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TheSisyphusEvent
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Littleloki
Boot


Joined: 31 Aug 2012
Posts: 34

 		Ok two things I found while scouting.
A.in the URL of each image there is a small sequence of numbers separated by underscores. Maybe more coding or maybe anouther book reference as they are to big to be straight A to 1 sequence.

B. I must be stupid because I can still not figure out the PDF password.

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 8:21 am
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amandel
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 15 Jan 2008
Posts: 4096
Location: Nederland

 		Hi Littleloki. Maybe you'll face-palm now at the PDF PW being obvious or maybe that's just me enjoying the images so much. Smile
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
PW is: king


Also, the newspaper page title decoding to "FK" (from HEX "464b") may refer to the Fisher King legend as that figure is said to derive from the Celtic character of Bran the Blessed, "bran" being the latest Ogham word on the home page & the other being "fishermen". Reckon cupcakesnsuch's bran=crow post (prev page) is quite Cool 2
_________________
"I could write a hell of a paper on a grown man who dresses like a flying rodent."
"Can you hook up with a Snow Person? Can't tell you or I'd have to marry you."

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 9:19 am
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cupcakesnsuch
Greenhorn


Joined: 02 Nov 2012
Posts: 3

 		Has anyone taken a hard look at the video that is posted if you click the face next to the date on the home page? I saw that there was binary and what seemed to be Morse code. I tried to translate the binary. In HEX it gives the numbers 61, 64, 2e, 61. I'm not sure what that means yet. I tried to see if it was coordinates because 2e is the Eastern Meridian, but I haven't found anything.

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 12:02 pm
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Elethamei
Unfettered


Joined: 31 Aug 2012
Posts: 448
Location: Finland
cupcakesnsuch wrote:
Has anyone taken a hard look at the video that is posted if you click the face next to the date on the home page? I saw that there was binary and what seemed to be Morse code. I tried to translate the binary. In HEX it gives the numbers 61, 64, 2e, 61. I'm not sure what that means yet. I tried to see if it was coordinates because 2e is the Eastern Meridian, but I haven't found anything.


Yeah, they've both been solved on page three.

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 1:13 pm
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cupcakesnsuch
Greenhorn


Joined: 02 Nov 2012
Posts: 3
Elethamei wrote:
cupcakesnsuch wrote:
Has anyone taken a hard look at the video that is posted if you click the face next to the date on the home page? I saw that there was binary and what seemed to be Morse code. I tried to translate the binary. In HEX it gives the numbers 61, 64, 2e, 61. I'm not sure what that means yet. I tried to see if it was coordinates because 2e is the Eastern Meridian, but I haven't found anything.


Yeah, they've both been solved on page three.



Thanks, I guess I didn't read as thoroughly as I should have.

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 2:48 pm
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specterseymour
Veteran


Joined: 07 Oct 2012
Posts: 70
Location: Michigan, United States
amandel wrote:
Hi Littleloki. Maybe you'll face-palm now at the PDF PW being obvious or maybe that's just me enjoying the images so much. Smile
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
PW is: king


Also, the newspaper page title decoding to "FK" (from HEX "464b") may refer to the Fisher King legend as that figure is said to derive from the Celtic character of Bran the Blessed, "bran" being the latest Ogham word on the home page & the other being "fishermen". Reckon cupcakesnsuch's bran=crow post (prev page) is quite Cool 2


Amandel, I'm fast becoming convinced that you're a genius. But it does look like Brandon is meant to play the part of Bran, especially considering the birds in his Twitter background. Crows, methinks. Curious how Peter fits in, and how everything else is connected.

PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 5:36 pm
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Dr Cow
Boot

Joined: 29 Jun 2012
Posts: 10

 		http://www.behindthename.com/name/peter

Peter means stone. is he going to be the one to kill the blackbirds?

PostPosted: Sat Nov 03, 2012 7:33 am
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Elethamei
Unfettered


Joined: 31 Aug 2012
Posts: 448
Location: Finland

 		New tweet
Brandon Rhea wrote:
It looks like aunt Annalee, uncle Paul, and John's memorial service is going to be on November 11th. Pete will be moving in with us soon.


