Previously: “Teaching Jake About The Camcorder, Jan. ’97.”
CW: Alcoholism and addiction, drunk driving, lots and lots of murder and death and dismemberment. Also, there are flashing lights in most of the videos in this web series, so if you’re photosensitive, you might want to avoid clicking through and watching them.
A family restaurant. Animatronic performers. Missing people. Murderous robots. Mysteries. Blood. Death. It’s an equation that will no doubt sound familiar to many — although in this case, I’m not talking about what you probably think I’m talking about. I am not, you see, talking about indie horror video game darling Five Nights At Freddy’s. I’m talking about The Walten Files, a YouTube web series with some light ARG elements centered around a fictional restaurant called Bon’s Burgers and the many tragedies that befell those in Bon’s Burgers’ orbit.
But The Walten Files is not just a Five Nights At Freddy’s clone. The Walten Files is something else. And it absolutely deserves its own exploration and investigation, independent of where the seeds for it may have originally come from.
Created by Chilean artist and animator Martin Walls, The Walten Files does in fact have its origins in Five Nights At Freddy’s; as Walls noted in a comment on the The Walten Files‘ first video, his series was directly inspired by the FNaF games. It does, however, take place in a world where none of the events of FNaF happened — where Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is just a pizza restaurant beloved by kids and their families as a fun place to spend an afternoon. Interestingly, though, Bon’s Burgers predates Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza: Set in Brighton, Michigan — a small city that does actually exist (it’s about 20 miles north of Ann Arbor and 50 miles west of Detroit) — the story of The Walten Files so far focuses mainly on the years between 1974 and 1982.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
But I don’t really want to spend too long on the FNaF aspect of The Walten Files. While there’s no denying FNaF’s influence on indie gaming in general and indie horror gaming in particular, I don’t really support the games at this point; besides, while The Walten Files does share some of its core DNA with its roots — the restaurant; the murders; the possessed robots; even the arcade game that forms the entirety of the third episode, which is very much reminiscent of the mini-games embedded within the standard Five Nights At Freddy’s framework that reveal most of the series’ deepest lore — The Walten Files tells a story all its own. It doesn’t just rehash what FNaF did in service of a duplicate narrative; it takes the tools that FNaF popularized and does something different with them.
We’re still early in the series’ development — only about a quarter of the way through, if it continues as Walls plans for it to — but let’s take a crack at solving the mystery of The Walten Files based on what we have so far, shall we?
The Walten Files, Briefly
As of this writing, The Walten Files consists of three main episodes and several hidden videos. The five videos range quite widely in length — the first two main episodes are both 10 to 20 minutes long, while the third is nearly an hour; meanwhile, the hidden videos tend to be shorter, clocking in at under 10 minutes each. (There are also a number of additional, tangentially related videos on Walls’ channel, but he has said expressly that they’re non-canonical and just for fun.)
Storytelling-wise, the third episode is the weakest, despite the fact that it’s the longest and the one that perhaps goes most deeply into the series’ lore. For me, the problems lie in how explicit the video is; it features narration that spells everything out for us, more or less handing it all to us on a plate and turning it into a much more passive viewing experience. Yes, there’s missing information, which means there’s some room for conjecture based on what we haven’t seen yet — but what is present in the video isn’t really up for interpretation: There is a correct way to read it.
The form of The Walten Files is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the project. In essence, it’s found footage — but instead of being live action, it’s animated, which gives it quite a different feel than, say, projects like Marble Hornets or Hi I’m Mary Mary. Indeed, as Walls put it in a comment on the first main episode, his aim was always to make it “feel much more like a fever dream than anything.” I’d argue the use of animation instead of live action is pivotal for achieving this “fever dream”-like quality.
Eventually, says Walls, there will be 12 main episodes total, divided into two seasons of six episodes apiece; as such, there’s a lot about the story that hasn’t yet come together. But here’s where we’re at right now.
The Walten Files: The Main Episodes
The three main episodes of The Walten Files are compilations of footage from a variety of sources — company training videos, pieces of licensed media, and footage recorded directly by employees — all pertaining to an extinct company called Bunny Smiles Incorporated and their primary venture, a Chuck E. Cheese/Showbiz Pizza-style restaurant called Bon’s Burgers. These compilations have been cut together and uploaded by someone calling themself Anthony, although who Anthony is and why he has taken it upon himself to do so has not yet been addressed.
