New Ollah

The Midnight Article "New Ollah" was written by u/MatgamarraAlt3 and posted to r/MidnightPaper. It was part of the Halloween Challenge 2020.

The text of the Article was as follows:

NEW OLLAH

You probably have not heard of it, but your parents did back in the 60s and early 70s. As everyone knows, there are some unspoken rules in society. Some things must not be done, said or attempted. People may not know what would happen if these cultural informal laws were violated, but there’s a reason for the existence of them. One of these rules, that was slowly forgotten a long time ago, is worth looking into, specially when we approach Halloween. It comes from a old legends.

Some sources say this event took place in the early 1950s, but some say it was in the late 1940s. The legend started when a group of children in a typical old-fashioned small American city decided to attempt a joke on their little trick-or-threat. Instead of knocking in their neighbors doors, they decided to knock at their own houses. At first it was fun. For the first houses they gained a lot of gifts from their parents.

The last kid in the gang was 15-year old Jakob Todorović. Jakob, the offspring of an immigrant Serbian family that came to America to flee the horrors of World War Two and the Stalinist expansion in the Balkans. The poor kid was bullied all the time and called a soviet spy. More than once the front of his house was vandalized with the word "Communist Scum" and "Red Pigs".

At first the boy tried to be kind, even to his aggressors and defamers. His attempts were all futile, and the harassment turned to physical aggression rapidly. The colleagues would beat him everywhere, even in front of teachers and adults. They would not intervene, because Jakob was "Soviet scum" and probably a spy.

After a serious beating a few months prior, in which his face needed three surgeries to get slightly back to it's usual shape, Todorović was changed to another school, located on the other side of the town. Humiliated, deformed and angry, friendless, the young boy knew the only way to get friends was if he abandoned his old personality all together.

Todorović "changed" his name to Jake Tudor. Jake Tudor was the son of two monster-hunters that came from the distant land of New Ollah, a mysterious land in the Pacific Ocean where strange things happened. He moved to the USA with his family to retire after they defeated three sea-dragons and won the Gran New Ollah Prize.

His story was obviously fake, but the teenagers could not realize that. The Internet was not a thing, and there was no way to check out if something was real or not. Plus, he was quite convincing, and used his large knowledge of pulp and weird fiction to his favor. So, everyone begun to be friends with him, in order to discover new stories about that mysterious land. Jake got the attention he always wanted, but he was not happy. He knew that he was a fraud. So he decided to use all his reputation while he still could.

He bought a few old fishing tools and exposed them in his tree house, charging for tours while his parents worked away. He got together with the troublemaker kids in the school, doing drugs and going to parties. He kissed all the girls of the neighborhood and lost his virginity, making sure to tell everyone about his deed. His friends would exclude anyone that didn't believe his story.

However, as everyone got older, suspicion began to arouse around him. Maybe he wasn't really a monster-hunter. Maybe New Ollah does not exist. The rise of intrigued minds menaced his entire "cult". And the worst: His parents were beginning to notice everything. That the way his friends treated him was eerie. That they were not actually misspelling his name "Jake" instead of "Jakob" as their son claimed.

And Jake knew that the day everyone noticed the fraud was coming. The days of isolation and bullying would come back, but now even more brutal, because no one likes to be lied to. Specially your own cultists. He managed to prolong the time by always avoiding taking his friends home. Until Halloween came.

Jake was surprised when his friends told him they were knocking on their own houses. He tried to stop them, but couldn't. They ended up knocking on his house. But Jakob's parents didn't open up. Jake's parents did. Two people Jakob had never seen in his life were there, dressed with "New Ollah Diving Armor" and armed with spears like he had in the tree house and giving candy to everyone. They didn't even look like his parents. But he could not think about it for long, because he needed to keep the lie alive.

After all the "trick-or-treat" and he went back into his home, the mysterious new parents received him. They treated him like their son, and called him Jake Tudor and talked about New Ollah and monsters. Horrible monsters from the depths of the ocean. Jakob now didn't know if his lies were really lies, if it was all real, or if he was going insane.

A few days after Halloween, Jake stopped showing up to school. Several months later, his friends began to get letters from him. Coming from the island of New Ollah in southwestern Pacific. The letters talked about how his parents and him needed to return to New Ollah, how he was sorry for lying, how the monsters were so horrible and how he missed everyone. Legend says his friends keep getting the letters from him to this day.

Thus, the following rule was created:

If your life is a fantasy, do not knock on your own house on Halloween.

