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The Harbinger Experiment · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to grief Guest today. I believe we are
• 0:18
  reading a classic, or at least this is one that
• 0:20
  Isaiah knew from when he was a kid. Yes, called
• 0:23
  the Harbinger Experiment, which also you said that there's post
• 0:26
  on our subway that basically said like, oh, you should
• 0:29
  check this out. I remember it being good. Well, the
• 0:31
  one post you're reading me. It was kind of funny
• 0:33
  that the guy was like, yeah, you should read it.
• 0:35
  I don't remember anything about it. I just can't remember that.
• 0:38
  I think it made me feel pretty scared, but I
• 0:40
  don't remember. And you're like, what kind of review was
• 0:43
  that for the story?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Well, not to mention their context around that was I
• 0:48
  was in the grocery store with my mom, So I
• 0:52
  love that prime age to be scared by. It's also
• 0:55
  funny to vagine a woman walking around and like, there's
• 0:57
  an iPad boy next to you.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: We are listening to people.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a version one iPad, giant brick reading a Harbinger
• 1:07
  Experiment or whatever. That was ironically me this, Yeah you
• 1:13
  were that little kid. Hello, uh the yeah, what is
• 1:16
  that in your iPad? Basically smut tell them, Uh it
• 1:22
  was either it was this. We ended up on this too.
• 1:25
  One of these days. I keep seeing people there's a
• 1:28
  story called Happy Happy that people say is like a
• 1:32
  classic or something too. So I don't know. That's one
• 1:34
  too that I think we were gonna have to read
• 1:37
  the future that I was like, oh my god, this
• 1:39
  is like a fucking four or five hour long read.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Well you'll be you'll be excited when that one shows up.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So okay, So that's a that's a terrible story, is
• 1:48
  what you're saying.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I don't know. No, you're a.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Horrible, horrible, horrible liar that I immediately can tell that
• 1:56
  that's going to be a dog shit story. If it's
• 1:58
  a fucking my best friends ruining my life, I can't
• 2:01
  do it. If it's if it's that long ago story
• 2:03
  and it goes that was.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: That I didn't appreciate what that story gave us.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I hate David that so much.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the point of the story is to hate
• 2:16
  David King. But you.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: You don't get it, Princess. That's what he wants.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: He wants you to do. No, you don't appreciate that
• 2:31
  story because there are so many boring stories where I
• 2:34
  wish it became a PSA about credit card fraud. And
• 2:39
  I mean David broke into the apartment and choked his
• 2:42
  roommate to death for no reason.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: That is true. If you're going to go there, at
• 2:46
  least go there. And it did go there. I mean
• 2:48
  I I will give credit where CROs do because I
• 2:50
  know that for some god awful reason, it's one of
• 2:52
  our audiences. I would say, it's like a top of episode.
• 2:55
  People love that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Say, don't say for some reason, you know exactly why
• 3:00
  you were. I was crying, laughing.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: It's the crash out. It's the crash out. But I
• 3:05
  am not gonna I refuse to acknowledge it. I actually
• 3:08
  wanted to do something here though, because you don't really remember.
• 3:11
  Do you think you can at least set up what
• 3:13
  you can remember what you think you remember from the story, okay?
• 3:16
  Or do you remember anything at all?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Okay? So for context, the Harbinger experiment was posted to
• 3:26
  creepypasta dot com on December twentieth of twenty thirteen.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: So it is a.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Twelve over twelve year old story at this point, and
• 3:38
  I remember listening to it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Gosh, I would have been fourteen.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I think fourteen or fifteen when I think mister Creepypasta
• 3:44
  covered it, and I remember it freaking me out. I
• 3:51
  just remember I was listening to it in my room
• 3:53
  and I got scared, and then I made my friends
• 3:55
  listen to it, but they didn't like creepypasta, so they
• 3:57
  just bullied me for liking creepypasta.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: That's a story.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: I feel there was something about three test subjects. I
• 4:05
  remember that, and there was some doctor running some evil experiment,
• 4:11
  but something had happened to the test subjects and it
• 4:15
  had something to do So the word harbinger means like, you.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: Know, the the.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Bringer of something bad, or like an omen or something foreboding.
• 4:24
  So I feel like there may have been apocalypse vibes
• 4:26
  or like it was to stop the end times or
• 4:28
  something like that makes.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Usually safe to say with a lot of these stories too,
• 4:32
  I think a lot of them kind of skewed to
• 4:34
  the end of the world kind of doomsday thing. I
• 4:37
  do think there's a lot of like in these earlier stories.
• 4:40
  Even nowadays, I think people do like this kind of
• 4:42
  like evangelical, end of world biblical kind of thing. I
• 4:47
  would say that that's a through line which always makes
• 4:49
  you think too that like a lot of these authors
• 4:51
  are from like the Midwest or like the South or
• 4:54
  something where it's like that's an oppressive thing that they
• 4:57
  think about. I used to I watch one of my
• 4:58
  buddy's churches and were like it was just death at
• 5:02
  hell fire. The entire it was horrifying. And then there's
• 5:04
  other churches where it's like, oh, this is you know,
• 5:06
  this is awesome, this is lovely or whatever. So I
• 5:10
  could see some people taking that and being like, I'm
• 5:11
  afraid is.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: This religion the same or not religion?
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Is this church the same one that told your mom
• 5:21
  you need professional help?
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: No?
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: That was a different church, and they were kind. I
• 5:29
  drew a lot of very odd things. I don't blame
• 5:31
  them for what they said. How old were you I
• 5:32
  don't I can't remember. Maybe like eleven.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Church faculty who met you one time immediately pinged that
• 5:43
  you needed psychiatric help.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I think around that time, I was really I was
• 5:48
  really hooked on this comic, this Tokyo pop manga. I
• 5:51
  don't even know if Tokyo Pops a company anymore. There's
• 5:54
  this Tokyo pop comic called Priest, and I was so
• 5:58
  stoked on it. It was by this fucking awesome care an
• 6:00
  artist named Menuu Hung and he was amazing. But anyways,
• 6:03
  he drew these like it was like, all, it's kind
• 6:05
  of like this Western I don't know if you if
• 6:06
  you've never looked at that comic, Isaiah, I think he
• 6:08
  would actually.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Like it a lot.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: But it's a it's an interesting like Western comic, but
• 6:13
  it's all about like a guy who takes a deal
• 6:15
  from the devil, YadA YadA. Like that's pretty generic. But
• 6:17
  the way that the guy draws is awesome. And I
• 6:19
  remember I was I just kept drawing all these an
• 6:21
  like he like shoots all these angels because all like
• 6:23
  the devil's henchmen are all like the angels that went
• 6:27
  with him or whatever. But they still look beautiful and
• 6:29
  it's really cool. But I kept drawing all of these
• 6:31
  like people like getting their like wings ripped off and shit.
• 6:34
  So like I could see people being like, oh, this
• 6:37
  child is this child that's eviul of his art. But
• 6:40
  I was just stoked on priest, that's all it was.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: Sure, sure, Okay.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Also, it was funny a second ago when you said,
• 6:47
  I think this is a lot of like a lot
• 6:50
  of these doomsday stories come from people in the Midwest
• 6:52
  or South, and I see now that you were talking
• 6:55
  about because they have religious influence. I thought you were
• 6:57
  implying because in the Midwest the raps just happens every
• 7:01
  now and then.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Well that is true too. I think just being in
• 7:04
  these fly over states, you never know what happens, and
• 7:06
  I think that it's just constant sorrow. The entire idea
• 7:09
  of the Midwest is to leave the Midwest, and if
• 7:11
  you don't, then you're just kind of stuck. So it
• 7:13
  is just abysmul terror forever. I'm excited to get into this. Also,
• 7:18
  just wanted to thank everyone who is listening on audio
• 7:20
  platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcast. We appreciate you for
• 7:24
  giving us nice litt reviews as well. I appreciate you,
• 7:26
  and also to our patrons who support us behind the
• 7:29
  scenes and help us keep this saying going. Isaiah, are
• 7:33
  you ready to jump back into the past as I
• 7:35
  dived in with you.
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: I'm ready to jump into the past.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I'm ready to see if this was something actually scary
• 7:42
  or if this is just another public flagellation.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: So we'll find out.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I always like to think that whenever you go into
• 7:48
  these I never think they're going to be scary, like
• 7:50
  these old old ones, but I am curious to be like, Oh,
• 7:53
  I can see how people maybe read this and the
• 7:56
  influenced all this other stuff, you.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Know, especially kids. Percent All right, Well, like I said,
• 8:01
  the story was written by Zion Jay. He's written a
• 8:05
  few stories, most recent of which was in twenty sixteen,
• 8:07
  but will leave a link to his creepypasta profile and
• 8:09
  description so you can check out the other stories anyway
• 8:12
  without further ado. The Harbinger experiment. The world we live
• 8:16
  in is full of things we don't understand. Being the
• 8:19
  curious humans that we are, we naturally try and seek
• 8:22
  these things out. Doing so has led us to remarkable
• 8:25
  discoveries and inventions that we never could have imagined one
• 8:27
  hundred years ago. We have defeated disease, built to the
• 8:30
  sky itself, and even created machines that could take us
• 8:33
  beyond the clouds and into the stars. If our ancestors
• 8:37
  could see us and what we have created, I'm sure
• 8:40
  many of them see us as gods. Our innate curiosity
• 8:44
  lust for knowledge has not always led us to greatness. However,
• 8:49
  true evil and darkness have also been uncovered in humanity's
• 8:52
  conquest of knowledge, and in the end, I fear this
• 8:56
  evil will be our doom?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Should we also shout out the author and stuff real quick?
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I did? I did. That's what I just did a
• 9:04
  second ago.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Oh we did, okay, just making sure.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right before I start, I said, we'll leave his
• 9:09
  link below. Yeah, okay, great, Sorry, did you just did
• 9:12
  you go comatos for a second?
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I always am, all right. I'm in a constant state,
• 9:16
  a constant state. It's like a river, all right.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Make sure editor, make sure you leave in him asking
• 9:20
  me to shut out the author, just so the audience
• 9:22
  knows what I that if you leave it.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: If you leave in an editor, you will be fired.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: No, no, you won't know you want to, I will,
• 9:28
  I'll But if you get fired, I will double whatever
• 9:31
  he's paying you on Windygon.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So won't he's a liar.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: I'll do it.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I'll do It's on this a matter of record right here,
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  So leave this in as well, so there's a public
• 9:39
  record of it happening. So you have job security. So
• 9:43
  do the right thing. I did not say this from
• 9:45
  the standpoint of a great philosopher who has said and
• 9:48
  simply pondered things either. No.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: I say this is because I've seen it, experienced it.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I was a part of it. It's interesting. It almost
• 9:57
  reads like a Frankenstein thing, doesn't it. Yeah, he's the experiment.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like he's the monster. That he was a part
• 10:03
  of it. I don't think. I don't remember that, but
• 10:06
  that could be what it is.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It just reads like that I don't know, or he
• 10:09
  was a part or what's more likely is he was
• 10:11
  just a part of whatever.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: He was, like a researcher or something like that. Fun
• 10:16
  what's funny is trying to remember details of it. I
• 10:19
  just remember the thing, like I remember there being an experiment.
• 10:26
  I remember the third test subject being creepy, and that's it.
• 10:29
  So I know something else has to happen, because there's
• 10:33
  no way the story is just Man, that guy's kind
• 10:35
  of spooky. Then that's it. Yeah, yeah, maybe it is.
• 10:39
  Who knows.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's all you need.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: The event I'm about to relate to you is true
• 10:43
  in its entirety.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: This I swear.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I feel certain that this will fall on deaf ears,
• 10:48
  and many of you will believe this to be just
• 10:50
  another spooky story meant to give you cheap thrills. But
• 10:53
  I promise you this is neither my intent nor my purpose.
