 The Para-Watch Weekie is an online web forum of conspiracy theorists, paranormal enthusiasts, and amateur writers, operating with the intent of investigating and exposing anomalous phenomena. Geographically the group is disparate, its users primarily hailing from North America and Europe. No common background exists, age, careers, and other demographics vary. The group's operations are mainly in the form of compiling stories on their forum, detailing encounters with paranormal phenomena, historical cases, and any unusual events users have experienced. While moderation has enabled a loose degree of coordination, further efforts are hindered by the sheer spread of the user base. Any impact the site could have is limited, several clusters of members are noted to collaborate in exploring forested regions of the United States and Canada, though they are relatively small in comparison to the full group. Although Para-Watch is heavily invested in its investigation of the anomalous, continuous monitoring has found that the group lacks a comprehensive understanding of the foundation's existence. The veil, the nature of anomalous phenomena, theories posed by the group lack context on actual circumstances, leading to inaccurate beliefs that limit the potential for an information breach. This, in combination with obscurity to the general public and out towards the truthfulness of their stories, prevents them from being a significant threat to the veil's stability. As such, Para-Watch is to be left active as a disinformation measure to hinder and mislead investigations into the existence of the veil. Any leads may be misdirected by foundation implants at their discretion, recognition of actual circumstances will be met with the deletion of the offending content, and the progressive anesthetization of the user base. No direct action is to be taken at this time. What's up guys, this is Theron, and tonight we're taking another dive into the Para-Watch wiki. Nice thread was started by user Ideological Imbrolio on Halloween 2018. It's called Abbasin Height. Let's begin. The recent disappearance of Basil Odinger and the subsequent discovery of several lost films in his private collection has reignited cinema's fascination with the revolutionary work of an underground independent filmmaker known as Yosef Helmuth. The reclusive director's fame in cinema circles is ironic. Helmuth was best known for not wishing to be known. Only one of his films, Schweigen 1953, contains an end credit sequence, wherein he thanks my thiebe and voltotter, my dear benefactors. His work was distributed privately through panopticon pictures until the company declared bankruptcy in 1962. Nearly all extemprints were destroyed in a warehouse fire. Helmuth's work is characterized by sparse structure, emotional isolation, fascination with negative space, no dialogue, and single extraordinarily long takes. His first film, Nox, 1951, is a two-hour exploration of a dilapidated, abandoned munitions factory. What makes the film remarkable is how it's shot. One single smooth tracking shot that begins at the entrance, descends several flight of stairs, and ends in a basement. Given the lack of identifiable cuts, tracks, or rails, even along the stairs, the film is released to produce endless speculation among cinematographers regarding how this was done. Although Nox is the most conventional film Helmuth produced, it still contains surrealist elements that would become hallmarks of his style. The factory's basement is improbably vast, containing far more levels than it should, and includes strange, unidentified machinery. At several points, the camera focuses on objects that are out of place, a pink ribbon, false teeth, a wooden dreidel. Under the 70-minute mark, a silhouette is briefly visible passing by a doorway. The final shot, where the camera explores a pitch-black room, lasts for 15 minutes, during which only heavy breathing can be heard. Themes of isolation and emptiness are further elaborated on in Helmuth's fifth film, Doppelganger, 1953. Composed of a 90-minute long tracking shot, the viewer navigates a carnival's hall of mirrors, while pursued by a hazy, indistinct figure, visible only in each mirror's reflection. The film ends abruptly when the figure appears in front of the camera, obstructing its view. Numerous diehard Helmuth fans have mapped out the interior of the hall based on the camera's movements, only to discover that the camera often moves through what ought to be a solid mirror. To this day, vigorous debate continues over how Helmuth achieved this and other effects, such as the absence of the camera's reflection in any one of the hall's hundreds of mirrors. Schult, 1954, is perhaps the film for which Helmuth is most infamous. It is three hours long, and consists of a single-fix shot, four figures burning a top of pyre as a crowd watches from below. Details regarding its screening at a 1965 Oldenburg Film Festival are murky. Viewers express distress, anxiety, and physical illness. This allegedly escalated with the audience storming the projection booth and destroying all prints of the film. Helmuth is notorious for being tight-lipped about his work, having never publicly commented on it. However, in 1961, a student attending Mayor's Academy uncovered a letter authored by him in the college's archives. The following excerpt, translated from its original German, elaborates on his views regarding the role of the author. Quote, Death of the author presumes too much. It presumes the author may exist, but this cannot be permitted. The author must be obliterated down to their element of structure, down to their essence, their very core. No trace of their presence can remain on this earth. The author must cease to be. Art can only be understood as an excretion of natural indeterminable events, a thing that is shaped via a rudderless process devoid of intent, purpose, or reason. Raindrops falling through a canopy of leaves, apples withering on the branch of a decaying tree, maggots bursting from a dead pigeon's breast. The author is much more than irrelevant. The relevance is such that to merely mention this relevance is to grant them more relevance than they deserve. To say the author is dead, you must first presume the author was once alive. But the author was never alive. The author was never even there. End quote. Immediately after the publication of this letter and several film periodicals, Joseph Helmeth ceased to respond to all correspondence and phone calls. No one has heard from him since. In 1962, he produced and published his final film, A Vason Height. All six copies of A Vason Height were believed to be lost in the 1962 fire. However, in 1987, a recording of a private viewing was recovered from the home of Basil Odinger, a prominent art collector obsessed with the study of Helmeth. Although incomplete, it indirectly captured a small portion of the filmmaker's final masterpiece. The footage is several minutes in length and focuses on a television screen on which A Vason Height is playing. The television's footage is heavily distorted. The audience, out of frame, produces muffled sobs. Odinger repeatedly apologizes. As the film draws to its conclusion, the audience becomes increasingly distressed. One member starts to pray. Odinger begs for it to stop. A hand descends in front of the camera, obstructing its view of the television. The recording abruptly ends. Investigations into Basil Odinger's disappearance and the location of the fabled surviving print of A Vason Height have turned up no results. However, it is notable that the footage of Odinger's doing was recorded with Kodak 5247, Yosef Helmeth's preferred film stock. Wow. Okay, what do you think? Is this real or too unbelievable? Leave your answer in the comments below. What's up, guys? This is Theron. And tonight we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiggy. Tonight's service started by user Cthulhuop on April 12th, 2012. It's called Straight to VHS, Sunday Dinner. Let's begin. The premise of a real commercial snuff film is a series of films by which film-goers and filmmakers over the years. From urban legends regarding a suicide in the background of the Wizard of Oz to the campaign of misinformation surrounding the Blair Witch Project, audiences and directors have indirectly conspired to achieve the appearance of an authentic death on tape for decades. The irony is palpable. Records of genuine deaths can be obtained near effortlessly. News outlets provide endless footage of war. Meanwhile, one needs only crack open a history book to find countless images of execution, mass murder, and violence. But these deaths are presented as informative rather than titillating, detached from the camera's hungry lens. They didn't die for our viewing pleasure. The snuff film is more intimate, more voyeuristic, though it may frame itself as merely instructive, such as the seminal 1978 classic Faces of Death. This contrivance is merely to placate our sense of guilt long enough to watch someone die for our enjoyment. Isn't that the whole point? When Hadeshi Hino drugs, kidnaps and dismembers a beautiful woman over several hours in the 1985 Japanese horror film, Guinea Pig 2, Flowers of Flesh and Blood, is it not clear this is for our own gratification? Doesn't the framing of the film, footage taken by the murderer himself, presume the murderer wants us to watch, even participate? The harder it is to distinguish from an authentic murder, the more tantalizing it becomes. We soothe our conscious by telling ourselves it's just a movie. All while a tiny voice teases us and thrills us with just a whisper. But what if it's not? The zealous dedication to versimilitude often has a cost. Hadeshi Hino has had to demonstrate his special effects to skeptical authorities on multiple occasions, even going so far as explaining them in another film, The