CASE FILE 1975-008: Archival Review Notice

CASE FILE: 1975-008
REFERENCE: Schlitz Incident (Dec. 26, 1975)
REPORTING AGENT: J.L. Porter, BATF-F-002
DATE FILED: December 26, 2025
FILE STATUS: Reopened

ARCHIVAL NOTICE

The following report was authored after the recovery of materials left behind by Agent Thaddeus W. Dunlap during an archival review of his former office.
Those materials are referenced herein but are not reproduced in full.

SUMMARY

Today marks fifty years since the event internally referred to as The Schlitz Incident. Until this morning, I would have described the case as “closed,” “misfiled,” or “wildly overinterpreted by a single overworked agent with a drinking problem and too much access to a typewriter.”

That assessment is no longer accurate.

While cataloging the contents of Agent Dunlap’s former basement office, I located a sealed storage box wedged behind a filing cabinet that had not been moved in decades. The exterior was water-damaged. The interior contents were… less so. Several folders inside show signs of organic intrusion. Not mold. Not rot. Something fibrous. Green. Alive, or recently so.

The box was labeled, in Dunlap’s handwriting:
“SCHLITZ, 1975–76. DO NOT BURY THIS AGAIN.”

For the record, I did not bury anything. Someone already had.

FINDINGS

The recovered files include correspondence, photographs, hand-drawn maps, soil samples (now compromised), and a series of increasingly urgent notes written between late 1975 and early 1976. These materials suggest that the original Schlitz-related investigation extended beyond contamination concerns and into what Dunlap repeatedly refers to as bIOLOGICAL aftereffects.

At the time, these notes were dismissed as speculative. In some margins, they were openly mocked. In one instance, the word “folklore” is underlined three times in red ink, presumably by a superior who did not wish to engage further.

What concerns me now is not the tone of the notes, but their accuracy.

[Dunlap uses the term “aftereffects” frequently in these materials, though he never defines a clear endpoint. – J.L.P.]

RECENT CORRELATIONS

Over the past six months, the Bureau has logged a modest increase in reports involving unexplained ground disturbance, accelerated invasive plant growth, and localized structural stress in areas flagged repeatedly in Dunlap’s notes. These reports were initially categorized as unrelated. After cross-referencing Dunlap’s materials, that categorization appears… optimistic.

Of particular note:

• Invasive plant growth documented during months where growth should be dormant.
• Soil temperature inconsistencies without geothermal explanation.
• Repeated mentions of “pressure,” “movement,” and “breathing” beneath the surface.

Dunlap did not describe these as isolated events. He described them as early symptoms.

PERSONAL ADDENDUM

I want to be clear: I do not believe in monsters. I do not believe in folklore-driven mass hysteria. I especially do not believe that a beer-related industrial incident from fifty years ago could result in anything resembling a living threat.

However, I do believe in patterns.

And I believe Dunlap when he wrote, in 1976:

“If this ever wakes up, it won’t be sudden. It’ll start small. Missing things. Shifting ground. People blaming the wrong culprit. That’s how it always starts.”

Today’s date suggests we are no longer in the start phase.

CONCLUSION

Effective immediately, the Schlitz Incident files are reclassified as Active Review. Any further anomalies reported in regions previously flagged by Agent Dunlap are to be documented, not dismissed. If nothing comes of this, then this report will serve as a cautionary tale about overthinking old paperwork.

If something does come of it…
then we are already fifty years late.

END REPORT