• 10:57
  Why would you say neither intent nor purpose. That's the
• 11:02
  same thing. I just really driving driving on the visage,
• 11:10
  I fear. Okay, so that's.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It was neither what I meant to do or what
• 11:14
  I intended to do, or was my purpose the Holy Trinity.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Furthermore, this was not my purpose, my intent, my assumption,
• 11:22
  my direction, my directive. That sentence scared me a little
• 11:27
  bit where it's like I fear that this will fall
• 11:30
  on deaf fears and be another spooky story, because I
• 11:33
  feel like a lot of the creepypastas back then will
• 11:35
  do this thing where it'd be like, you may think
• 11:37
  this is just another ghost story, but it's not. You know.
• 11:41
  I love that.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I love that young energy of just being like, yeah,
• 11:44
  you could just yeah, just a spooky story. But as
• 11:49
  a kid, though, I know that I would be in
• 11:50
  they'd be like, what is this real. It's like when
• 11:53
  the first time I saw paranorm activity, I was like,
• 11:55
  why are you fucking that was real?
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: What the fuck? You know?
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Just because there was no credits or whatever. I want
• 11:59
  to thank you Paramount Pictures, You're like, what that kind
• 12:03
  of thing?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said previously, I would this and No
• 12:07
  End House were the ones when I was really young,
• 12:09
  like thirteen, maybe thirteen fourteen that I would always tell
• 12:17
  people was my favorite. I'd be like, oh, this is
• 12:19
  the best one ever. It was like this, Okay, No
• 12:22
  End House and I think an Assie scout Man were
• 12:26
  the ones that were like prime for thirteen year olds.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: No End House was good, though. I like that one.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: It was good.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: It just wasn't like the scariest.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Like now we've read stuff that you know, far surpasses it,
• 12:39
  sure that I wouldn't have appreciated when I was that age.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Well, the pool of stuff must have been so much
• 12:45
  smaller back then too.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: It was, it was a lot smaller, and there it
• 12:48
  was also the quality, and primarily I was thirteen, you know, like.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: You're a different human being now than you were when
• 12:55
  you were.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if I read pin Pal, then like, sure some
• 12:58
  moments would be scary, but I'd probably see it as
• 13:00
  like a lot of dialogue and stuff that, yeah, just
• 13:04
  goes over your head, just goes over your head with
• 13:06
  a love it or like I don't appreciate how well
• 13:08
  built the scares are and stuff like that, sure, whereas
• 13:12
  now it's way more impactful. At the time, a house
• 13:15
  with seven creepy doors was way more impactful.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That's all you need. That's one too many doors.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. If it was six, so I could
• 13:21
  take it, but seven six.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: If it was six, I wouldn't be pissing my pants
• 13:26
  with seven. That's why here those driblets.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Those triple Actually, wasn't it like nine doors? I think
• 13:33
  it's way more. That's why. That's way more than you.
• 13:37
  That's way more than six.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: I remember.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: I remember he thought he had gone home, and then
• 13:41
  he drives to his house and his parents are dead.
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: It's like there's another door. Yeah, there's another door.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: That was like a time warp or like he was
• 13:51
  he's been an eternity in the void or whatever. When
• 13:56
  I was thirteen, I'm like, oh my gosh, this door's
• 13:59
  even creepier in.
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: The last.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my god, all these stors, I can't get it scarier.
• 14:07
  Let's just start from the top of this paragraph, ibout
• 14:09
  your best, say the whole story.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: It was like, God, know this. The purpose of this
• 14:15
  story is to simply warn you of what lurks beyond
• 14:18
  the veil of what we can see and understand, to
• 14:21
  show you what awaits us in the darkness.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: Even if I myself don't understand it.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: What I'm about to tell you has happened, and I
• 14:28
  feel certain will happen again. In nineteen seventy one, a
• 14:32
  not so well known scientist began preparations for an extremely
• 14:36
  secretive project and simply as the Harbinger Experiment. I would
• 14:41
  like to keep the identity of the scientist's secret for
• 14:44
  personal reasons, so throughout this recounting I will refer to
• 14:47
  him as Zimmerman.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Of course, it's all.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Right, you know what, you know, it could be I
• 14:55
  could clan on it for having a stereotypical German name
• 14:58
  for a Germans, like an evil science right, sure, but
• 15:01
  I'm not going to do that because it could be good.
• 15:03
  The story could be good, and I'm just I'm just getting.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Flashbacks German scientist. I'm not faulted it for having Zimmerman.
• 15:12
  If he said count, if he said.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Like count, okay, let's back. You know what, maybe I'm
• 15:18
  just afraid because every because what's happened several times of
• 15:21
  the show is I've pulled up a story I liked
• 15:23
  and it's been just trash. So I'm just the stories
• 15:27
  you read, Isaiah, Okay, you don't have to go that hard.
• 15:32
  But I've just got my gloves up a little bit.
• 15:34
  But I'm good, good, okay. Zimmerman's background is unclear at
• 15:37
  best beyond nineteen seventy one. All that is known about
• 15:41
  him before that time is that he had grown up
• 15:43
  somewhere in Maryland with a strange fascination of the occult supernatural.
• 15:48
  This later made him an outcast amongst his fellow scientists. Dude,
• 15:51
  how scoffed upon the metaphysical was and still is at
• 15:55
  the time. Zimmerman's opinions concerning the or worldly were not
• 16:01
  the sole cause for him being an outcast, though it
• 16:04
  was his methods that made him widely unaccepted among his peers.
• 16:08
  Zimmerman was well known during his time for being ruthless
• 16:12
  and cold beyond measure. He never cared about the means.
• 16:15
  All that mattered to him was the results, and if
• 16:18
  he predicted the results to be valuable enough, anything would
• 16:22
  be worth obtaining them. It was this insatiable and brutal
• 16:26
  lust for the truth that made him feared among those
• 16:29
  who that knew him, and the few that knew of
• 16:32
  him and did not fear him believed in him and
• 16:35
  followed him in his work. Closely. The word harbinger itself
• 16:38
  has such a mysterious and intimidating taste to it. Maybe
• 16:42
  it's the way it rolls from our tongues, or maybe
• 16:44
  it's simply due to its association with the project, But
• 16:48
  the word always seems to carry a.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Certain amount of doom with it, which would make sense.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: The word itself means to warn or from keeping it together,
• 17:00
  we're not The word seems to carry amount of doom
• 17:05
  with it, which would make sense since it means doom.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Which would make sense.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: That would actually make sense, because that's what the words say.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: No, it definitely feels like he's putting on like the
• 17:23
  anime gloves and you know, mee.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: This hand wouldn't make sense.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: You'd be a You should be afraid, very afraid.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Whenever I think of the word car accident, I think
• 17:35
  of a car wreck, since that's what the word means.
• 17:48
  Of course, right away, doctor, when I think of the
• 17:56
  word explosion, I think about something blowing up, since that's
• 18:01
  what explosion means.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Since that's pretty much what bling up means.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for clarifying for us, which would make sense.
• 18:12
  The word itself means to warn or forebode, I can't
• 18:16
  imagine Zimmermann's reason for giving the experiment this title, but
• 18:19
  in retrospect it fits perfectly. Oh gosh, I can't.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Comprehend it all why he would give it this title,
• 18:28
  but in retrospect it actually makes a lot of sense.
• 18:33
  That probably means that he knew that it was going
• 18:35
  to be a fucking like doomsday experiment, right. I think
• 18:39
  doctor Zimbit would never be so crass.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: When I think of an explosion, I think of something
• 18:47
  blowing up. I don't know why they decided to name
• 18:51
  a hand grenade an explosive device, but after watching what
• 18:55
  it does, I think it fits perfectly.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: The doctor, the psych ward. This guy's hat just takes
• 19:01
  a gun out and blush.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Can't you anymore? Just saying words some like other words
• 19:09
  and then now understanding why words are named what they are.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think of cheese. I really think of the
• 19:19
  wooden milk. This is pretty much because that's what's cheese
• 19:22
  is made of.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know why they call sour.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: You'd have to. You would have to take that person
• 19:28
  and treat them like a fourteen year old lab well, um,
• 19:34
  taste of death.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Buddy down, go ahead and eat the chocolate.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: This is Scareddelli dark chocolate. You're gonna It's tasty, isn't it.
• 19:44
  I do think of chocolate.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: I think of cocoa chocolate. I don't know why they
• 19:51
  called the mocha at Starbucks a coffee with chocolate, but
• 19:55
  after tasting it, it fits perfectly.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Oh no, why the call? Look, but what takes it?
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It's posis perfectly. I see you are a treasure. I
• 20:16
  can't imagine nutty butter crunched bar what he did.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: How it is it fits perfectly.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: If me and you get bogged down in a corner
• 20:34
  like that on a track, we're never coming out of
• 20:36
  the turn, just beend in the bud for a while.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: We have got to persevere.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: It also has helped this is we're recording kind of
• 20:44
  earlier in the morning, and I feel like it's us
• 20:46
  getting that this is us like really coming to into
• 20:50
  the day. So I feel like this is just like
• 20:52
  revealing itself very slowly, and we're getting fixated on it.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: Zimmerman came to select a few, me being one of them.
• 21:00
  He told us he was working on something big and
• 21:03
  that he needed people who could keep Okay, I I
• 21:09
  will not think about the something Big being a Nuther
• 21:12
  butter crunch bar I.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Won't keep it together.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: He told us he was working on something big and
• 21:18
  that he needed people who could keep confidentiality and not
• 21:21
  spread out all gossip of his work. Well, he did
• 21:24
  not fully trust some of us. He did know that
• 21:27
  we were professionals and that for some reason or another,
• 21:30
  we were all in dire need of employment. I'd worked
• 21:33
  at the local clinic as a doctor. I was caught
• 21:35
  stealing medication and was probably fired. What it's a funny note.
• 21:42
  I feel I steal drugs from work.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: That's why I still I steal hard prescription medication. Is
• 21:49
  Do you think it's because that is he using them?
• 21:52
  Or I mean, I don't know, it doesn't matter.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Uh, he's doctor Zimerman Sawhimon was like, this man's perfect.
• 22:00
  The guy that steals medication, he can be trusted to
• 22:02
  keep his mouth shut.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Well, well, the doctor who steals hydro codone and sells
• 22:07
  it to twelve year olds, you're going to be perfect
• 22:10
  for my something Big experiment.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: This left a very dark mark on my resume, so
• 22:18
  work was hard to find. I was also a native
• 22:21
  to Alaska and lived near where the experiment would take place.
• 22:24
  So I guess you could say I was a convenient choice.
• 22:28
  As you can imagine, I jumped at the opportunity. It
• 22:31
  was hard not to when I saw the payout.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: So he's getting a ragtag team of basically blacklisted professionals whatever. Yeah,
• 22:40
  so I'm guessing it's just because it's like, well, no
• 22:42
  one's even going to like see them gone because they're
• 22:44
  basically already ostracized from their fields.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it feels very uh well maybe not the
• 22:50
  professional part, but it feels SEP almost all.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Right, dude, I was actually going to say the exact
• 22:55
  same thing. Expendable people to experiment on or whatever or
• 22:58
  be a part of it. Like the SEP people, they're
• 23:01
  all like prisoners, right, Well, the.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: D class are.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: There's different classes to people there, because like the researchers
• 23:07
  and doctors aren't expendable per se, but the D class are.
• 23:11
  The D class are like food they throw in to
• 23:14
  see what it does or how it treats people and stuff.
• 23:19
  It's like, oh, well we threw that man into the
• 23:21
  time prison forever. So oops. Fifteen of us were hired
• 23:24
  in total. Some were colleagues of his that have been
• 23:27
  working with him. For a while, some were maintenance workers,
• 23:30
  and if you were hired as private security, I was
• 23:34
  the only medical professional to be hired. Still wonder to
• 23:37
  me how he even attained the funds necessary for the experiment.
