The Cricketer

St-Roch neighborhood has always been known for being Canada’s capital of strange people and events, but for five weeks in 1952, it was full-blown collective hysteria. Our neighborhood had the highest number of convicted felons by square foot across all the Americas. It was not uncommon to witness a grown-up man snatch an ice cream cone from a kid in broad daylight, or to catch a kid stealing your copper pipes at night, but what happened that summer was entirely different. It was a psychological attack that touched mostly everyone alive at that time in the neighborhood. Everyone who lives in St-Roch knows the story of The Cricketer and The Great Infestation to this day. The Cricketer became our local celebrity, and we still need to talk about this because it was a very important historical moment. 

People started to notice dead crickets in their buildings and in their apartments at the beginning of summer in 1952. A lot of residents were claiming to have also heard a very distinct cricket sound near their windows, but no one seemed to have caught any cricket alive so far. At first, we thought it was a simple cricket infestation, but there was no crickets outside at all, and we lived at the heart of the city. After two weeks, it was all that we could talk about. Everyone had either seen crickets in their living space or heard the cricket sound outside their windows. We were all starting to question our sanity and feared for our lives. After all, there was not much we could do to prevent a criminal from entering through the window since most of us didn’t even have window screens to begin with. Even if you lived at the top of the building, The Cricketer always found a way to make his presence felt. The fear was real and growing more and more contagious. 

The attacks started to get more vicious, more personal. People were finding dead crickets inside the food in their fridge, inside their pillowcases, inside their underwear drawer, etc. The attacks became intimate. The fear of having someone entering your own bedroom while you were not there to spread dead crickets all over your most private spaces was maddening. Not only that, The Cricketer was watching all of us sight unseen, because he always knew when the houses were empty. He was observing us from afar, yet he was so close. It was now turning into psychological torture. People didn’t want to leave the house, but they didn’t want to stay inside either in case The Cricketer would come by. We were paralyzed by fear. We started to turn against each other, suspecting even our best friends and family members. After a few weeks of multiple crafty break-ins by The Cricketer, everybody was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Some of them even went to the psych ward until the situation was resolved. Some people even moved cities. 

The mass hysteria from The Great Infestation came to an end after five weeks. It was Johnny the Junkie who caught the degenerate. One night, he heard a cricket sound near his window. He knew he was now a target. Since he was used to spend a lot of days without sleeping or going outside to stay in the dark, he decided to sacrifice himself for the common good. Johnny the Junkie decided to go on a bender on purpose to catch The Cricketer. If you ask me, all he wanted was to be a hero because he always been a drug addict loser. For four days, he stayed inside his apartment with the lights off, not sleeping and barely moving so the maniac would think the apartment was empty. Johnny the Junkie made sure to have all the necessary equipment to catch the weird criminal red-handed. A baseball bat, a rope, and he greased the floor underneath his window. Then on the fourth night, The Cricketer finally got caught. As expected, he sneaked inside the window, but when he put his foot on the floor, he slipped and fell, thanks to the grease. Completely high and sleep-deprived, Johnny the Junkie jumped on the intruder, supposedly punched him in the face, and managed to tie both his feet and hands with the rope. Well, that’s the story he told us, but he had a black eye, a big chunk of hair was missing, and one of his fingers was curved at a 90-degree angle. Nevertheless, he still caught the monster who caused this mayhem in our neighborhood. 

So, who was the mastermind behind this evil scheme that terrorized St-Roch for 5 weeks in 1952? The Cricketer was Poopy, a security guard who was known for being an introverted guy who loved animals. After he got arrested, the story made the international headlines and the trial begun. The bizarre story fascinated everyone on the planet at that time. Apparently, Poopy had been holding a grudge against almost all of us for years since he shat in his pants in sixth grade and everyone started calling him Poopy. One day, while feeding crickets to his snake, he had the Machiavellian idea of spreading dead crickets into people’s homes to make them feel fear. Just like he feared being teased every day for months. Fear comes in many forms, was he thinking. Another interesting fact about Poopy was that he had a hidden talent: He was able to perfectly imitate any animal sound. All the ingredients were there to create a monster. He had a ton of dead crickets to feed his army of serpents, and he had the gift to imitate crickets sounds to perfection. And there was a desire for revenge. And, most of all, a motive: To install a climate of fear just like he's been subjected to. He was enjoying hearing that everyone was living in fear because of him. That was the essence of The Great Infestation.

Poopy spent three years in jail, and when he got out, he moved to another city. Well, I guess. But I've heard many crazy rumors...Some say he went to work as a snake charmer in a traveling circus, some say he joined the Nazis in prison, some say he committed suicide, and the craziest rumor of all: He is still around in St-Roch, watching us from the shadows and waiting for us to leave the house. And when we leave, he enters by the opened windows, hiding inside the bedroom closet and is watching us sleep.