# Chilling Internet Rabbit Holes | 252

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 11 Jun 2026, 1 h 01 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO8375224325.mp3

Join me for 1 hour of chilling dark web crimes and internet mysteries. Episode 252 of the true crime podcast btw. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, internet crimes, internet mysteries, rabbit hole, internet rabbithole

## Transcript

[0:01] There's something uniquely unsettling about a mystery that
[0:04] predates the Internet itself, but didn't take root until it
[0:07] was discovered online. We live in an era where almost
[0:11] anyone can be identified through facial recognition and digital
[0:15] bread crumbs. The idea that a person could
[0:18] appear on camera for nearly half an hour, make no effort to
[0:21] conceal their identity, and still remain completely
[0:25] anonymous decades later feels almost impossible.
[0:29] Yet that's exactly what happened with a grainy VHS recording that
[0:33] has come to be known as Grave Robbing for Morons.
[0:38] It's a roughly 26 minute video featuring a young man who claims
[0:42] to be an experienced grave robber and proceeds to deliver
[0:45] what can only be described as a tutorial on the subject.
[0:49] The footage is bizarre and disturbing, and since it first
[0:53] surfaced online in the late 2000s, nobody has been able to
[0:57] definitively answer the three central questions it raises.
[1:01] Who made the video? When exactly was it made, and is
[1:05] any of what's depicted actually real?
[1:09] The video itself is remarkably straightforward in its
[1:12] presentation, almost disarmingly so.
[1:15] A young man, likely a teenager or someone in his very early
[1:19] 20s, sits in what appears to be a cluttered, dimly lit room.
[1:24] He's wearing jeans and a leather jacket, his long dark hair
[1:28] pulled back into a ponytail, and he's holding what looks very
[1:31] much like a real human skull. Throughout the video, he
[1:35] describes his methods for robbing graves, discusses the
[1:39] best times of year to do it, and mentions that skulls can be sold
[1:43] to a cult shops. He identifies himself only as
[1:46] Anthony and references a handful of associates, including someone
[1:51] he calls Gino who appears to be operating the camera.
[1:56] He has a noticeable speech impediment, and the entire
[1:59] production has the raw, unpolished feel of something
[2:02] recorded in somebody's living room on a whim.
[2:07] Understanding how this video reached the public requires
[2:10] stepping back into a world that doesn't exist anymore.
[2:13] The underground video trading scene of the late 1980s and
[2:16] 1990s. Before the Internet made
[2:19] distributing video as easy as clicking a button, collectors of
[2:23] obscure and extreme content would trade bootleg tapes at
[2:27] conventions and through mail order catalogs.
[2:30] The original tape apparently circulated through these
[2:32] channels for years before anyone thought to digitize it.
[2:38] The first confirmed online appearance of the video came in
[2:41] August 2009 when an online store listed a bootleg compilation
[2:46] titled Ensuring Your Place in Hell.
[2:49] This compilation contained 4 distinct segments of varying
[2:53] quality and tone, each roughly 30 minutes long.
[2:57] Some of the other segments were later proven to be what
[3:00] essentially amounted to low budget homemade horror flicks.
[3:04] This would eventually fuel the idea that Grave Robbing for
[3:06] Morons was essentially a video project slapped together by
[3:10] horror obsessed teenagers. But more on that in a bit.
[3:15] Despite appearing online in 2009, it didn't gain much
[3:19] traction until August 2014 when a YouTube named Simon Prege
[3:24] uploaded the now famous video. Even then, it took a couple more
[3:29] years before it began to have its viral moment, ending up
[3:33] accumulating almost 1 million views.
[3:36] What followed was significant research, and it was discovered
[3:40] that the seller of the DVD compilation received it from a
[3:43] private collector in the early 2000s.
[3:48] Unfortunately, though, the man who compiled the videos together
[3:51] was no meticulous record keeper. He wasn't sure where exactly he
[3:55] met the private collector, nor did he recall any conversations
[3:59] with him about the provenance of the video itself.
[4:02] That said, he believed that he may have encountered this
[4:05] collector at a convention. Despite calls for this
[4:09] individual to come forward with further information, that
[4:12] private collector still remains a complete unknown.
[4:18] One of the few concrete clues about when the video was
[4:20] produced comes from within the footage itself.
[4:24] Visible in the room during the recording is Avhs copy of Evil
[4:27] Dead 2 Dead by Dawn, which wasn't released on home video
[4:31] until 1987. For many years, this was thought
[4:35] to be the only definitively identifying object in the video.
[4:40] However, an intrepid redditor who goes by the username of C
[4:43] Pager would later identify a copy of a magazine on the table.
[4:48] It was a Fangoria spin off magazine that was published on
[4:51] July 16th, 1989, further narrowing down the timeline.
[4:57] As of now, everything else in the room is consistent with the
[5:00] very late 1980s or the very early 1990s.
[5:04] With no further clues to suggest a more exact date, most
[5:08] researchers have settled on a narrow window of approximately
[5:11] 1989 to 1990 as the most likely period of production.
[5:18] Over the years, Internet sleuths have proposed several theories
[5:22] about the identity of the young man in the video.
[5:25] The most prominent of these connects him to Anthony
[5:28] Casimassima, a real New York grave robber who was arrested in
[5:32] the late 1990s. At one point in the video, the
[5:37] narrator appears to start giving his full name, saying something
[5:41] that sounds like it could begin with the syllables of
[5:43] Casimassima's surname. This was long believed to be the
[5:47] most likely scenario, until 2 pieces of evidence ran counter
[5:51] to this narrative. The first is that Casemassima
[5:55] would have been at least 30 years old in the video, much
[5:59] older than the young man pictured.
[6:02] However, what really ended the debate was the discovery of
[6:05] photographs of Casemassima which clearly showed he couldn't have
[6:08] been the man in the video. Another recurring theory across
[6:13] the Internet identifies the narrator as a Brooklyn based
[6:16] individual nicknamed Screws. He allegedly operated out of the
[6:21] Red Hook neighborhood and ran a shop selling bootleg goods,
[6:25] including movies and knock off clothing.
[6:29] The nickname supposedly stemmed from his reputation for cheating
[6:32] people. Multiple independent posts
[6:35] across different platforms have repeated the same story, with
[6:39] most claiming that Screws has been dead for roughly 2 decades.
[6:44] While the consistency of these claims is notable, forum posts
[6:47] from anonymous users don't constitute reliable evidence.
[6:52] Further, nobody has ever been able to verify this
[6:54] identification through any official records or more
[6:57] credible sourcing. It looks as though the initial
[7:00] identification of this young man as Screws stems back to a
[7:04] YouTube comment. It's possible that all the
[7:08] additional, seemingly independent comments confirming
[7:11] that he was the guy are all working from the same initial
[7:14] anonymous source. Perhaps the most compelling
[7:19] contextual theory doesn't identify the narrator at all,
[7:23] but instead suggests where his ideas may have come from.