• 23:41
  Will not be wholly surprised if his financing was not
• 23:43
  entirely legal, but legal or not, I needed the money
• 23:47
  and he was paying. Looking back, it's a decision I've
• 23:51
  come to regret. After Zimmermann obtained his money, he used
• 23:55
  it to buy a relatively large plot of land deep
• 23:57
  in the frozen wilderness of Alaska. Upon that piece of land,
• 24:01
  Zimerman built a concrete structure not dissimilar to a bunker,
• 24:05
  in fact, the sole difference being that its goal was
• 24:09
  to keep any potential damage contained within the structure rather
• 24:12
  than keeping it out. As he put it, most of
• 24:15
  the structure dug underneath the earth, which at the effect
• 24:18
  of making the underground complex seems so much smaller than
• 24:21
  it really was from the outside. As would be expected,
• 24:24
  there is only one way of entering and leaving the
• 24:26
  underground structure, and it was through a ladder that led
• 24:29
  from a small, unassuming concrete building on the surface, which
• 24:33
  I will refer to from now on. As the entrance
• 24:35
  building for convenience to the network below. After everyone had
• 24:40
  gone to bed at night, the hatch that contained the
• 24:42
  ladder would be sealed off with a very large and
• 24:44
  thick metal lid.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Zimmerman was very strict about this.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Located not too far away from the entrance building was
• 24:51
  a series of wooden cabins that would serve as the
• 24:53
  sleeping quarters for the staff Zimmerman had hired. Compared to
• 24:56
  the entrance building standing on the surface, the underground system
• 25:00
  was massive. At the center of the complex was the
• 25:03
  control room. This is where all the facilities, electronics and
• 25:06
  such were linked to. This included security cameras, lights and
• 25:10
  door controls. Consoles, monitors, and computers lined the walls of
• 25:14
  this large central chamber. This is also where the ladder
• 25:17
  in the entrance building connected to in the underground complex.
• 25:21
  Connected to the control room were three doors. One led
• 25:24
  to a smaller room that serveced the infirmary, another door
• 25:28
  led to the breakroom, and the last door.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: Led into the hallways.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: The hallways are where the complex began to feel extremely eerie.
• 25:35
  They were, for some reason, laid out in an extremely
• 25:38
  confusing scheme that led in circles and to complete dead ends.
• 25:43
  These hallways made up a vast majority of the complex,
• 25:45
  and it would be very easy to get lost in
• 25:47
  the maze if you were unfamiliar with the complex.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: Seems that the doctor has made a literal labyrinth underground
• 25:53
  for the like. I only imagine that the people that
• 25:56
  he hired were not for their specialties, but just to
• 25:59
  experiment on them, and they're gonna be like mice in
• 26:01
  a maze.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that sounds right. I can't remember exactly
• 26:04
  what happens, but I think I think that implications correct
• 26:09
  that these people are down here because they're expendable, which
• 26:15
  if you're gonna kill the people you hire, you can
• 26:17
  promise anything.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: You can be like, oh, you'll make ten million dollars
• 26:22
  one hundred percent. Yeah, I'll offer you a two year salary.
• 26:24
  Oh shit, Okay, I'll be like, I'm never doing that.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: They don't know they're going to die, which is kind
• 26:33
  of okay, okay quick. I don't know why he called
• 26:38
  it the death chamber. Death makes me think of dying,
• 26:42
  but after what happened, it fit perfectly.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: If if fits perfectly.
• 26:48
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• 26:51
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  Now back to the episode Almost Jeergo. Today we read
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  I dared my best friend to ruin my life on
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  to your episode.
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  Speaker 2: But if you knew where you were going, you would
• 29:16
  find yourself standing before one of three eight by eight
• 29:19
  foot rooms. Before long, each room had a camera hooked
• 29:23
  up to one of the corners of the room, and
• 29:25
  all three of those cameras were connected to a corresponding
• 29:28
  monitor in the control room. Cameras were also scattered throughout
• 29:32
  the hallways so that whoever was watching their corresponding monitor
• 29:35
  could see anywhere they wanted to when they wanted to.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Thick metal door stood the entrance.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Of each of the three eight by eight foot rooms,
• 29:43
  and in order to open them, you would have to
• 29:45
  enter a four digit code into a panel located near
• 29:48
  the door. I remember when I first arrived at the
• 29:50
  complex how badly the hallways frightened me. I've always been claustrophobic,
• 29:55
  you see, and those hallways were so very narrow. The noise,
• 30:00
  or more accurately, lack of noise, was also a tremendous
• 30:04
  source of fear for me. In those bleak, narrow hallways,
• 30:08
  it was always so unnaturally silent, as if the entire
• 30:11
  world had stopped moving. It really made you feel like
• 30:15
  you were trapped down there. Thankfully though, I only rarely
• 30:19
  ventured into those hallways, for I was the only medical
• 30:22
  professional in the facility, and I had virtually no reason
• 30:24
  to go into them. In the beginning, I found it
• 30:27
  so peculiar that Zimmerman would ask for a medical professional
• 30:31
  like me on a project like this. By the time
• 30:33
  it was all over, I understood why. It's like the
• 30:37
  third time, it's like paragraphs that it was like, I
• 30:40
  get it now.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: But I could see that was or I would come
• 30:44
  to regret that later.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's like, yes, we know, we're
• 30:47
  reading the story.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: We get it. Yes, you're very scary. You're doing a
• 30:51
  good job.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: The official purpose of the Harbinger Experiment was to test
• 30:55
  and observe the effects of extended isolation on the human mind.
• 30:59
  This is what was less our reports being sent out
• 31:01
  at least, but unbeknownst to all those who were not
• 31:04
  participating in the project, excluding the subjects, the true purpose
• 31:09
  was much darker. Like I said before, Zimmerman had always
• 31:13
  had an obsession with the occult and supernatural. He sought
• 31:16
  to prove himself to those who did not believe in him.
• 31:19
  He wanted physical proof that the supernatural was a real phenomenon,
• 31:23
  and he wanted to be the first one to attain proof.
• 31:26
  The true purpose of the Harbinger Experiment was to find
• 31:29
  proof of the metaphysical, the world we couldnt see. The
• 31:33
  thought of doing this was naturally a tadbit daunting and
• 31:35
  even scary, but it was Themmerman's method of doing so
• 31:39
  it was truly terrifying. Zimmerman believed that he would be
• 31:44
  able to open a portal between worlds momentarily following three
• 31:48
  random entities to cross over to our world, and each
• 31:51
  one of these beings would be tracked within one of
• 31:53
  the three rooms. That's not going to work. We will
• 31:57
  simply put them in the rooms.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Well, so the ghost like creatures from the other world
• 32:04
  will basically see this vacant, very comfortable room and want
• 32:08
  to take a nap from there.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: You will seal the door. Okay, thankfully, these multidimensional beings
• 32:16
  respect complicated hallways and doors.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: They're so narrow that they'll be kind of weeded out
• 32:21
  and want to take a nap in the room.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: No, you don't understand. We lock the door. They can't
• 32:25
  open it. Of course, they know what doors is. They
• 32:29
  wouldn't mess with that. That's a universal concept.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: That's our dimension, not their dimension. They don't know what
• 32:34
  doors are.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: I think of door, I think I think of a gate.
• 32:41
  I don't know why he's he called it a door,
• 32:44
  But looking at it now, it makes perfect sense. It's
• 32:49
  perfect just walking through the bunker, just looking at stuff.
• 32:59
  I don't know why we called it a computer. Looking
• 33:01
  at it now, it makes sense. This is.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: We don't need the nurse. That's okay.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Zimmerman had the theory that any entity would try and
• 33:14
  latch onto the nearest living thing that had the capacity
• 33:17
  for it.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: He wanted to use this.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Technique to trap a spirit in a physical form by
• 33:22
  allowing it to enter a living being that had been
• 33:24
  injected with a compound mixture of Zimmerman's creation theory. Compound
• 33:29
  would keep the entity from simply leaving whether it was
• 33:32
  attached to, and the only way it would be able
• 33:35
  to leave a host who had been injected with a
• 33:37
  compound was through death. According to Zimmerman, the host would
• 33:41
  have to be something living with a will strong enough
• 33:44
  to survive the possession, and there is only one known
• 33:47
  species that possesses the amount of will required for this humans.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Zimmerman had also done something to ensure that.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: The entities would only enter the three rooms and that
• 33:57
  there would only be one entity in each room. But
• 34:00
  I cannot say I know what he exactly he did.
• 34:03
  In fact, I know next to nothing when it comes
• 34:05
  down to we'remen managed to do what he did. He
• 34:08
  liked to keep his methodology a secret to his most
• 34:10
  trusted colleagues, was likely due to his paranoia that someone
• 34:14
  would steal his ideas and take credit for the success
• 34:16
  of set ideas. That whole paragraph's kind of funny. It's like, well,
• 34:20
  you may ask how he did that. I don't know,
• 34:23
  but he did it, and.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: If you try to, if you try to ask him,
• 34:26
  he would just throw a bitch fit and be like,
• 34:28
  stop trying to steal my ideas.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: So whatever, So I didn't ask him, but I know
• 34:32
  there is a compound and that's all you need.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So basically, what is happening here is kind I feel
• 34:36
  like it's kind of spelling it out. I mean, I
• 34:37
  don't know if I'm getting this right, but it seems
• 34:40
  as if he is going to have these entities come in.
• 34:42
  But it seems like you need hosts to have these entities.
• 34:45
  So the people that he hired are going to be
• 34:47
  these hosts for the entities that are coming up.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I think there's a specific three that we'll get to.
• 34:54
  I can't remember if they're like prisoners or if they're
• 34:56
  like test subjects or something like that, but yeah, I
• 34:59
  remember the there's three subjects that were designated for it
• 35:02
  to happen to. I see, if I had known that
• 35:05
  this was the true purpose before I signed up, I
• 35:07
  may have reconsidered, but Zimmerman decided not to tell us
• 35:10
  until we were all gathered at his fortress. Even if
• 35:14
  any of us wanted to leave, I doubt we would
• 35:16
  have been allowed to do so. The security team Zimmerman
• 35:19
  had hired was loyal to him and the payout. It's
• 35:22
  not likely that Zimmerman had given them the order to
• 35:25
  now allow anyone to leave. There were three different subjects
• 35:29
  included in the experiment. All were native to Alaska, and
• 35:32
  each one was lured into the project under the belief
• 35:35
  that they would be participating in a harmless study on
• 35:37
  the effects of isolation on the human mind, as I
• 35:40
  mentioned before, which is why none of the subjects objected
• 35:44
  when they realized that they would be confined to one
• 35:46
  of the three rooms that I mentioned earlier. The first
• 35:49
  subject was a young man who was apparently out of
• 35:52
  work and desperately needed the money that had been offered
• 35:55
  for participating in the study. The second was a woman,
• 35:59
  but looking at I could tell she was an addict
• 36:01
  of some sort. The third and final subject was an
• 36:05
  older man drifter. If I had to guess, one thing
• 36:08
  they all had in common was that none of them
• 36:10
  had any family or friends left. In short, no one
• 36:14
  would miss him, which is why they were chosen for
• 36:17
  the project. I'm sorry. I wish I could supply more
• 36:20
  information about the subjects, but all of this had been
• 36:22
  drawn from memory, and I was given little information on
• 36:24
  the three to begin with. The experiment did not officially
• 36:28
  begin until nineteen eighty seven, sixteen years after its original announcement.
• 36:34
  I was eager to begin, so I packed up and
• 36:36
  headed out to the complex as soon as I could.
• 36:38
  I arrived at the compound a week before the subjects
• 36:41
  had even signed up, and a whole month before the
• 36:43
  project even began. I was not the first to arrive
• 36:47
  by any means. When I got there, Zimmerman, his colleagues,
• 36:51
  and the security team had already arrived.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: I suppose you could.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Say I was among the people Zimmerman did.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: Not trust to arrive first.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Everyone had arrived about a week before the experiment began.
