Re: The Note

Alright so my friend who reads this blog brought up the point of how there's a bunch of translators online that could figure out what that sick prank or whatever it is says, but let me explain something.

I know google translate. Everyone knows google translate. I survived 7+ years of Italian classes by using google translate. Through those seven years, I've learned one good rule about google translate. It sucks. It gets things wrong. When I used it for italian, I could fix the mistakes because I knew italian. But this is I guess latin? I don't know latin, and I don't know what's wrong with it or how to fix it.

But I know someone who does  know latin. My Sister. And she should be coming down soon to visit and I can get her to translate for me.

Which brings me to another problem, and that is the handwriting on the note is fucking horrid. My transcription? Sub par at best. I can't tell if this person meant As or Us or Rs or Ns half the time. Hell it could just be a teenage boy in my neighborhood being an asshole. It does say "cum" and "semen" in it after all. Seriously... this handwriting is some of the worst I've seen.



Haaa... I suppose there is another factor in all of this. Someone invading the privacy of my home due to my own carelessness... this isn't the first time this has happened. Last year, some... person did something similar, I suppose...

I had just gotten home from work, it was sometime in June near 11.30 at night. I went into my room, prepared to change into my pajamas... I.... got my pajama bottoms on and as I was taking off my bra I head a voice coming from my window. My window which was open slightly to let the air flow through. The window I left open with the blind up thinking that my thorn bush outside of it would protect me.

The voice said, "Now haven't you grown up?"

I screamed. I ran into the living room, crying for my step dad, covering myself, having been too distraught to grab a shirt. I begged him to check around the house, since I heard that voice. He checked and he checked, but he couldn't find anyone. We locked all the doors and closed all the blinds even though my mom was still out.

I thought I was fine. I've been getting more relaxed recently. And then this... fucking asshole drops this note while I'm once again leaving something open. So excuse me if I was a bit... stressed yesterday.

A sick bastard

Okay, okay fuck- So I was sitting in my computer room, you know writing some papers for my fucking finals, minding my own business, when I heard the front door slam shut. At first I thought, perhaps it was the wind or something like that, because today was actually a nice day for once, so I opened it earlier to let in the nice air and stuff- but that's before I went to reopen it.

But then I found this.

What the fuck. What the absolute fuck. It's a note in... Latin? Italian? the hell if I can tell. Whoever put this there has A) no sense of humor, and B) is a sick bastard.

It says "Videte enim Pupa/ Hubet enim responsa petis/ Tu antem, cum futura scientia/ Non erit semen eim, ludos"? That's the best I can do, the hand writing is shit.

What the hell was this even written in? Orange sharpie?

I want to Forget

I've been avoiding this all day.

But I'm so fucking angry right now. It has been two weeks. I thought I was good, safe. I don't know, some other lies I've been telling myself. But no, I can't even go a whole month without some goddamned dream or city or whatever other bullshit.

I even went camping and I'm still seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Thinking that I'm seeing that fucking City behind me, lurking or some bullshit. How do you even see a city in the middle of fucking nowhere? Even when I'm not keeping my mind on other things, I still hear that goddamned giggle echoing in my head. Over and over, it's driving me nuts.

And then last night. Fucking last night.

Fuck, fine, here. Have the dream.

.........

When I opened my eyes, I was at the bottom of the library stairs, picking up from the last dream I suppose... Initially I suspected the nearby children's section to look like... well the children's section from my local library... but I was wrong. It was wrong. More wrong than the entire wretched City that this library was within.

There weren't any children's drawings hanging from the walls, or any other nonsensical adornments you would expect from a children's section.

Well... no, there were papers, but they were all blank. Blank printer paper hanging from the walls. And on the bulletin board there were no notices or flyers. Instead there were letters, cut out white and grey printer paper. They didn't say anything coherent, just letters pasted up there in a mockery of language...

"FR  ADA RWEG" and "BDI QWPRN SKT"

Eventually, I stood up and walked into the children's section proper. On the bookshelves were effigies of books. Almost all of them were grey and the same size. When I grabbed one, the pages were either blank, or a scramble of letters similar to the walls. I wasn't even certain if they were all of the Latin alphabet. However, there were a few books that had cover art, though those books lacked clear messages as well. As I stepped out of one of the aisles, I saw movement within the adjacent hallway. And because I'm aware of the tropes that come with horror stories and general surrealistic stories...

