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nonathlon posted:I'm fairly sure it was the 90s with the advent of digital cameras (and then phones in cameras). People started taking a lot more photos, were more likely to have their cameras on them. I think there might be something about digital cameras that also makes them more likely to pick up orbs. Yeah, I think it’s mainly that more people carried cameras. “Orbs” are out-of-focus specs of dust/pollen/rain/snow that reflect a lot of light from a flash (or sunlight is bouncing in a weird way). The lens on a smartphone is pretty likely to be filthy so it would have a lot more dust on it. Early digital cameras also have much worse picture quality compared to even a ho-hum 35mm film camera.
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Mar 24, 2021 14:07
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Backscatter artifacts are just a thing that has always happened with flash photography, it's just way way more common with digital cameras. You also get it on film and video cameras. Youtube is full of videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02cI0ITnsik There's also been centuries of folklore about 'spirit lights' (will o' the wisp, pixy lights, min min lights, etc) over the entire globe which probably fed into this idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp#Folklore Old timey spirit photography really popularised the idea that cameras could capture images of ghosts that weren't visible to the naked eye and they occasionally included "ghost lights" and similar things, although they mostly deliberate hoaxes 
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Mar 24, 2021 14:58
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FreudianSlippers posted:The Tribumvirate I want you to know that I appreciate you.
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Mar 24, 2021 19:26
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Aw sweet, there was a good paranormal thread a while back (probably in a different subforum) that's been gone too long to dig up, glad to have a current one. Our friend the Chupacabra is my favorite cryptid in a way, because I remember all the reports stating up back in the '90s. Coincidentally I was visiting my grandparents, who randomly decided to listen to Art Bell-esque paranormal radio that summer, and I was young enough to think "they couldn't say it on the radio if it wasn't true"  Many sleepless nights were had that summer. Good memories. Also I have a Puerto Rican friend whose mom absolutely swears she saw one on their farm, killing their animals   
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Mar 24, 2021 22:51
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hARjT7uoWUg
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Mar 24, 2021 23:02
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Captain Hygiene posted:
You’re probably aware of this but the Chupacabra is literally Sil from the movie Species: quote:A five-year investigation by Benjamin Radford, documented in his 2011 book Tracking the Chupacabra, concluded that the description given by the original eyewitness in Puerto Rico, Madelyne Tolentino, was based on the creature Sil in the 1995 science-fiction horror film Species.[1] The alien creature Sil is nearly identical to Tolentino's chupacabra eyewitness account and she had seen the movie before her report: "It was a creature that looked like the chupacabra, with spines on its back and all... The resemblance to the chupacabra was really impressive", Tolentino reported.[9] Radford revealed that Tolentino "believed that the creatures and events she saw in Species were happening in reality in Puerto Rico at the time", and therefore concludes that "the most important chupacabra description cannot be trusted".[1] This, Radford believes, seriously undermines the credibility of the chupacabra as a real animal.
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Mar 24, 2021 23:30
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david_a posted:You’re probably aware of this but the Chupacabra is literally Sil from the movie Species: That's pretty awesome, I think I've read that and forgotten about it since. Seems like one of the bigger cases of things in TV or movies suddenly becoming the next big thing people think they see IRL.
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Mar 24, 2021 23:39
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It's much more common than you'd think. The appearances of cryptids usually bounce around a lot until they get canonized by a popular movie or TV show. The loch ness monster may have been based on a dinosaur in King Kong, Grey aliens are from The Outer Limits, etc.
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Mar 24, 2021 23:59
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Heck, those black eyed children from a a few pages back are straight out of japanese horror movies/their western remakes
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Mar 25, 2021 00:04
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a kitten posted:Heck, those black eyed children from a a few pages back are straight out of japanese horror movies/their western remakes It's like how the Warrens went from being ghost hunters to demon hunters immediately after The Exorcist came out
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Mar 25, 2021 00:12
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feedmyleg posted:It's much more common than you'd think. The appearances of cryptids usually bounce around a lot until they get canonized by a popular movie or TV show. The loch ness monster may have been based on a dinosaur in King Kong, Grey aliens are from The Outer Limits, etc. The X Files el chupacabra episode aired January '97, and made me think it was as ancient and we'll established as something like the yeti or something.