• 37:02
  There's a noticeable rift between those who were there simply
• 37:05
  for the money, like me, those who were.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: Followers of Zimmerman.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: On October fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven, all the preparations were
• 37:13
  in place. Subjects had been sealed in their rooms, cameras,
• 37:17
  lights and speakers were fully operational, and all the staff
• 37:20
  members had settled in the time had come for the
• 37:22
  experiment to officially begin.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: How wilstay, I do like this, Like I think this
• 37:26
  is kind of interesting of a secret like just like
• 37:30
  a secret experiment thing and people being subjects of like
• 37:33
  a paranormal like basically like a rift opening between worlds
• 37:38
  and allowing something in and seeing the effects it has
• 37:40
  for like hosting or whatever. But this kind of like
• 37:43
  fucked up guinea pig experiment is interesting enough, Like it
• 37:47
  kind of reminds me of like the Stanford prison experiment
• 37:50
  or something where it's just like these fucked up, weird
• 37:53
  experiments that people are doing for the quote unquote you know,
• 37:57
  for the quote unquote research purposes or whatever. Yeah, I
• 38:00
  just feels like a torture or something.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: I also like the distinction between.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: There are people there with Zimmerman and there's people there
• 38:12
  for the money. I think it's cool. There's kind of
• 38:14
  like this shadow group moving in the midst of it
• 38:17
  and stuff like that.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: It's interesting so far.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: I'm actually like invested in the story because I remember
• 38:22
  some details, but I don't remember where it goes, so
• 38:24
  like I'm I'm bought in effectively.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: It's silly with some of the writing or whatever. But
• 38:28
  I will say there is like a fun experiment there,
• 38:30
  or there's like a fun idea here. Yeah, and I
• 38:33
  was going to say too, I was trying to figure
• 38:34
  out where to put this in, but this definitely has
• 38:37
  to be a guy who read the Russian Sleep Experiment
• 38:39
  right now and was influenced.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, anyone anyone who was writing creepypasas in twenty
• 38:45
  thirteen read the Russian Sleep Experiment.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Sure, as soon as you start talking about the doors
• 38:50
  and stuff in the hallways, I was like, ah, man,
• 38:51
  this sounds like I can see that the flavor of
• 38:54
  that seeking and seeping into this.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's like like the Russians experimented in early
• 39:01
  ones like that that were so heavy. It's hard to
• 39:04
  even because I would say, like, oh, it's like saying
• 39:10
  that you watch movies but you've never seen Star Wars.
• 39:12
  It's like, even then you can do that because movies
• 39:15
  are so varied. It's like being a sci fi special
• 39:19
  effects artist and never seen Star Wars. It's like it's
• 39:22
  such a hyberniche thing. It's like, of course you've seen
• 39:24
  the like starting of it, right, like the Frigender, But.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: What you're saying too, is that even if you haven't
• 39:29
  seen it, the things that you have seen have been
• 39:31
  influenced by that thing.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, so this guy definitely did, and which
• 39:35
  which is fine.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's fine to work off of you.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's cool. I was just pointing that out
• 39:40
  because I was like, this is a fun This is
• 39:43
  a fun idea of someone reading that being like, oh fuck,
• 39:45
  that was awesome and then like putting their own take
• 39:47
  on it, I guess, is what I meant.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: And also, thirteen year old me, I can see I
• 39:51
  have been like, oh my gosh.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean I was kind of like getting
• 39:54
  nustled into my seat a bit when it's just like,
• 39:56
  you know, first off, sixteen years of this prep work.
• 40:00
  It's pretty crazy, so you've like it's been a huge
• 40:02
  devotion to your life, and then now it's like just beginning.
• 40:05
  I mean now, I'm like even I was kind of
• 40:07
  like getting nestled in, like Okay, well, what the fuck's
• 40:08
  gonna happen?
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thirteen year old me reading this, like, that's a
• 40:11
  good point. The harbinger does mean those things?
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Wow does mean doom.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't think of that.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: Wow, You're right, it does fit perfectly.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Zimmerman asked everyone to report to control room around nine
• 40:27
  pm to witness the beginning of the experiment. He wanted
• 40:30
  everyone to be present when he proved that all his
• 40:32
  theories have been correct and that he was not just
• 40:35
  a madman.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: He wanted us solid to see the fruits of his labor.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: When everyone had finally gathered in the large control room,
• 40:42
  Zimmerman turned to us and simply said, observe. He then
• 40:48
  turned us back to us, leaned into the microphone that
• 40:51
  would project his voice through the three rooms, and then
• 40:54
  he began chanting in a strange language that I feel
• 40:58
  certain no one but Zimmerman could understand. We all observed
• 41:01
  the three large monitors on the wall, silently waiting for
• 41:04
  something to happen. The subjects all stood in their rooms,
• 41:08
  dumb struck by Zimmerman's channing, staring at the monitors with
• 41:11
  confused expressions on their faces. After about five minutes, I
• 41:18
  felt something.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Awful.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Cannot explain what exactly it was, but a horrible feeling
• 41:26
  of dread washed out for me, riddling me with fear.
• 41:29
  It was then the ground actually began to shake subtly,
• 41:33
  and the lights began to flicker. Zimmerman continued chanting into
• 41:37
  the microphone as if nothing was off or wrong, while
• 41:40
  the subjects began dashing around their rooms screaming for help.
• 41:44
  Then suddenly the ground stopped shaking and the monitor's image
• 41:48
  turned into the static. The air began to become very
• 41:51
  heavy as we all stared at the monitors, waiting for
• 41:54
  them to regain their image and show us what was
• 41:56
  happening or had happened in those three rooms. For a while,
• 42:00
  ale all was silent, but then there was screaming. Screams
• 42:06
  of a woman going through unbearable pain and terror began
• 42:08
  to echo through the compound. The similar screams of men
• 42:12
  began to coincide with the woman's terrified screams, and together
• 42:15
  they mixed into an awful symphony of pain and fear
• 42:18
  that beat mercilessly into our ears. Those of us who
• 42:21
  were here for the money began to give each other
• 42:23
  scared looks, while those loyal to Zimmerman seemed completely unfazed.
• 42:28
  We wanted to leave and never come back to this
• 42:30
  awful place, but we all knew deep down that Zimmerman
• 42:33
  would never allow that to happen. We were here for
• 42:36
  the long caull there's no escape. It was ten thirteen
• 42:40
  PM when the screaming finally stopped. The monitors had yet
• 42:43
  to reveal to us what had occurred in those three rooms.
• 42:47
  As soon as the screaming ended, Zimmerman stood and dismissed
• 42:50
  us all for the night, adding that we were all
• 42:52
  forbidden to come back into the compound until ten am
• 42:55
  tomorrow morning. Not like any of us wanted to, we
• 43:00
  all solemnly made our way out of the compound towards
• 43:02
  the cabins and settled in for the night.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: I feel it safe to say.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: That not all of us slept well that night, and
• 43:09
  I was not one of them. The following morning, all
• 43:11
  of the staff had arrived at the entrance building. We
• 43:14
  all stood inside, exchanging tired or nervous looks as we
• 43:17
  waited for Zimmerman to arrive and.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: Open the hatch that concealed the ladder.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I could see palpable fear in the eyes of some
• 43:24
  of us, while others did not seem to have been
• 43:27
  even remotely affected by what had happened last night. Zimmerman
• 43:31
  showed up five minutes after ten, apologizing for his tardedness
• 43:34
  as he came through the door of the entrance building.
• 43:37
  He opened the hatch and without any hesitation, began descending
• 43:41
  the ladder downwards into the black abyss. He almost seemed enthusiastic.
• 43:46
  I was the first to follow behind Zimmerman's dark descend
• 43:49
  into the facility. It seemed that the farther I climbed down,
• 43:53
  the more the darkness closed in on me, as if
• 43:56
  it was trying to swallow me whole.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: As I climbed deep, I.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Couldn't help feel that this place was different somehow. Well.
• 44:05
  Before there was only the unsettling concrete hallways and rooms.
• 44:09
  Now there was something else, something made the eeriness feel
• 44:12
  so real and personified. I felt like a horrible and
• 44:16
  gruesome scene a waited us down there, but I continued
• 44:19
  climbing downward. It's by my fear and my hesitation. This
• 44:23
  was no longer just a spooky bunker. There was darkness
• 44:27
  and malevolence in the air. True evil now lived here,
• 44:30
  and I could feel it.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: We all couldn't like the idea after the experiment, It's
• 44:35
  like what it was once, This like normal place that
• 44:37
  you worked now has this like actual physical change, where
• 44:42
  the presence of these beings is like affecting the entire
• 44:46
  like the even just the air that you're in. It
• 44:48
  just it feels like it's all around you. It's pretty cool.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I went from something that you were so familiar
• 44:54
  with to like a layer dungeon. Yeah.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: And also just like the presence of evil being there,
• 45:01
  that seismic change that has happened.
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's something otherworldly down there with you.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I finally felt my foot touch ground and let out
• 45:08
  a silent sigh of relief to be on solid ground.
• 45:11
  Almost as if on q the light bulbs came alive,
• 45:14
  dousing the room and their warm and welcome light. Zimmerman
• 45:18
  must have turned on the power, I thought. I allowed
• 45:21
  myself to take a couple seconds to examine the control room.
• 45:25
  It was exactly as we had left it last night,
• 45:27
  for which I gave a silent and thankful prayer. It
• 45:31
  was almost as if nothing unusual had ever happened. I
• 45:35
  shook myself from my thoughts as I remembered the static
• 45:37
  filled monitors from the night before, let my eyes slowly
• 45:41
  make their way towards the monitors on the wall, anticipating
• 45:44
  the grim and fearful scenes that would be on them.
• 45:47
  My attention was first grabbed by monitor one and three,
• 45:52
  which were still pure static. It would have been a
• 45:54
  small relief, But then the motionless image on monitor two
• 45:58
  caught my eye. Room two was entirely still, and everything
• 46:03
  seemed entirely untouched. Couldn't help, but gasp was I noticed
• 46:06
  the only thing that was different. The woman lay in
• 46:10
  the center of the small concrete room. An expression of
• 46:13
  fear and terror was frozen into her gaunt face as
• 46:16
  she lay silent and lifeless on her back. Zimmerman's expression
• 46:20
  turned angry when he saw this. He ordered that the
• 46:22
  second monitor be turned off, and it was. We didn't
• 46:26
  ask why. It's not like any of us wanted to
• 46:28
  see the dreadful scene any longer.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: He also ordered that if the images.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: In the monitors one and three did not return within
• 46:35
  the next two hours, the security team would.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: Be sent to investigate the rooms.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: The security team nodded at hearing this and made it
• 46:42
  seem as if they had no fear that I could
• 46:45
  see it in their eyes. I like that's a fun
• 46:48
  note about the security team and the fear.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: I also like.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: The lead up to it, where you know there's three
• 46:55
  people and the only one you can't see is dead,
• 46:59
  and that makes some upset that you can see it,
• 47:01
  so he needs to turn it off right away. So
• 47:02
  it makes you ask, like, what are the two others in,
• 47:05
  Like it's a good build up to like an eventual reveal. Yeah.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Also to the security and staff that is quote unquote
• 47:14
  Zerman's trusted colleagues, No, what's happening. They're just not saying
• 47:18
  stuff because there's obviously like a fear on their face.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they know it's not just three dead people
• 47:24
  in a room. Right. The subtly loud TikTok clock was
• 47:28
  the only sound that echoed through the control room while
• 47:30
  I stared at the monitors. An hour and fifteen minutes
• 47:34
  to come by, and static was still all that occupied
• 47:37
  Monitor one and three. All the other staff members were
• 47:40
  working except me. This was due to the fact that
• 47:43
  the project had been completely injury free thus far, so
• 47:46
  I essentially had nothing to do but wait for someone
• 47:48
  to hurt themselves. So like how he clearly saw like
• 47:51
  a dead or catatonic woman on the floor, and he's like,
• 47:55
  you know, when I'm called, when I'm called, like, hm,
• 48:01
  I have no hippocratic oath for that woman or whatever
• 48:03
  I just saw on that camera, So you know, Zimmerman,
• 48:07
  A couple of his colleagues, and I were the only
• 48:09
  ones that occupied the room. They quietly chatted amongst each
• 48:12
  other on the other side of the room, while I
• 48:14
  spent my time reading and pondering the situation I currently
• 48:17
  found myself in. I clearly made a mistake coming there.
• 48:21
  The corpse line of room two was evidence enough to this.
• 48:24
  God only knew what awaited us in rooms one and three.
• 48:27
  My thoughts were soon interrupted as monitor three's image returned.
• 48:31
  The clear image now displayed on the screen made everyone's
• 48:35
  eyes noticeably widen. What was displayed on the monitor was horrifye.
