The Guide
From Urban Hunt
| Table of contents |
THE URBAN HUNT DISCUSSION FORUMS
Look, a link (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/index.php?c=16)!
They were invaluable during the investigation. If you have a whole lot of free time, I suggest you read them.
In The Beginning
At first glance, Urban Hunt (http://www.urbanhunt.com/) appears to be a new reality TV show. The tagline of the show is "It's not what you think!", and this phrase is rather prophetic... (Read on, True Believers!)
Tomorrow's Talk Studios (http://www.tomorrowstalk.com/) is the TV show
producer responsible for Urban Hunt. It's a very slick Flash site with preview
videos for their shows, the usual company blurbs, and a list of employees.
They're currently producing another trashy reality show called "Your Money Or
Your Wife". Luckily, I can admire the Flash rather than the awful TV
programming. There are some interesting pictures that appear when I hold my
mouse over the headings. I wonder what the significance of that barcode at the
top left is... Finding nothing much of interest, I went back to the UH website
to learn a bit more. It is a competition in which online advisors try to either
flummox or help live players as they try to complete missions all over the
states in order to win a large prize.
Curious about the Urban Hunt show, I sent an email to apply as an online
advisor. I told them that I enjoyed guiding people (hee!) and thought it would
be a great experience. I recieved an autoresponse that was rather long for an
autoresponse. A closer examination of the first letters of each sentence
revealed this as a Rabbit Hole into a
strange story. The letters spelled out the name of a website:Urban
Mythology
(http://www.urbanmythology.net/). Its webmistress Amanda Graves
updates the site every week with new urban legends. Why would the email from
Urban Hunt lead to a seemingly unrelated site about myths? This bears further
investigation; something quite interesting must be there for its address to be
hidden within an email. Browsing the site, I found an interesting myth related
to reality TV shows. Speculating that it could be related to Urban Hunt, I read
over the myth carefully...
Dread House was a reality TV show that never aired. 13 contestants had to
survive in a spooky abandoned insane asylum. However, players and crew started
dying mysteriously... Googling, I found the Dread House
website (http://www.dreadhouse.com/)
, which seems to show that Dread House was -real-. In fact, the webmaster JC
seems to be an employee of Tomorrow's Talk determined to uncover the sinister
secrets surrounding Dread House. Phonecalls and emails to various employees of
Tomorrow's Talk recieve autoresponses or denials of their involvement. It seems
likely that JC is the one who led people to Urban Mythology through the secret
message in the Urban Hunt autoresponse email. This knowledge prompted me to look
for further secret messages from the paranoid JC. Lo and behold, within the html
source of his picture pages are the DreadHouse
Numbers, which are a sort of Beale cipher. When decoded, the message states
"seven twenty eight/ten pm eastern/there and gone." Presumably, incriminating
evidence concerning Dread House will be posted for a short period. I await this
event anxiously...
Curious about the asylum at which Dread House was filmed, I explored its
website (http://www.cambridgementalhospital.com/).
Maintained by webmaster Charles, the CMH site is a repository of history,
stories, records, and pictures concerning the hospital. The stories tell tales
of ghost sightings and mysterious deaths; events that are par for the course at
a spooky old asylum. Regular updates by Charles keep readers informed of the
recent events concerning CMH and Charles' bird-obsessed friend Old Todd. Some of
the pictures of CMH look awfully familiar. I'm sure I've seen that door and that
hole somewhere before, perhaps in a dream
(http://www.dreamprojector.com/)... Reading through the history of
the asylum, it seems that CMH was led by Dr. Edward House. An amusing
coincidence: Dr. Ed House --> Dread House. In any case, CMH is notorious for
its "forced seisure" technique of therapy; notably the infamous method of shock
therapy. Many of the pictures on the site are quite creepy and show the rusty,
abandoned rooms of the asylum. One shows a scratched up headstone which seems to
be written in German. It reads "Here rests August," and some more indecipherable
text. There is an intriguing picture with blurry ghostly drips which seem to be
moving up. One of the patient's works of art matches exactly with real photo of
a set of red handprints on a green door. In fact, most of the imagery is quite
dreamlike.
Which suddenly reminded me of the Dream
Projector
(http://www.dreamprojector.com/) myth from Urban Mythology. I'd
guessed the website's name and given a cursory glance before, but the idea is
rather intriguing. The Dream Projector, using some rather advanced neuroscience,
can record people's dreams. The creator of the Dream Projector is Dr. Karl
Shoemaker, a German scientist with a face only his mother could love. I'm
beginning to wonder if the myths on Amanda's site are really myths at all, since
this site seems quite real to me! A few clips of dreams are given on the
website, and many of these dreams are rather disturbing. The only dream from
2004 is particularily interesting: it has seemingly random letters being written
on a wall. Possibly there is some hidden meaning within them... Interestingly,
one of the dreams includes familiar imagery from CHM. How could the Dream
Projector be linked to the mental hospital? There is much to think about...
--RobMagus (and so it begins!)
Dead Poems and Outside.html
A day went by, and I was looking through the CMH patient artwork. Some of it is strangely beautiful... There is a watercolour reminiscent of the tarot card depicted the Moon. It's strangely appropriate, for the Moon signifies madness. (Hence the word lunacy.) Another piece of artwork stands out: the portrait by "Beatrice Doe". The signature is written in a very odd fashion, and is in an unusual place for a signature; the top left. Turning the picture upside down puts the signature in the usual place for a piece of art, and reveals that the name is actually "Ann Starling"! Miss Beatrice/Starling was intriguing enough that I Googled for "Ann Starling". The ad bar had a link to Dead Poems (http://www.deadpoems.com/), a site run by Starling's grandson Reed Singelton. The website promotes a collection of poetry written during her stay at CMH. The site has many familiar pictures of CMH, and also has evidence that Ann Starling could have been the young girl described in one of the stories (http://www.cambridgementalhospital.com/stories2.html) on the CMH website. Apparently, Ann Starling could talk to the dead. She was sent to the asylum for telling people what the dead were saying. Much of the poetry and imagery on Dead Poems is rather creepy, though I must say that I am interested in the book which goes on sale August 17th...
--RobMagus (the first update!)
New Myths July 27
Amanda Graves posted three new myths at Urban Mythology, her first weekly update. One is about a creepy carnival worker that turns out to be the good guy. Why, I beleive I know the person who sent that myth in! :) Another myth is about the strange effects of noises at certain frequencies, and how this relates to the commonly reported phenomena of haunted houses. Finally, there is the utterly terrifying myth about the website that drives you insane. The caption for this myth catches my eye: "Open outside.html. Enter". Of course, adding "/outside.html" to the URLs of the ingame sites does nothing. Amanda is just gently reminding her readers that natural light isn't -that- scary.
--RobMagus (natural light -burns-!)
There and Gone
We stared at the screen, refreshing Dreadhouse obsessively in anticipation of JC's proof. Suddenly, at 10 PM EST, the main page directed me to DH There. Recalling that JC's Beale cipher read "there and gone", we immediately also tried going to DH Gone. Excellent, two puzzles from JC! He seems overly concerned with security to me. Why would he take such extreme measures to make sure nobody finds out about this evidence? Tomorrow's Talk must have particularily viscious lawyers. Anyways, "There" is a set of ROTed sentences (Child's play, thinks Lieutenant Ebo Znthf). When solved, they appeared to be captions for the photos that have been removed from JC's site. Gone is an ingenious morse code hidden in plain sight in two different colours. Letting one shade be the dashes and the other be the dots seems like a good idea. Voila: it spells out an email address. I sent an email to it right away. JC's response said "Why stop there? There's more to what you have wrought." Seems like a clue to look at the ROTed sentences a little more carefully. Another email from the paranoid webmaster said "The right numbers might lead you somewhere." Oh, jee, thanks.
After I scratched my head in utter confusion for a while, JC sent yet
another email. "You are looking at the solve and not the puzzle. See things
through my eyes. Follow what I have done. The numbers I have used are they key."
JC sent several such help-ful hints, and the solve
(http://fngeeks.net/urbanwiki/index.php/DH_Gone) for this
infuriating puzzle led to the four pieces of evidence JC has accquired. One is a
crumpled, cryptic Tomorrow's Talk interoffice memo
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/pfile3_102.jpg) from
Greg Boyle to Richard Meyer. It mentions getting a password in the usual manner.
Hmm... Next is a picture
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/pfile2_164.jpg) from
inside a ruin at CMH, with "DH was here" spraypainted on the wall in red. Third
is a piece of a newspaper article
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/pfile4_678.jpg) that
seems to be reporting high-security at CMH for suspicious reasons. Finally there
is a video
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/download.php?id=2098&sid=49d2b29ad4a209e580d4c19ea307b58a)
filmed in a car driving into the gate of CMH in the winter of 2002. Opening the
video in an editor reveals, among more mundane tags, "TTS Pre-Show Site Audit
none TT Studios 2002 Location #4: Cambridge Mental Hospital Cambridge, Minnesota
Engineer S. Rowan." What to make of all of this?
