THE BLACK PROM
In late May of 1999,
Americans across the country woke to news of a horrible tragedy
unfolding in New Limerick, Maine. Initial reports spoke of over forty
graduating teenagers killed as a freak fire struck the auditorium
hosting the Senior Prom. When the last bodies were discovered, the
death count numbered over four hundred and fifty people.
Further reports carried news of massive explosions,
perhaps caused by natural gas leaks, which quickly racked up a large
toll in costs, both human and financial. The Governor quickly declared
the city a disaster area and asked for federal aid in dealing with the
issue. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not long in
arriving on the scene.
By afternoon the following day, rumors were abuzz
on national talk show circuits, press feeds, and the Internet.
Eyewitnesses were beginning to talk about what they had experienced,
laying blame at the feet of a young local woman who many alleged
“made things blow up just by looking at them.”
The young woman in question was soon identified as
Kairee Black. Local authorities located Kairee after responding to a
call by another local woman, who had discovered her body.
Kairee’s remains were autopsied by a Maine medical examiner to
determine cause of death, but quickly “cremated due to the state
of the body.” Internet rumor has it was someone else’s
remains that were cremated, and that Ms. Black’s body was handed
over to black-clad men from FEMA.
In the weeks that followed, the Governor of Maine
appointed a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the events surrounding
what became known in popular culture as the “Black Prom” or
“Prom Night.” Representatives from the federal government
and academia served the panel in an advisory capacity.
The panel soon became commonly referred to as
“The Black Commission”, and initial hearings were delayed
as it was discovered that a pair of key witnesses had inexplicably
vanished. The witnesses, a father and his daughter, were found a few
nights later by emergency medical technicians responding to a traffic
accident. They were written off as the victims of a drunk driver.
The Black Commission did everything it could to
ridicule any mention of Kairee Black and her alleged involvement, but
was unable to suppress the testimony of Shannon O’Connor.
Shannon’s testimony before the Commission alleged that Kairee was
the target of excessive, ongoing torment by her classmates, and
recounted several instances of objects flying through the air or
exploding under Kairee’s apparent control.
Sparse video footage recovered from the security
camera of a Quicky-Mart and later a gas station seemed to corroborate
parts of Shannon’s story. Others also testified before the
Commission, people who had witnessed bits and pieces of the same events
Shannon recounted.
After three months of interviewing witnesses,
reviewing forensics evidence, and conferring with experts, the Black
Commission issued its finding. They concluded that while there was
overwhelming evidence to support the claim that Kairee Black had some
sort of “parahuman ability” that contributed to the
disaster, most of the damage was done via mundane sabotage carried out
by the same Ms. Black.
Part of this sabotage supposedly involved the
explosion of a gas main, which explained the numerous explosions that
rocked the city. That only the most circumstantial and ambivalent of
evidence was presented to support the claims of sabotage sent the
conspiracy and Internet hounds into a frenzy, claimed a massive
cover-up was underway.
Complicating the situation was the massive upswing
in reported sightings of “mutated humans” with
“parahuman” abilities, or in some cases, inhuman
appearances. Cults began to latch on to the mutant phenomena as a sign
that this time, the end of the millennia really /would/ usher in the
end of the world.
By the fall of 1999, Americans were paranoid,
confused, and extremely frightened by the numerous mutant sightings,
spouting of cults and fringe religious movements, and the pending
threat of the Y2K computer bug. The country was split along two major
lines of thought: one believed that mutants were real and that
something had to be done, while the other felt that all these sightings
were hoaxes inspired by the Black Prom affair.
The federal government, supported by mainstream
science and academia, did their best to calm the public and deny that
“mutants” existed. However, they promised to investigate
the matter, and Project Pegasus was created in October of 1999 as a
special program jointly administered by representatives from the
Departments of Defense, Justice, and Energy.
Prom Night stands out as the crisis that awoke
America, and the world, to the possibility that beings walk the planet
with powers that can’t be explained by current science and that
pose a significant threat to public safety. Just as gun nuts point to
the Columbine school shootings and other such tragedies to support
their efforts to tighten gun control laws, radicals who have taken up
the banner of protecting humanity from the Mutant Threat point to the
Black Prom as justification for their actions.
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In September of 1999, Artisan Entertainment
announced they would start production on a movie based on the Black
Prom. The movie would star Juliette Lewis as Kairee Black, Kathy Bates
as her mother, and Freddie Prinze Jr. as her prom date. Jeff Goldblum,
Carrie Fisher, and other names were also attached.
The movie is set to be released on August 25th,
2000, and there has already been a lot of controvery, surrounding both
the events depicted in the movie, and the very idea of ‘cashing
in’ on the tragedy.
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Coming Soon (maybe): reputed official documents
which have turned up that may shed light on certain aspects of the
Prom.