Description:

"New Ollah" is a place born from an unnamed Ritual-Type Oddity that involved Trick-or-Treating at one's own house.

Jakob Todorović:

Jakob Todorović and his family immigrated to the United States from Serbia. As a result of small town prejudices, Jakob and his family were called communists and were feared and hated, even if they had fled their home country precisely to avoid communism and Stalin's expansion into the Balkans.

Jakob was the victim of severe bullying and attacks on his person. This escalated to the point where Jakob was beaten so severely that he required extensive plastic surgery that changed the shape of his face.

He was moved to a new school and, in an understandable attempt to distance himself from what he believed made him a target, Jakob changed his identity. Thus, Jakob Todorović became "Jakob Tudor," Serbia became the small island nation of "New Ollah," the horrors of World War 2 and communism became literal supernatural monsters, and his unassuming parents became professional monster hunters.

The kids at Jakob's new school believed his tall tales and "Jake" began to revel in the attention and his new reputation as a fearless descendant of monster hunters. Jake fell into a bad crowd, hanging out with troublemakers and began binge drinking and taking drugs.

As he and his new friends got older, however, Jakob's lie became more obvious. After all, the belief in supernatural monsters is something most people grow out of as they reach the threshold of adulthood. "Jake" however, kept the lie going as long as he could, clutching to his made up past in a desperate attempt to avoid exposing himself as a fraud and perhaps fearing that the kids of his small town would begin bullying him for his real identity once more.

One Halloween, however, "Jake's" reputation would get the better of him. When his friends told him of the strange Halloween ritual that involved Trick-or-Treating at one's own home, it was a certainty that a fearless descendant of monster hunters such as Jake Tudor would have to partake.

Jake and a group of his friends made their way to the Todorović household. As the group watched on in anticipation, Jake knocked on the door in the established ritual of Trick-or-Treat...only to find that two strangers opened the door. They were dressed in traditional New Ollah fishing armor...precisely like the one that Jakob himself had made up. Jakob was taken aback but could not reveal his concern to his friends, as that would expose him as a liar.

At the end of the night, Jakob had no choice but to go back home to the two strangers. He found that his parents now referred to him as Jake Tudor and acted exactly like he had described to his friends, mentioning New Ollah and the legendary exploits that Jakob had made up.

Jakob stopped going to school, and began writing letters to his friends. In them, he exposed himself as a liar and expressed his regret. He stated that his parents had taken him back to New Ollah and were hunting monsters for real. Jakob was terrified that the lie he had spun for so many years was now true, and that he was face to face with the monstrosities he had made up to make him and his family appear fearless.

Ritual:

The Article ends with a warning: "if your life is a fantasy, do not knock on your own house on Halloween."

It appears that the unnamed "Trick-or-Treating at your own house" ritual is harmless to all those who do not lead a double life or lie to others about their personal lives. For the other kids in town, the ritual was more of a prank. They knocked on the doors of their own houses and enjoyed the fact that their parents could not recognize them under their costumes, and were thus giving them the candy that would otherwise be reserved for the other children.

Jakob Todorović, however, had lied about his parents and his family life for years. It is not known exactly how the ritual managed to shape Jakob's parents and life in the way that it did. However, it can be surmised that if one were to lie about one's home life to other people, that knocking on their own door on Halloween would cause that fantasy to become a reality. Jakob's parents were entirely transformed into the people that he had described to his friends, so it can be assumed that anyone mentioned in the lie or fantasy would change to fit what was claimed to others.

It is unknown what force causes one's lies or fantasies about one's life to come true, or why they have chosen this Trick-or-Treating ritual. It is possible that the prank itself came into being in order to punish those who lie about their lives, serving as a way to show children (or anyone who performs the ritual) the consequences of their lies.

Ramifications:

Whatever the force is that causes a person's lies or fantasies about their lives to come true, its immensely powerful. It was able to completely change Jakob's parents to fit what he had made up about them. It appears to be able to change a person's memories, appearance, the objects in their home. It may even be able to create life or take it away, if someone lied about having an extra sibling or not having any siblings when they did indeed have them.

The most impressive show of power of whatever is behind the ritual, however, is its ability to create a new nation. Jakob Todorović made New Ollah up entirely. The Oddity behind the ritual, then, was able to create not only a piece of land in the Pacific but populate it with people and monsters and create a culture of monster hunting that stretched back for generations.

What Oddity was able to do all these things, and what other pranks or rituals it has latched onto, is unknown.