THE NORTHERN GATE OF WESTPINE VALLEY

NOTICE:

August 14, 2025

The following contents of this documentary are treated by the compilers to be factual, and we expect you to go into this document with such a mindset. The document contains content that may or may not be suitable for public viewing— if you are an outsider seeing this document, we warn that what you are about to read going forward contains disturbing content not suitable for everyone, all of which will be left uncensored, and unaltered to preserve the archival nature of this documentary.

-Anthony Ross

I've found myself on online forums again, digging through old threads and finding obscure blogs I don't remember ever looking at. I don't really know when that started again, it just did. And now I don't know if I can stop.
My mind keeps drifting back to when I stumbled across a forum thread concerning a small town in Colorado called Westpine Valley. If you were just visiting the state you'd never know it exists. You might have driven through it on your way to somewhere else. A strange little town in the middle of the mountain range, gated off and secluded, remote from the outside world.

There was a post in that thread, on a site I can't seem to find anymore- that mentioned a gate on the northern edge of the town. I don't remember the exact wording— maybe I put it out of my mind. I don't know why I'm saying that like it's a decision I made on purpose. I remember reading it once, and then later not being able to find it again, and at some point I guess I kept trying to find it because it felt better_Easier than admitting I couldn't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, having lived in Westpine Valley my entire childhood, I had eventually come to realize that, after spending enough of my life outside of the town, it had become hard for me to explain certain parts of my childhood without sounding dishonest, or forgetful, or both. Now I am no longer sure I understand my early years as well as I thought I had. And that thought alone, for some reason I can't articulate, stayed with me for a long time.

When I think about Westpine Valley now, the memories I have there don't come back to me in any particular order. What follows is my closest approximation I have so far...

I was born on July 29th, 1992 into a family I can no longer remember, in a town I no longer recognize. Westpine Valley sat deep in the mountains of Colorado, somewhere closer to the western border, a large clearing– though small compared to the outside world, surrounded by a thick mass of trees.

When I was young, none of us really thought of the town as secluded; that would require relation to something else. The town is all we've ever known, and therefore our whole world. I remember when days would feel like they stretched into weeks before sundown, long periods of time where life became not much more than a humdrum of routine, not containing much more than what I now realize were surface-level friendships. My favorite times of year were the colder seasons– Fall and Winter, where the trees would turn white or go bare, and the cars on the street would cease to move. As the days got shorter, it was almost like the town went into hibernation…

There was only a single school in Westpine Valley, about 500 kids in total if I had to guess, that’s how small it was, though to me it was massive. We were split into 3 grades, Elementary, Intermediate– which I can only assume to mean “middle school” and Advanced, which I guess would be High School. We were taught the basics, reading, math, history— although history in particular was strange. I myself don't remember what exactly was taught, seeing as I had very swiftly learned that a lot of the things I was taught turned out to be _FABRICATEDinconsistent, though as a child they had always just made sense.

Or maybe I just never questioned it.

We didn't learn a whole lot about the outside world, besides the fact that there was an outside world out there… And then there were the rules. They were simple, yet distinct.

1) We were not allowed to leave the walls of the town. I don't remember how strictly enfornced this rule was, only that it was never questioned why.
2) There was some kind of precribed diet. I don't know whether this was some kind of policy or if people just agreed upon it.
3) Curiosity toward a higher power was discouraged. I believe this wasn't set as a law anywhere, but I guess it was more of an etiquitte.
4) Adults were expected to attend weekly "evaluations" at the Westpine Center. I had never known what those evaluations consisted of, but I do remember it happening every Saturday, at the end of each week.

We also had churches, though we didn’t call them that, and I don't remember what exactly the churches were called, or when exactly I figured out that they were churches. We had a supermarket on the southeastern side of town, and a hospital up north toward the Gate.

The Northern Gate of Westpine Valley, one of a few places that had always stood out to me as a child. It never opened, or at least– I don't ever remember it opening. The wall that surrounded the gate had a stone base underneath the iron mesh, too tall for me to properly see what was on the other side at the time. At night I would rarely hear what I could only infer to be the sound of rusted metal groaning from what I could only assume to be the gate opening, but I couldn't see. The closest I had ever gotten to it was when I was around 11 years old. The gate stood at what felt like a hundred feet tall at the time but, looking back, it couldn't have been as big as I remembered it. And sitting on the top of the archway was an eyeball, made of curved metal rods, highly detailed for something I don't remember anyone paying any attention to. Beneath it, was a sentence, carved into a wooden arched sign; "Das menschliche Auge kann nur das Chaos im Universum erkennen."

This brings us to today. As of writing this out, I am setting out to fly back to my hometown, and launch a full-scale investigation. Alone. This isn't a matter of preference, I do have reasons for this that I am stil trying to phrase properly as of writing this now, but, at least I wouldn't exactly feel like I'm approaching this from the outside looking in.

And maybe doing this alone is better anyway.