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Mar 25, 2021 01:14
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Bi-la kaifa posted:The X Files el chupacabra episode aired January '97, and made me think it was as ancient and we'll established as something like the yeti or something. drat that was a good episode
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Mar 25, 2021 01:23
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a kitten posted:When i was a kid i didn't quite believe in UFOs and other assorted weirdness, but i didn't quite not believe either. I'd happily read any "mysteries of the unknown" type book i could get my hands on, but there was one thing i could not deal with at all and it was the Flatwoods Monster, specifically the picture in one of those books. I even paperclipped the pages it was on together so i wouldn't accidentally see it if i was flipping through to read about the Dogon tribe, or mysterious green cave children, or some other UFO thing. It was this pic and it was the size of like 2 postage stamps and i have no idea why it wigged me out so drat badly for so so long Flatwoods Monster is so good. It's the right combination of uncanny valley and overt menace, especially given the accompanying story, and it freaked me out plenty, too. The reasonable explanation of it just being a panicked encounter with an owl did nothing to assuage that feeling. I think the scare it gave me finally got diluted thanks to the 2013 video game Wonderful 101, where an alien antagonist has that look, but they strut around doing familiarly cartoonish bad guy stuff and you wind up beating them in a pastiche of Punch-Out.
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Mar 25, 2021 02:21
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I love this thread. Thanks for all the great posts and fun reads so far! I enjoy a ton of cryptids, but one of my most enduring fascinations is with the "lobishomen" or "lobisomem," which is commonly described as either a Portuguese "vampire" and/or a Brazilian "werewolf." Why? Because, as far as my research has proven, there is almost no unique or culturally-accurate information online in English about this creature(s). In Iberian or Brazilian Portuguese, I can't find much information about them either. Most online "resources" mostly repeat this kind of poo poo: https://bizarreandgrotesque.com/2015/08/09/the-lobishomen-a-werewolf-whose-blood-can-kill-you/ http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1079302/pg1 Totally unsourced, *except* Legends and Poems By John Keegan and John O'Hanlon (1907). Basically every reference comes back to this book, somewhere. I cannot find this book's text in full. Mostly, the Portuguese bloodsuckers suck a little blood and never kill a victim. They only attack women. If they do, they either cause women to kill their kids or go "nymphomanic." The Brazilian lycanthrope is frequently embellished as being the 7th child of a 7th child, a bastard, etc. Typical folklore stuff. They're either a more recognizable werewolf or tiny monkey men who trick young women into letting them suck their titties, then bite them and suck their blood, making them, again, commit infanticide or begin behaving hypersexually. Unlike the Portuguese version, the Brazilian lycanthrope's blood can and will kill a human, and that's pretty consistent across English sources, but I cannot find a single Brazilian Portuguese source that corroborates this. A common feature across all info I can find is that if you kill the original creature, you free all other people they've attacked, which is interesting in how similar it is to other folkloric creatures/cryptids. The wildest thing? My Portuguese or Brazilian friends have *no idea* what I'm talking about, and say they've never heard of either of these critters as interpreted by the dozens of online or English book sources I can find, even when presented with the sites in question. "It's just the Brazilian word for werewolf. Nothing special." Corroborating this, I can find movies involving the word "lobisomem" as a translation for "werewolf" on IMDB, but they seem generically werewolves. I can't find a single horror movie involving the nymphomania, infanticide, or weird tiny monkey men at all. If anyone actually has information about this creature, especially if you're Brazilian or Portuguese, please free me. At this point, I assume someone made something up (akin to Alexandria's Genesis years and years ago, which would be its own post, but funnily enough, someone already covered it this month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKKdDByP-qM) and it just spread online as people copy-pasted text and didn't do their own research, which I suppose is interesting on its own. (Like how the chupacabre is just Sil, as previously stated.) Treguna Mekoides has a new favorite as of 06:05 on Mar 25, 2021 |
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Mar 25, 2021 06:01
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Backscatter artifacts are just a thing that has always happened with flash photography, it's just way way more common with digital cameras. You also get it on film and video cameras. Youtube is full of videos like this: This ring doorbell footage seems to have caught something similar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE6vgKrdHzk sorry I know I posted this in the horror thread too I just love this video. It works better here anyways
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Mar 25, 2021 06:54
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one of the hot new conspiracies is the Propaganda Due/Operation Gladio rabbit hole Highlights include notorious figures like:  Hitler in Argentina  Nazi James Bond  A talented rocket boi  German Pablo Escobar  Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961 but it all starts with the "unholy alliance"  Broad strokes: this book presents evidence that the USA/NATO in cooperation with the Vatican and Organized Crime created not only fascist stay behind networks to physically combat the USSR in europe, but also -- as this book details -- allegedly committed false flags acts of terror to promote conservative political discourse as an ideological bulwark for the same goal. From what we know, this was a part of a strategy of "tension", to keep people on their toes, afraid, and voting more conservative. Now this isn't exactly in the realm of "conspiracy theory" there's a great deal of evidence, there's a whole wikipedia article about this stay-behind network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio e: if you don't want to buy the book this wiki page has 96 individual references and 15 works cited in "further reading" or just ask me I'll try to explain best as I can Former DILF has a new favorite as of 10:50 on Mar 25, 2021 |
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Mar 25, 2021 08:10
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Treguna Mekoides posted:If anyone actually has information about this creature, especially if you're Brazilian or Portuguese, please free me. 