--RobMagus (the first in-game event!)
Ancient Terror
Reed Singleton has updated Dead Poems, just like he said he would in his apologetic popup. There is now a new poem on the page for the foreward (http://deadpoems.com/foreword.html), and a new creepy picture of a shrouded skull with wings, or at least something resembling wings. It's named "deathangel.jpg". Personally, the style of these sites is giving me the willies, and Dead Poems is by far the williest of the bunch. Anywho, the new Poem on DP has a very strange capitalisation pattern. It could be that Ann was being nutty again, but you never know. Indeed, upon closer inspection, it seems that the words "ancient terror" are encoded within the poem. However, it's rather unlikely that Ann would have encoded the message in that manner. (unless she was channeling the spirit of a programmer from the late 1800s..) This merits an inquiry to Reed, I'd say. While sending that email, we can check his responses to previous questions about Ann Starling's "Beatrice Doe" picture on the CMH website. The emails prompted him to read through some of the stories, but he can't draw any connections because he's been busy trying to finish the book. Hopefully he'll be able to take some time and inform me whether Ann capitalised the letters exactly like that, or whether they'd been changed later. Crossed fingers, eh?
--RobMagus (Ann's channeling dead programmers!)
RECAP 1
As the amount of things we have discovered increases, it gets harder to keep track of what is going on. Every once in a while I'll make a recap of what we've learnt so far. Hey, look, I'm ripping off Adrian Hon! :)
Anywho:
NEW SITES:
- Urban Hunt (http://www.urbanhunt.com/)
- Tomorrow's Talk Studios (http://www.tomorrowstalk.com/)
- Urban Mythology (http://www.urbanmythology.net/)
- Dread House (http://www.dreadhouse.com/)
- Cambridge Mental Hospital (http://www.cambridgementalhospital.com/)
- Dream Projector (http://www.dreamprojector.com/)
- Dead Poems (http://www.deadpoems.com/)
NEW CHARACTERS:
- Amanda Graves, excellent webmistress of UM
- Charles, skeptical webmaster of CMH
- Old Todd, crazy bird guy at CMH
- JC, paranoid webmaster of DH
- Dr. Karl Shoemaker, mastermind of Dream Projector
- Ann Starling, insane poet inmate of CMH
- Reed Singleton, Starling's grandson and promoter of Dead Poems
- Greg Boyle, TT IS department (memo)
- Richard Meyer, TT boss (memo)
- Steve Rowan, TT location scout?
UNKNOWN/UNSOLVED/INTERESTING:
- the author of the rabbithole autoresponse
- the TT barcode
- the 4 pieces of evidence from JC, notably the memo and the video
- the headstone at CMH
- the ghostly drips at CMH
- patient artwork at CMH
- dream projector dreams, especially bloody letters
- dead poems, both the book and the poems on the site
- ancient terror
- how in the world is all of this connected?!
Whew, that's a lot of stuff. Well, back to our regular programming.
-- RobMagus (duh. the first recap!)
New Myths August 3
Time for Amanda Graves' weekly update to Urban Mythology!
First up is the creepy tale of the Indian campground/school that suddenly became devoid of all life at once. Sent in by a reader, the myth tells us that the abandoned site still has food in the pantry and clothes in the drawers... Next is a lovely short one which I shall post in its entirety:
"Omniscient Mater: A former Mafioso was taken into the Federal Witness
Protection Program after testifying against his partners in crime. He was given
a new identity, plastic surgery, clothing, job, and housing. A month after the
move, he checked his mail and found a letter from his alma mater university,
asking for funds. The letter was addressed to his real name." Neat, huh?
Finally there's "Seven", which tells us of the serial killer obsessed
with the number seven. His victims were all somehow related to 7, and the killer
was going to kill 7 people so he could raise his 7-week old son from the dead.
Yikes.
--RobMagus (the killer is Kevin Spacey!)
Flirting With Ron
It seems logical that the webmaster is the one who would write the autoresponse for people applying to Urban Hunt. As such, it may be important to establish a rapport with the webmaster. Looking at the employee list, we find that Ron Daubert is the webmaster. We have to be careful, though. If the folks at Tomorrow's Talk are as sinister as JC makes them out to be, emailing a direct query might cause trouble. In any case, why would someone be encoding messages in the autoresponse int he first place?
Then we recall something from JC's site for Dread House: JC knows someone
who went on to participate in the show! Perhaps the person who encoded the site
name within the autoresponse is a survivor of of Dread House? Well, there's only
one way to find out. We send out an email asking the question. Under the guise
of an email talking about how overly "detailed" the autoresponse was, we encode
the message "RUSURVIVOR" in the same manner that the UM site name was hidden.
The email was sent to Ron, and his reply came soon.
He acknowledged the hidden message directly within his response, saying
that it was cute. In fact, he even mentions that he encoded a message within his
response in the same manner. The message is "NOTHATSBURNETT", which is of course
a reference to to the creator of the Survivor TV show. Clever! :) Of
course, this means that Ron knows as much as we do about this Dread House thing,
if not less. In any case, Ron seems like a nice guy and we might want to have a
contact within the company, so our next email to him is flirtatious. The lovable
Konamouse elects to take the flirting path so she thanks him for his clever
message and then basically asks if there's a way she can sweet-talk a
guarrunteed position as an Online Advisor. She also asks if he knows who the
former webmaster is.
Meanwhile, Ron responded to a query from Varin. Apparently, TT's top brass seem on edge, and we should keep an eye on the TT website for an update sometime soon.
Then Ron's reply to Kona arrives, and gives us some more excellent information! While she can't improve her chances of getting Advisorship, the flirting seems to be paying off. We learn that the big kahunas at TT are quite secretive and that memos sent around the office have passwords encrypted within them. Obviously we need to take a good look at that memo we got from JC. Ron further informs us that there's a lot of new people at TT. Did they have a clearing-out after DH? Hmm... Ron gives us one more juicy morsel of information: the former webmaster's name was Ed. Nobody seems to know much about him, and the office seems strangely quiet about him.
Well, this sort of success inspires Varin to play the flirtatious
computer geek card. Her email to Ron refered to the troubles with receptionists
we'd been having (which I have not included in the Guide, incidentally), and
mentioned that she could never play the polite receptionist. That's why she
stays behind a computer screen. Kona then sends an email to Ron, after which
Varin sends an email, and you get the picture. Ron is grateful for the chance to
answer some fluffy emails, because he's been working late and the taskmasters
are getting anxious about something.
Will Ron give us more useful information? Are the TT bosses worried that
he's leaking information? Does Ron have to choose between Kona and Varin? Is
this going to turn into a love triangle? Tune in next week to "The Young and the
Flirtatious"!
--RobMagus (the first time I mention other players!)
JCHASNOSPACE
When visiting Dread House in hopes of finding some new information from our lovably paranoid webmaster JC, there seems to almost have been no change. Almost! The start momentarily seems to turn red before going on to the regular page with a choice between the flash intro and the main page. I reloaded Dread House and stopped the next page from loading as soon as the screen flashed red. Well, whaddya know. It's a page with that same glaring red background as Gone.html, and the familiar message JC has on his picture and documents pages. However, this sentence has no spaces, and has the word "again" tacked onto the end:
"sorrythesepageshavebeentemporarily
removedduetoharassmentandthreatsby
thepeoplebehindthedreadhouseshowagain"
That "again" is interesting... has something else been removed from JC's
site? Is this a clue to find the documents we didn't get with There and Gone?
Well, like a good little ARGer, I check the source. Turns out that, just like
the dots on Gone.html, the letters of this sentence are in two slightly
different colours
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/dreadhouseodd.html). Is
it morse code again? Is it binary, like Ancient Terror? Is it something
completely different?
Tune in next update to find out! Same Guide-time, same Guide-channel!
--RobMagus (the first puzzle we didn't solve relatively quickly!)
Oh... AGAIN.
Well, I was completely stumped. The lack of spacing made this puzzle really quite difficult. As a result, I'd gotten to thinking that it had nothing much to do with spacing. After hours of that leading nowhere, Anon Y. Mous suddenly revealed a partial solve of the first bit. Turns out that it was morse code all along. Just a long string with no spaces. Talk about frustrating! Thanks to Anon's boost and a time-saving program, we solved the puzzle of the DH_Main_Page.
Great. Now I know why that "again" is tacked on. Just like last time, a
rather difficult morse code puzzle with spacing problems leads to JC's secrets
email. I fired one off to everyone's favorite paranoid webmaster, saying that I
wish to be included. Now all I can do is twiddle my thumbs until an answer
arrives...
--RobMagus (JC is too paranoid!)
Metus
Our good pal Ron sent an email in response to queries about the former webmaster, Ed. Ron's been getting a bit worried, cause the office overlords seem to be keeping a close eye on him. Hopefully the head honchos at TT aren't suspecting him of helping uncover Dread House... Ron also commented that he was a fan of encryption, which I suppose explains why he responded so wonderfully to kona's little email about Survivor. In any case, Ron says that he poked around a little for more information, and found a CD marked "Webmaster Tools" in an old storage closet. He didn't have much of a chance to look at it himself, what with work and all, so he posted the exe file from the CD in a directory on the Tomorrow's Talk webpage. The page was removed some time after I got the exe, hopefully by Ron himself.
Joy! The exe requires a password, and we've been looking for a place to
put passwords for a while. Trying some of the words we gleaned from the memo
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/pfile3_102.jpg) and
getting zilch, it is obvious that we have to look for more clues. Perhaps that
subject line needs more attention: "Request After the Meeting". A little
thinking leads us to the solve for Richard
Meyer's Memo Password, and to the encrypted files! Considering that they are
maps of the CMH site, I doubt that these are really "Webmaster Tools". Obviously
these are the disks referred to in the memo, or at least related to them.
Hopefully Ron won't get into trouble for handing us more evidence! We send these
maps off to JC for his collection of proof, and now we wait.
--RobMagus (it means dread!)
New Myths August 10
Two new emails, two updates! First, of course, is Amanda Graves' weekly update to UrbanMythology. This week, the first myth ("Brain Drain" (http://urbanmythology.net/legends/bd.html)) concerns the concept of transmitting dreams from person to person via the electrical impulses of the brain. Interestingly, it mentions the use of binary for those impulses... perhaps we should look for binary within some of the DreamProjector dreams? The other two myths include some classics. One is about the illiterate boy who makes a profit each time he sells apples and then gives a great snappy rejoinder to a fellow who preaches that he should learn to read. The other is the tale of the man who puts so many silver dollars in his boots for luck that he can't move and has to spill them all out. I have to say that Amanda's regular updates are one of the most enjoyable parts of this game.
--RobMagus (I wanna be a bookkeeper at a whorehouse!)
Random Obsessive Thoughts
The other email is from JC, which is exciting since he hasn't contacted anyone for a week or so. Furthermore, the email is obviously a puzzle. Solving JC's Random Obsessive Thoughts # 13 leads to another of JC's hidden directories (http://www.dreadhouse.com/foryourhelp.html). Excellent, another suspicious memo from Greg Boyle to Richard Meyer! In the subject line of this TT Memo - After You I Insist is the hint for finding the password in the usual manner. Now we just need a place to put this password! Here's hoping Ron will send us some new encrypted files soon. If that happens, It'd also mean that he's not in trouble.
While we wait for that, we can peruse the merged
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/dhmapmergine.jpg) set of
maps from "Webmaster Tools". A look at the properties reveals that the initials
of the artist (SR) stand for Steve Rowan. Rowan... that's the name that was in
the driving video
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/download.php?id=2098&sid=49d2b29ad4a209e580d4c19ea307b58a)
JC gave us after solving There and Gone. Perhaps he was the location scout for
House of Dread? How can we use this information?
-- RobMagus (EboZnthf!)
They're Watching You
Ron's alive! Hallelujah! He sent out an email saying that he was busy, and that the UH update has been delayed slightly while the head honchos at TT review it. He also mentions that he's working on a new page for Your Money Or Your Wife, the other trashy reality TV show TT advertises on their site. Strangely, this email seems to be a kind of form letter, and doesn't really follow the writing style we're used to from Ron. Remembering that Ron is a fan on encryption and has been suspicious of his office overlords lately, we check the email for secret messages. Guess what?
The first letters of every sentence spell out a message, just as in the
survivor joke he made a while ago. Looks like we've trained him well. However,
the message in his latest email sure doesn't seem funny: "I MUST WATCH WHAT I
SAY". Ron may be alive, but he's definitely in trouble. We respond with an email
saying "I UNDERSTAND WHERE CAN WE TALK". We need to get Ron out of this.
-- RobMagus (we love you Ron!)
Ron's Last Wishes
Looks like Ron found a way out himself... I hope it didn't involve him ceasing to live. Several people who have had contact with Ron recieved this email:
"The Following message and attached files have been left by the
LastWishes member Ron Daubert for delivery to you on Friday August 13th 2004 at
8pm (EDST).
Message : I heard about this service, lastwishes.com, which sends email messages if a member passes on, and contacted them about helping me reach my friends in the event I was unable to do so myself. When I told them I felt my life was in danger, they bent the rules a bit and agreed to send out messages for me today if I failed to contact them and cancel the request. (Normally they require a death certificate.) So hopefully I'm not dead, just... unavailable. Ron Daubert Please don't reply to this"
LastWishes
(http://www.lastwishes.com/) is a legitamate site which sends out
messages for people if they do not contact LastWishes within a certain period of
time. Attached to Ron's message was "Ron's
World"
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/ron_s_world.htm), a
journal in which Ron could speak safely and that would be sent out with the
LastWishes email in case he didn't check in. The contents of the journal are
worrisome. The people at TT have been snooping through Ron's work and computer,
and Ron is sure that he's been followed home. He also mentions that nobody
smiles or talks to him except fro strict business, except for a "Mr. Richards"
who gives him the creepiest smile... The last entry says that he is going to
find out once and for all what is going on at TT no matter what happens.
Also in the LastWish was a picture of one of the CMH maps
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/6.jpg). There are
numbers in red pen on each of the huts. Remembering Ron's knowledge of
encryption, we can assume it's a code. Comparing with the maps from "Webmaster
Tools" and assigning the hut number to the position of the red pen numbers
within each hut, we get 2129318522. Looks like a phone number, don't it? Calling
it gets Ron Daubert's voicemail. Ron is giving us another way to contact him, so
he may be alive! If the bosses at TT have gotten him, well...
We're going to do everything in our power to make sure they go to jail for life.
--RobMagus (run Ron run!)
RECAP 2
It's that tme of the month again; yes, time for another recap!
NEW SITES:
- none
NEW CHARACTERS:
- Ron Daubert, friendly new webmaster at TT and the official good guy
- "Ed", mysterious old webmaster at TT
- Mister Richards, creepy TT boss (possibly Richard Meyer?)
UNKNOWN/UNSOLVED/INTERESTING:
- TT barcode
- the headstone at CMH
- the ghostly drips at CMH
- patient artwork at CMH
- dream projector dreams, especially bloody letters
- dead poems, both the book and the poems on the site
- ancient terror
- why are "Webmaster Tools" maps?
- what happened to "Ed"?
- the second memo
- insania
- what happened to Ron?
- why did he give us his number?
- how in the world is all of this connected?!
One day, all will be revealed...
--RobMagus (the list gets longer!)
New Myths August 17
Here it comes; Amanda's weekly update to Urban Mythology. This week the three myths seem to be the most eclectic yet, and also none of them involve death! The first is the tale of a Viking coming into Burger King to order some "MEAT!" When asked how we wants his meat, he deliberates for a moment, then says "Cooked!" Turns out that he's just zealous Ren fair goer. Amanda goes on to describe variations of the myth that usually involve SCA members versus bad guys that are scared off by the awesome medieval gear. Myth number two is the good old one about mole people living in the tunnels underneath cities. The final myth is a strange one about a fellow who accidentally chops off a couple of his fingers and is careful not to do it again for the next 20 years. Then, one day, some curvy blonde walks in and asks the guy how he did it, so he promptly demonstrates and cuts off a couple more fingers. Oddly, this myth's title is "Or Were You Looking At the Woman in the Red Dress?", which is of course a reference to the scene in The Matrix where Neo is distracted by a curvy blonde.
--RobMagus (I was distracted!)
Charles Speaks
Charles is being drawn into the mystery, it seems, as evidenced in his latest update to CMH (http://www.cambridgementalhospital.com/).
"Whoa Nelly!
Lots of people writing in to ask about construction and demolition going on at the hospital, so I've decided to write an update in order to halve the email still waiting for replies.
Although I hate to give this whole Dread House gameshow any more acknowledment than it has already received, people still insist it took place at Cambridge and continue to try to convince me to be of the same mind.
I have been sent blueprints by various people claiming that certain areas denoted site scouting locations for the show. I cannot, for the life of me, see how those locations could have possibly been used for Dread House. Most of the areas pointed out to me were under heavy construction in the spring of 2003, and were totally inaccessible to anyone but the construction crews because they were working to remove asbestos and other hazardous materials. And later that same year (June, I think) many of the buildings in that same area were demolished.
So I hope this answers at least some of the curious construction questions.
I'm thinking about taking a trip to the hospital, if only to clear my head.
Charles"
Well, now we know what that construction mentioned in the newspaper
article was for. OR DO WE?
-- RobMagus (maybe, I say!)
Dream Projector Awakens and Dead Poems Hits Snooze
Dream projector -finally- answered some email! Various queries sent to the pseudoscientific site were answered by "Svetlana Kerensky", an administrative assistant at the "Dream Projector Project". Every email included the statement
"I apologize for the delay in responding. I've been on vacation, and apparently nobody was monitoring the general email during my absence."
Lazy buggers, those scientist types. In any case, we finally have a liason to Dream Projector. Perhaps we can finally start getting some clues as to how the project is connected to the DH mystery.
In other news, another thread somehow connected to the mystery has been
tangled up for another week. The Dead Poems website has yet another popup on
loading; this one reads
"Important Announcement
I'm very sorry but the Dead Poems book has been unavoidably delayed by one week and will now go on sale next Tuesday, August 24th. There have been a few last minute complications in the printing of the book and I have been unable to get them all resolved despite my non-stop efforts. I realize many of you will be terribly disappointed and I'll try to find some way to make it up to you all. Please write to me if you have any suggestions.
Reed Singleton
Dead Poems - on sale August 24th".
Looks like we have to wait a little while longer. Hopefully we won't be
as busy as bees on the 24th.
-- RobMagus (DP and DP!)
Ron's World
We're worried about our buddy Ron and want to find out more about him. With a little leap of logic, we get the idea to google for "Ron's World" and "Ron Daubert". Whaddya know! Ron has a personal website (http://www.ronsworld.org)! His mastery of flash certainly shows, as does his humour. This guy is obviously an intelligent fellow, and reading through his personal information and blog we find that he has had an interest in puzzles and games for quite some time. In fact, he is quite interested in ARGs! But wait, there's more: every single entry name in his blog is a song title. I like this guy's style.
Why, Ron is such a fan of puzzles that he's created a whole site (http://www.puzzlecards.net) to -sell- them! That's right, for some sort of fee, you can send a personalized web puzzle to anyone with access to email. This is one of the coolest ideas ever. Hopefully Ron is safe and sound so he can continue with this great business venture.
-- RobMagus (Hoo boy, It sure would be Nice To get a puzzlecard!)
See
JC sent his most enigmatic email yet. The subject is "Secrets", and the content is a block of seemingly random letters. Damn you, JC! Damn you for being so paranoid that you must encode absolutely everything! In any case, solving the code leads to there again (http://www.dreadhouse.com/thereagain.html). Great. Another block of seemingly random characters. Upon closer inspection, many of the characters repeat... turns out that it's a stereogram! You know, those Magic Eye things. A little eyecrossing and we see the number "13". Damn you, JC! Damn you for making such a cool puzzle!
We go to the corresponding site
(http://www.dreadhouse.com/13.html), only to get redirected to a
page with nothing but a line of characters, and a number. Well, this stumps us
for a while, until we refresh and get redirected to a similer page. The
difference is that this one has a different line of characters and number.
Several refreshes later, we order the lines according to the numbers, and voila:
yet another stereogram. Ubercool.
This one has a sailboat! Well, no, not really. Actually, it has the word
"see". See? We go to the see.html page
(http://www.dreadhouse.com/see.html). Here we have the completed
stereogram and more interestingly, a short video clip! Near as I can figure,
it's someone going through the CMH tunnels with a camera. The cameraman films
the entrance, then goes in deeper and eventually encounters someone with a
flashlight. Then the filming is cut short violently.
What's happening in this tape? It's not clear whether anything illegal
has happened or not. Here's hoping JC's next bit of evidence will help us put
together a larger portion of the puzzle.
Interestngly, the source code of see.html contains a note to "send mailing address to secrets". I did, and now await some mail from JC.
-- RobMagus (Damn you JC!)
Mythmail
We find an easily-overlooked email in the spam folder of the inbox. This one is from "importantinfo@urbanmythology.net", and looks pretty much like your common Chainmailus domesticus. Well, what would we expect from a site about Urban Myths?
The email details the terrible tale of a mother who turned around one day
while shopping only to find her 4 year old daughter missing. After calling her
name to no avail, Mom enlists the aid of a store employee who gets a store phone
and dials Code ADAM. The store doors are locked tight so nobody can leave, and
they scour the store for Daughter. The find her in a changing booth, stripped
down, head half-shaved, and a wig lying nearby.
- shudder*
The email goes on to give the origin of "Code ADAM" and the obligatory chainmail message to "BE SURE TO FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE SO THEY KNOW JUST HOW SICK PEOPLE ARE OUT THERE!"
Seems pretty regular for chainmail, until you see the end of the message:
"Your lucky dates! 3/2 4/28 2/3 5/7 1/21 2/13 4/3 3/17 2/6 5/26 1/15 3/5 2/ 29 4/17 2/1 3/21 4/4 1/7 4/7 4/19 3/3 2/5 3/2 1/29 1/5 4/21 1/15 2/9 5/ 22 3/7 4/16 5/13 1/5 4/22 1/9 3/31 3/12 1/4 5/19 5/23 5/1!"
If that isn't a puzzle, I'll eat my hat. Luckily, it is, so my hat is safe for now. The solve reads
"What is important is not always readily apparent!"
It seems that we might be missing something at UM. Time to take a closer
look at those myths!
-- RobMagus (the first puzzle from UM!)
Summary by Konamouse
What needs to be done to solve the mystery of the House of Dread and bring those responsible to justice?
Find Ron.
- do we need to get into his voicemail (is the first message something we need to hear)? Why give us his phone number if we aren't suppose to use it? - did he leave a clue in his blog or on his website, or the last message that we got from lastwishes (aside from the map which was his phone number). - or is he already dead? - did he leave more files from the CD (s) he found that "Ed" left? Are they hidden on his website? maybe he left the files on his business site, puzzlenet? Speaking of which, we still have card #3 (diet puzzle) to solve.
Urbanmythology.
- strong suspicions that there is more to be found from the articles posted the past two weeks. - start googling from the stories (isn't that how we found other websites)?
DreadHouse.
- guess we are waiting for a realworld clue (snail mail). - my own SPEC: This is "Ed", our mysterious ex-TT webmaster, or a good friend of his.
CMH.
- who is Old Todd? If he is a 'tunnel person', what did he do while TT was there in production? Right now he may be our number one suspect for doing the dirty work (murders) during production. - who is Charles and why didn't he see all the tv crews and stuff? TV productions are a very obvious site, even with 'construction' fences. Did he actually help Old Todd (trying to keep the public away from his beloved hospital)?
Dead Poems
- okay, Aug 24th is going to be dangerous around UF. Lots of bees will be buzzing around and it could beat the record 234 logged in at the same time.
Which brings us to the META of it all; How is Dream Projector tied into
House of Dread. Current SPEC (I think) is that people started dreaming about
what was happening at the hospital during the filming of the show and they
traveled through space (and we got to see some of those images). But also, did
Ann dream about it as well (did the images travel through time, because they
were in the same location and she was getting electroshock therapy) - and then
draw and write about her dreams?
-- RobMagus (excellent summary Kona!)
Charles Gets Fed Up
Our favorite old mental hospital caretaker has once again updated the CMH website (http://www.cambridgementalhospital.com):
"The gall of some people!
This Dread House TV show stuff is really starting to feel like a bee in my bonnet. Someone had the nerve to call me and not only pester me with questions about the show, but also demand (through various veiled threats) that I stay away from Cambridge! Imagine! Me.....stay away from my life's work and first love!
The coward didn't even have the courage to identify himself, and I refuse to be bullied by some nameless ruffian. I will go to Cambridge whenever I wish to do so!
The call did, however, have me wondering if there's more to this Dread House thing than I originally thought.
On a less cantankerous note, I did receive an email invitation to tour Cambridge with a Mr. Dishman. Although I'm unsure of when I'll next be going to Cambridge, I'll definitely keep it in mind. I love to act as a tour guide, although maybe I ramble a bit too much.
I'm still getting a lot of mail from people looking for information on a doctor by the name of Shoemaker, and although I don't recall the name, I will try to remember to ask Old Todd about it the next time I take a trip - if only to satisfy my own curiosity.
Charles"
Well, looks like this is starting to spread. Hopefully Charles won't get
into trouble! He's not directly involved with this little investigation of ours.
Crossed fingers, eh?
-- RobMagus (the calls are coming from INSIDE the mental hospital!)
Dead Poems On Sale
August fourth! Today's the day that Dead Poems goes on sale after being postponed for a week. Checking the site (http://www.deadpoems.com/) obsessively showed no change for a while, except for a new example of Reed's favoured communication method; the pop-up. This one said
"Counting Down
Yes, the Dead Poems book will go on sale today, August 24th. The final check of the purchasing system and all the associated details is being conducted right now and the PURCHASE link from the web page will be going live soon. Thanks for your patience!
Reed Singleton
Dead Poems - on sale today August 24th"
We sit at the computer, drumming our fingers impatiently. We've waited
this long; a little while longer means little...
Finally, we hit paydirt! A refresh reveals that the popup has changed.
"A Message from www.deadpoems.com
Dead Poems is now on sale!
Buy (http://www.lulu.com/content/71107) the deluxe version with 4 color interior pages for only $21.96
Buy (http://www.lulu.com/content/71054) the standard version with black and white interior pages for only $9.95
Dead Poems merchandise coming soon too!"
I'm ordering my B&W copy presently. What a perfect momento of this
experience.
-- RobMagus (buy the book!)
