Update: Comments!

I just realized I had my comments section set so only Google users could comment. I've since opened it up to anyone and wanted to add something while I'm at it:

If you have any topics you would like me to cover, requests are always welcome! The only thing I'm reluctant to cover are ARGs, mostly because with many of them there is so much to cover it could take essays and I'd probably still miss a lot of it. However, if there is one you really really want, I might be willing to take a crack at it. If you also notice any important information I may have missed or new updates to the stories of any post, feel free to let me know. I'm striving for accuracy on this blog and appreciate being told if there are any inaccuracies.

Thanks again and new post should be up soon!

"Hi, Walter...": A YouTube Mystery

When it comes to the bizarre and unnerving, YouTube is no stranger to these situations. Despite the platform's attempts to host more family friendly content to the point of demonetizing channels or videos they feel go against that atmosphere, there is still plenty of creepy content to be found. And when there is no initial explanation for said content, it only makes the discovery more unnerving and can often be  a cause for concern.

In 2009, a channel was created on YouTube simply called, "Hi Walter! It's me Patrick!" which eventually contained only contained one video titled, "Hi Walter! I got a new gf today! In the video, a man (assumedly Patrick though he never states his name on camera) opens by telling someone named Walter that he has found himself a girlfriend. He excitedly talks with a wild-eyed expression about how he met this girl at the mall and that she's very hot and attractive. He then says he wants to show her on camera, even though she's very shy and the camera cuts to what looks like a dark basement with a wooden door that's padlocked shut. The man then steps into view, unlocks the door, and a woman can be seen inside on all fours, sobbing and begging to be let go. The man steps into the room with her and after the door closes behind him, we can hear her screaming before the video abruptly ends. The channel has since been taken down, but the video has of course been re-uploaded and is easy to find on YouTube:




For a long time, the video went relatively unnoticed but began to really go viral around 2016 when the mother of a missing teen saw the footage and became convinced that her daughter was the imprisoned woman shown at the end of the video. Up until this point, those already aware of the video (particularly the Reddit community) had been busy dissecting it, many coming to the conclusion that it was fake. Aside from the cheesy acting from "Patrick," those skeptical of the video pointed out things like the fact that at the beginning of the basement scene, it sounds like the man says something along the lines of, "Action," furthering the suspicion that this was a hoax. But to one viewer, Hope Sprenger, the video looked all too real and potentially offered answers as to what happened to her missing daughter, Kayla Berg.

In 2009, only a few months before the channel's creation, 15-year-old Kayla Berg went missing after being dropped off at her boyfriend's house in Wausau, Wisconsin. In 2016, when the possibility arose that the girl in Patrick's video might be Kayla, the Wisconsin police were alerted and began immediately investigating the video's origin as well as the people behind it. They admitted that there were similarities between the missing girl and the girl in the video, causing valid concern that this was not a hoax after all. However, it all turned out to be a false alarm when Antigo police were able to identify the the creators of the video.

Leading the video and playing the role of Patrick was a man by the name of Michael Maton from Utica, NY. As for the actress, the imprisoned girl was a woman by the name of Lucy Cavo and the producer of the video was a man named Jason Derr. All three of the people behind the video were from Utica, NY and had nothing to do with the missing teen from Wisconsin. According to them, the video wasn't even intended to reference her case. Once this information was established, Antigo police issued a statement, ensuring the public that the video was nothing more than a hoax, but by that point the damage was done. Hope Sprenger was said to be traumatized when she saw the video and believed she was seeing her daughter being held captive by Maton, and this led to the creators issuing an apology for the harm they caused. However, Maton went on to blame the media for misconstruing what was meant to be a short YouTube horror film that had nothing to do with Kayla Berg's disappearance and even called it slander.

As troubling as this situation was, this is not the only time a YouTube creator has led the public to believe they had something to do with a missing person's case. In 2012, a video was uploaded of a middle-aged man laughing sadistically into a camera, winking, and the words "Happy Anniversary" appeared on the screen. The video itself was also titled "Happy Anniversary," and was posted 8 years to the day that a young woman by the name of Maura Murray went missing after crashing her car on Route 112 in Massachusetts. The uploader himself had named the channel "Mr112dirtbag" which references not only Route 112, but also Murray's father's claims that whoever had abducted his daughter was a dirtbag.  However, police investigated the source of the video and it turned out to be yet another cruel hoax.

