I think I have done everything I can with the E_12 documents given the information I currently have, so I sent an email to the Archivists today. Here is my email and the response I received. If I hear anything else, I'll make sure to share it with you all.
Does anyone have the email messages that were received with the E_12 images? I have the Archivist post messages, but they only address a few of the images. I would like to see what the emails said.
For example, what did the emails say that contained the 1a.2 and 1a.3 image files?
I just shared this and realized the title of the pod cast episode for the interview is "Playing in the Destructive Sandbox with Marcus Kliewer."
Here I go again with my annoying simulation theory:
"Playing in the Destructive Sandbox" is a loaded phrase in software engineering and cybersecurity.
A sandbox is an isolated environment where code can run without affecting the real system. It's used for:
• testing new software
• analyzing malware
• running simulations
• safely experimenting
A destructive sandbox would imply an environment where things are intentionally broken, deleted, corrupted, or stress-tested. Security researchers often "play" with malware inside sandboxes because the damage is contained.
Could this be a smoke signal? Hmmm...
I was listening to u/ShySkye94 break down the HOAX document found in WUTLH on the "Inside Old House" podcast, and something clicked. So I went back and revisited the glossary from the perspective of my theory that the lore revolves around people in comas being connected to a simulation.
It now appears to me that these aren't merely definitions; they're defining roles within a system. The terminology reads almost like documentation for a game engine, operating system, or simulation. Here's my proposed interpretation:
• Glossary:
◦ Trapped (or willingly residing: OWR) for more than one year.
• Working theory:
◦ A person in a coma, natural or medically induced
◦ Long-term resident of the system.
◦ Either unable to leave or choosing not to.
◦ Becomes increasingly integrated into the simulation.
• Glossary:
◦ Trapped (OWR) for less than one year.
• Working theory:
◦ OWR could mean Overworld resident (or people outside the simulation)
◦ A guest could be an Overworld Resident who entered intending to leave but became trapped.
◦ Possibly someone entering to visit another person already inside the system.
◦ In computing, a guest account exists inside the host
• Glossary:
◦ Has intimate knowledge of Old House wings
◦ One who guides others.
• Working theory:
◦ Someone with privileged knowledge.
◦ Knows how to navigate between realities or move people safely through the system.
◦ Maybe hypnotherapist, psychologist, nurse, doctor
◦ Maybe administrator, developer, (someone who knows the architecture, not someone who created it)
• Glossary:
◦ Enter Old House under the Ward of a Guide
◦ Temporary visitor.
◦ "Many tourists unwittingly become guests/hosts."
• Working theory:
◦ Someone intentionally entering the system.
◦ Expects only a temporary visit.
◦ Entry carries an unexpected risk.
• Glossary:
◦ Enters without a guide.
◦ By accident or nefarious intent, for monetary gain or otherwise
• Working theory:
◦ Someone entering without permission or without following the proper protocol. (Unauthorized)
◦ May represent hacker or exploit
◦ Intent doesn't matter. Like accidentally executing dangerous code like a virus
• Glossary:
◦ Trickster, spirit, demon, entity, presence, specter, etc
◦ A non-human entity or Host trapped so long they are essentially no longer human.
◦ Some neutral, helpful, dangerous
• Working theory:
◦ The "or" means the two may become indistinguishable
◦ Could be AI or NPC
◦ Could be coma patient who died while connected to the system and their spiritor consciousness became trapped like a ghost permanently embedded in the system
◦ Final stage of long-term integration.
◦ Someone who's original identity has dissolved
• Glossary:
◦ Means of entering or exiting.
• Working theory:
◦ Portal or access point.
◦ Connection between the Overworld and Old House.
◦ Maybe the toys, like Moe and Doc, locket, cross pendant
• Glossary:
◦ Used to jump locations
◦ Alternate route.
• Working theory:
◦ Hidden pathway or bypass through the system.
◦ Comparable to fast travel or alternate routing.
◦ Programming pointers, links, jumps
• Glossary:
◦ Room or section of OH impossible to escape without ritual replacement
◦ Associated with replacement (including crossed-out wording referring to ritual replacement).