New Myths August 24
Another Tuesday, another batch of delicious urban myths straight from Amanda Graves' kitchen. Mmm, mmm, good! This week we've got a story about a motorcyclist who goes into a diner and encounters a real jerk of a smoker. The smoker goes outside and spitefully knocks over the Harley outside, then turns around and bumps into the 270 pound biker who was the real owner of the Harley. Smoking kills! Next up is a medley of information about haunted hotels, and the challenge
"Is there something in common with all the different haunted hotels, or are there really that many displaced spirits roaming the Earth, trying to get their messages across to the living? Is it all a secret government plot using infrasound? Are you brave enough to find out?"
I sure ain't! Last, but not least, there's a quick one before you go. It's a gruesome tail obout a lady who bought a pillow that wriggled off her bed one night. Turns out that some chicken was still attached to the feathers inside, and attached to the chicken were some maggots...
Sweet dreams.
-- RobMagus (yeugh!)
Mythmail: Cancer and Bible Quotes
More mythmail from UM! This one begins with:
"This is Kathy's Story, in her own words:
'As some of you know, I have Primary Peritoneal Cancer. This cancer has only recently been identified as its OWN type of cancer; but it is essentially Ovarian Cancer. Both types of cancer are diagnosed in the same way (with the "tumor marker" CA-125 blood test), and they are treated in the same way (surgery to remove the primary tumor and then chemotherapy with Taxol and Carboplatin). Having gone through this ordeal, I want to save others from the same fate. That is why I am sending this message to you and hope you will print it and give it or send it via e-mail to everybody you know.'"
It goes on with the general cancer chainmail fodder. I suppose it is
raising awareness about cancer, but the CA-125 stuff is just another urban
myth
(http://www.blackwomenshealth.com/ca-125_hoax.htm). It's sad how
people use such devastating topics for chainmail. Enough ranting from me! This
email contains another puzzle.
Once again at the end of the email, we have
"Your lucky dates! 2/27 12/8 10/26 2/15 7/1 11/26 3/14 8/5 11/16 9/11 4/3 6/26 11/10 3/4 12/26 12/18 3/3 8/29 11/5 1/8 6/6 7/20 11/11 7/23 9/7 2/22 8/19 10/1 6/27 5/16 7/15 1/18 8/19 9/23!"
The solve reads
"YOU WILL SEE THE TRUE REASON FOR THIS SITE"
After that list, we also have
"Read these verses every day! James 1:3! Luke 21:19! Romans 8:25! Revelation 13:10! James 5:5!"
Those bible quotes all have something to do with patience, with the exception of James 5:5:
"Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter."
There is definitely something going on at UM, and it looks as if we'll
have to wait to find out. What to make of James 5:5, though?
-- RobMagus (Psalms 32:8!)
Phone Tones
Hooray, here's another one of JC's homegrown headscratcher emails! This time, the subject is "Send Me Another Long List", and the body of the email reads
"SSDwERDGHoXDGWQRvuKLlVtBSlTTzVCXSzMYTRhAWnEEl."
Solving that leads to this site (http://www.dreadhouse.com/phonemessage.html),
which features some nifty ASCII art
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/asciigirl.jpg) of a
woman posing in the regular portraiture style of the early 1900s. Think it's Ann
Starling?
Anywho, in the source code of the page there is the obligatory cipher:
"X yspiuzwv tnmh tsfwmkw gn sc pugjidmfy mggwpbr wtsjlle euase M niysn orklggmselanm xwl Reimh Zguyi hocj. Xti uslrig PR jee fdgcqis zc V'q zsl uexxppb jla ml uasi uycz fgx A sm vshphvzq ml as gfdbh Qvqev Zoawt. P vnh niwf cgpapbt qmrq heutal oah bpsuey vxnvg fqjgje zlxz, ofoury iukwipcaw mfgmt zlt zvba, es ozosiklf vx iek uoaps ooii ssllet qn uizfqv lzaz apf. Bbx fsg dotk pmhrv flak I hivhb eioianitk hvar sr xzw axxxjzrw ur lze sexs W uehi sdrkesf guediv oizl nvi."
I sure can't read that! Luckily, somebody else can. The solve reads
"I recieved this message on my answering machine shortly after I began investigating the Dread House show. The caller ID was blocked so I'm not certain who it came from but I am positive it is about Dread House. I had been calling many people and places right before this, asking questions about the show, so whomever it was could have gotten my number that way. Not too long after this I began receiving some of the articles in the mail that I have already shared with you. jc"
There's something else in the source. "counter.swf" is mentioned in the
source near the cipher note. However, there's nothing on phonemessage.html to
suggest a flash file or a hit counter. Well, let's check this
(http://www.dreadhouse.com/counter.swf) out. Whaddya know! It
sounds like a phone answering message, followed by a robot-voiced message,
followed by a series of phone tones. This would be the message JC is talking
about. Interestingly, JC's answering message seems to have a woman's voice, and
says that "this is Jamie". Is JC a woman? Could that just be the work of
computer voice alteration? What do those phone tones mean? Let's get to it!
With a little help from the internet and some sound editing software, we
find that the tones correspond to these numbers:
1221106939427352912469899161279839717043185927494159828139
-- RobMagus (paranoid webmaster ahoy!)
Gold Mine Hotel
Everlovin' Amanda added an update to the Haunted Houses myth:
"8/26/04 Update: I got an interesting e-mail from a reader today regarding the hotel story. Oddly enough, there appear to be two purportedly haunted old hotels in the same town in western Nevada. They were both build atop old, abandoned gold mines and have quite a reputation among the locals for the scope and frequency of their ghostly visitations. It's not clear whether both hotels are actually haunted or whether similar names have caused stories from one place to be applied to the other. In any event, it would be interesting to see if both places are built over the same gold mine!"
According to Amanda, this was sent in as an anonymous tip. Taking recent
emails from UM to heart, we look over this update carefully and do a little
searching. A Google for "gold mine hotel nevada" brings up a sponsored link. Our
favorite way of finding a new site! This one is for the Gold
Mine Hotel
(http://www.goldminehotel.com).
The Gold Mine Hotel is a neat gold-rush themed place to stay. Browsing
the site, we can familiarize ourselves with a little history of the hotel and
its Hostess, Tara Hutchins. The hotel is apparently built over gold mines, and
some say it is haunted. Tara Hutchins travelled to the area to visit the place
her ancestors came from, and fell in love with the Gold Mine Hotel. Having
always wanted to own a guest house, she purchased it and refurbished it. The new
and improved Gold Mine Hotel is set to open in January 2005. There's a mailing
list we can sign up for updates concerning the hotel, and a phone number to
call. The hotel's voicemail is done in the style of an old western feller
greetin' folks; it's quite entertaining.
Interesting... could the Gold Mine Hotel have been another location
considered for House of Dread? It -is- built over tunnels, much like CMH. What
does infrasound have to do with all of this? Hopefully we'll get more clues
soon.
-- RobMagus (it's haunted, y'all!)
Madness
After a day of being stumped over the phone tones puzzle, a hint suddenly appeared in black on the black background of the puzzle page. The hint was the word "madness". We needed a bit more than that, so we went back to looking at the numbers, and noted that the tones are being played in groups. Grouping the corresponding numbers in the same way, we get
"12 21 10 6 93 94 27 35 2 9 12 4 6 98 9 9 16 12 7 9 8 3 9 71 70 4 31 8 59 27 4 9 41 59 8 28 139".
Identifying the ASCII girl helps lead to the puzzle solve. It's Emily Dickinson. She wrote a poem about madness. The rest is pretty obvious, I'd say.
The solve reads
"its all true i have evidence i think they know".
Looks like JC is next on TT's hitlist.
-- RobMagus (it's madness, I tell you!)
RECAP 3
It's about time for another one, I'd say.
NEW SITES:
- Ron's World (http://www.ronsworld.org/)
- Puzzlecards (http://www.puzzlecards.net/)
- Gold Mine Hotel (http://www.goldminehotel.com/)
NEW CHARACTERS:
- Svetlana Kerensky, Administrative Assistant at Dream Projector
- JC's phone contact, possibly a TT employee
- Tara Hutchins, Hostess of the Gold Mine Hotel
UNKNOWN/UNSOLVED/INTERESTING:
- TT barcode
- the ghostly drips at CMH
- patient artwork at CMH
- dream projector dreams, especially bloody letters
- dead poems, both the book and the poems on the site
- ancient terror
- "Webmaster Tools" are maps
- what happened to "Ed"?
- the second memo
- insania
- what happened to Ron?
- why did he give us his number?
- who threatened Charles?
- what is the real purpose of UM?
- what does infrasound have to do with this?
- who phoned JC?
- JC is a woman?
- how is the Gold Mine Hotel connected?
This is a real headscratcher, innit?
--RobMagus (the list gets even longer!)
Reason To Fear
Several people who had phoned Ron's voicemail recieved a phonecall! It was hard to make out, but the voice on the other end said
"Hello, this is an automated call from puzzlecards.net. Someone has sent you a puzzlecard. To receive it, solve this simple riddle:
The puzzle without just one prize. Can you see what's before your eyes? Backwards, forwards, up and down, you circle them when they are found.
Good luck."
