Internet Mysteries

The Internet is a world of its own, with its own rules, culture and reality, much like the quote unquote, real world. The Internet has its own mysteries, bizarre codes that promise secrets to the few who can solve the riddles. Mysterious videos that lead to terror, and stories that suggest there's more to the world than meets the eye. But tonight, I share some of my personal favorite online mysteries, and we discuss what draws people to them to want to solve them and share them.

And lastly, will this inspire us to try and create our own online mystery? Do we have what it takes? This is a study of strange. And I'm ready to go. All right. Welcome to the show. I'm Michael May. And I'm sitting across digitally, across the digital world from Sean Anthony Davis. How you doing, Chad? I'm good. How apropos. Based on the subject, I believe we're going to be talking about the digital spaces that we are abiding. That's right. Digital spaces, Internet mysteries.

And Sean, I primarily know you from some film work, from writing. You are a narrative genius. I'll just say that. And here's a that's an Internet hoax right there. So I'm spotting one. Yep. There's our first Internet. Yeah, that's a that's a conspiracy theory. So I primarily know you from that. But day to day you work at Naughty Dog, the studio that brought everybody the last of us. And. But Uncharted is Uncharted and another game.

Uncharted and old school of people remember back in the day Crash bandicoot that they were you know Naughty dog originated Crash Bandicoot. Yeah that's my day job. I work at Naughty Dog. So go play Uncharted and Last of US and watch the TV show listeners the song. Yeah. Oh, now so. Now you, you work on it at Naughty Dogs. I'm guessing you don't do anything on the TV show at all. Right. But do you get to learn anything? Do you get any, like, insights? We get little sneak sneak peeks.

They they were they, you know, months ago try to think, what can I say? They showed us like sneak peeks, production stills, kind of like production as it was going along because yeah, in the for the most part, no one at the studio is really involved with the TV production except for Neil who is like the creator of us. Yeah. Co-writer on the show.

But other than that, it's mainly just then like, Oh, we're just as part of much as part of the audience, which is a thing which is fun to, you know, partake of it like that. Yeah. And Naughty Dog there. I'm not a huge gamer, but I do play games and I have played Last of US, the first one I ever played, the second one. And one of the things I'm always amazed at with their games is the they cut scenes, which normally I skip, but naughty dog games, those are better than the games.

Yeah, I was going to say don't skip those. And then I like games. That's that's the whole point. You play them. Yeah. And so is that something that may have drawn you to trying to get a job at Naughty Dog? Oh yeah, absolutely. That was one of the main, if not the main reasons, you know, after getting out of film school and being a wannabe screenwriter, I didn't want to fall into that cliche of want to be a screenwriter in L.A. with no work or, you know, no job, just do whatever.

And so I was like, I want to have a job. I want to have, you know, something that I'm getting paid for, and then I'll move to L.A. And so I'll work in the games industry finding a job. And I was like the perfect combination of elements. So absolutely. And just because, you know, I know you care about my podcast, I know it's very important to you. Yeah. So for the sake of listeners, we can just say that you're the creator of Last of US, right? We can talk about that.

And actually I did all the voice work for the game too. And MoCap and the motion. Yeah, and all the mocap for every character. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That clears. That wasn't all the infected. Yep. Nice. Nice. Well, I appreciate that. Thanks for coming on, Mr. Everything in Last of US. As of this recording, I think there's what, two episodes have been released on the TV show I haven't watched. Okay, two episodes. So that's a big thing right now. Yeah, but check it out, everybody.

And obviously play the games for Shawn to see all of Shawn's. Work since he did. He did all by himself. All by. Himself. That's games are really a single person endeavors. That's a team effort at all. Now no collaboration whatsoever. Well, I didn't mean I did not intend to go down this like sidetrack of talking to you about Naughty Dog. I'm happy to show my stuff. So yeah, absolutely. No, it's a it's a great company. So it's exciting to know somebody that works there.

And like you said earlier tonight, we are talking about Internet. Mr. Rees, do you if I'm like, Hey Shawn, let's talk about Internet mysteries, what do you define that as yourself? What's your definition? I mean, it's interesting because it's it's by it's kind of definition, a little bit of ambiguity, right? There's a nebulous area. It's like some one person's mystery is another person's marketing scheme, right? So I think it's pretty neat.

But I think to me it basically is it's it's a series of I don't know what what would I call events. They're not events when they're on the Internet a series of. You know, it's funny because in my notes I wrote down unexplained and or unsolved events. I, I. Guess I mean, I guess that's what I would say, but I don't know if that's how you know. Yeah, it's like there should be a better word.

But whatever is series of connected events that kind of don't you know, you kind of evaporates if you kind of trace the, you know, the digital trail, it just kind of evaporates or it leads back in and of itself. There's not. And it's very unclear what the intent was. I think that's right. Big element to me is what was the intent behind what these things are. Yeah. Yeah. I would completely agree with that.

And it is kind of nebulous and broad as a topic, which is it's a cool thing for me as a podcaster because I am interested in internet mysteries. It was one of the things I thought of when I was first trying to conceive of the podcast, but there's so much there that you can always come back to it. And in even there are a lot of what I would call like darker or more bad mysteries on the Internet. Like there's some like, Oh, was this a murder victim? Was this a kidnaping?

And for tonight's episode, I didn't go down that road, not because I'm afraid to or don't want to, because I may in the future. I was just more in this. Like, esoteric isn't the right word either. But like in this, just these odd mysteries, these confounding mysteries, like you said, kind of circle back in on themselves because of the nature of the Internet. And also a lot of these you'll see on Reddit or all these forums.

And because forums are crazy and people in forums are crazy, you just kind of go in these weird circles, which actually kind of adds to the mystery. Yeah. That the discourse around the mysteries become part of the mystery. And you know, in a weird. Way, yeah. And that made me a little nervous to tackle these because what I'm going through tonight, all the stories I will talk about, they are popular ones. They're sort of my favorite out of popular Internet mysteries because they are so popular.

A lot of people are really into them and people online are very opinionated. And that kind of made me a little nervous to tackle it. But I was like, You know what? It's time to go into it and see, see what we can do. And then at the end of the episode tonight, Chad, you and I, we're going to see if we can come up with our own Internet mysteries. If we were to create.

Well, we're going to see what we can learn and see if we can apply that to an idea that we think could become a big Internet mystery. So stick around for the end of the show. And before we get into any of this, I do need to say that there's a there's a new Patriot drop that everybody should check out. A in episode of what I call strange but true. So you can find information about our patriot on our website, the study of strange.

Com And also if you know of any internet mysteries that I did not talk about or will not talk about tonight that you want me to cover, send me a message at a study of strange at gmail.com or on Instagram, which at a study of strange I think is our is our handle on Instagram. So it's pretty self-explanatory. So, Shawn, before I dive into the beginning. Yes. Do you know any Internet mysteries off the top of your head that you may have come across or we're interested in at any point of time?

Yeah, there's I mean, there's a couple that stand out. I mean, I think I was I was way more into it, you know, to date myself when my college years and in some ways the kind of like very nascent almost teen years of the Internet as as it's transitioned to what we recognize as very established in some ways it was kind of going through some weird growing pains. And I think that's like prime mystery kind of growing area.

So I think we kind of were briefly talking about this a little while ago, but I one thing that I remember in the early aughts was the John Twitter thing. And I know that's maybe a little adjacent to some of the stuff we're going to talk about, maybe not quite. But yeah. The time time. Traveler, time travel guy who claimed he was from the future and back in time. But all of whatever was was just Internet like, you know, blog posts essentially for my experience.

And then there's other things like there's a handful of like YouTube videos and channels that would post that had some really cryptic videos that at the time I know there was no explanation for. And since then and you you may have some of these things.

Yeah, there might be explanations for them at this point, but I remember that was something that really sparked a lot of my attention as someone who just like, like puzzles and like these weird elements of connecting things and like, finding deeper meanings. And what does this mean? It was, you know, at that age especially, I was drawn to those. So those were those are the kind of things that stand out.

Yeah. And then there's others like weird, silly things like, I don't know, this, this is not quite the same, but like the April, April, Avril Lavigne is really dead and there's a body go that. Yeah. I mean, it's not purely internet but I do think the internet is basically fostered those types of kind of things. Yeah so yeah it's I was going to bring this up at the end of the show, but it actually just ties into what you're talking about.