• Working theory:
◦ Mechanism for attaching, transferring, or replacing consciousness.
◦ Resembles a software "hook" that redirects execution. Once execution enters a hook something else has to replace or release it.
◦ In TC, Grace may have used a Macy as her ritual replacement
• Glossary:
◦ Undefined abbreviation appearing in the Host and Guest entries.
• Observation:
◦ Every other glossary term is defined, but OWR is not.
• Working theory:
◦ OWR = Overworld Resident.
◦ Refers to people originating outside the Old House system.
◦ Overworld = real world
───
Overall Pattern
Rather than describing monsters, the glossary may be describing roles within a system.
Progression:
• Overworld Resident (OWR)
• Tourist
• Guest
• Host
• Anchor
It's almost identical to increasing integration into a system.
"Many tourists unwittingly become guests/hosts," suggests that entering the system is much riskier than people realize. It also makes the glossary read less like folklore and more like documentation describing how people move through the Old House system. Eventually, the user becomes indistinguishable from the program. That could be why in TC, performing the Rites is crucial to save humanity.
Lastly, this document held the hidden message, "The Old Gods See All." That feels like a nod to the creators of the system who are monitoring everything from their computers.
I know this was a lot. I'm sorry if it's too much, but believe me, I tried my best to be concise. Believe me when I say, I had more to share but held back in order not to be overwhelming. I hope someone out there is happy I shared it.
Omg... trees are safe and shelter. Thomas had a business card with a tree on it! 🤯
I'm driving home from an out of town trip and just saw there were two new episodes of the "Inside Old House" podcast, Episode 16, Hoax Part 1 and 2! Oh happy day!
First, thanks so much for the shout-out u/shyskye94. That was an unexpected treat. 🥰
I can't remember if it was in Part 1 or 2, but you mentioned you had never heard "Dead Before Arrival," that typically it's "Dead On Arrival," but you didn't know what to make of it. Well... this could potentially fit into my simulation theory. Dead Before Arrival could be seen as DBA, and a DBA is also the acronym for Database Administrator. It could potentially be a nudge in the simulation direction.
I'm totally riffing off the cuff on a pit stop so I don't have my notes, but I didn't want to forget to share this. I have other thoughts related to Hoax, but I'll share when I get back home.
The most recent morse code message released regarding the stairwell document says:
>!TREES ARE SHELTER. TREES ARE SAFE. SAFER THAN ROADS, AT LEAST. SAFER THAN SUBURBIA.!<
At the beginning of TC, I looked up the brand "Sylvo" for Macy's headphones that Jemma gifted her to see what the logo looked like and couldn't find that brand. I keep seeing them brought up and decided to explore the brand name itself and bumped into an interesting connection to the morse message.
Sylvotherapy
This is what I found:
Sylvotherapy, often called "forest therapy" or forest bathing, is the practice of intentionally spending time in a forest to promote mental and physical well-being. The modern practice is closely related to the Japanese concept of Shinrin-yoku ("taking in the forest atmosphere"), which was formally promoted in Japan in the 1980s under the name Shinrin-yoku (森林浴). It was developed not just as an intuitive spiritual practice, but as a deliberate, state-sponsored medical and environmental initiative.Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries officially coined the term and launched a national health campaign led by tech-revolution official Tomohide Akiyama.
Japan was experiencing a massive tech boom, rapid urbanization, and a spike in stress-related illnesses, including karoshi (death from overwork). “The development of Forest Bathing as a therapeutic practice was a response to the rapid urbanisation and technological advancements being experienced in Japan.” as noted by Forest Healing.
Japanese researchers were the first to scientifically document that inhaling phytoncides (antimicrobial compounds released by trees) significantly drops cortisol levels, lowers blood pressure, and spikes human natural killer (NK) immune cells.
Shintoism: The indigenous spirituality of Japan dictates that kami (spirits or gods) reside in nature—particularly in grand, ancient trees and deep forests.
Core Practices:
- Sensory Immersion: Walking slowly through a forested area while consciously focusing on the sights, sounds, smells, and textures of nature.
