Entry #8

Trailhead post for Entry #8 on Unfiction

Previous: Entry #7 — Next: Entry #9

Summary

Entry #8 was posted on July 12, 2009.
It has the description "Short entry. Doesn't seem like Alex."
In total, this clip is 0:36 long.

Footage from Alex's tapes. Alex, drawing with charcoal, is filling up sheaves of paper with drawings and large writing that seems related to trees, vision, and the Operator.

+ Detailed Transcript

[00:00] Black screen.
[00:01] White text appears centered on the screen:

Entry #8
I did not notice any visual tearing anywhere in this tape. However, the audio does cut out.

[00:10] Cut to footage of Alex, his face just barely in the top of the frame, leaning over a table covered in pieces of paper with writing and images on them. He is scribbling in a coil-bound notebook with a piece of charcoal.
The scrawled drawings are of an ellipse with an X through it, some of which are attached to a body. Words like "SEES", "SEES ME", "FINDS ME", "SPEAKS TO ME", "TREE", "Trees", "HI", and "[unreadable] THESE PINES" cover the pages.
Several of the images seem to be of [[[the Operator]], who appears to be a stick figure with long arms drooping down and an X through his face - this includes the drawing Alex is working on when the clip begins. To the left of that drawing is a picture of the Operator standing next to a pine tree. Below him is written the word "Trees" - this word is not bolded and is in title case rather than all-caps.
Alex is scribbling the letters "H E L" on a notepad.
[00:17] The audio cuts out. Alex stops scribbling and stays still.
[00:18] Alex gets up abruptly. He picks up the camera, and pans up and to the left, bringing the frame into total darkness.
[00:24] The camera approaches a lamp with a yellow shade.
[00:26] The lamp turns off. The frame is once again black.
[00:29] White text appears centered on the screen:

The rest of the tape remains too dark to see and the audio never comes back.

[00:36] Video ends.

Main Theories and Observations

• Alex is using stick charcoal. The smudged quality of the already finished drawings and writings suggests they were all done in charcoal.
• The drawings that Alex is doing are the first known incidences of the Operator symbol being seen on camera. In the drawings, these appear to be used to represent the Operator's head.
  • That could imply that the symbology behind them is something along the lines of "no face" — some sort of identifier.
• The connection of the Operator to trees suggests that Alex encountered the Operator in a tree-filled area. Judging from other videos, this could be:
  • The scouting location from Entry #5 with the extreme audio distortion.
  • The filming location from Entry #12 with the visual distortion and Operator sighting.
• anonymousloli screenshotted and labelled a number of the drawings from the table: 1, 2, 3.
  • "HEL" could be meaning "Help" or "Hell" since he made room for another letter on the page

Connections to Other Videos

• This could be the beginning of Entry #1 (similar to the way that Entry #6 was the end of Entry #1), given that Alex is turning off the light and Entries #1 and #6 are done in darkness.
  • This is something of a stretch, given that Jay tells us that "The rest of the tape remains too dark to see and the audio never comes back".
• This could be a different angle continuation of the first clip of Entry 3, where Alex is sitting on the couch and paper noises can be heard. The lighting is very similar, and he could have been shuffling through and ripping these drawings.
  • Even if these videos didn't happen in immediate conjunction, it's not unlikely that the drawings are related to the paper Alex is tearing in Entry #3.

Further Speculation

The ovals with Xs through them seem to me to be depictions of Slender Man's head, because he has no face. This would explain the presence of an attached body in some of the etchings. ~ Henry Maness