same afflicted

person. Then there was a visual anomaly, a shimmering, oily film coating that same person's

skin that had no clinical explanation. When a blood draw was taken and the nurse held the

syringe up to the light, she saw particles suspended in the blood that blood shouldn't produce.

Crystalline, yellow-brown, just sitting in the clear plastic cylinder like they belonged there.

...