[7:27] In 1984, a Long Island teenager named Ricky Kasso was arrested
[7:32] for the slaying of his friend Gary Lowers in what was
[7:35] described as a satanic ritual. Before the ACT, Kasso had been
[7:40] involved in grave robbing, and his friend Randy Gethler had
[7:45] been arrested for stealing a skull and a hand from a
[7:47] mausoleum. During questioning, Gethler told
[7:51] police he'd heard he could get 500 to $600.00 for a skull at an
[7:55] occult shop in New York City. In 1987, author David St.
[8:01] Clair published A heavily fictionalized account of the
[8:04] CASO case titled Say You Love Satan.
[8:08] The book was popular among teenage metal heads and proto
[8:11] edgelords, and it included a passage about a Greenwich
[8:15] Village store that paid $500.00 for a skull.
[8:19] The narrator of Grave Robbing for Morons repeats this claim
[8:23] almost identically, strongly suggesting he'd read the book.
[8:28] This connection, combined with what appears to be a Long Island
[8:32] or Greater New York accent, paints a picture of a misfit who
[8:36] was likely inspired by local dark folklore.
[8:41] One of the most debated aspects of the video is the skull
[8:44] itself. The general consensus among both
[8:47] experts and amateur investigators is that the skull
[8:51] Anthony holds throughout the video is genuine.
[8:56] It appears to be a real human skull, and one that he
[9:00] incorrectly identifies as male when it actually exhibits
[9:04] characteristics more consistent with a female skull.
[9:08] This detail is actually somewhat important because it undermines
[9:11] the idea that Anthony possessed any real expertise.
[9:16] Much of his advice throughout the video is either impractical,
[9:20] clearly wrong, or appears to have been lifted directly from
[9:23] the Say You Love Satan book. His instructions on dealing with
[9:28] potential witnesses, for example, have been cited as a
[9:32] strong indicator that he was making things up as he went
[9:35] along. Personally, I agree with this
[9:38] assessment, and I'll let Anthony tell it in his own words because
[9:42] honestly, this part is too silly not to include.
[9:46] If you have to knock them out, knock them out so that way they
[9:48] think it's a dream. It's best not to kill, but if
[9:53] it's necessary, do it. There's also another part of the
[9:58] video where he casually drops that you can easily get
[10:00] 1,000,000 bucks for a celebrity skull, citing the potential for
[10:04] a big money Elvis heist. It's like if you want I'm Elvis
[10:09] or something, you get at least a mil for it.
[10:13] All right, You want Marilyn Monroe, at least get a milk for
[10:17] you know, you get high prices. The more famous they are get the
[10:20] most high prices, right? So if that person really wants
[10:24] it, they will get that money, Ross.
[10:28] Otherwise it's not worth it. And always ask for money
[10:30] upfront. The prevailing view among
[10:33] serious researchers is that while the skull is likely real,
[10:37] Anthony and his friends were probably not the seasoned grave
[10:40] robbers they claimed to be. They may have obtained a skull
[10:44] through some means, possibly even through actual grave
[10:48] disturbance, but their knowledge of the practice was largely
[10:53] performative. It seems that they cobbled
[10:56] together their understanding of grave robbing from real crimes
[10:59] and horror movies rather than actual experience.
[11:04] What makes grave robbing for morons so persistently
[11:08] fascinating isn't really the content of the video itself, as
[11:12] disturbing as that content may be, it's the fact that it
[11:16] represents a kind of mystery that's becoming increasingly
[11:20] rare. It's a genuine artifact from the
[11:23] analog age, a piece of footage that predates the tools we now
[11:28] take for granted for identifying people and verifying claims.
[11:32] There are no digital fingerprints, no metadata to
[11:35] examine, no social media profiles to cross reference.
[11:40] The video exists almost in isolation, a strange artifact
[11:44] from a time when a teenager could record something deeply
[11:47] weird in a cluttered room and have it circulate on copied
[11:51] tapes. Somewhere in the hidden layers
[11:57] of the Internet, buried beneath encryption and anonymity, a
[12:01] website once promised something unthinkable.
[12:04] It called itself Base a Mafia, and it claimed to connect paying
[12:08] customers with professional assassins who'd carry out hits
[12:11] anywhere in the world. For a fee starting around $5000
[12:15] in Bitcoin, users could supposedly order a standard hit
[12:19] on anyone they wanted dead. For 10,000, they could have the
[12:24] attack staged to look like an accident.
[12:27] The site presented itself as an offshoot of Albanian organized
[12:30] crime, complete with a shadowy administrator, user profiles,
[12:36] and a system mimicking legitimate online marketplaces.
[12:40] But here's the thing that makes this story so deeply strange and
[12:43] so deeply disturbing at the same time.
[12:46] It was all a scam. Nobody was ever getting
[12:49] assassinated through base of mafia.
[12:52] The hit men didn't exist. The supposed Albanian mob
[12:56] connections were pure fiction. The entire operation was an
[13:00] elaborate fraud designed to steal Bitcoin from people who
[13:03] genuinely wanted other people dead.
[13:06] And yet, despite being completely fake as a service,
[13:10] the site left a trail of very real destruction, including
[13:13] actual deaths, federal convictions, and shattered lives
[13:17] across multiple countries. The figure at the center of the
[13:22] operation went by the name Eura. Nobody knew his real identity
[13:26] for years, though the broken English in his communications
[13:30] and various digital bread crumbs pointed toward Eastern Europe,
[13:34] most likely Romania. Eura didn't just run one site.
[13:39] Over the course of several years, he operated a series of
[13:42] hitman for hire platforms under different names.
[13:46] These included Kimura, Hitman, Crime Bay, Cosa Nostra and the
[13:51] very bluntly titled #1 Hitman Marketplace.
[13:55] Each time 1 was exposed or shut down, another would spring up in
[13:59] its place. The business model was
[14:03] remarkably cynical and incredibly chilling.
[14:06] Users would find the site through the Tor browser, sign
[14:09] up, provide details about their intended victim including
[14:13] photographs, addresses and daily routines, and then submit a
[14:17] payment. From there, Eura would string
[14:20] them along with excuse after excuse.
[14:23] A common tactic was to claim the assigned hitman had been
[14:26] arrested by police or encountered some complication,
[14:30] then demand additional funds for a replacement.
[14:33] It was a classic con, but one operating in a space so morally
[14:37] compromised that victims of the scam could hardly complain to
[14:41] anyone. After all, you can't exactly
[14:45] file a fraud report when you've been cheated out of money you
[14:48] spent to retain a hitman. What made Basa Mafia especially
[14:53] effective was the effort you're a put into maintaining the
[14:56] illusion. He hired freelancers to run
[14:59] online campaigns, boosting the site's visibility.
