My name is Stuart Raphael.

On the night of August 10, 1979, a man living in Bonaparte, Florida, was awakened in the

middle of the night by the piercing screams of a child coming from outside his house

on a quiet road.

He bolted out of bed and ran instinctively to his front door and out into his yard,

mortified and ready to help.

The moment he got to the edge of his lawn, though, the screaming, which he would identify

as that of a boy, stopped.

He looked up and down the road.

It was only a little past twelve, but no neighbors seemed to be awake in his upper middle-class

neighborhood.

The houses on his side of the road faced a very small, nondescript public park, which

bordered a quiet lake on its other side.

Monkey bars, a sliding board, a few benches looking out over the water.

He crossed the road, believing someone in the starling park had been the source of that

terrible sound.

He saw that the park's most well-known feature, a modest foot-propelled carousel consisting

of four tiny horses on a creaky metal platform, was slowly spinning, though no child was

inside.

As he approached, the carousel slowed and slowed, then finally stopped.

The horses stared blankly into the dark.

Their paint faded and shipped, one of them a little wobbly, and amusement to be replaced

...