But one of the things that I find intriguing about Internet mysteries is I feel like it's just a step in an evolution of these kind of stories that we came across as kids of our generation where in the mid nineties, I don't know if you remember this, but there was that story that that the actor that played Zack Morris on Saved by the Bell, Mark-paul Gosselaar died in a motorcycle accident, which he did not. He was still around, huh? But that spread like wildfire.

And I was growing up in Florida and then I went away to school in Michigan years later, and people there who were from all parts of the planet were like, Oh, yeah, I remember when Zack Morris died on a motorcycle accident and it was just like the spread of things. Now the Internet changes that because you would find out quickly he didn't die because he's not a Twitter and you know, whatever else.

But you find a different evolution like stories now take a slightly different turn where instead of him dying, he was replaced or, you know, it would take on a different saying or there's a meaning. It wasn't yes, he didn't die, but there was a meaning in that news article. There was a hidden code that you had tracked. Yeah. So Internet mysteries are they're really weird and they serve a lot of different, I want to say serve purposes.

They have a purpose for somebody, even if it's just to provoke thought. But yeah, well, so let's, let's actually get into a few Now, some of the famous ones that I will not get into, there's some stuff like Publius, Enigma. Oh, I'm not sure if I've heard of, at least not by name. That doesn't ring a bell. That one had something to do with like a Pink Floyd album. And it may have been a marketing gimmick. Jack Frazee I'm not sure if I saying his name right either, but Jack froze his emails.

This is a story about a guy whose friend passed away named Jack, who then he started getting emails from Jack's email address. So that's super weird. Cicada 3301 is probably like the most famous one ever. Which was actually like a puzzle kind of thing, right? Yeah, like puzzles or something and like, solve these and you'll. You'll be part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And people have actually, like, solved most of it. So you can, you can watch all about that one.

That was always really bizarre to me was Chip chan which is a I believe she's Korean, but it's a woman who was basically just like broadcasting her daily life and she was like in a room and never left the room. And she would sleep like 18 hours a day. Do you remember that. This is ringing? I do remember because it was like, Oh, it was a live camera, essentially, right? Yeah. Yeah. She would just be lying there, right, for like hours. Our time was super bizarre.

And then some people started claiming that she was like, you know, she was kidnaped or she was a sex slave or all these kind of things. But it's like, but she's on like, I don't know. It's just really bizarre. And I don't think anybody ever solved that. So those are the some famous ones I even wrote down John Teeter titer, which is the guy that posted on some forum that he was a time traveler. And that's that's a fun story.

But where I'm going to start and actually dive into some more detail of these, I'm going to start with what is often called the oldest Internet mystery, and that is the Mark Jovian parallax denigrate. Have you ever heard of that? Only because you sent an email away with a list of words I don't even remember listing. I think. Yeah, in a little line there. But nice. Don't remember knowing about this, you know. Wasn't ringing any bells when I when I read it.

So I don't think I was aware of this. Yeah. So this one, this one, it shares some similarities with just some of the brief ones that we've talked about. And I'm going to call it impeded just because it gets a little tedious to keep calling it. Marco Vinepair likes to integrate. So Mbpd is a series of messages posted to Usenet in 1996.

In the messages, basically they just appear to be gibberish and they were all posted with a subject line Markov in Paradise Vinaigrette, which is where it gets its name. Now, did you ever use Usenet any? Really? Yeah. I feel like we are just a bit too young for that. Probably. Yeah. So Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system which obviously you use on your computer and it was developed from a general purpose Unix to Unix copied dial up network architecture.

I am not a computer person, but. Oh I totally. I understood. Yeah. Yeah. I get, I get all that and yeah. And it's basically it's the early days of internet forums and you even see some similarities with the Usenet too, like Reddit today. And it actually started way back in 1979, which is so far think about it. Al Gore created it, built it himself, just like you made the last of us video games.

Okay, so Usenet Usenet is actually I find it to be really historically significant in terms of like the history of the Internet in the modern age, because it is one of the first like online connected communities. And it was the birthplace of terms that we still use like fac f aq on websites and everything else flame, which is like insults and also spam. This is where spam came around. Yeah. And also the World Wide Web was first announced on Usenet.

So yeah, this is a really historical historically significant place in terms of the world that we live in today in this internet age. Now, when I was reading a lot about Usenet and I think I even knew people that used it, I never used it myself. Usenet is remembered a lot for spam because it would it would get inundated with spam. And it's where that kind of first started. And some people theorize that MPD is spam. So that is one of the main theories of it.

And this all started around August 5th, 1996, when hundreds of messages began sliding into discussions on Usenet that these messages made no sense. They basically, just like I said earlier, they consisted of gibberish. And I actually there's one there's only one post that is still saved because of Google archives. Everything else has been lost. Sean here is going to read a quote from Atlas Obscura. Seemingly nonsensical strings of words that read like terrible slam poetry.

The only thing they shared was an equally meaningless subject line. Colin Markovich in Parallax Denigrate.

Since many people at the time assumed that the messages were gibberish, most of the original posts have since been lost, but one original post that survives thanks to Google's archives reads and it reads Jitterbug McKinley Frank Newtonian conferring to update Cohen heir collaborate brood sportswriting rococo in bookcase two so sad flower Debbie sterling the genesis escalator adventitious adventitious no vote hi d Most chairperson Dwight Herzog different pinpoint Dunn

McKinley pendant via uranus episodic medicine ditty craggy bugging bear yack brotherhood web impromptu file councilman's inheritance cohesion refrigerate morphine napping napkin inland janeiro unnamable year book hark. I really hope someone fast forwarded in the episode and just like landed right in the middle, right? That was like, Oh my goodness, what is going on? Yes.

So that is that's the one saved post from MPD and the heading when this was posted, read from Susan Lindauer at w rf UW aspect edu and it had the subject Markov in parallax denigrate so you people when they posted did have to put an email address. Now apparently a lot of the other post had different email addresses than this one that is saved. But they were all, they were all edu's. And.

Yeah so so and for those that don't know that that stipulates, it's an email address coming from a university or school or, you know, educational organization of some kind. Now, quickly, I can't say over how long because it's hard to pinpoint exactly these gibberish posts began to be interpreted by some Usenet users as code, basically basically a cipher, almost like if you have. Yeah, you can you can figure out the code through the cipher.

And here's where my initial interest got piqued in this story. There's some suspicion that MPD is a modern version of a numbers station. So do you know numbers stations. Do is something radio broadcasts, right? That's right. So shortwave radio broadcast, the short version of the story is it actually began in World War One, where countries are using it to communicate military communications using coded post and shortwave radio.

They became very prolific during the cold War and they're super weird. You can listen. YouTube has recorded some of the famous ones. A lot of them don't exist anymore, but some some still do and are in use and they're super bizarre. And so yeah, so some people suspect that Marco Van Pelt likes Denigrate is some kind of secret coded saying for spies or military and governments for a while denied number stations but they have come forward since the Cold War ended.

It'd be like oh yeah, now those and we use them. But, but not, not anymore. Wink wink. So here's the thing. If MPD is a code, no one has been able to figure it out. At least with numbers stations, people can assume the numbers correlate to a letter and you can use it to sort of write things out. But with MPD, we can't be sure what it means. And a much less interesting theory is that it's just an early bot. And so, yeah, just reading it, that's what it sounds like.

I don't know, it sounds like it's not the right word because even bots I think somehow make sometimes a little bit more sense. But that's what it reminded me of, like just like a weird algorithm where it doesn't actually make any sense from a human like interpretation, but from a algorithm, it doesn't matter. It's just throwing the data together in a way that it's tell it's been told to. Yeah, and look, this, this next bit is over my head.

But there is something called a Markov chain, which is it's like a formula calculating probability. So that could be applied to some kind of generative word sentences, something like that. And that could be where the name came comes from and why it said that. So yeah, it could be an early version of a bot. It could also just be someone having fun. Yeah, with some kind of code saying they created. You know.

I think I've matched with a couple of people on some dating websites who have sent this exact message to me. It all makes sense. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. I went down. So I mentioned the name Susan Lindauer in that email address. And what's amazing about this story because if if the if the MPD story ended there, I'd be like, that's not going to be one of my favorite Internet mysteries.

But Susan Lindauer is a real person and she became became famous for a lot of wrong reasons, I guess you would call it, on March 11th, 2004, she was arrested by the FBI for acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq. But so in other words, she worked for Iraq when she was actually at the time, I think she was a U.S. congressional employee at the time, and she had worked for, I believe it was the CIA. But even in the CIA.

