Liminal Photographers Club — The Passenger on Sycamore Street
An anonymous investigator mines a now-defunct online message board, for clues about what happened to its many members.
Just a bit of fun while I chip away at some bigger projects. I had this idea over the course of a few late night drives, which give a lot of ordinary places a certain wrongness that I find wonderfully unsettling. Hope you’ll enjoy! —Cole
The following collection of locations, people, and stories have been compiled from the now defunct online message boards, called the Liminal Photographers Club.
For those who don’t know: Liminal Spaces are unsettlingly ordinary. One poster summarized his work as depicting places that are meant to be passed through, when no one is passing through them.
But while empty airports and abandoned strip malls may fit these definitions, the places discussed by the Liminal Photographers Club were something stranger–a fact many members discovered at great personal cost.
For reader safety, and to protect the privacy of the victims’ families, names and locations have been changed.
Entry 01 — The Passenger on Sycamore Street
u/LimiNurse
walking on the highway?
March 23rd, 2020
Any of you ever been on a highway, totally alone at night?
Some quick background: I’m technically an “essential worker,” so even with everything going on, I have to drive downtown every night. Working the overnight shift always meant a quiet commute, but now there really is nobody on the road.
Just so you can picture it: this is one of those sunken highways that sits below street level, with a lot of cross street overpasses. Because of the angle, you can’t see any cars or people above you. And the street lights cast these really cool shadows on the buildings.
This one church near the Tech Center exit looked totally surreal, so I slowed down to get a better look. And the slower I got, the more I realized I’d never just stopped on this road. Obviously I’m not talking about bad traffic when there’s tons of people around. Alone at night is something different.
So I checked the rear view mirror to make sure no one was coming, and just sorta stopped there. Let me tell you: it felt like I was walking into some kind of freaky world-ending apocalypse. I kept waiting to see lights in my mirror, but I never did.
After a minute, I started feeling panicky, like this stupid childish fear that I really was alone, and the city really was abandoned. I had the weirdest urge to get out of the car and actually take a look around. But at that point, I was already running late for my shift.
I’m planning on going back with my 35mm camera to try and capture the feeling on film. But I still don’t have a ton of experience shooting with it in low light. Any tips here?
Editor’s note: Despite many comments, both offering advice and requesting updates, this was the user’s final post on the forums, leading some to speculate that the original poster may have been struck by a car while trying to take pictures.
Our investigation has determined something far stranger happened.
User LimiNurse did not share the exact location in his post. However, commenters suggested several locations that matched the provided description.
Cross-referencing these with local news reports led us to a bizarre incident along what appears to be the very same highway the original poster frequented.
On April 7th, an unoccupied, idling vehicle was discovered in the center lane of the highway in question. There was no sign of the driver. In fact, the vehicle’s registered owner, Jacob O’Dunn, was reported missing shortly after.
By requesting a copy of the police report, we were able to learn the car’s VIN number. That detail, in turn, allowed us to track down O’Dunn’s vehicle maintenance records. During the days between the man’s final post, and his disappearance, he made multiple trips to a local dealership to troubleshoot a problem.
March 25th
Customer reports an intermittent rattle from the passenger side of the vehicle. Technician unable to duplicate.
Technician asked whether rattle occurs in multiple driving conditions, or is isolated to roadway conditions. Customer stated concern seems tied to the stretch of highway along their commute.
March 27th
Customer reports same intermittent rattle. Noticed passenger side airbag sensor activated at highway speed, with no passenger present. Technician scanned for diagnostic trouble codes and found the sensor functioned as normal.
March 30th
Customer returned with same issues, adds that passenger seatbelt chime sounds intermittently at highway speeds.
No fault codes present. Technician performed visual inspection of seat connections and wiring harness. No damage observed.
Reset SRS and BCM modules. Customer advised to return if concern persists.
March 31st
Customer returned, stating prior chime issue has become more frequent, demanding to take technician for a test drive to reproduce the issue. Unable to duplicate during road test.
Quoted customer for a sensor swap. Customer declined repair, stating intention to leave harness fastened to suppress warning.
Of note: there are no active recalls on O’Dunn’s make and model vehicle that would indicate issues with the passenger seat sensor system.
The maintenance logs—while mundane by themselves—raise further questions when read in conjunction with the police report itself.
Officers stopped short of drawing specific conclusions about Mr. O’Dunn’s fate. However, the report makes mention of “unusual vehicle behavior,” and references a forensic report on the vehicle’s EDR data and telemetrics.
For those not technically inclined: newer cars essentially have a computer that tracks details about your vehicle and driving habits; things companies can use to contest warranty claims or hike insurance rates. The reports are boring streams of mostly useless data, logging tiny status changes to your car as “events.” Not just location data either; small things like aggressive braking can appear in the logs.
After a second records request, we were able to access some of these reports, which amounted to thousands of lines of data.
In the early morning hours of March 23rd, 2020, O’Dunn’s passenger door briefly registered as “ajar” while in motion.
This blip marks the start of a series of strange data points, coinciding with the maintenance records.
During the following days, the EDR data and telemetrics registered a consistent pattern: once moving at highway speeds, O’Dunn’s vehicle briefly showed the passenger door was ajar, despite never stopping.
Shortly after these door ajar events, the passenger airbag sensor would activate.
O’Dunn disappeared less than one week later on March 28th, 2020
The final telemetric reading occurred shortly after one of these “door ajar” events. It showed multiple erratic maneuvers, followed by a proximity alert from the front bumper, which tripped the vehicle’s automatic braking feature.
The vehicle was still running when police discovered it, with all the doors left open.
O’Dunn remains officially missing, and his case is considered active.
Thank You for Reading!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of the Liminal Photographers Club. This project was inspired by late nights on long road trips, passing by ordinary places at irregular hours. I may write more of these as I wrap up my novel, and finally finish off the Gideon Gale serial.
In the meantime—what do you think happened to Jacob O’Dunn?