The first video, titled “The Walten Files 1 – Company Introductory Tape,” introduces us to Bon’s Burgers as a workplace, as a corporate entity, and as an entertainment venue: We see training videos for tech support and maintenance jobs; we’re taught company lore about Bunny Smiles Inc.’s co-founders, Jack Walten and Felix Kranken; we meet the restaurant’s animatronic entertainers — a blue bunny named Bon, a purple bunny named Banny, a sheep named Sha, a humanoid ringmaster named Boozoo, and a clown named Billy — who, together, are referred to as the Showstoppers — and, crucially, we learn that as of 1975, Bon’s Burgers has closed and its props, animatronics, arcade machines, and other ephemera have been transported to a storage facility labeled “K-9” in Saint Juana Forest, where they are looked after by an employee with the title of Facility Caretaker.
We also learn that Jack Walten is missing, and has been since June 11, 1974.
And we learn that there’s a reason the animatronics have been hidden away in such a secure location—because some of the footage, shot by a new Facility Caretaker named Brian Stells in 1982, ends in Bon the blue bunny attack and killing Stells. “WHAT WAS THAT THING,” Stells yells as he runs through the woods, trying to escape his robotic pursuer. There’s a loud crunch. The screen goes black.
When we see Stells again, his face is distorted and bleeding, his eyes and jaw missing. “I can’t feel anything,” a piece of text at the bottom of the screen reads. “He thought I was her.”
The second video, “The Walten Files 2 – Relocate Project,” reveals to us more about what may have happened at Bon’s Burgers. Through more company training videos, we learn that the restaurant closed on July 20, 1974 — but that, as of 1978, Bunny Smiles Inc. founder Felix Kranken has launched the Relocate Project, with the goal of restoring and rehabilitating the animatronics and reopening Bon’s Burgers by 1982. There is no mention of Jack Walten; he seems to have been erased from the company lore.
We also learn that there are more missing people in addition to Walten: A woman named Susan Woodings, who hasn’t been seen since June 30, 1974, and Rosemary Walten, Jack’s wife, who stopped by the restaurant on July 19, 1974, frantically searching for her missing husband. It is strongly implied that not only were these two people killed, but also that there remains were stuffed inside two of the Showstoppers — Susan in Banny the purple rabbit, and Rosemary in Sha the sheep.
Lastly, we see footage shot by three Bunny Smiles Inc. technicians, who — Hilary B., Ashley P., and Kevin W. — who were sent to the K-9 storage facility in 1978 to restore the animatronics as part of the Relocate Project. They were meant to spent three days onsite, even sleeping there, between July 12 and July 14. Two of them — Hilary and Kevin — did just that, leaving on the third day. But one of them — Ashley — went exploring. She discovered a door labeled “Backdoors” and opened it. And there, after finding an assortment of abandoned animatronics and a cassette tape that intoned the names “Jack,” “Susan,” “Charles,” “Rosemary,” and “Sophie” at her when she used a tape player embedded in one of the animatronics to listen to it, she was attacked by Bon the blue rabbit. Her coworkers just thought she left early — but she never left at all. She was, it’s heavily implied, stuffed inside another one of the Showstoppers: Billy, the clown equipped with the tape player she used to listen to the cassette.
The third video, “The Walten Files 3 – BunnyFarm,” introduces us properly to a character whose name has been on the periphery of the previous videos: Sophie Walten, who, at the time the footage included in this video was recorded — 1982 — is 22 years old. Despite sharing a last name with Jack and Rosemary Walten, Sophie doesn’t seem to have any knowledge of them; nor does she seem to know much about Bunny Smiles Inc. But when her girlfriend, Jenny Letterson, shows her an old arcade cabinet for a game called Bunny Farm which has recently been installed in the basement of the building in they live, she begins playing — and as she does so, she begins to uncover memories she didn’t even realize she had.
The video is entirely gameplay footage, which at first looks simply buggy, but soon begins to appear straight-up haunted. Through a combination of what the game is showing us and what Sophie says about it as she plays, we learn more concrete information about the missing people and what happened to them, and add another to the list: Charles, another Bon’s Burgers employee named on the tape Ashley had previously found in the second video, who went missing on July 14, 1974 — that is, who was killed on July 14, 1974 and stuffed inside the Boozoo animatronic.