Making of Guinea Pig. The director of Cannibal Holocaust in 1980 famously appeared in court with his cast to prove they were not actually dead. Even Faces of Death still receives periodic outcries for the monkey brain scene. The monkey was not harmed, the mouths were foam and the brains were cauliflower. In 1983, Goldhouse Distributors released Sunday Dinner. The most well-known version is two and a half hours long. It consists of cuts between six different cameras hidden throughout a home. Over the first 45 minutes, we watch a family, a father, mother, two sons and a daughter having an ordinary Sunday dinner. The grainy low quality footage and lack of sound design helped sell it as genuine. Then the footage cuts to the attic, messy but seemingly uninhabited. Back to the family, heads bowed. The daughter is saying grace. Back to the attic. Something lurches past the camera. There are no musical cues, no shocking sounds, merely the silent intrusion of something that does not belong. The effect of this is stunning on account of how it doesn't try to be. Back to the family enjoying dinner and chatting about each other's day. We learn one of the voices having trouble at school, something about a bully. The mother disapproves of violence, but the father wants him to stand up for himself. The other son, desperate to avoid what is likely a recurring marital spat, interrupts by offering his latest scholastic achievement. He got a B plus on his math exam. The father and mother put their dispute on hold long enough to express their pride. Meanwhile, the daughter complains of a tummy ache. Back to the attic. The figure now paces. We cannot make out his face. It's covered in a cruelly stitched burlap sack. It's only now that astute viewers start to identify clues that indicate his prolonged presence. Empty tin cans, a filth-incristened bucket filled with presumably excrement. Piles of clothes uses a bed. The shot lingers. For eight minutes, we watch him pace side to side. When he abruptly stops, it almost looks like he's staring up the camera. Cut back to the family dinner. All of them are now slumped in their chairs or over the table, paralyzed and whimpering. At this point, the film proceeds much as you would expect. The figure descends, then methodically murders each paralyzed family member. The mother is crushed, bones snapping, when she is forced into the oven, then roasted alive. The father is eviscerated. His intestines force down his throat. Both sons are placed inside the refrigerator, left to experience the agony of asphyxiation via carbon dioxide. The killer notably takes the time to carefully empty the refrigerator's contents before removing the shelves. The daughter is the last and most disturbing. This is on account of the paralytic, presumably placed in their food, partially wearing off. The audience is subjected to an excruciatingly extended scene where she crawls out to the porch, sobbing and screaming for help, only to be dragged back inside by her ankle. 45 minutes later, the film ends. Unsurprisingly, this movie, made available on VHS through Goldhouse Distributors mail order catalog, caught the attention of law enforcement. The video was uncredited and the effects combined with the graining low quality of the footage were good enough to make it seem too authentic. Compounding this problem was that Goldhouse Distributors, operated entirely by a married couple out of their living room, received the film from an anonymous seller. They couldn't prove it wasn't real. Was it though? There were several clues, not the least of which are that no murder like this had been recently reported. The positions of the cameras implied that they were not hidden at all. The timing of the killer's movements in that brief glance at the audience suggested the director's hand. The daughter's complaint of a tummy ache sounded like foreshadowing. The mother's death, while shocking the graphic, had the killer obstructing our view at several key points, points where she could have swapped places with the dummy. The porch cameras used only once at the end. Its placement was extremely convenient. How could the killer have known the daughter would crawl out the back door? But the most compelling argument of all was the simplest. Why? Why would someone go through the trouble of hiding several cameras in a family's house, secretly living in their attic, only to drug them, murder them, and then send the footage to a film distributor for public consumption? Despite these points, Goldhouse distributors removed Sunday dinner from their catalog and handed all extant copies over to the FBI. The intuitive investigation is still ongoing. The movie itself became a footnote in the history of exploitative shock horror. Then, during an interview in 2010 on TromaVision, a podcast for horror movies from various genres, Brian Holdinger, an independent filmmaker, professed his fascination with Sunday dinner. One of the hosts, an actress named Susan White, confessed a similar fascination. During the following discussion, they realized they had drastically different recollections of what happened in the film. To settle the debate, they agreed to bring in their copies and watch them together. They soon discovered that both owned completely different copies. In Holdinger's, it is a mother who lives alone with her two daughters. All three are drugged, butchered, then boiled alive. In White's, it's an elderly couple living alone. They're buried in a pit in their basement as they scream. It wasn't until January of this year they started finding bodies. Whoa. All right, what do you guys think? Is this real or is it too unbelievable? What's up, guys? This is Theron. And tonight, we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user Yero William on June 21st, 2015. It's called White Tail. Let's begin. There's a place in the forest by my town where the deer don't die. Time and time again, hunters talk about it. Eyes full of darting, half-lidded to suspicion. A stretch of roadside south of town, around the Appalachians but not quite in them, where the hunters don't go. You'll hear stories about it if you listen long enough. Rambling tales of deer that keep on living when shot through the heart, the head, splattered on the windshield of a car, shrugging it off and darting back into the forest. Trappers never seem to catch their quarry there. And the number of times I've seen a car viewer off the road in the last 20 years faced with something that didn't seem to catch the headlights quite right. I can't count on one hand. I never believed it, though. A particularly rough patch of forest where the animals are healthier than the weak. Stick-legged things that walk along wherever humans have gone by. Thin black ice on the road, reflecting starlight to go where it shouldn't. They'll blame it on the Indians, but these folk blame them for all sorts of things. Never actually go and look. That's where my uncle differed. He was a savvy hunter and a taxidermist, too. Never really believed in those things. His garage was full of trophies, some of them half-completed. And whenever someone said he couldn't do something, he took it as a challenge. He caught one of the stories and one day made it a goal of his to get one of those deer and bring back its head in the bed of his pickup. We drove there one night in his old beat-up of a dodged Dakota. I was the spotter in the back, hid his drink, told him where to stop. It felt strange stuffing by a roadside and most people just drive past. Out of staters usually took this route, eyes on the road in front of them. On the ground below me were pebbles of all sizes, tire worn, dusted with the black coating of rubber that you see on these older stretches of road. Forest was thick, but didn't look unusual to my eyes. There was a smell though, barely noticeable through the doors of the car. It still pervaded, essentially wafting out of the wall of trees to the east and over the asphalt. If my uncle noticed it, he didn't say. Something was dead nearby was my first thought. Too sour for that, a part of my brain told me. I started to speak up, but a grunt from my uncle told me to keep my mouth shut. He disappeared in the forest and it was an agonizing 15 minutes before he came back out again, slightly agitated. I found something, he said. Tracks, big ins too. He ushered me to follow him and I did over roots and sumac. I didn't know what to look for. I could carry a gun, but I couldn't track. Soon though, clear as day, I saw them. My uncle's flashlight darted across the forest floor, illuminating depressions in the soft earth, cut deep enough to lay a finger in, cooled with water from the recent rain. They leaned along and skinny, close together but far from front to hind, and something had dragged along in the dirt to the side of them, leaving a wavy trail. The spore was wrong in a way I couldn't pinpoint. Uncle identified it though. Hoops weren't splayed. The deer was lighter on its feet than any this size ought to be. It had moved quickly too, given the density of the underbrush. Starving, he said it was, probably too sick to move properly. I didn't buy it. I gripped my rifle more tightly as we continued on. The track stayed prominent, hours sinking much deeper into the mud. The sense was hard to ignore now, although my uncle was indisposed to mention it. It had gained a tinge of sweetness somehow, like burning honey mixed with sewage, water dripped. Our stakeout spot was unwieldy in the lower branches of a stout white oak. My uncle's breath heaved hot on my neck as we watched. A sick deer couldn't travel far, he reasoned, and the head and bragging rights would be worth more than any meat it lacked. Long minutes passed, the hidden moon failing to give any indication of the time. I was about to try and persuade him to call it quits when something moved. My uncle, holding the rifle, didn't