Wide Atlantic Weird is an ongoing series of stories that explore the folkloric and sometimes spooky side of life. It's a selection of urban-legend styled stories that attempt to create that feeling you get when you come across a delicious little fragment of weirdness, a story that's so out-there it can't possibly be true, yet one which you can't dismiss out of hand. When you stumble across such a tale buried in a chapter of an old collection of 'unexplained' stories, or when you hear an unbelievable story from a listener to a podcast, that's Wide Atlantic Weird.
EXTRACT 1:Source: The West Cork Standard Magazine, Dec 2005, Article
by Ken Crean
‘Mark just always wanted to make films. That’s all he ever
cared about, ever since he was little. When we were ten years old, his dad
brought him one of those old JVL cameras from the media department at the
university. It filmed in black-and-white and recorded onto this little VHS tape
that you had to stick into the side of it. That whole summer, we recorded mini
horror epics. Corn syrup and food colouring for blood. Supermarket dummies
taken apart for severed limbs. That kind of thing. Even then, I think, we did
some recording our here in the Forgotten Forest. It just seems right that our
latest film, the one we shot right here, is gonna be the one that kick-starts
our career as film-makers.’
I’m talking to Edward Whelan, best friend and colleague of
budding director Mark McInerney. It’s the end of a bright December day, and the
so-called Forgotten Forest is just beginning to turn gold around us as the
early winter sun drops below the treetops. Mark himself is standing nearby with
his girlfriend Lauren Phelan, and true to form, he’s got a camera in hand.
‘The lighting is perfect,’ Mark says to Lauren, ‘Maybe we
should come back here to film the sequel.’
The film he’s referring to is, of course, the unlikely
smash-hit short film The Antlered Man
Tapes, a 15-minute spectacular that has taken off – gone viral, as the phrase goes – on a
platform that would have been unthinkable ten years ago when this team of movie
enthusiasts were filming their first efforts.
‘Youtube,’ Lauren explains to me, as we trudge deeper into
the forest. ‘It’s an online video-sharing platform. It means that anyone can
watch our movie. We don’t need a studio to get the film out there. We don’t
need connections, we don’t need to live in California and know the right
people. It’s going to change how the entire industry works.’ Her eyes seem to
shine with the possibilities.
The trio filmed their horror short over a one-month period,
using very simple techniques. Natural lighting, improvised dialogue. Everyone
wore their own clothes. Mark’s mother provided sandwiches for the crew on long
days. ‘The most difficult parts were the night shoots,’ admits Mark, ‘the guys
used to get pretty cranky with me. We’d be out here in the forest after
midnight, in the cold and the mud, and I’d be calling for take after take. But,
you know, I had a vision. Everything had to be just right. And I was right –
they’re thanking me now!’ Mark smiles, then raises the camera to his eyes again,
as the dying sunlight turns the woods a beautiful shade of orange.
Within four months, the film had breached Youtube’s top ten
videos, becoming one of the most-watched videos of the site’s short existence,
and competing with videos – both professional and amateur – from around the
world. Millions of people saw The
Antlered Man Tapes. Social networks lit up with commentary, the video
passed on from person to person. Everybody was talking about the film. ‘We got
emails from people claiming to be lawyers,’ says Lauren, resting against a
knotted oak as Mark snapped still shots of her. ‘They wanted to represent us,
get our work shown at festivals, deals with big companies, that kind of thing.’
But they held out – and last month, they got what they were
waiting for. A major British film production company – they aren’t allowed to
say which one until negotiations are hammered out – got in touch, saying they
wanted to fund Lost Forty Pictures, as the group called themselves. ‘We had to
register a company and everything,’ says Edward. ‘All for our little amateur
viral film.’ He’s downplaying their success, and their hard work, but he can’t
keep the smile off his face. Idly, he traces a symbol with his foot among the
fallen leaves: a circle, bisected by a curved line that spreads like a pair of
wings on either side of a faceless head.
So what exactly is The
Antlered Man Tapes? Why are so many people obsessed with it? You can watch
it yourself, of course, if you have an internet connection. It’s a simple but
effective horror film, perhaps most
effective in what it suggests rather than what it shows. The film stars the
three young friends playing a version of themselves, on a mission to
investigate a legendary figure that lives in the Forgotten Forest. That figure,
of course, is The Antlered Man. They discuss the legend, enter the forest, get
lost, and come to a mysterious end.
I think the story gets much of its power from the use of a
real local urban legend. And the Forgotten Forest is the ideal home for an
urban legend – earlier in the evening we came across a gang of teenagers,
swigging cans of cheap lager and hoping for a glimpse of a spook.
