25 More Anomalies

This project went way over my original target number, so I ended up splitting it into two posts. Hope you enjoy these! I've been trying to create a loose Mythos-esque sense of continuity between them with some repeatedly occurring themes and implications. 

26. Euler's Garden (novel): This unpublished manuscript for a science fiction novel tells the story of Adam W. Underwood, a child prodigy who has the ability to set objects on fire with his mind. Underwood attends a boarding school for children with similar abilities and foils a plan by agents of the russian mafiya who have infiltrated the school to harvest and sell the brains of its students. Intertwined with his narrative is the story of two magic-using detectives solving a case on the interplanetary luxury liner M.S. George Costanza. The plot is interspersed with numerous references to advanced mathematics and digressions on physics. While most of the equations and principles cited are accurate to current understandings of mathematics and science, the book also contains several proofs that contradict basic principles of those disciplines and would have wide-ranging implications for numerous fields if true. These proofs have been thoroughly tested and found to be valid.

27. The Black Box (flight recorder): This flight data recorder was once part of United Airlines Flight 389, which crashed into Lake Michigan on August 16, 1965. The recorder is still listed as unrecovered. Its outer casing is covered in dents and scratches not typical of damage incurred during a plane crash, implying that someone clumsily attempted to destroy or pry open the recorder. The recorder shows normal positional information for most of its flight time, but in the minutes before the crash the various measuring systems begin to show bizarre results. The airplane's speed is briefly recorded as being far faster than the speed of sound before returning to normal levels, the altitude measurement changes rapidly from below sea level to semi-orbital heights, and the location indicator rapidly changes, showing coordinates from across the world, though mostly corresponding to remote locations in the southern Pacific. The cockpit voice recorder from the flight has not been recovered.

28. On The Account: An Introduction To Piracy (VHS tape): This tape, dated "June 6th, 1701", contains footage of a man dressed in late 17th century to early 18th century clothing who identifies himself as "Captain Johnson". Based on furnishings present and the visible rocking of the floor, the video appears to have been recorded in a cabin aboard a sailing ship from a similar time period to Johnson's clothing. Johnson offers advice on piracy, including tips on maintaining cannons, choosing promising ships to seize, intimidating enemies, and composing your crew's articles of agreement. Johnson implies that video recording technology is new to him, but that he chose it in order to provide a resource usable by a largely illiterate demographic. The tape ends as Johnson leaves the cabin and steps out onto deck, at which point the footage ends and a message appears on screen telling the viewer to play Tape 2.

29. The John Dee letters (collection of parchment letters): These letters, which have been tested and seem to be authentic, cover a period of correspondence between english occultist John Dee and an unknown individual identified only as "S." They are written in code and have only been partially decoded. From what has been translated so far, Dee and S appear to be friendly at first, and exchange alchemical knowledge and experiments freely (the exact details of these experiments and procedures are still mostly concealed by the layers of ciphers used). Relations between the two seem to grow strained as Dee grows increasingly enthusiastic regarding Britain's imperial ambitions and its establishment of colonies in the Americas, which S warns against. The most recently translated letter is a plea from S to Dee to "deny the Lord Of Tendons the bounty of your esteemed mind" and to "instead turn your genius to brighter endeavors than feeding the shambling beast of provincial conquest". These letters were found in a trunk of personal effects said to have once belonged to Woodes Rogers, who was mentioned in some contemporary accounts to be a great admirer of Dee's. Included with the letters was a record of Rogers' work decoding them with commentary scrawled in the margins in which Rogers dismisses S as a fool and repeatedly uses the phrase "let One Eye rule all hands and let Three Eyes rule none".

30. Sandwina's posting history (dropbox text file): This plain text file collects the posts and private messages made by an internet user with the handle "Sandwina" who primarily posted on bodybuilding and physical fitness forums. Sandwina repeatedly expressed frustration with the frailty and limitations of the human body and pursued increasingly extreme exercise regimens, admitting at several times to regular use of steroids  One of the last pieces of text comes from a PM exchange between Sandwina and an unknown user with no other posts on the site who offers her a "sort of product testing job" that would "transcend all limits". Sandwina is believed to be former WMMA fighter Adelheid Thesiger. Thesiger was barred from the sport in 2008 for excessive roughness during matches and disappeared in 2012, leaving her current whereabouts unknown.

