1992: The Sky Beacons of Brookpark

In 1992, the NASA Glenn Research Center (formerly Lewis Research Center) in Brook Park was undergoing internal reorganization and downsizing. One of its experimental antenna arrays reportedly malfunctioned, flooding the night sky above the city’s western suburbs with eerie, rippling aurora-like colors for nearly five full minutes. News coverage was minimal and quickly brushed aside as “an atmospheric anomaly.”

Those five minutes were a spiritual rupture.

Commoners across Northeast Ohio reported a simultaneous Dreaming surge—brief, brilliant, and disorienting. Multiple mortals went through a forced Chrysalis that night, waking suddenly to their fae identities in fits of ecstatic confusion. One teenaged Troll crashed his stepfather’s pickup into a Stouffer's restaurant while undergoing the change.

The source was an experimental deep-atmospheric resonance array built under the supervision of an eccentric Nocker named Thimblejack Rootle, a former protégé of the slain Moondog of 1970. Though not officially employed by NASA, he had subcontractor access—and left behind a single cryptic note when he disappeared that read:
“They’re listening. So I shouted.”

No one knows exactly what was contacted.

Shortly afterward, a circle of Sluagh from across the Great Lakes converged on the west side and conducted an unsanctioned silencing ritual. When questioned, The Gray Voice (in private) claimed, “We’re lucky the answer didn’t fit through the microphone.”

Legacy

• The Sky Beacon phenomenon is commemorated each year by a rooftop vigil held by Cleveland-area Kinain. Lanterns are raised while quiet music plays. The Nockers never attend.
• Some Kinain and Changelings of Cleveland are told this story as the moment the Dreaming roared like a broken TV static. Some wonder if it was a scream of pain—or joy.
• Some say Thimblejack Rootle isn’t dead. Just… listening now, on the other side of a cosmic channel.