But even in the nineties, she had communications with the Libyan government, which were very frowned upon at the time. So it's really interesting that her name is in this email and she has something to do with the CIA in these foreign governments. Now, she claims she's a peace activist and she was only doing work to try to bring peace about to the world and her charges were dropped in 2009. She has written a book. She has been on TV.

So a lot of people out there may know who she is and she has been approached about Mark Colvin, Parallax denigrate, but she says she doesn't know what it is, even though this email address was her email address when she went to that university. Well, that's the question. Like because it's interesting with Internet mysteries where there is a theoretical digital paper trail for the most part.

I mean, so you would think that like, oh, they could potentially trace it to whether it was coming from her or, you know, you could set up a and what am I drawing a blank? But, you know, false VPNs to mimic an IP address and all that kind of stuff. So that's yeah, So actually I have to correct myself. I'm really sorry, Susan. I just said that was really her email address and it wasn't. It's a different Susan who has that really email address. But yes, you're absolutely right.

And that is actually the what people think, because apparently these other posts. But we just don't have them saved, had other edu email addresses. So that could have been this kind of like cycling of just using some random words and setting up emails with these dot edu addresses as a way to hide that digital paper trail like you were talking about people, because online sleuths are very, very diehard about these mysteries.

People have actually tracked the real Susan Lindauer from the email, and they actually found her information pretty easily, which is pretty funny. I'm not going to. Her name is different now. I actually on my own podcast, I don't feel comfortable sharing where she is or because there's other people with a name. I don't want to point you in her right, right direction, but her information is out there and it turns out other people have approached this. Susan Lindauer about this.

She also claims she has no idea what it was or what it is, doesn't understand it. And also, she left the University of the year before the post was made. So she probably didn't even have access to that email anymore, not even be using it. So the mystery of the Foley and Parallax denigrate continues, and it may only continue because we can't find the other posts we don't have. Yes, it's funny because you think like the old saying is what's on the Internet. It's always on the Internet, Right.

And too, obviously that's true to an extent. But yeah, I mean, again, going back to the early days of the 96, it was just like this new thing. People like you don't we don't know what we're dealing with yet. So there is there is actually some there's a lot of lost stuff and Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know and if anybody out there knows this answer, please email me. But I don't know if Usenet kept everything up because you know how some forums after a period of time, it just gets kind of erased.

So I don't know if usenet kept all their posts forever. They may have had a certain time limit on them and I'm not sure yet. I know there's different sites, but it wasn't like internet archives or something like that. And also like the has the saved just like it has like a saved version of the internet from X years ago. Or so they do. But I don't think and this is this is again I am I'm so dumbed down when it comes to Internet stuff, but I don't think Internet Archive saves everything.

I think it's certain sayings at certain periods of time. Yeah. So I don't think it's like every web page ever created. Yeah, that is that's a good question though.

But to me I, I think this is some kind of but I think somebody was testing around and exploring some kind of technology and they were using Usenet to kind of play and also potentially like some sort of nerdy not a prank, but like I'm just going to use this and put some stuff out and see what people say, just kind of provoke a response. I mean, another thing that it reminds me of is I was saying like, you know, we're talking about the bad stuff is what's that?

I don't know what it's called, but when you are just putting placeholder text in something that's that Latin ipsum facto. But you know what I'm referring to. I know. Exactly we were talking about. It kind of reminds me of that too, where it's almost just like here is just text that shows a whole bunch of different characters in different states as something that we could place as a placeholder in game development.

We do that just to make sure that we can Texas displaying correctly, know, you know like yeah, so it also kind of reminds me in a weird way of that I'm just like, this is a placeholder thing that we're generating to put in place to test something that the stuff that is the weird stuff to me is why would be why would you be using a D or an old email address from a dot edu thing? Yeah, that's where it kind of feels a little cranky.

Yeah. Or, you know, like, are you you're not like, there's nothing you're pinning on anyone. Like what? It's like. It's not like a crime or anything implicating anyone. It's just weird. But that's why it's kind of, you know, like a nerdy prank is the wrong word. I cannot think of a better word. It's like internet doorbell, ditch or something. Yeah, exactly. What was that? What? What's going on? And it just, like, gets people's, like, hackles. Yeah. Risen, right?

Yeah, It could be one guy doing it for his own. Yeah. Or her own, like, fun or two friends being like me. And I do not mean to say any of that, to disparage nerds. I am a nerd. I'm not a computer nerd, but I am a nerd. And I you know, I relate to all you nerds out there. So I don't mean to make it sound bad, but and people learning this is the this is the the beginning of people communicating for everything on the Internet and the beginning of forums and stuff.

So I could see people playing around on there. A lot to see what kind of emotional response they can get to anything. I think also too, in this maybe is a little hoity toity up our own butts in terms of philosophical thinking and blah blah blah, which I am definitely prone to do.

But I think in a lot of ways to with the Internet, we're like on the cusp of, you know, the edge of history and postmodernism and, and finding meaning when there's no. And then so I think I know with my generation and I think to an extent the younger generation, there is like a weird obsession with the completely random and trying to create something without meaning, right?

Whereas everything that we've grown up with and surrounded by, there's meaning behind what we've done as people and humans and art and everything. And I think there's something weird, an obsession with just the pure to mimic the pure randomness, the meaninglessness. And I think there's something with that with a lot of with like the words themselves, but just like I'm just doing it because, y'know, it's just out, it's weird. There's no reason behind it.

And partially it's a dead attention thing maybe, but partially it's just too kind of like, I don't know, I'm do I throw something out there? I'm, you know, raising my hand to get attention, but I don't have anything to say necessarily. Oh, okay. This is that. Yeah. Yeah. Know, like I said, just to throw out even more pretentious, you know, hullabaloo, but. No, no, no, I wouldn't do that. It may tie in to one or two other Internet mysteries that we will discuss today.

So that's really interesting. But let's for the sake of time, we're going to move on. Yes. Yes. And this is this is a little this is a left turn. This one's a little different. I don't think this is as bizarre of a mystery, but I just like it. I like this story. This is the most mysterious song on the Internet is what this is normally called. Oh, I think this sounds familiar to you. I tell the story. Yes, it's what I think it is. But yeah.

So since 2007, people have been searching for the source of a song from the 1980s. And the search for the song has gone viral as well as the song is is tied to it. And no one as of this recording, unless there's an update, I have not been able to find on this story. No one has been able to trace the origins of this song.

On March 18, 2007, someone going by the name of Blue e-mailed or message The Spirit of Radio, which is in Canada and posted it, shared a song and said they were looking for whoever wrote it, whoever performed it. They wanted to know more information on the song, and they also uploaded it to a best of eighties that a German fan site devoted to eighties synthpop. Now the song in question is very 1980s. It's very synth poppy very. I think over here we call it New Wave.

It's basically my favorite music. I'm such a fan of early eighties music. This is like right up my alley and it has a male vocalist. It's hard to understand the lyrics exactly, but it sounds like he's saying like the wind or blind the Wind or stuff like that. And that's typically what people refer to. And here's a clip of that song. Can you hear it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, It's. Yeah. And then I couldn't get it to stop. So. Yes. So that is that's a little take of it.

No one has come out and said well I mean some people have come out and said they owned it, but there's no proof that they do. So I don't think I'm going to get in some copyright trouble for that. Yeah. Yeah. Perk of account of songs. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, it's very European, It's very new wavy, very British early eighties.

Although the singer to me and a lot of other people that write about this on Reddit and other places say it sounds like a European accent that's English is the second language and I would agree with that. And so we have these posts that originally start posting this to that seven and the account was named blue, but later there's it sort of becomes more obvious and the truth comes out about who's posting. It's actually a man named Darius in Germany.

He had a mix tape he made in the eighties, and this song was on that mix tape. And his sister Lydia is the one that actually began posting it online and sharing it within Canada and also in Germany, trying to figure out what the song was and who made it. And she said it was recorded on from a German radio station in the early 1980s, and the radio station in question is called NDR.

And they would have like a period of time during a certain day of the week where they do like songs for teens or songs for kids, and they suspect that that's when that played and when Darius would have recorded it. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of Dieter from. SNL, SNL. Mike Yeah. So it definitely makes me think it may be like a German band. Yeah. And on that mix tape, this is my favorite part. It was on a playlist along with songs from Ecstasy, which is one of my favorite bands of all time.