Sad So that's what "dead. alone." meant.

PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 5:41 am
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Hawthorne
Boot

Joined: 04 Nov 2012
Posts: 10
Location: Virginia, USA

 		New to This
I may or may not have written out an extensive analysis of everything that has happened thus far
Hello, all. I am completely new to ARGs and only just discovered they even existed a couple hours ago. This is the first thing I will ever post in relation to any of this kind of stuff! I read all the posts on this thread so far. The following will be a recap of everything we know (perfect for anyone trying to join in!) followed by my speculation on what has occurred thus far:

The very first thing we ever learned was that there is a website: thesisyphusevent.com.
This was posted with the subtitle "tellthesoulswithsorrowladenifwithinsomedistantaidenn" and so far nobody has made any sort of hullabaloo about that.
By going to this site we learned that something will happen on December 3rd, 2012.
We then saw this image of a face by clicking on the "i" in Sisyphus: http://www.thesisyphusevent.com/#!event/c1blg
By clicking on that image the title reappeared with the date.
By clicking on the "1" of the second "12" we were taken to this page: http://www.thesisyphusevent.com/#!4b5620534835/c1upj
The first line of this page decoded to "2009DialPressTradePprbkEd" which we determined to be intended to lead us to a book of which the subsequent lines referred to specific pages, paragraphs, and words.
The book was determined to be Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. through a combination of the previous information and decoding a portion of the URL to read "KV SH5".
Then it was determined that the page, paragraph, word references referred to the series of words, "Three black birds lit on a wire two were half honest the other a liar till the king walked by throwing his stones knocked two from their perch left the other alone"
The title of a jpeg page from the site was decoded to mean "lark"
Something something something raven. (I did not originally understand where the raven came from on the message boards, but I think I figured it out below.)
Then it was discovered that there was another face next to the second "12" on the homepage that appeared if you rolled over it with your mouse that led to a password protected page if you clicked on it.
Then a link to a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=268v0PTRiLU) with a strange title was found in the source code of the homepage (I don't think we were supposed to find it this way) that had a video of a bridge over water shot from the ground on the shore. Morse code was playing in the background and there was a block of binary text flashing around the bottom left corner of the screen. Towards the very end of the video, the word "SOON" flashed very quickly. The binary was decoded to be "lone dead dead dead alone", the Morse code was decoded as "Peter", and the title of the video decoded to 10 31 12 (Halloween).
Then it was mentioned that in the myth of Sisyphus, a magpie is involved. At this point we had three birds (a lark, a raven, and a magpie), but we have not done anything with them since. Shortly after the Lyrebird was mentioned.
We then discovered that the password to the page we found by clicking on the "invisible" face was "liaralone" because two lines were indicated specially with ">>" (as opposed to ">") that represented the words "liar" and "alone".
The page led to by this password contained the video we had already discovered and a crown drawn rather cryptically beneath it that led to a password protected PDF when clicked on.
The password was "king" as indicated by the fact that the picture was a crown and there is a king in our story about the three birds on a wire.
The PDF was a medical file from Mary McCraft, PhD that read as follows:
CASE NO. 11-9-14-7 STEVEN'S ST. INPATIENT
PATIENT
FIRST NAME: JAMES__________ LAST NAME: _________________
DOB: UNKOWN (ESTIMATED AGE 6)_ SOC. SEC. #: _ _ _-_ _ _-_ _ _ _
PSYCHIATRIST: MARY MCCRAFT,PH.D
SESSION NOTES – 7/14/92
James still refuses to speak. To my knowledge, the only time he has spoken was to tell the social services worker his name when he was found wandering downtown last month. I am continuing to ask him questions about his family, his hobbies, and favorite cartoons. He never responds, or provides any indication that he can hear me, but continues to fill pages with his drawings. When I introduced myself and told him my name, he laughed audibly, though he didn't look up from his drawing. The constant preoccupation with sketching doesn't concern me nearly as much as that laugh; it was cynical, and judging somehow, not the peeling laughter of a 6 year old. Never have I heard a child chuckle like that.
The drawings are, however, disturbing, yet also sophisticated. He constructs images by shading in the page with violent black strokes, and the remaining white space takes the form of trees, birds, or indistinguishable, featureless humanoids. The lack of feature distortion in these drawings is what impresses and disquiets me. When most children James' age draw, the proportions of their subjects are usually moderately to severely skewed. This is partly because the young mind perceives features, i.e. hands, feet, heads, size to surroundings, more subjectively than the adult mind. The images in James' drawings, however, show proportions that suggest an uncanny level of developmental maturity and artistic skill, though the aforementioned humanoids he draws tend to be taller and more slender than the average person. That and the use of negative imaging also indicates a kind of intentionality uncommon before the age of fourteen or fifteen.
After reviewing the information in his medical checkup, and observing his behavior, I am confident that James is suffering from moderate to severe post-traumatic stress. And while I would never in any circumstance diagnose a child as young as James, he is showing clear symptoms of early disassociation, likely brought on or triggered by aforementioned trauma.
I will recommend that we increase my sessions with James to twice a week.
END FORM
This development, while interesting, was disquieting because it pointed towards the possibility of the involvement of Slenderman. That would have been super lame.
The site was updated so that clicking at the top of what was then thought to merely be a string of tally marks or something of the sort led to this article: http://www.thesisyphusevent.com/#!464b/c1p8x
Then we discovered that the markings were part of the Ogham Alphabet which is a language from Ireland in the 4th and 5th centuries AD
Someone so kindly provided this link: http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4821/sillyphus.png that indicates the areas that the events from the article may have taken place. (Also, they gave it a very creative name: "sillyphus".)
The Ogham was read to be "IASCARI" which is the Irish for Fishermen.
A portion of the URL of the article was decoded as "FK".
A new string of Ogham was linked to the following Twitter feed under the name of Brandon Rhea @SisyphusEvent: https://twitter.com/SisyphusEvent
The new Ogham text that led to the Twitter feed was translated to "Bran" which presumably is short for Brandon.
Brandon Rhea has informed us of many things through his Twitter. Most notably he has told us that:
He has a cousin named Peter
He went trick or treating with Peter and somebody named John who is presumably (1) very young and (2) Peter's brother
Peter and his family were hit by a drunk driver on Halloween. Peter survived but all of his family died.
Peter will be moving in with him and his family soon.