31. Odysseus Repents (series of ceramic vases): The images banding these six vases seem to show a progressing narrative of a bearded man depicted in heroic style who, from context, was interpreted by the discoverer of the vases to be the greek hero Odysseus. The story starts conventionally, with Odysseus departing victorious from Troy, killing the cyclops Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, and being cursed by the gods. However, around the third vase, the narrative diverges from Homeric tradition, showing a dispute breaking out aboard Odysseus' ship, leading to his men splitting into factions and attacking each other. The ship is beset by a storm during the brawl and split, with Odysseus and his crew washing up on a strange, surreal landscape that seems to be a representation of an underwater abyssal plane. Odysseus implores the gods for forgiveness and kills his remaining crew, piling their bodies and sacrificing them to the gods by burning them in a deep-sea thermal vent. In the final image, Odysseus, at the base of the vase, prostrates himself before the gods, shown above him in Olympus on the middle section of the vase. Most stand and look downward, but one, likely Poseidon, prostrates himself as well with his arms pointed upward, towards the top third of the vase, where an enormous vaguely humanoid figure made from intertwined black strands looms over Olympus and reaches down, its appendage splitting into tentacles that circle downwards around the columns of Olympus to meet Odysseus' outstretched hands.

32. Oh Black Rain (poem): A rather amateurishly written poem composed of the lines "take away the pain, oh black rain" in between seemingly meaningless stanzas of rhyming but otherwise randomly chosen words. If every number mentioned in the poem is removed and collected, they can be assembled into a cipher. When this cipher is applied to the rest of the stanzas, the letters form a recipe for creating a potent memory-erasing drug of the type used by certain black budget goverment agencies.

33. Lemurian Menu (restaurant menu): This menu, found among hoarded clutter in an abandoned house, is identical in style and branding to the menus used by the Black Whale Bar And Fish House, a Long Beach Island seafood restaurant, though the location of the restaurant is listed as "6 Jasconius Street, New Barnegat, Lemuria". The menu lists conventional seafood dishes as well as several stranger items, including "scyllops", fish and chips made with "deep fried fastitocalon", "transponder snails escargot style", lobster claws weighing dozens of pounds, and "merman flank".

34. dugtoodeep.mov (video file): This video shows a haggard-looking middle-aged man in a stained business suit hauling large packages of plastic explosives into what appears to be a disused quarry, all while rambling about "exposing them" and "the dero". Throughout the video, flickers of movement can be seen around the distant piles of gravel in the background, though the video quality is too low to make out their sources. After gathering the explosives, the man distributes them around the quarry, connects them with wires, and stands in the center holding a detonator. He then recites the "Peter Pan monologue" from the Christopher Durang play 'Dentity Crisis before saluting the camera and detonating the explosives, destroying the recording equipment and ending the video in the resulting explosion.

35. Carter Aldridge's List (notebook): Only the first few pages of this notebook, dated to the 1940s, have been written in. They first list, in very small handwriting, various chemicals and components including formalin, human cerebrospinal fluid, and "crushed ox bezoars". Several entries on the list are crossed out. The next few pages describe how to mix these ingredients and employ them in crude life-extension procedures. The book was found in an attic chest by Jeffrey Cray, son of Winston Cray, a career butler who spent most of his life working for the wealthy and reclusive Rhode Island shipping company heir Carter Aldridge.

36. Astral Latitudes: Sailing The Antisystem And Beyond (hardcover book): This book, written by "Kazchk Sssarth", who seems to be of the same species as the author of the "Goanna Gourmet" blog, describes the author's experiences yachting on various planets, most of which seem to be similar or the same as those described in the "No Fear" translation of the Voynich Manuscript, though Sssarth appears to have visited them centuries after the manuscipt was written. The author focuses the most detail on sailing and weather conditions, geography, and local culture, but covers a wide array of topics relating to oceanic tourism. Included are sections on how to modify a yacht to use the "Super-Sargasso Sea" to travel between planets, how to sail the cloud seas of Venus, and general advice on whaling. 

37. The 66th Street Tapes (cassette tapes): A series of tapes taken from wiretaps of the 66th Street Club, a Manhattan bar active between 1957 and 1959. The tapes are believed to have been recorded by federal agents and feature long conversations between mostly unidentified people connected by an occasionally mentioned membership in "the honorable society", "our thing", or, once, "Pandemonium". Their conversations frequently touch on both the paranormal and the criminal, and the bar's clientele seem to have been involved in extensive illegal endeavors, including protection rackets, robbery, smuggling, gambling, and diabolism. The voices frequently allude to extensive influence in both criminal and legitimate society and access to supernatural powers, artifacts, and resources. For example, at one point a voice asks if a police officer who had been giving them troubled should be "zapped by Vina, or if we just get Mallory to drain him and then sell the body to some of those lizard guys" or describing a heist which involves one member of the crew creating a "telepathic non-interference field" around a bank and another using her "transmutation drills" to dissolve the concrete walls using alchemy. The last tape begins with the patrons greeting a new arrival, who somehow immediately realizes they are being recorded and then finds and destroys the wiretap.