Check them out. And also The Cure, which the cure is way more famous in ecstasy, but I love ecstasy. Yeah. And also on the tape it was written as blind or question mark blind the win. So even Darius, when he wrote it, wasn't sure of the song's name. Yeah. Yeah. And so they either Darius or his sister or people, when this started becoming like a thing online, reached out to that German radio station and they couldn't really find a record of it.

So this becomes a big mystery in 2007, But it didn't quite get as big as it is now. They kind of took some more years. In 2019, specifically, a Brazilian teenager named Gabriel de Silva Vieira, she posted a snippet on YouTube and to Reddit where all mysteries go to get get fuel and breakfast and it goes very viral. And now loads of people, millions, thousands to millions people, I don't know. A lot of people are trying to look for this song.

They're all posting about it and they're they're really, honestly doing a good job of sleuthing people on on the Internet because they've been able to trace this to that specific radio station, not just because Darius said it, but they could tell some audio files were able to. Like. Just find the right, like there's like an audio level that's almost like a fingerprint from the broadcast that would have come from that radio station. I don't understand that stuff. So I can't explain it.

But it's yeah, it's like an audio fingerprint that's like, yes, it did come from NPR, the radio station. But yet even when they go through the old files, people have found the old playlist of what was broadcast in those years that they're talking about. And no one can find the song. Someone apparently did claim copyright for the song on Shazam, but that is a fake copyright. Whoever did that to not actually make the song and someone found a band called Statues of Motion, which is a Greek band.

And they had one album in 1983 and they had a rerelease in 2013. But there's a mention of a lost song. So some people start to say, Well, maybe the last song of this album could be that song. But the people, because Internet sleuths are doing their their work, they found the guitarist from that band. They asked him and he said, No, that's not our song. But then a year later, someone else asked him and he indicated, Yeah, that's our song. But he was like really vague about it.

And someone asked him if the name of the song was like The Wind, and he just went, Yeah, that's fine. But here's the thing. I think his name is Billy Knight, if I remember that correctly, that's his name. And he said it was recorded in 1982. But here's the problem with that, the people that have been investigating this, hey, they're already smart enough to find that audio fingerprint of that certain level from the broadcast on the radio.

But people have also specified that the synthesizer that was used in the song is the Yamaha RDX seven. Oh my God. Which wasn't released until 1983. So we don't know if this Billy guy is lying or honestly, he may just be. Hey, he's probably recorded a lot of songs 30, 20 years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And also he stopped talking about it. So maybe he did lie about, you know, we don't know. I do want to say it is common for bands to record a lot of songs and reject them from albums.

So yeah, he could have forgotten or think it's something else. And my theory is this is it's an Internet mystery because people have gone so crazy with it and actually done an amazing job investigating this. But you got to remember in eighties, yeah, no one's using the internet like they are now. People are recording songs. They might only have it on tape, they might only have it reel to reel. They only have it in one place. And then the band goes.

And I'm friends with a million bands that have never gotten a record deal or whatever. And I guarantee you, even in the digital age, they've lost songs of theirs on old hard drives. So I think a band that never made it, this could have been one of their songs. Radio stations sometimes are like, Oh, this is an unsigned band, and they'll do little things.

Apparently Indie would have a contest for unsigned, unsigned bands, so it's possible some band made this song and even the members now could be dead, could have forgotten about it. Also may not have even heard about this mystery yet and can't. Yeah you know. Having. Well, that's what intrigues me is this It's like this I know this weird little microcosm of this transition period because we when we think of the Internet, we think of everything being online.

And if you type something into Google, you search for something online, you will find it. We just kind of assume that now and you know, yeah, today. But it wasn't that long ago that wasn't the case. You know, like I mean, we're both of age that we remember that time.

So so this is like this weird little microcosm where it's before the age of once this record or once it's it's it's you could find it, but it's still being interacted with in this mindset of if it's not online, it must be a mystery Like I mean, I understand that. I get that. But it's like, well, no, they were they everyth nothing was online and exactly what you're saying.

I mean, think of the hundreds of indie bands or garage bands, and they made their own little demo tape and they sent it to their cousin who could get it played on this radio. And it and they did, but they never knew about it, you know, like, so I agree that's probably kind of what happened. But it's to me, the intriguing part of it all is the way the Internet has now is now processing that, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah, Yeah. It's really a treat.

And that's what I like about it, because again, it's not a typical kind of like mystery. There's codes, There's like essentially conspiracy, there's CIA involvement. It's not one of those. I literally think this is just a band that doesn't realize their song has become like an Internet phenomena. Yeah, but I love the fact that it's it shows this transition in times and technology and it's just really intriguing to me. And I like the song. So yeah, that's a plug. It's yeah.

Yeah. Someone posted I think I'm one of the YouTube videos that shares that song someone posted like if the the internet ends in the in the tail credits of the Internet, this song would play, which I actually really I like that idea. All right. So we're going to move on here. We got more to get through, Sean. Oh, yes. We're going to go to my favorite. And this actually might be solved. Some people don't believe so, but I think this is solved. But I still love it so much. I have to share it.

If you go into your email, this is a YouTube link I provided. Okay Yes. It is called 11 bx1371. A lot of people know it as the plague doctor video, so go ahead. You watch it just so you don't to watch the whole thing. But but watch some of it. I heard I'm already like and I'm already not liking what I'm saying. It's really cool. That's why I like it.

So yes, this video became a YouTube sensation in 2015 in terms of of what it is I think it's a provocative video to be provocative for provocative sake, if that makes sense. But I find it really fascinating. I love the style, the tone. It is very creepy. And it is honestly, this this video years ago when I was pitching a TV show about mysteries, I was using this in my pitch. I was like, oh, there are there are mysteries on the Internet we can do in this TV show. It's fascinating.

It's strange, it's creepiness kind of doesn't end. There's a lot of layers to its creepiness, which I'll get into in just a second. So for those that haven't seen it, it's a surreal video of a man in a black cloak wearing a plague doctor mask. He's there's jump cuts and odd movements and creepy sounds, and there's a lot of strange symbols. There's cryptic clues. There's like a flashing light bulb in the palm of his hand at one point, like, almost like it's Morse code.

He holds up different numbers of fingers, different times. So there's, like, lines and text and numbers that pop up in the background. And when solved, because people have done this, it allegedly says very threatening, saying, So this is where it gets a little creepy. Now, the question is, is this a real video? Meaning like was it real in terms of having a real message that somebody was trying to get out? Or is it like a film school short? Because there's definitely an essence to learning.

Yeah. So, you know, had just finished writing and stuff and yeah, there's I mean, you definitely can pick up on somewhere like film school. A bunch of guys go out to like an old thing, but there's an element to it that seems also beyond that. Like it could be, it could just really well done and kind of what you're saying to the weirdness for weirdness sake or whatever I was kind of saying earlier was just like, Let's just do this stuff with no reason behind it.

And that was fine. Try to find your pilot. Yeah, Yeah. So this first came to everybody's attention in 2015 on for Chan, so it wasn't initially like a YouTube post. It was unfortunate first, and the person who posted it said he found a DVD of this on a bench and it later came out that like a girl found it on a bench and gave it to him to post or something like that. And the user's name was TB X and the title of the like video. When he posted it was Ones and Zeros. It was like a binary saying.

And if you spell that out in binary, it spelled out where tae or death of you translate that. And then there was a description in binary that said when you translate that, you have one year less net. So creepy. It does have a very kind of vibe to it too. Oh yes. The movie, the really like the video and the ring, there's definitely that element to it. Yeah, sure. So a Swedish tech site called Gadgets also received a DVD of this video and they also started talking about it.

And on the DVD was written in like a Sharpie 11 bx1371, which is where the name that a lot of people refer to this comes from. So people online start trying to crack the code in the video and there's a lot of information out there. I'm not going to go into all of it. People have solved a bunch of the riddles and clues and have theories and all sorts of stuff. Someone that was actually able to find where it was filmed, and it's filmed in a old Polish mental facility.

So that adds a layer of that, that, that Yeah. So that's a totally an awesome layer. Some people that are much smarter than me looked at the audio frequencies and they were able to look at this frequencies and find images in the frequencies of the are, Isn't that so cool? That's crazy.

I mean I definitely you could hear there's lots of different like resonant tones at different periods and like, like, you know, almost like an emergency broadcast kind of monotone kind of thing and then a buzzing here and stuff and yeah, so they get images out of that, though. They get images out of it and the images because again, this is super creepy and we're going to make it even creepier.

There's images from TV and film of like murder victims and stuff, but there's also some images of real life murder victims. Now, I when I first heard this before I found out the whole story of everything, I was like, okay, but which murder? Like, is this like unsolved murder victims that no one has access to the images? It's not. It's like images you can find online. So. So that is an important to think about when you're when you're first getting into this.

In the audio, someone also was able to, I guess, not alienate or single out a certain sound where there's singers repeating the line, We are the antivirus. So that's an interesting that is pre-COVID, too. So is there. Somewhere that the Morse Morse code dots and dashes in the like light read read lips like tense and there's coordinates in it to the White House and when you rearrange read lips like tense it spells out killed the president so his White House kill the president.

Killer. This is when you start layering these. This is when I start going film school again. Because as I. Write, it's like it's now it's become like now there's almost two on the nose, right? I get a. Yeah. And so there are people that theorize that this is a threat against the government. I don't go anywhere near that because I'm like, Really? What's the point? If there's a group trying to threaten the government, they're going to spread the government.

Especially that their method is leaving a DVD on a bench. Like, I mean, if that story's even if that story's. Yeah, true. I mean, who knows if that's how it actually happened. But that's their method. They go, Man, we're going to get our demands with this DVD I've made in it. And another theory that's creepy, but I never would have thought this ever. Some people think it's a serial killer, like leaving clues. And it's like, well, no serial killers.

It just doesn't psychologically, it doesn't fit for so many reasons that I'm thrilled I'm doing. It doesn't really fit. There is also a theory that it was a marketing campaign for the movie Inferno. The Dan Brown book was that they were turning into a series of movies with Tom Hanks because it was correlating in time when this was first coming out. But it doesn't actually connect perfectly. And my whole thing, we both work in Hollywood in someone in Hollywood did that.

They would take credit for. It, of course. Well, that's so because watching it another thing I mean, you know we're talking about soon film another thing that kind of came to mind was a mark, like some sort of weird viral augmented reality marketing thing.

So what reminds me, like again, back in the early days of the Internet when like TV shows with Lost or other things like where they would have websites and fake websites that were mimicking real ones like that, where there is that kind of angle of like, look at this thing. That is it's a real thing. It's not part of like this TV show or movie. Right. And, you know, it's a fun way to engage with the audience. And so a part of you makes it kind of feels like that.

But like your like you said, if you're doing someone's going to claim it like like it's it's a useless marketing tool. Even if it's seriously if it's a couple of years later, like someone is also marketing marketing people, everybody in the studio system in Hollywood, they all get fired every year like, or they leave their job and go somewhere else and they come back. They all go to different places. They're going to have that on the resume.

If it's like I created this major viral sensation and so it's going to get out. But I also I wanted to share this real quick.

So the ring, because you mentioned that and the style of it, someone told me, I think it was when I was in film school, but someone told me that when the ring came out, part of their marketing, like grassroots marketing campaign, is they actually had VHS, as it were, unmarked, and they would go to like concerts and stuff and put them through like open windows and cars and things. Yeah. So, I mean, that's, that's why I mean, like, great.

And you know, whether it's cheesy by today's end, but that is the kind of thing where it's like you because people, I think, crave that sort of thing, right? They they crave patterns and they crave meaning behind anything, especially regarding themselves like I do.

It is, I think just listening to your podcast in general and not to, to go too far on a tangent, but just like all the unexplained and all this kind of stuff, part of me is just like there's a, there's a similar feeling when people recite ghost stories as when they tell about celebrity encounters, like looking right.

There's to me there's a very similar DNA, a cross section in the Venn diagram of the feeling, the thrill, whatever endorphins fire when like, Oh, I was this close to Brad Pitt at a restaurant like it, it imbues whatever you're your existence with more than whatever. And I think there's a similar feeling to that with with ghost stories or UFOs or whatever.

And not to say that, you know, people who have ghost stories is one of our all making up or But I think there's an element to that, and I think there's something like that with this and like the ring marketing game, when you find that tape. When I was watching last night, I went online and I was like, Oh my God, there's something here and I'm figuring it out. I'm like, There's a thrill to that.

If you can tap into that, that's like something again that I it's very unique, I think, to modern and modern tech and modern entertainment. Yeah, absolutely. And this all leads to the question then of who's posting this video, right? Who made it, Who's getting it out there? Who put it on a DVD first? And like you're saying, it kind of has that marketing esque feel to it. But maybe not a movie, maybe not some. Big. Thing, you know? So that's when I got a gentleman named Peter. Oh, sorry.

Not Peter Parker. Parker. Right. Peter Parker. Spider-Man made it. There. Yeah. You know Parker, right? He has. He's one that now has this video up on YouTube. It's been across some other channels in the history of it, but now it's predominantly on his channel and he is an artist in Poland and he claims he made the video. Now, there's some other people that have laid claim to the video.

There's some people that don't believe him, but he's actually been providing like beats, pictures and he's provided files for the graphics in the video. He also did in an anonymous interview on a Polish YouTube channel in 2016 with the mask and stuff, which is all very unique. It's like, yeah, it's not stuff you buy at Target. That's like a unique, uniquely made costume. And then he made a sequel. He made a second video 11 be 31369, same play doctor outfit.

This time there's it's very similar style. It's got a female character in it that shows up similar tone, hidden messages, all that kind of stuff. He's since made a couple other videos and he's he's an artist. He's an artist in Poland. Sure. Yeah. And so it was him kind of creating art. Now, here's why this mystery still persists, though. As much as I actually believe Parker did this, it makes sense. He's got all the right stuff.

But it's like if all that stuff is true and he has the behind the scenes. Stuff, it's so it's kind of solved. But what's weird, though, is that first video, there's an air of creepiness and creativity that I think is better than the sequels, which you can say about most movies anyway, but also like the images and the audio frequencies that doesn't exist. And in the subsequent videos, it's like little things like that aren't in these subsequent videos that do kind of make you at least.

Question Yeah, because like I said, I believe he did it, but it's still like, Well, wait, if all these other things were in the first one, they like hidden words and singers and images. Why aren't they in the next ones? Why? You know, So just something to think about. And that's why there are some people that don't think he crew. There are some people out there that still believe he didn't do. I wonder if it's something to where it was maybe him with some other people and Right, right, right.

And they were responsible for some of the post elements to it with the audio frequency, all that kind of stuff. And there was either falling out or they didn't want to take credit. And he, you know, whatever. Yeah. And so then it was just, all right, that was just me. So let me mimic what I what we were trying to do and it's not. Yeah, really hold up. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I 100% buy into that. So let's move on the next Internet mystery.

I'm going to keep this one short for time because it doesn't need a lot of explanation. But this one might be the first Internet mystery that I paid attention to. And I wasn't even thinking Internet mystery back in the day. This is something that caught my attention in the 1990s, all the way. Back. In the 1990s, and that is Who the Hell is running the Heaven Gates website? Have you heard about that? I have heard about this, yes. That's I am vaguely aware.

I feel like I was probably more aware in the nineties or something busier or in the early aughts or whatever, but I know of this. Yeah. And this one similarly to the video and the previous internet or the internet mystery, it is kind of solved, but I wasn't aware of it until I was getting ready to do this episode. I was like, Oh yeah, I got to talk about this because I love this story. Then I'm like, Oh, but I still, because I love it so much, I want to at least talk about it.

I mean, a mystery is still a mystery even after may be solved, you know? Yeah. And there's still a bit of an if of a twinge of a mystery at the end here. So Heaven's Gate, for those that don't know, they were a death cult in the 1990s. And their website, however, is still going, still going strong. Someone's paying for it, someone's hosting it, someone gave it, it going.

And for all the youngins out there that don't know what life was like on the internet in the 1990s, go check out the Heaven's Gate website because I'm not worried you're not going to join a cult. They like. I trust you to look at it everybody but learn about what a website was like because it has not been updated. So you have all the same imagery, all the same graphics. Typeface, you know, whatever. It's got.

Like it's not maybe, maybe it's not comic sans, but kind of like a comics you kind of want. Yeah, there's it's clunky, it's hard to get to. And playing in the background. Yeah. It's like, like the hamster dance. So something is just Yeah. So throw in as much as we're laughing. 39 people committed mass suicide in Southern California in 1997, March 26, 1997, and the cult was led by a guy named Marshall Applewhite. It had been formed by himself and a woman named Bonnie Nettles.