OK. That is everything that has happened so far that has been either proven to be of significance or has been said to possibly be of significance. Questions that remain are:

Is the subtitle of the post with the link to the website significant in any way? "tellthesoulswithsorrowladenifwithinsomedistantaidenn" is the subject description. With spaces, this reads, "Tell the souls with sorrow laden if within some distant Aidenn". Aidenn is a poetic spelling of Eden (i.e. The Garden of Eden). This username seems to be a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem "The Raven" which is linked here: http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html The referenced line reads, "Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn". I am not familiar with this poem beyond the last stanza. I will read the full poem in the event that I remember to do so and get back to the forum with what this subject line may mean.

What will happen on December 3rd?

What are the faces on the website? Is it significant that they are in white surrounded by black like James' drawings? Are they James' drawings?

Why Slaghterhouse-Five? I am actually already in the process of reading this book (what a coincidence) so I will see if I come across any answers to that.

What does our little poem/riddle mean, if anything, beyond the passwords? "Three black birds lit on a wire two were half honest the other a liar till the king walked by throwing his stones knocked two from their perch left the other alone" My first thought upon reading this was, "Which bird is left?" Is it one of the "half honest" birds or is it the lying bird? It is not explicitly stated that the king throws his rocks at the two half honest birds and leaves the liar alone. It is only stated that he throws rocks at two birds. Who is our king? Who are the three black birds? Which one is the liar? Does the password "liaralone" mean that our liar is Peter? Do our birds who get knocked down die or just go away? Does the bird not hit by a stone stay at his perch? Finally, does this story connect to the myth of Sisyphus in any way? Sisyphus is a king that is punished for his trickery towards Zeus by being forced to push a stone up a hill in Tartarus for all of eternity. If Sisyphus is our King, who are our birds? Some of the other players in stories about Sisyphus are Zeus, Persephone, Thanatos, Ares, Merope, Salmoneus, Asopus, Tyro, and the Oracle of Delphi. Sisyphus was a pretty shitty guy and he could be metaphorically throwing stones at any of these people. I find it most likely that the birds are Zeus, Thanatos, and Salmoneus. The bird that remains is probably Salmoneus as he never succeeds in doing anything particularly bad to him (even though Sisyphus hates Salmoneus and wants to kill him.) He traps Thanatos in Tartarus and tricks Zeus temporarily. Salmoneus would also be our liar as he is put in Tartarus for imitating Zeus' creation of lightning.

