Cat Spiders!

August 24, 2004 5:09 PM

I found a digital camera in the woods
posted by bob sarabia (55 comments total)

originally posted here. See also here and here.
posted by bob sarabia at 5:10 PM on August 24, 2004

Now he should use the camera to document his efforts to find the owner...

Cool though. Very eerie photos.
posted by Jimbob at 5:11 PM on August 24, 2004

What the hell! Linking to GTA forums is okay now?!?!?!?!?!?!

Great post, bob sarabia. This is the kind of internet obscurity that I love to see on metafilter.
posted by nthdegx at 5:23 PM on August 24, 2004

Is this an ok place to mention the trailer for GTA: San Andreas got me way more excited than it should have? I'm pretty sure I saw The Ghost of Eazy-E.
posted by yerfatma at 5:29 PM on August 24, 2004

Looks a lot like Silent Hill 2.

If a digital camera is left alone on self-timer in the woods, and it goes off, does it make a sound?
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:34 PM on August 24, 2004

I recently found a 128 smart memory card on the sidewalk. I was hoping that it would contain some homemade pr0n, but when I got it home it didn't have any pictures on it at all, just some dos files or something that I couldn't decode.
posted by alms at 5:38 PM on August 24, 2004

alms, I believe you found the President's Nuclear Launch Codes. Whatever you do, DON'T GIVE IT BACK.
posted by wendell at 5:48 PM on August 24, 2004

Of course don't give it back. Make 'em pay for it. It's the American way after all.
posted by orange swan at 5:55 PM on August 24, 2004

This strikes me as totally bogus. The way he just posted the pics with no remarks about what he saw in them (there's no "Whoa - wait until you see what's in these pics" kind of comment), as if he just sat back and waited for people to notice the shadows and silhouettes and faces. My bullshit detector went on as soon as I read the first sentence of his post, and never went back off. He overexplains how he came across the camera, and his oh-so-casual "not sure why some of them are blurred" totally cemented it for me.

Bullshit, I tells ya.
posted by iconomy at 6:56 PM on August 24, 2004

Bullshit, I tells ya.

I think that's also what bob sarabia was telling us with the last two links. ;)
posted by mr.marx at 7:02 PM on August 24, 2004

Looks like a reenactment of the Blair Witch Project.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:02 PM on August 24, 2004

yerfatma, why you wear your pants like that?
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:07 PM on August 24, 2004

mr.marx , I looked at the Woodstock link but didn't get it - are they unretouched photos, or something? I'm a little slow when it comes to subtlety. You have to hit me over the head with a hammer ;)
posted by iconomy at 7:08 PM on August 24, 2004

I was expecting naked people....
posted by spilon at 7:10 PM on August 24, 2004

see the guy on the right?

not on the original
posted by mr.marx at 7:12 PM on August 24, 2004

I think its viral marketing... Several of those pics looked like CGI (very good quality, for sure).
posted by PigAlien at 7:19 PM on August 24, 2004

I think its viral marketing

nope, just very good photoshopping. the author admits it in the SA forum thread. very good thread.
posted by bob sarabia at 7:25 PM on August 24, 2004

Monkeys! Purty monkeys inna trees!
posted by ook at 7:32 PM on August 24, 2004

I guess it's supposed to look like some guy was out on a hike, looked through the crack in the tower and saw the body or person and then ran away?
posted by tomplus2 at 7:37 PM on August 24, 2004

Is that a monkey in the tree? A sock monkey? WTF?
posted by jmgorman at 7:38 PM on August 24, 2004

mr.marx, please don't do that.

Am I the only person over 12 that was freaked out by The Blair Witch Project?
posted by jaronson at 7:41 PM on August 24, 2004

please don't do what?
posted by mr.marx at 7:44 PM on August 24, 2004

I love this shot with the reflection of someone hunched over.
posted by shoepal at 7:46 PM on August 24, 2004

Sorry, mr.marx. The pics you linked to spooked me...just a little. I thought you were doing a little photoshop 'til I went back and took another look.