• 48:43
  A humanoid thing stood in the center of the room,
• 48:47
  staring directly at the camera, unmoving. It was wearing the
• 48:52
  jumpsuit that Subject three had been issued, but this clearly
• 48:55
  was not the same man that had entered the room.
• 48:57
  What caught my attention first was its eyes. It was
• 49:00
  solid black and twice the size of normal human eyes.
• 49:04
  It seemed so, so endless, so cold. Its head had
• 49:09
  also grown with the eyes in such a symmetrical and
• 49:12
  unsubtly manner. The bean had also shed all of the
• 49:15
  hair it had once had, and even from the monitor,
• 49:17
  I could see how unnaturally smooth and clear its skin was,
• 49:21
  and had also seemingly grown in its height and stature,
• 49:25
  which could be seen in the fact that the jumpsuit
• 49:28
  was now obviously far too small for its wear. Slim's
• 49:31
  had grown especially long, its arms hung almost as low
• 49:35
  as the creature's knees.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I almost like thinking, does it not sound like a
• 49:39
  gray alien?
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: A bit?
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: It does sound like a gray alien?
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know it doesn't It like just a description?
• 49:44
  I feel. That's where my mind immediately went.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: What we were looking at was in no way the
• 49:47
  same man we had sitt inside. Fear was all I
• 49:50
  felt as I continued to stare into the monitor at
• 49:52
  the thing in the room. My fears seemed to be
• 49:55
  shared by those around me, which made me feel kind
• 49:58
  of good. It may sound awful, but it was a
• 50:02
  bit satisfying to see that Zimmerman and his colleagues could
• 50:05
  feel fear too. But at the same time, it was
• 50:07
  worrying because this showed that this was not part of
• 50:10
  Zimmerman's plan. Something had gone wrong. We all stared into
• 50:14
  the monitor at the thing despite our fear. It was
• 50:17
  almost as if we were in a trance. My already
• 50:20
  present fear began to grow and spread rapidly through my
• 50:23
  body as I became lost in the creature's eyes, Trapped
• 50:26
  in its terrifying hypnotic gaze, I for what felt like forever,
• 50:30
  managed to break eye contact with the creature and divert
• 50:33
  my attention from the monitor. When I did so, I
• 50:36
  felt my fear levels dropped considerably. After a short while,
• 50:40
  Zimmerman ordered his security team to make their way to
• 50:42
  Subject one's store, just as he said he would do.
• 50:46
  The security team left without question, armed only with batons
• 50:49
  and pistols. I focused my attention on watching the men
• 50:51
  progress through the hallways towards Subject one's room via the cameras.
• 50:55
  Even through the not so high quality cameras, it wasn't
• 50:58
  hard to tell that these men were afraid of what
• 51:00
  awaited them. Their heads were downcast as they walked. They
• 51:04
  had not possessed the same confidence within them that they
• 51:07
  did when this project began. They looked like scared boys
• 51:10
  being sent off to a terrible war. Eventually they made
• 51:13
  it to the door. We had a perfect vision of
• 51:16
  them and the door via the hallway camera. One of
• 51:19
  them said something through one of their walking talkies and
• 51:21
  made a motion towards the camera. In response, one of
• 51:25
  Zimmerman's colleagues buzzed the door open. The men already had
• 51:28
  their pistols out by the time the button was pushed. Slowly,
• 51:32
  the door began to open. We all watched eagerly as
• 51:36
  the men began to approach the door, guns aimed inside.
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: Suddenly, without warning.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: There was a loud shriek and something bounded out of
• 51:46
  the room with the men.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: The monitor turned into static.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Immediately we could hear screaming echoing down the hallways, followed
• 51:52
  shortly after by the distinct sound of gunshots. We could
• 51:56
  do nothing but wait. After a couple of minutes, screaming
• 51:59
  in gunshots stopped. We all waited and prayed, hoping that
• 52:03
  whatever bounded at them from the room would not be
• 52:06
  the one. To return to the control room. For a
• 52:08
  couple more minutes, three of the men came back, carrying
• 52:11
  with them the corpse of the fourth. He had massive
• 52:14
  cuts covering his chest and his face was shredded. Couldn't
• 52:17
  even tell who he was anymore, even that he was human.
• 52:21
  I was used to gore, being a doctor. In all
• 52:24
  so I felt somewhat unfazed by the massive shredded flesh
• 52:27
  and blooded meat they carried with him, but many of
• 52:30
  the others went pale and vomited. The security team all
• 52:33
  wore emotionless expressions and eyes filled with terror. One of
• 52:38
  the men finally looked up at us. He stared at
• 52:41
  us for a while with those wide eyes of his,
• 52:44
  finally managed to mutter and shaken scared voice, I will
• 52:47
  say so again. Cool setup. I like the way that,
• 52:50
  like each of the test subjects are being alluded to
• 52:53
  and shown off. I do like that line, and ironically
• 52:57
  the one about the guards where it says and they
• 53:00
  looked like scared boys being sent off to a terrible war.
• 53:04
  That's that was good, And that's a surprising statement out
• 53:10
  of a story that previously has the It fits perfectly
• 53:15
  as we described, so, you know.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: The Zimmerman aspect here. I would I kind of wish
• 53:21
  I would knew more of how he felt about how
• 53:23
  the thing was going, you know, like I wish during
• 53:26
  these things, is he unless it's just supposed to be
• 53:29
  like we it's an intentional that it's like, well, even
• 53:34
  the guards don't know how he's feeling about how it's going.
• 53:37
  So far, I just wish there was more reaction or
• 53:40
  like something more of like our protagonists looking at Zimmermann
• 53:42
  being like he looked unfazed, or he looked like, you know,
• 53:46
  he was like pushing up his glasses and rubbing the
• 53:47
  brim of his nose, like it wasn't going as planned,
• 53:49
  et cetera. I wish there was more of that because
• 53:51
  right now I'm kind of like, I don't know if
• 53:53
  this is a part of the plan or not. I
• 53:54
  know that the protagonist keeps saying, well, it's not part
• 53:57
  of the plan, but how would he know.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we get more of it later, but
• 54:00
  I can't remember. I think there's more. I'd you wrong.
• 54:04
  But a couple hours went by. The dead man's name
• 54:07
  was Frank. He was buried outside in the cold Alaskan ground.
• 54:12
  Two of the men were unharmed physically. At least third
• 54:16
  was alive, but only barely. His body was covered in
• 54:19
  bloody slashes, and one of his eyes had been couched out.
• 54:23
  I managed to stabilize him, but only just the other
• 54:27
  two men vaguely explained what happened. Apparently Subject one leaped
• 54:31
  out of Frank after the door had opened, only it
• 54:34
  wasn't really Subject one anymore. According to them, it had
• 54:38
  a hideously contorted face and long sharp claws. They claimed
• 54:42
  to have shot it over a dozen times before it
• 54:44
  fell dead, and then they emptied another dozen bullets into
• 54:47
  it just to be sure it was really dead. Only
• 54:50
  once it was dead did they come back. After tending
• 54:53
  to the wounded man, I went to investigate the monitors.
• 54:56
  As afraid as I was of seeing what those monitors
• 54:59
  may have held, I needed to see Subject three was
• 55:03
  the only one left now, and I needed to see
• 55:05
  it and make sure the creature was still in his
• 55:07
  room seemed to be more like a jail cell than
• 55:10
  an ordinary room at this point, though, which was probably
• 55:13
  a good thing. The camera's displaying Subject one's room in
• 55:16
  the hallway outside it still displayed a static filled screen.
• 55:20
  No one was sent to repair them or investigate. We
• 55:23
  just had to hope that Subject one was well and
• 55:25
  truly dead. Monitor three's image was exactly the same as
• 55:28
  I had left it. Subject three was still steering directly
• 55:31
  into the camera at us. He was still in the
• 55:34
  exact same position as If it were not for the
• 55:36
  small fan in the corner of the room, I would
• 55:38
  think I was looking at a still image. In a
• 55:41
  way I felt relief at seeing this, relief that he
• 55:44
  was still in his room and had not escaped. While
• 55:46
  no one was looking. After everything quieted down, I noticed
• 55:51
  something especially unusual. There was a strange sound emanating from somewhere.
• 56:01
  At first, it was barely noticeable. The only reason I
• 56:04
  heard it was because of how extremely quiet it was
• 56:06
  in the infirmary. This time went by slowly began to
• 56:11
  increase in volume. After about an hour, it was just
• 56:15
  loud enough that everyone else could hear it to And
• 56:19
  after a couple more hours its volume had increased.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: So much that we could determine what the noise was.
• 56:25
  It was a song.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: One of the staff members identified it as living in
• 56:30
  the Sunlight by Tiny Tim. All right, well.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: There it is.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: What year did this movie come out?
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: Twenty thirteen? When did.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, by this time, in Citius had come out, So
• 56:45
  that was just kind of the I think that was
• 56:47
  just kind of the meta or the popular. It was
• 56:49
  just popular.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But keep in mind, living in the Sunlight is
• 56:53
  the one that is used in SpongeBob because what's the
• 56:57
  song again, insidious? What's the one it tipped out through
• 56:59
  the two lips? Right, Yeah, but living in the Sunlight's
• 57:05
  the one from the SpongeBob. I think it's from the
• 57:06
  pilot when he's making So, you know, you may think
• 57:19
  it's an insidious reference, and you're probably right, But there
• 57:22
  is a chance that this is a SpongeBob reference. So
• 57:27
  maybe the thing that jumped out of the Room one
• 57:29
  and killed Frank Squidwards.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Suicide, it was Quidwards.
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: It was quivered with a shot, of course.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: Apparently his father loved the song and listened to it frequently.
• 57:44
  Song seemed to be on a loop and capra plane itself.
• 57:47
  Although we were able to identify the noise, we remained
• 57:49
  unable to identify its source. We knew that it wasn't
• 57:53
  coming from the speakers because we had turned them off.
• 57:56
  Seemed to be emanating from the walls themselves. Well time
• 58:00
  ticked by us, we all began to become increasingly agitated
• 58:03
  by the song. That spent most of my time in
• 58:06
  the infirmary attending to Frank or in the control room.
• 58:09
  Fear hung in the air, in the presence of unmistakable
• 58:12
  darkness and evil snow doubted source Subject three still had
• 58:16
  not moved it kept his unblinking gaze fixed on the camera.
• 58:19
  The entire time. It always felt like he was staring
• 58:24
  directly at me, no matter where I was in the room.
• 58:27
  I think this effect was also felt by others due
• 58:29
  to the fact that they had seemed to move around
• 58:31
  the room a lot and for seemingly no reason. After
• 58:35
  a few hours, the song was so loud that people
• 58:37
  almost had to shout in order to communicate. We've been
• 58:40
  trying to find its source so that we could turn
• 58:42
  the song off, but it was snow avail source was
• 58:45
  completely unidentifiable. Added a level of extreme irritation to our.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Already very present fear an not naturally a loud song
• 58:53
  that's also like one of the people's dad's favorite song
• 58:57
  is so as actually pretty fucking creepy. Yeah, repeating over
• 59:00
  and over again.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: It'd be like for me, it would be like if
• 59:04
  Night Moves just started blaring full volume. Okay, that would
• 59:08
  actually be terrified. Okay, now I say that out loud,
• 59:11
  that would be.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Pretty freecia And it's so personal, you know, I don't know,
• 59:17
  it's just odd.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: I remember my uh, what's that What's that line near
• 59:21
  the end where it's like I'm playing a song from
• 59:26
  nineteen sixty two? Ain't it funny? How the night moves.
• 59:28
  I remember my dad singing that and like seeing like
• 59:32
  recognizing his nostalgia board and stuff like that. So if
• 59:34
  I was in like an abandoned building, and that would
• 59:37
  be fine volume, like I couldn't hear anything else. That's
• 59:43
  actually you know, also, I'm pretty.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Good unnaturally loud. Like it's just like it's getting louder
• 59:49
  even though we're standing in the same spot.
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: Is insane, like something's getting closer. Yeah. It was around
• 59:56
  eight thirty that the ground itself began to shake once again,
• 59:59
  just as it had done the previous night. Panic began
• 1:00:03
  to spread among my fellow employees and me as the
• 1:00:05
  shaking grew in intensity. During this, I had the sudden
• 1:00:10
  instinctual feeling to look over at Subject threes monitor. It
• 1:00:14
  was gone, almost as if on Q power went out.
