Oct
22
2015
109

Breakdown Of The Possible Theories Surrounding The Creepy Puzzle

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Regarding the weird video that we received that has stirred the internet, to say the least. People have uncovered a lot of information, but it’s hard to make connections between the different messages. Many different theories have been put out there, but nothing conclusive, so I thought we’d have a look at what we do know and what it points to.
spectrogram creepy puzzle
At one point, when the gruesome images hidden in the sound file were uncovered many people thought this was the work of a serial killer. Scary for sure.

But then people started finding the origins of those images.

Image of girl is the same as this image from the German movie Slasher made in 2007. I’ll link it to you, but be warned, it’s very much NSFW.

In the Audio Spectrograph, one of the images you can see, looks like a tortured girl BUT it also looks veeery close to Courbet’s Painting “Origin of the World”. The diferences are that the spectrograph version is shaved. Wich is an Andrey Keske art based on the Courbets.

I’ll link that too, but same warning, not safe for work. You can find it here

One of the embedded photos is from a horror movie called The Bunny Game, .. , and a third is an actual crime-scene photo showing a victim of Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler.

It seems the images were chosen at random, one is from a movie, one is a piece of art and one is an actual crime scene photo. Still creepy, but at least this tells us that the person who made the video isn’t a serial killer trying to spread his work.

 

Then there’s the idea that this might be a promotional stunt of some sort.

The story and settings seems to fit quite well with an upcoming movie based on a book by author Dan Brown, some also see a connection to a ScyFy series.

 

It could also be the start of a viral marketing campaign for a television show, movie, or video game. Several Reddit users have settled on it being a complex promo stunt for the new big screen version of Dan Brown’s novel Inferno. In the book, a death-obsessed genius sends a video while wearing a similar outfit to the man in the clip and preaches the benefits of creating a new plague to reduce the human population. The movie is slated to arrive next year.

Others agree that it’s a promotional stunt but claim the Syfy series 12 Monkeys is the more likely culprit. As the show’s synopsis explains, the series follows a time traveler who has come back in time to stop a deadly plague from destroying humanity. A mysterious character in the show bares a striking resemblance to the person seen in the video clip:

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Daily Dot

Another interesting connection is that it might be the musician Skrillex that is behind this. The theory comes from the decoded message ‘RED LIPSLIFE TENTH’, Skrillex has released a song called ‘Red Lips’

Skrillex is an electro DJ known for his references and taste for illuminati and satanic issues. Has a very known song/video called “Red Lips” that came out in May 2015. Maybe is kinda marketing campaign, or maybe this can be the stolen CDs that Skrillex declared that had been stolen from his hotel room. Others electro DJs like Aphex Twin had before put hidden images in the specrogram, like in the musical video WindowLicker

Also Skrillex tweeted this yesterday:

  While this does seem entirely plausible, the problem is that the hints towards the works being promoted are fairly weak. And a reoccurring question is, ‘why wasn’t this sent to a bigger news outlet?’. —   Then there’s this lead, which went cold pretty fast. But it might hint towards the creator hacking a website to spread clues.

**This Facebook page is not affiliated with TritonTV.com. That site has been hacked. Our correct website is ttv.ucsd.edu.**

Posted by Triton Television on Monday, October 19, 2015

As for the source of the video, one seemingly promising lead comes from a cached version of a now-defunct website. The blog for Triton TV, a University of California, San Diego film group, showed a screencap of the disturbing video along with a title and description written entirely in binary code. The Daily Dot reached out to Triton TV only to discover that the blog in question had been hacked just weeks prior. Whoever brought down the site chose to upload whatever creepy YouTube videos they could find, seemingly at random, in an effort to troll people.

Daily Dot

Then there’s the people who think that this is a credible threat towards president Obama. To me this is the scariest theory, but some things lead me to believe it’s not accurate.

This idea comes from the fact that coordinates to the white house have been found in the video. Combined with the message ‘RED LIPSLIFE TENTH’, which could possibly be an anagram for ‘KILL THE PRESIDENT’.

At first glance this would seem to be a likely theory. But if you think about it it might also not be.

The media that is saying  that the F = K mean that it could be up to the way you interpret that character (46 = F, 4b = K) . But ‘Fill the president makes little sense, although maybe that is indeed what it was intended to say)

The K in “Kill The President” is because in the hex it was decrypted from had a “b” in it. The researchers thought that it also looked like a “6”, which means that that particular letter could have been an F or a K.