The internet can be a disturbing place, even if you only remain on the surface web. While most would have enough of a moral compass to know when creepy content takes it too far or at least is in need of some context to prevent a scare, there will always be those who will do harm, whether intentionally or not. The story behind "Hi Walter!" can serve as a cautionary tale of how a lack of context can unfairly cause alarm to those dealing with something as horrible as the abduction of a family member. To this day, the disappearances of Kayla Bern and Maura Murray remain unsolved.


Sources on Maton and Mr112dirtbag:

• https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/hi-walter-i-got-a-new-gf-youtube-kayla-berg-investigation-396802761.html
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4286854/Unmasked-internet-hoaxer-Hi-Walter-viral-video.html
• https://imgur.com/gallery/91MAa
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104121/Videos-taunt-family-Maura-Murray-eighth-anniversary-disappearance.html

Ruth Price: The Infamous 911 Recording of a Murder

One of the scariest situations imaginable is the possibility of a home invasion. Whether it happens in broad daylight or the middle of the night, the thought of an armed stranger breaking into your house at random, intending to do you harm, is something you may imagine will never happen to you. But you've still probably thought about what you would do if it did. Would you be able to defend yourself? Do you have a safe hiding place or a quick escape plan?

What if you're elderly, unarmed, and probably unlikely to be able to move fast enough? The first thing likely to come to mind is finding a way to call the police, but even then there is no guarantee they will arrive fast enough. Imagine then that you're the dispatcher, unable to do anything but listen to the other end and hope that help does get there in time... but it doesn't. Situations like this are what makes being an emergency dispatcher one of the most stressful jobs, and when recordings of events like this are leaked, the audience gets a taste of just how awful that job can be.

Which brings us to the story of one of the more infamous 911 calls to be leaked on the internet: the murder of Ruth Price. However there is more a little more to this story and we'll delve into that a bit.

For those who haven't heard it and are morbidly curious, this is the call in question (WARNING: the audio is very disturbing):



In case you're someone with no interest in hearing the audio, this is a brief rundown of what took place. The call begins with Ruth Price telling the dispatcher there's a strange man lurking around her property. She tells the dispatcher he came to her door, saying he was "looking for a guy" and then asked about her apartment. She sounds very uncomfortable and informs the dispatcher that she's an elderly woman and lives alone. The dispatcher asks her if she can still see the man, but shortly after she says she can't there comes the sounds of something hitting the receiver, followed by the sounds of Ruth shrieking as she's attacked and killed. As she dies, she pleads for her life, says she can't breathe and after more struggling the line goes silent.

This is one of the scariest audio recordings to be leaked and is easy to find on the internet, particularly on YouTube. But what makes this recording even more interesting is the lack of information behind it. There is little to no information that can be found on the actual murder or of Ruth Price herself. This has led many to believe that it's a fake made for shock value.

However, an unnamed Florida safety officer jumped into the conversation to offer a little more information. According to the officer, the call is used for training purposes to reinforce the importance for dispatchers to begin every call with, "911, what's your location?" Despite the fact that the calls can be traced, opening with your location can potentially help to speed up the process. But given how quickly Ruth is attacked during the call, it's unlikely that this would have saved her. The officer then went on to claim the call is 100% real and not a fake.

Unfortunately, this is still up for debate as almost no other information has led to any definitive answers. Whether Ruth Price was a real woman and the murder was genuine has yet to be solved but the possibility of this not being a hoax still adds a layer of horror to the recording.

If you would like to explore this mystery even further, the people of Reddit have researched this a little further, speculating on the authenticity and giving a little more insight on the case:

https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/3b4ks0/911_call_made_by_elderly_woman_before_she_is/

Whether or not it's real, the call still serves as a haunting reminder that no matter who you are, the unthinkable can strike at any time no matter how prepared you may think you are to handle it.

Katherine Knight

Our upbringing can shape us into the people we are today, often for the better. Katherine Knight, however, is a perfect example of what a horrific childhood can produce.

Conceived during an extramarital affair, Katherine's early years were laden with abuse brought on by multiple members of her family. Her mother was routinely beaten and raped by her partner, and in turn she would give Katherine graphic details of the encounters, as well as telling her how much she hated sex and men. Katherine herself was said to have been sexually abused several times by members of her family until she was 11 years old, and the family members she accused of the abuse have since all confirmed her claims were true.