38. VLOG Day 139 (YouTube video): This video, posted by "grindsetcrypto" was posted on YouTube on January 15, 2017, and remained up for three days before being removed. It received only 43 views in that time. Its description consists simply of a list of hashtags: "#riseandgrind", "#crypto", "#sidehustle", "#startup", "#elonmuskmindset", "#grindset", "#sleeplessgod", "#sacredtendons", and "#underoneeye". In it, a young adult man wearing a t-shirt stands in a crowded bedroom surrounded by computers running crypto-mining programs and describes his progress on a "startup project" that apparently involves an app, though he gives no details on the functions and purposes of the app. The man claims to have been working without sleep or food for several weeks, but that it "will be worth it". He is emaciated and shows signs of malnutrition and dehydration. He also appears to be sunburned and perspiring heavily, and his arms are covered in sores that visibly ooze fluid at several points during the video. Tears pour freely from this eyes throughout the video, though he does not appear sad or even particularly emotional and makes no reference to any of his physical issues. After talking about his startup for several minutes, he switches topics to his cryptocurrency mining setup, which he describes for several minutes, using terms such as "sanguine work" and "marrow cooling". He then turns the camera downward to reveal that the mining computers are connected to his stomach by several thick tubes embedded in his skin. Several of these connections appear to be infected. He then turns the camera back to his face and grins, saying "People say you're crazy for doing this stuff, but, like, that's why they're poor. This is what you gotta do. Some day, this is gonna be worth it. It's gotta be."

39. Bloody Passions (fanfic): This fanfic, originally posted on the tumblr blog "gothicassholes", describes a romance between the character Nadja from the TV series What We Do In The Shadows and the character Lady Dimitrescu from the videogame Resident Evil Village. It is fairly well-written by the standards of fanfiction and contains several author's notes in which gothicassholes compares the the depictions of vampires in both source works to "the real ones" and lists the differences between vampires and ghouls, which she admits is a "fuzzy line".

40. Circular Reasoning (assorted magazine pages): These stapled-together pages appear to have been torn out of a magazine, referred to in the margins as "Magonia Monthly". They provide advice for creating ritual circles for using in summoning and other forms of magic, including information such as the different qualities of chalk and paint, ways to minimize "breakout" risks, and the best surfaces to place circles on.

41. "Wilson's Pens" (ballpoint pens): This collection of six unbranded ballpoint pens was found in the personal collection of David Hildebrand Wilson, creator and operator of the Museum Of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles. When the tips are out and the pens are held to a surface which can be written on, they will move on their own, pulling the user's arm along with them. Each seems to contain a particular set of sentences, the longest of which spans several dozen pages, except for one, which instead draws intricate maps of islands and ocean currents. The five other pens write extended descriptions of covert experiments being carried out in secret subterranean facilities, including experiments related to time travel, reanimation, telekinesis, and an autopsy of an angel. Anything written on by these pens will ignite and burn away the writing ten minutes after being written on.

42. Cthsssk's Bughouse (Grubhub menu page): This restaurant page was briefly accessible to GrubHub users in Pennsylvania and the Australian suburb of South Brisbane on the morning of August 5, 2014. It is unknown if anyone attempted to order from it. The restaurant offered predominantly but not exclusively insect-based dishes, including a "tub o' grubs", "cricketcakes", fried spider, and a "premium primate burger with swiss cheese and our special waspjam". The prices were reportedly extremely reasonable.

43. Know Your Chromatophores (pamphlet): Several of these pamphlets were found discarded in the Kinko's copy shop where they had presumably been printed. They photos and clip-art of smiling professionals next to circular swatches of colors and patterns, with the apparent meanings of these patterns written under them. The text of the pamphlets tells the reader to "get ahead!" by "learning the skin-moods of your shoal queen" in order to "please her and show that you have internalized her superiority over your own tepid meat casing".

44. Huntress' Drive (combination knife/flash drive): A hunting knife that contains a USB drive hidden in the handle. On it are numerous photos and video files. Most of the photos are of either wilderness landscapes (some identified as locations on earth with others unidentified and several resembling the surfaces of Mars, the Moon, Mercury, Titan, and an unidentified asteroid) or show several individuals involved in the process of hunting, butchering, and posing with the corpses of various animals. These animals include cape buffalo, an unknown species of four-tusked elephant, an unidentified species of prehistoric "terror bird", apatosauruses, an immense land-dwelling echinoderm, and several tall bipedal hairy primates. The most frequently appearing hunter is a tall, very pale woman wearing elegant, clearly tailored hunting and survival gear, sometimes with goggles, a wide-brimmed hat, and bandages or other wrappings covering all exposed skin in photos and videos taken in daylight. She appears blurry and unfocused in several of the photos and videos, even when her surroundings and others are clear. In one, she appears to notice this and laughs, remarking that she "forgot to set the thaumoculus". She then approaches the camera and tinkers with it for several seconds before withdrawing, now clearly visible. She and the other hunters use a variety of weapons, from bows and crossbows to elephant guns, shotguns, anti-materiel rifles, directed-energy weapons (one of which is referred to by one of the hunters as a "neutron special"), and what appears to be a railgun constructed from the skull of an unknown animal.