hesitate to shoot. A low, dark shot rang out, and whatever had been moving stopped. Quickly, uncle dismounted the branch and started walking. Wherever it was, it was distant, and the flashlight's beam didn't penetrate the low branches. The stench was overpowering now. It seemed to come from nowhere in particular, but the air was warm and still. Holding my breath, I continued after him. In moments, the flashlight hit something, and uncle stopped. A dark figure, laying over in the ground cover as if injured, sat at the edges of the flashlight's beam. It somehow was still shown in silhouette, as if the flashlight hadn't touched it. One eye gleamed, the other shot through with a bullet, and the point where it's antler stopped and the branches began wasn't clear. It breathed slowly, steadily, in a careful, practiced, almost deliberate fashion. The thing that was not a deer got up, turned backward and started walking away. My uncle was silent, quick to follow. At that moment, the forest seemed to melt around me as I ran. Sharp thorns and branches blocked my way where uncle steps were swift. The flashlight in his hands waving wildly. I gave chase, now acutely aware of my lack of gun, and managed to follow him into a small clearing, a place devoid of trees where a creek must have once flowed. His flashlight tilted up, and I stopped in my tracks. The deer stood before us, gazing intently. The right half of its face was caved in, and from the wound, antlers grew, extending up and into the branches above it. They billowed thick and gnarled like frozen smoke. Around it, from either side, heads of deer hung like trophies encrusted down to the eyes in the same dark material, not quite catching the light. I stood delirious with the smell under a canopy covered in the stuff. Hard, finely twisted antlers gnarled together into great burls, half forming the shapes of heads or hooves. Uncle turned my way, looking back to me, smiling. You look sick, what's wrong? It's only a deer. I bolted wild through the night, and woke up sometime later by the side of the road, surrounded by paramedics. My memories for the next few weeks were fuzzy, full of hospital rooms and doctors and tubes. Suicide, they said. Evidence was found in a nearby section of the forest. Chugs of brain matter, splattered by gunshot on nearby trees, a flashlight and some clothes, a couple scattered bones, asked for his body. They said the scavengers must have come after it. My name was clear quickly enough as it went, as they learned what was inside of my head. Some kind of poison, biological in nature, neurotoxic. Said I was lucky I came out with only minor brain damage. Only thing that saved me was that I was found unconscious on the roadside days before his estimated time of death. I sometimes hallucinate now, seeing antlers, trees, hearing the clicks of hooves. They blame it on the brain damage, but these folks blame that for all sorts of things, never bothering to go and look. On warmer days, through the humidity and the still, heavy air, a smell sometimes wafts into my yard from the south, a sweet smell like honey, like taxidermy in a rot. That still in that direction, my uncle awaits among the crown of horns. I take up the scent deeply now as repulsive as it once was and know quietly in my heart that my uncle did not die. Shit, guys, that's something. Do you think that's real? Or is it just this guy's brain damage? Leave your answer in the comments below. What's up, guys? This is Theron, and tonight we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user 2egg on December 13th, 2019. It's called St. Augustine Monster. Let's begin. If you're looking for something to hunt and catch and brag about, this isn't your day. The St. Augustine Monster, a gigantic mound of rubbery flesh washed up on the beach in 1896, gone for a hundred years. Why is it worth writing about? You know, honestly, this is my city now. If I'm going to be operating out of here, there's room for the dead to be remembered, even if the dead is a gigantic octopus. That night, between stranding itself on the shore again, people heard something. Wasn't in the official record, but there were some letters to the editor in the St. Augustine record. It might be a fish rag, but even fish rags can be useful if you're trying to wrap up dead guts and dead ends. It was a song. User old Greg replies. Wasn't this just a whale or something? I mean, it's cool and all, I guess, but I don't see how it's scary. Two egg continues. It was the kids that found it first, out early on their way to school maybe, or on vacation, heading to the beach before the tourists got there and made the sand stink of sunscreen and burnt snowbird. Her body was so heavy and dense that it sank halfway into the beach sand before they stumbled on it. Dead weight. My personal theory, though, is that it wasn't dead, at least not at first. Back in 64, when Dora blew through, the Historical Society lost a lot of records, but I did my homework. It didn't wash up ashore once. After one beaching, she swam back out. I've decided she's a she. I've got no evidence for that, but it's how I prefer the story. Moving on. She was one of the first blobbies to wash ashore in North America. Those blobs of unknown flesh that wash up in California or Virginia every few years. Sometimes they're whale guts. Sometimes they're not. User JoeDakami chimes in. I don't really get why they call unknowable biomasses washing up on our shores blobbies. They're little bits of eldritch abominations and sound about as eerie as a beanie baby. Two egg. Blobbies have been reported washing up on numerous coastlines since 1896, although none have been the same creature as the St. Augustine monster. But it's not unique. I know there were at least two of them. There's a little scuba community in town, tight-knit group, got places to rent out the equipment and everything. I saved up a little bit of cash, cleaning houses and doing laundry, enough for an envelope full of money to be exchanged for a little underwater photography. Didn't give them the rundown of what I was looking for, but they found it. A cave in the seawall far past the beach. The pictures they brought back made me wish octopuses could have bones, evidence, something to remember him by. This was where they made a home before that century got stolen from them. I know that the bits were part of him. The diver didn't agree with me, said it was sand or debris. What does a Norman know? User anti-antipope. Feels a little bit like you're speculating here, but uh, go on. Two egg. Maybe that happened here. Hits her, she left, tried to let it all go. Current won't let her back. Comes back and he's a mess. Maybe he hits her again, squeezes those coils around her tight until her own tentacles are in tatters. I hope not. I hope they were happy, at least for a moment. She wasn't coming back from that beaching. Accidents do happen. The sea brought her back for a moment so she could say goodbye. He waited for a long time. I went out there a few nights ago, my guesstimate for the anniversary. It was like that glowing plant stuff, floating on the water like skim on custard. But it was jellyfish, tons of them, just wriggling and pulsing and glowing. But only for a second. Just for a second. Long enough that I could hear that song, too. I couldn't remember the tune, but it was good. It was enough. Worthy of whatever it was they had. Whoa, blobs on the beach. What do you guys think of all this? Leave your answer in the comments below. What's up guys, this Theron. And tonight we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user Klohlehoop on May 5th, 2015. It's called Escape from Terminus. Let's begin. Before Dungeons and Dragons, before Empire of the Petal Throne, before Chainmail, White Bear and Red Moon, or even Siege of Bowdenburg, there was Escape from Terminus. Considered by some to be the father of modern tabletop role-playing, Escape from Terminus was first distributed by Albion Games in 1965. One year later, the company folded. Of the 700 initial prints, less than 50 were sold. But in the years leading up to the gaming explosions in the 70s, Escape from Terminus became an underground hit. Loose-sleeved binders filled with dog-eared photocopies of its 343-page rulebook made the rounds at V-Con, a Canadian fantasy and sci-fi gaming convention, in 1973, along with perforated cardboard sheets that could be folded into the special dice needed to play. Despite the rabid interests, most of these binders were incomplete. Entire chapters were missing. People desperate to complete the game filled these gaps with homebrew rules. Others would mistake these pages for originals and insert copies into their own rulebooks. Over time, this made it all but impossible to tell which pages were authentic and which were written by overzealous players. Interest in Escape from Terminus waned in the late 70s and early 80s. Simpler and more accessible games like Dungeons and Dragons, Tunnels and Trolls, Rollmaster, Rose and Popularity. Nevertheless, it retained a small and active audience who sought to outwit the cruel and relentless Minotaur. The game is set in a sprawling complex with hexagon-shaped chambers, connected by doors on all six sides. The players navigate this infinite maze of hexes one move at a time, adding each room to their maps as they go. The content of a hex is determined by rolling dice and consulting reference tables. A room can contain traps, items, messages, rations, even the bodies of previous players. With no combat mechanics, the game focuses on exploration and survival. But what made Escape from Terminus unique was how you played it. Alone, with no companions and no dungeon master. Once you died, either from a trap, starvation or the Minotaur, the hex you perished in was marked. The map was then passed on to another player who started again. When entering a room that