Exterior view of SCP-7283 (highlighted in red).
Item #: SCP-7283
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: The Foundation has purchased the building in which SCP-7283 is located. The adjacent apartments are currently used as storage and workspaces for personnel who are monitoring or experimenting on SCP-7283. The retail business on the ground floor serves as a front for other local Foundation operations.
Description: SCP-7283 is a third-floor apartment in a Victorian brownstone building in Boston, Massachusetts' Back Bay neighborhood. Its interior has no notable features.
At sunset, SCP-7283's doors and windows will lock themselves and become impossible to open until sunrise. Within an hour, the apartment's air temperature will drop to 4°C (39°F) and relative humidity will reach 100%.
From sunset to sunrise, music can be heard emanating from SCP-7283 at high volume (~90 dB). This music is not audible within the apartment, but rather, only in adjacent units and the outside hallway. The selection of music played by SCP-7283 is stylistically consistent with party music favored by Bostonian intellectual subcultures, though none of it is a match for any known song or artist; some sequences of songs are commonly repeated, suggesting the use of predetermined 'albums' or 'playlists'.
Between five and twenty human voices are audible from within SCP-7283 during its active hours, conversing in a manner consistent with a lively social gathering. This conversation mostly consists of small talk, mundane social matters, and occasional references to classical art; however, it is much quieter than the music, making transcriptions difficult.
Any sounds that are actually produced within SCP-7283 during its active periods are inaudible from the outside, regardless of volume, and vice versa. Occupants of SCP-7283 will hear the same music and conversation as those outside the room, but still muffled as though it is coming from adjacent apartments.
SCP-7283 has exhibited additional anomalous behavior on an irregular basis, as detailed in Appendix A.
Rumors pertaining to 'ghost parties' held at SCP-7283 predate its discovery by the Foundation by several decades; while these are rarely taken seriously, nearby locals still consider the location suspicious in some respect. In particular, residents have noted the frequency of loud parties at the location without any associated influx or exodus of visitors. Additionally, the Foundation's purchase of the building containing SCP-7283 led to speculation of criminal involvement.
Appendix A: Incidents in which SCP-7283 displayed anomalous properties outside of its above-stated parameters.
03/02/1985: As part of an effort to track down a recently-theorized oneiric anomaly, all SCP objects in New England were subject to testing for dream-related anomalous properties. To this end, all personnel assigned to SCP-7283 kept dream journals for three weeks while taking turns sleeping in the apartment overnight. The following incident occurred on the second night of the experiment, when Junior Researcher Reyes was stationed in SCP-7283.
At 1:16 AM, Reyes was awoken by loud knocking on the door to the apartment. She answered the knock, opening the door to reveal a woman she did not recognize, who then asked her for ice. Reyes retrieved the ice tray from SCP-7283's freezer, as well as two oranges from the refrigerator; after returning to the door, she threw the tray and both oranges at the visitor while screaming expletives, then slammed the door shut.
About a minute after this incident, Reyes realized its abnormal nature — knocks on SCP-7283's door are not audible from the inside during its active period, the door cannot be opened during the active period, and there should not have been anyone in the building that Reyes did not recognize. She promptly called her supervisor, who reached the scene at 1:23 AM. It was confirmed that the ice tray and oranges were no longer in the apartment, but they were also not present in the hallway outside. A thorough search of the building failed to find any signs of an intruder.
Following this incident, security cameras were installed inside SCP-7283 and in the hallway outside; however, no comparable incident has occurred in any subsequent tests. Analysis of staff's dream journals failed to demonstrate the presence of any oneiric anomaly.
08/22/2001: A test was conducted in which researchers attempted to communicate with any entities that may be responsible for the speech produced by SCP-7283. Most methods failed to elicit any observable response, save for one attempt, in which Researcher Simard passed a note under the door reading "Can I come in?". This note did not appear on the other side of the door; about ten seconds later, raucous laughter could be heard, and the note was passed back under the door unaltered. The laughter died down after about a minute.
Following this event, Simard abruptly left the building in violation of protocol and sat on the sidewalk outside for three hours and thirteen minutes. Immediately after sunrise, he stood up, went back inside, and reported the incident to his superiors. Simard explained that the event had been highly distressing, but could not explain why, noting that he was not emotionally invested in the test beforehand and that his emotional state returned to normal immediately after SCP-7283's active period ended.
Subsequently, all tests with SCP-7283 are required to have at least three personnel in attendance. Additional tests involving requests to enter SCP-7283 and/or notes passed under the door have all failed to elicit a response.
12/31/2007: PoI-3022, who was temporarily lodged two apartments down from SCP-7283 until he could be safely smuggled out of the city, left his room at 7:13 PM, went to SCP-7283, and knocked on the door. The door opened after several seconds, allowing PoI-3022 to enter, and then shut afterwards. The security cameras inside SCP-7283 did not show the door opening or PoI-3022 entering, and as the hallway security cameras were not pointed directly at the doorway, it is not clear what PoI-3022 saw.
At 5:04 AM the following morning, PoI-3022 exited SCP-7283, disheveled but uninjured, with no concrete memories of the previous evening. He claimed to have consumed a great deal of alcohol and engaged in sexual intercourse with an unidentified person during the evening, but no physical evidence of either was found; indeed, no foreign matter, biological or otherwise, was found in or on his body.
