March 1st
We start the new month with a new email from Sam. He posts the link he had talked about yesterday to the news clip from February 14th about the accident.
The Aglaura homepage has been updated with a message from the Mayor. He offers condolences to Dale over the loss of his wife and child.
March 2nd
Dale receives some more new email. He gets a reminder from his "friends" who want to remind him that he is running out of time. We assume that this refers to the "friends" who loaned him money. They are growing impatient.
March 3rd - 6th
The Aglaura homepage has a new story about graffiti on the new Aglaura library. When we look at the source code we find a puzzle that leads us to some images on the synthasia page. They give us a message - digitalis agp. After a little research we find out that there is a fortune teller who works at Ash Grove Park who goes by the name Digitalis. We obviously are being directed toward him, but why?
Dale also receives a new email from Collective Protective Insurance. They have been contacted by countless people impersonating Dale, trying to access his account. In response to this they are suspending all online support for his account and will speak only to him in person. This is obviously in response to our emails to the company and will have to remember in the future to be a little more careful.
Pat J. Dobbs, the mayor of Aglaura, tells us that Dale has been institutionalized at a Klepsydra facility. We also learn that Great Water General Medical Center is the hospital that Dale was taken to after the accident.
A press release was added to the Aglaura homepage. They have decided to hold a phone press conference on March 9th to answer some of the questions that people seem to have about Dale's accident. Seven people will be allowed to phone in and participate.
Dale recieves an email from Ash Grove Park. Apparantly the park has some pictures of the Sprague family visit for us to see online. It gives us his order number (99746403) and says that his password is the number from his AGP ticket stub.
March 7th - 12th
Dale receives an email from Great Water General telling him that his personal effects are still in storage there and can be picked up with proof of ID. A photo of the effects will be made available if we can provide the Insurance Company Incident Report Number.
The conference call press conference takes place on March 9th. A recorded copy of this can be downloaded here. Mayor Dobbs and Borough Attorney J. Douglas Willingham were on the call accepting questions. Attorney Willingham stated the rules of the conference call and gave an account of the accident. There is mention of the police report of the incident that will be made available soon. The last "participant" on the call asked some interesting questions about the relationship between the Aglaura town council and the Sons of Don Contruction Company, a company linked to the mob. The mayor suddenly gets flustered and the call is quickly ended.
The call then leads us to the Sons of Don website. We see that the construction company, like Empty Threats, is run by members of the Marzano family.
Today we also get some more information about Dale's insurance. We find out that Dale's policy number was right in front of us all along. The emails CP sent contained strings of numbers (example - 34097xx65736243239857ui23658) that contain the user id at the end. This is the policy number. Sam (the Aglaura webmaster) agrees to send the number to Collective Protective using Dale's synthasia email account to gain access to his insurance records. Dale receives two new emails. One is from Collective Protective Insurance accepting Sam's request for online access to Dale's account. It will be available in 48 to 72 hours. The other email is a welcome message from Klepsydra. From it we learn the Dr. Michelle Kendra is Dale's doctor during his stay at Klepsydra.
March 13th
Dale receives an email about foxgloves (or Digitalis purpurea). There have been several references now to Digitalis so we are still being pointed in that direction for some reason.
The Aglaura homepage is updated again with a Graffiti tips hotline (877-806-7862).
March 14th
Collective Protective gives us access to Dale's temporary online account statement. It shows two charges ($62 and $8) for Diana's visit to a Dr. Baylor and Dale's admission to Great Water General, which includes the incident number we need to give to Great Water so that we can get a picture of Dale's personal effects.
We also find another newclip about the happenings in Aglaura. It seems that residents have been finding more graffiti in their homes and garages along with some strange items.
March 15th - 18th
Dale receives an email from Great Water General giving us access to a picture of Dale's effects. They include some change, some receipts, a note to Diana that is folded up and the ticket stub (with the password)from Ash Grove Park.
Now that we have both the user id (99746403) and the password (1bf33mx9) to retrieve the videos at the Ash Grove Park site. I have archived Video 1 and Video 2 (right click to download). The videos have a timestamp which through emails to ash grove has been verified to be correct. The timestamp shows Maeghan in the park on February 14th at 4:33, which is supposedly the same time that the accident occurred killing Maeghan. This shows that Dale's story is not just a figment of his imagination and has some truth to it.
We also find out that Digitalis is still missing and there is now a symbol (like the grafitti?) burned into the ground where his stand usually is.
March 19th - 20th
Dale gets a strange email from numinoustrail@yahoo.com. It yields a puzzle dealing with a list of numbers and words and the mathematical pi. It leads us to the website mythosphere.org.
The page shows some characters that when deciphered read mythosphere.org and then redirects to a picture of the 9 planets. Sin Vraal from Unfiction noticed a difference in how the page loaded when you click on the planets in a specific order (we later find out that we missed a part of the puzzle, see 3/22 Update). We then get a message that deciphers to "Mythosphere the meaning behind the myth give us the way to contact you guides"
Emails were sent to guides@mythosphere.org and the guides reply with:
Every journey begins with one small step,
the catalyst to change inertia to momentum.
The length of the journey depends upon the direction of the second step.
With each rain drop, the ocean grows.