Legend-tripping, you could say. They asked us if we knew where to see the
Antlered Man, if we thought he was real. Mark smiled, said he didn’t think the
legend was true. The kids seemed disappointed. Then they asked us if we knew
anything about the three investigators who disappeared looking for the Antlered
Man. You know, the ones from the viral video. In the gloom, they didn’t recognise
Mark and his crew. I told them that I didn’t think that video was real, either.
And this time, they seemed not just disappointed, but annoyed.
That was some time
ago. We are alone in the forest now.
‘The Antlered Man really has been seen here,’ Lauren tells
me, with just the merest shiver in her voice as the woods turn dark and the air
turns cold. ‘Although sometimes he’s only sensed – you know, like a general
feeling of panic. Uncontrollable panic. That’s what people have reported
feeling. But when he is seen
–sometimes he’s just a silhouette – he’s incredibly tall, with these huge
antlers coming out of his head, like some kind of pagan god.’
Behind us, Mark imitates the knights who say ‘ni’ from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but the
other two are not in the mood for jokes. In fact, the mood within the group has
noticeably soured. I gather that success has led to their relationships
becoming strained. Much of this, I gather, is due to Mark’s decision to pass
the film off as a true story.
When The Antlered Man
Tapes begins, a title card informs us that the following footage is real,
and that the investigators in the film disappeared and were never seen again.
It’s implied that they came to some sticky, unspecified end at the hands of
some terrible occult phenomena, perhaps related to the Antlered Man himself.
Getting lost in this forest seems somewhat unlikely – even in the darkness, we
can see the lights that signal the housing estates that brush up against it –
but the way the footage is shot makes the forest feel huge, endless.
‘We had to stay off all social media,’ says Lauren, ‘Mark
created fake accounts and left posts asking if anyone knew where we were.
People started to take it seriously.’
‘If we hadn’t created the mystery, do you think the film
would have been a success?’ says Mark, with a half-smile.
I’m starting to see things in the trees myself, now. I’m
almost embarrassed to mention it, but pagan antlered heads seem to be lurking
everywhere amongst the branches. I begin to ponder on the power of legends, on
their ability to conjure up something and make it real.
‘The letters,’ says Lauren, ‘Tell him about the letters.
Something scrawled my address in red ink and sent them to my house. I had to
burn them, I was so weirded out. That symbol
– how could they know?’
‘Something waited outside my house for three nights,’ says
Edward quietly. ‘I saw its head through the trees.’
Mark suggests that it’s time to leave the woods.
Later, we’re at Mark’s family home, watching the group in
happier times on Mark’s computer. They show me their first films. Ten-year-old
Mark covered in fake blood. Ten-year-old Lauren with her hand cut off. A kid’s
idea of horror. Then we get to see a behind-the-scenes shot of the making of The Antlered Man Tapes. We’re back in
the woods, except it no longer feels like a fun, friendly place. Mark is tying
Lauren up with thick, frayed cord. Edward is already gagged and bound. A huge
pentagram has been drawn on the forest floor beneath them. Mark drips fake
blood on both of them, creating the symbol I saw Edward make earlier. The
symbol of the Antlered Man. Darkness is falling. They’re getting ready for the
climax of the film: the part where it all goes wrong for the characters. The
actors, however, are laughing and joshing one another good-naturedly. They have
no idea yet that their film is going to be spread across the internet, creating
reality from what was fantasy. They don’t yet know about the letters that are
so awful they will have to be burned.
-END OF EXTRACT
EXTRACT 2: Source – Creendubh South newspaper, May 2006
Gardaí today found three young people dead at an isolated
house in the Inchigeela woods in West Cork. It’s believed that the three were
filmmakers who were renting the house as a retreat to finish scripting a
follow-up to last year’s surprise hit The
Antlered Man Tapes. As a result of fears the trio had relating to security,
the house and its surroundings were well-covered by cameras. Some images from
these cameras have leaked to the press. Two of the pictures, published below,
show hooded figures approaching the house from the woods and peering in the
windows. There are at least six of them. Each has an odd symbol painted on
their robes: a circle, like a head, with deer-like antlers above it. No
evidence of the killers was left in the house. Gardaí have refused to comment
on the rumours that the trio were murdered in an occult fashion, or as part of
any kind of ritual. They did, however, make it clear that there was no evidence
of any inexplicable or supernatural happening. This was simply a group of
ordinary people in the grip of some strange, powerful idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment