The video began circulating in October 2015 with a note attached: "Please view the following video in its entirety before viewing this message." Then warnings about photosensitive epilepsy.
The content was disturbing in the way that deliberately constructed disturbing content is. A figure in a plague doctor mask. Distorted imagery. Flashes. A soundtrack that, when spectrogram-analysed, revealed hidden images.
The internet got to work.
Within days, analysts had found Morse code in the audio. Binary sequences in the visual noise. Decoded strings pointed to GPS coordinates in various locations. One set led to a park in Antwerp, Belgium. Investigators who went there found something scratched into a tree.
The video, tracked back to a file called "11B-X-1371," had been uploaded by an anonymous account. Blockchain metadata led to a dead end. The original file was traced no further.
Theories branched. This was a serial killer communicating in code. This was a government psychological operation. This was a viral marketing campaign. This was a lone programmer testing investigation communities.
What investigators confirmed: the video did contain genuine steganographic content. The Morse code, the spectrogram images, and the GPS coordinates were real embedded data — not imagination. Someone put real effort into constructing this.
What remained contested: whether the coordinate locations held any significance beyond the Antwerp discovery. Reports of physical markers at other locations were never independently verified.
The community came to believe it was a sophisticated ARG designed by one or more individuals to test whether the internet could find hidden information.
The creator never came forward. The video remains unattributed.
SOURCES