Entry #22 — Unfiction Thread for Entry #22
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Summary
Entry 22 was uploaded on December 22, 2009.
It has the description "22."
It is tagged "Marble" and "Hornets".
In total, this clip is 6:46 long.
This entry consists of footage of Alex, taped by a second person identified as Seth, wandering through a dilapidated building. There is heavy audio and visual distortion. At one point, the camera and probably cameraman appear to fall to the ground, Alex shouts Seth's name, and then the picture changes. Alex sitting with his back to a wall, looking stunned and telling the camera that "Seth is gone. …. Brian is gone, and Tim is, and Jay, and Sarah" are all gone, and that all he remembers is on the tape. He says that he is going to go home and that he is going to burn the tape. The audio and visual distortion return intermittently towards the end of this segment, and a hand-like shadow passes through Alex's head.
Main Theories and Observations
- The movement of the camera when it (and probably Seth) fell to the ground could be Seth being pulled into the hallway.
- Alex and Seth could be trying to hunt down the Operator. There is little other reason that the entries give us for them being wandering around a dilapidated basement with a camera.
Alex's Monologue
- From what Alex is saying it almost seems that he's being forced to say it. He stares of into the distance and Masky or Hoody could be holding up signs directing him on what to say. It doesn't seem very genuine.
- Considering that this tape ends with the statement from Alex that he plans on burning the tapes, this is probably shortly before he gave the tapes to Jay and left town.
- Alex states that "Seth is gone. …. Brian is gone, and Tim is, and Jay, and Sarah". In videos that are later in the chronology (all of the Entries for Jay, and Entry #15 at least for Tim) that at least Jay and Tim are still around in the same town. This discrepancy could be caused by a number of things:
- Brian, Seth, Sarah, Jay and Tim could have all lost their memories of being stalked by the Operator, and thus be mentally "gone" from being in the same situation that Alex was in. This is supported by evidence of Jay at least having lost time from during the filming of Marble Hornets — he doesn't remember Entry #17 at all, for example.
- The aforementioned missing persons could actually have been missing for a time, and later returned and lost their memories of ever being missing.
- The missing people could have fallen under the Operator's control, if the Operator is an entity that takes control of people, and thus be "gone" in that they were not themselves anymore. If this is the case, then in the time since this was taped, Jay at least has recovered.
- Alex simply might have lost a number of memories and thus be confused and disoriented.
- Alex says "I thought I could run away". This statement is without much context and so is very mysterious. It could mean that:
- Alex left his own house to hide out in Brian's. This would stand to reason with previous evidence of habitation, such as:
- He tried to leave the town earlier but couldn't.
- He tried to ignore what was happening to him and couldn't.
- If he is from another town, he could have had encounters with the Operator as a child, and moved away from that town in the hopes of escaping.
- When Alex says "I'm going back to my home", he could refer to a different town if perhaps he grew up elsewhere. However, if that's not what he meant, then the statement is very strange as after this video, he apparently didn't stay in the same town that he assumedly had been living in over the course of the filming of Marble Hornets.
- He could be saying that he was going to back to his house to burn the tapes before leaving down, though his diction suggests something more profound.
- There is a theory that, due to the things that Alex says, the section with Alex sitting against the wall is more recent. In that case, the aforementioned missing persons might well be missing (except for Jay, however, Jay has made himself difficult to find), and Alex would have tried running away. Entry #26 would seem to lampoon that — Alex is there, apparently having moved on very successfully from the whole mystery.
- Xenophobe suggests that the creaking of the door during Alex's monologue is actually Jay, arriving in time to have the conversation with Alex that results in him receiving the giant pile of tapes, and that the reason that this entry wasn't among the ones given to Jay was that it was still in the camera at that time.
- This is unlikely due to Alex not being at his own house at the time of this video. The color of the wall that Alex is sitting against appears to be the same color as the walls of Brian's house.
The Pump Room
- The basement, boiler room, bath house, pump room, or whatever it is, appears to harbour a lot of distortion. The large amount of distortion that can be seen and heard in the video seems to suggest that the Operator is nearby.
- If this is the case, the fact that there is dried blood on the walls would lend the Operator a more concretely threatening character.
- There are theories that the boiler room is in an alternate dimension. If the Operator is from an alternate dimension, this could be expanded to say it's the dimension the Operator is from.
- The location of the pump room could be related to the abandoned pool that is seen in Entry #13. All of the water equipment (pipes, boilers) would suggest that the basement is related to some water-based enterprise, and the Operator was seen at least once and possibly twice near the abandoned pool.
- Petrichor gives an excellent piece of research and analysis as to the likelihood of the room in question being a pump room attached to the old pool. He also links a pair of pictures of actual pump rooms: 1, 2
The Imagery
- The face-like shape that appears at 05:14 is very obviously not an actual face, though it evokes one quite strongly. The expression it holds seems to be of agony or extreme distress.
- The shadow shape that goes over or through Alex's head at 06:19 while he's sitting against the wall is very clearly a hand, though whose hand is uncertain. The creaking of the door a moment before suggests someone entered the room, but we don't seem to see an actual figure approach Alex and the blacked-out moments are too short for a normal person to have approached and left again. The "hand" therefore likely belongs to the Operator.