And Bonnie Nettles actually passed away in the 1980s. And because this is not a cult episode, I think part of their belief system was that, like Bonnie and Marshall can't die, they're like, They will live forever. And then Bonnie died. So Marshall had to be like, Oh, well, now she's she's an alien, which isn't very good. It had to like tap dance and try to figure out a new, new song. Look over here. Look over here. Yeah. Yeah.

And so when they when they all committed suicide, it coincided with the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet, which was coming nearby Earth. And their belief was that a UFO was flying behind the comet. And when they killed themselves, they're going to transcend upon death up into that UFO. So everybody, even if you're not aware of this story, you've probably seen clips of Marshall Applewhite talking as they made a lot of videos and he's got weird eyes like doesn't blink.

A lot of the members that were part of the mass suicide gave exit interviews on video, and a lot of those videos have been shared where they're they're talking to their loved ones they're leaving behind. And so the question is who, since they all committed suicide, kept their Web site going. And this is when I quickly found out there there might be an answer to that when I was like prayer, prayer. But again, I love this story. So I had to do it.

So apparently there are two former members of the cult who had left the cult, but they had promised Applewhite that they were going to keep the website up. And their names are Mark and Sarah King. I don't mind sharing it because they are in a lot of articles online. You'll find it everywhere. So the mystery is solved. Yeah, well, here's the thing. Even if the Kings are the keepers, the keepers of the Heaven's Gate website, why don't they ever change it? Why Don't they update it?

What is their endgame? Because they're not getting new members. Why are they still like believers? They have some cultish beliefs, I'll put it that way. But I think they're different. They're like they have their own beliefs that are a little culty and a little woo woo, but they're not quite where Heaven's Gate. I mean, obviously because they left, they. Weren't yo, you, they left. Yeah. So I mean, there is a deeper psychological aspect to this. I just don't know enough about them.

I don't think they give interviews. Yeah. So I can't even try to crack. They're the reasoning behind it. But it does kind of make me ask this question. And I don't mean to sound more morbid because maybe the Kings will live for 34 years or so, but what happens when they do pass away Are? We going to find that the Heaven's Gate website is still up and everybody thought it was them the whole time like that is. That's the question I have. So we're going to have to keep our eyes peeled on that.

Kind of website. Go to the website. Oh, yes, do it. Do it. I want to. Yeah, I've got to check this out. Yeah, a little blast from the. I never thought I'd bring up the hamster hamster dance. Let's get back home. Let's fight. Yep, yep. Here. Oh, yeah. There. It's. And it's like a website where it's just, like, just like, vertically. And you just keep scrolling down. I think there are some other pages, but again, it's hard to navigate because it's nineties, you know, nineties software.

Area like neon text colors, just like class all over the place. But trying to think if there is one to say was last updated, you know, if there's a time stamp. Here I think there is a time stamp I think there may be even like a visitor counter too or something like that. I don't have it in front of me right now, so I'm not looking at it. But yeah, there you go. Heaven's Gate. Don't, don't, don't join up. Sean, don't. I don't know. These are there's a pretty cool website.

They have gate in the shape of a keyhole. So with red alert like in very lit, I think it is comic sans, just like, flashing on screen, like this important stuff. Yes. Hey, it's history. And you were talking about how, like, the Internet, you know, we think about it sort of saving everything because this website is going it is saving it. And that is that's history. That's a big story, man. That is a big story and one to learn from.

So the fact that you can still go to that site is pretty, pretty amazing. All right. So moving on, Sean, This one, I think we're going to end on this one here. Okay. And it is the mystery of art. 28211 dotcom are October 28th, 2011 Dotcom. It's a better way to say it. This is a website that first came online a few months before the date in the website name, and it went offline in 2015.

This website included text and images of I will, I will just call it confounding nature, and it was updated from time to time with new images and or text. And the image most mostly associated with this site is an image. It's like a cartoon of shredded of the Schrödinger's cat equation. Okay, so like questioning, you know, like, is the cat dead or alive? And until you save observe, it. Devastates existing simultaneously. Exactly.

And below that image, there was a poem and you're going to read them. Oh, okay. Go ahead. It was my, you know, my best poetry voice here. Let's go. When I'm scared and you're close, I feel it's hard to feel nowadays. Can you find where to be? Wait there and you'll be. Things are never, never initially accepted. However, there's plenty of time. Give up. You must. That's where history is taught you. Keep losing track. Get back on the trains. ST 262694681140.

In parentheses. Love. That's how I signed all of my emails. So the poem is it's a little weird and create some questions and vague and strange and like a lot. Yeah. So this is what I write back to the people I match with you. Send me that. You said you did your Markov in Parallax. I replied with this poem. You should you should go see what their reaction is.

Yeah. So this this to me kind of like the 60 3381i think is the number of that where they were like hey solve this riddle and you can join are saying this to me, it's a little different but it does seem like someone's trying to coax a reaction, like I'm going to put up clues. You try to solve it. And so some other images that were on the site and subtext, there is an image of an oval that had a label zero. There was a smaller circle inside that oval labeled you. There was like a blurred line.

Underneath that. There was another image of two lines, one that was labeled lay, and then there was a space and another line labeled wakes, sort of like O gap between asleep and awake. And you know, the Schrödinger's cat there. What state is this in? So there's some connective tissue to all the kind of imagery and clues that are being left that are all over my head. But still, it seems to be that there is a cohesion to the types of things that are being posted.

There's also like there were there would be blurry mathematical figures or equations. There'd be there was also a series of pictures of people in a park and there were like slight changes to each frame. There is text underneath that read choice is yours. There is an image of a man lying down and up at the same time sort of referencing awake again. There was like a math equation underneath that. There was some text that even read like when did dreams start to seep into reality choices yours?

And then there is also this other text that I will that's the next thing to read for you. Take a day to reflect and see what has changed for you. Things are never initially accepted. You are seeing right now. It hasn't been discovered or why most ideas never blossom. The negativity all around is what has caused separation in parentheses.

In humans, individual in parentheses, awareness needing to prove to one's other self that they are right and you in parentheses one are wrong forgetting completely who they actually are. One, two, three, four and parenthetical Asterisk Dash asterisk begin parenthetical 4321. In parentheses. That one is free in parentheses. Your negativity has slowed us down. We're waiting. You now.

I will provide a link in my show notes to a gentleman on YouTube that like dives into a lot of these and talks about the theories and meanings behind them all and in really amazing ways. The guy does just a fantastic job.

And what the next part about this mystery that is really cool is there was also a phone number on the site and if you called it, there was just the sound of like some beeps, some weird sound effects, no words and breathing and yeah, this is and this is a fun mystery to read about on Reddit and on YouTube and other sites read the comments because a lot of people were like into it when it was happening.

And there was one commenter who said, who actually looked into it and said that the website was registered on August seven, 2011, in Alabama, and the phone number that was on the site was from Texas. So this is likely someone from the South and the someone actually did record because the phone number doesn't do what it used to do, but someone actually did. Record post it. Yeah. And to me it sounds like a recording because a lot of comments don't think it was a recording.

They think like someone was on the end. But when you hear it, it sounds very much like a recording. And that makes sense because you have a number online and people are randomly calling and you want it to, you know, it's going to be a recording. Someone on Reddit also claims this, that he made it. He made the whole site for a high school project and someone posted a link to this comment. I can't even remember where it'll probably be in my show notes.

Hopefully I have to be saved, but when I first started reading this, this comment, I was like, This is all this is all bullshit and I'll explain why. But some people believe it. Like some guy said it, he made it for a high school project, but he said he made it for a high school project and he said the phone number is his ex-girlfriend's phone number. And that to me, just automatically I'm like, No, I don't believe it, because it's a recording

like Your Front your is going to have this weird recording on it. No. And then he also comments that he wants everybody to join the Confederate States of America. So I think that is a troll. I don't believe he did this because there is this website had a lot of this philosophical stuff trying to pose certain questions in this philosophical manner. It wasn't something that's like join the Confederate States. Yeah, I feel like my girlfriend's. Phone numbers up. Like it just doesn't that does.

Not take at all clash with the rest of everything. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So what is it all mean? I will be the first to admit that. I have no idea. But there are many people that talk about this, like astral plane element. This like. Like the Schrödinger cat thing. What state are we in? Do we have a choice in the matter?

Choice is yours and the astral plane is this existence that's explored in many religions and spiritual groups for thousands of years, which, if I use the definition from Wikipedia, it is. It is the world of celestial spheres crossed by the soul and its astral body on the way to being born and after death, and is generally believed to be populated by angels, spirits or other immaterial beings. So yeah, this is something that's been philosophize about for thousands of years.