[15:02] He created websites that simultaneously condemned and
[15:05] promoted the operation, generating a self reinforcing
[15:09] cycle of online discussion. These websites would report on
[15:13] the absolute travesty of the base of Mafia and its kingpin
[15:17] Yura, a negative marketing campaign intended to drive marks
[15:20] to his website. He even produced staged proof of
[15:24] violence videos to intimidate so-called critics, including one
[15:28] clip showing a car being set on fire with a sign referencing A
[15:32] critic's website. Little did credulous viewers
[15:36] know that he was doing this himself in an effort to make him
[15:40] seem like a powerful underworld figure.
[15:43] Interestingly, when his customers became too insistent
[15:47] that they had been scammed, he fed their names and information
[15:51] to the authorities. He told the authorities this was
[15:54] a public service, but it was really just one more element of
[15:58] his business model. It's also believed that he had
[16:02] hoped to generate uncertainty about who he actually was from
[16:05] local law enforcement. To them, he didn't claim he was
[16:09] an Albanian mafia figure, but something entirely different and
[16:14] somehow more fear inducing. He implied that he was connected
[16:18] to various intelligence agencies and the operation was actually a
[16:22] honeypot to lure in people who wanted to off their enemies.
[16:27] Much like with Jeffrey Epstein, this intelligence connection was
[16:31] intended to have a chilling effect on any local law
[16:35] enforcement investigations. The first person to seriously
[16:40] challenge Base of Mafia's facade was Chris Montero, a
[16:44] london-based IT specialist and cybersecurity researcher.
[16:48] In 2016, Montero noticed someone had accessed his blog and edited
[16:53] one of his posts about dark web scams to insist Base of Mafia
[16:57] was legitimate. The initial post hadn't
[17:00] mentioned Yura's operation at all, and the edit immediately
[17:04] struck him as suspicious. He investigated the site,
[17:08] quickly concluded it was fraudulent, and published his
[17:11] findings on his blog. What followed was an escalating
[17:15] conflict between Montero and Yura.
[17:18] The site's operator tried to bribe him into taking down his
[17:21] critical posts. When that failed, Yura sent
[17:25] Montero the car burning video as an intimidation tactic.
[17:31] Montero, undeterred, exploited a vulnerability in the base of
[17:35] mafia messaging system and gained access to the site's back
[17:39] end. And what he found there was
[17:41] staggering. Hundreds of real people had
[17:44] submitted orders requesting killings, beatings, kidnappings,
[17:49] and acts of arson. The messages were graphic and
[17:53] disturbingly specific, and they weren't idol fantasies.
[17:58] People had paid real money and provided real details about real
[18:02] targets. Montero began passing
[18:06] information to law enforcement, working alongside Australian
[18:09] journalist and dark web expert Eileen Ormsby, who'd
[18:12] independently gained access to the same data.
[18:16] Ormsby, a lawyer turned investigative writer, had been
[18:19] researching dark web marketplaces for years and
[18:23] recognized the danger immediately.
[18:25] Together, they tried to alert police agencies around the world
[18:30] about the targets on what amounted to a kill list.
[18:34] The response from authorities was frustratingly slow, and many
[18:38] agencies dismissed the information because the site was
[18:41] known to be a scam. The logic seemed to be that if
[18:45] the hit men were fake, there was nothing to worry about.
[18:49] But that reasoning turned out to be tragically and fatally wrong.
[18:54] But before I talk about that, it's worth mentioning that
[18:58] Montero himself was arrested in 2017 after Europe planted false
[19:03] information online, framing him as the site's actual operator.
[19:09] He spent two days in custody before the cops realized their
[19:12] mistake and released him. The most devastating consequence
[19:17] of Basa Mafia's existence was the case of Amy Alwine, a dog
[19:21] trainer and devoted mother from Cottage Grove, MN.
[19:25] In February 2016, someone using the screen name Dog Day God
[19:31] contacted the service and ordered a hit on Amy.
[19:35] The user provided her photograph, her travel schedule
[19:39] and her home address and paid thousands of dollars in Bitcoin.
[19:43] Base of mafia strung the customer along with the usual
[19:46] excuses. The hit man had been arrested.
[19:50] More money was needed. A dog ate the hit man's weapon.
[19:54] The usual excuses. In May 2016, after the site was
[19:59] hacked and its customer data leaked, the FBI learned about
[20:03] the threat against Amy. What happened next is absolutely
[20:07] wild. Considering how often the spouse
[20:10] is the one who is responsible in these sorts of cases, agents
[20:14] contacted the Alwine household and informed both Amy and her
[20:18] husband Steven that someone had paid to have her knocked off.
[20:22] They advised the couple to install security cameras and
[20:25] purchase a weapon for self-defense.
[20:28] Curiously, the FBI apparently never considered Steven a
[20:31] suspect, even though he was sitting right there in the room
[20:34] during the notification. That turned out to be a
[20:38] catastrophic oversight. And as it turned out, Steven
[20:42] Alwine was Dog Day God in the flesh.
[20:45] He was a church elder who'd been carrying on multiple
[20:47] extramarital affairs through the dating site Ashley Madison.
[20:52] His church didn't condone divorce, and he'd taken out a
[20:56] $700,000 life insurance policy on his wife.
[21:00] And yet, last I checked, there's something in the Bible that
[21:03] forbids cheating on your wife, then offing her for a tidy
[21:06] profit. But hey, I'm not a theologian.
[21:11] When his dark web plot failed because the hit man he'd hired
[21:14] simply didn't exist, he took matters into his own hands.
[21:19] On November 13th, 2016, Steven drugged Amy with a massive dose
[21:24] of scopolamine, a drug that causes extreme disorientation,
[21:28] then shot her and attempted to stage the scene.
[21:32] The gun was placed near her left hand, though she was
[21:35] right-handed and there was no residue on her hands.
[21:39] The case unravelled when a computer forensics expert
[21:41] discovered a unique 34 character Bitcoin address found on Stevens
[21:45] laptop. This was identical to the one
[21:48] Dog Day God had used to pay base a mafia, and Steven Alwine
[21:52] quickly let the police know that he'd been the victim of a
[21:55] sophisticated set up by the real perp.
[21:58] Unsurprisingly, detectives and prosecutors didn't buy this
[22:02] story, and he was clapped in cuffs and eventually put on
[22:05] trial. In January 2018, Stephen Alwine
[22:10] was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the
[22:13] possibility of parole. Amy Alwine's killing wasn't the
[22:19] only real world crime connected to the site, and the full extent
[22:22] of the fallout worldwide isn't known.
[22:25] A Nevada woman named Christy Falcons was sentenced to five
[22:29] years in federal prison after paying roughly $5000 in Bitcoin
[22:33] through Basa Mafia to offer ex-husband.