The message RED LIPSLIFE TENTH could be an anagram for that, but it could be also be something else entirely. Since nothing substantial about that message has been found, this seems as likely as the Skrillex connection.

But what makes me the most skeptical is the fact there is no actual threat in the video. There’s a lot of talk about death, but no actual threats.
There are mentions of something one year from now, but that might have already been. (Nope, that was false information spread by Aetbx)
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The dates of the photos confirm that the video was created sometime between November 2013 and April 2015. -Daily Dot
And once again there’s the question ‘Why was this sent to a small tech blog in Sweden?’, note that we do have a US address listed on the website too. It makes little sense to go about it that way if you wanted to reach the US government somehow.

Nobody could have guessed this thing would become so big, but by now the US government has to have seen it. And I haven’t heard anything from them, although I would help them any way I could if they did decide to contact me. This at least suggest that they aren’t taking it seriously.

It may just be me sincerely hoping this isn’t a terrorist threat, but I do find it unlikely. None the less, the prospect is scary

It was suggested to me that ‘Kill the president’ might actually be a reference to this song. I’m skeptical, but it seems as credible as the other speculations.

13 ani (and?) 50 was part of one of the decrypted messages. It’s been suggested this might refer to 13 stripes and 50 stars on the U.S flag. So far the only solid theory, others have however suggested it might be a date or a year.

Connected to the previous theory is the one that the video is an invitation to join the Illuminati. Well, that seems incredibly unlikely.

“A new order is on the rise. You will join, or you will fall”
The White House stuff combined with this, and the masonic eye (possibly the hand symbols too) is what makes people believe this.

But honestly, presuming the Illuminati even exists outside The DaVinci Code, why would they want me to join?

And if they want anyone who can decrypt it to join, they will soon have a whole lot of members.

But one does have to consider that this might be an invite to join some kind of secret society, and maybe it was never meant to come out the way it did.

Lukasz Matablewski, creater of DO NOT BELIEVE HIS LIES, lives in Warsaw – he has done this type of this before. see this video which was part of the DNBHL puzzle :

This one I can’t actually find any evidence against. The only thing that strikes me is the major difference in styles, that is how it was made. (And the same goes for ‘Cicada 3301’)

But it does seem possible, perhaps we’ll hear from Lukasz Matablewski..

2ab02d324be94bf2ea1acf5669183d1aThe AETBX theory… The very first uploader. He started uploading new codes adding to the puzzle, he invented the ‘Muerte’ title and the ‘one year from now’ thing.
At first it would seem this person was taking responsibility. But of course he has denied that from the very start.

When I posted one of his doodles he promptly emailed me asking ‘to end this nightmare’ and delete that photo. (He said I would respect his request if he explained, he did. But honestly, why do it to begin with.) See the emails here

Was It him? Is he an impostor? How was he the first to get the CD?

Why was the CD found in Spain when the others seem to originate in Poland. As it turns out this guy has been very active, either building on his creepy puzzle, or spreading false information. But why….

There are clearly more questions than answers…

 

This new spectrogram was sent to  Reddit user theufomusic, it includes this message:

0101010001100101001000000111001101101001 0110011101110101011001010010000001110001 0111010101100101011001000110000101101110 0110010001101111001000000011000100100000 0110000111000011101100010110111100100000 0110110101100101011011100110111101110011

[ES] Te sigue quedando 1 año menos [EN] You still has one year less (You still have one year or less)

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So the questions, what on earth is this guy trying to do. He claims he didn’t create the video, yet he very much acts like it.

Someone pointed out this whole thing might be created by the same person who made a website called Magibon.com. It certainly is as creepy, if not more creepy.

This was posted about the Magibon project by it’s creator (Danung)

This is an experiment in memetics, or the phenomenon of cultural transmission on the Internet. The idea was to utilize the fame and popularity of an already-existing cultural instance on the Internet. So I targeted the bizarrely popular YouTube-video-blogger “Mririan” (also known as “Magibon”).. She is a 21-year old (but much younger looking) girl who is most recognized for frequently putting up videos where she stares at the camera without saying much or anything at all. But her videos are seen by millions.

Then of course there’s the theory that this is just a really elaborate joke, perhaps by film students.
No particular evidence for or against. We know it wasn’t the Parker Wright film student we found. But it does still seem to be the most likely theory.