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Mar 25, 2021 11:23
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nonathlon posted:Darren Naish had done some top stuff to do with marine life and sea monsters. This is apparently the full uncropped photo, or at least what's left of it:  Wilson apparently snapped four photos. Two didn't turn out, one became the infamous Surgeon's Photo and the fourth was this:  Karl Shuker wrote a very long blog post where he argues that the second photo is proof that the object in the photos can't have been a rigid fake model because of its different shape and orientation. To me it looks like a rigid model that is falling over in the water and has pitched towards the camera. 
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Mar 25, 2021 18:06
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 I've never seen the full photo before. No wonder the crop is always shown, it looks as tiny as, well, as it actually is.Agreed about the other photo just being a different angle. Probably floated a few feet closer to the shore so it was a more top-down view, too.
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Mar 25, 2021 18:16
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Karl Shuker wrote a very long blog post where he argues that the second photo is proof that the object in the photos can't have been a rigid fake model because of its different shape and orientation. drat - Shuker always seemed like he was a smart guy that applied the appropriate amount of scepticism. But that wider photo is damning and tells you how much framing and composition shapes how you interpret a picture.
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Mar 25, 2021 19:11
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Twist: the photo is actually real but Nessies are the size of a duck
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Mar 25, 2021 19:32
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Captain Hygiene posted:Twist: the photo is actually real but Nessies are the size of a duck That sounds adorable 
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Mar 25, 2021 19:40
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Casu Marzu posted:Oh hey, there's a semi-local cryptid in WI that I absolutely love. Backreading the thread and was excited to see this. I worked in Rhinelander for a while back in 2019 and got to hang out with this fine fellow for a month:  Doubly fun because I remembered driving through there and seeing the main statue way back when I was a kid, having forgotten about it in the years since then. It's neat, about the most localized cryptid I can think of.
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Mar 25, 2021 21:32
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 Found this in my Amazon recommendations today. I thought I had recommendations turned off!! Of course, this made me wonder... https://www.etsy.com/listing/894748962/mothman-plush  gently caress, I want 'im. 
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Mar 26, 2021 03:31
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Treguna Mekoides posted:
Replace the US flag with either the California or Cascadia flags and I'd wear that bigfoot t-shirt.
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Mar 26, 2021 04:06
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Treguna Mekoides posted:
Etsy has some great cryptid stuff  https://www.etsy.com/listing/967172...h_click=1&cns=1
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Mar 26, 2021 04:42
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stereobreadsticks posted:Replace the US flag with either the California or Cascadia flags and I'd wear that bigfoot t-shirt.   Searching bigfoot + cascadia got a lot of hits so you might be in luck. Thinking back on Nessie up there and i'm so used to the idea of it "really" being some sort of plesiosaur or something similar that i forget that some of the descriptions don't match that at all. So, sure why can't it be some sort of giant squid-blob.