I was amused by the sock monkey pic, though. Are those glowing eyes in the shadows below him?
posted by jaronson at 7:50 PM on August 24, 2004

(seriously; I noticed that monkey thing hanging at the top of one tree before reading the SA thread which explain everything, jaronsen, and it did give me a genuine twist in the stomach for a moment. Dunno if that's evolutionary hardwiring at work, or just the effect of too many horror movies at an impressionable age. Either way, quality work here.)

uh... does that make us one of those "dumber forums" they wanted to test this against? snerk
posted by ook at 7:51 PM on August 24, 2004

nope, just very good photoshopping. the author admits it in the SA forum thread. very good thread.

It was (I lurk at SA too), and an amusing prank indeed. Not sure it merited linkage here, but that's OK. If waxy.org links to something, it's got the wonderchicken seal of approval pre-applied!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:54 PM on August 24, 2004

if you look at the gta thread, theres an another jpg that's "corrupted" and once the author gets through "repairing" it, it's a copy of the last picture in the series, this time blurred w/ aliens in the scene. It's pretty freaky. Also, I <3 waxpancake.
posted by bob sarabia at 8:10 PM on August 24, 2004

That's the observation tower on Mt. Wachuset, in MA. Elevation 2006' or so. I went hiking there last weekend. There were lots of bikers showing off in the parking lot, plus people showcasing their antique cars - and, from a very different planet, plenty of hikers with dogs.

Some just treated the wee little mountain like the beach : they got there early, set up chairs, and basked in the sun. Others left early.


Fog makes anything creepily indistinct. That obese couple with the little dog could have been real monsters : Boo!
posted by troutfishing at 8:36 PM on August 24, 2004

the problem with figuring out this is fake is that you dont have any fucking fun... i hate you guys
posted by Satapher at 9:14 PM on August 24, 2004 [1 favorite]

iconomy is my hero.

I kept waiting for someone on the original (main) thread to call bullshit on it, then was flummoxed when nobody on this thread had yet. I haven't checked out bob's additional links and see no need to, especially since they weren't part of the FPP. Someone on this thread had to spell out h-o-a-x, if only for the discussion to move on from that, and I was about to do so when I got to iconomy's comment.

Nice pictures, though.
posted by soyjoy at 9:23 PM on August 24, 2004

I just want to mention how glad I am that MeFi doesn't do the whole animated-gif-avatar-sig-file-block-quote-mega-verbose-post-detail-bullshit thing.
posted by techgnollogic at 9:34 PM on August 24, 2004

Aaaaaaaamen to that, techgnollic.
posted by ook at 9:49 PM on August 24, 2004

i just want to agree with techgnollogic. ya know, once in my life.
posted by quonsar at 9:51 PM on August 24, 2004

High fives!
posted by techgnollogic at 9:54 PM on August 24, 2004

Night of the Living Dead still shots?
posted by Trik at 9:56 PM on August 24, 2004

i just want to agree with techgnollogic. ya know, once in my life.

Ooh, ooh! Me too! Is it too late?
posted by soyjoy at 10:05 PM on August 24, 2004

soyjoy: I haven't checked out bob's additional links and see no need to, especially since they weren't part of the FPP

I included the links in the 1st comment instead of in the link description. You should have checked them since they were the first comment and also by the post author. If someone in the thread has to spell out the message that's in the FPP, maybe you should lay off mefi for a spell.
posted by bob sarabia at 11:04 PM on August 24, 2004

That's cool and creepy - nicely understated. The monkey was a bit much, though; it's obviously a temperate forest, not exactly prime monkey habitat. Anyone know what the posters in the Something Awful thread mean by "ragman"?
posted by Mars Saxman at 11:20 PM on August 24, 2004

Brrr. Good post.
posted by Quartermass at 11:40 PM on August 24, 2004

But it wasn't a monkey.

It was a Cat-Spider.

Didn't you read the link?
posted by kaibutsu at 11:57 PM on August 24, 2004

Man, somewhere in Hollywood, a PR person is reading this thread and thinking, "I am gonna make a million dollar promo budget for the next horror flick I land!"
posted by mwhybark at 12:03 AM on August 25, 2004

This one creeps me out the most.

