Nightmare Fuel / Gravity Falls: Journal 3

Yeah, this is what happens when you deal with Bill.

I am used to hearing the Muse's voice in the head on occasion. But now suddenly I hear whispers. The murmuring voices of beasts. The echoing howls of lost souls. This is not right at all. It is almost as though my Muse is contacting others. Ghouls from another world. The more I listen, the more I am convinced it's NOT my imagination. My head throbs. My right eye burns. I heard my Muse say something...
"The door is open"....
What have I done?

—Ford right before he finds out Bill Cipher's true intentions

Just like its parent show, this book is equal parts hilarious and horrifying. Well, this page is where we describe the horrifying...

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Introduction

• The opening "notice" on the very first page before Ford's writing's is quite creepy, despite how brief it is.
  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
  The Parks Department of the state of Oregon was on a routine moose-tagging mission when we located this item, a strange dust-covered book, lying in the center of a mossy clearing. Quick perusal reveals paranoid ramblings, demonic sketches, descriptions of nonsensical creatures, and uncrackable ciphers.
  We believed this to be either a prank by high schoolers or the ramblings of a local fraud. But since discovering this book, a number of our troopers have had headaches and disturbing nightmares. We have logged it in our records and are now putting it up for purchase at our annual Confiscated Items Sale/Bake-Off.
  Please take this cursed thing off our hands.

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Ford's findings ^note This is before Ford's inter-dimensional travels

• Ever wonder where all those zombies in "Scary-oke" come from? The mudslide shown in "Northwest Mansion Mystery" washed all the lumberjacks' graves down to the land where the Mystery Shack was later built. When he learns of this, Ford is understandably shocked and horrified that he's living and working above a mass grave.
• After Fiddleford creates the Memory Gun, he does some rather... questionable things, such as starting the Society of the Blind Eye behind Ford's back when he gives a younger Blind Ivan a card after talking to him and mind wiping the lumberjacks who Ford hired to build the Bunker. But worst of all, it's heavily implied that he mind wiped Ford. The special edition Journal 3 confirms the implication. Fiddleford had been using the memory gun on Ford to get away with using construction workers to build the portal. He then wiped the workers' minds to further protect the secret.
• The Shapeshifter grew malevolent all on its own, and its first attempt at stealing the journal involved impersonating Fiddleford, who had been rendered "nearly mute" due to his anxiety, after tying him up in a closet. Ford himself even says that if the creature ever escaped, it'd be too horrifying to for him to imagine. He also mentions ripping out the pages on the Bunker and the Shapeshifter to "sleep better at night".
  • There are also some lovely messages on the page, as well.
  DO NOT LET OUT!
  Extremely unpredictable!
  It's too powerful!
  It CAN TRANSFORM!
  IT'S PLAYING TRICKS ON ME!
  • Just the thought of poor F getting tied up and scared shitless as he's stuffed into a cabinet in order to be impersonated by the Shapeshifter just so he can get his hands on Ford's journal easily cranks the Paranoia Fuel up to eleven!
• Both the Soothsquitos and the Hand-witch attempted to warn Ford about Bill, only for him to dismiss them.
  • The Soothsquitos message spells out, "Batch out for Will." While this has a more comedic tone to it because of the misplaced letters, reading it while knowing what ultimately happens, Ford dismissing it as "total nonsense" can make one cringe in discomfort.
  • In almost stark contrast, the Hand-witch's warning on the "Palm Reader" page, is much more dire. It begins when both Ford and Fiddleford go to a carnival to unwind from their research and Ford decides to check out the palm reader tent just to see if she'll be stumped because of his extra finger. But once he enters the tent she immediately calls him by his childhood nickname, "sixer," which is what Stan used to call him. Naturally, this creeps Ford out since he has no idea how she could've known this. It only gets worse when she brings out some tarot cards and when she sees what they say, she shrieks and looks at Ford with sympathy before telling him:
    Someone very close to you is deceiving you. You have chosen the wrong allies. You will live two lives and both of them too short... unless you change now.
  • At which point, she gives him a ring, telling him that if it's blue, "you may pull through." But if it's black, "you can't turn back."
  • And sure enough, much later after an argument between Ford and Fiddleford in which Ford tells him, "We will do the test ^note on the portal tomorrow night at eight 'o' clock sharp. Be there or get left behind. The choice is yours." At that moment, he feels the ring in his pocket... and it's black. Things only get worse when he claims that "superstition is for the weak" and tosses the ring into the lake. And it all goes downhill after this.
• The blood on Bill Cipher's page? It came from Ford's eye as a result of the times he'd allowed Bill to possess him.
• The pages immediately after the portal schematics are... unsettling, to say the least. One of them is pictured above. Frankly, it's a relief when Dipper takes over.
  • To elaborate, the author's impressive sketches become a lot darker and more crude.
• There's a particularly creepy instance of Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick on the Truck Stop page. For context, Ford's desperately trying to keep himself awake to keep Bill Cipher from interfering with his mind and body like he has been. As such, he's gone to the aforementioned truck stop to get some industrial-strength coffee to attempt to keep himself awake when another customer comes up to him and offers him some suggestions:
  Pinch yourself.
  Pinch someone else. They'll punch you awake.
  Put peanut butter in your face and let a dog ride shotgun. (He'll lick you awake.)
  Put peppers in your eyes.
  Just give up, Sixer.
  • As soon as Ford hears this, he rears back and accidentally knocks a plate of bacon to the floor. This attracts the attention of everyone in the diner and Ford isn't sure if it was the sunrise coming through the window, but it looked like all of their eyes were glowing yellow just like what anyone who's currently possessed by Bill looks like! Needless to say, Ford gets the hell out of there and runs towards home as fast as his weak legs can carry him. This is where Ford's paranoia reaches its height as he comes to realize that "he has eyes everywhere" and "they are watching my every move." It’s even scarier in the special edition where Ford draws invisible ink on every person he draws’ eyes to make them glow in the dark. Even the Paul Bunyan statue.
    GET OUT OF MY MIND, CIPHER!
• A lot of Ford's breakdown in general is rather disturbing to read, especially compared to the idealism (and arrogance) the previous entries shown. No wonder he was such a wreck when Stan arrived.

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Dipper's entries ^note During season 1 and the first half of season 2, with occasional entries from Mabel and Soos

• After the sock opera, Mabel found a note Bill had written while possessing Dipper. He planned to kill Dipper's body after destroying the journals and make it look like a suicide, leaving Dipper trapped as a mindscape ghost forever.
  Note to self: Possessing people is hilarious! To think of all the sensations I've been missing out on—burning, stabbing, drowning. It's like a buffet tray of fun! Once I destroy that journal, I'll enjoy giving this body its grand finale—by throwing it off the water tower! Best of all, people will just think Pine Tree lost his mind and his mental form will wander in the mindscape forever. Want to join him, Shooting Star?

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Ford's entries ^note After Ford returns during the second half of season 2, with the occasional entry from Dipper and Mabel

• It's revealed that the series takes Never Shall The Selves Meet to an extreme, only with parallel universes instead of time travel. Touching a counterpart of one's self from an alternate universe causes that entire universe to fizz out of existence.
• The fact that Ford never mentions anything about what happened to Stan after he left with Journal 1 in the "Better World" dimension, only caring that he did what he asked him to do. Some fan theories assume the worst, believing Stan took his own life after hiding the book.

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