unforum

[trigger23]

Fangoria

[notgordian]

More information on the address listed on the whois:

It's listed as the address for a Japanese domain registration company, so it's probably comparable to GoDaddy's anonymous registration option.

Either that or it's a standard fake address / PO Box since it's been reported as used in phishing scams.

EDIT TO ADD: It seems like a selection of podcasters (JC Hutchins and Jeff DeRego), movie bloggers (Screen Rant and Cactus Pix) and general pop culture folks (Baierman at YBNBY and ....?) are receiving the envelopes. It seems like linking this to recipients might be a little harder than usual since there's nothing obviously similar (at least until the ancient texts are translated).

Was the Gizmodo banner the only link bringing us to chishio.jp?

[Sirand]

I received the exact same letter in the mail yesterday. I'm a writer for DreadCentral.com and upon getting it, I contacted fellow journalists to see if they had one. No one else got a letter, but a friend at Bloody Disgusting said "That's odd. We have some weird ad up on our site that I don't understand." Going there, I noticed the same TB logo was on the banner which led to the chishio site. The ads have since disappeared.

Frantic for answers, I sent the letter and site to the UCLA Linguistics department and got this back:

"Hi Mr. Kasch,
We've determined that the scripts on the website are actually all from different ancient languages. The first is Akkadian. The third is Greek. And the fourth is Sumerian.
The second (which you received) is Hieratic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieratic , http://www.jimloy.com/hiero/hieratic.htm).
Unfortunately, I'm not don't know anything about what it is that they say. Also, it is very strange that they are all on a Japanese webserver, whose name (chishio) means "blood cirulating within the body (often as an metaphor for strong emotion or hot-bloodedness)", according to my dictionary.
All very strange."

So a small lead, but I'm still totally in the dark. What is this thing?

[ShaneBaxter]

Centralizing RED SEAL / CHISHIO investigative attempts

[AzureWolf]

First off let me say I know nothing about ancient languages and this is all based on stuff I found on the net.

The first letter is definitely Akkadian Cuneiform, all but 2 of the symbols can be found on this page. I had a heck of a time wringing anything out of it though. I tried using phonetic and logograms, nothing.

The second letter is probably hieratic, some of the symbols can be found here. Seems only about half the symbols are on that page, best I found for it though.

The third letter was called Greek by the linguists at UCLA so I won't argue, but it seemed like some of these symbols were also on the Hieratic page (but sideways?).

The fourth letter appears to be ugaritic or Sumerian according to UCLA.

Finally, I strongly believe this is a viral marketing (or ARG?) campaign for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, for 2, admittedly circumstantial, reasons. There is a prequel/sequel something or other in the works for the movie called The Scorpion King: Rise of the Akkadian. Second the mummy movie is mentioned on the Hieratic site and all of the languages seem to originate from that area.

Could the reason for it being on a Japanese site be because Jet Li's character Emperor Han is Japanese?

[Jedediah Coy]

Here's what I have so far from the red symbols.

Each symbol is three letters, every occurrence of a letter seems to be an exact copy, although sometimes mirrored and/or rotated.

The letter groups as far as I can tell are:

NOT ONE SEN SEC SCO OMC OMR ERM ERV EEV ENV ENA ANN ANT NOT

The Ms could be Ws. The letters are repeated in groups of three so the first three symbols contain N. The second through fourth contain E.

If you continue the pattern (and wrap around the circle for the last two groups) you get:

NESCOMREVENATO (or NESCOWREVENATO with W instead of M)

I see several words:

NES COM REVENATO
NESCO MR E VENATO
NESCO MR EVE NATO

This could be an anagram.

[Leyton Stone]

Re: Centralizing RED SEAL / CHISHIO investigative attempts

[Karensa]

[amandel]

AzureWolf,after posting the Akkadian Cuneiform yesterday I refound many symbols and also tried phonetics without success.

When Demonpunk had that same problem with the Urgantic he found yesterday I began to wonder if the Red Seal might be some sort of Rosetta Stone. And @Sirand-THX for all that UCLA info,esp. for the scary "blood circulating within the body"

Also,AzureWolf, you're not alone in feeling this may be a viral campaign for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor film. Screen Rant received a similiar package yesterday and that's their guess also. And @Jedediah Coy--sweet work on the Seal.

Finally(hehe)Jedediah: Revanatio Cum Nex is horrible latin for Rebirth With Slaughter. Does that fit in with the Mummy theme?

[AzureWolf]

Something about this doesn't make sense to me, why make a viral marketing/ARG that only a handful, at most a couple dozen, linguists can decipher?

The rosetta stone theory is a good idea, and I have noticed similar themes in some of the letter's (water and snake, but that could just be the prevalence of those words/symbols) but it would require us to be able to understand one of the four and then use that and one of the other letters to translate something else entirely. So that's out for now.

I also tried a substitution cipher for individual symbols that got me nowhere. But there are too many and varied symbols, especially in the first letter, for this to make sense. Also I have a funny feeling the letters all say the exact same thing or are similar anyway.

My latest attempt is taking the Ugaritic, which is the only one I can find 100% of the symbols for, and translating it to letters, then words via https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-November/015436.html

My result (broken up by the ' in the letter):
snake water "tied bag" manacle
manacle head thread
court door breast
water eye snake
court door breast
crook eye house door signature
eye crook snake
eye door
eye crook water

If you get really creative you can tell a story with it or something

:sigh: This is getting mildly frustrating but it's still fun, there MUST be more clues out there for us to discover yet.

[jono]

[AzureWolf]

Haha, yeah, but good publicity for what? As it stands right now they are getting nothing out of this, to make it worthwhile they have to let us figure it out. And if they take too long people will lose interest.

[BlueAjay]

Greetings -

I ran across this forum because I'm a "red seal recipient" and I was searching for clues.

This has been the most interesting thread I've found thus far.

Here are a few notes about me - in hopes of assisting:

I'm a musician - I've done some indie-film soundtrack work and I work in rock and roll as an indie under the moniker Booze Monkey.

I've also done some short film writing and directing.

I am also a Fangoria subscriber.

Hope this helps and thanks for the great thread.

[Leyton Stone]

Seems to me like someone needs to check out Fangoria online and/or the magazines, and/or (again) make contact w/ someone over there...

Everyone appears to have some kind of connection w/ Fangoria.

[ScreenRant]

Hey, Vic from ScreenRant.com here. I have no connection to Fangoria and although I'd like to believe this is a viral campaign for some major movie I'm starting to suspect that our buddy J.C. Hutchins is behind the whole thing.

A lot more people who write for movie sites would have received this if it were for some major upcoming movie. Based on who's received it I tend to think it's not videogame related but may be an attempt to drum up interest/publicity for some project he and maybe a partner are working on.

Vic