I gave chase after the figure.

I ran after the moving shadow, down a hallway that was far too long to be found in a small town library. It felt like ages but finally I had reached the end, where...

Where the man from my Theater Dream stood. He stood there, with a script in his hand and a pen tapping the paper. His head was bowed, but I could see him grinning at me, smirking, laughing, daring me to do anything-

So I did.

And when I stepped forward, I fell. I fell and I fell and I fell. I fell down so far that Tartarus would be envious of the pit. And then... The Voice spoke, "You're skilled at Hiding. Better than your Running. Maybe you want to play Hide and Seek instead of Tag?" The Giggle echoed in my mind with the Voice's final words, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway. I'm going to Win. Because I always Win. And I always know where you are, Mariette."

And then I woke up.

.........

Ugh, even writing it is too much.... I do not need this during finals... I just want to forget.

Dear old Selndy

Hello there blog, sorry about the radio silence. College was kicking my ass and all that. But I am here to post more about myths and lore! Yaaaaaay.

Since last post I talked about tulpas and mentioned dear old Slendy, let's talk about his origin today.

Slendy was concieved on June 10th, 2009 on the Something Awful forums. The "Goons" of the forum were trying to make fake paranormal photos in order to freak out paranormal forums. The SA goon who "planted" Slendy was Victor Surge, who posted two fabricated photos in black and white, showing an impossibly tall creature with no face near children. He included two short descriptions:

"We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..." -1983, photographer unknown presumed dead

"One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. – 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.

From there, Victor Surge and the rest of the SA forums updated and fleshed out the mythos of Slendy, more or less taking over the forum.

Obviously enough, Slendy is no longer confined to the SA forums, Within the same month of his conception, Slendy was used in a webseries known as Marble Hornets made by SA users KicksYouInHalf and Ce gars. Many people believe these videos to be the driving force for Slendy's fame. Ce gars and friends popularized many common themes related to Slendy, and inspired webseries like EverymanHybrid and TribeTwelve to name a few.

Common Names for Slendy include; Slender Man, The Tall Man, The Thin Man, Der Schlanker Mann, Fear Dudh, Schlankwalkd, Slenderman, The Pale One, The White King, Master, Black King, The Operator, and The Birch Prince

Not only has he become an internet phenomenon,  he is perhaps one of the first samples of Internet Urban legend that gained mass traction. He's become a meme, something referenced anywhere. The Endermen in Minecraft, the Silence in Doctor Who. He has his own video game (several in fact), a movie, several web series and blogs, and easter eggs dedicated to his fame.

And all of that. All of that history and fame and acknowledgement gives it power. Every time someone walks home after talking about him, and double takes when they see a shadow under the lamp post, they give it power. Every time that someone believes in it, has the brief moment of "what if he is real? What if he's more than mortal?" he becomes a stronger and stronger tulpa. That is why I fear Slendy. That is why I nickname it, why I refuse to give it a proper name. Because my belief in it, gives it more potential to exist.

"You've seen him, now you can't unsee him." -Victor Surge

Let's talk Tulpas

So, while I avoid writing end of term papers, and thinking about that dream from Sunday, I think I'll make an entry about something I'm actually interested in.

Which means talking about urban legends and myths. Because other than dreams, that is literally my life.

So, let's talk about tulpas, or thoughtforms.

If you frequent creepypasta like I'm perchance to do, then you're probably familiar with the story with the name Tulpa. And honestly, the creepypasta does have the idea pretty down pat. But the origin actually comes from Tibetan Buddhism, first documented in Samaññaphala Sutta which listed the steps to to create a Mano-maya-kaya. Or rather, Mind-made body. Essentially, Tibetan monks in a group would ascend to the celestial plane through the Boddhi, or mindstream. Initially, tulpas, or nirmitas, was classified as a psychic skill through Buddhist discipline.

