Marble Hornets: an ARG with Fear

Some of ya’ll may have heard of something like Marble Hornets, or ARGs in general. If not, let me tell ya about the latter first. An ARG, or Alternate Reality Game, is as defined by TVTropes, a piece that is either written and/or presented in such a way that it could be a “legitimate construct” within our world. That is to say, the stuff you see in these ARGs could very much be something happening in real life. This also means that the first two lines in "Bohemian Rhapsody" could take on a whole new meaning. Marble Hornets is a Youtube film series. Its introduction talks about how a college film student director named Alex Kraile had abruptly stopped production of the movie, "Marble Hornets", back in 2006. During production, the film crew and actors had been complaining that Alex was becoming fairly irritable; his actions were somewhat erratic and strange. This was due to the “unworkable conditions” on the set… …At least, that’s what he tells Jay, whom is a fellow film student and a friend of Alex. Alex tells Jay that he plans on burning the tapes, but Jay manages to convince Alex to give them to him. Too nervous to look at them, Jay stores them. Three years pass, with no contact from Alex, as he had since transferred to a different school. On a whim, Jay decides to look at the tapes…this was perhaps the biggest mistake of his life. From the first few tapes, he doesn’t find anything unusual…then Jay finds a tape that was different from the others…it wasn’t related to "Marble Hornets"; rather, it was taken inside of Alex’s house. It showed Alex looking outside for something…as if he had heard someone on the porch. Someone…or something was there alright. In the next video (in which Jay assumes was before the first vid, marked Entry 1#), we hear Alex talking about how he and his dog Rocky saw a really tall man in a dark suit standing underneath a street light.

This freaked Rocky out like nobody’s business.

With all of that said, you can tell that Marble Hornets is set within the Slender Man Mythos. For those unfamiliar with the mythos, it describes a tall man, in a suit, and a blank face. He instills paranoia and an unshakable sickness in those that he comes into close contact with. With Marble Hornets, he (known as the Operator in that particular universe) has subtle ways of letting the viewer know that he is, in fact, near.

Some have viewed Marble Hornets for the kicks of trying to find him in all of the vids; others look through Marble Hornets for the story, as it follows Jay’s investigation into the Operator. The former can lead to some interesting double take moments. The latter leads to one seeing Jay get too deep into something he should not have delved into in the first place.

And that the Slender Man himself is out there…looking…searching…

This series is ongoing, as it is (at the time of writing this) on its 64th entry. With each entry, the story seems to get a little bit deeper and creepier with each second. It starts to become less of a “Where’s Waldo?” sort of thing and more of a terrifying bit of pure Fridge Horror and Nightmare Fuel combined.

In closing, I will say this as a bit of advice: if you are watching this series, and later on, you decided to do some filming of your own, and if in watching those films, you see several tears in the video, or have a bit of audio distortion, he’s—

alrea

dy…

fou

nd

you.

By ChocoThunda (10/27/12)

Pics from unfiction.com forums, and rantsreviewsrock.com.

Bonus Content!! Click Here

Decon and Choco have a discussion about MHs, and its successes.