Spaces_009-5C
Nickname: The Diner That Wasn't There Yesterday
Danger Ranking: 5C
First Reported: 1982–10–04 — Alongside Route 12, near Packwood, WA

Summary:
A classic mid-century roadside diner, complete with neon signs, a chrome façade, and vinyl booths, The Diner That Wasn't There Yesterday appears suddenly and without warning in isolated rural locations—always along empty highways with minimal surveillance. It remains visible for precisely 7 hours before vanishing. Locals insist they’ve “always known about it,” though no maps or records support its existence. It is not listed in any commercial registry, and no individual has been confirmed to enter and return unchanged.

Inside, the diner appears operational. Lights hum overhead, an old jukebox plays on loop, and a cook can sometimes be glimpsed behind the counter, though always just barely out of focus. No one sees him arrive or leave. The menu is outdated and static, offering only four items. Any food ordered arrives within minutes—warm, familiar, and deeply nostalgic.

Those who eat remember things they never lived through.

Known Properties:

• Appears spontaneously and always during the early evening hours (between 5:00 PM and 6:00 PM).
  
• Diner signage shifts per location: sometimes it's called "Betty’s," sometimes "Mel’s," or "Jackie’s Place." The names vary, but the design remains identical.
  
• Food consumed from the diner induces hyperreal memory phenomena—subjects recall entire childhoods that do not belong to them, including people, smells, music, and towns that do not exist.
  
• Interior time dilation observed. Several reports detail individuals returning after “just a bite,” only to find six or more hours have passed externally.
  
• Surveillance attempts fail. Any camera placed inside or facing the windows records only static or loops of previous footage, as if someone had overwritten it.
  
• After three consecutive appearances, the diner does not reappear in that area again. Where it goes is unknown. Its next appearance is always at least 200 miles away.
  
• Consistent visual: a payphone on the back wall, off the hook. The receiver plays a soft, staticky voice—each subject hears something different, often personal and accusatory.
  

Containment Procedure:

• Road signage and travel advisories are used to redirect traffic during suspected appearance windows.
  
• A mobile PARADIGM perimeter unit must be deployed within 15 minutes of sighting confirmation. Observation is preferred over entry.
  
• Under no circumstances should food or drink from the diner be consumed. Past ingestion resulted in dissociative fugue, spontaneous speaking of unknown languages, and one incident of total memory displacement.
  
• Deployed teams are to mark entry volunteers with biometric trackers. None have yet maintained signal beyond 30 minutes.
  
• If the diner disappears while personnel are inside, initiate Status Zero and update next-of-kin with pre-written scripts. No one has returned after a disappearance event.
  

Encounters:

• 1982–10–04 — Packwood, WA: Local hitchhiker was last seen entering the diner during its first recorded appearance. Recovered backpack contained photos of a woman identified as his “sister,” who never existed.
  
• 1985–07–12 — Camas County, ID: Two hikers found inside diner, unresponsive and smiling. Both suffered complete loss of personal memory. One has since relearned speech, only to ask repeatedly when “the lunch rush” is coming.
  
• 1990–11–03 — Kalama, WA: A field operative recorded 3.4 seconds of real-time interior footage. Frame-by-frame analysis revealed 47 patrons in the reflection of the jukebox glass—none of whom were present.
  

Recommendation:
Do not eat the food. Do not answer the phone. Do not trust the name on the sign. It is not a place. It is a memory looking for a mouth to feed it.

List of Case Workers:

• Agent Soren Bell (Status: Deceased – memory overwrite)
  
• Dr. Nadine Pruitt (Status: Retired – psychological fragmentation)
  
• Operator Lewis Mann (Status: Active – anomaly pattern tracking)
  
• Specialist Janice Hollow (Status: Active – nostalgia-induced hallucinations)
  
• Technician Rell Omar (Status: Missing – last seen entering via east booth)