Mystery: 62.10401554464931 24.459908986464143

A still frame from the video in question. Source: Cool Interesting Stuff.

Internet mysteries: they’re a lot like Bethesda games. On the surface, they offer you the world and then some. However, once you so much as lay a finger on the door handle to let them in, they crumble into dust and fall apart. Then a dragon spins around and flies away spraying fire everywhere.

Indeed, Internet mysteries are far from the most magnificent things out there when it comes to compelling content. Though that doesn’t immediately mean they’re bad. If you’re a talented writer, you can explore beyond what’s presented to show the greater picture. This is where a serious divide comes into play when it comes to the innumerable amount of videos and articles about your dime-a-dozen Internet mysteries; the so-called “greatest” of them. You know, the Markovian Parallax Denigrate, A858, Unfavorable Semicircle, and every ARG this side of the Milky Way. Because of this, I often believe that most Internet mysteries fall into one of three categories:

The first is that they’re an art project. Some artsy student threw together some bizarre imagery that would make Lars von Trier gush over the deep meaning as to why the maggots are crawling on the woman. As a result, the denizens of the Internet think it’s a confession to a murder and it makes it to about a dozen top ten lists where people put a red circle around Mick Jagger’s lips, signifying that he too is behind Paul McCartney being the father to Ariana Grande.

The second is that it’s an ARG, or “alternate reality game”. Basically, a very bored person makes a game where people go outside and don’t practice social distancing. These kinds of games are very popular and actually quite cool. I had once contemplated making one myself, but I’m neither clever enough nor do I have any reason to make one. I also don’t think there’s any point to making one when there are enough out there to satisfy most fans of ARGs.

The third and final category is that the answer is something mundane, boring, and ultimately very normal. A supposedly creepy website was made by someone for fun, a creepy video was made for a contest or for school, or any other “mysterious” piece of content on the Internet was, well, just made because the user wanted to make it.

That brings us to today’s supposed mystery. It’s called 62.10401554464931 24.459908986464143 and it’s one of those “lesser known” Internet rabbit holes because it never took off. Though just like any other titan of the Internet mystery genre, it has its own base of truth seekers that suspect there is something malicious behind this video. So let’s journey down the rabbit hole and see what the truth is.

Mystery: Giant Scuttles

I scuttled away with this from a Cryptozoology wiki.

I recently finished picking stories out for my megalist of 5,000 mysteries and I’m feeling really energized by that. So, in celebration, the month of May will have a daily blog post for some of the mysteries that will be on said list. To kick things off, let’s take a look at one of the funnier stories I found while searching for worthwhile material: the cryptid known as the Giant Scuttle.

Mystery: The Oviedo Dick Monster

Oviedo on a map of Florida.

Salutations, dear reader. I’ve been extremely busy with a massive list as of late, so I apologize for not posting much lately. I don’t know when I will be posting regularly again, but it’ll hopefully be sometime in the not too distant future. For now, let’s have a bit of fun.

I recently tried to get ads put onto this blog so I can make a bit of money—or at the very least to make some so that I can forward it to a good cause, such as me not starving during the dreadful thing known as quarantine. Alas, Google had other plans. Namely, that this blog commits the act of “scraping content”. That’s actually something I’m unfortunately aware of. When it comes to writing, I’ve always been hyper self-conscious and even a bit displeased with how I tend to not add anything new to the table. I’m merely a parrot when it comes to many things, but I want to change that today—or at least I hope to. Okay, maybe not really, I just wanted to post something for the month of April and being told I scrape content motivated me.

Our story today is one that I found while browsing the cryptidz wiki. It was on a page called “The Top Ten Ridiculous Cryptids” and it got a really good laugh out of me when I first saw it. There are a fair number of nonsensical entries and even one that I talked about already (Gef the Talking Mongoose). The one that got the biggest laugh out of me though is called the Oviedo Dick Monster. It’s exactly what it sounds like and it’s everything you’d likely imagine it to be.

To Fear or Not to Fear: The Coronavirus

Time to look over something scary.

Conspiracy: The 2003 Papillion Incident

An aerial photo of Papillion, Nebraska.

A disclaimer some time later: this story was made up by me. I wrote it as an experiment to test on friends. I apologize if you fell for this. Should you be upset: I promise it won't happen again. Still, I'm leaving this up for posterity's sake.

Ever read or hear a story so bizarre, it defies all explanation? Such a thing is subjective, but I’m sure we all know of at least one story that really nags at us in some capacity. I know of a fair few: the Somerton Man, the murder of Blair Adams, and The 3X Killer  are but three of them. Though one I’ve never spoken of is one called the 2003 Papillion Incident. This little story I’ve never seen talked about on the Internet, but it’s one I encountered in my time researching. Today, I’m going to share it with you guys. So let’s dive in.

Mystery: The Self-Immolator From Hiper-Bompreço

A photo of the Hiper-Bompreço mall.

There were two things I wanted to do this month in the way of the stories I picked. The first was that I wanted a fair bit of diversity in the locations we went to to discuss the mysteries. I've never quite liked how little I've focused on cryptids and enigmas from continents like Asia and Australia (which I'll say right now: it got the short end of the stick badly this time around). I've primarily focused on stories in North America and Europe. As such, I made sure to get a fair number of stories from South America, Africa, and Asia. The second thing I wanted was for the stories to be really, really weird. I wanted stories I could really cut loose on and be less restrained by the chains of professionalism.

Doing that wasn't difficult whatsoever. The Obscurban Legend wiki was there to help me pick out a fair number of the entries. The first of them is short, sweet, and really weird. It's called the Self-Immolator of Hiper-Bompreço. To call this any other than the epitome of what I wanted this month to primarily be would be a federal crime. So let's dive in!

Mystery: The Tennessee Wildman

Oh baby it's a wild world.

Have you ever had this weird feeling inside of you when you want to do something, yet you know that doing it is a bad idea? In my case, I wanted to take a brief break after writing the megalist since I’d spent several days on end writing it without so much as a few hours to recuperate. Yet, once I was done, all I wanted to do was resume writing something—anything really. The projects I have lined up though are not the wisest to pursue on account of them being fairly sizable (especially the one on Crawlers).

As such, I found myself lounging around, feeling rather saddened and restless. I tried to take my mind off of things, but then I realized that I have no friends who live locally and I’m also a NEET. Therefore, I am more or less stuck either doing crossword puzzles or hoping nobody throws a water bottle at me to do something.

Golly gee willikers, it sure is good I don’t live in the 1950s. Otherwise, I may be kicked out of the house.

If that were to happen, I’m confident I’d become like the creature in today’s story. Known as the Tennessee Wildman, this story is... quite wild. So let’s begin!