had been explored previously by someone else, new reference tables simulated the passage of time and the actions of the Minotaur. You could also leave behind items for the next player or provide hints written in chalk. These messages were included with the map in sealed envelopes marked by the hex's number. After years of playing, each map developed a life of its own. Players recognized landmarks and paid their respect in hexes where previous runs met their untimely end. Others created elaborate strategies tailored to the layout of their map. Rooms could contain dozens of messages that had accumulated over decades of play. Even the Minotaur's behavior felt unique to each game as if its personality was dictated by the map in which it lived. Eventually, the sheer size of the map required multiple sheets with meticulous notes regarding how each part fit together. In some cases, it grew so large that it could no longer be shipped from one player to the next. The longest ongoing session from Escape from Terminus started in 1974 between a group of friends in Minnesota. It was then passed on to their friends who passed it on to theirs. In 1985, the map grew so large that it had to be moved into the basement of a local game shop. Before the last player vanished in 2008, the map allegedly included well over 200,000 hexes and 600 messages, only a handful of which were ever even read. In 2005, a web forum, Terminus Velocity, was established as a hub for Escape from Terminus players eager to beat the game. Participants scanned every map and rule book they could find. They then combed through gigabytes of handwritten data and produced the first attempts at an optimum strategy. Everything in Escape from Terminus is resolved via complex mechanic that uses six seven-sided dice in addition to a coin flip, producing the probability range of an inverted bell curve. The result is checked against several hundred reference tables with different outputs. Modifiers, plus or minus, are applied to the role according to circumstances, items, and even adjacent hexes. The game ends when someone finds the escape hex, a hex containing the stairs out. Since each hex is randomly generated, optimizing Escape from Terminus meant maximizing the chances of spawning this hex. But there was a problem, the Minotaur. Every time someone came close to spawning the hex, they fell prey to Escape from Terminus's unseen nemesis. Either via a trap it set, a door it locked, or an object it destroyed. Maximizing the chance of an escape hex also maximized the chance of the Minotaur's presence. Despite years of frantic attempts, most players eventually recognized that spawning an exit and not dying was virtually impossible. Once players realized the game was effectively unwinnable, most of the community went silent. The web form unexpectedly dropped offline in 2012, taking most of what we know about Escape from Terminus with it. An incomplete rulebook or box with pages from an abandoned campaign will occasionally show up at the yard sale somewhere. But otherwise, Escape from Terminus has become an obscure footnote in the history of tabletop games. One last thing, two days prior to going offline, Terminus velocity experience a brief flurry of activity. A new thread managed to generate more replies in 24 hours than every previous thread combined. The post in question. Hey guys, Randall Petrov's son here. He was part of Albion Games in the 60s. I know he would be so honored by and proud of everything you've done here. You all have gone far beyond what he and Albion ever hoped and gave new life to the Terminus story. It's so exciting to read all the different variations. I wanted to ask though, whose idea was the Minotaur? Okay, wow, what? What do you mean whose idea was the Minotaur? That's crazy. What do you guys think of all this? Leave your answer in the comments below. What's up guys, this is Theron and tonight we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiki. Tonight's story was started by user Spectral Sprite on August 12th, 2009. It's called The Clock at St. Claude's. Let's begin. Despite popular belief, the building is still occupied. I've come to be on a first name basis with a couple of the men who guard the property so I won't make their jobs any more difficult by giving out the name of the location. Still, those of you who are from the area will know the place I'm talking about and anyone else dedicated enough can probably find it with some clever Googling. Suffice to say that somewhere in the United States there was an orphanage. Let's call it St. Claude's Orphan Asylum. Before it was an orphanage it was a boarding house and before then it was a would-be dormitory. Today the building is the well spring in which our entire local mythology flows. Most of it is bullshit, of course. After all, it's a spooky old orphanage. The place probably would have attracted stories even if nothing bad ever really happened there. The fact that bad things did happen there is just the icing on the cake. It's the perfect source for campfire fodder. I can attest to that. My first exposure to the St. Claude's mythos was at a sleepover in third grade told in hushed tones amidst blankets and flashlights. In recent years I began to wonder how much of this lore was fact and how much was fiction. Obviously the tales of ghosts and curses and whatnot would be difficult to verify. But what about the human horrors? I decided to do some research. Right off the bat I was shocked to find that several of the most lurid atrocities attributed to St. Claude's weren't just matters of public record. They were practically mundane by virtue of how many similar cases you can find in the history of our country's orphanages. Based on everything I've read I can say with no exaggeration that for most of the 20th century orphanages could murder children with no effort or consequence. There were countless acts of cruelty committed on the grounds of St. Claude's. Every case of abuse is a tragedy and I don't mean to diminish the significance of any injustice by excluding it, but exclude I must. For today's purposes we won't linger on the beatings, the molestation, the daily humiliations or the alarming number of accidents involving stairways and window sales and electrical sockets and pointed chaps of wood. Many orphanages have been places of cruelty, but today I'm gonna tell you why St. Claude's was fucking weird. Next post. The first thing you need to understand is the building itself. In its earliest life it was intended to be a dormitory for a privately funded college, but the private funder went broke and the project abruptly ended. Still the dormitory was mostly finished and a couple of enterprising businessmen finished up the property to use it as a boarding house. One key feature remained incomplete though. The clock on the facade. The face was set up and ready to go. Numerals embossed and polished, but there were no hands to be found. The issue seems to stem from a miscommunication between the clockmaker and the architect. Normally there's a shaft which connects the hands on the exterior with the clockwork inside the actual building, but the shaft delivered to the site was too short to bridge the gap and too wide to fit through the opening in the wall. The clockmaker and the architect each claimed each other for the mistake and demanded further payment to fix it. So naturally, nothing else was done about it until the Catholic Church paid to have the clock face covered by brickwork when they bought the property two decades later. As for the clock's internal mechanisms, never removed. The second thing you need to understand is the children. Despite its name, St. Claude's Orphan Asylum did not how it was mentally ill children. What's more, the children weren't even orphans in most cases, but simply extracted from troubled families by the church or government after their parents were deemed lacking in morals or money. Children up to the age of 13 were accepted in St. Claude's, but sometimes stayed through early adulthood if they had nowhere else to go. Adoptions were rare, and when they did happen, the happy new parents were often said to look disturbingly familiar. The sisters taught the children employable skills such as sewing, although actual employment was not permitted while under the sisters' care. Not that they opposed child labor, of course. The children were still expected to earn their keep. Idleness is a sin after all. Whenever an enterprising scamp would sneak off to work and odd jobs in town, their wages were confiscated without fail. The sisters always knew, and the sisters always punished. Of course, punishments didn't always require an actual offense. The children of St. Claude's had a reputation, you see. Most had come from other orphanages who were ill-equipped to deal with that particular child. The sisters attributed these children's issues to spiritual matters, generational sin usually, though satanic influence wasn't out of the question. Survivors have recounted tales of exorcisms where the accused was physically restrained for hours, sometimes days. In one case, a child is said to have been tied feet and hands to a brass light fixture and fed meals by their peers by use of a pole. One former inmate of St. Claude's recalled an incident where a five-year-old girl was accused of black magic, a nun claimed to have seen the girl levitating, and when the girl embarrassed her by failing to reproduce the effect for the other sisters, she took the child and threw out a second-story window. The girl reportedly screamed, catch me, catch me, as she fell. By the time the witness made it outside, the little girl was nowhere to be found. The sisters simply said that she had gone home to be with her parents. Fear was a constant companion for the children of St. Claude's. All punishments and reprisals were the stuff of nightmares, but