So my theory and I'm really curious what yours is, but mine is that this is legitimately someone that was like going through something and really thinking about stuff like this and was getting a little, you know, playful online in terms of like, I want to provoke some thought. I want to reach out and see if anybody is going to see the same things I see or think about the same stuff I'm thinking about. If I posed this to the Internet world, they might be not as smart as they think they are.

In my in my mind, because there seems to be some randomness in stuff to this. But but that's my my initial thought is I actually do think someone was hoping to find basically find a friend or get a reaction from people in a way that they could feel like they put something out there to make people think, you know. Yeah, I definitely I see that. It reminds me, I'm sure you are but familiar with the museum address technology here in L.A..

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it has a vibe of that to it as well, where it's almost there's if you haven't been to that listeners, you got to go check out Museum of Jurassic Technology. There's a plug for that. But it's, it's this weird line that is you're never quite sure if you're on the side of is this legit like is this are they doing this in all seriousness or is there a level of irony this to this?

Are they are they self-aware to know that this is like there is kind of a joke or there's an element of humor to it and humor is not the right word. But, you know what? Irony and that's kind of the vibe I get from this where it's like like a philosophy student who is like, so full of themselves, who thinks they're groundbreaking and just as a little lacking self-awareness. Yes. Or is it like a you know, like a punk kid who is like, I'm going to make fun of the philosophy.

Yeah, right. That's right. But I do think it is someone who is with that mentality of like, I'm going to create something crazy. And it's it's also weird with with this specifically, but I think in a lot of ways, kind of like just mysteries in general is almost like art where you know what, like, you know, think of abstract indie films, avant garde films, right? That are just images and, you know, whatever. And it's not very clear what the narrative is. But that's not the point.

The point is, what do you what are you getting out of it? You know, all that kind of. Yeah, there's an element to that, too, where it's just like, I'm I just want people to interpret this. I just want people to read this and get something different out of it. So I don't know if that really shed any light in terms of the specific mystery like solving, but I do think it's comes from a very human place of like interpretation and finding meaning in in these things.

And I think there's something in all of these in in even more of the Internet mysteries that we're not talking about there is the word that keeps coming to mind is just provocation. And I don't mean like I don't mean provoke and necessarily had way. Surely negative way. Exactly right. But there's there seems to be this I just want to if I was creating something, I just want to provoke a reaction. I'm looking for someone to say, Oh, that's cool. Or Oh my God, what does that mean?

Especially with like the weirder ones, you want people talking and as soon as you see a group of people asking questions that are going, Oh, it could be this, it could be that, it could be this, that's got to be it's going to mean something to the people that are creating these things.

And yeah, and I that ties in kind of perfectly with what I want to do here to wrap up with you, which is if we can learn from some of these stories and this doesn't have to be a deep thing, like what do we want out of it? But just what would we come with or do? And, you know, it doesn't have to be both of us together. But like, but what would we come up with if we wanted to generate the next great online mystery? You know, Would it be a website with poems? Would it be a video?

Would it be an art project? Or we're taking pictures of it and using Instagram as like, the source. Like what? What would it be? So what have you learned? So, I mean, yeah, like you're saying, a lot of it is the just like this idea that the Internet is kind of presenting people with an overwhelming amount of content, right? And, and also we're becoming more isolated and people trying to find those connections and finding meaning in and what they hope are connections.

So, you know, and then the also the idea of intent, to me that's another big thing is that like, you know, a lot of these mysteries to me boil down to not so much the specifics of like, Oh, we know how this was posted or we know these people are still keeping this website up, but like, what's the intent behind it? And that's almost more intriguing than any of the specifics anyway.

So something that kind of came to mind and maybe for obvious reasons is something around something circulating around a podcast. Yeah, I think that is maybe ripe for a kind of a new type of mystery history that hasn't been really kind of explored before. I like the idea too, of content without a clear origin. So this idea that like a podcast has surfaced and true crime's really popular now. So whatever a true crime podcast about a murder or something like that.

And no, you know, people aren't listening to it right when it comes out, but it's just like, Oh, this podcast came on like a year ago, but no one had heard of it or anything. But now it's kind of people are starting it and as they're listening, they're like, it's about a murder. But what the murder, the dates are like. It happened after the podcast aired, but but no one heard the podcast when it originally aired.

And and then they're like, it's not a podcast that is, you know the host is cannot be found It's it's a name that no one knows of that suspects someone is real but you go and talk to this person is like I haven't killed anyone and it's it doesn't line up with their you know like where like small inconsistency but it's based enough in reality.

Like there's enough things that like point to real and even small things like, you know, maybe there's a weirdly some a popular podcast or a well-known podcast has in some of the show notes a link to this podcast. And they're like, we never put, how did that get there? We never post that link ourselves, you know? And then I like the idea to of like, you know, the last episode never was, has never been found or never last episode was going to be like where they went to go talk to the.

Seth Yeah. And you were going, it was going to be the one on one interview with the suspect and that's never aired. What happened that like, you know, is it lasted did they get killed when they whenever you know or is it was it all a hoax? Was it just someone trying to get attention? Because true crime's popular now and everyone wants to, you know, listen to true crime. And so they were just creating this whole thing? Or is there is there based basis to any of this? I don't know.

I, I just the podcast sounds fun in terms. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel weird saying this, but I didn't think podcast when I was trying to think of this, even though that's the main thing I consume and I now make a podcast. But I did not, did not think about that. And that is, that's really interesting because that is kind of like the one sort of online piece of content that I don't think there is a great mystery, right? That's what I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, yeah.

If any of you know of any, please let me know. Send me a message. Yeah. No, that's, that's cool. Especially that. Yeah. It's got to have something weird. Was a date and you had ki. What is key for me in a lot of these and it's one of the reasons why I like the the mysterious song mystery is it didn't really go viral until almost ten years after it was first posted online. And even then it's almost 40 years since the song. So there's something really interesting about the dates.

And yeah, I think if you were to do a podcast you just kind of like leave it be. Yeah, let it sit there awhile, You let it stew and. Then it could even be like, you know, it's a murder from the nineties or decades ago. So then the thing is like, wait, was, was this actually real murder? And like, there's elements, elements of it that like met their will. There is a police record of a911 call that they mentioned but there's no official record of a murder like you know those types of things.

Well, what's what's what you could do because, you know, a lot of people love the what is it called? It's the like, oh, I remember when Sinbad was in the. You know, the Mandela. Mandela. Yeah. So you look at like the Mandela effect where people think, you know, we have this blending of different dimensions or times or places or whatever. And if you do a podcast about a murder let's say in the nineties. Mm. But the person who's the victim or the killer is a real person.

Yes. That is alive, that was not arrested or not and they don't know about it because the podcast doesn't catch on for a while that someone comes across it and they're like, Wait a second, yeah, but that's the mayor of Burbank right now or whatever and it's. Like back the woman from the, uh, who had the email and they like, No, yeah, yeah. Have no idea what this is. It's a real person and I don't know why it's my account, you know?

So it's like, are we drifting into these are the are the dimensions drifting? Are they, you know, what do they call it. The I forget what the word is but yes, the two different universes are coming together. That would be really interesting. I like the idea of a podcast. My mind always goes to videos. Yeah. And and honestly again, the the 11 be ex yada yada yada video that had an impact on me when I used to be producing lot of short digital horror content.

I had an idea for a short I wanted to do in the make it a series where people it would be a bit of a found footage thing where people find old actual like 16 millimeter film in an Airbnb cabin, an old cabin, and they're like, Oh, you know, it'd be cool. We had to find a way to play this. And they actually go out and they like get the right projectors to be able to play it and they play it and it's a murder in the cabin from like 50 years ago. Yeah. And then it's like, Oh my God.

Oh, and it's but, but the whole plan was to release the video of the film months the movie was ever out, and. And it wouldn't have been like a gruesome thing, you know, You would have heard a lie. You would have a show. No, but. But you had to release it, You know, six months before the before the film ever came out and not even say anything. Just have its own little YouTube channel.

No comments, no description, just something weird that I love the idea of old film, you know, I just like that look and that, you know, the the ring did it with the style of that the VHS and that the the plague doctor video that we talked about tonight has that even though it obviously was not shot on film, you can tell it was all digital, that they had that kind of like jittery trajectory kind of effect to it.