• 1:00:20
  Thankfully song did as well. All right, so.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: What is your game plan here?
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: Hunter? This series of events happening you're doing.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: I mean like this at this moment, it feels like
• 1:00:35
  what I mean, what can you actually do? You know,
• 1:00:37
  if you try to go to the last the power
• 1:00:39
  goes out, you're in the complete dark. I mean, I
• 1:00:41
  don't know, I'd cry, I'd probably get under the table
• 1:00:43
  and I just cry.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: Probably cry a lot, probably be a big baby. Probably
• 1:00:47
  be a big baby.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: That would be an extreme baby mode. I would initiate
• 1:00:51
  baby mode.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: I would activate baby protocols. Ever since the security team
• 1:00:57
  came back, panic had been slowly building up among the staff,
• 1:01:00
  and Zimmerman was powerless to stop it. When those lights
• 1:01:03
  went out, the calm projections that everyone had been trying
• 1:01:06
  to maintain left us, and the fear and all our
• 1:01:08
  hearts took over. Emergency backup lights kicked on shortly after
• 1:01:12
  the power went out, which I gave a silent, thankful prayer.
• 1:01:15
  For the lights were dim, they still allowed me to
• 1:01:18
  see a lot. Total panic seized up as many of
• 1:01:21
  my fellow staff members began screaming and rushing the ladder
• 1:01:24
  in an attempt to escape, but too many were trying
• 1:01:26
  to use it at once, and no one was able
• 1:01:28
  to get very far in the ladder without someone else
• 1:01:31
  pulling them to the floor and taking their place. Zimmerman
• 1:01:34
  was shouting for everyone to calm down, but his dominating
• 1:01:37
  and intimidating personality had no effect here, and his demands
• 1:01:41
  fell upon deaf ears.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: It was total chaos.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Was it long?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: Until people actually started hurting each other in their desperate
• 1:01:48
  attempts to.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: Get up that ladder and out of this place.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: I could only stand against the wall and wait for
• 1:01:52
  my opportunity to escape up the ladder. All the screams
• 1:01:55
  were soon silenced as the familiar hum of that unsettling
• 1:01:59
  song began to rise volume again, only much quicker this time,
• 1:02:03
  and this time it was clear that the noise was
• 1:02:05
  coming directly from the maze like corridors. Oh God, people
• 1:02:10
  stopped fighting and shouting as all our attention shifted to
• 1:02:13
  the door that led into the hallways. The song quickly
• 1:02:16
  got louder than it had ever been before, which forced
• 1:02:19
  many of us to cup our ears with our hands
• 1:02:21
  in an attempt to silence the noise. Then suddenly, the
• 1:02:25
  song just completely stopped. Silence that was all that filled
• 1:02:30
  the room as we all stared at the thick metal
• 1:02:32
  door in anticipation for what was coming. It felt like
• 1:02:36
  ages had gone by, but in reality it was probably
• 1:02:38
  only seconds before the silence was broken. The door suddenly
• 1:02:43
  and violently pushed open, and the music started again, louder
• 1:02:47
  than it had ever been before. The suddenness and the
• 1:02:50
  volume of this caused many of us to recoil by
• 1:02:52
  falling to the ground and grabbing our ears in an
• 1:02:54
  attempt to block out the noise. I glanced up for
• 1:02:57
  just a second, and in the doorways a tall, smooth
• 1:03:01
  skinned figure with long limbs and eyes so dark and
• 1:03:04
  malevolent that you clearly see them in the dim lighting.
• 1:03:08
  After I got my bearings, I looked upwards at the
• 1:03:10
  creature once again, just in time to see the thing
• 1:03:13
  pick up and rips the them in half, one fluid Jesus,
• 1:03:17
  Good God, dousing the room and everyone in it with
• 1:03:20
  his blood, intestines and organs.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: I was no stranger to gore, but the sight of
• 1:03:25
  that was too much for me to bear.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Hunched over immediately after seeing this and vomited all over
• 1:03:29
  the cold cement floor. Crazy moment, just walks in rips
• 1:03:33
  every mind in half, probably because he's the one that
• 1:03:35
  brought it here, right.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: You'd have to assume, so he, I mean, he is
• 1:03:39
  the one who did the chant, So that's why I'm
• 1:03:41
  assuming that that's the subject. But that's like their target.
• 1:03:44
  But yeah, at the same time, is he the one
• 1:03:46
  that just hasn't been scurrying back in fear or whatever?
• 1:03:49
  And then ya just gets picked up.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: It's just the closest one paper.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Also, like like creepypastas around this time, we're
• 1:03:55
  obsessed with characters throwing up. It's always like I was
• 1:03:58
  so disturbing to I vomited out of vomit and stuff
• 1:04:00
  like that. So it's funny to imagine the sky in
• 1:04:02
  the middle of those to being like, can you give
• 1:04:05
  me a second, I'm like bending over to like do
• 1:04:07
  the whole hurl thing. That ladder is my only hope
• 1:04:10
  for survival, I thought to myself as I forced myself
• 1:04:12
  to a standing position. As my eyes rose along with
• 1:04:15
  the rest of me, I could see the thing ripping
• 1:04:18
  and tearing through the people as they scattered in an
• 1:04:20
  attempt to escape it. It was distracted and as awful
• 1:04:24
  as it sounds, this was my only chance to get
• 1:04:26
  up that ladder. I forced my legs to move towards
• 1:04:29
  the ladder, trying to block out the terrified screams of
• 1:04:32
  my fellow staff members and the unbearably loud music. I
• 1:04:35
  get your gunshots coinciding with the screams and terrible sounds
• 1:04:38
  of flesh being ripped apart.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: Somewhere in the mess of noise.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: I reached my hands outwards and felt a wave of
• 1:04:44
  relief wash over me. As my fingers came into contact
• 1:04:46
  with the hard metal rungs of the ladder.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: I gripped them and.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: Began to climb upwards as quickly as I could in
• 1:04:52
  my disoriented state, all the while praying that the monster
• 1:04:55
  would not see me and pull me off the ladder
• 1:04:57
  and back into the slaughter. Felt like at any moment
• 1:05:00
  I would feel one of its smooth hands wrap around
• 1:05:02
  my ankles and pull me to my death, but I
• 1:05:04
  eventually made it to the top. There was no question
• 1:05:08
  in my mind. I had to close the hatch and
• 1:05:10
  seal that thing down there. Even if I met certain
• 1:05:13
  death from my colleagues, I cannot allow that thing to escape.
• 1:05:17
  I gripped a thick metal lid and began to push
• 1:05:19
  with all my might in an attempt to seal the
• 1:05:21
  underground complex off. Despite how dense and sturdy it was,
• 1:05:25
  the lid was surprisingly easy to move and did not
• 1:05:28
  take very much effort to push it over the hatch give.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: It in my weakened state.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: Seconds the hatch was completely covered by the dense metal lid.
• 1:05:37
  I collapsed on my side and began to vomit some
• 1:05:39
  more as exhaustion overtook me. As I lay there, I
• 1:05:43
  realized something, aside from my labored breaths, the only thing
• 1:05:48
  I could hear was the faint echo of that song
• 1:05:50
  from down below. I felt as though I would lose
• 1:05:53
  more of my sanity if I continued to lay there
• 1:05:55
  and listen to that song. So I once again forced
• 1:05:57
  myself to my feet and began to make my way
• 1:05:59
  to the wooden lodge I'd stayed in the previous night.
• 1:06:02
  That's where I left my baggage, and also I left
• 1:06:05
  the keys to my truck.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: So I I like that.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: I like the instine. I wish there was more characterization
• 1:06:13
  for Zimmerman.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was. I have a bunch of
• 1:06:17
  stuff written down. I was gonna say, I think that
• 1:06:18
  we might be on the tail end. I'd be curious
• 1:06:21
  we should discuss it at the end or whatever.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: But uh, yeah, I.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Have I have a lot of thoughts so far. You
• 1:06:29
  know what, Hunter, you can just tell me to shut up. Well,
• 1:06:32
  I guess it just makes me. I feel like we're
• 1:06:34
  not too far from that.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just sorry.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: It's just funny.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Ever up a point, you're like Yeah, I've got stuff too.
• 1:06:41
  I got Yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: I have thoughts, but I'm not gonna share him.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah that's interesting anyway, I'm waiting. Yeah, yeah, Oh, you've
• 1:06:50
  got stuff to say. I don't really care. I care
• 1:06:51
  about what that was. What were you gonna say?
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: I'm just giving you a complex. It was funny.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: Of the fifteen staff members that took part in the
• 1:07:01
  forsaken experiment, I'm the only one who survived. I've never
• 1:07:05
  returned to that. Well, yeah, you're the only one who survived.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: You chucked the door.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty sure, it's just you do. I've never returned
• 1:07:15
  to that awful place where all of this happened, and
• 1:07:17
  I don't intend to.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: The project was very secretive.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: And Zimmerman was the only one who knew all the
• 1:07:22
  details of it, and as far as I know, no
• 1:07:26
  one is aware of my involvement aside from me, In fact,
• 1:07:29
  probably the only one who knows that the Harbinger Experiment
• 1:07:32
  truly was let alone what actually happened. By now, probably
• 1:07:36
  wondering why I've told you all about something none of
• 1:07:39
  you should be aware of. Maybe you're expecting me to
• 1:07:41
  give you a speech about not messing with things you
• 1:07:44
  don't understand or substant along those lines, I hope not.
• 1:07:48
  Or I have no speech to give or lessen to impart.
• 1:07:51
  I mean, okay, I like that line too. I like
• 1:07:54
  that too. I have no speech to give or listen to. Impart.
• 1:07:57
  I began hearing a noise earlier today. Most immediately I
• 1:08:00
  recognize the noise. It's a very haunting and familiar song,
• 1:08:04
  and didn't even try to trace it to its source. No,
• 1:08:07
  it would be pointless. And as the day is progressed,
• 1:08:11
  the song has increased in volume. It's loud enough now
• 1:08:14
  that I can very clearly make out the lyrics, completely
• 1:08:17
  unable to escape Tiny Tim's voice.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: It's followed me everywhere I've gone.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: Subject three is coming for me, and I know my
• 1:08:25
  time left in this world is extremely limited now. And
• 1:08:29
  it'd be really funny if he just had his phone
• 1:08:30
  on it's just playing the song over. Yeah, he confesses
• 1:08:37
  all these government secrets. He's like, my time is up,
• 1:08:39
  and it's just because he has Spotify open.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 3: Oops.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: I guess you could say that I just wanted to
• 1:08:46
  tell the tale of the Harbinger experiment before I was
• 1:08:49
  lost forever. I hope that you will take some lesson
• 1:08:52
  from what I've recounted to you, but I think we
• 1:08:54
  both know you won't. Let's be honest, you don't believe
• 1:08:58
  a word of what I've just told you, and I
• 1:09:00
  don't blame you. I wouldn't believe me if I were you.
• 1:09:04
  To you, this is nothing more than something to get
• 1:09:06
  your cheap thrills from. You're probably mindlessly serving the internet
• 1:09:09
  when you click the link and found yourself here wherever
• 1:09:12
  here may be reading the story. And to be honest,
• 1:09:16
  I don't care if you believe me or not. Even
• 1:09:19
  if you do, probably won't stop you from trying to
• 1:09:22
  uncover the truth of darkness that few of us have
• 1:09:24
  ever seen. Certainly, never stop Zimmerman. If you want a lesson,
• 1:09:29
  look what happened to him when he went seeking the truth.
• 1:09:32
  I pray that none of you will ever discover this truth.
