Mystery: Terra Nova Islands

A picture of the Antarctic coast.

Here on this blog, we cover an array of topics. Missing persons, cryptids, and conspiracies. Today’s going to be something brand new though: phantom islands. So rather than linger on the introduction, let’s instead dive right into the story of the Terra Nova Islands.

Mystery: The Man in the Plastic Bag

This has to be one of the most random things I’ve ever encountered on any website dedicated to mysteries, legends, or anything of that sort. On the ObscUrban Legend Wiki, there’s a story related to something called the Man in the Plastic Bag. I’d intended to cover it last year for Decemystery, but I honestly found it to not be worthwhile material. However, because I want to have fun and cover some of the simpler things I’ve amassed, I’m going to cover it for you all today.

Mystery: Kitsune

Woof.

Let’s take a trip over to Japan. Land of Godzilla, Gundam, and creepy ghost girls. It’s a fascinating location historically and culturally—the latter of those two being the central focus of today’s mystery. I’m sure most of you have likely heard of the Kitsune. If you haven’t, it’s a nine-tailed fox that has become something of a peculiar “waifu” to many who fall into the category of being a furry or a weeb, though you need not be either to appreciate the creature of legend. Now, given my pension for saying that legends had to have come from somewhere, it stands to reason that the Kitsune would fall into that category, right? Well, let’s take a gander at just that.

Mystery: The Terrifying Commercial Break

An image from the horror film Hostel.

I had plans to cover a story about a very famous unidentified murder victim case today. Alas, I got caught up in real life and didn’t want to rush through the story. As such, I decided to pick out a story from a wiki that I’d discovered while making my megalist: Paranormal World. It’s a site with a host of really fascinating, weird, and unique stories that I’d never heard of until I found the site. If I’m to be honest, I was extremely tempted to poach a bunch of them for this month, but I was hesitant as I didn’t want to be seen as a content thief. I did take a bunch of them for the megalist, but I’m highly doubtful more than two or three will remain on there (this particular story didn’t make it on there as an FYI).

Now with that said, even though I used some of them to fill slots on that list, I was still hesitant to even make this write-up. The main reason being: it seems the writer of that wiki is the only author, and it acts as something of a personal blog to them. I didn’t want to write about something that may be extremely personal to the writer. Not to mention, the story comes from Reddit which, as some of you may know, I’m really not fond of. However, I decided to throw aside my concerns and go through with it as I think I have an interesting argument to make in the long run. So let’s dig into what I call The Terrifying Commercial Break.

Look, I didn’t want to copy the name that Paranormal World used. If you’re curious by the way, click here to see the original article. I’d highly recommend you check out the other stories on the wiki too. They’re extremely interesting and the writer deserves a lot more credit for the stuff he finds.

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.