Solving puzzles is a passion shared by millions, and with the magic of the Web, some examples have grown in reach and complexity. Yet a recent puzzle that surfaced left enthusiasts stunned, and to be honest... several have been frightened. As the first layers of the puzzle began to fall, the content exposed formed a network of words and images pointing to torture, bacteriological attacks, and death. Who did this?
The Mysterious DVD
Now that a bit more is known about the enigma, Web detectives have managed to trace its origin to a post in the paranormal section of 4chan on the past May 9... but it all began for everyone else when the Swedish blog GadgetZZ received a strange package from Poland, with a DVD inside. On the DVD's surface, letters appear written without any particular order, mixing uppercase and lowercase. The data stored on the DVD amounts to a simple video... but this is where the mystery takes another dimension. The video has a copy on YouTube, but I must warn that the content, while not NSFW, falls into disturbing territory. I recommend turning down the volume, especially for headphone users, because the sound is... horrible.
Hidden Clues and Disturbing Messages
For those who didn't press Play, the video shows a subject wearing a long mask, similar in some ways to the one worn by the so-called "Black Death doctors" when miasma theory ruled the world of medicine. As the video progresses, you can see several visual clues, including Morse code, hexadecimal values, and text blended into the background. Those with a special affinity for these challenges began to work... but everything became very uncomfortable, at considerable speed. A Reddit user came to the conclusion that the awful sound in the video is nothing less than steganography, and the spectrogram revealed worrying images, in which you can see tortured women, as well as the messages "You Are Already Dead" and "We Are The Antivirus". Additional analysis of the images established that the origin of several of them is a 2007 German film called "Slasher".
As if that weren't enough, two of the video's sequences contain the GPS coordinates of the White House, and the phrase "REDLIPSLIFETENTH", an anagram for "KILLTHEPRESIDENT".
Theories About the Puzzle's Origin
Theories? Where do we start? Many users believe it's a publicity stunt a bit more twisted than normal for "Inferno", the third adaptation of Dan Brown's saga with Tom Hanks. The problem is that the book's story (and its eventual film) is set in Italy, and apparently has nothing to do with the White House. Another possibility is promotional material for the second season of the series "12 Monkeys". Without a doubt, the puzzle has a lot of work behind it, and it doesn't seem to be the effort of just a couple of people. Does it have a formal solution? We don't know that, but if its creators were looking for the Web's attention, don't worry: they have it.