And lastly, the game imparts to her one other crucial piece of information — something that might be the beginning of everything when it comes to the tragedy of Bon’s Burgers: Sophie had two siblings, Ed (sometimes styled as Edd) and Molly. Felix Kranken and his wife, Linda, were like family to them; they called Felix “Uncle Felix.” But Uncle Felix struggled with substance abuse; he was an alcoholic. His wife left him due to the alcoholism on May 2, 1974. And then later that night, when driving Ed and Molly home from a school function, Felix — under the influence — crashed the car, killing both children. Then he hid the evidence, burying Ed and Molly in the forest where the car had rolled to a stop — the Saint Juana Forest. He left with them a grey rabbit he had fabricated for them as a Christmas gift some time before — a toy Molly had named Rocket.
But the children’s spirits were restless — and somehow, they managed to escape the forest; it’s implied that they somehow merged with Rocket in the process.
The Walten Files: Hidden Videos And Other Odds And Ends
The main episodes, though, are not the only pieces of content floating about that are canonically part of The Walten Files. There are… others. Ones you have to look a little deeper for.
A handful of them are videos. Two of them are unlisted videos — hidden ones you can only watch if you have the exact URL for them. The URL for the first one, “Lucky You,” is hidden in the opening and closing frames of “The Walten Files 2.” This video begins like a photo album or slideshow of Bon’s Burgers from its opening day on June 28, 1974 to its utilization of the K-9 storage facility on Jan. 23, 1975. Then, amidst nightmare images of the Showstoppers, we hear narration:
“You must be so confused about what you saw. Don’t be scared, my little bunny; answers will be given eventually. But don’t try to solve this puzzle only with the pieces you have so far. This is only the beginning, for I’m going to tell you a story of broken people. Beautiful people. He is so sorry about what he did to them. But there’s nothing he can do. Remember that. Safety of pills, Sophie. Safety of pills, Sophie.”
An image of a grey bear wearing a hat we can’t name yet, but who “The Walten Files 3” will teach us is called Showbear. An image of a bottle of pills labeled “Sophie Walten.”
Then, images of the abandoned Showstoppers, with text laid over them:
“Oh can’t you see? I made them beautiful. I don’t know how. I didn’t even mean to. But I did. They try to talk to us. Through analog they will be heard. This is their cry for help. Besides, they want us to know what happened that year. But we must be patient.”
And an image of an endoskeleton labeled “CYBERFUN,” with more text:
“Look. They are filled with life. They dance to the music. They laugh and sing along. They’re perfect. They are beautiful.”
Then: “They will see you soon, Sophie.”
The URL for the second unlisted video, “Guilty,” is hidden within “The Walten Files 3.” Its description is an obituary for Ed and Molly Walten; its contents are confirmation from Felix that he crashed the car, killed the children, and buried them in the forest — although he can’t remember exactly where.
One final video isn’t unlisted, but it’s hard to find unless you know what to look for. Within the comments of the main episodes are a handful of messages encrypted in Base64 from a user calling themself Sy05. The first episode’s message is, “The first pieces of the puzzle have been placed. The puzzle is far from a solution, however. Be weary [sic] of the hints that appear over time. One missed direction can throw off the course of this puzzle forever”; the second’s is, “More puzzle pieces have been laid out for you. Others are more significant than others. Two pieces are crucial to slowly achieving the solution. Find the pieces, return them to me, and meet at the intersection. See you soon”; and the third is, “The puzzle pieces are here for you now, and they are in a similar fashion to the ones you pieced months ago. Remember the methods, look for the pieces, and you will have another segment complete.”
And if you search YouTube for the username Sy05, you’ll find their channel, with one, single video on it — one called “The Ticking Clock.” It features… a ticking clock.
Sy05, by the way, is Base64 for K-9.
And lastly, there’s a website: FindJackWalten.com. If you click on the Contact button at the bottom of the screen, you’re taken not to a contact form, but to findjackwalten.com/missing, with a drawing of Jack’s face hiding beneath that of an animatronics, and the message “did you forget about me?” hidden off to the side. If you look in browser, the tab with this page open will be labeled “Help.”
But there’s more here, too. Manually type in findjackwalten.com/rosemarywalten, and you’ll be taken to a page with Rosemary’s missing poster; the page is titled “A Beautiful Rose.” Then, type in findjackwalten.com/jennyletterson — the name of Sophie’s girlfriend who shows her the Bunny Farm arcade cabinet — and you’ll see a photo of the building in which they live and a chunk of dialogue. Sophie tells Jenny what she saw in the game — what she remembered of her family — and Jenny vows to help her get to the bottom of the mystery.
Who’s Who and What’s When: The Walten Files’ Victims And Timeline
There’s obviously a lot to unpack here, but we can’t do that until we make the two biggest elements of the story clear: Whose spirits are possessing which animatronics, and the timeline of the whole thing.