the one that brought me to write this today is the winding of the clock. The foyer of St. Claude's takes up both stories and has a curved staircase and a small balcony on the second floor to give the impression of grandeur. Unfortunately, the clock was built on the central gable directly above the front entrance, which means there's no way to access it directly from below. Instead, one asked to traverse a narrow raised attic that protrudes along the center of the building from front to back like a spine. The entrance to the attic was, of course, at the other end of the building. Almost every single day, a child would be forced to climb into the attic, travel the full length of the spine, and wind a clock that had no hands, no face, and no bells. On all the other days, the child would still be there from the day before. Final post. Urban exploration of an abandoned space is technically considered a form of trespassing in most cases. On the other hand, trespassing in an occupied space is hardly ever considered urban exploration, and it always struck me as a double standard. Don't get me wrong, there was no force entry involved. I'm not a thug. All I had to do was become buddies with one of the guards. After we got to know each other, I explained the history of the place and assured him I only wanted to look around, and he gave me an hour. I walked through the front door. St. Claude's is a clergy house nowadays. The only folks who live there are a few old white men who go to bed before 10 p.m. The floors are creaky, but the rooms are close enough together they just blame each other for the noise, so getting to the attic was a piece of cake. Getting through it was the hard part. There was crap everywhere. Old furniture, mountains of bibles, old Christmas decorations, all of it ancient, all of it ruined by water damage and infested with rot. Ceiling was lower than expected, just a little under five feet of clearance. Explain why they sent the kids up to do it. Walking more than two dozen yards while hunched over would be bad enough on its own, let alone we have to constantly stop and crawl over a moldy love seat or a box of tinsel and spiders. The far end of the attic drops down under a couple of steps leading up to the gable, which allowed me to stand up straight again. The clock mechanism itself isn't terribly large, at least not to an adult. About four feet tall, roughly the size of a chest of drawers. A skeletal frame wraps around the base like the edges of a box, leaving every tooth on every cog fully exposed. To wind it, one must have fixed a detachable crank to the top of the device and give it a couple dozen turns. Now if you're about five feet tall, this is no problem. Unfortunately, most of the kids at St. Claude's were under 10 years old. Let me walk you through it. You're eight years old. The nun threatens to send you to bed without supper or worse if you don't wind this damned clock. You're sent up to the pitch dark attic with only a box of matches, maybe an oil lamp if you're lucky. You're too short to reach the crank, so what do you do? You climb up onto the frame and kneel over it. The crank is stiff and heavy. You can't see shit and you're shaken like a leaf because you're fucking terrified. The crank hits a hitch. You lean on it with all your weight. It suddenly gives, but you're not ready for it. Your foot slips. Your leg slides between the gears. The heavy clockwork snaps your body in three different places as it pulls you in. More than a dozen children are said to have died this way. No bodies were ever found, but there were remains. One survivor told me that she was put on clock duty a few days after a little blonde girl had vanished. And sure enough, she found a knot of wispy golden hair snared around a sprocket. She took it for evidence and hid it in her pillow, but a sister discovered it two years later. Having seen the clock myself, I can't quite tell you whether I think it's as deadly as the story say. The machine and area around it are clean. No blood or hair or even rust to be found. The teeth on some of the gears look quite sharp and there are certainly a lot of pinch points, but it doesn't strike me as a meat grinder for children. I guess my verdict is that any child who fell in probably wouldn't be reduced to a pulp, but they would definitely come out broken. Speaking of which, I made a discovery, three of them actually. The first is that there's a ladder right behind the clock mechanism. It's wedged in tight, not like someone stored it there by accident. It's clean too. The second is that there's a conspicuous series of seams in the wood beneath the machine that form a small rectangle, just big enough to fit a small adult through. The third discovery, and the reason why I'm sharing this with you all today, is that it's still ticking. Someone is still winding the clock, but okay, wow, that's it. That is weird. All right, so what do you guys think? Is this clock eating kids? Are the nuns weird or the clergy weird? I don't know. Leave your answer in the comments below. What's up guys, this is Theron, and tonight we're taking another dive into the Para-Watch Wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user CrewTime on April 23rd, 2015. It's called The Death of AJ Fader. Let's begin. The death of AJ Fader and of their friends remains one of the Pacific Northwest's most puzzling mysteries. Despite clear photographic evidence of the presumed killer, he remains unidentified. They were six recent college graduates from the University of Washington, Seattle, class of 2003. One, Matt Mantell, had graduated a year early through a combination of AP credits, summer classes, and a heavy course load. After graduating, he moved back home to Eureka, California. The other five, AJ Fader, Blake Thorburn, Lisa Tran, Liv Benjamin, and Zach O'Grady, all graduated the following year. After graduation, they planned a road trip down from Seattle to Eureka in AJ's 1997 forerunner, spending some time on the Oregon coast. According to Matt, the plan had been for the group to drive from Seattle to Portland. They'd spend the night there and then spend a few days lazily going down the coast. They weren't in any particular rush, and Matt would have been busy with work if the group had arrived as soon as possible. The plan had been to camp on the coast in some redwood forests and generally take it easy after a hectic senior year. It was supposed to be a safe trip, but AJ brought their gun just in case. As far as anyone can tell, the trip had no problems for the first few legs. The group arrived in Portland without a hitch, staying with a friend of AJ's in the city. They visited a few bars on the night of their arrival, and a few parks the next day before leaving in the afternoon. Throughout this time, they kept in close communication with Matthew, letting them know their progress throughout. Next post. Things take a turn for the worse after leaving Portland. The group gets dinner in Tillamook and then leaves for Nags Beach Campground, a small and infrequently used campsite about an hour from Tillamook, close to the water. They pick the campsite for its isolation, hoping they wouldn't be bothered. It is off the beaten path and rarely receives visitors. Often, campers find themselves the only people there. However, they are not alone. On a call to Matt at 8.13 p.m., Alisa mentions another camper at the campsite at the same time as them. Nags Beach has large enough that two groups can spread apart, and on this call, Alisa only mentions seeing the campfire of the other party through the trees. She didn't spend long talking about their fellow camper, choosing to discuss the day and the other features of Nags Beach. It is unknown what happens between 8.19 p.m. when Alisa finishes her call and 11.47 p.m. when AJ leaves Matt another voicemail. Matt had fallen asleep. Throughout this second call, Alisa, Liv, and Zach can be heard talking in the background, having their own quieter conversation. AJ starts. Hey Matt, just a heads up, wanna let you know how our plans are going. We got into a bit of a, well, thing, a fight with one of the other campers at Nags Beach. The only other camper, in fact. Felt it was best if we just headed out after that. Not physical, but could've maybe. At least it can be heard in the background. Why would he say something like that? How could he have known? Zach in the background replies, I'm less concerned about what he said and more about what he was. I don't think, and then it trails off unintelligibly. AJ continues. I'm not really sure what our plans are for the night. Blake is the one driving. Uh, Blake, where are we headed? Liv in the background can be heard. Did you see his eyes? Did you get a good look at his eyes? Blake responds to AJ. Anywhere that's away from that freak. I don't know about you, but I'm scared of him. Not just in the normal way, which is bad enough. But you saw him too, you get it. Alisa in the background. No, it was too dark to make anything out. Just saw shadows. AJ, so yeah, not sure where we'll end up. I'll let you know where we are. Give you a recap of tonight when we get to Eureka. Zach in the background. It wasn't that dark, Alisa. I could see yours just fine. His warrant. The call abruptly ends before Zach finishes. Next post. The five sleep in their car in a Walmart parking lot that night as all campsites had closed before they left Nags Beach. Regardless, they had no further problems that day. They stayed at their next campsite, Harris Beach, without issue, remaining in contact with Matthew. The group gets a late lunch in a Crescent City eye hop and are recorded on a security camera. While the group is eating, a man wearing sunglasses enters behind them and the group instantly freezes. There's a brief moment where the two look directly at each other without moving or reacting before the man is taken to