Though she often had a tendency for violence, Katherine was an otherwise model student, and though she couldn't read or write, she managed to find employment as a cutter in a clothing factory. She later found other work cutting up offal at the local abattoir, where she was quickly promoted to boning and given her own set of butcher knives. She claimed it was her dream job and had a set of knives hung above her bed "in case I ever need them."

Katherine's violent tendencies grew over time, and she soon earned herself a reputation of being willing to attack anyone who upset her. Her first marriage was to an alcoholic coworker named David Stanford Kellett, and on their wedding day, her mother warned him to keep an eye out or her daughter would likely kill him if he made her mad. On their wedding night, Katherine attempted to strangle him, saying she was angry at him for falling asleep after only having intercourse with her three times.

The couple had a child together, but Katherine's violence grew as she often attacked her husband in fits of jealous rage, including an incident where she hit her husband's head so hard with a frying pan, she fractured his skull. Kellett eventually left Katherine for good, unable to cope with the constant abuse any longer. The following night, she was admitted to St. Elmo's hospital after being seen violently tossing her infant's pram from side to side, the baby still inside, but was released on good behavior. Katherine then left the baby on a railway line, took up an ax, and headed into town where she threatened to kill people. The infant was rescued minutes before the next train was due to arrive, and Katherine was admitted into St. Elmo's again, but released the very next day.

Not long after, Katherine attacked a woman, slashing her face with a knife and forcing her to drive towards Queensland to find her husband. The woman managed to escape and by the time the police arrived, Katherine was holding a young boy hostage. She was eventually subdued, then admitted into another psychiatric hospital where she revealed she had intended to kill her husband, his mother, and his mechanic as punishment for fixing the car he left in.

Some months after her release, she became involved with, and even had a child with a man named David Saunders, but this would also prove to be disastrous. Katherine suffered severe jealousy over her partner and even cut the throat of his 2-month-old dingo pup in front of him as a warning of what she would do if he ever cheated on her. The two eventually got a house together, but after a fight that ended in Katherine smashing his face with an iron and stabbing him in the stomach with a pair of scissors, Saunders went into hiding. He came back briefly in an attempt to see their daughter, but Katherine went to the police and had an AVO issued against him.

Another relationship and another child later, Katherine soon became involved with a man named John Price. Price had three children of his own, one of which was living with his ex-wife. He was well aware of Katherine's violent history. Despite that, he let her move in with him and his two children, willing to overlook the occasional violent arguments. When Price refused to marry her, Katherine retaliated by video taping items Price had stolen from work and sent it to his boss, causing him to get fired. Price kicked her out of the house for it, but it did not end there.

Despite their falling out, Price restarted his relationship with Katherine, though he refused to let her move in with him again. Unable to handle the violent relationship, Price's friends abandoned him, no longer wanting to be a part of it. Soon enough the violent fights began again, and after Katherine stabbed him in the chest, Price drove her out again and went out to have a restraining order placed against her. He told he coworkers that day that if he didn't show up for work the next day, it was because Katherine killed him.

The following morning, Price did not show up for work, and his coworker and a neighbor turned up at his house to check on him. When they found blood on his front door, they called the police who broke down the door when they arrived. What they found was something out of a horror movie.

Price's body was on the floor, having been stabbed up to 37 times. He had been skinned, his skin hanging from a meat hook on the architrave of a door to the lounge room. He had been beheaded and parts of him had been cooked up and served on two settings with vegetables on the dining table. Next to each setting was a place card, each with a name for both his children. Thankfully, neither of his children were home at the time of the murder.

Katherine is the first Australian woman to have ever received a life sentence without the chance of parole and is currently still being held at the Silverwater Women's Correctional Centre in New South Wales.

The "Momo" Statue

Since I've been seeing it spread a lot recently, I wanted to quickly throw out there what this thing actually is just to give the artist some props. "Momo" is a statue (and no, that's not its real name) depicting a bird-woman created by the artist Keisuka Aisawa from the special effects company Link Factory and was put on display at the Vanilla Gallery in Tokyo Japan.

The statue itself is supposed to be the artist's representation of the yōkai, Ubume from Japanese folklore. Ubume was the reincarnated soul of a woman who died during childbirth. Some myths say she's a malevolent child abductor who snatches children to never be seen again. Other myths say she's actually a protective spirit who watches over children while they sleep at night.