Here’s an interesting theory! This might have been made by an angry former Bell employee.

Bell is a Canadian telephone provider, and doesn’t even exist in Poland. So it’s weird to find this here:

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And if you go to FuckYouBell.com it gets even more interesting.

But besides the spray I don’t see any connections to the video. It sure is an interesting idea though.


As for the idea that I made it. Well, frankly it would be a terribly stupid thing to make and then publish on your own website. Although it does seem kind of harmless at this point, it still contains some stuff that one could really get in trouble for. Not to mention how much it would hurt my reputation as a journalist.

There’s nothing else suggesting this would be the correct theory. I don’t have the skills to make something like this, besides I’ve never even been in Poland.

Although I see why some people might think so, which is why I thought I’d mention it. Also, do feel free to ask me questions in the comments


By now you all know what happened in Paris on the 13th of November. Immediately I started receiving comments about how this video might have been a warning about that.

That is of course an extremely unsettling thought, and I can see why some might jump to that conclusion.
But let’s not forget that there’s not actually anything in the video specifically about France, Paris or Isis.


It has also been suggested that Anonymous has something to do with this video somehow.

The following sentence is from “Anonymous”:
“ISIS, we will hunt you, take down your sites, emails, accounts and expose you. From now on, no safe place for you online.
You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure.”

Maybe ISIS is the virus and Anonymous the “antivirus” – like in our creepy video.


A person claiming to be the creator of the video has stepped up recently on Twitter and Facebook. The person goes under the name Parker Warner Wright.

This isn’t the first person to make it seem like they made the video, but some things about this person stands out. He’s obviously very dedicated and keeps replying to questions, with fairly reasonable responses. He is very straight forward in his answers unlike others who claimed responsibility. The purpose of the video was apparently to make a political statement in an artistic way.
parker warner wright birdman 11bx1371 mask
For proof he has posted a picture of the supposed mask, of course people have replicated the mask previously, like the Halloween costume I posted about earlier. And what might be the source files for the geometric puzzle in the video. He also posted the source code for the blinking light in the hand, which was apparently made using Arduino. However he failed to prove that the PWW Youtube account is his, he says it’s because he forgot the password.

If this is true it’s incredibly exciting. Personally I will remain skeptical for now, some things still don’t make sense, like why send it to me specifically.

Here is a document that was posted with many of his replies to questions.
Update:
Well, it’s starting to really look like the Parker Warner Wright guy is the person who made the video.

Besides the previously provided evidence, he has now changed the description of the original youtube video. Which means he has regained access to his youtube account.
It used to say ‘Are you listening?’, it now says ‘Are you watching?’

He also posted a CD which he says is from the same batch as the one that was sent to me. Suggesting we can confirm using the serial numbers on the CD. I honestly can’t read the serial numbers he provided, but if you want to have a go at it I have included the serial number on the CD I received.

Further photo evidence. This, I think is harder to fake. I am confident, if you match these numbers against the numbers on the disc Gadgetzz received, they should match very closely.

Posted by Parker Wright on Friday, December 4, 2015

I’ve asked him about his reason for sending the video to me specifically. The answers were rather obscure and didn’t quite satisfy me, but apparently he received one of my business cards. That suggests he has attended a consumer electronics trade show. It would also

Supposedly PWW gave one of the gloves in the video to a collector. However I haven’t been able to find any more than a tweet about it, so I’m not sure.

My first thought was the CES in Vegas, but it might make more sense if it was CeBIT or IFA, since these are in Germany and a bit closer to Poland. I have asked him for a picture of the business card, so let’s see if he delivers.
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As for peoples reaction to this.. Some are relieved it’s just a piece of art, me included. But many people are also dissapointed, since it kills the mystery. The comments on this Facebook post by PWW about sums that up.

Someone would have to be very clever, to produce the amount of evidence I have presented. It’s actually quite…

Posted by Parker Wright on Friday, December 4, 2015

Personally I don’t really know what to think. It may kill the mystery for some, but I’m more curious than ever. This is the closest we’ve been to any actual answers about this whole thing.

He has promised that a follow up version is on the way, which will supposedly fill some of the gaps in the first version.

 

Let me know if I missed anything!
I will keep updating both the original article and this post.

 

Update:

Parker Warner Wright has been confirmed as the creator of the video. He has also released part two, you can find it here.