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Mar 26, 2021 04:45
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    This store has a good selection of cryptid scented candles, they're very affordable and having bought a few I can confirm they smell great: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SnowsCutSoaps?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=790372733
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Mar 26, 2021 04:49
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"Cryptid scented candles" is a phrase I never would've expected to encounter a week ago, but one I'm very much on board with
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Mar 26, 2021 04:52
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haha wow these are some great finds, i personally love the mothman hey i have an idea, what if I were to put together a "blind box" figurine set of rare war criminals, shadow spies, secret nazis that kind of thing basically Funkos for CSPAM nite crew. I'm gonna try to expand on the Gladio Cinematic Universe later in this thread but it seems like this thread knows what it likes
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Mar 26, 2021 04:57
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 https://www.etsy.com/listing/938624..._search_click=1 Well, this went in a weird direction. Anyway, these pins reminded me of a shirt Branson Reese made for a podcast:  https://shop.boontavista.com/product/boonta-vista-bigfoot-is-real-t-shirt I'll be honest, if this shirt wasn't 46$ I might have bought it. Edit: Former DILF posted:haha wow these are some great finds, i personally love the mothman I'd be up for that. Space Cadet Omoly has a new favorite as of 05:03 on Mar 26, 2021 |
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Mar 26, 2021 05:00
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There's a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge number of cryptid toys and figures out there, there's crazy popular 
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Mar 26, 2021 13:20
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Flatwoods Monster sounds like doped up radiated Mr Burns in my headcanon, bringing peace and love to all and sundry
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Mar 26, 2021 13:28
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nonathlon posted:I'm fairly sure it was the 90s with the advent of digital cameras (and then phones in cameras). People started taking a lot more photos, were more likely to have their cameras on them. I think there might be something about digital cameras that also makes them more likely to pick up orbs. Early digital cameras were definitely more susceptible to orbs and other phenomena. In the days of film cameras, the average person would drop them off to be developed and get them back the next day with dud photos removed or with a little sticker explaining why the photo came out bad. It wouldn't surprise me if orb photos from the 70s/80s disproportionately came from Polaroid instant film cameras. In Ireland we have very few cryptids. I think it's because we're a small, well-settled country that has been largely explored and deforested for thousands of years. A lot of what might once have been cryptids have now passed into mythology. From a western perspective, America was a vast unknown continent until relatively recently. It was being explored by deeply religious and superstitious people who saw demons round every corner, making it fertile ground for cryptid legends. Or that's my take anyway. There's the gruagach ("long-haired one") that some people think is the Irish Bigfoot. This is supposedly a picture of one. It looks like a terrible example of pareidolia to me.  The dobhar-chú ("water hound") aka King Otter is a giant half-fish/half-otter said to attack people and dogs, often in pairs. I like this picture because it looks like a Vaporeon bred with the cat-sneers-at-angry woman meme. 
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Mar 26, 2021 13:41
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Similar to Slenderman, there was a guy on Reddit a few years back (around the time Firewatch was released) who posted a bunch of tales from his time as a Search/Rescue Officer for the Forest Service in the US. They didn't go quite as viral, but loads of kook sites picked up on his tales about mysterious staircases deep in the forest and started reporting it as if this had been around for a long time, instead of some poo poo one guy made up. It's very creepypasta and probably TL;DR but he tells them well, with a nice mix of cryptids and weird phenomena. I remember enjoying them a lot at the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/
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Mar 26, 2021 13:55
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Clyde Radcliffe posted:Similar to Slenderman, there was a guy on Reddit a few years back (around the time Firewatch was released) who posted a bunch of tales from his time as a Search/Rescue Officer for the Forest Service in the US. They didn't go quite as viral, but loads of kook sites picked up on his tales about mysterious staircases deep in the forest and started reporting it as if this had been around for a long time, instead of some poo poo one guy made up. I think that person sold the story to Syfy for their Chanel Zero show
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Mar 26, 2021 14:05
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I like how the Flatwoods Monster became the final boss in the NES game Amagon. It's a nice surprise for anyone who suffered through that mess. http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/nes/a/amagon.htm One of my favorite cryptids is Trunko, a mysterious, white, furry, trunk-sporting ocean creature who nobly fought a doomed battle with two killer whales and then washed ashore after expiring. https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Trunko Of course, Trunko was most likely a white whale, the corpse was a globster, and the trunk was just the whale's exposed dong. That hasn't stopped people from drawing Trunko fan art, though, and most of it is just plain adorable. I'm surprised there isn't more Trunko merchandise. Come to think of it, are crytpids copyrighted in any way? Will you get a cease-and-desist from the Loch Ness board of tourism if you make and sell your own Nessie plush toys or keychains?
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Mar 26, 2021 14:41
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Sea monsters are the best because it’s much easier to suspend disbelief about mysterious creatures hanging around down there then out in the woods. Edit: I need a I WANT TO BELIEVE poster with a vaguely plausible sea monster on it
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Mar 26, 2021 16:36
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Clyde Radcliffe posted:Similar to Slenderman, there was a guy on Reddit a few years back (around the time Firewatch was released) who posted a bunch of tales from his time as a Search/Rescue Officer for the Forest Service in the US. They didn't go quite as viral, but loads of kook sites picked up on his tales about mysterious staircases deep in the forest and started reporting it as if this had been around for a long time, instead of some poo poo one guy made up. Here's a channel with a guy reading all of those stories out loud if you prefer your media in audio form: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YskG1zqMfxo&list=PL3vq3HFjqkVlEK-6-kZ_6MKM2RquxHfCu&index=1
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Mar 26, 2021 16:50
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I've really wanted to pull a cryptid hoax for pretty much my whole life tbh.
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Mar 26, 2021 17:26
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