[22:38] A Minnesota teenager discovered that someone had paid the site
[22:41] thousands of dollars to have her slain, an ordeal that left
[22:45] lasting psychological scars. An American soldier was found
[22:50] dead under suspicious circumstances in 2018 after
[22:55] someone used his computer to order a hit on his stepmother.
[22:59] In a bizarre twist, he allegedly paid the platform 5 bucks in
[23:04] Bitcoin to fill the contract, and it's unclear if he truly
[23:08] believed this would be sufficient for them to do the
[23:10] deed. Disturbingly, unlike Dog Day
[23:14] God, some have theorized that he may have actually been framed,
[23:19] especially given the fact that he sent the equivalent of $5.
[23:25] By 2022, data gathered from Montero's investigation and
[23:29] subsequent law enforcement efforts had contributed to at
[23:32] least 25 arrests, mostly in Romania.
[23:36] The site and its variance had generated an estimated 6 and a
[23:39] half, $1,000,000 in cryptocurrency over its
[23:41] lifespan. Even after the arrests, it
[23:45] remained unclear whether Yura was a single person who'd built
[23:49] an operation requiring A-Team, or whether it had always been a
[23:53] group effort. If there really was a Yura, and
[23:57] this wasn't just a collective name, he's never been
[24:00] apprehended. Some have speculated that he may
[24:04] be located in Moldavia or the breakaway Republic of
[24:08] Transnistria, the latter of which would put him essentially
[24:11] outside the law in the end. Whatever the case, it's clear
[24:17] that there was a very sophisticated organized crime
[24:20] gang behind the Basa Mafia. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy
[24:27] dropping in, letting you know how grateful I am that you made
[24:30] it this far in my video. If you're enjoying the content,
[24:34] don't forget to hit the like and subscribe buttons and Ding that
[24:37] notification bell. Also, don't forget to check out
[24:41] the Patreon or the YouTube membership if you want to
[24:44] support my channel further. Somewhere in South Korea, in a
[24:51] small and cluttered apt, a woman has been broadcasting her life
[24:55] to the Internet for well over 2 decades.
[24:58] She sleeps for extraordinarily long stretches, sometimes upward
[25:02] of 12 or even 20 hours at a time.
[25:06] She holds up handwritten signs in Korean to whoever might be
[25:09] watching, and what they say are deeply concerning.
[25:13] She claims she's being controlled by a corrupt police
[25:15] officer through a microchip implanted in her body.
[25:20] Nobody knows her real name, and nobody has been able to confirm
[25:23] or fully disprove her story, despite her being in the public
[25:27] eye for so long. For the thousands of people
[25:30] who've watched her streams, the mystery of the woman known as
[25:34] Chip Chan remains one of the most haunting puzzles the
[25:37] Internet has ever produced. The story begins around 2008,
[25:43] when a user browsing 4 Chan's paranormal board stumbled across
[25:47] something unsettling during a thread dedicated to finding
[25:51] unsecured webcam feeds. The feed showed a Korean woman
[25:55] lying motionless on the floor of a messy apartment, surrounded by
[25:59] large sheets of paper covered in Korean writing.
[26:03] She didn't move for hours, and many anonymous posters assumed
[26:06] that she was dead. Then, without warning, she
[26:11] sprang to life, quickly hiding behind a stack of handmade signs
[26:16] as though she knew she was being watched.
[26:19] The user posted the link, and from that moment on, an online
[26:23] community formed around trying to figure out who this woman was
[26:27] and what was happening to her. Through her blogs, live stream
[26:33] chats, recorded audio messages, and the countless handwritten
[26:37] signs she's held up to the camera over the years, a
[26:40] narrative has taken shape. According to Chip Chan, a
[26:45] corrupt South Korean police officer she refers to only as P
[26:49] implanted a device known as a very chip into her body, near
[26:53] the cartilage of her ankle. According to the Chip Chan lure,
[26:57] so to speak, this occurred sometime around 2006.
[27:02] A very chip is a real product, an injectable radio frequency
[27:06] identification microchip originally designed for
[27:09] identification purposes similar to the kind used to tag pets.
[27:14] Chip Chan, however, claims that the chip implanted in her body
[27:18] goes far beyond simple tracking. She insists that P can use it to
[27:22] control her mind, force her to lose consciousness at will, see
[27:27] through her eyes, and cause skin rashes and outbreaks.
[27:33] She believes that he essentially holds her prisoner in her own
[27:35] home without ever needing to physically be there.
[27:39] However, she has also claimed at other points to have been living
[27:42] this lifestyle since 1996, calling into question the
[27:47] veracity of the entire origin story.
[27:52] She claims that her parents are deceased and left her a large
[27:55] inheritance, which P is allegedly trying to control.
[28:00] This, she says, is his motivation for keeping her
[28:03] captive, and she's stated in communications with viewers that
[28:08] she's met P only two or three times in person.
[28:12] She refuses to reveal his full name or rank, though she has
[28:16] referenced specific names of officers she alleges are
[28:20] connected to his network. She doesn't go to the police
[28:24] because she believes the entire force itself is complicit and
[28:28] that reporting P would only make things worse.
[28:31] While she used to be a dedicated live streamer, she gradually
[28:35] moved away from the platform, posting on YouTube instead under
[28:39] the channel Mind Control Weapon. Her YouTube channel has been her
[28:43] most active online presence in recent years, and her streaming
[28:47] frequency has declined steadily over time.
[28:51] What viewers have observed over the years paints A troubling
[28:54] picture, regardless of which explanation one finds most
[28:57] plausible. Chip Chan spends the vast
[29:00] majority of her time either sleeping or sitting at a
[29:02] computer. She sleeps in unusual and
[29:05] seemingly uncomfortable positions, often in a chair or
[29:09] on the floor, and occasionally inside a large filing cabinet.
[29:14] Her sleeping patterns are erratic and extreme, with
[29:17] sessions lasting 12 hours or far longer.
[29:21] She appears lethargic, unkempt, and in poor physical health,
[29:26] with skin rashes and wounds of unknown origin that she's
[29:29] documented in photos and videos over the years.
[29:33] According to her own head cannon, these skin conditions
[29:37] and wounds are caused by Pee and his thugs through the use of the
[29:40] chip. Her apartment is filled with the
[29:44] handwritten signs she uses to communicate with the outside
[29:48] world. Translations of these signs have
[29:51] revealed messages that are equal parts desperate, disorienting,
[29:55] and nonsensical. One reads that P has been using
[29:59] a particular technique since 2006, causing her to sleep for
[30:03] 20 hours a day and leaving her terrified of falling asleep.