Your message has been received.
a guide
Dale gets another email from numinoustrail on March 20th asking why their invitation has so far gone unanswered. Seems that the guides are waiting for dale to respond to them from his account before preceding. The list of numbers and words is given again and also...
you contacted us
asked if we might be able to help
the questions you have raised
the answers and meaning that you seek to find
echo and resonate throughout time and in us all;
for those who see, a path appears to follow
"ex lux in tenebris lucet" - and the light shineth in the
darkness.
enter the mythosphere
March 21st - 22nd
We find an email in Dale's inbox that lets us know that Dale has been released from Klepsydra. Soon Dale emails several people telling us about the weird strangers that have been asking questions about him in town. He warns us to stay away from the "friends" that loaned him money unless we want to get in trouble with them ourselves. He also says that he is going to go to Ash Grove Park to find the fortune teller Digitalis because he thinks that he is somehow involved. He also gives us his Yahoo and AIM screen name (synthasiadale).
We also discovered that we missed something while trying to solve the mythosphere puzzle. Before the page redirected to the planets, a glimpse of one of four pages are shown. There are some commented out letters in the source code of each of the pages. They spell out orunmila. An email is sent to orunmila@mythosphere.org and we get our first step in the form of a reply to that address (we skipped ahead to the second)
March 23
Dale popped up on AIM and chatted with several people. He lets us know how we messed up the mythosphere puzzle. He talks about the graffiti that has been found around Aglaura and says that his house has been hit also. He also recounts his visit to Ash Grove Park and the one on the day of the accident. Turns out that Digitalis is the one that led Dale to the mythosphere site in the first place. After the first time he visited he received an email that said "what you have been searching for stands right before you; a source of knowledge once thought lost found again". He thinks this is about the trunk at the Hollow Needle. He opened the trunk at the Hollow Needle and saw an illuminated manuscript with a picture of a six-fingered man, some paintings and other items.
March 24th
Several people an email from the guides with a link and a warning that the message will self-destruct in 30 seconds or if clicked on by the mouse (that means no cut and pasting!). When the link was followed, a long series of numbers were shown. Gupfee and SpaceBass (who were forewarned about the self-destruction) took some photos with their digital cameras.
The series of numbers was decoded using a mod 28 substitution and turned out to be two quotes:
"the beginning of wisdom is to unlearn that which is nought" and "let us not make random judgements on the greatest of things"
The first quote refers to Antisthenes and the second to Heraclitus. These lead us to:
http://www.mythosphere.org/antisthenes.html and http://www.mythosphere.org/heraclitus.html.
Some changes also are being made to the Ash Grove Park site. The site went down today which is an unfortunate inconveniece since we (along with Dale) have been trying to convinve others that Dale's story about the park was true. Doesn't look so good for us when we point to a site that isn't even up.
March 25th - 26th
Uh oh. Dale receives an email from Dr. Kendra. She has gone to the Ash Grove Park site and has seen that nothing is there. She wants some help from Dale in finding more information.
We also make some progress on the commented out numbers in the source of the antisthenes and herclitus pages.
"16 0 18 8 10 0 18 2 20 16 24 24"
"17 0 23 1 8 9 0 17 17 8 27 19"
They were decoded to "Modular Times Table Pattern". This doesn't lead us to the final answer, but its progress at least.
Dale disappears for awhile and isn't online like he told us we would be. Before we all get too worried, on March 26th he sends many people an email explaining that he's fine. He doesn't understand why no one can find Ash Grove Park. He also recaps the work he has been doing along side us on the new grid puzzle from the guides. He's just as stuck as us at this point. Dr. Kendra also seems concernced that she can't seem to find any info on Ash Grove Park either. Dale is going to take her out to the park soon to prove his story.
March 27th
Dale chatted with us again. He has been looking at the recent guides puzzle a little differently than us. Rather than decoding the numbers found in the source code...
16 0 18 8 10 0 18 2 20 16 24 24
17 0 23 1 8 9 0 17 17 8 27 19
He just put all the numbers at the end of the url and got...
http://www.mythosphere.org/16018810018220162424.html
which says only "modulo z23 multiplication".
Dale also said that he received a package at his house which was addressed to his daughter. Inside were 12 items. He wants to send these out to some of us to disperse them around a bit in case someone is after them.
Dale also received an email from Wes saying that he had sold the disk he found and that those strange men came by looking for it.
March 28th - 31st
The website for Ash Grove Park is back up as of March 28th, although it has changed quite a bit. It's no longer a website about a theme park, but rather an old cemetary in New Jersey.
To top it off, Dr. Kendra and Dale took a drive out to Ash Grove Park and found what else? A cemetary. Of course, Dale is shocked and Dr. Kendra feels quite betrayed.
The Aglaura Borough Council has decided to schedule some meetings to help clear up all of the questions about Dale's accident and some of the strange things happening in Aglaura. On March 31st, there is a Borough meeting to discuss the accident report from Dale's accident and on April 3rd there will be a conference call concerning the graffiti that has been showing up around Aglaura.
The guides also have sent us a new email to help us along with the puzzle we're stuck on. The email has a quote by Carlyle which leads us to the page http://www.mythosphere.org/carlyle.html. The page has a grid with four symbols on it. In the source code is a comment ...
"the pattern in single digits and first positions"
The page is titled Blavatsky. This leads us to another page http://www.mythosphere.org/blavatsky.html which is exactly the same as the Carlyle page.