Solving the riddle leads us to this site (http://www.puzzlecards.net/wordsearch.html).
Excellent! It's a classic wordsearch puzzle. Through the collaboration of
several people, the words were unscrambled and found and the solution
(http://www.puzzlecards.net/wordsearch/morrison.html) to the
puzzlecard was found. That can't be all, though... People recieved -phonecalls-.
There's more here.
Inspiration strikes: perhaps this wordsearch has that classic extra
puzzle often used in wordsearches. Sometimes the leftover letters spell
something out, and indeed they do!
"LMTHRAEFOTNOSAERNOOSTCATNOCEVILA"
That's a really obvious puzzle, and it leads to this site (http://www.puzzlecards.net/reasontofear.html). It looks exactly the same as the solve site for the normal puzzlecard, but this time you can click on the picture. Doing so lets you download another encrypted exe. This one, like the last, needs a password. Well, whaddya know, we've had a password from a TT memo just lying around waiting to be used! Typing "insania" into the box works, and we crack open our prize:
three more pieces of evidence!
1. Newspaper
Clipping
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/accidentnewsclipping.jpg)
with the headline "Accident Kills NY Television Crew". It has a list of the
names of the deceased.
2. TT Employee List (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/employees.jpg). Those names that are crossed out... 6 of them match the names in the Accident article. A note on the side reads "M.R - PROBLEMS RESOLVED R.M."
3. Newspaper Clipping (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/sr_newsclipping.jpg) with the headline "Local Man Dies in Fire | Steve Rowan, 47". Steve Rowan was the Engineer behind the "Webmaster Tools" maps of CMH and of the scouting video of CMH.
Wow. At least now we know that Ron is alive, and is going to contact us
soon. However, this is definite proof that -something- sinister is going on at
TT, and people who knew too much had to be killed by this "R.M." guy. R.M. is
probably Richard Meyer, and M.R. may be the creepy Mister Richards Ron mentioned
in his blog. Then again, M.R. could be Mark Robinson, the CEO/President of TT.
Looking through the employee list, we can see that the former webmaster was
named Ed Vargas. Looks like Ed found out a little too much for his own good.
Something about the letters in his name strike me as familiar, though...
Amanda Graves is an anagram of "a man ed vargas". Recent emails from UM
have been hinting that there's more to it than meets the eye. Could Amanda be
Ed? Could both be JC? Where is Ron hiding? Does TT want to clean up any loose
ends in a bloody manner?
This just keeps getting better and better!
-- RobMagus (Ron's ALIVE!)
New Myths August 31
Here comes Tuesday's terrific trio of tall tales.
"Is That a Camera in Your Smoke Detector or...
Big Brother is
watching you."
Sent in by dmax, one of the wonderful people involved in this investigation, this myth tells the readers of the smoke detectors that came with an extra-special feature: "a fish-eye lens and a wireless feed back to a series of monitors back at the Police Station." Guess they really wanted to make sure that nobody was doing anything too hot by the detector.
"Secret Societies
Not just the guys in funny hats who drive little
cars in parades."
Well, it's -about time-. I've been waiting for the obligatory reference to the Illuminati for quite some time now. There's also a reference to the books by Dan Brown, and to that lovable subsect of the Freemasons that like to dress up like clowns and wear fezes, the Shriners. Curiously, for a short period of time the main page had two (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/um.jpg) links to the same page. The Secret Society link had replaced the Haunted Hotel link. Mistake? Or is "Amanda" trying to tell us something?
"Tall Cool One
Are you thirsty? Maybe you should be."
Another wonderful person involved with this investigation named Rob writes in with the origin of a common phrase. "A tall cool drink of water", as used in reference to a real knockout lady, originated in the saloons of the Old West. I wonder if Amanda is a tall one...
-- RobMagus (I want a tall cool drink!)
Dead Poems Arrives
Three weeks after the date of the original post (which has now been overwritten by this one) I recieved my copy of Dead Poems. All I can say is:
Read it - you will believe.
-- RobMagus (Buy the book!)
Mythmail: The Klingerman Virus
"Amanda" is definitely communicating with us through the mythmails she sends out shortly after each regular UM Tuesday update. This time the mythmail is about a mail virus that comes via an envelope and infects people rather than computers. It goes on to tell us about another mail of doom that is totally real because it happened to a friend's COUSIN. Yeah, right. Chainmail has so much credibility, what with the "PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE YOU CARE ABOUT" part.
Strangely, after the body of the email there is this passage:
"Advice for those wishing to learn: One cannot change the general statistics of Asia. Instead, take up the decorative arts which are so helpful with child rearing and home care of the sick. Other social problems & services are also a strong force in promotion of health. It's no use to learn the creeds and catechisms of monocotyledons; that education is better spent learning about buildings for education and research. American or Canadian literature in English has strong roots in classical Latin grammar, and both subjects are a sound basis for applied psychology."
I guess "Amanda" is trying to put a -real- message in chainmail. Speaking
of messages in chainmail, this episode of Mythmail ends with a series of bible
quotes:
"Proverbs 7:27 Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Genesis 7:2 Ecclesiastes 2:16 Revelation 2:10 Job 4:14 Leviticus 7:37"
Solving the puzzle gets this message:
"you've seen my name before"
Obviously "Amanda" is somebody else, and somebody that we know. But who?
WHO could she be? Ed Vargas? The whole "Amanda Graves --> A Man Ed Vargas"
thing seems telling. Anyways, this time round the bible quotes don't seem to
have anything in common. However, the one quote that was written up fully in the
email is probably referring to Dread House and maybe the tunnels under CMH. This
confirms that UM is definitely more than it seems and is connected to this
little mystery.
-- RobMagus (she-mail!)
Oh Heavenly Neighbour
A few of the wonderful people involved in this investigation recieved an email from JC.
"Subject: Joy oh heavenly neighbor. Time reveals eternity\'s vast agenda. Nothing is obvious now.
Friend:
Better now than later, I think. The days are fleeting, as powder in the wind, so I suggest we move now. We can only hope, after all we've uncovered, our fates are not yet sealed. The hour, day, who is to be included and so on are unknown.
I must, no should, treat you no differently, I realize, so I hesitate to write more. Suspect everyone; if fear can save us, I cling to it.
I have secrets yet to share, if words of truth are what you seek. The time is now, and I grow desperate."
What a weird way of writing, with all that punctuation. It's obviously a
puzzle. Solving it gets us the message "the picture you see is flawed". What
does that mean? Are we missing something that we need to get the whole
"picture"? Maybe it's something more mundane? Well, it inspires us to go looking
around the Dread House website. Lo and behold, we find that the Proof pages now
have images on them! It seems that JC has decided to put the pictures and
documents up regardless of threats from TT.
We set out to look for a flawed picture among the evidence. the Picture
pages now have a series of familiar images
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/download.php?id=2601). They
are from the video on see.html. Perhaps one of the images is different, and thus
is flawed? The Documents pages now have the two TT memos and a new piece of evidence
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/ua.jpg): an application
form for Dread House. Now THAT is definitive proof that TT had a show named
Dread House. One can just barely make out the blurry presence of words on the
other side of that page. What could they say? Also, one of the memo pictures (uc.jpg
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/uc.jpg)) stands out,
because it is different from the original
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/pfile3_102_188.jpg).
Strangely, soon after that memo to "Joe" was found, JC replaced it with the
original picture. Is uc.jpg the flawed picture? If so, what does it mean?
-- RobMagus (crinkly evidence!)
A Man Ed Vargas
We have been wondering about the anagram of Amanda Graves' name that seems to indicate that she is in fact a he. Well, what better way to confirm than to simply ask? (and what better way to take up space in the Guide because I have little to write?)
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you an email conversation with Amanda Graves.
"I have something else for you. Keep it a secret, for now. Not that you could post it anyway. Only found it because of my obsession. Went far out of my way for some of them‰¥Ï Urban legends.
About dread house. More than I can share right now. And more that I need. Need & want. E-mail me if interested. Dread house may not be all there is to the story. Very interesting. A group of us are working on an investigation of a sort... Running out of time. Gaining on us. And we thought maybe you could help us, Special circumstances and all."
- from us.
"Glad you sent me this. Occasionally I get so bored during the day that I'm just dying for diversion. One time I just decided to leave my office and run free instead of being tied to a desk. Desks just aren't my style. Funnily enough, my employer wasn't too thrilled about this and sent out a search party. Of course, I had a lot of projects on my desk still needing to be done. Remind me to tell you that story sometime. Unless, that is, you'd rather not hear it!"
- from her.
"Hi again‰¥Ï
Ordinarily, i wouldn‰¥út continue to pester you. Was very intrigued by your offer. Considering the circumstances, Amanda, Now would be the perfect time for a story. If it‰¥ús too long, i can give you another means of communication ‰¥ã phone perhaps? However you wish to‰¥Ï Express yourself. Let me know soon.
Patiently waiting‰¥Ï‰¥Ï‰¥Ï"
- from us.