[30:08] Another describes how the police officer forces her to lose
[30:11] consciousness at any time, which is why she always sleeps sitting
[30:16] in a chair. Other signs ask how anyone could
[30:19] sleep sitting upright every single day unless they were
[30:22] being forced to lose consciousness against their
[30:24] will. The cameras in her apartment are
[30:28] set up throughout multiple rooms and appear to have been placed
[30:31] there by Chipchon herself, not by a captor.
[30:36] Early speculation suggested that P had installed the cameras to
[30:40] surveil her and that the public feed was accidental.
[30:45] As I mentioned, she was originally found through an
[30:47] unsecured webcam that wasn't apparently for public
[30:50] consumption, raising serious concerns that some elements of
[30:55] her story were true. 4 Chan users initially speculated that
[30:59] someone, perhaps the police officer, had placed this
[31:03] vulnerable woman under 24/7 surveillance against her will.
[31:08] However, it became clear over time that she was fully aware of
[31:11] the cameras and also in control of the streams.
[31:15] She used them as her connection to the outside world, her way of
[31:19] proving that she exists and that something is being done to her.
[31:25] Concerned viewers haven't just watched passively, and over the
[31:28] years, multiple individuals and groups have attempted to
[31:32] intervene on Chip's behalf. People from around the world
[31:35] have contacted South Korean police to report what they
[31:38] believed was a woman being held captive.
[31:41] Korean police reportedly stated that they were already aware of
[31:45] her and described her as a mentally ill woman who was a
[31:49] regular nuisance to the department.
[31:52] This response didn't satisfy many of her followers, who felt
[31:56] the police were either dismissing her too quickly or
[31:59] were potentially covering for one of their own, as her
[32:02] narrative suggested. Others have gone further than
[32:06] phone calls, and a YouTube reportedly identified what they
[32:10] believed to be her physical address, though this was never
[32:14] conclusively confirmed. And I do feel like it's
[32:18] necessary to state at this point that no one should engage in any
[32:21] sort of doxing behavior. At least two people are believed
[32:27] to have visited her apartment in person regularly over the years.
[32:31] During certain streams, an older couple has been seen briefly
[32:35] appearing on camera, leading to speculation that relatives may
[32:39] be checking in on her or providing some form of care.
[32:44] These glimpses of outside interaction have offered a small
[32:47] measure of reassurance to those who worry about her safety, but
[32:51] they've never been enough to fully resolve the mystery.
[32:55] Several explanations have been proposed over the years and each
[32:59] carries its own set of problems. The 1st and most commonly
[33:02] discussed theory is that Chip Chan is suffering from a severe
[33:06] mental illness, most likely paranoid schizophrenia.
[33:10] The belief that a microchip has been implanted in one's body and
[33:14] is being used for surveillance and control is a well documented
[33:18] delusion. It falls under the umbrella of
[33:22] what researchers and online communities refer to as the
[33:25] targeted individual phenomenon. 10s of thousands of people
[33:30] worldwide reportedly believe they're being monitored and
[33:33] harassed by organized groups or government agencies using
[33:37] advanced technology. Chip Chan's claims aligned
[33:40] closely with this pattern, and her symptoms are all consistent
[33:44] with untreated psychotic illness.
[33:47] For many observers, this is the most likely and the most
[33:50] heartbreaking explanation. The second theory is that Chip
[33:54] Chan's story is, to some degree, actually true.
[33:58] The specific claims about mind control via a microchip strain
[34:02] credibility, but the broader elements of her story could be
[34:05] accurate, and it's worth noting that this isn't mutually
[34:09] exclusive with the idea that she's suffering from a severe
[34:13] form of mental illness. She could be a vulnerable person
[34:17] being exploited by someone in a position of authority for
[34:21] financial gain. She claims to have a significant
[34:24] inheritance, and financial exploitation of isolated
[34:28] individuals is a tale as old as time.
[34:32] The fact that she's moved apartments multiple times over
[34:35] the years while maintaining her streams suggests she isn't
[34:39] entirely without agency or resources.
[34:43] In fact, it seems to suggest that she may have access to
[34:46] fairly significant wealth, since viewers don't believe her
[34:49] apartments are public housing units.
[34:54] The third theory, and the one that generates the most
[34:56] skepticism among those who followed the case closely, is
[35:00] that the entire thing is an elaborate performance art
[35:03] project. Some have even suggested that
[35:06] multiple actresses have played the role of Chip Chan over the
[35:09] years. While not technically
[35:12] impossible, this explanation requires an extraordinary
[35:16] commitment to a deeply obscure piece of art with no apparent
[35:20] commercial pay off. It seems highly unlikely that
[35:23] such a project could be sustained across more than two
[35:26] decades. Most serious followers of the
[35:29] case dismissed this theory as lazy speculation that doesn't
[35:33] account for the genuine distress visible in the streams.
[35:39] As of recent years, Chip Chan's streaming activity has become
[35:42] less frequent. The days of continuous 24 hour
[35:46] broadcast, lasting weeks at a time, have given way to shorter,
[35:50] more sporadic sessions. Her blog presence has also
[35:54] largely gone dormant, but she hasn't disappeared entirely.
[35:59] She still surfaces on YouTube from time to time, and the
[36:03] community that's formed around her continues to monitor her
[36:06] activity and discuss her situation.
[36:09] At present, her uploads almost entirely consist of highly
[36:12] disturbing and repetitive YouTube Shorts.
[36:17] What seems to be certain is that regardless of the circumstances,
[36:21] Chip Chan is a woman suffering from untreated mental illness.
[36:24] Her case remains A deeply human story wrapped inside an Internet
[36:28] mystery. It's a bizarre reminder that
[36:31] behind every strange live stream and every oddity, there's a real
[36:35] person whose life continues long after the rest of us close the
[36:39] browser tab. And for the woman known as Chip
[36:42] Chan, that life has been playing out in front of an audience for
[36:46] more than 20 years with no clear resolution insight.
[36:53] The Internet has produced its fair share of strange rabbit
[36:56] holes over the years, but few have captivated amateur
[37:00] investigators quite like the mystery of Lake City Quiet
[37:03] Pills. What began as a simple death
[37:06] announcement on Reddit in the summer of 2009 eventually
[37:10] spiraled into one of the platform's longest running
[37:13] unsolved puzzles. It's one that touches on hidden
[37:16] messages, military slang, encrypted communications, and
[37:21] even a real world assassination. Whether it's all an elaborate
[37:26] hoax or something far more sinister remains an open
[37:30] question to this day. The story starts with a prolific
[37:35] Reddit user called Religion of Peace, who went by the nickname
[37:38] Milo. He'd created his account back in
[37:41] December of 2007, making him a fairly early adopter of the
[37:45] platform. By his own account, Milo was an
[37:49] elderly man, claiming at various points to have been born around
[37:53] 1930 and to be in his upper 70s. He described himself as a
[37:58] military veteran with a gruff personality, and his posting
[38:02] history bore that out. He was cantankerous,
[38:06] opinionated, and constantly battling what he perceived as
[38:09] spammers and trolls. He railed against liberal
[38:13] politics and socialism, promoted atheism, and moderated some of
[38:18] the sites more controversial and disturbing communities.
