The viral yearbook

This one went viral last week. A kid was leafing through his Dad's yearbooks and found a couple notes from Jeff Dahmer. He posted them online and it went viral.

Yes, these are authentic, yes, these are our yearbooks, and yes, I know who the dad in question, Ted, is. From what I hear, media people who inquired on this, were re-directed by Ted to me. This is not unexpected, given my book. I knew I was very likely turning myself into the local "Dahmer expert" when I decided to finish the project. Such is the price I must pay.

Everything associated with Jeff is spooky, of course, but what strikes me about these notes is the obvious disintegration. The above note is from the 1974 yearbook, from our freshman year. The handwriting is neat and steady. To be precise, we usually received out yearbooks at the start of the following year, so the precise date this was written was September of our sophomore year.

This one above is from our junior yearbook, two years later. Look at that shaky scrawl. It's very likely Dahmer was drunk when he wrote the second note, since by 11th grade he was in an alcoholic haze for most of the day. This serves as proof for what I describe in the book. Again, this book was distributed to students the following Fall, the precise date this was written was September of our senior year. Dahmer was lost by that point. There was very little of him left, except the monster.

The "Jeff Dahmer" signature was obviously added at a later date by Ted, probably in 1991 when all of us classmates were trying to figure out what artifacts we had in our possession. I think signing it "You know who" makes it even creepier!