Really, from what I've read, it seems like the nirmitas were a test for the young monks. In Buddhism, reality is empty of any essence, and to make sure that the young monks were following this teaching, they had them create nirmitas. Once the nirmita was created, they'd tell the younger monk that this thing was a god. If they believed them and accepted the nirmita as a god, they failed. If they saw past the falsehood, and accepted the nirmita as a hallucination, similar to what life was to the Buddhists, then he passed.

However, us westerners are more acquainted with thoughtforms. Which are more linked to western magic and witchcraft. Really, this has less fancy names. People try to make imaginary friends. Shit goes wrong, and suddenly Mr Fluffykins is impaling you on that "cute" tail you gave him.

Personally... I think Tulpas are bad news. They're just asking to give a demon or something a physical form.

Now, you may be wondering "Hey, Mariette, other than you being a completely weirdo, what's up with the tulpa talk?" Well, I'm glad you asked, random people who look at my blog.

This guy is to blame to be honest. Well not him exactly, but see he's a statue on my campus and I absolutely hate him because he's one of the reasons I fear our favorite tulpa on the internet, Slendy!

Yep, that's right, Slendy is what I consider a modern day tulpa, and he creeps the fuck out of me because of this whole thing I have about not being able to see faces on people. But that has nothing to do really with tulpas, now does it?

Ugh, sorry. I'm getting bad vibes from talking about tulpas too much. Call me crazy, but I just think they're major bad mojo that I do not need in my life. Maybe I'll talk about this another day.

Insomnia

Insomnia needs to be stopped at all costs. #stopinsomnia2k14 or whatever bullshit they're doing over on twitter now.

This week is so not the time for sleep deprived Mariette. Sleep deprived Mariette is no one's favorite Mariette.

New Dream

So... last night was a thing. So was today, but, you know, Easter. Different story for a different time.

For now, well.... I guess I'll get right into the point of this blog; the dream.


I dreamt of the city again, for the  first time in years. The City. Even now I can scarcely believe it.

.........

When I woke, I was on a street.

I was on a street, alone with only the familiar grey, sleek spires as my company. I heard no noise, saw no evidence of any human life surrounding me, and it... was terrifying. The silence had seemed near deafening, and there was a shiver down my spine that told me that this wasn't right.

That there was something I had to do.

And then I remembered-

I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran. I ran so far and for so long that I could feel my lungs burning, my feet bleeding, the bones in my legs aching for some sort of reprisal, a boon, any form of relief to end this hellish marathon. And even then, I continued to run, with the words from that far off dream ringing in my head. It was the only thing that kept me going, until my legs gave out and I was scraping my legs and knees across the asphalt of the road.

I felt like dying.

It was only when I could breathe that I looked up, and suddenly my body became immobile; I saw a Library.

It wasn't as if there was anything off about it perse. It wasn't anything epic or grand,it was just... a library. Like one you'd find in a small town run by kindly volunteers. Still, I felt my body give a tremble as I stared at the gray doors, gray like the spires and the road and the sky. This place felt wrong and I knew it, yet...

Yet somehow, I managed to get up, almost as if it was against my will, as if there were strings pulling my limbs up to stand, despite my body screaming for me to rest. I stared up once more at Library's looming figure before stumbling through those grey, grey doors.

I don't remember what I had expected, but I suppose it was only natural for it to seem near identical to the libraries of my childhood, it was my own dream after all. Even walking around, looking at all the books, it was impeccably replicated. Well, except for the complete and utter lack of human life of course, as seemed the new staple of The City.

As I further explored the library, I felt a sudden urge to go  down the stairs into the children's section, almost like a tug, pulling me down. But before I even took my first step on the creaky old stairs, I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I turned, trying to find the source when I heard that voi.... no... That Voice within my mind and behind me again.

"I tell you to Run and you plod along. What a defiant toy you are."

And instead of waking up peacefully, I felt my body being jerked back, down the stairs as a giggle echoed throughout my mind.



Then I woke up, as I felt the first step dig into my spine.

.........

Yeah, you could say that after that ordeal, going through the festivities today, well...Okay I may have been shaken up a bit, but it did make suffering through the pleasantries of the day a bit... more bearable.