Marble Hornets: Scariest shit I've seen in a while

This is only the intro. Watch the rest (AND the videos by totheark) for the full story.

This is how Paranormal Activity should have been. Shit happens straight from the start and gets progressively worse as the story goes on.

Quote :

About two or three years ago, a film school friend of mine, Alex, was working on his first "feature length" movie. It was called Marble Hornets and I think it was about a twenty something returning to his childhood home and recalling events that happened there. It was pretty pretentious film student fare, but I helped out for a few days before my summer classes started, and a few rare occasions after that. Everyone on the set seemed pretty excited to be making it, especially Alex. The set itself was about half a mile away from Alex's house, roughly a thirty minute drive away from where I lived at the time. It was a pretty heavily wooded area, I guess to give it a sparsely populated small town feel. Most of the movie took place outside.

After about two months of off and on shooting, Alex dropped his pet project completely. It was really sudden when he let me know about it. When I asked him why, he told me it was because of the "unworkable conditions" of where he had picked to shoot. Which struck me as very odd since he had been living around that area since he was eight, and never seemed to have a problem with it. What's even stranger is that he acted incredibly distant when telling me this news. Soon after, he started avoiding me and from what I hear, everyone else. All he did was sit around his house.

Being a film student as well, I hated to see his work go to waste and decided to talk to him about it a bit more. A few weeks after he had stopped shooting, I finally convinced him to let me come over.

Something about him was worse than I'd originally thought. He had lost a good bit of weight, and looked pretty sickly. I pretended like I didn't notice and we just hung out for awhile. Right before I left, I asked him about Marble Hornets and what he was planning on doing with all of his tapes of raw footage. With almost no hesitation, he simply said "burn them".

This caught me off guard. When I asked why he didn't just archive them for B-roll in future projects, he just said he never wanted to work with the footage again. He was completely serious about this. I couldn't understand why he'd just want to get rid of it completely. Surely it wasn't all that useless. So I asked if I could take a look at them.

He agreed, but only under the circumstance that I never bring them back to him, and never discuss what was on them with him. He also highly discouraged me from showing any if it to anyone else. I laughed at this, and said that he must have accidentally made The Ring or something with the way he was talking. He didn't acknowledge this and brought me up to his attic, where he was storing the pile of tapes.

There were tons of them. He grabbed a couple of plastic shopping bags and piled the tapes in and gave them to me, then shooed me out of the attic. Right as I was walking out the door, he said, in the most serious tone I've ever heard from someone, "I'm not kidding, don't ever bring this up around me again."

Alex's comment was so sudden that I didn't have time to react before he had closed the door on me. He transferred to an out of state school soon after that and I haven't seen him since.

I filed the tapes separately from my others, and was honestly too freaked out to look at them at the time, and eventually forgot about them. I've decided to begin going through the tapes later tonight. If I don't do it now, I probably never will. I'm hoping all I find is an unfinished student film and nothing else. That would sure put me at ease now that I'm thinking about it again.

tl;dr SOMETHING was caught on film and that something is going to fuck you up.

I want some theories and discussions going on here people!

Isn't something Something Awful goons made up? People mentioned it when I gorged on the sf_drama Halloween creepypasta post.

But it's still cool and terrifying.

Miss Prince wrote:

Isn't something Something Awful goons made up? People mentioned it when I gorged on the sf_drama Halloween creepypasta post.

But it's still cool and terrifying.

The Slender Man was made by Something Awful, but no one's been able to confirm if this is a goon creation.

And yeah, every time someone walks past my window I flip out.

I saw like the first couple of entries and I know I'm not touching this shit with a ten-foot pole. I like being able to sleep at night.

D: Every scary story I've ever found to be linked to Something Awful has made me afraid to go to sleep. That's really saying something considering I breathe horror movies.

AFSDGGHHHHGODDAMMIT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE TREES?!? MY HOUSE IS SURROUNDED BY TREES!!!

I live in a fifth floor apartment in the middle of the city and I still spent about an hour huddled in a ball in the dark before I could fall asleep after watching the whole thing. :unskilled78:

I tried to sleep last night. TRIED being the key word. What I did do was jump at every little sound and keep looking over my shoulder, trying desperately not to look out the window.

Goddamn, you know something's good when it affects you like this.

... I am staying as far away from this as possible - fuck, I got nightmares for a week straight after reading House of Leaves; this thing would have me sleepless for a month at least.

*bars her door*

I will not watch...I will not watch...I will not watch... If the people into horror are creeped out, I won't survive. Fuck I couldn't even get through the trailer of Paranormal Activity.

Watch this to see if you want to see any more of it. I like this series because you don't have to wait forever for the monster to show up.

Also, there are NO pop up scares. Thank god, I hate those. Just very unsettling atmospheres and...The Slender Man.