- Tree Hugging: Physically embracing a tree to connect with nature on an energetic or tactile level.
- Mindful Breathing: Taking deep, intentional breaths to absorb the rich oxygen and plant oils in the woods.
- Digital Detox: Disconnecting from screens and technology to allow the brain to reset and ground itself in the present moment.
My Connections:
- Macy uses the headphones to drown out her inner voices and calm down
- She often takes mindful deep breaths in and out
- Lucy tells her there are a lot of suicides by the forest
- Roads and Suburbia are both isolating from nature
- The trees have been consistently described in a personification way
I just read 18 A MODERATE SETBACK. In it, Macy receives a call from an "UNKNOWN CALLER" and thinks it's either a debt collector or a telemarketer. Her conversation begins and it's an exchange with Greg, her father's insurance broker.
Throughout TC - and if I recall correctly, I made the same observation in my notes while reading WUTLH - I have felt like there were an unusually large amount of ". . ." And "-". I tried isolating them and seeing if they gave me a hidden morse, binary, or ascii code, but none of that worked. Reading this chapter gave me another idea that could tie into my simulation theory.
When Macy mentioned telemarketers, it made me recall my own experience working as a telemarketer for a breifest of times in my teen years. When we spoke to householders, we had a script and a binder with reply options to address customer responses. I have also seen similar dynamics while playing decision-tree games like Detroit or Until Dawn, in which you, the player, can choose your own adventure by the response or prompt you select for your character to interact with the NPC. Depending on your selection, the game follows a specific path, and each path leads to is own conclusion. It feels like the ". . ." Is the latency while processing after each prompt. Or the pause while the "telemarketer" looks for the corresponding reply.
I wonder if Macy is in a coma, like in Black Mirror, season 7, episode 6. I wonder if she was in the car with her dad when he drove into the river. She keeps mentioning this "ever-present tightness between her lungs, forcing her ribcage to expand. " This makes me think of intubation.
What if she's in a coma and communicating with the outside world through a simulation? I can't wait to finish this book and go back through everything.
Random thought crossed my mind today. WUTLH begins with Thomas knocking on Eve's door and asking if she would let him in to show his family the house because he used to live there. He used to live there. He. Not his family. So who's WE? Shouldn't it be "I" Used to Live Here?
In Chapter 11 SEVEN SECONDS, it says:
". . . at precisely 3:56:35 a.m., no more than one second after past Macy had exited the hallway, the storage room light snapped ON by itself."
Later it says:
"I scrubbed back until the moment she entered: twenty-seven seconds after 3:57 a.m. One minute and fifty-eight seconds left until the three-minute mandate. "
The way I'm reading this, I'm seeing:
3:56:35 - light turns on
+
0:03:00
=
3:59:35 - (three minute mandate time)
3:57:27 - Macy enters
+
0:01:58 - time left until mandate
=
3:59:25 - supposed three minute mandate time
Am I doing something wrong, or is there a missing 10 second discrepancy here?
In TC, 10 OFF, pg. 129, Macy asks:
"[Grace] couldn't be that crazy, but . . . what time was it in Florida anyway? It was 4:OI a.m. here, so that meant - "
In HTTP, 401 is the status code for Unauthorized. Also the font looks like 4 (number): OI (letters). I'm tracking time stamps and also looking to see if the "OI"s begin forming some kind of binary code. Because I'm officially going crazy.
All this to say, I'm feeling like the simulation theory is getting stronger. Like, what if soldiers or others were being put into some sort of simulation to perform military tasks remotely with their minds. But they disguised the tasks with things like lights and rabbits. And what if this mental state unintentionally created a Faustian separation from God which in turn exposed them to demonic forces and brought them closer to hell?
I was playing with my new editing app and decided to combine the two TC symbols. I find it very interesting, but don't know what it means, if anything. What do you guys think?
In TC, Chapter 9 PICKUP, Macy says:
"And in the months after Dad's funeral, I deeply, profoundly started to relate with the phrase: Misery loves company. "
Ok, here I go again. My spidey senses perked up and I went searching for the origin of that phrase and found something very, very interesting.