• 1:09:35
  I pray that none of you ever have to see
• 1:09:36
  the evil I've seen. I hope you all get to
• 1:09:38
  live in ignorance of what lies beyond the veil of
• 1:09:41
  what we can understand. It's here now. I feel it's
• 1:09:44
  black eyes burning into me, just as I could all
• 1:09:47
  those years ago. As much to blame as Zimmerman as
• 1:09:50
  for the monstrosity that is now free to run the world,
• 1:09:54
  even if I was not the one to create it.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Please forgive me.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: That's the end of the Harbinger Experiment. I mean, you
• 1:10:01
  know what, dude, for an older story, that was pretty good. Yeah,
• 1:10:03
  I think that.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't hate it.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wrote down.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: I wrote down a bunch of shit here. I wanted
• 1:10:10
  to talk about.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: First off, well, I'm just gonna just you pop in anytime,
• 1:10:16
  because I was writing stuff the entire time, all the
• 1:10:19
  way through. First off, I was gonna say like that.
• 1:10:23
  It was once again just to go back and be
• 1:10:24
  like like that. It was definitely something that was inspired
• 1:10:27
  by the Russian Sleep experiment. It had that love crafting angle.
• 1:10:30
  You know, the audience knows I love that, all right,
• 1:10:33
  that's my jam. I was thinking whenever they're going through,
• 1:10:38
  they had so much emphasis on I don't know, him
• 1:10:42
  being like a paranormal or like believing in the occult
• 1:10:45
  and all that kind of stuff that my immediate first
• 1:10:51
  reaction is there should have been more to that, like
• 1:10:55
  the hallways and stuff like. I feel like there could
• 1:10:57
  have been an interesting thing, which it wouldn't have inside
• 1:11:00
  with the ending. But this is me just writing it
• 1:11:02
  from the beginning. But when you're going through these narrow hallways,
• 1:11:04
  how cool would it have been if there was like
• 1:11:06
  seals or something like on the upper parts of the
• 1:11:11
  walls or something.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: It's something kind of like related to like rich something
• 1:11:18
  more than just the speech, because then it's like, well,
• 1:11:22
  couldn't he have done this at any point? You know?
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly what I think, because right now it's like
• 1:11:28
  you just had three rooms that really didn't I'll say this,
• 1:11:31
  which I'm reaching here, and I don't think this is
• 1:11:34
  necessarily what it intended.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: But what if the complex with the twisted hallways?
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: What if the complex itself was essential?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: It could have been. But see by not telling us
• 1:11:46
  that or I'm just making it up SA Yeah, yeah,
• 1:11:49
  I mean it could have been. You know, I mean
• 1:11:51
  I like that as an idea of like the complexself.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: That's why it took so long, why it had to
• 1:11:55
  be done here.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, like I was thinking of stuff
• 1:11:58
  that's like, you know, like they're the fucking zach Begans
• 1:12:03
  in his haunted museum or whatever, which God I can't
• 1:12:05
  believe I'm talking about. This is he has the dibig
• 1:12:07
  box in there. But it's like this room and there's
• 1:12:09
  like a glass thing that has like a giant like
• 1:12:11
  it has like uh, like a Jewish seal around it.
• 1:12:16
  It's like just looks it just it's kind of interesting
• 1:12:18
  where it's like, oh, this is to keep the spirit
• 1:12:21
  at bay or whatever. Because at first I was thinking
• 1:12:24
  too when we were reading this, I'm like, oh, with
• 1:12:25
  these rooms, if there was sealing, like this is kind
• 1:12:28
  of turning into like a thirteenth thirteen ghost situation where
• 1:12:31
  it's like people that are capturing ghosts inside of like
• 1:12:36
  these rooms or these cases that have like ruins or
• 1:12:38
  seals on them whatever, only for the ruins or something
• 1:12:41
  to be faulty breaks and then they're unleashed into this
• 1:12:45
  like maze of terror right at this place, is what
• 1:12:49
  I was thinking at first. Two I was thinking, I
• 1:12:54
  don't know why I which this might be, this might
• 1:12:56
  be a weird comment. But at first I thought that
• 1:12:58
  he was saying because the first object I believe was
• 1:13:00
  a woman, right, I was like.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: I wonder women, the second one is, oh, the.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Second one is, well, one of them was a woman.
• 1:13:06
  I was like, oh, I wonder if they're all women
• 1:13:08
  and I thought that it might go into an angle
• 1:13:09
  where like the possession is almost like a like a
• 1:13:12
  pregnancy kind of thing, because I was like, well, we've
• 1:13:14
  been here for sixteen years whatever where I wonder if
• 1:13:18
  they And I was like, that'd be kind of an
• 1:13:19
  interesting thing too. A ghost possesses a woman and then
• 1:13:23
  it like that's like impregnates her and then like the
• 1:13:27
  physical manifestation of that ghost is like birthed or whatever
• 1:13:31
  that might have been.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: That's been pretty cool there you go. I think similar
• 1:13:36
  to me and the whole complex being a sigil given
• 1:13:38
  a little too much credit, I think.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I mean, that was just me going through.
• 1:13:43
  But and then once again I went contrast.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: To that theory, the woman just died.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and that's and that was like the biggest
• 1:13:50
  thing is a lot of the and we find out
• 1:13:52
  with a lot of these older stories, but a lot
• 1:13:54
  of the older stories here it feels like there's really
• 1:13:57
  interesting ideas, but there's no there's not any like sweet
• 1:14:01
  fat on the bones. It's kind of just the bones
• 1:14:03
  of an interesting idea. But you know, in a lot
• 1:14:06
  of times, I feel like we're like you need to
• 1:14:07
  cut the fat because sometimes people over indulge. But these
• 1:14:10
  older stories, I feel like it's just skin and bones,
• 1:14:13
  like you kind of want a little more meat to
• 1:14:14
  chew on, you know. And I wrote it down here
• 1:14:17
  again too, but more magic, like more of him doing
• 1:14:21
  something that is like experimentive with this occult thing. You know,
• 1:14:25
  we kind of get we touch on it, but really
• 1:14:27
  there's nothing that he's doing besides the chant, which after
• 1:14:30
  the chant, you can start with that, but there needs
• 1:14:32
  to be I think more stuff. And I think a
• 1:14:35
  big part of that too what I wrote down wash
• 1:14:38
  instead of stealing medications are protagonists. I think that he
• 1:14:41
  should have been an experimental doctor as well, or he
• 1:14:45
  was like, well I got kicked out too because I
• 1:14:49
  experiment in this way, or you know, I like a
• 1:14:53
  challenging doctor against the status quo that that Zimmerman needed
• 1:14:58
  for his experiment. Because right now our protagonist is like
• 1:15:02
  kind of worthless. He doesn't really do anything here, you know,
• 1:15:06
  but there's nothing that there's no real reason that he's
• 1:15:10
  there besides just like it's a cheap doctor. But I
• 1:15:13
  think it would be fun if it's like like that.
• 1:15:15
  I guess that's why I was going back to, like
• 1:15:17
  it doesn't have to be the pregnancy thing. I'm kind
• 1:15:18
  of harping on the pregnancy thing, but it's like, oh
• 1:15:20
  it's a guy that.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: Would be.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want pregnant women. Sorry, but that's just
• 1:15:26
  what I'm all about, but just something to where it's
• 1:15:29
  like this doctor who is an unconventional doctor gets approached
• 1:15:32
  with an unconventional task. Yeah, you know, because this whole
• 1:15:35
  idea of like the guy coming out, he rips Himmer
• 1:15:37
  in half. All this stuff of like bloodshed and the
• 1:15:39
  Tiny Tim things. They're effective and fun, but I do
• 1:15:42
  wish that it's like there was more cause and effect,
• 1:15:44
  like because he did X this.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: There's more direction involved. There's like I I don't like
• 1:15:51
  Tiny Tim specifically because I know that he just got
• 1:15:55
  it from you know stuff. But the idea of these
• 1:16:03
  spirits or demons or whatever possessing host and their actions
• 1:16:08
  are completely unknowable to us. I like that idea, like
• 1:16:11
  the one that comes out of the room and it
• 1:16:13
  just kills people like whatever. But the one that stares
• 1:16:16
  in the camera and then there's music that precedes it
• 1:16:19
  as it follows and it kills Immerman. I like that.
• 1:16:21
  I don't like that immediately after it just becomes a
• 1:16:23
  thing that kills you. I remember talking to a guy
• 1:16:28
  about writing, and he said, if the solution to you,
• 1:16:32
  which this can be like played with, but if you're
• 1:16:37
  writing a monster and the monster's breakdown is it just
• 1:16:42
  kills people, then you should probably rewrite your monster.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, it's just because it leaves so much purpose also,
• 1:16:50
  and a thing where it's a man made experiment gone wrong. Yeah, whatever,
• 1:16:56
  it feels so unrewarding to me, at least as a
• 1:16:58
  reader where it's like, oh, the thing's just evil versus
• 1:17:01
  like because of your experiment, it was given the directive
• 1:17:05
  to do X, right, you know what I mean, it
• 1:17:07
  gives it more purpose almost like two where once again
• 1:17:10
  wish that the people that he brought down the Zimmerman
• 1:17:13
  played everybody that was there to where like each person
• 1:17:16
  was connected to X ghost or spirit or entity.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: So that's also why it's chasing it too, because I
• 1:17:22
  was like, why the fuck would it still like why
• 1:17:24
  would it not just be killing everybody? Yeah, or like
• 1:17:26
  why is it chasing him now? It was like, because
• 1:17:28
  it's not really marked in any way unless it was
• 1:17:31
  like you know previously stated before where it was like, well, yeah,
• 1:17:34
  we need this guy to be here and you're going
• 1:17:36
  to be marked here, You're you're on subject three, and
• 1:17:40
  it's all these different doctors and different perspectives that you
• 1:17:42
  could get where it's like you're all spiritually linked to
• 1:17:45
  this subject or something or whatever, which would make you like,
• 1:17:49
  you know, more of a target, or it's just like
• 1:17:51
  I'm just coming after you and then you kind of
• 1:17:54
  it's like kind of a buying product, like your punishment
• 1:17:57
  for experimenting.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: And you did that.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: There's another movie I'm trying to think of where the
• 1:18:02
  same thing happens, where someone brings out a team and
• 1:18:05
  then the first thing he does is kill him because
• 1:18:07
  they weren't supposed to. I guess that's in a lot
• 1:18:10
  of horror movies, right, like someone summons a spirit or
• 1:18:13
  ghost or whatever.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's just punishment for doing something that. Yeah,
• 1:18:16
  like you know, it's it's punishment for your action, which
• 1:18:20
  feels like it's cause and effect, which is always more satisfying.
• 1:18:23
  I was even thinking, dude, where I was like, yeah,
• 1:18:25
  this could go into an almost ghost story. You know.
• 1:18:29
  I mean this once again, I'm reaching, I'm giving it credit,
• 1:18:31
  but I was like, it would have been sweet if
• 1:18:32
  this would have been like a minotaur parody or something
• 1:18:36
  of like a guy summoning a thing. And then now
• 1:18:38
  he is like bringing these doctors and stuff in there,
• 1:18:41
  and he's watching them interact with this monster he made
• 1:18:45
  or something like. It's like the tunnels and everything. It's
• 1:18:48
  a literal labyrinth and he's going through and he's like
• 1:18:52
  watching how it affects her.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you could have it to where he leaves
• 1:18:59
  or like they think they're in the control room. The
• 1:19:00
  control room they're actually in is just a farce to
• 1:19:03
  get them down there, and then he releases the subjects
• 1:19:06
  with them to see how they interact with it.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: You could go even closer to the minotar myth.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: And have it be the reason he's doing this in
• 1:19:14
  experiment in the first place is to like bring back
• 1:19:16
  a lost love one or whatever. So maybe he thinks
• 1:19:22
  this is a way to bring her back, but as
• 1:19:24
  we see, it's just monsters. Like he's just opened the
• 1:19:26
  door and is not picking what comes through there. So
• 1:19:30
  it's kind of like the Luigi board thing, right, like
• 1:19:31
  you're just knocking on the door, you don't.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: Know who's going to answer it.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always a fun angle too with paranormal stuff
• 1:19:38
  where it's like the idea of the theme of being
• 1:19:40
  unable to let go, yeah, like being being like the
• 1:19:44
  grief process, you're not able to Yeah, yeah, come.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: You can't let letting go that's already gone. So because
• 1:19:50
  of that, you decay with it, like it it gets worse.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: You open it, you open the door to let it
• 1:19:55
  back in, but something else comes out, very like talk
• 1:19:57
  to me, kind of vibe of like leaving the door
• 1:20:00
  open to talk to something, but then something else comes
• 1:20:03
  through that you didn't want to want to happen. Also
• 1:20:05
  to you know, these big facilities, they're coolest pieces, but
• 1:20:10
  I'm always more like grounded a bit more in reality.