[38:22] He also regularly promoted his own image hosting website, a
[38:26] site he casually referred to as An Old Man's Picture Host, a
[38:30] site called Lake City quietpills.com.
[38:35] On July 17th, 2009, a brand new Reddit account with the username
[38:40] 26 appeared and posted a brief emotional message announcing
[38:44] that Milo had died. The post described him as a
[38:48] mean, ornery man with no living relatives and no real friends.
[38:53] According to the poster, Milo had helped him find work after
[38:57] he'd left the army, and now 26, was handling his final affairs.
[39:03] He mentioned donating some of Milo's belongings to the local
[39:06] VA, giving his cat to a neighbor, the usual things one
[39:11] would expect in this sort of situation.
[39:14] He also planned to scatter his ashes near where his family's
[39:17] farm had once stood in Pennsylvania, close to
[39:20] Gettysburg. A couple of days later, he
[39:23] posted a Google Maps link showing a location near a small
[39:27] shopping center, claiming it was where the old farm had been.
[39:32] The post drew genuine sympathy from dozens of Redditors who'd
[39:35] interacted with Milo over the years.
[39:38] A few skeptics called it a hoax, but 26 pushed back angrily
[39:42] before signing off from Reddit for good.
[39:45] Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of it.
[39:49] A colorful Internet personality had passed away, a friend had
[39:53] said goodbye, and everyone would move on.
[39:56] But curious users couldn't quite let it go.
[40:01] Investigators started digging into the connection between 26
[40:04] and the Lake City Quiet Pills website, and they quickly found
[40:08] out that they were through the looking glass.
[40:11] They discovered that a user called Angel 26 had been posting
[40:15] on FARC, a popular news aggregation site, since as early
[40:19] as 2001. The consistent misspellings in
[40:23] Angel 26's posts match those found in Two Six's Reddit
[40:28] messages, strongly suggesting they were the same person.
[40:32] This user's e-mail address wasregistered@lakecityquietpills.com,
[40:37] and their forum signature was particularly striking.
[40:41] It referenced dispensing Lake City quiet pills to those in
[40:45] need of permanent rest since 1968.
[40:50] The name itself raised eyebrows. Lake City didn't seem to have
[40:54] any obvious connection to an image hosting website, but it
[40:57] did connect to something else entirely.
[41:01] The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant is a nearly 4000 acre
[41:05] government owned facility in Independence, MO.
[41:09] It was established by Remington Arms in 1941 to manufacture
[41:14] small caliber ammunition for the United States military.
[41:18] It's the single largest producer of small arms ammunition for the
[41:21] American Armed Forces, having operated almost continuously
[41:25] since being established in military and firearm circles.
[41:30] Ammunition produced at this facility is well known, and the
[41:34] implication was hard to miss. If Lake City referred to the
[41:38] ammunition plant, then quiet Pills was slang for bullets.
[41:44] This realization prompted more people to look closely at the
[41:47] website source code, and what they found was deeply
[41:50] unsettling. Hidden within the source code of
[41:53] Lake City quietpills.com were messages that appeared to
[41:58] function as some kind of private communication board.
[42:02] On the same day that 26 announced Milo's death on
[42:05] Reddit, a hidden message appeared on the site conveying
[42:08] the same news to an unknown audience.
[42:11] It described giving away Milo's cat and taking his ashes back to
[42:15] Pennsylvania. Over the following weeks and
[42:19] months, additional messages appeared, including one in which
[42:23] someone announced they'd bricked Milo's iron key.
[42:26] An iron key is a brand of hardware encrypted flash drive,
[42:30] and bricking it means deliberately destroying its
[42:33] data. The implication was that
[42:36] whatever information Milo had stored on that drive needed to
[42:39] be permanently erased. Then came the messages that
[42:44] really alarmed people. Hidden posts began appearing
[42:48] that looked remarkably like job postings.
[42:51] They referenced immediate needs for groups of eight to 10 people
[42:54] who were fluent in specific languages, including Korean,
[42:58] Farsi, Arabic and French. They mentioned delivery bonuses,
[43:03] sequester periods, and insurance arrangements described as part
[43:07] of an agreement or contract. To many observers, these looked
[43:11] like recruitment notices for mercenary or private military
[43:14] operations. The mystery took its most
[43:19] dramatic turn in January of 2010, when a hidden message on
[43:23] the site invited people to a birthday celebration for Milo.
[43:27] The old man, who'd supposedly died six months earlier, was
[43:30] apparently having a gathering. The message mentioned a party
[43:34] starting at around 1500 hours and referenced 38 rooms booked
[43:38] at a Marriott. Another message appeared the
[43:41] following day with additional logistical details about key
[43:44] cards and travel names. On January 19th, 2010, Mahmoud
[43:51] Al Mabhu, a senior Hamas military commander responsible
[43:54] for weapons procurement, was assassinated in his room at a
[43:58] hotel in Dubai. According to the Dubai Police
[44:01] investigation, Al Mabu had been tracked from Damascus by a team
[44:06] of at least 26 operatives carrying forged European
[44:09] passports. He was slain between his arrival
[44:13] at the hotel in the afternoon and approximately 9 in the
[44:17] evening. The operatives had arrived from
[44:20] various cities, spread across multiple hotels, used disposable
[44:25] phones and paid in cash. Dubai's police chief later
[44:30] stated he was nearly certain that Israel's Mossad
[44:33] intelligence agency was responsible and had done a
[44:36] sloppy job. Israel, following its standard
[44:42] practice, neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
[44:46] Internet sleuths immediately noticed that the timing of the
[44:49] hidden messages on the Lake City Quiet Pills site seemed to align
[44:53] with the logistics of the Dubai operation.
[44:56] The party invitation appeared roughly a week before the
[44:59] strike, and the mention of hotel rooms, key cards and travel
[45:04] names felt chillingly operational for many who'd been
[45:10] following the mystery. This was the moment it stopped
[45:13] feeling like an Internet curiosity and started feeling
[45:16] genuinely dangerous. It's important to approach the
[45:20] Dubai connection with serious skepticism, and most level
[45:24] headed analysts have done exactly that.