Is the image in our YouTube video the place where the events of the article took place? I find this to be very, very likely. Is it also where Peter's family was killed? I find this to be likely, as well. Is there something else hidden in this video that we did not notice because of the other three significant features?

Who is Mary McCraft? Will we hear more from her (I hope so)? Why was James walking downtown alone? Why won't he talk? Why did he laugh at the doctor so maniacally? What is he drawing? The trees, birds, and humanoids are all very interesting. Why is he so interested in his drawing that he will never look up from it? Is he really six years old? His drawings are very sophisticated and the description of his laugh was also very matured. What led Dr. McCraft to believe that James was suffering from PTSD and disassociation? When she says "disassociation" is she referring to Depersonalization Disorder, Dissociative Fugue, Dissociative Amnesia, Dissociative Personality Disorder (previously known as Psychogenic Fugue, Psychogenic Amnesia, and Multiple Personality Disorder respectively until recently -- much after 1992), or something that has not yet developed into any of these?

Why the Ogham Alphabet? Does our story have something to do with Ireland? Why "Fishermen"? This may be because our present day players live in Seattle along the Puget Sound.

There are also things Brandon has let us know that may be significant in the future. Who is the girl with the headphones? Jessie is presumably his sister, but she has not done anything of significance, yet. Can we expect future Doctor Who references? Was Peter's family killed by a drunk driver at all? Brandon was reluctant to release information at first, probably because of a timeline he intended to keep the game to. Maybe his initial reluctance was to tip us off that he wasn't being entirely truthful with us. Then there is his background. He has frickin' birds flying across his twitter page. I wonder what that might have to do with.

How do our stories connect? James, Mary McCraft, Peter, Brandon, Jessie, and our event at the lake all have something to do with this Sisyphus Event that is presumably occurring on December 3rd. I guess only time will tell.

PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2012 11:21 pm
Last edited by Hawthorne on Mon Nov 05, 2012 12:51 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Hawthorne
Boot

Joined: 04 Nov 2012
Posts: 10
Location: Virginia, USA

 		whois
I did a whois on the main site
The PM has asked me to remove his information from here. He is a person too so I will be complying. I figure it's not relevant if he wants it taken down. For those of you who missed it, I had posted the results of a whois search that turned up with the information of a PM. I thought that this information was possibly a part of the game (as it was not hidden as approximately 25% of all domain registrations are) so I contacted him asking what thesisyphusevent was and he responded asking me to take down his information. So I did. Clearly it was not a part of the game. He also said to look forward to December 3rd and that they are working to get more stuff out to us soon.

PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:07 am
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OhWhatProvidence
Entrenched


Joined: 26 Sep 2011
Posts: 819
Location: Dallas, Texas

 		PM removed the relevant stuff like FB, ect. Good call.

Let's not scare him/her away, sheesh. XD

Nice recap, btw. :] Welcome to the world of ARGs!
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Current ARG: 44. Current project: Bound, a modern retelling of Tam Lin

PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:14 am
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natas
PHP Ninja


Joined: 06 Oct 2007
Posts: 3177
Location: Northwest Indiana
OhWhatProvidence wrote:
PM removed the relevant stuff like FB, ect. Good call.

Let's not scare him/her away, sheesh. XD


If the PM didn't bother to make his registration anonymous, that isn't my fault.

PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 1:59 am
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OhWhatProvidence
Entrenched


Joined: 26 Sep 2011
Posts: 819
Location: Dallas, Texas

 		I meant that in a joking way about how we as uF tend to go a bit too far with our snooping/ect. Sorry if it didn't come across like that, text v. tone of voice and all that. Wink
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Current ARG: 44. Current project: Bound, a modern retelling of Tam Lin

PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 2:24 am
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Hawthorne
Boot

Joined: 04 Nov 2012
Posts: 10
Location: Virginia, USA

 		EMAIL FOUND and The Raven
thesisyphusevent@gmail.com
I just found an email thesisyphuseventSPLATgmail.com. (Message me if you want to know how I found it. I don't want the PMs to know that I know what I know.) I don't think the PMs intended for me to find this email, but I don't think it is "behind the curtain" like what I found before. I haven't sent anything to the email, but now we have a way of contacting whoever is in charge of the whole thing. Should I send something to the email or wait until I have something significant to say/ask?

Also, I read "The Raven" by Poe and a short summary is as follows:

The poem begins with a young scholar alone in his home on a December night. He is trying to forget about his lost love Lenore. He hears a rapping at his door and he goes to investigate to reveal that there is nothing there. He hears a similar, but louder, rapping at his window and when he opens up the window, a raven comes in and lands on his bust of Pallas (Pallas Athena, Goddess of Wisdom) that he has above his door. Our narrator ask the raven its name and it replies "Nevermore". He muses at the oddity of a raven that can speak and then states that the raven will soon fly out of his life like everyone else does. The raven replies again, "Nevermore". The narrator reasons that the raven learned the word nevermore from a previous owner and that it is the only word that it knows. He then pulls a chair up in front of the raven and starts thinking about Lenore again. He feels the presence of Seraphims (the highest category of angel in the Catholic hierarchy) entering his chamber and wonders if God is telling him to forget Lenore. The raven replies, "Nevermore". The narrator then gets super pissed and yells at the bird calling it a thing of evil and a prophet. He then, masochistically, asks the bird if he will be reunited with Lenore in heaven. The raven, of course, replies, "Nevermore". He gets even more angry and shouts at the raven some more. He tells it to get out but it does not budge at all. At the time that this poem is being recited, the raven is still sitting on the bust of Pallas and the narrator tells us that his soul is trapped under the raven's shadow to be lifted, "nevermore".

OK. A few things: Poe wrote the poem as a non-allegorical narrative. THIS MEANS POE DID NOT WANT PEOPLE TO READ INTO THE POEM VERY MUCH. IT IS NOT ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT IT SAYS IT IS ABOUT. Ok, now that we've got that out of the way, the poem, overall, is simply the tracing of a single man's path into madness. Poe did not consider a raven that could speak a single word to be very remarkable. He considered it about as remarkable as a parrot speaking. Also, the poem is VERY rhythmic and makes use of typical rhyme schemes as well as internal rhyme. It is so formulaic in its structure that it has been criticised for it. It is unclear whether the narrator wants to keep his memories of Lenore or not. I don't think the narrator knows the answer to that himself. "The Raven" is a favorite of artists to depict and has been created by many famous names. It has been parodied many times. The original has been memorized by famous people such as Abraham Lincoln. There was a movie recently released called "The Raven" about a man who kills inspired by Poe's work.

As for connections to The Sisyphus Event, I have no idea. You tell me. Mostly, I found an email. Yay.

PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 4:35 pm
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OhWhatProvidence
Entrenched


Joined: 26 Sep 2011
Posts: 819
Location: Dallas, Texas

 		Hmmm. The poem stuff is interesting, will check that out later, for now my own ramblings:

I think this has more to do with Irish/Celtic/Welsh mythology than we're seeing. I'll read back up on my stuff (mostly I've been sticking to the Ulster cycle) and see what I can find.

Anyone wants to read up on the Magaibon (sp? The Red book and White book, the Welsh branches of mythology) then that would help too.

First thing off the top of my head is that The Morrigan would often take the form of a crow/raven, (which was associated with her form as Badb, the goddess of War) and that the raven was often seen as a messenger (or death, nach) type of animal.
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Current ARG: 44. Current project: Bound, a modern retelling of Tam Lin

PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 4:49 pm
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