Take an umbrella
Today I am writing to tell you about SCP-3300.
SCP-3300 is not a physical object or even a place, rather it is an event.
SCP-3300 takes place every year at around mid-June and lasts anywhere from six to eighteen days. During this time the entire populace of Clear Water in Montana will disappear and be replaced by a new set of citizens.
Typically, in the first 48 hours of the event, there will be light, continuous rain over the entire town, this occurs regardless of the weather in the surrounding area. Once the first 48 hours are done the rain will turn into a severe thunderstorm lasting for the remaining duration of the event.
When the event ends, all previous people living in the town will have been replaced by new iterations with completely new appearances, personalities, and memories. Though that being said some of the new people will sometimes have things in common with those they are replacing, such as sharing names, professions, certain memories, and broad personality traits. However, they will never repeat identically from those in the town prior to the storm.
The new population will have absolutely no recollection of the event and will be unaware of their anomalous nature. These are entirely new people, created by SCP-3300, there are no records of them existing prior to the event that created them.
The population behave identically to ‘normal’ human beings and are physically indistinguishable from you or I, with post-mortem examinations revealing no differences from other humans.
The people outside of the town, are also affected by SCP-3300 in so far that they seem unable to pay attention to the town, completely ignoring it unless it is brought directly to their attention and even then struggling to stay focused on it as a topic of discussion or attention.
The SCP Foundation’s response to SCP-3300 is focused on observation only at the moment as well as ensuring that the event does not spread from the affected area. Any attempts at a manned exploration of events have been suspended.
Any of the population of Clear Water that attempts to leave will be detained by the SCP Foundation. This is due to the fact that any town member will disappear several days after the event begins regardless of them being in the town or now.
My Thoughts
This is one of my favorites from the SCP Wiki, I love the setting, the complete lack of how or why this happens, or what can be done to stop it. It works well as a horror subject due to how it robs those involved of power, in so far that anyone caught up in the event is powerless, even the foundation is powerless to do anything more than observe.
The storm is unknowable, it has no clear consciousness or motivation, it’s just a thing that happens. This also puts me in mind of how people may have felt many years ago when large scale accidents or geographical events such as earthquakes and volcanos. A big unknowable, unconscious thing, something that happens and boom, your entire town is gone. Makes me think of Pompeii or Herculaneum.
This SCP taps into a common fear we all have of our own mortality and that we effectively disappear after death, no one knows why, or what happens after death and this SCP is a microcosm of that.
I didn’t want to reproduce this here as many others have done so, and they are far more skilled than I, but there is an addendum to his SCP, a journal entry told from the perspective of one of the townsfolk, caught up in an instance of SCP-3300. It’s wonderfully written, you can feel the confusion and blind fear of the writer. I strongly suggest giving the below video a listen and you’ll see why I find this SCP to be so effective.
Letters from a Horror Writer 