Previously: “The Little Pink Backpack.”
On April 18, 2008, a short video titled “Mereana Mordegard Glesgorv” appeared on YouTube. Uploaded by a user by the name of erwilzei, it featured a mustachioed man washed over in red staring at the viewer for 20 seconds — nothing more; nothing less. It was perplexing, to be sure; but it was also somewhat unsettling, although no one could really pinpoint why. It’s not a pleasant thing to watch, even though nothing actually happens in it.
It quickly went viral, and eventually a longer version appeared, this time accompanied by a short creepypasta. The pasta claimed that upload it was attached to was merely a clip of the complete video. Those who viewed it in its entirety, it said, tended to suffer unusual and painful ends, frequently at the viewers’ own hands. It noted that the person who had originally uploaded the video had never been found, and that the man seen in it remained unidentified.
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The whole thing, of course, is a fiction designed to be taken as truth. The video might make you feel a little weird, but it won’t make you claw your own eyes out. And the man it features? We know who he is; his name is Byron Cortez, and he lives in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I find it interesting that in this case, the creepypasta was written in response to the video, not the other way around. That’s unusual; normally the videos come after the pastas do. Kind of makes you wonder what the intention was behind the 20-second video in the first place, doesn’t it?
There is a video on YouTube named Mereana Mordegard Glesgorv. If you search this, you will find nothing. The few times you find something, all you will see is a 20 second video of a man staring intently at you, expressionless, then grinning for the last 2 seconds. The background is undefined.
This is only part of the actual video.
The full video lasts 2 minutes, and was removed by YouTube after 153 people who viewed the video gouged out their eyes and mailed them to YouTube’s main office in San Bruno. Said people had also committed suicide in various ways. It is not yet known how they managed to mail their eyes after gouging them out. The cryptic inscription they carve on their forearms has not yet been deciphered.
YouTube will periodically put up the first 20 seconds of the video to quell suspicions, so that people will not go look for the real thing and upload it. The video itself was only viewed by one YouTube staff member, who started screaming after 45 seconds. This man is now under constant sedation and is apparently unable to recall what he saw. The other people who were in the same room as him while he viewed it and turned off the video for him say that all they heard at the time was a high pitched drilling sound. None of them dared look at the screen.
The person who uploaded the video was never found, the IP address being non-existent. And the man in the video has never been identified.
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[Photo via erwilzei/YouTube]
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