As official investigations into the fate of Aether’s Way came to a close, independent researchers took up the mantle, arguing that authorities were hiding the full story. At least one paranormal investigator, Quirky Rabbit, believes she has a better understanding than most.

“That was one of my first jobs,” she told me, “I’d heard the story while at the Quicksand in Ul’dah, and instantly knew something beyond the ordinary had happened there.”

She says she never believed the West Shroud Hypothesis. “Everyone knows that place is dangerous. Everyone. And Vuirant, the Elezen? She was from the Black Shroud. She saw those things first hand, from what I read. I don’t believe for a second that they’d accidentally wander over to Dalamud.”

Instead, Rabbit and her team set to work investigating what remained of the Aether’s Way camp, nestled in an out-of-the-way corner of the South Shroud. According to her, authorities refused to allow her team access, though eventually they found a way into the area under the cloak of darkness.

“By the time we got there, the holes had been filled, and all of the remaining supplies and notes were confiscated. But that wasn’t what we were looking for.”

Rabbit and her team set up a number of aetherometers around the area, and what they discovered, she says, sent a chill down her spine.

“We use aetherometers to measure aether currents, or concentrations of aether. I’m not sure how to explain it, even to this day. They’re all in that tent. Every single one of them.”

When asked what she meant, Rabbit confessed that even she isn’t sure. “It might be some kind of anomaly, or corrupted aether current,” she told me, “There were about eighty or so members of Aether’s Way when they disappeared, and our readings suggest that there is about eighty peoples-worth of aether inside that tent right now. How? I don’t know. But it’s not something you’ll see with the naked eye.”

“They’re in there. Somewhere.”

Quirky Rabbit’s findings, however, were suppressed by local authorities, and attempts to get the word out mostly fell on deaf ears.

“No one wants to hear it,” she says, “They think it’s all a bunch of pseudoscience. They claim it’s empty. I’ll just say this: They filled the holes, they took the remaining evidence. But they left the tent up. Why? Because it was better left alone.”

“Now they have a group of Wood Wailers disguised as Coeurlclaws guarding the area,” she added.

I asked if she’d be willing to show me the tent first-hand, but Rabbit refused. “Something happened there that we cannot even begin to understand,” she told me, “And if it happened once, it can happen again. I’m not taking that chance.”

Quirky Rabbit would later go on to form the Empyreum-based EMET-SELCH Paranormal Investigations Team (that is, The Eorzean Manifestations Extermination Team - Special Evictions of Lingering Creatures and Haunts). The Babbler would feature them multiple times throughout October 2022.