Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Come visit the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park!

Wouldn't we all like to visit the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park?

An energetic person on Reddit's Worldbuilding board has created this delightfully horrific alternate park.  So far it's only a series of images, mock-official documents posted to that board and to a Tumblr blog.

I'm developing supplementary material (maps, guide pamphlets, etc.) for a fictional national park/national monument chiefly characterized by the existence of an enormous living organism which extends deep into earth. The origin of the pit is unknown, as well as it's ultimate size and complete characteristics. The company which discovered the pit, Anodyne Deep Earth Mining Inc., has been granted a contract from the [National Park Service] to operate a tourist experience there with close oversight from the U.S. Government. Though most authorities and experts have determined that the pit is reasonably safe, new and unusual phenomena in and around it continue to be recorded.

For example, this official brochure:

Don't miss the Abyssal Copepods and the Restraining Forceps!

Consider the fine equipment used by a park trail engineer:

 

There's also a wildlife safety brochure, a gallery of park signs over the decades, and a look at a park ranger's getup.

Following its accidental discovery, the Mystery Flesh Pit and the unique phenomena surrounding it were targets of a headfirst and furiously paced campaign of commercial exploitation. Once architects, engineers, geobiologists and clerical members of the development team had done their work to make the park safe and viable, marketing teams faced the daunting task of selling the public on the intriguing and miraculous phenomena of the Mystery Flesh Pit while downplaying the visceral cosmic horror of the pit itself.

Families were a particularly difficult sell, as children often displayed an overwhelming fear and aversion to descending into the throat of the pit. One strategy early in the park’s history was the creation of friendly cartoon mascot Caver Coop. A brief animated film starring Caver Coop was shown at the park’s visitor center, where the character would attempt to assuage worries about being “eaten alive” or “swallowed”, reassuring children (and often parents) that the pit was perfectly safe and reinforced.

When the attraction was absorbed into the National Park System in the early 1990s, signage and other graphic materials were updated to the NPS Graphic Identity. The architecture of the park’s surface facilities was also expanded and renovated during this time to better fit with the “Natural Resort” image of the Mystery Flesh Pit brand, drawing inspiration from the local Santa Fe style integrated with unique bone formations discovered within the pit itself.

(via MetaFilter)

Agony and death of a Furby

On Twitter a woman recalls her Furby ordeal.  It involves feeding, pleading, stabbing, skinning, and crushing.

A sample:

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

New Year's Day, Infocult style

Happy new year!  Approved News 6 offers a nightmarish, visionary glimpse into the annual ritual.

It begins with a single tweet, "US Military Goes to DEFCON 1 as End of 2016 Approaches", then escalates:

It's as if Grant Morrison and Delta Green had a moonchild, midwifed by Robert Anton Wilson.

(via MetaFilter)

A thicket of creepy campfire stories

It begins with a Reddit thread, asking "What is the weirdest or creepiest thing you have found while hiking?" Some of these short-short tales are very effective.

For example,

Took my young children to a cave not far from the house. Popular spot, but we had the place to ourselves. You can walk through it in about 30 minutes without too much difficulty. It has a tiny exit at the opposite end. It was pretty muddy, so we decided to turn around and head back to the entrance. Halfway back, there was a lit candle sitting about eight feet up one side. It was definitely not there on the first trip. I went into full-on protective-dad-mode knowing there was likely someone hiding in the dark while we walked the rest of the way out.

That thread led to a much larger strand, a marvelous sequence of campfire spooky stories. The conceit is a search and rescue veteran sharing the creepiest experiences s/he has had or heard. Pore through these in a brightly lit, warm house, without stairs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

The author has now launched a Tumblr site.

(link via MetaFilter; stairs photo by Sunburned Surveyor)

"Otherwhere": fine scary audio storytelling

"Otherwhere" is a fine bit of audio horror. It starts off as a local public radio host interviewing one Dr. Arlen Childs about his new religion or psychic program. Childs is a channeler, and claims to have made contact with an unusual entity.  Saying anything more will spoil the delights.

Plus, the show has some fine art:

(thanks to Scott Danielson)

The dark side of insurance

We may think of insurance as benevolent, or just dull.  But what about its dark side?  Harvested from Tumblr:

and

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

Transylvanian tweet of the year

One fine tweet:

Fair ground built deep in abandoned salt mine in Transylvania, awesome...

Here's the attached image:

Twitter continues to provide us with this tiny, evocative glimpses of larger, creepy worlds.

(thanks to Steven Kaye)

Haunted on Facebook

I just heard a Facebook alert. I'm too afraid to swap windows and check it.

