SCP-239: The Witch Child

SCP-239: The Witch Child SCP-239 is Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir, an eight-year-old girl whose wishes can change reality. The Foundation has raised her since infancy and taught her to understand those abilities as witchcraft. By the time of the current containment instructions, she is being kept unconscious in a medically induced coma at Site-17. Staff are explicitly forbidden from waking her. Her ability appears to depend on what she truly wants at a basic psychological level while conscious. That makes ordinary speech an imperfect guide to what might happen. The report describes her influence as apparently limited to herself and her immediate surroundings, summarized as being able to change what she can see. Researchers have deliberately avoided testing the full extent of her power, so that apparent local range should not be treated as an established upper limit. One incident demonstrates how directly she can affect another person. After a D-class accidentally hurts her, she wishes him away. Staff then make her feel guilty, and she wishes him back. The entry does not explain where he went or what happened to him during his absence. What it establishes is that both his disappearance and return followed her wishes. Her own survival is protected by the same general problem. The file describes her self-preservation instinct as making her virtually invincible while conscious. Her skin cannot be punctured by ordinary means, with SCP-148 identified as an exception. Researchers also detect an unfamiliar form of radiation around her, apparently harmless at low concentrations but potentially capable of breaking down matter at a subatomic level at higher concentrations. The Foundation's early approach relies on shaping her beliefs. She is told she is a witch and given an approved list of spells. If she believes those are the things she can do, staff hope that belief will restrict her behavior. Keeping her calm is also necessary because a subconscious wish could harm her or someone nearby. The system depends on managing a child's understanding of her own abilities. A short note about Santa Claus shows how easily that becomes complicated. A researcher complains that someone told her about Santa and then explained he was only a story. According to the note, the Foundation now has another potential anomaly to catch, and his being magical prevents them from doing so. The entry supplies no separate investigation, leaving the complaint as the account of that development. Her discovery follows an unexplained hospital explosion approximately three hours after her birth. Investigators find her as the only living person at the site. The public receives a gas-leak explanation, and she spends the next eight years in Foundation care. The report later orders the coma without revealing the decision-maker or providing a complete account of the circumstances behind it. Dr. Clef's closing report proposes killing her while she sleeps using an implement made from SCP-148. He volunteers because he fears she could awaken, perceive the operative as a good person, and change that person accordingly. This remains a proposal in the article, not a documented execution. The containment instructions still describe a living child under continuous sedation, while the final report records an unresolved argument that even approaching her with hostile intent may change the person sent to do it. Original Entry: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-239