The phrase has a Latin origin, and in the 16th century, an English playwright named Christopher Marlowe wrote a play called "The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus." When Faustus asks the demon Mephastophilis why Satan seeks to enlarge his kingdom, the demon replies that misery loves companions in woe.
This is interesting because in WUTLH, Thomas' last name is Faust.
In the play, Faustus is brilliant but bored and turns to black magic. He signs a contract in blood with Lucifer's servant, Mephastophilis. Faustus asks him where hell is located, he explains that hell is not a specific geographical location. It's a state of mind, and it's a state of psychological separation from God.
In WUTLH, there is a lot of mention of characters losing their religion. Thomas even refuses to say a prayer over the dinner table. If hell is a state of mind, that would tie in to many of my theories. Hypnosis, mental health, and simulation theory all have something to do with state of mind. Is the Old House universe a journey between different degrees of separation from God toward hell?
Also, the demon in the play has certain dynamics that feel familiar:
- He was honest with Faustus. He warns and advises him against making the deal with the devil. Both books have an internal voice warning and influencing the main characters. Moe and Jemma.
- Whenever Faustus tries to think about God or repent, he threatens him with violence or distracts him with illusions. This reminds me of all the interruptions. ( . . . --- )
- Faustus believes he is the master commanding a servant. Mephastophilis the demon, actually controls the dynamic manipulating Faustus into wasting his time instead of achieving his goal. Macy thinks she's responsible for Jemma, but what if Jemma is a demon controlling her through manipulation and internal dialog. (I'm only half way through, so I'm jumping the gun here.)
There's more. Apparently, there was a real historical figure named Johann Georg Faust that was a German alchemist, astrologer, and magician.
The Reputation: He traveled across Europe, boasting of his magical feats and supernatural wisdom. Church authorities condemned him as a fraud and a practitioner of black magic.The Folklore: After he died in a mysterious chemical explosion, rumors spread that the devil had physically dragged him away, sparking the legend. In 1587, a German publisher compiled these myths into the popular Faustbuch (Faust Book), a heavily religious cautionary tale. Two centuries later, the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe rewrote the myth into a massive two-part closet drama simply titled Faust.
This makes me think of the fire accounts in WUTLH.
Lastly, this week I heard an interview of Marcus on a podcast, and he said he had a very religious upbringing that made him compulsively afraid of going to hell. And when asked what type of horror he would say his two books were, he answered cosmic and uncanny.
I want to talk about the interview in CT, PART1, Chapter 3 TROUBLESOME PEOPLE, pg 19, paragraph 3.
Grace begins her interview by squinting at Macy's resume:
_
"Macy, uh . . . Mew . . . luns?" She butchered the pronunciation in a way that was almost impressive. "That's . . ." She grimaced. "Certainly an interesting surname. "
_
I looked up "Mew" and came up with something interesting. Apparently in Pokémon (which I know nothing about,) Mew is a Mythical Psychic-type considered to be the genetic ancestor of all Pokémon because its DNA contains the building blocks of every species. Mew wasn't originally intended to be in the original games at all. It was secretly programmed into Pokémon Red and Green as a last minute prank right before it's release.
Macy wears a Pikachu backpack so I find this a potentially interesting connection. I also discovered that colors are used as a classification system in Pokémon, and that the lore includes these monsters coexisting with humans.
Lastly, you can catch the Mew by exploiting a glitch that relies on a specific 5 step sequence of actions to corrupt the game's battle encounter memory, forcing it to spawn a Pokémon. This reminds me of some of the OH ARG instructions findings.
Food for thought.
In chapter 5 LOOKOUT, on pg 102, Lucy tells Macy about her grade school best friend Zee, and says, "She was a real troublemaker, I was a Goody Two-shoes, but we clicked like Legos."
Goody Two-shoes jumped out at me so I went digging and look what I found on a Google search:
"Little Goody Two Shoes is a horror narrative adventure game with dating sim and RPG elements, featuring a 90s anime art style and a story that shifts from a cute fairytale to a dark, psychological horror experience. Players manage the life of Elise, who must work, build relationships, and survive supernatural threats in the woods to achieve one of ten possible endings, with gameplay split between day (life sim/dating) and night (horror/puzzles)."