• 1:20:13
  And it's like just a weird.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: Guy because it's a doctor. Yeah, the long, complicated hallways
• 1:20:18
  never came in.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: They'd never come in. And I'm like, well, this has
• 1:20:21
  been a more like almost like a thing where right,
• 1:20:24
  let's say you do keep the guy who's like, I'm
• 1:20:26
  a sketchy drug dealer doctor. Right, I'm a sketchy drug
• 1:20:29
  dealer doctor. I got my license revoked. But this guy
• 1:20:32
  says that there's a gig that I can do. Okay, Well,
• 1:20:35
  I show up, but it's at the guy's house. Well
• 1:20:36
  that's fucking weird. Well, this guy who's like basically a criminal,
• 1:20:41
  like a drug dealer, maybe he does like humor this
• 1:20:45
  like fucking weird man who's like doing experiments in his
• 1:20:48
  house or something, you know what I mean, like a
• 1:20:50
  little more grounded in reality, where it's like this is
• 1:20:52
  just the walks of this doctor's life put him in
• 1:20:56
  the situation where he like was foolish enough to like
• 1:21:00
  participate in X an X, Y and Z experiment. Yeah,
• 1:21:04
  I think like just stuff like that, you know, and
• 1:21:06
  this is all in hindsight. And I will say just
• 1:21:08
  to give the story credit, we were meming on it
• 1:21:10
  at the beginning and stuff I had legitimately had a
• 1:21:12
  good time with the story.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: It was like a nice.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah for one of these older, like og kind of stories.
• 1:21:19
  I so much more has been like you could tell
• 1:21:22
  this was a guy who was like very inspired, had
• 1:21:25
  like a fun idea because a lot of these stories
• 1:21:27
  that we read, like the Jeff the Killers or whatever,
• 1:21:30
  it feels like these are like a little throwaway kind
• 1:21:32
  of just like, oh I wrote this in an afternoon
• 1:21:34
  kind of vibe or whatever, I will say, because at
• 1:21:37
  this point we're just doing fan fiction, right, But.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: That thing that we talked about with the the minotaur
• 1:21:53
  the minotaur idea. Have you read House of Leaves?
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: No, I mean do. I've heard you talk about it
• 1:21:59
  so much. I've been one to actually dive into it.
• 1:22:02
  But I honestly like, since we read so much on
• 1:22:06
  this show too, it has stopped almost all the.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: I do, so I'll the only reason I have time
• 1:22:14
  to is because it's like what I do on the
• 1:22:16
  main channel and stuff like that. But yeah, I mean,
• 1:22:18
  also you just really enjoy but not to spoil the
• 1:22:24
  specifics for you.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: But there's a part in House of Leaves.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: Well, is it going to spoil the specifics for me?
• 1:22:30
  I want to read it?
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, I'm saying I'm not going to to not
• 1:22:35
  spoil the specifics. There's a segment in the book where
• 1:22:40
  the book has multiple authors, right, like they're not literally
• 1:22:44
  but in the formatting of the book. Yeah, different people
• 1:22:46
  are writing different segments on the page. And there's one
• 1:22:50
  part where a group of people are walking through the
• 1:22:52
  hallways of the house, and then the other part another
• 1:22:56
  writer is giving an analysis of the mennotar myth Oh.
• 1:23:00
  Interesting because in the literal plot where they're walking through
• 1:23:04
  the house, they're afraid of something in the hallways as
• 1:23:09
  they're moving through it. And then the other part where
• 1:23:11
  you're talking about the Menotar myth. So you have one
• 1:23:13
  author describing the literal and you have the other author
• 1:23:16
  describing like a figurative that connects.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: To the literal.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: That's fine, But while describing the minotar myth, the author
• 1:23:22
  gives an interesting analysis I had never heard of before.
• 1:23:25
  Soon you know, in the original menota myth, it's King,
• 1:23:28
  it's not Midas. It sounds like Midas though, right, he
• 1:23:32
  has the child, Yeah, and the child is like half
• 1:23:37
  a monster, so he throws it into the maze, right,
• 1:23:42
  and the author and House of Leaves says, there's Minos Minos,
• 1:23:48
  that's it. The author has a different rendition of the
• 1:23:52
  story or a different interpretation of the story where Minos
• 1:23:54
  did not find his son disgusting, but instead Minos knew
• 1:23:57
  that his son would never be safe, so she built
• 1:24:03
  the labyrinths to protect his son, to keep people from
• 1:24:06
  wanting to find him and kill him. So in the
• 1:24:08
  original play, when it's Perseus who kills the minatar, right,
• 1:24:12
  I'm forgetting so many details. I think it's Perseus who
• 1:24:15
  kills the minatar. When Perseus Theseus, Theseus, Okay, when Theseus
• 1:24:20
  kills the minatar, he stands before the king holding the
• 1:24:24
  Minataar's head or whatever, and the king cries because the
• 1:24:26
  monster's been slain. But in the House of Leaves rendition,
• 1:24:29
  it theorizes that perhaps when the hero went forward and
• 1:24:34
  killed Minus's son, someone that only had to be killed
• 1:24:39
  because it was said the minotaur was killing people that
• 1:24:42
  had ventured into the labyrinth. But in this version, the
• 1:24:46
  king sees the people who were going into the Limbrinth
• 1:24:50
  as those who were going to kill his son, and
• 1:24:52
  his son was just defending himself. So when Theseus stands
• 1:24:55
  with the head of the Minotar, the king cries not
• 1:24:57
  out of joy for the hero, but out of warning
• 1:25:00
  for his son, which is an interesting way to.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: View that myth.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: So I was thinking about that where you were talking
• 1:25:07
  about the labyrinth for the Harbinger EXPERI and we're put
• 1:25:10
  in a lot of weight on a creepy pasture right now.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: But I mean, I just think that just shows also,
• 1:25:15
  like to me, I was just I mean, I was
• 1:25:17
  writing down so much shit just it might be a
• 1:25:19
  simple creepost story. But I was just like, man, my
• 1:25:21
  mind was going all over the place.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: You can use it.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: It's the starting point for a lot of different ideas
• 1:25:26
  that you can do and stuff like that. So you
• 1:25:29
  could have Zimmerman be more nuanced in the beginning and
• 1:25:33
  he brings people this experiment, and then not only the
• 1:25:37
  complex hallways, but the control room itself. They think it's
• 1:25:40
  their safe zone, is revealed to be all part of
• 1:25:42
  like a maze that they're to figure out as this
• 1:25:46
  is some kind of ritual to bring back the dead,
• 1:25:48
  like we talked about or something like that. And similar
• 1:25:50
  to the idea of Minus loving the minotaur, you could
• 1:25:54
  have the Zimmerman see this monster as something holy, not
• 1:26:03
  the stereotypical rod of like oh my creation or whatever.
• 1:26:06
  But maybe he does believe it's a lost loved one
• 1:26:08
  or something. So you have him actively trying to destroy
• 1:26:13
  like our protagonist or group members' efforts to destroy the
• 1:26:16
  creatures that they're down there with and stuff like that.
• 1:26:19
  So he becomes a sort of antagonist like from the top,
• 1:26:23
  and he thinks he's doing the right thing. But like
• 1:26:25
  I said, what the story actually is is there's three
• 1:26:29
  people in a room and one of them becomes a
• 1:26:30
  scary thing that kills everyone. Right, that's like it.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: But you know, I guess just for this part for
• 1:26:35
  people that are interested or whatever. You know, these are
• 1:26:37
  the ways that you can start. You can start your
• 1:26:40
  skeleton of your story life, yeah, and then just go
• 1:26:42
  back and find fun ways. I do think that the
• 1:26:44
  idea of like even the thing of like Zimmerman's plan
• 1:26:48
  was this, but a protagonist didn't die when he was
• 1:26:50
  supposed to. That creates conflict in his plan, and then
• 1:26:54
  he had like that, you know what I mean? Like
• 1:26:55
  those kinds of things are the pivots of like X
• 1:26:59
  was supposed to happen? Why happened? And like that's that's
• 1:27:02
  what creates conflict. And that's like what diverts the thing
• 1:27:04
  and the creature could get loose or anything like that.
• 1:27:07
  Like those kinds of things I think are the things
• 1:27:09
  that make stories fun. And that's just the conflict. Whatever
• 1:27:12
  your conflicts are in your story that isn't just scary
• 1:27:15
  monster is X and he kills people? Yeah, Like I
• 1:27:18
  think like the conflict is the things of like what
• 1:27:20
  was the plan? How did it?
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: What is my plan? How did it go wrong? How
• 1:27:24
  do I try to solve that and how does that
• 1:27:25
  create more and more conflicts with the kind of like
• 1:27:29
  foolish decisions that you're making whatever those are usually the
• 1:27:31
  fun ways.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can do whatever you want as a storyteller, right,
• 1:27:35
  there's no rules or anything like that. But I feel
• 1:27:37
  like if you had and it was a different time
• 1:27:40
  of the internet, this author could have been younger. I'm
• 1:27:42
  obviously not saying that they're discredit but from my.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: Point of view, i'm a bad story.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: If you're gonna get people's attention and you're gonna you know,
• 1:27:50
  they're going to dedicate their time, and you now have
• 1:27:52
  the opportunity to do something with that time, I mean,
• 1:27:55
  why not make it, you know, multi layered, fun, interesting,
• 1:27:59
  so something to chew on, you know, make it worth
• 1:28:02
  their while. Right.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm always curious to see with some of
• 1:28:05
  these writers in these early stories, how much time did
• 1:28:07
  they take on it?
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: Was it something that you ever just like you were
• 1:28:10
  like I just took a couple of days and was
• 1:28:12
  just like a little you know, I was into it
• 1:28:14
  for a couple of months, like Creepypasta's for a couple
• 1:28:16
  of months, and I just decided to write this and
• 1:28:18
  then I kind of stopped reading them. Was it just
• 1:28:20
  something you did in the day with your friend, Like,
• 1:28:22
  I'm curious to how many of these is like you're
• 1:28:24
  in a room with your buddy and it's them like
• 1:28:26
  being like, oh, and then this happens, Like I'm so
• 1:28:29
  curious to see that collaborative nature. I bet that was
• 1:28:31
  like a really fun, weird time of people just quickly
• 1:28:34
  putting out things and not thinking too much about it
• 1:28:37
  and just kind of shooting from the hip, which is
• 1:28:39
  kind of there's something admirable and pretty wholesome about that.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but what a great story. I mean, yeah, once again,
• 1:28:45
  we'll leave a link.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: If not embarrassed with my younger self, that was fine,
• 1:28:50
  So you know, get on me.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun. I think, like a
• 1:28:53
  lot a lot of all the older stories that we read,
• 1:28:54
  I think that this was one of the better ones
• 1:28:57
  in my opinion. But no, this was a fun one.
• 1:28:59
  I think that we'll leave the link below again. Thank
• 1:29:02
  you again to audio listeners that decided to listen to
• 1:29:05
  us ramble about possible ideas with mister Zimmerman on Spotify
• 1:29:08
  or Apple podcasts. You could leave us a nice rating
• 1:29:10
  it would help us out and also thank you to
• 1:29:12
  our patrons who do support us behind the scenes and
• 1:29:14
  get a little extra extra content on the side, So
• 1:29:17
  if you want to do that, be sure to click
• 1:29:18
  the link below as well. But until next time, guys,
• 1:29:21
  we will see you in the next one.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: Stay creeped by by Stay creeped. You know, if you
• 1:29:26
  think about it, I'm kind of Thesius because I'm in
• 1:29:32
  a labyrinth with Hunter. It's clearly like a monstrous bullman
• 1:29:36
  thing who his father has asked me to kill.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: So you know, I'm
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: I'm a hero, I think, and I think his dad
• 1:29:48
  would cry out of joy if I killed him, So yeah, Hi,