A nice bit of Facebook horror appeared on the Reddit NoSleep board. It has the appropriately long title of "My dead girlfriend keeps messaging me on Facebook. I’ve got the screenshots. I don’t know what to do."

The story poses itself as a cry for help from a young man increasingly scared of Facebook content seemingly coming from his dead girlfriend.  Formally, it's a sequence of paragraphs arranged in chronological order, each linked to a screen capture of some creepy bit of Facebook activity.  The narrator sets up each graphic, then reacts to it.

For example, here is one of the early exchanges.  "Nathan" is the story's narrator, the boyfriend; "Emily" is the supposedly dead girlfriend:

Note the anonymizing features, which add a documentary feel to the story.  And note, too, the final open text box, which gives an extra sense of ongoing conversation.

Later the exchanges become more like a ghost story.  For example, this screenshot shows Emily complaining about temperatures - of the grace, most likely:

The Slenderman death trip

Two girls dreamed of Slenderman, and tried to kill a third.  It's a Gothic story, one that crosses between the boundaries of Gothic fiction, real-life horror, and digital media.  It is in some ways the ultimate Infocult story, and deserves our attention, dear readers and minions.

If you don't know the Slenderman mythos, it's a fascinating one.  Users at the Something Awful forums concocted it out of whole cloth as a kind of DIY internet horror meme.

And from there Slenderman just grew.  The subject of games, movies, photoshops, and especially short fiction.  Call him the first native boogeyman of social media, or the spook of prosumer culture.

So how did fictional Slendy cross over into real life without a Borgesian pathway?  It's hard to say much, given that the story is only a few days old, and wrapped up in multiple layers of secrecy.  But we can tackle this from a number of angles.  

For example, this affair is a story about stories and horror.  Listen to this account of events, starting with the worldview:

[accused attacker Anissa E.] Weier told police that Slender Man is the "leader" of Creepypasta, and in the hierarchy of that world, one must kill to show dedication. Weier said that Geyser told her they should become "proxies" of Slender Man — a paranormal figure known for his ability to create tendrils from his fingers and back — and kill their friend to prove themselves worthy of him. Weier said she was surprised by Geyser's suggestion, but also excited to prove skeptics wrong and show that Slender Man really did exist.

The suspects believed that "Slender," as Weier called him, lived in a mansion in the Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin.

What a fine imagining.  There's the fairy tale castle grounded in the upper midwest (a mansion? did Slendy join the 1%?).  There's the cult-like sense of shared sacrifice and crime.  Then the fusing of identity, whereby the girls would become part-Slendermen, proxies.  And the faithfulness to the source material, locating the fearsome tall man in darkness and horrible acts against children.

Beyond the worldling, the girls concocted a scheme, both practical and poignant:

The plan was to kill the victim and walk to Slender's mansion. After school on Friday, Weier told police, she and Geyser went to Weier's house, where she packed a backpack with clothes, granola bars, water bottles and a picture of her mother, father and siblings. She didn't want to forget what her family looked like after leaving for Slender's mansion.

And the tactics:

Geyser and Weier originally had planned to commit the murder at 2 a.m. Saturday, according to the criminal complaint. They'd duct tape their victim's mouth, stab her in the neck and pull the covers up to make it look like she was sleeping. Then they'd run.

But the plans changed after they'd been out rollerskating Friday night. Instead, they'd try to kill her in a bathroom at a nearby park the next morning. Weier knew there was a drain in the floor for the blood to go down, she told police.

Very practical.  How much of this was drawn from crime fiction, and how much from solid DIY instincts?

Then there's a blend of crime and young adult chaos:

Weier said Geyser then tackled the victim and started stabbing her. The victim was screaming. Weier said when Geyser got off the victim, the victim screamed, "I hate you. I trusted you."

Weier said the victim tried to walk toward the street but was stumbling. They didn't want anyone to see her, so Weier grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the street. The victim fell. Weier said the victim couldn't breathe, see or walk. Weier told the victim to lie down and be quiet — she would lose blood more slowly. Weier told police she gave the victim those instructions so she wouldn't draw attention to herself, and so she would die. Weier told the victim they were going to get her help; but they never planned on actually doing so. They hoped she would die, and they would see Slender and know he existed.

The victim lived, so far.

Creepy tweet time

Infocult's creepy Tweet of the day:

The text reads:

THE WEIRD SHUDDERING FIGURES YOU'VE BEEN NOTICING IN YOUR VIDEOS LATELY

SEEM LIKE THEY'VE JUST BEGUN TO NOTICE YOU AS WELL

Mmmmm, creepypasta.