Lake City Quiet Pills is considered to be Reddit’s first great mystery. After the mysterious death of u/religionofpeace, many users started looking into the website owned by this individual and shortly after the discovery subsequent hidden messages found on the site that seemed to indicate something far more bizarre was going on behind the scenes of “The Old Guy’s Image Host”

What Happened?

On Friday, July 17th, 2009 a user by the name of u/2-6 would make the following post to the all (uncategorized) section of Reddit. This post was by a user by the name of 2-6 and was in reference to his friend Milo passing away.



Note: Milo = u/Religionofpeace = ROP

The post by u/2-6

After this subsequent post, a user by the name of Marlonbain would point out…

If you’re familiar with the term “Jailbait” it is in reference to underage girls. This subreddit r/jailbait was infamous for being home to this community and after some time Reddit actually had to step in and shut it down. The fact that u/Religionofpeace was a mod here, shows what he was looking at daily on Reddit.



The reason this thread received so much attention was due to the fact that Reddit was a far more tightly knit community back in the day. u/Religionofpeace gained notoriety for his frequent activity and supposed military service in WWII. People frequently thanked him for his service and so on.

When news of him passing away hit, many people decided to look into the website that he owned and what they found was a series of discoveries that seemed to suggest something far shadier was going on with ROP…

Subsequent Discoveries

After this post from the u/2-6 this cause renewed interest and users on Reddit started to look into ROP’s account…

Note: u/Religionofpeace’s post history is extensive and from a brief look through, you can tell the person has an interest in Military combat, they understand various military jargon, and oddly enough this “79-Year-Old” also seem to have knowledge as a technical writer.

As mentioned earlier ROP was a pervert and he was likely a picture collector as he owned a site by the name of lakecityquietpills.com

This was an image hosting service similar to something like Imgur. On Reddit ROP would frequently advertise his site, and after u/2-6 posted this some users found the following messages in the source code of the website.

Taken From Website Capture June 2009.

It appears as if 2-6 is making these updates as he was the one who claimed to have access to the web hosting that was involved. Other users on Reddit found that someone by the name of angeltwosix@lakecityquiepills.com had an account over on FARK, as such, it is believed that this was the same person that posted about Milo passing away.



The bio of 2-6’s Fark Account read the following.

Bio: Dispensing Lake City Quiet Pills to lousy bastards in need of permanent rest since 1968.

It would appear like this was a job board for mercenaries and or military contractors. On 2-6’s bio, we can infer “Lake City Quiet Pills” is making reference to bullets.



The usage of the term w/w is likely believed to be in reference to the term “wet work” which is involved in murder-for-hire scenarios. Or alternatively, it is believed that this could have been in reference to “wants / warrants.”

When this was discovered various people on Reddit started to continue to monitor the site, but this really didn’t receive that much attention until much later.



New updates would continue to roll into the site’s job board…

The “Party”

After this initial discovery, the website lakecityquietpills.com would continue to update their source code hidden messages and they would tell a story of a party being planned in honor of Milo’s passing.

Messages are down below, but the thing that has captured the internet’s attention is the “party” bills. $94,080 sounds like one hell of a party bill, and the mention of medical supplies sounds incredibly off.



The most interesting part, however, is the date to which the party takes which is the exact time that a Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Take a read through the messages for yourself.



Note: Message dates are in backward order.

Shortly after these messages were publicized the site’s source code was later encrypted. But this didn’t stop new messages from popping up, later on, PGP messages started to pop up in their place.

Note: You can still view these encrypted PGP blocks on the Wayback Machine as well. Just check out any later date after these final messages were posted and check the source code.

Note: Not the full message, but you can find them still, there are multiple messages that have never been cracked.

Further Analysis

So what was going on with lakecityquietpills.com?

The answer has still been widely debated to this day. Some possible explanations are the following…

Military Contractors

Hoax

Alternate Reality Game

There isn’t much common consensus online, the most popular theory is that this was some type of military job board that predated the popularity of the dark web.



Other online opinions point out that this could be some sort of ARG, but the use of PGP encryption hints at this not being “solvable” (Alternate-Reality-Game)



Assuming it wasn’t the first two theories the last one would regard this as a hoax meant to mess with Reddit.



Many individuals question why no obituary was ever found for Milo and to date, no verifiable record of him ever existing has ever been found either.



While this topic had been around for a while it seems to have peaked in interest around October of 2019. Barely Sociable, and his youtube channel is largely associated with the spread of this mystery with his video “Lake City Quiet Pills Explained“

Initially a follow up was planned to this video, but nothing ever emerged, when he finally spoke up regarding the topic, he had this long thread that he published on twitter.

Been holding my tongue on this for awhile but lake City Quiet Pills was a hoax made by a hardcore role player on second life. His name was “Trent Katsu” and he had a server friend by the name of “Tigoro Spotty Stripes”



There was no merc board and ROP and Milo where the same. — Barely Sociable (@SociableBarely) December 26, 2019

Whatever you settle on, this mystery is definitely an interesting one. The web holds various mysteries and every pocket of the web has some rabbit hole you can stumble onto.





