Introduction



Beginning of Trailhead on Unfiction

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Summary

The Introduction was posted on June 20, 2009.

It has the description "0."

It is tagged "marble" and "hornets".

In total, the clip is 1:59 long.

It is, for all intents and purposes, Entry #0.

Footage of driving down a highway on the outskirts of a city is overlaid with text from Jay explaining the tapes he has received from Alex, and the conversation leading up to his acquisition of them.

+ Detailed Transcript - Hide Detailed Transcript [00:00] Black screen. Ambient noise from inside a car.

[00:02] White text appears centered on the black screen: The following clips are raw footage excerpts from Alex Kralie.

A college friend of mine. [00:07] Black screen.

[00:09] Fade in footage out the window of a vehicle of someone driving through the suburbs. Visible are houses, fences, industrial structures.

[00:12] White text appears at the top of the screen, overlaying the footage: In 2006, Alex was in the process of shooting his student film, entitled Marble Hornets.

Over the three months that this took place, his film crew complained of his increasing levels of stress and irritability.

Near the end of shooting, Alex halted production indefinitely and dropped the unfinished project.

He told me it was due to the "unworkable conditions" on his set, which was less than a mile away from his house. [00:42] Footage fades slowly back to black screen. Ambient noise continues. I asked what he planned to do with the countless number of tapes he had filled.

"Burn them." [00:53] Footage fades back in. This appears to be from the front of a car, as the sun is setting and dusk is falling. Visuals of other cars driving, streetlights, and small businesses along the side of the road (including a "Shell" gas station) can be seen. White text appears over the top of the screen again: Being a film student myself, I hated to see all of his work go to waste.

And after some coercing he agreed to give them to me.

Under the condition that I never mention it to him again. [01:14] Cut to footage of later evening. A treeline and various power lines and towers can be seen, black silhouettes against a darkening blue sky. The angle is lower. More white text: Soon after, Alex transferred to another school and I haven't seen him since.

At the time, I was too unnerved to look through the tapes, and eventually forgot about them. [01:27] The camera is angled towards the road ahead again rather than the treeline.

[01:28] The footage fades to black again. Ambient noise remains. More white text: A few days ago I found them filed away in the back of my closet.

After three years and zero contact with Alex, I have decided to look through them.

All the tapes are unnumbered and missing timestamps. Other than taking place in the summer of 2006, it is impossible to determine the exact order or date of each.

Should I find anything in any of them I will upload it to keep as a permanent record. [01:58] Ambient noise fades out.

[01:59] Video ends.

Main Theories and Observations

Jay began to watch the tapes years after the fact because he, as "Ce gars" on SomethingAwful, came across a thread on the forums about Slender Man. For some reason, it reminded him of the tapes again.

Further Speculation

The audio is a monotonous white noise, like the muffled sounds of a moving car. The footage in this Entry is of suburban/semi-rural America, presumably somewhere in the Midwest. The geography is mostly flat, with ample forestland, although there are some wooded hills in the distance. Other than a Shell gas station, none of the businesses can be identified. Likewise, the street signs cannot be used to identify the location of the shots. There are three separate clips shown in the entry, none of which seem to have much bearing on the developing story.

J claims that Alex gave him the tapes & moved away, & that he was too disturbed to watch them for three years. The cause of this disturbance is unknown, but is believed to be related to Alex's sudden shift in behavior.

J posted this on June 20th, 2009. He said that he was just starting to pour through the tapes. He apparently finished looking at the tapes around December 15th, 2009, when he posted Entry #20. So it seems that it took him about six whole months to review all of the recordings related to Marble Hornets, which is consistent with the sheer volume of footage that Alex supposedly recorded ("countless tapes").

~ Zeta Kai

The footage actually takes place in central Alabama, not the Midwest. —pursuit