[45:27] The evidence linking Lake City quiet pills to the AL Mob Who
[45:30] attack is entirely circumstantial, built on
[45:33] overlapping dates and suggestive language rather than any direct
[45:37] proof. Having 2 events share a similar
[45:40] time frame doesn't establish causation, and the AL Mob Who
[45:44] operation was widely attributed to a sophisticated state
[45:47] intelligence apparatus. However, others have pointed out
[45:51] that Mossad has been known to use any means necessary to
[45:54] accomplish their goals, and they have strong ties to the United
[45:58] States. Several alternative explanations
[46:03] have been proposed. Some believe the entire thing
[46:06] was an elaborate alternate reality game, a type of
[46:10] interactive fiction that uses real world platforms to create
[46:13] immersive puzzles. The level of detail involved,
[46:17] from years of consistent posting across multiple platforms to the
[46:21] carefully planted clues, is potentially consistent with a
[46:25] dedicated Arg. Others have suggested it was
[46:30] simply a hoax designed to generate traffic to the website
[46:33] or to create an Internet legend. The fact that Milo was known for
[46:38] his disturbing and dark sense of humor and provocative nature
[46:41] supports this reading in the minds of many theorists.
[46:47] What argues against the hoax theory, however, is the sheer
[46:50] effort involved. The Angel 26 account on FARC
[46:53] predated the Reddit mystery by nearly a decade.
[46:56] The consistent spelling errors across platforms suggest a real
[47:00] person rather than a character being performed.
[47:04] The hidden message board within the site's code required genuine
[47:08] technical knowledge to create and maintain, and perhaps most
[47:12] tellingly, when the site began attracting attention, it didn't
[47:16] lean into the publicity. Instead, the hidden messages
[47:20] stopped. The site was eventually taken
[47:23] offline, and someone later requested that archived versions
[47:27] be removed from the Wayback Machine.
[47:30] That's not the behavior of someone who wanted attention and
[47:33] suggests that there may have been something more going on.
[47:37] Lake City Quiet Pills endures as one of the internet's most
[47:40] compelling unsolved mysteries precisely because it resists
[47:44] easy categorization. It's not cleanly A hoax because
[47:49] the depth of commitment spans too many years in platforms.
[47:53] It's not cleanly an Arg because no one ever stepped forward to
[47:57] claim credit or reveal the game, and it's not proven to be a real
[48:01] mercenary operation because the most sensational claims rest on
[48:06] coincidence rather than evidence.
[48:09] Somewhere buried in that blur, the actual truth about Milo and
[48:13] the nature of the quiet pills he was allegedly dispensing is
[48:17] still waiting to be found. There's a sketch of a man's face
[48:24] that, at some point between 2008 and 2010, probably crossed your
[48:29] screen. It's an unremarkable face in
[48:33] many ways, a composite drawing showing a round headed figure
[48:37] with thick, bushy eyebrows, a receding hairline, thin lips and
[48:42] beady eyes. He looks like someone you might
[48:45] have sat next to on a bus and immediately forgotten, the kind
[48:49] of face that blends into a crowd without effort.
[48:53] And yet, according to thousands of people around the world, this
[48:56] was the face of a man who kept showing up uninvited in their
[49:00] dreams. The phenomenon was called Did
[49:03] You Ever Dream This Man? And it became one of the most
[49:07] fascinating Internet mysteries of the late 2000s.
[49:11] It sparked genuine debates among psychologists, online
[49:15] communities and media outlets before its true nature was
[49:19] finally revealed. But even after the curtain was
[49:22] pulled back, the story didn't end the way anyone expected it
[49:26] to. The narrative presented on the
[49:30] website was as straightforward as it was bizarre.
[49:33] In January 2006, a patient of a well known psychiatrist in New
[49:38] York City sketched a drawing of a man who'd been appearing
[49:42] repeatedly in her dreams. She claimed she'd never met
[49:46] anyone who looked like him in her waking life, but he kept
[49:49] showing up, offering her unsolicited advice about her
[49:52] personal decisions. She found it deeply unsettling
[49:56] and couldn't get this figure out of her head.
[49:59] A few days later, another patient of the same psychiatrist
[50:04] noticed the sketch sitting on his desk and immediately
[50:07] recognized the face. That patient started insisting
[50:11] that the very same man had been visiting him in his dreams as
[50:15] well. Intrigued, the psychiatrist
[50:19] forwarded the composite image to colleagues who also treated
[50:22] patients suffering from recurring dreams.
[50:25] Within just a few months, four additional patients came
[50:29] forward, claiming to recognize the face.
[50:32] All of them swore they'd never encountered anyone resembling
[50:35] the drawing in real life. The patients and the doctor
[50:39] collectively began referring to the mysterious figure simply as
[50:44] this man. That was the origin story as
[50:47] presented the lore, so to speak, and it was unclear which
[50:51] elements of the tale were true, if any.
[50:56] What happens next is a little bit hazy, but two years later,
[51:00] in 2008, a website was launched claiming it was a way to
[51:05] document the growing phenomenon. The site presented itself as a
[51:09] neutral clearing house for information, inviting visitors
[51:13] to share their own experiences if they'd ever encountered this
[51:17] man in their sleep. It featured the now iconic
[51:20] composite sketch front and center, along with a map
[51:24] visualizing reported sightings from cities all over the globe.
[51:29] The site eventually accumulated thousands of testimonials, and
[51:32] some dreamers described this man as a comforting, fatherly
[51:35] presence who offered guidance. Others painted a far more
[51:40] disturbing picture, recounting dreams where the figure simply
[51:43] stood motionless, staring at them without expression for the
[51:47] entire duration of the dream. Still others reported that he
[51:52] was a menacing figure who either attacked the Dreamer or other
[51:55] entities within the dream, though some said they believed
[51:58] the attacks were to defend the dreamer.
[52:03] The website operated in relative obscurity for about a year
[52:06] before it suddenly exploded into the mainstream Internet
[52:09] consciousness in October 2009. In the span of just a few weeks,
[52:15] the site racked up more than two million visits, becoming a
[52:18] massive viral sensation. During that period, it received
[52:22] over 10,000 emails from people claiming to recognize the face
[52:27] or sharing photographs of real individuals they thought this
[52:30] man resembled. Twitter, Reddit, and 4 Chan.
[52:34] We're all buzzing with posts about this extremely uncanny
[52:37] looking man, and I'll discuss the theories that emerged in a
[52:40] moment. What made this man so compelling
[52:44] wasn't just the creepy premise, but rather how perfectly
[52:47] calibrated the face was for the purpose.
[52:51] The drawing was generic enough that almost anyone could
[52:53] convince themselves they'd seen it somewhere before, but it was
[52:57] also just distinctive enough to feel memorable.
[53:01] Psychologically, it hit a sweet spot.
[53:04] Since human brains are wired to recognize and store faces, a
[53:09] simple, slightly uncanny image like this one could easily embed
[53:13] itself in someone's memory after just a brief viewing.