I have all the entries loaded into a browser window on my laptop, so all my friends can watch it with me tonight. =D

Sorry guys, I'm not really getting it. I'm on Entry #13. I guess this could be interesting, but it just seems way too fake. The clips that require acting are way too poorly done to be believable at all and they didn't even try to make Marble Hornets seem like a project anybody would want to make. The backstory with all the "BURN THE TAPES" crap drags me out of this, too, as does the "narration" by the friend. The meant-to-be-cryptic charcoal drawings and writings come off as really trite.

I guess the parts where he's alone and peeking out the windows are okay, but so far all I'm seeing is random shots of that tall guy. I think that there are bits and pieces of this that have potential, but in the end it seems to me that it's made by someone with decent taste but no idea how to really go about it.

I am so waiting to watch this when I'm with my best friend. I have to sleep during the week or else I'll be soooo screwed.

D:

Narwhal wrote:

Sorry guys

Ahahaha. You don't have to apologize. Different strokes and all that.

The acting doesn't strike me as terrible, but fear of The Slender Man is very much a personal thing that varies from person to person. For me there's so much WRONGNESS with how he acts. Just staring constantly. Not to mention that unlike werewolves or vampires, he has nothing that repels or destroys him and he has no reason for existence. He just IS and there's nothing you can do about it. Not to mention, that he's vaguely threatening, but no one really knows what that threat entails...

But yeah, you're not obligated to like it.

Quote :

The backstory with all the "BURN THE TAPES" crap

I agree with this though.

I just finished all the available videos, and I think that the backstory bit is really starting to hurt the story in a major way. I find it hard to believe that after the initial foray into the house that he would not only go back, but go back at night and alone? There is something interesting about the concept of this menacing, ambiguous figure in a business suit and the memory loss and everything, though.

All in all, I think the best part of this whole thing was the interview with the former actor. When he starts questioning him about the guy in the suit and Alex's behavior, all you see is him fidgeting with his hands and twisting the paper and giving off really strong DO NOT WANT vibes. That part was really effective.

Narwhal wrote:

I just finished all the available videos, and I think that the backstory bit is really starting to hurt the story in a major way. I find it hard to believe that after the initial foray into the house that he would not only go back, but go back at night and alone? There is something interesting about the concept of this menacing, ambiguous figure in a business suit and the memory loss and everything, though.

All in all, I think the best part of this whole thing was the interview with the former actor. When he starts questioning him about the guy in the suit and Alex's behavior, all you see is him fidgeting with his hands and twisting the paper and giving off really strong DO NOT WANT vibes. That part was really effective.

There's some unexplained marks on Tim's arm too. Or so someone said, I haven't had a chance to go back and look at it yet.

The "why did you go back into house at night/again you stupid bastard" thing was semi-addressed (I think) on he twitter, when everyone encouraged him to go back to find Alex. The night thing is still a wtf for me, but I guess I can suspend my disbelief and attribute it to him having class/a job/rule of scary/ect.

One of my biggest complaints so far is the

Spoiler:

I want to know what the deal is with the

Spoiler:

The most intriguing part of the house was the closet that was obviously being slept in. That is a scary thought, that someone is so terrified of being exposed that they'd hole up in a linen closet with a bottle of water. The pills were probably something to help them stay awake, would be my guess.

Anybody else getting an "aliens" vibe from this? I dunno, it just seems to be more extraterrestrial than paranormal. Don't know why I think that, but I do.

Watched all* the vids now, including the responses by totheark. My suspension of disbelief came crashing down at #16 because

Spoiler:

#18 kinda blew the scariness for me because

Spoiler:

*Couldn't watch #14 at all. Couldn't do it. Clicked it off after about ten seconds.

Honestly, this sounds far too much like viral marketing to give me any interest. The backstory sounds really fake and contrived, like it's trying to be another Blair Witch Project.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Watched all* the vids now, including the responses by totheark. My suspension of disbelief came crashing down at #16 because

Spoiler:

#18 kinda blew the scariness for me because

Spoiler:

*Couldn't watch #14 at all. Couldn't do it. Clicked it off after about ten seconds.

Spoiler:

You probably did yourself a favor by missing the end of 14.

Quote :

viral marketing

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Also: This

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Edit edit: Reread Aggie's post and realized she wasn't saying it WAS a viral, just viral like. DERP.
Though there may reek of viral-ness to you, it might be because it's not completely a video series but an Alternate Reality Game. So they are TRYING to draw people's attention to get them to join in. So...I guess it is viral?

I dunno.

I'm on dial-up speeds and it's taken aaaages, but I just reached #7 and... and... BAAAAAW. CANNOT UNSEEEEEE....

Me and a bunch of my friends watched all the videos and all the responses, and we're so psyched for the next one. I mean, yeah, there are some shitty things, like the terribly fake blood, but other than that, we were psyching each other out and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Thanks, Mafi. I'm freaked the fuck out and liking it.

Watched all of it yesterday and, shit, I haven't been this scared of some creature since I was a kid. D:

Yeah, the whole going to that house during the night-thing was stupid (and unnescessary? It would have been creepy during the day as well),

Spoiler:

Entry #14 wasn't very impressing when I watched it, but I got more creeped out by it afterwards, when I started wondering why.