a table. While his back is turned, the group rushes out, hastily throwing a 50 onto the table, not enough to cover their meal. Matt gets another voicemail from AJ, not long after the five flee the eye hop. This time, Matt is at work. Hey Matt, AJ here. The guy from the other night at the Nags Beach campground followed us, we think. He walked into the diner we were eating at so we left as fast as we could get out. Not sure how we followed us, but I was worried this would happen. Saw it coming. We're going to take a detour in from the coast, see if he's still following us then. Still going to Eureka, just by a different way. Call you soon. Final post. However, AJ did not call back soon. This voicemail was the last communication that Matt would ever receive from his friends. After making this call, the group drives away from the coast into the heart of California. It's hard to guess at what their travel plans were at this point, but the most logical is that they plan to drive north on 199, take grayback road to 96, and then go to Eureka, a route that adds four hours to their travel time. Their reasons for this much longer route are unknown, as are their sudden lack of calls. The next sighting comes late on the night of the fourth day of their trip, caught in the outside security camera of a gas station in Klamath Falls, Oregon. At this point, they've been driving in the opposite direction of Eureka for three hours, and there's no path they could be on that leads to Eureka. The four-runner drives up and A.J., Alisa, Blake, and Liv exit. Zack is nowhere to be seen, not even in the car. The gas station camera is in black and white and doesn't capture sound. Blake and Alisa have an argument and A.J. and Liv join in. A.J. gestures to their gun, sitting on the dashboard throughout. It lasts for a few minutes before they get back into the car and drive off. Two minutes later, another car, this one a 1969 Ford Mustang. It has no license plates front or back. A man exits, still wearing sunglasses in the dark. This man inspects the ground near the pump used, and then suddenly jerks his head to the camera. For almost a minute, he stares directly at the viewer. He then proceeds to calmly buy gas and takes off in the same direction as the group. A.J.'s four-runner is found abandoned just outside of the Sheldon National Antelope Refuge, almost 200 miles away from Klamath Falls, five days after they left Seattle. Matt had reported them missing on the evening of the fourth day, but nobody could have expected to find them that far away. As best as can be told, the five drove continuously from the station without stopping until they ran out of gas and pulled off on the side of the road. A highway patrol officer found the car stopped on the side of the road and pulled over to investigate. Inside, he found three dead bodies, Blake, Alisa and Liv, each stabbed to death. Their eyes had been all carved out of their skulls, nowhere to be found. Zach was, and to this day still is, missing. Each had been propped up in the car seats, seatbelts buckled in. Leading off from around the side of the four-runner were two trails of footprints. The officer followed them, although he noted one stopped 20 feet before the other and turned back. The other led straight to the corpse of A.J. Fader, clutching their gun and facing the direction of the road. Cause of death, a self-inflicted bullet wound shot by A.J. through their own right eye. Holy shit, that's too creepy. That can't be real, can it? What do you guys think of all this? What's up guys, this is Theron and tonight we're taking another dive into the para-watcher wiki. Tonight's episode was started by user Teethbrush on August 22nd, 2019. It's called Barnes from Nowhere. Let's begin. This is a weird one. Has anyone had any strange experiences in Barnes? I was driving through Iowa and saw something burning by the side of the road. It was a barn. I could make out the truss framing and a few splotches of red paint clinging to the charring boards. It was mostly gone already. I was going to stop and see why this barn was on fire, someone could have swerved into it after all. Then I saw someone in robes watching it burn, just staring at it. I decided real quick not to stop. I'm at a rest stop now trying to find a gas station. There's another barn next to the place, pick-related. Thoughts? At this point, user Carniball responds. I think I can top that. I used to live on a farm, a quaint little place in Iowa when I was a youngling, pick-related. I was only with my father then. Mom died a little before and dad thought that farm life would be a good change of pace. Good 300 acres of annually cycled corn and soybeans, kind of small. A couple sheep too. Pretty boring when you're off work. You'd have to make the most of what's there. Memorize all the divots, the boulders, where the blackberry bushes were. It becomes a kingdom of sorts. Then the barn showed up. I remember waking up notably later than normal to my father on the phone. He was yelling at who I assumed was our neighbor. Dad was pissed at some construction project on our land they'd done. I didn't pay much attention to this at the time. They always butted heads like bulls back then. So I went outside to dick around as usual and as someone who had memorized every last inch of all those fields and beans and rocks and trees, I was not expecting to see a barn. It was planted neatly into the soybean field as if it was a crop itself. Didn't look neat though. For something that appeared so recently, it was fairly worn down. Paint peeling off withered wood, black shingles clinging onto a porous roof. I couldn't see inside. Light just didn't enter at all. I never really went in the thing for how curious I was, that was pretty unusual. My dad wanted that neighbor to take it down and refuse to do it himself. My father was a very stubborn man, wanted things done the way he wanted with no room for error. He didn't want me near it either. It was too rickety and built by a man with a block of wood for a thinker. I kept my distance most of the time. I still noticed a few things about the barn. You know how it was all neatly rode with the crops before? Well, the day after it popped up, that barn was slightly off. I knew I wasn't crazy then, so I used my noggin to conduct some advanced science. I put a stick in the mud at one of the corners of the barn and waited to see if it would get farther away. Namedless to say, after a couple of days, I really knew I wasn't crazy. It was turning towards the sheep pen. One of our sheep disappeared soon after, but part of the fence had been knocked outward, made it look like it had escaped. Dad didn't believe that one bit and thought the scapegoat neighbor was to blame again. I kept telling him to check in the barn, but he refused. He didn't want to go in either, just no convincing him. The sheep kept going and my dad would blame the neighbor over and over. It was a vicious cycle, with a very clear way to stop it. Each time I would plead for him to just go into the barn and he would refuse. He had a look in his eyes that I had never seen before. It was strange, subtle, but noticeable. After half the flock had gone, he finally cracked. My dad went and grabbed a rifle and a lantern in the dead of night. I didn't know what he's expecting to shoot in there. He went up to the barn, body shaking enough to nearly cause him to pull the trigger. I could tell what that look was now. He went in and the dark of the barn consumed him whole. Lanternlight faded fast and devoid. I heard muttering, clattering, the occasional swear, suspense, stretch time thin. After what felt like forever, he ran out in a sweat. Blood caked on the bottoms of his shoes and tipped his fingers. I could tell it wasn't his. He threw the lantern into the barn. A fire dripped onto the paint, but dried quick. Now, my dad's a rational man. He would have known that whatever fire he lit on that barn would spread to the soybeans. He wasn't stupid, but that didn't stop him from getting the blow torch from the garage. It didn't start a flame at first. When it did though, it went fast. It was already in shambles. A good fire is all it takes to turn the derelict to ruin. Around then I was told to go to the house and stay in my room as the fire was getting too wild. Then it started screaming. It was an animal, just too articulate for that. However, something about it didn't seem quite human either. I could tell it was the barn. I just know it was. It evolved into choking a while and trailed to a charred rasp. I didn't know if I fell asleep that night, but I know those rasp faded by the morning. All that was left of the barn was four rotted sheep skeletons and heaps of charred flesh. But all that flesh couldn't have come from four sheep. We covered the remains up with dirt and that was the end of it really. But here's the thing. There's so many abandoned barns in the Midwest from a financial farm crisis in the 80s. So many people lost their jobs. Their homes. But more importantly here, they're barns. I wonder how many of them are real sometimes. Sometimes I feel bad about barn burning because most of them are just barns. But if you heard those screams, you'd wanna burn them too. Wow. Okay, shh. That's creepy as hell. That can't be real, right guys? What's up guys? This is Theron. And tonight we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user Sergeant Bones on November 6th, 2012. It's called I-Man. Let's begin. The original trilogy of Star Wars films has spawned one of the most dedicated and passionate fan bases of all time. And what sets this particular pack of nerds apart from the others is the borderline obsessive documenting and cataloging of every extra or background character who appears on screen. Every character, regardless of screen time or plot relevance, has earned themselves a name, a fictional backstory, and