"Sometimes it's hard to remember those days, you know. Often there are times in your life that you wish you'd forget, but know that you should remember for your own good. Odd, isn't it, how the human psyche works? No matter.. truth, as they say, will out."
- from her.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the translation of the plaintext to the ciphertext.
"I KNOW U A MAN ED VARGAS"
- from us.
"GOOD FOR U"
- from "her".
"HOW CAN I HELP"
- from us.
"SOON"
- from "her".
I'd say this confirms that Amanda is in fact Ed. We can help him soon,
but what will that entail?
-- RobMagus (she is a he!)
Not In A Phone Call
Several wonderful people got a phonecall from Ron! He said
"Hi this is Ron, Ron Daubert, there are a lot of things I need to tell you about, but not now, not on a phone call like this. Make sure I have your e-mail address. Write to me at ron@ronsworld.org, and watch your e-mail. I'll be in touch."
We have a recording here (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/download.php?id=2644). This certainly proves that Ron is alive and well. He's been getting paranoid lately, though. We fire an email off to him, and hope he's okay. What is he going to tell us?
-- RobMagus (I'd like to order a pizza!)
TT Responds
Uh oh. It appears that our inquiries into the Dread House matter have raised some hackles at TT. A few wonderful people who have emailed TT in the past recieved responses from Randall Thomas, a Vice President of TT. Here's a few clips:
"While Tomorrow's Talk Studios does not usually respond to questions about urban legends and wild folktales such as yours, I am hoping that you may be of some use in a matter I am currently overseeing here at Tomorrow's Talk Studios."
"I can assure you that we have absolutely no footage of the subject matter that you have asked about. I'm not sure why you think we would."
"Your little "hidden" message has done little but convince me that you may indeed be somehow involved in this whole affair. I'm not certain you comprehend the seriousness of this matter or the consequences of any verifiable involvement in it on your part, but I would be glad to discuss it with you."
Sounds like a nice guy, huh? I don't know about you, but I'd rather eat
caffeinated chili than help an inquisitor working for a company that may have
murdered everyone involved with a reality TV show.
-- RobMagus (that's some perky chili!)
Stegosaurus
Mulling over the pictures on Dread House for a few days doesn't really accomplish much except convince people that we're looking in the wrong place. JC told us that there is a flaw with on of the pictures, though? Was it just the Joe mistake? Then suddenly one morning, the source of this page (http://www.dreadhouse.com/document1.html) gained some ASCII artwork:
"
tfGj: jGDDf, ,,
,,: :GLLGDLLDGDGGGj jLLj. :
:DDDEDft,fGGLGDLLEDDGGGDL.fLfLDG :fDf
GDDGDDWKLDLLDGLGDDDDGDKKLLGfGLGLDDGD;
:LLGGjfDGDDGEKDfGGLGGLGDDDEDKDGLGLLGLLDEGGDf
LGGGGDDDEEDEELGfGGLDLGEGEKWDLGLGLLLGDGELGGD: :ti
:,,,:;GLGGGDGGDKEKKGGLDGDGKDEDGKEfGLELDLDLGEGDEK.tDfG;
fGDKWDGGGGGGDGEEGLDGLjjtt;;;itttjjfjLLGEDDDGKWELGGLLDGjLL
GDDEKLLLGDDDDGLtttiiii;;;;;i;;ii;iiiiiitjfLGKtfLGGGGDEGGG
. . .jGDDEEDKKDGGLLttttiiitttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii;itifGDGDDDDGGj ..
.: , i i. LGLGEGDDDGLftiittjfjjtjttttttii;itjjjiii;;;tiii;iiiitLGGGDED;tGf,
;, tf. i, jjjLGDDGDGLtiii;itiijLLLfjttittttii;itffjjttttttiitittiii;tff:fLGDED,
it Gt. jj ;DDWGfffji;;iitttttjtffGEGffjti;;;ii;iijffjt;ttttiiitii;iii;;itDDEEEGif:
: if,.GfG;fj,;fjjjttiiiitiiiiijjtjtijDEDGjjtti;;;;;;iLjt;iii;;tjttttii;tiii,;jfLiiGEEii
.,;tjLLjjjjjttiiitt;;;iiiittttjttjfffLDEEEDGfjjjii;tttijLii;iiitffjjt;,;,iijtiiii;;tfLfiL,,,..
.:,;itjjjjjffLLLGLLGfffLLjfjttfEEDEEEDDGjfLtiiiiitGjftiitLjjtfjjtii;ti;i;,;iittttttjjLfttti,
:tLGDDDDDDfjfjtiittDffjjjfLLDDLiiij;ttjitiiiiiittjfLLLLLLj;ii
;DDGDDEDDGfjffjt;DELfGLGDEEGtttitfGGGLGLjfLLLLfjtii;:..
:jDDDEEGGGEDDfjtjtiLEDDDDEEEGftttiGDDDEGLfi,:..
:LGGGDDDL,,itGGjjjjjfffLGDDDDGLjiii;;GDEDfii,
.LGGGDft; ,GLjjti. :,jGjti; .LDGfti;,.
:LGGGj: iGftii: .Gjti; ,tLfjji:
.LGDG. .Gftt. iLii;: ;GLjt.
GDGf. jftt; Lfjt, :DLjt,
;GjGj, ,GLttji: .DLtii, ;fffLt
DtED; KGt;EtG DDf;KiG E
"
Now, if that isn't a blatant hint that this different version of the memo is stegged, I'll eat my hat. If we think back to the message JC encoded in his heavenly email, we realize that he's given us the steg password already, as well as which picture to use it on. The stegosaurus, having done its job, wandered away from the page source shortly after being discovered.
Whaddya know? Destegging uc.jpg gives us this URL (http://www.dreadhouse.com/myconnection.html).
Oh, -goody-. More of JC's favorite glaringly bright red background. Recalling
that every blank red page we've gotten so far has had something hidden, we start
clicking around, using select all, checking the source; the usual. Ctrl+A
selects a vertical bar in the top centre of the page. Curious... Looking at the
source shows us some really weird coding which seems to have to do with clicking
and dragging the mouse on the page. A little experimentation with that leads to
the unveiling of a hidden message
(http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/red2.jpg) from JC.
JC stands for Jaimie Cyphers. That is one -neat- name. I'll assume it's
real for now. In any case, the message makes it clear that Jamie has lost
someone close due to Dread House, and is willing to go to any lengths to uncover
the sinister plot behind it all. The message ends with
"Understand there will be consequences to what I - no, we - are doing. Be ready. I'll be in touch very soon."
Hopefully we won't end up like the Dread House contestants. What does the
future hold in store for us?
-- RobMagus (that red box thing is so cool!)
RECAP 4
NEW SITES:
- n/a
NEW CHARACTERS:
- JC is Jaimie Cyphers (not new)
- Amanda Graves is Edward Vargas (not new)
- Randall Thomas, VP at TT
- the Stegosaurus
UNKNOWN/UNSOLVED/INTERESTING:
- TT barcode
- the ghostly drips at CMH
- patient artwork at CMH
- dream projector dreams, especially bloody letters
- ancient terror
- who threatened Charles?
- what is the real purpose of UM?
- what does infrasound have to do with this?
- who phoned Jaimie?
- Jaimie is a woman?
- how is the Gold Mine Hotel connected?
- Dead Poems book puzzles
- what will Randall Thomas do if he finds out more?
- what information will Ron give us?
- what information will Jaimie give us?
- is William Staufer from TT the William S. on Dream Projector?
Curiouser and curiouser, as Eliza's sister said.
--RobMagus (the list gets even more longer!)
The Crying Game
Remember that weird paragraph in the Klingerman Virus Mythmail that EdAmanda sent us? Well, for those of you who haven't been paying attention, here it is again:
"Advice for those wishing to learn: One cannot change the general statistics of Asia. Instead, take up the decorative arts which are so helpful with child rearing and home care of the sick. Other social problems & services are also a strong force in promotion of health. It's no use to learn the creeds and catechisms of monocotyledons; that education is better spent learning about buildings for education and research. American or Canadian literature in English has strong roots in classical Latin grammar, and both subjects are a sound basis for applied psychology."
Hey, it's still weird. Weird. Anyways, all of those phrases in there
sound a lot like subjects of books. If we do a little research where it counts,
it becomes apparent that the paragraph can be represented with this series of
numbers:
315 745 649 363 613 238 584 370 727 810 475 158
Given that this is in a Mythmail, we are pretty confident that the
numbers represent this string of letters:
baaccbbbbaab
Lovely. What does that mean? As luck would have it, EdAmanda senses that we are stuck, and leaves a very hint-like update on UrbanMythology's About page:
"9/4/04 Update: Lots of e-mail lately. So many notes on such a large scale. Some of my notes are even yet unread. Please be gentle with me if I don't get back with you immediately."
Notes? Scale? Hmmm... Another look at that string of letters, and their
meaning is readily apparent. The solution of this puzzle leads us to this page
(http://www.urbanmythology.net/cryinggame.html). Curses! It's
blank? May the Source be with you, always. The hidden message reads:
"A man Ed Vargas. More to come."