PoI-3022 offered no explanation for his behavior other than a general impression that he "was invited", which he could not justify.
Following this incident, additional locks were installed on SCP-7283's door, and the security cameras in the hallway were moved to face the door directly; additionally, persons of interest are no longer lodged in SCP-7283's building.
Addendum: An excerpt from Love Songs by the 20th century modernist poet J. Alfred Prufrock reads as follows:
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The winter evening settles down
With smells of steaks in passageways
That linger over muddy-footed murmurs,
Recalling riddles Bassarids would pose:
Why do the living chase the dead?
Hallway echoes gather in a room
Unknown when seen by sunlight,
Straining to be heard another time,
To be invited.
Said Lycurgus, "There will be no cheer
Accomplished in the shadow of my son.
To mourn is sacred, as inviolate as law
For god and man alike, peasant and king.
All will be as I proclaim:
There will be no light to see your dances by.
No ivy here will flower, fruit, or grow.
Your staff and crown will wither. Not even rain
will cause your golden cup to fill again."
Dionysus measured his reply, pouring
Wine from skin to cup, muddling
Leaves into the liquid with a coin.
"Oh, very well. Then we will not be seen
In palace rooms where no one comes or goes,
But all remember laughter. Spare us now your goad
And find your wish is granted, son of Dryas!
By this libation" — here he doused the floor —
"I seal into the earth your late despair.
Your son has smiled his last, and so have you.
Your son has grown his last, as have your fields.
Your son has walked his last, your oxen too.
No feet disgrace your land with errant dance,
A stillness to befit a stagnant King
And those tied fast to his dominion.
Yes, as Helios traces out his sorrowed arcs
Beneath the scar-cleft sky, so will they
Seek out your son in contemplation where they lay,
Throughout the passing of the day."
"Let this be also, stalwart King, father to Dryas,
An oak grasping for a fallen acorn. As my own gift,
You will hear his voice again among voices,
In palace rooms where no one comes or goes.
Though he will not appear nor breathe again,
You will hear laughter, dances, merriments, and song,
All throughout the night, none of it ours:
We will honor your petition and depart.
Hear, in our stead, the many celebrations of his life,
Now everlasting, departed but nearby.
Do not despair, for whenever you desire,
You may choose to mourn no longer: call to him,
Proclaim an invitation to his joy, and he will arrive
To celebrate his passing and release."
So did the kingdom of Edoni fall:
In stillness, to the sound of nearby song.
Why do the living chase the dead?
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The excerpt's applicability to SCP-7283 was noted by Dr. Cecilia Hartford after hearing about the anomaly's properties from Agent Whitehead. Several experiments in which small parties were held in or near SCP-7283 were conducted in the 1990s and 2000s, to no avail; however, given Dr. Hartford's recent successes in the Recalcitrant Anomalies Department, an additional such experiment was deemed appropriate.
The experiment was conducted on the night of February 15th, 2012, in an apartment across the hall from SCP-7283. A large budget expenditure was approved in order to contract interior decorators, party planners, and a live musical performance. Local artists, socialites, and intelligentsia were invited or paid to attend as necessary. The first guests arrived at 4:33 PM, and by 7:31 PM, all expected guests had arrived. SCP-7283's anomalous properties activated at sunset (5:16 PM) as expected, but no guests regarded it with much interest.
At 8:21 PM, Researcher Quincy passed a small stack of invitations under the door to SCP-7283, then knocked on the door and said "Feel free to join us." before returning to the experimental party. The invitations did not appear on the other side of the door. Shorty thereafter, guests, hosts, and contractors started interacting with individuals that did not appear on any surveillance cameras and did not exhibit any physical presence. SCP-7283 stopped emitting music at 9:00 PM, though it remained inaccessible.
No-one present found anything unusual about the presence of guests beyond those expected to attend, and when interviewed afterwards, they were unable to provide any detailed account of the names, appearances, or actions of any such unrecorded attendee, other than that they were demographically and behaviorally consistent with the actual guests. Somewhere between five and ten additional 'guests' are believed to have attended.
SCP-7283-1
While most actual guests left before 3:00 AM, the party continued with reduced attendance until sunrise (6:26 AM), when all the unrecorded 'guests' were reported to leave, and the Foundation personnel in attendance abruptly became aware of the anomalous nature of the activity they had witnessed. A thorough sweep of the apartment found only one piece of physical evidence that was not otherwise accounted for, tentatively designated SCP-7283-1.
SCP-7283-1 is an ornate cage cup 16.5 cm in height constructed mostly of dichroic glass — light passing through the glass appears red, while light reflected off its surface appears green. The design features the mythical Greek king Lycurgus of Thrace being taunted by the god Dionysus and two of his followers.
SCP-7283-1 has been relocated to Site-55 for additional testing; at Dr. Hartford's recommendation, this will include attempts to recreate SCP-7283's sound-producing anomaly under different aesthetic conditions. SCP-7283 itself continues to seal itself from sunset to sunrise and experience changes to its interior temperature and humidity, but does not produce noise. If this change persists, reclassification may be warranted.