This makes me think of the Rick and Morty simulation game episode. If this is all happening in a simulation game, that would explain why Marcus says it's not really multi-verse or time lines. Maybe the discrepancies in characters is more like alternate endings.
I then looked to see if there was a game called "Troublemaker". There is a game that blends intense melee combat with high school social simulation. But the only connection I see to "Little Goody Two-shoes" is the 90s anime style.
The "Little Goody Two-shoes" lore is interesting, too.
"It follows Elise, an ambitious young woman desperate to escape poverty and become rich, whose life takes a sinister turn when she finds a pair of mysterious red shoes in her backyard.
Orphaned at a young age, Elise was raised by her grandmother. Following her grandmother's death, Elise is left to support herself as a general laborer. She develops a bitter resentment toward her humble life and the villagers, dreaming only of wealth and living like a princess.Her life is upended when a strange, mysterious girl named Rozen Marine breaks into her home, claiming they are fated to meet, and stays with her posing as her cousin. Concurrently, strange anomalies begin plaguing Kieferberg—missing livestock, swarms of crows, and floods—which the highly superstitious townsfolk quickly attribute to witchcraft.
Elise is secretly lured into the surrounding forest by visions and fairy tales. She discovers a demonic entity known as "The Strange Boy" (often revealed in his true form as a goat or Ozzy). According to demonology in the game, the entity requires a woman to perform three tests to prove her determination.
Depending on the player's choices and relationships, this leads to 10 unique endings.
A major pillar of the lore centers around the village's patron saint, Saint Walpurga. While the villagers view her as a symbol of pure faith and protection against the occult, Walpurgisnacht is actually historically tied to pagan spring festivals and demonic gatherings.Father Hans, the village pastor, discovers this dark secret early on. Rather than stopping it, he strikes a pact with a dark entity called Walpurga, serving as the mastermind who manipulates the town's paranoia. He frames innocent villagers (and depending on your playthrough, Elise herself) as witches to appease his demonic master."
Once I'm done with TC, I'm going to go back through my notes for both WUTLH and TC and focus on the simulation theory to see what I find that I missed the first time. The mention of the Mandela effect, the pixel level clues we've seen, the hidden message in the source code on the website, the jumping into bodies looking out of their eyes descriptions... I'm really feeling like it's all pointing to a simulation. I have many more thoughts, but I'll save it for another more fleshed out post about this theory.
Did anyone else notice the time in chapter 7 GREMLINS, page 113, is I:OI a.m. (letters) not 1:01 a.m.? (numbers)
In the movie "Ready Player One," the primary antagonist is a company called Innovative Online Industries (IOI).
This would tie into my simulation theory. I also picked up on something in the previous chapter. I'll post that seperately.
Chapter 4 FEED, Pg 94, paragraph 94 reads:
>!"I recalled a fun little YouTube factoid: the leading cause of death for the vast majority of vertebrates is "predation." A euphemism for getting eaten alive, torn limb from limb, fully conscious and shrieking as you watch the rest of your family flee in terror and realize you were never anything more than flesh and bone and marrow barely held together by tendons and veins. That's what a truly natural demise looks like."!<
There's so much to unpack there, I'm sure, but I just want to contribute some quick initial findings. What the paragraph says sounds more like a description than a "euphemism," so I decided to look up euphemisms for "predation" and this is what I found:
>!"Predation" is sometimes used to describe the act of plundering, pillaging, or ruthlessly exploiting others for personal gain. Eg., predatory financial loans. )!<
>!Exploitation: The standard academic or sociologic term describing individuals or corporate predators who take advantage of vulnerable people or weaker businesses. !<
>!Victimization: A term that associates with predatory behavior, describing the act of injuring or exploiting others for personal gain.!<
All of the main characters have vulnerabilities that one could use to exploit them. My question is, who's behind the exploitation, and to what end? What's the personal gain?