Who’s Who
Let’s start with the animatronics. There are six creatures to account for — the five Showstoppers, plus Rocket the grey rabbit. The series so far has made most, if not all, of the possessions clear. Here’s what we’ve got:
- Rocket: A grey toy rabbit. It is occupied by Jack Walten’s two youngest children, Ed and Molly Walten, who were killed by Felix Kranken in a drunk driving incident on May 2, 1974. Felix buried the children in Saint Juana Forest. They later learned how to possess the Rocket toy, and seem to have made it out of the forest with the toy’s help — although precisely how they did it is unclear.
- Sha: The sheep Showstopper. It is possessed by Rosemary Walten, Jack’s wife and the mother of Ed, Molly, and Sophie Walten. On July 19, 1974, Rosemary stopped by Bon’s Burgers to inquire about her missing husband. She was lured backstage by a voice saying, “I know where he is Rose.” She was met by Bon the blue bunny Showstopper, who dismembered her and stuffed her inside Sha.
- Banny: The purple rabbit Showstopper. It is occupied by Susan Woodings, a Bon’s Burgers engineer. After the first birthday party held at Bon’s Burgers on June 30, 1974, she noticed the Bon animatronic acting strangely and stayed late to fix it. Bon killed her and stuffed her inside Banny. She stayed there, alive but mangled, for some time; it is implied that she starved to death.
- Boozoo: The human ringmaster Showstopper. It is possessed by Bon’s Burgers employee Charles, whose last name is not identified. On July 14, 1974, Charles was killed — presumably by Bon, although this is never explicitly stated — and stuffed inside the Boozoo robot. He doesn’t remember what his own face looks like, implying that it was heavily mutilated.
- Billy: The clown Showstopper, equipped with a cassette tape player in his abdomen. It is occupied by Bunny Smiles Inc. technician Ashley P. On July 12, 1978, Ashley entered the K-9 storage facility with two other technicians to attempt to restore the robots. On July 14, she used a small key given to her by Bunny Smiles to enter a door marked “Backdoors.” Behind this door, she found many other doors, many filled with old animatronics and parts. She also found a cassette tape labeled “6/11/197* DISCARD” and used the cassette player in the Billy robot to play it. It named the list of the previous victims to her, along with the name “Sophie.” Then Bon appeared, killed her, and stuffed her inside the Billy robot.
- Bon: A blue rabbit robot, and the face of Bon’s Burgers. It is unknown who, if anyone, possesses Bon, although one likely possibility is Jack Walten. Jack went missing on June 11, 1974. His fate is unknown.
What’s When
Based on what’s in the videos themselves, the descriptions of the videos — especially the hidden ones — and the other odds and ends available around the internet, the timeline for the events of The Walten Files as I understand it is as follows:
- 1958: Jack Walten and Felix Kranken are college students when they come up with the idea for the animatronics that will become the centerpiece of Bon’s Burgers.
- 1960: Sophie Walten is born.
- May 15, 1962: Ed Walten is born.
- October 30, 1964: Felix’s alcoholism is starting to become apparent.
- Aug. 22, 1965: Molly Walten is born. Also around this time: Jack and Felix are actively pitching the Bon’s Burgers concept to a company they hope will fund it, Cyberfun Tech.
- Christmas, 1970: Ed and Molly receive Rocket the grey bunny as a holiday gift from Felix.
- December 19, 1972: The Cyberfun Tech deal has been struck and Bon’s Burgers is officially in the works.
- May 2, 1974: Linda leaves Felix. Jack asks Felix to do drop-off/pickup for Ed and Molly’s school function. Felix kills Ed and Molly while driving them home and buries them in Saint Juana Forest. (Rocket’s possession begins.)
- June 11, 1974: Jack Walten goes missing. (Bon’s possession begins?)
- June 28, 1974: Bon’s Burgers opens.
- June 30, 1974: Bon’s Burgers hosts its first birthday party. Susan Woodings goes missing. (Banny’s possession begins.)
- July 14, 1974: Charles No-Last-Name-Given goes missing. (Boozoo’s possession begins.)
- July 19, 1974: Rosemary Walten goes missing. (Sha’s possession begins.)
- July 20, 1974: Bon’s Burgers closes due to reports of an adult woman heard screaming from inside the restaurant at night. The source of the screaming is not identified.
- Oct. 31, 1974: The Bon’s Burgers building is abandoned and labeled condemned. The Bon robot is still visible in the window.
- Dec. 10, 1974: Photographic evidence of the existence the K-9 storage facility.
- Jan. 23, 1975: By this date, the Showstoppers have been transported to the K-9 storage facility. Bunny Smiles Games may also have begun development on Bunny Farm around this time.
- July 2, 1978: The Relocate Project is put into action; Bon’s Burgers’ reopening is planned for 1982.
- July 12, 1978: Ashley P., Kevin W., and Hilary B. are sent to the K-9 facility to reprogram and restore the robots.
- July 14, 1978: Ashley P. goes missing. (Billy’s possession begins.) Kevin W. and Hilary B. depart the facility, noting that the reprogramming and restoration has been unsuccessful. The Relocate Project is put on hold.
- Oct. 10, 1982: Brian Stells is sent to the K-9 facility as the new Facility Caretaker. He goes missing; Bon has killed him, although he does not appear to have taken possession of any animatronics.
- Oct. 15, 1982: Sophie Walten begins playing the BunnyFarm arcade game, which has been installed in the basement of the Entfernt Hotel, where she and Jenny Letterson are living.
- Oct. 16, 1982: Sophie continues playing BunnyFarm.
- April 26, 2020: Anthony uploads “The Walten Files 1 – Company Introductory Tape.”
- June 27, 2020: The unlisted video “Lucky You” is uploaded by an unknown person.
- June 28, 2020: Anthony uploads “The Walten Files 2 – Relocate Project.” It contains the URL for “Lucky You.”
- Oct. 16, 2020: The unlisted video “Guilty” is uploaded by an unknown person.
- Feb. 19, 2021: Sy05 uploads “The Ticking Clock.”
- March 19, 2021: Anthony uploads “The Walten Files 3 – BunnyFarm.” It contains the URL for “Guilty.”
And… that’s where we’re at right now. There are, obviously, large holes which will no doubt be filled as the series continues.
But now that we’re clear on these key details, what do we do with it all?
I’ve got some ideas.
Putting It All Together — Or, The Story So Far
As is typically the case with mysterious web series that attract a lot of viewers, there are tons of theories floating around out there concerning what’s actually going on. Some, I buy; others, I don’t. Whether or not these theories are correct will likely become clear as the series progresses — because, as I’ve noted previously, there’s a lot of missing information so far, but not a lot of ambiguity about what’s happened so far.
In any event, the more I think about it — and I have thought about it a lot — the narrative that makes the most sense to me right now, given the pieces that we have so far, is this:
Felix kills Ed and Molly Walten and buries them in the woods to hide his crime. They possess the Rocket doll and make it out of the woods by some mechanism not yet identified.
Maybe they find their way to Jack and somehow inform him of what had happened; or, maybe Jack finds out about what happened to his children some other way. Regardless, he and Felix have a confrontation about it, culminating in Felix killing Jack — possibly accidentally, or possibly intentionally in order to keep Jack quiet. He (possibly) stuffs Jack’s remains inside Bon, and then erases him from the Bunny Smiles Inc. company history. Bon’s Burgers opens as plans.
But, like Ed and Molly, Jack also winds up possessing an inanimate object — Bon. In this state, he has been reunited with his two youngest children; however, the rest of his family is unreachable to him. So, he attempts to put the family back together again, albeit in a misguided fashion: He will kill make beautiful the remaining two members — his wife and oldest child — and put them inside robots, too.
Jack-As-Bon kills Susan Woodings, thinking she is Rosemary, and puts her inside Banny. Then he kills Charles, again mistaking him for a family member, and puts him inside Boozoo. Then he actually finds and kills Rosemary and puts her inside Sha. Ashley P. and Brian Stells are both mistaken for Sophie and killed; Ashley winds up in Billy, while Brian’s fate is unknown.
Sophie, medicated for eight years and, in some weird way, protected by the suppression of her memories, is now beginning to recall what happened. Because this — all of this — it’s for her: The animatronics keep telling her through the videos, and through Bunny Farm, that they’ll see her soon. Why? Because Jack is still working to put his family back together again, all these years later.
There are, of course, some wrenches in this narrative. My read of some of the deaths — those of people not part of the Walten family — are based almost entirely on a particular interpretation of Brian Stells’ final comment at the time of this death: I’ve taken “He thought I was her” to mean “Bon/Jack thought I was Sophie,” meaning that Jack-As-Bon mistook Brian for his daughter and killed him, thinking he was putting his family back together at last. By this logic, it seems reasonable to think that Susan and Charles could have also been mistaken for the remaining members of the Walten family — but we don’t know for sure. Additionally, Ashley seems not to have been mistaken for Sophie; rather, she “saw something she shouldn’t have” — that is, the Backdoors — and was silenced because of what she knew. So, the pattern may not hold.
Additionally, it’s not definite that Jack is possessing Bon. That’s been my assumption; after all, he was the first to disappear (after the two youngest Walten children, that is), while Bon was the first Showstopper to begin acting oddly, which suggests a connection between the two. Brian’s “He thought I was her” comment helps here, too, as does the inclusion of Jack’s name among the other victims in the cassette tape Ashley finds. But not everyone is convinced that this is the case; there could, in fact, be someone or something else inside Bon, which would make this narrative null and void.
I’m also unclear on how one particular motif that keeps popping up might fit in with the narrative I’ve proposed: Those who have been killed and merged with the animatronics are often described in their pre-transformation state as “broken” and in need of “fixing”; then, once they’re transformed, they have been “made beautiful.” This motif seems to reflect an obsession with achieving perfection, but I don’t… quite know what to do with it yet.
Again, though, even accounting for what we don’t know yet, this narrative seems to make the most sense to me. Time will tell how much of it is correct, if any; we’re still only a quarter of the way through the series, after all.
Speaking of…
What We Still Don’t Know, And What Might Be Yet To Come
Here’s a small selection of the mysteries that still remain about The Walten Files:
We don’t know what happened to Jack, or why. Again, I have ideas, but nothing concrete has been laid out by the series yet.
We don’t know how Ed and Molly got out of the forest — only that they did.
We don’t know who precisely lured Rosemary backstage. In my proposed narrative, it’s Jack-As-Bon, but it may not be. We also don’t know whether Sophie actually witnessed her mother’s death — a theory I’ve seen many ascribe to, but don’t feel is backed up by the current evidence.
We don’t know where Showbear comes from, or what its significance is.
We don’t know how big a role Cyberfun Tech — the company that funded Bunny Smiles Inc. and Bon’s Burgers — truly has in everything.
We don’t know who Sy05 is.
We don’t know who a character dubbed “the Shadow Man” is, or what he has to do with everything else.
We don’t know who Anthony is, or why he’s digging through all of this.
In short: We know, in many cases, what happened — but we don’t necessarily know why it happened, or how it happened.
And, of course: We don’t know what happened between 1982, when Sophie played Bunny Farm, and 2020, when Anthony started uploading The Walten Files.
I do have an idea of how the series might fill in that gap, though — or at least what’s in store for Sophie next:
There’s moment in the very first main episode where we see Sophie in a Bunny Smiles Inc. uniform. Many have interpreted this moment as indicative that Sophie once worked for Bunny Smiles Inc. herself, sometime prior to the recording of the Bunny Farm footage; the idea is she must have forgotten about it due to the medication, just as she had forgotten losing her family.
However, I read this moment slightly differently, based on the fact that Sophie is only 22 during the Bunny Farm episode, and just 14 years old when her entire family goes missing and, I believe, she begins taking the medication: I think it’s something that’s yet to come for her.
It feels inevitable that she’ll go to investigate the K-9 storage facility at some point in the remaining nine episodes of the series. One way to do it would be get a job as a Facility Caretaker; after all, in 1982, Bunny Smiles Inc. is still around. We know because Brian Stells’ misadventure occurred just a few days before Sophie began playing Bunny Farm. Alternatively, Sophie could get a hold of the company’s training videos, learn that those venturing into the facility should always wear a uniform for their own safety, acquire a uniform, and break in.
What’s not clear to me is whether the image of Sophie in the uniform is an actual vision of the future, or whether it’s an image the literal ghosts in the various machines at play here have cooked up to show her what they want her to do.
But either way, I think Sophie is headed for the K-9 storage facility.
And I think she’s going there soon.
***
So, there we have it: The Walten Files so far. This series is a terrific example of how fan works can transcend their source material; the best art is always in conversation with the world around it, and it’s been a delight seeing how some of the same elements from one work can be shaken up, moved around, tweaked, and built upon to make something new.
There’s still much more to come, of course — for Sophie, and for us.
And I can’t wait to see where it all goes.
Useful Resources:
Martin Walls’ YouTube channel.
The Walten Files full playlist.
A video that takes all instances of backmasking in The Walten Files and reverses them.
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Twitter @GhostMachine13 and on Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photos via Martin Walls/YouTube]
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