- There appears to be a spotting of fingertips in the frame at 05:00 - 05:01 in a position that is unlikely to have been caused by Seth or Alex. As stated by Demongel: Alex was behind him, as he had darted against the wall in what looked like fear. Seth went to investigate. We see fingertips in a direction that would be impossible to be Seth's hand, and Alex is confirmed to be behind Seth. Third set of fingertips.
- This happens a moment before Seth falls to the ground. It could be that if it was a hand, the person who it belonged to was responsible for Seth's fall.
- The pipe with the strange iris-like structure at the end appears to have been important or relevant in some form, given that the camera skips back to it.
- iFaux suggests that it could lead to the strange, staticky hole in the ground from Entry #21.
- The overlay of the white shape over where Alex's face was a moment before, as seen documented by Banshee 21, could allude to the masked man's mask and suggest that Alex is the masked man.
- Entry #35 would seem to make this theory far less likely, in that it reveals the masked man to be Tim.
- There is a blurry image of what could be a face close to the camera at 4:25. It is very ambiguous, however, if it is a face it could be Seth having turned the camera around to check it. ptlundholm screenshots the face, and shows his interpretation of its features.
Further Speculation
Based on the fact that at the very end, Alex insists that he must now burn the tapes, and the fact that this tape was hidden away from the others, the general consensus is that this tape takes place in the summer of 2006, right before Alex turned the tapes over to J (but before J convinces him to turn them over.)
However, the above line of speculation has a major flaw: in the video, Alex says "They're all gone… Tim, Jay, Sarah…"
One popular explanation for this is that Alex does not refer to the mentioned people being physically gone, but rather that they have forgotten so much that they are not themselves anymore.
Based on the abundance of distortion, in addition to the setting, it is quite likely that the Slender Man was somewhere nearby while Alex and Seth were exploring the dilapidated house. ~ Dav Flamerock
What happened in this entry (and some interpretation):
- Seth and Alex are hunting SM (Alex goes on the offensive *after* being terrorized by SM)
- Alex finds two places with dried blood (why is it always dried?)
- Alex decides to leave (is he giving up, or does he realize they're in danger?)
- Seth gets caught by SM and Alex leaves him there
- Alex wakes up in the "white house" with the tape from Seth's camera, but not Seth's camera or Seth (how?)
- Alex feels isolated and claims his friends are all gone (they're not, but he thinks they are)
- Realizing he has no memory left other than the tapes, he decides to go home and burn the tapes (seems like a bad idea!)
…
Timeline
This entry definitely takes place right before Alex locks himself in his house and J takes the tapes away. Alex says he is "going back to his home" to burn the tapes; considering the tapes are with J, it's safe to say Entry 22 doesn't take place in present day.
Slender Man appearances
Slender man doesn't make an appearance in the first part of this entry…however, they seem to have chosen a location with a lot of lookalikes. Honestly, I'm impressed with the enormous number of "aaah, it's slenderman! oh wait, nevermind" scenes. These guys have an eye for horror. It gives the whole first part a creepy otherworldly vibe.
Why was Seth scouting with Alex?
Why would Seth go hang out with Alex after their blowup in Entry 9? Seth seems to hate Alex in that clip. Maybe Alex wanted to show Seth the truth by bringing him on a SM hunt. On that hunt, SM takes Seth out of the picture.
Did Brian suffer the same fate as Seth?
It's possible that Alex and Brian went SM hunting after the close encounter in Entry 7. Alex wanted to show Brian the truth, Brian gets taken, yet Alex has no footage of the event (Brian doesn't have a camera). Brian isn't in 17 or 20, and the guys have no idea where he is. Is it possible Brian has been gone since entry 7, but no one remembers?
Is everyone really gone?
Probably not (we've seen Tim and J recently), though it doesn't look good for Seth or Brian. After this entry (according to J), Alex was going out of his mind. He had isolated himself completely from everyone - if he thought everyone was gone, his isolation would have a reason. The order Alex says the names (and that weird stutter during "..Tim, and J..") seems to reflect how much we know about where each character is now. Seth and Brian are probably deranged/dead/etc. Tim and J are alive but disturbed. Sarah is off the radar but probably not harmed.
~ morscata12, Wed Dec 23, 2009
When Seth falls, is grabbed or whatever at 5:03 Alex doesn't sound like he's excessively paniced so I think that Seth simply fell in a coughing fit much like other people have had or the cause of the disturbance is around the corner where Alex can't see it. One other remote possibility is that Alex took Seth there to have him killed, captured etc. and was badly acting when The Operator catches him. Although the evidence in other entries shows that at this point Alex still fears it rather than is under it's control or trying to appease it like in later entries.
~obsidalicious
Entries 51 and 56 take place beforehand on the same day, and they prove that it's Alex's fault that everyone is "gone". Maybe Alex was under the Operator's control and broke free, vowing to destroy the tapes so that it wouldn't find him again. He seemed to be acting normal in Entry 26, so it could have taken control of him again after that.