So that's the statue in a nutshell. Unfortunately the statue, or rather photos of it, has been recently become tied to a supposed suicide challenge that targets kids and tells them to hurt/kill themselves (the validity of these claims is HIGHLY debatable, especially now that trolls have gotten their hands on it). So in light of that I wanted to try to give back credit to the artist as I find it sad their work has now been associated with something like this. I don't think any artist deserves that whether they create pieces of horror or not. I strongly recommend checking out the Link Factory's works. There are some extremely talented artists and plenty of creepy pieces to enjoy (including their Grudge Girls series). Just a heads up though, some of them include nudity and body horror so technically NSFW.

http://linkfactory.jp/contents17.html

There has recently been a new rumor spreading around the internet that due to the notorious "Momo Challenge," the creator had to destroy the statue. This is actually not the truth. The statue was destroyed because she was deteriorating as she was not intended to last forever. She was constructed out of a delicate rubber typically used in special effects props and had begun to fall apart. So rest assured, the internet did not cause her destruction. She was just simply not built to last. Here is a link explaining this further.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/momo-sculpture-destroyed-keisuke-aiso-802627/

"13 Views of the Suicide Woods," by Bracken MacLeod

Despite what the title might suggest, this anthology has nothing to do with that notorious forest in Japan. 13 Views of the Suicide Woods is a collection of creepy short stories, each of them ranging from dark and suspenseful to bleak and depressing, many having some interesting twists along the way. The author, Bracken MacLeod, manages to paint a vivid and intense image in only a few paragraphs, and while each story is no more than a few pages, they're all satisfying and a great way to get in the mood for the approaching Halloween season.

Some examples of what's inside:

Pure Blood and Evergreen- A young prisoner in a concentration camp ponders over his imprisonment and why he and his people have been called "monsters," only to uncover a sinister truth.

The Blood and the Body- A young woman gets dragged against her will to a party she doesn't want to attend, becomes seduced by another woman at the party, and realizes too late everyone in the room has ulterior motives, especially the girl she can't keep her eyes off of.

The Texas Chainsaw Breakfast Club or I Don't Like Mondays- Three high school students find themselves chained up in a basement with very little time left, and the fact that they all hate each other isn't helping.

Reminisce- A homeless vet receives a free meal from a good Samaritan who claims he looks like his deceased son. But when he makes the mistake of accepting another act of charity from the man, things take a very fucked up turn.

This book is available in paperback or ebook format and well worth the read. So go check it out!

White Enamel: An Unsettling Experience

If you've ever seen a photograph of the interior or exterior of an old abandoned insane asylum, you've more than likely felt an unsettling vibe. Only a few decades ago, these places served as homes for people who were deemed to be mentally ill by the medical community, and were intended to provide proper treatment. However, they often became a place where the mentally ill were not only forgotten about by the families who didn't know what else to do with them, but were subjected to barbaric practices and horrendous conditions. These institutions frequently fell victim to overcrowding, low funding, or were understaffed. Factor in what constituted a mental illness back then (homosexuality, for example) and that you could easily be admitted against your well, these places were a veritable hell on earth.

Enter, White Enamel.

Upon first appearance, the site is simply a flash-based virtual tour of one of these many abandoned institutions, but it is so much more than that.

White Enamel is an interactive game that not only allows the player to view the inside of an old abandoned asylum (Glenfield State Psychiatric Hospital), but presents them with old footage and visuals to help them truly experience the bleak atmosphere. The game is broken into seven parts, each one taking you through the different wings while also exposing you to many of the practices that took place.

But what truly makes this an unsettling experience is the alternating atmosphere in each section, never making you quite sure how to feel. Some portions are dark and depressing, filled with the screams and visuals of patients who are suffering, while others are uplifting and ease the mood for a few moments.

Many who have played the game have felt the need to take it one part at a time, taking breaks between parts as the experience can be overwhelming. However, if you do intend to venture through the asylum in one setting, do not expect an uplifting experience. The game begins with admission and ends with the reality that thousands of patients faced. If anything, it will make you grateful the medical science, specifically in the field of mental health, has come as far as it has, even if it still has a ways to go.

If you would like experience the asylum for yourself, then simply go to http://www.whiteenamel.com/

An Introduction

Welcome to All the Creepy Little Things!

This blog is intended to explore the world of all things creepy and startling. From art to literature to true crime, there will hopefully be something here for everyone. 

May you enjoy your stay.