sometimes the design is visually intriguing enough, an action figure. But there's one character you won't find on a Wookiepedia page, priced exorbitantly high in a collector's guide or lurking in the background. And if you do, God help you. I-Man. It's a name unfamiliar to even the most knowledgeable of Star Wars fans, but mention it to the small collective who are aware of I-Man's non-existence and watch as their faces light up with a unique mixture of passion, weariness, and fear. Each account is as personal as the next, but every one of them is laced with a bitter sense of self-doubt, delivered with the cadence of a wise-end storyteller telling a story for the thousandth time. I-Man is the name given to a background character who supposedly appeared in the original theatrical cut of the 1983 film Return of the Jedi. His design is consistent, a large muscle-bound Cyclops covered in hair and a burlap sack. Compared to other extras in the Jabba's Palace sequence, I-Man is uncharacteristically simple. He's not a puppet or an elaborate animatronic, nor does he sport the colorful and imaginative design motifs of other palace denizens. By all means, I-Man is out of place and rightfully so, because I-Man does not exist. Every I-Man account starts out the same. A young boy between the ages of five to nine watches Return of the Jedi in theaters after months of anticipation. They enjoy the film, but become particularly vested in the various aliens and creatures inhabiting Jabba's Palace, specifically the Cyclops. The roles that I-Man supposedly fills in the film vary between accounts, but only add to the intrigue of this mythology. Some claim he only stood in the background alongside other extras, with brief focus shots like the ones given to the other extras. Others remember a scene where I-Man accosts protocol droid C-3PO, who is acting as Jabba the Hutt's translator. I-Man proceeds to brutally dismember C-3PO as Jabba and the palace denizens cheer on, some catching pieces of the droids plating that fly through the air as the Cyclops continues his assault. The alien takes time to chew on the droids' wires before unceremoniously ripping C-3PO's head off with his mouth and swallowing. This lasts for an extended period of time with no musical score and is never referenced again. The film proceeds as normal, with C-3PO apparently being reconstructed by the next scene as if nothing happened. In the weeks that follow, witnesses become fixated on the creature, with I-Man receiving the same fearful curiosity children often exhibit towards movie monsters, but that would soon change. Attempts to bring up the scary Cyclops in Jabba's palace appears, even ones that were present at the same showing, result in confusion, accounts detailing the C-3PO scene are laughed off at playground, and I-Man witnesses learn not to talk about their secret obsession. Witnesses draw pictures of I-Man, incorporate the creature into their play sessions, then open every pack of tops trading cards hoping to get a glimpse of their one-eyed muse in the same way that they add the other background characters. As time goes on, I-Man creeps into their subconscious, usually in the back of their minds, and always in their dreams. No one ever forgets the dreams. The progression of an I-Man dream varies between accounts, but certain attributes remain consistent. They take place in a dark and seemingly infinite location, like a forest or a basement. There's a nauseating sense of fear and dread. Other children are present. Simple actions like walking or running become near impossible. Limbs feeling like they're tied to cinder blocks. I-Man is always present. Hiding behind trees, doors are in the background. The children explore the dream world with I-Man never far behind. When a child draws verbal attention to the stalking Cyclops, the creature will lunge out and devour the child before returning to the shadows. This happens for what feels like hours. Upon waking, it's like they never fell asleep. These dreams occur repeatedly for months, every single night. During the day, I-Man becomes an omnipresent background character in their life, hiding in the dark corners of a room or under the bed, but they remind themselves that he isn't real, that I-Man is just a guy in a costume or a puppet, and then they fall asleep. For most I-Man accounts, that's where the story ends. After hundreds of vivid lifelike nightmares, I-Man suddenly disappears. They don't think about I-Man for decades before stumbling on a forum post about identifying the Cyclops from Star Wars. It all comes flooding back. One forum post built upon another, from website to website, witnesses began connecting with each other and forming tightly-nipped private communities and chat rooms to discuss this phenomenon. If you know where to look, you'll find them. If you post about I-Man, they'll find you. No consensus has ever been reached through these discussions, nor any evidence of I-Man's existence found. All that remains are the harrowing stories told by an aging user base on a private IRC server, and that's all there will ever be. When it comes to I-Man, closure is not an option. But I was never satisfied with that. My story is different, and for the first time I will tell it. Where I branch off from the other witnesses is that I saw something tangible. My history with I-Man is, as far as I could tell, entirely unique to myself. I never saw Jedi in theaters. I saw it on a laser disc in 1986, and I can assure you there was no I-Man. Now for context, Star Wars was well on its way out in 1986. People had moved on, kids especially, and the thought of any new content seemed like a pipe dream. This, however, was great news for me because that meant all of the toys were on deep discount. Every Saturday I'd go to the toy store and pick two figures from the giant bin of unsold Star Wars toys. This worked out conveniently well for both me and minotauriously cheap parents. Regardless, I was happy. But one Saturday, as I sifted around the bin like usual, examining the card backs and trying to decide whether I needed another stormtrooper, something caught my eye. It was a figure I had never seen before, and I was pretty certain I had seen them all. You probably guessed it by now. It was I-Man, staring at me in his 3.75-inch glory. Now, as any avid Star Wars collector will tell you, an action figure of a random no-name background character is a pretty common occurrence, so seeing a character I wasn't particularly familiar with wasn't anything new. For every Luke Skywalker, there was a squid head or a walrus man. But this figure was different. He unnerved me. From the photo on the card back, he looked like he was from Java's palace, and while I had a particular affinity for hut goons, I just couldn't bring myself to buy him. He was way too creepy, and quite frankly, I didn't need that in my toy box. I picked up another stormtrooper and headed out. As soon as I got out of the store, I began thinking about I-Man. In fact, he scared me so much that I debated never watching Return of the Jedi again, in fear that that one-eyed bastard would be staring at me from the corner of my screen. Nonetheless, my fears were alleviated when I went back the next Saturday and I-Man was nowhere to be seen. I breathed a sigh of relief and didn't think about my one-week bogeyman for 20 years. That's right, no dreams, nothing. I simply forgot about him. Then I saw a post on a sci-fi forum that made my jaw drop. A user was asking about the Cyclops from Java's palace, and the entirety of the thread had it out for this guy. Pages and pages of arguing that there was no Cyclops in Java's palace, while OP insisted there was. It came flooding back to me. The store, the figure, the fear. I jumped in and vehemently defended OP, flashed my nerd cred by mentioning that the Cyclops was named I-Man, and Kenner made him into a toy during the final years of the line. Another user blatantly told me I was wrong, and obviously confusing prune face for this non-existent I-Man character. I told him they were wrong, but when multiple users began telling me the figure didn't exist, I decided to do my own research. I must have scoured every collecting fan site on the internet. I looked over the official Kenner checklist hundreds of times, no I-Man. I then assumed a figure from another toy line must have ended up in the Star Wars bin, and my faulty memory filled in the details, but no. There was no toy that resembled what I saw that day. A couple days later, I got a PM on the sci-fi forum, inviting me to a private chat room. I told my story and the rest is history. That was six years ago. Since then, I've been fascinated with I-Man and the tightly knit community that has sprung up around him. There were only a couple hundred of us, but we had become pretty close. I-Man, being an exhausted topic, became less and less of a focus over time, sans the indoctrination of a new member to our little clan. We got to know each other, talking about our lives, our families, hobbies, whatever. We were friends, and as cliched as it sounds, the I-Man community was like a second family. All of us were nerds in one way or another, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that even I-Man himself was given an irony-tinged lining as time went on. The embodiment of childhood fear and uncertainty that hung over our heads like a one-eyed Damocles turned into a little more than a calling card. His presence immortalized on hashtag wears I-Man coffee mugs and t-shirts. I even received a custom I-Man action figure, who looked as terrifying as I remembered him. The next step for any community like this would logically be a meetup. That's right. The I-Man fandom decided that we would get together at one of the larger Star Wars conventions. I was ecstatic. It was only a two-hour drive, and I would finally get the chance to meet the