[53:18] Once you'd seen the face, it wasn't hard to imagine it
[53:21] resurfacing later in the blurry, unreliable theater of your
[53:25] dreams. It also wasn't difficult to
[53:28] attribute the face to previous dreams, and given the murky
[53:32] nature of dreaming, this man seemed to slot himself in
[53:36] perfectly. As the story spread, a cottage
[53:41] industry of theories emerged attempting to explain why so
[53:44] many unconnected people might be dreaming about the same
[53:47] stranger. The most intellectually grounded
[53:50] of these drew on the work of psychologist Carl Jung and his
[53:54] concept of the collective unconscious.
[53:57] According to this framework, this man could represent a
[54:00] shared archetype, perhaps a universal father figure or
[54:04] protector, that exists deep in the unconscious.
[54:08] Under this theory, this figure existed in the minds of people
[54:12] across all cultures, surfacing during periods of stress or
[54:16] uncertainty. Another popular theory was what
[54:21] the website itself labeled the daytime recognition theory,
[54:24] which offered a much more mundane explanation.
[54:28] The idea was simple and sensible, drawing on a universal
[54:31] experience that everyone who dreams has had.
[54:35] People have a notoriously difficult time accurately
[54:38] recalling faces from their dreams.
[54:41] After seeing the composite image of this man while awake,
[54:45] individuals might retroactively convince themselves that this
[54:49] was the face they'd encountered while sleeping.
[54:52] The image essentially overwrites whatever blurry, half formed
[54:56] face they actually dreamed about, substituting itself into
[55:00] the memory. Other theories were much more
[55:04] esoteric, with some saying that this man was actually some sort
[55:08] of government dream manipulation experiment.
[55:11] Others proposed that he was a real person with the ability to
[55:15] psychically insert himself into other people's dreams on mass
[55:20] and against their will. There was even a theory that
[55:24] this man was God, which is certainly one way to interpret
[55:28] an unexplained face in your sleep.
[55:32] It didn't take long for the more skeptical corners of the
[55:35] Internet to start pulling at the threads of the story.
[55:38] Users on 4 Chan conducted a reverse IP lookup of this
[55:42] man.org and discovered that the hosting company also owned a
[55:45] domain in Italian. That domain belonged to a
[55:49] so-called fake advertising agency founded by an Italian
[55:53] sociologist and marketer named Andrea Nutella.
[55:57] The agency, according to its own description, specialized in
[56:02] subversive hoaxes and produced unconventional art projects that
[56:06] explored the boundaries of advertising.
[56:09] The connection between the website and a known hoax
[56:12] operation was obviously extremely suspicious, and the
[56:16] connection didn't even take much digging.
[56:20] In 2010, Nutella confirmed the suspicions himself, and he
[56:25] admitted that the entire This Man phenomenon was fabricated.
[56:30] He'd invented the origin story about the New York psychiatrist
[56:34] and created the composite sketch using a facial composite app
[56:37] called Ultimate Flash Face. He based the drawings features
[56:42] loosely on a photograph of his own father as a young man,
[56:46] though he decided to make it much more uncanny.
[56:49] He'd even seated the legend in various online forums and
[56:52] communities without revealing his involvement.
[56:57] The dream testimonials on the site hadn't been fact checked
[57:00] before being published, as Nutella himself later
[57:03] acknowledged. They were simply emails sent in
[57:06] by people around the world, presented without verification,
[57:11] and some people evidently sent in dozens of testimonials.
[57:15] Notably, given the level of deceit around the phenomenon,
[57:19] most now believe the initial testimonies were also faked.
[57:23] Though he never admitted to this, Nutella described the
[57:28] project as an experiment in guerrilla marketing and
[57:31] conceptual art. He wanted to explore how
[57:34] effectively the Internet could be used to create and spread
[57:37] modern urban legends and collective myths.
[57:41] He outlined the project as having three deliberate phases,
[57:44] all of which leverage the ability this still relatively
[57:48] new platform had. First, he built an aura of
[57:51] mystery around the sketch, presenting it as a weird
[57:54] phenomenon that was popping up organically.
[57:58] Second, he claims he solicited and curated dream reports from
[58:02] users to amplify the narrative's believability and encourage
[58:07] viral sharing. As I mentioned, though, there's
[58:11] a strong belief that many of these initial reports were
[58:13] phony, likely intended to drive a certain narrative around this
[58:18] dream figure. Third, he planned to reveal the
[58:23] hoax as a demonstration of collective psychological
[58:26] suggestibility. Though he was caught before this
[58:29] ever happened. He insisted that no underlying
[58:32] commercial product or brand promotion was involved,
[58:36] positioning the whole endeavor as pure experimentation.
[58:41] In early 2010, a horror film production company announced
[58:45] they would be producing a film based upon the concept.
[58:48] The project eventually stalled after Nutella's confirmation of
[58:52] the hoax undermined the premise that there was something real
[58:55] going on, which halted the viral momentum for a time.
[59:01] Eventually, IN2023A, Nicolas Cage movie called Dream Scenario
[59:06] dropped, which dealt with a professor discovering that
[59:09] people were seeing him in his dreams.
[59:13] What makes this Internet mystery truly remarkable isn't that one
[59:17] clever Italian marketer managed to fool the Internet.
[59:20] It's what happened afterward. Even after the hoax was fully
[59:24] exposed, people continued to report dreaming about this man.
[59:30] In 2015, five full years after Nutella's confession, Vice Media
[59:35] contacted him for an interview, and Nutella answered questions
[59:39] as though the phenomenon were completely real.
[59:42] Vice published the interview before realizing they'd been
[59:45] fooled, then had to publish a retraction, admitting they
[59:49] hadn't performed even the most basic fact checking.
[59:53] It was theoretically an embarrassing moment for the
[59:55] outlet, though given that it was Vice, I'm sure they felt no
[59:59] shame. And it also proved Nutella's
[1:00:02] original point. The power of suggestion,
[1:00:06] combined with the Internet's capacity to spread a compelling
[1:00:09] narrative, could sustain A myth long past its expiration date.
[1:00:15] At its core, the Did You Dream of This Man?
[1:00:18] Phenomenon endures because it tapped into something genuinely
[1:00:22] universal. Dreams remain one of the least
[1:00:25] understood aspects of human consciousness.
[1:00:28] The idea that a single mysterious figure might be
[1:00:31] visiting millions of sleeping minds touches on deep anxieties
[1:00:35] about privacy, autonomy, and the boundaries of the self.
[1:00:41] The concept revealed how desperately people want
[1:00:43] mysteries to be real, and how readily the human mind will fill
[1:00:47] in gaps in its own memory with compelling images.
[1:00:51] It also showed how a single unremarkable face drawn in a few
[1:00:55] minutes on an app can become genuinely haunting once you've
[1:00:59] been told to look for it. The Dream Man may have been
[1:01:03] fictional, but the questions his apparent existence raised
[1:01:07] somehow became real throughout its spread on the Internet.

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