*hides under the covers*
posted by Katemonkey at 12:23 AM on August 25, 2004

I disagree - you only have to look at the pics in any sort of detail to work out what's going on. Calling "bullshit!" on it completely misses the point, and removes the fun, in my opinion. Also diminishes the initial spook-factor for future visitors. Also confused by a comments that say this isn't worthy of mefi posting, presumably for the reason that it isn't at all important. For me, this was the best post of the day.
posted by nthdegx at 1:51 AM on August 25, 2004

I think it's a very good post. Nice break from political threads.

I quickly looked through the pictures and didn't notice anything in them unusual until some posts mentioned stuff. I looked back a little better and I was amazed. The background story needs a little tweaking, but it's pretty cool anyway.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 2:17 AM on August 25, 2004

I, too, really like the man in the reflection photo. The rest, not as much.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:30 AM on August 25, 2004

I'm with JakeEXTREME on this one: thanks to bob s for the break, no matter how small, from the perpetual pounding MeFi is taking over the American presidential election (not to mention any other related PartisanParamus-esque political pointlessness we've had to endure in recent days/weeks). Glancing through the photos - which were interesting in a "somethings not quite right about all this" sort of way - and then following the uncovering of what's up with it was diverting and entertaining enough that I've been playing along at home. Ya know, sometimes a good MetaFilter link can be just something mildly amusing from the Internet that most people might not have seen yet...
posted by JollyWanker at 6:11 AM on August 25, 2004

if you guy's really want to be freaked out, here's an old mefi link: Ted's Caving Page. best read late at night, with the lights turned off.
posted by lotsofno at 6:52 AM on August 25, 2004

If someone in the thread has to spell out the message that's in the FPP, maybe you should lay off mefi for a spell.

WTF are you talking about? The message in the FPP is "I found a digital camera in the woods." Do you mean "if someone in the thread has to spell out that the sentence in the FPP is untrue?" If so, maybe you should've lurked a little while longer before joining MeFi. I defy you to find a single thread since day one where the FPP is a hoax and nobody in the thread mentions it.
posted by soyjoy at 7:30 AM on August 25, 2004

Well, I didn't notice anything the first time, so I'm glad someone mentioned there were little spooky things. I browsed through the pics, thought, "nice woods," and moved on to the comments.

Now everyone play nice.
posted by Outlawyr at 7:50 AM on August 25, 2004

But it wasn't a monkey. It was a Cat-Spider. Didn't you read the link?

um.... huh? what the hell's a "Cat-Spider," and what link was I supposed to read other than the ones bob sarabia listed? Look in this picture; there's a monkey hanging from the big bent-over limb at the top of the tree. The eyes startled me, but the monkey spoiled the effect, and I realized the whole photo sequence was fake.
posted by Mars Saxman at 8:31 AM on August 25, 2004

Cat-monkeys.

Genius.
posted by Frasermoo at 9:09 AM on August 25, 2004

Very nice; even after realizing (from the obvious use of the photoshop clouds and radial blur) that it was fake, I have to admire the deftly done memetic creep factor.
posted by brownpau at 9:11 AM on August 25, 2004

So when I go to the link, all the pics have been replaced with:

"This domain is banned from using www.imageshack.us Thank you for your cooperation."

What the heck?
posted by Juicylicious at 1:40 PM on August 25, 2004

Many/most of those sites have had their images pulled -- common source host apparently got tired of eating bandwidth for it. Someone's hosted the whole thing at:

http://moonscrater.com/lostcamera/
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:53 PM on August 25, 2004

Update: 8/21/04

I've thought about it a lot, and I actually feel very guilty about just taking this camera, so next week when the weather turns nice, I'm going to go back up that trail and put up one or two laminated posters with my email on them, saying a camera was found. The person probably won't still be looking there after all this time, but if he likes to walk along that trail he might see it in the future. At least I'll be able to rest easier.

I'll update this page in a week or two.
posted by thomcatspike at 3:47 PM on August 26, 2004