people I'd been talking to for the better half of a decade. I got to the convention and immediately began searching for the hall we had rented out, a large sign saying two eyes-only police was stationed out front. I entered, expecting the same light-hearted atmosphere and banter from the chat room to carry over, but I was dead wrong. Nothing could prepare me for how quiet the room was. Around 40 people, simply staring at each other. Some were aimlessly pacing, and others engaged in hush conversations from a corner. I found our organizer and asked what was happening. What he told me felt like a punch to the gut from I-Man himself. A few people recognized each other. Forest, basement, convention hall. Okay, holy shit guys, that's too creepy. That can't be real, right? Sup guys, this is Theron, and tonight we're taking another dive into the Parawatch Wiki. Tonight's thread was started by user Sarah Tonin-Sez on June 1st, 2020. It's called MK Whiteout and how the CIA tried to kill pride. Let's begin. There's a content warning listing institutional homophobia and transphobia, sex crimes, and human experimentation. MK Ultra is the most infamous of the CIA's experimentation programs, but it's not the only one. Recently declassified CIA documents reference projects such as MK Smilodon, MK Waldo, and MK Isolda, all of which are woefully incomplete. MK Smilodon got dismissed by the news as the CIA's X-Files project, because any project that deals with trying to control the weather using human conduits is going to be called that by anyone not in the know. One thing that got largely overlooked by the news was something called MK Whiteout. By the late 60s, the MK project was starting to lose funding as the US government became more concerned about the space race and how badly the Vietnam War was going. But one place that Nixon wanted to focus was on oppressing minorities. The entire reason he refused to legalize POT was because he wanted more excuses for African-Americans and hippies to be arrested. And when it came to the fledging LGBT community, he was more than willing to turn a blind eye to the CIA testing using pride as a testing ground for natrosity. May 1971, Stonewall had taken place less than two years before and CIA director Richard Helms gives a green light for MK Whiteout, a biological warfare initiative that was to use, and I quote, infectious mutagenic agents to attempt to cure homosexual psychopathy for the good of the American people. Their so-called cure, a hybrid of botulism and something known as the Carpathian agent. June 1972, San Francisco. Several things happened over the course of the week leading up to the city's first official pride parade on the 25th. On the night of the 18th, Toad Hall, one of the city's oldest gay bars featured in the 2008 biopic Milk is broken into. Nothing is stolen, but the owners at the time are paranoid enough to dispose of all their booze after they find a Budweiser cap on a Miller bottle, clear evidence of tampering. Early that same day, a so-called hair fairy, an individual that might be considered transgender in the modern day, identified in a police report as Barry Dent is arrested for public indecency. What transpired in the next three hours is unclear, but Dent was never seen again. Her cellmate is found clutching a knife with blood matching Dent's type on it, Sam's throat and left arm. Said, cellmate's identity was not disclosed at the time, but the individual who came to collect their body is listed as Mr. Brighton, now known to be a common CIA cryptonym for cleaner agents during the Nixon administration. Starting on the 19th, three men hand out pamphlets advertising the Pride event around Castro. The pamphlets are printed on paper that has an odd texture with sharper creases. Several people get paper cuts from touching them and fall ill with strange symptoms. The stud, another famous gay bar is broken into on the 19th. The attempted vandalist fired upon by the owner and wounded. A black town car picks them up a block away. San Francisco Police Department does nothing about it, naturally. The 20th brings reports of over 60 different incidents of apparent botulism poisoning from across the city. All individuals who are considered queers, hair fairies, homos, whatever derogatory term you've heard, they use it to describe them. The police figured a few dead was probably a good thing and did nothing. Doctors who treated them managed to deliver antitoxin and noted that several of them had, quote, abnormal hair growth patterns that were not exhibited in normal human beings. A commonality among them is that they all got drinks or knew someone who was at the Wild Side West, which is, you guessed it, a gay bar, albeit one outside of Castro. Needlemarks are found on several of those admitted into hospitals across the city. At San Francisco General, a toxicology screen finds the same unknown drug in five different patients. One of the doctors there has a contact in the Swiss healthcare company, Roche, who confirms that it is a drug they patented a decade earlier, not yet on the market. The drug is fluned atrasopam, better known today as Ruffinol. On the 21st, the majority of the patients are discharged. That night, the SFPD is flooded with calls of wild animals being seen and heard throughout the city. They investigate one around Fisherman's Wharf and find a metal light pole bent in half with scratch marks all the way around the top as if whatever bent it over literally spun around it first. The morning of the 22nd, a young woman known only today as Millie finds one of the pamphlet men preparing for his day. She finds him coating the pamphlets with a brush covered in an unknown substance and gathers a mob to chase him out of the district. He reportedly jumps into a black town car bound for the north. This same man is seen again in the vicinity of the city lights bookstore in the red light district. Some people have speculated the existence of a CIA bolt hole in this part of the city. The night of the 22nd brings more calls of animal sightings. A few fortune tellers near Presidio Heights draw hazma sigils on their doors. Charms meant to ward off evil creatures. Gunshots are heard around the Castro district in the early hours of the 23rd of June. A wrecked town car is found in an alley in the neighboring Mission District upside down and on fire. Locals claim ignorance, despite evidence of blood and torn clothing being found on the corner of 20th and Castro Street. In the end, whatever malefactor was trying to sabotage San Frans first pride failed. The parade went on without a hitch, but not without weird things happening. Several people in the crowd reported seeing animalistic silhouettes on the buildings above the street only to look again and see people just waving at the parade. MK Whiteout was shuttered on July 4th, 1972. The majority of documentation related to it was incinerated but not all of it. Among the MK Whiteout team was a virologist from the Socialist Republic of Romania and his files were the ones that were recently declassified. The rest of this comes from my great aunt who lived through a large part of this. The Romanian's files state that the original intent of the project was to create a hyper virulent botulism spreadable only through fluid transmissions ensuring minimal contact with a non-psychotic populace. This is probably the reason behind the Carpathian agents inclusion in the hybridized bacterium as it is stated to be only transmissible through the contact of fluids on exposed wet tissue. Testing didn't go as intended. The Carpathian agent is a mutagen and being infected with it results in physiological changes among them being abnormal keratin growth. Hair and nails grow at super fast rates and from what I've read the nails are strong enough to tear into aluminum. Other signs of it are dermal and muscular mutations and spontaneous dental growth. So they changed tactics. Instead of literally killing the gay community they try to smear them to death. Throughout late 1972 and early 1973 the San Francisco examiner received several anonymous pieces of mail containing film roles appearing to depict large hairy creatures alongside of men and women who were known members of the LGBT community seemingly taken without their knowledge or consent. In one of them you can even see the cameras misaligned with the hole it's meant to stick through and you can see the inside of the drywall. If you don't get the intent here I'm not going to spell it out. In 1983 a camera was discovered inside drywall while renovation work was being done on an apartment building in the Mission District still containing an intact role of film. The apartment it was found in housed one of the 60 plus people who were admitted into the emergency room on June 20th 1972. I've seen the photos for myself. They depict the tenant a man named Raymond Murphy in his bed alongside his partner Cecil McFinn. The timer on the camera took a photo every 15 seconds. Raymond appears to be in pain and Cecil is holding him. About two minutes in Raymond changes. Cecil never lets go of him and seems to be patting him on the back repeatedly. After about another minute the change is complete and the creature that used to be Raymond looms over his partner. Cecil is clearly afraid. He's back up against the headboard of the bed. The creature bears down upon him and his face is concealed from sight for the next three pictures. When the creature pulls away from Cecil the man is laughing and his face is covered in what can only be described as slobber as he pulls Raymond close to him once more. Happy pride everyone. Stay safe out there. Whoa. Whoa. I've heard the government's done some messed up things but damn. All right, do you guys think this is real? Leave your answer in the comments below. Subscribe and hit the bell, join the site 42patreon and I'll catch you next time.