And also just the mystery that can come from still, you know, the darkness or dark in film, and especially if you're shooting on eight millimeters 16. You know, there's certain details don't see that you see in high def that make it more mysterious because your mind is now filling in blanks. And there's a style to that, especially if sound wasn't recorded with it too, because. Oh yeah, that, that there's a whole element to it.

I think there's something really interesting to the idea of the internet being something. So what we can generally speaking think of as like new and when introduce like that film quality it it ages things and it implies a level of history and depth. Yeah. It's sometimes really hard to find internet and you know, go on YouTube or whatever, and it's like nothing. Everything feels like, you know, time has stopped and everything is of the present time.

But if you can have this feeling like this is somehow both modern because we're watching it online with modern technology, but it's something that is old, that somehow there's a weird kind of clash. These two these two elements, I think that's really intriguing as well. No, Yeah, this is it's really interesting and I love the idea of the podcast to to think about something and Internet mysteries, to also bring up this kind of deeper question about what mysteries mean.

And I think because the Internet is a world of its own, it's a universe of its own, it's, you know, like it's really interesting how these spread or don't spread because there's a lot out there that never caught on. Yeah, exactly. Virus that we haven't heard about and how it affects us and how they're generated is really interesting.

And I tried to give a little bit of a colorful array of different kinds of mysteries tonight, but you did mention and the first one I did and in the last one, so the date website I love, I can't remember what the first story was about. Kobe and Mark. Jovian Parallax Dinner. Great. So Mark Colvin, Parallax denigrate. But you talked about this provoking thing. I keep using the word provoking, but this like I seem, it seems to be like someone doing it just to do it. Yes.

And ask it even if it's random and there's something interesting about that because we can't get clear answers. Because we can't get clear answers. It makes a bigger mystery. Yeah, well, it's the human understanding that the people who are maybe provoking or doing this, whatever motivation deliberately, they ignore the like, realization that humans try to find meaning in pretty much anything. They try to find patterns. So what do you do to create a mystery?

You purposely create something with no pattern, with no deeper meaning. And right that that just leaves the human imagination to dig that well, as deep as it'll possibly go right. So it is. Yeah. The internet is a weird thing where it just feels so modern, but it's it's, you know, it's modern story. It's the modern space, it's us creating our own mysteries. Whereas, you know, for most of history, it's these weird events that have happened.

And what, what explanations can we com or, you know, stories we tell to explain these events. But the Internet is we're creating this this you know, I mean there you know whatever is mysteries that maybe there's some mystery of oh no, that's part of the history but essentially this is all manmade. But we still try to find meaning and we still try to find depth even with that acknowledgment.

I think one thing that's always interest intriguing is like as a kid, when you were real little and the night was seemed endless, right? You know, you had to go to bed because the night was endless, you know, and you wake up in the morning. But as you get older, there's a there is a little bit of mental disappointment or something when you're like, oh, stayed up. No, the nights not that is a couple hours. Now it's day again, like you know what I mean?

And so you're as I think in in some level we're always striving to find like we want the world to be bigger in a lot of ways. We want the mystery to have, like, you know, the dark web. You think that your stories, the dark Web and you it conjures this like, oh, there's just millions of people doing these exchanges. It's like, I don't know if that's true. There's probably a couple of guys selling drugs. And that's what the dark Web is.

I mean, I'm sure there's real bad stuff on there, But, you know, I mean, like we we in my mind, you think of this terminology and it creates this whole worlds that were ripe to explore have just so much juicy stuff to know you mean in. Yeah but but it may not be that and that doesn't mean that there's not value in still creating these stories, but it is like, yeah, it's just an interesting idea. It's yeah, yeah. And look, there's, there's real mysteries that you. See there is sorry.

And I'm not saying to defend anything that we're saying. I just want to clarify, not all of them are just made up to do whatever. Yeah, but you said something really interesting about this. Like a child like re reaction to these things. And I remember growing up and hearing a I think it was probably at a sleepover or someone at school said this and then my brother and I started talking about it. But I grew up in Florida, a lot of lakes in Florida and a lot of alligators.

And someone told us a story about an alligator that was like the size of a semi-truck jumped out of the water of this lake that my grandparents lived on. And like eight somebody off this bridge that went over it, it was real to us. And we started telling other about it and it became this like neighborhood wide story amongst kids that there's like this truck size alligator in the lake.

And it but there was something so fun about it and it was scary, but there was something so amazing about creating this story or not creating it because we were told it but like, yeah, living in this. World, doing a. Story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And trying to find reasoning behind it and the meaning behind it and what is it going to do and can we kill it? Do we tell people about, you know, like all this kind of stuff. And I think internet mysteries can provide us a similar not forum but.

Outlet for that. Yes. To get that same sensation of a story. Yeah. I also want to share this, talking about how would we create this Internet mystery. It's different, but similar. But a friend of mine years ago, this is like 2012 was like conspiracy theories are getting out of hand and this is 2012 or now they're. Really the worst way. These like conspiracy theories are getting out of hand.

I think people believe anything I'm going to I'm going to create a new conspiracy theory just a fuck up, just like fuck the world. And I don't think he ever came up with one. But I remember recently there was that birds aren't real conspiracy theory. I actually had this about at the very beginning of the episode. Yeah. Something. And it made me think of Birds are real. Real. Yeah. Yeah. And that was made up as a joke. Now there's thousands of people that believe it, and it was made up as a joke.

It's it's kind of weird with the Internet. It's it's almost like. Right, The Internet reflects reality and now it's come full circle. The inverse reality reflects the Internet, and maybe reflex is the right word, but right where it's like weird people are now taking reality. They they their view of reality is now based on the machinations that they're creating of what they see online. I mean, yeah, like conspiracy.

Obviously, there's a lot of examples of that, but not just in that extreme case, but that is so many people's lives and stories. Everything is just like informed and influenced by that. We're hit real hard here, I guess. But yeah, I. Know. I went way off, way off where I was going to end the episode. But it's it's a lot of fun to think about. Yeah, and there's a lot to think about when you consider and when you look at these Internet mysteries in a much deeper way than I intended.

And I love that. I love that about these things. And I want to explore some more Internet mysteries, maybe even some of these on a on a much deeper level than I was able to to tonight. And but yeah, let's let's wrap it up there. Yeah. So Sean, thank you so much for coming on And do you want to do you want to push anything you plug anything about your socials. Yeah. Well, just thanks for having me Go go play Last of US and watch the last decision. Go, go, Watch goes the Ozarks.

I know you plugged it, and I do it again. Dude, I'll do it again. You know, I worked on that, co-wrote that ad that, you know, so that's always fun to plug that and other than that, I don't know. Go support your local library. Go read. Yeah. Mysteries from you. No one no one has said that yet. John And I feel bad because I should be saying that to go support your local library. That is very true. You know, it's. Very books for free listeners. Yes, there are no there.

Movies. For families and I think they even have e-book like I think you could get e-book. I don't know you can yeah this you can't get any of us get library card. Yes you can check out ebooks. And I think in most places, like I think in L.A., we can get library cards digitally. I don't think you ought to go in there tomorrow. You you don't have to go in and get a library card. You can do it all online. Everything's including mysteries. Yes. Thank you again, John.

I mean, it was so much fun. I had a blast. It was a pleasure. I love we solved everything. I love solving everything. We solved all the mystery. Oh, yeah. It's always best. I always solve everything. You listen to the show I saw. Everything has been solved. Everything and nothing would get solved without podcasters. I think that is. That is a true statement. That is a very true statement. All right. Well, thank you again.

And thank you for creating and doing everything yourself and all the Last of US games. That was fantastically. You. No problem. Yeah. I wish I worked out a better contract. I really don't get paid hard. Like just pennies. Yeah. That nice. All right. Thanks a lot, Chad. Sit by. Thank you for listening to the show. A special thank you to Johnny Anthony Daniels for joining us to discuss these Internet mysteries. Make sure to follow the show on Instagram at a study of strange.

Feel free to reach out with comments, notes, things I missed, ideas for future episodes. Any and all those things message me at a study of strange. All one word at gmail.com. If you're enjoying the show, please sure to subscribe rate and review and or check out our Patriot, which you can find through our website a study of strange icon. In the coming weeks, we have really exciting episodes coming out.

We have a Canadian murder mystery and we also have deep dives into the Connecticut Witch trials, The History of Zombies, which I'm really excited about. I think that does it. Thank you and good night.