I Have Been Here
History buried it. The dark remembered.
Before monsters had names, they had us.
For thousands of years, humanity has feared the dark. We tell ourselves that fear is instinct, superstition, the lingering imagination of childhood. But what if the fear is older than civilization itself? What if something once lived there — and remembers us still?
In 1673, natural philosopher Robert Hooke, pirate captain William Kidd, and engineer Thomas Bushell descend beneath Oak Island to bury a discovery capable of unraveling human history. Deep below Nova Scotia, they construct a labyrinth of traps, flood tunnels, and hidden mechanisms designed to keep one terrible truth sealed forever.
Three centuries later, a modern salvage operation breaches the shaft.
As historians, scientists, and treasure hunters begin uncovering fragments of a forgotten conspiracy stretching from prehistoric North America to the Royal Society of London, they realize the legends surrounding Oak Island were never about treasure.
Something was imprisoned there.
And after centuries in the dark, it has begun to wake.
Blending historical mystery, literary horror, and speculative thriller, I Have Been Here is a haunting novel about fear, memory, and the ancient things humanity was never meant to uncover.
"We are all, in some way, still children when night falls."
— from I Have Been HereThe Beginning
We are all, in some way, still children when night falls. Most of us confront this primal terror at least once in our lives — an unease that swells into panic, a fear that unites us in childhood and lingers, unspoken, into adulthood. It is the dread of what might hide where light cannot reach: something present in the darkness that vanishes in the light.
Every one of us has feared the dark.
From our earliest ancestors to the present day, humanity has carried this instinct. In caves and shelters, we huddled around our greatest defense — fire — keeping it alive at all costs. The flame did more than push back shadows; it was a beacon. It announced: We are still here. We have not been swallowed by the night.
Today, we have outgrown the simple torch. Our cities blaze so fiercely they drown out the stars. Yet the old wiring remains.
Society shrugs it off as childish fancy. We flood our homes with light and repeat the comforting lie: there is nothing in the dark that is not there in the light.
But that is not true.