Hooray! A confirmation of something we knew ages ago: Ed Vargas is
pretending to be Amanda Vargas and is using UrbanMythology to lead people to
clues concerning Dread House. Why the secrecy? TT must have some really
voracious lawyers.
-- RobMagus (this shall forever be known as the Boy George Puzzle!)
Chain Of The Shadow Of Death
With a nod to Mission Impossible, several wonderful people who made sure Ron had their email address recieved a self-destructing email (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/ron_mail.jpg). Aside from being a really cool idea, the email was a message telling us that Puzzlecards have become quite popular. Seeing as how this is from Ron, and that subject line and "14/14" at the end are suspicious, it's obviously a puzzle. Looking at it squarely and then from an angle bags us the solution, which leads us here (http://www.ronsworld.org/salesreport.htm).
Hooboy, now there's a puzzle if I ever saw one. A graph with seemingly
random letters on it, a series of symbols, a strange choice for graph caption,
and a hidden message in the source. First off, the source message reads
"catena dell'ombra della morte"
which is Italian for "chain of the valley of death". Creepy. Is it a reference to the Psalm? Or perhaps a Lewis Caroll poem? What does this mean?
Next we have the caption. An examination of the order of the words and
certain letters reveals the message
"find and replace".
Well, that's probably a hint on how to solve that incredibly suspicious graph. Indeed it is, for if we go along the graph and place the letters of the alphabet properly, the points on the graph spell out "becarefultxt". We add that to the url and get this (http://www.ronsworld.org/becareful.txt). Great, more encryption to work through. Using the replacement graph as a key, we go through and revise all the text to get Ron's message (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/ronstext-revised.txt).
You'd really have to read it yourself, but basically Ron relates the
events leading up to his disappearance, tells us about the third Webmaster Tools
disc and how he doesn't know the password, then tells us to be careful. He
doesn't want our names ending up crossed off on any lists.
Those symbols on the sales report graph are interesting, but who knows what they mean.
-- RobMagus (the symbols say "WALLABY"!)
New Myths Sept 7
Three new myths! Three new myths! See how they run! See how they run!
"Give the Little Lady a Hand
And her tuition probably cost an arm and
a leg, too"
This gruesome myth takes place during the era in which women were scarce in the medical field. A group of male med students decided to scare a female med student and put the arm of a dissection cadaver in her bed. The next day, they found her in bed gnawing on the arm. Apparently, the prank drove her mad. She had to stay sedated in a nuthouse to keep her from biting her own arm off. Be careful not to give her the finger...
"Killer Cacti
When plants attack"
This is the tale of a lady who got a rare type of cactus down Mexico way. Once she'd had it at home for a while, she noticed that it seemed to be moving, almost... breathing. She called the authorties to get rid of it, but the guy who was carrying the cactus out tripped and fell. The plant burst open, and thousands of baby scorpions piled out. I guess that's how cacti get those spines.
"Something Sounds Really Funny
A pain in the ear, redux"
This legend is sent in by reader "BS" as a follow-up to an earlier post about infrasound. Apparently, BS has experienced "the hum" for quite a while. He found a recording of the sound somewhere online, and sent it in with his mtyh. EdAmanda posted it up (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/download.php?id=2695&sid=4315647d8759520ab322ef29ac2c3155) with the tale.
BS, huh? Well now. Considering how infrasound has been showing up on
UrbanMythology a lot, and we know that Ed is trying to tell us something through
the site, that wav is likely to be a puzzle. Let's give it a go, shall we?
-- RobMagus (the sound makes my head fuzzy!)
Randall Gives Us A Call
After rescheduling to postpone the call one day, Randall Thomas phoned our man Satanis. Here (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/download.php?id=2709)'s a recording of the call. It's a bit difficult to make out what Randall is saying.
Also, in an effort to save me time, here's a summary of Randall's contact by Satanis himself:
"Randall Thomas is trying to get ahold of people in order to send a
message to Ron. The message is to call Randall Thomas as soon as he can.
Randall's motivations for getting in touch with Ron aren't clear, but he did mention that he "actually likes" Ron quite a bit. He mentioned "conflicting interests" were involved in this investigation, and he felt that it would be best if he got ahold of Ron before others did. When I asked for clarification on what he meant by "conflicting interests", he mentioned that there were some people who were worried about his well being, and others who would like nothing better than to see him "dragged off in chains to jail for doing what he's done". He also mentioned that he was calling "after normal business hours" in order to avoid direct conflicts with the named interests.
What he's done isn't specifically clear. Randall said that Ron has stolen company property, which is in violation of his employee agreement. I asked if they were "webmaster tools left by ed vargas" and he said that it's possible that those could be a part of what's missing. When I probed for more information, he said that he couldn't legally disclose that information. When I said that it was probably some pretty "wicked" information that he must have in order for people to be so upset about it, he mentioned that in television, they're very concerned with keeping things under wraps, as they don't want other networks or companies stealing their ideas.
We also talked a bit about Dread House, something which he denied knowledge of, aside from some e-mails that he had recieved, and he mentioned that it is very easy to fake "official" documents. When I mentioned disappearing employees, he also agreed that there was something strange about that, and he seemed a bit perturbed about the whole situation. He promised to investigate further.
I also said that this whole Dread House thing was the reason why Ron had left, also saying that he had felt threatened by certain staff members. When he asked for names, I mentioned Richard Meyer (whom he promptly denied any knowledge of), and also Randall Thomas (I mentioned the elevator incident, and he didn't "recall" anything). When I mentioned "unsavory" things going on with the company, he again said that he couldn't prove anything, though he understood my concern.
He also stressed that he was a "newer" employee, who had been employed recently by the company. He also stressed that he had to be careful about what he said due to "legal constaints", that he "liked Ron", and that there were "conflicting interests".
At the end of the call, I said that the best way to get information from us was to provide us with information. I said that he had given us enough information for me to pass the message on to Ron. He said that the important thing now was that Ron gets ahold of him, and that he couldn't make any guarantees about future interaction."
There you have it. I don't know whether to trust Randall or not, but I'm
leaning towards "not". In Ron's "Be Careful" message, he told us that folks at
TT were trying to accost him in his office, were following him home, and looking
through his cubicle and even his own home. We can pass this information on to
Ron, but I doubt he'll call Randall.
-- RobMagus (I'm so lazy!)
Mythmail: Cockpit Conversations
Folks recieved new mythmail in their inbox, and this time it wasn't the usual chainmail junk. You see, the email had a list of funny conversations taking place in the cockpits of airplanes. I suppose, though, that some of the conversations might be more scary than funny if the passengers of the plane ever heard them. In any case, the interesting stuff is at the end of the email as usual. We've got a passage entitled "Shakespeare in Love" that appears to be made up of snippets of Shakespearean sonnets:
"Shakespeare in Love: 0 Lo! in the orient when the gracious light Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath steel'd, Those hours, that with gentle work did frame 0 Lo! in the orient when the gracious light O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem So shall I live, supposing thou art true, 0 O! that you were your self; but, love, you are That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath steel'd, 0 Let those who are in favour with their stars Lo! in the orient when the gracious light O! that you were your self; but, love, you are 0 Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, No more be grieved at that which thou hast done: So is it not with me as with that Muse,"
We've also got the regular ol' set of special numbers:
"Your lucky software versions!
7.8.16 1.1.3 4.5.16 3.2.7 0.1.18 2.3.15 5.1.1 8.1.20 9.2.15 6.2.2 1.2.13 7. 3.21 3.1.11 5.2.49 4.1.5 2.1.21 6.2.47 0.1.7!"
Using the regular method, the solve for the numbers reads:
"Like Paul Harvey Says"
Now that's an odd one. Some common Paul Harvey sayings are "and now for
page two" and "and now you know the rest of the story". This seems to indicate
that there is more to this email. The secret probably lies in the cryptic
Shakespearean passage.
-- RobMagus (King Henry VI, part I: III, iii!)
Gravestone Rubbing
Charles has posted his latest update to the CMH website. He tells us of a phone call he received from a woman who had taking a rubbing of a gravestone at CMH during the seventies. This woman had become interested in the history of CMH and the website's story about the strange gravemarker reminded her immediately of the rubbing. She'd taken the rubbing because of the strange symbols. Charles has agreed to meet with her and is quite excited at the prospect of seeing a bit of CMH history.
I'll bet that -we- are excited too, but for a slightly different reason:
there are strange symbols, and Charles is going to post them on his site soon.
Perhaps they will shed more light on this investigation.
-- RobMagus (I'll bet they say "made you look"!)
GMH Mailing List
People who signed up for the Gold Mine Hotel mailing list received this email:
"Howdy!
Thanks ever so much for contacting The Gold Mine Hotel!
Although we've experienced a few minor delays, our remodeling efforts are well under way and remain "just about" on schedule for the Grand Opening in the new year!
I've been having a ton of fun watching the transformation over the past months, as I've tried my utmost to keep the original building architecture intact where possible. With the hotel having been built over a mine and the mazes of unusual passageways found within the building it