45. The Cryptozoologist's Camera (digital camera): This Nikon D780 camera vanished en route to a recent "black auction" in which it was intended to be offered as a potential bidding item. It was formerly used by Gary Baum, a conspiracy theorist and cryptozoologist known for perpetrating the Alabama Sasquatch Hoax as well as numerous other faked paranormal sightings. The camera contains both photos taken to be used in these hoaxes as well as photos of how Baum constructed the props used to fake these sightings, such as his sasquatch puppet and several drones used to carry paper cutouts of UFOs and mothmen. In some of these photos, Gary appears with more than two arms or surrounded by what appear to be levitating objects. In several photos, humanoid figures wearing overalls are seen helping prepare his materials. These figures all appear to have only one eye and no other facial features.

46. "She Showed Me The Way" (television advertisements): A series of television advertisements broadcast on
Florida public access channels during the first week of July 1998 between 2 and 4 AM. They show diverse groups of people standing on a beach facing the camera holding hands. Each of these people seems to have tattoos or markings covering their arms, chests, and necks, and several are bandaged. One appears to have a third eye in his forehead. After a short orchestral opening, the camera zooms in on a central person who then addresses the camera, saying that "she has shown me the way" and that "my problems are gone, I feel better, I look better, I am better...and you can be too." Others then speak, encouraging the watcher to "just take the plunge" and "just give in" to "the song of a thousand summers" and "the sublime billionfold voice of salt-sprayed chitin". The camera then zooms out to the entire group, who all chant "The ape is obsolete! Don't be a dead end!" in unison three times before the video ends.

47. "Crush The Sinner Between Her Immaculate Gears" (lyrics sheet): This sheet, found on a New York subway train, features the logo of the "Primum Mobile Church Of The Most Holy Engine", and has lyrics in which the singer calls on a "clockwork goddess" to crush their enemies, with each verse being devoted to a different type of machine used for the disposal of heretics.

48. "Annabel's iPhone" (iPhone): A yellow iPhone 5 found in 2015 in the lost and found of a Burger King in Pennington, New Jersey. It was, judging by the recorded message left on it, apparently owned by someone named Annabel. Its photo folders contained numerous strange pictures, including scenery that did not match with any known location and often included elements such as floating landmasses, an island supported on the back of an enormous turtle, large skeletons embedded in the landscape, and impossibly high towers and skyscrapers. The outgoing texts frequently include advice on how to access the "Super-Sargasso Sea" and how to "avoid the illhveli when you're near their habitats". The phone is jailbroken and has had numerous emulators for various game systems installed on it.

49. Spy Watch (smartwatch): A DigiKuber IP68 "spy watch" with an internal recorder that has almost been filled to capacity with recorded audio. Most of it is comprised of uneventful dialogue that appears to take place in an office owned or connected to the corporation Proteus Pharmaceuticals. However, there are several hushed conversations between employees and, presumably, the wearer of the watch regarding "Project Epimetheus", which apparently involves "high saturation aerial deployment" of something called "Compound 677C" and will require the corporation to prepare for "mass panic", "periods of heightened social unrest", and "inevitable hostile goverment response". The final conversation is with an individual tentatively identified as the company's Executive Vice President Of Product Development (formerly employed as Vice Chief Imagineer at the Disney corporation) Klaus Oswald Bertram. Bertram speaks with enthusiasm about "opening night" and "our big blowout" and mentions that "T01 is raring to go, and of course T02 just does whatever I tell her. Don't worry about T03, she'll come around. You're gonna love seeing them in action. But I'm just as excited for the backup dancers. The Grinders, the Bellowers, the Karkinoids...it's gonna be one hell of a show."

50. Benjamin Briggs' Log (captain's log): The actual captain's log of the Mary Celeste, which was stolen and replaced with a forgery shortly after the ship was found by the crew of the Dei Gratia. Its contents are identical to those of the fake log for the first few days, but the true log diverges afterwards. Briggs makes mentions of "strange lights" in the water that appear to be following the ship, a high-pitched keening noise that can occasionally be heard over the sound of the ocean, and several instances in which a large, unidentified underwater object impacted the Mary Celeste, causing it to shake and at one point nearly capsizing it. The last entry, dated one day before the fake log's last entry, describes an incident in which a seaman woke Briggs late at night to tell him that one of the crew had vanished. Briggs and the man then stepped out onto deck and saw an indistinct figure standing near the ship's prow that did not respond when they called out to it. They approached the figure, but it leapt off the deck into the ocean before they could come close enough to see it.