by Sara Green
IN THE GARDEN OF ROT by SARA GREEN
© Copyright 2015 Bride of Chaos
Edited by A.R. Jesse
Cover Art by Turtle&Noise
No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2015
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION.
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
1. THE VIDEO CLIP
2. THE CAMERA OPERATOR
3. THE COHORT
4. THE MENTOR
5. THE MEETING
6. THE CRIMES
7. THE FIGHT
8. THE MAKING
9. THE BLACK MAGIC
10. THE EXES
11. THE SITE
12. THE PARANOIA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This is a work of fiction.
IN THE GARDEN OF ROT
By Sara Green
NOTE: ALL NAMES AND SOME LOCATIONS HAVE BEEN ALTERED TO RESPECT THE PRIVACY OF THOSE INVOLVED.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
There is a video clip online. Perhaps you are reading this because you saw it. It is not as easily found as it once was when it was prominent on YouTube. Every now and again I do see a link pop up for the video and soon as I click on it, it is gone again—webpage not found. If you take the time to read any of the comments on the video clip, there’s a list of people who debunk and proclaim it is a fraud, mere fiction.
I think that is a fair assessment.
My personal background is in documentary filmmaking and one of the first big eye openers my professors at Virginia Commonwealth University revealed to me was the idea that the moment you film something it is no longer fact. It becomes fiction.
This is not an exaggeration, all one has to do is watch the great Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon and it is plain to see that we as a species will process facts completely differently. Film doesn’t clarify anything, if anything it superimposes an angle and a tone. So I’m not asking you to believe in the video clip. I’m asking you to believe that the two men behind the video clip believe in it—and remember—they were there.
Also, let this be a lesson in ascertaining signed contracts from interviewees, as I had not, in hopes of making my subjects more comfortable, and for that I must hand over this less than satisfactory report of my own findings.
But I hope you find something more to this story than a truth. I hope you come to realize what it means to be fiction.
1.THE VIDEO CLIP
Not all Internet video is low resolution, blurry or poorly shot. Such is the offending clip that this story centers upon. It was shot with a Canon 7D. That’s 18 megapixels of high definition video, set at 24 frames per second in order to imitate the look of true film stock. Perhaps if it were grainy and out of focus it might be easier to believe. Instead the footage shot on April 9th 2009 in Richmond, Virginia is as crisp and clear as any prime time television show (so far as you do not blow it up for display on the silver screen). A tripod was responsible for keeping the camera steady and a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Photography and Filmmaking composed the shot, giving it that perfect rule of thirds that becomes second nature to anyone taking photographs on a regular basis.
Cinematic would be an apt description.
There was intent to set the mood, to make it spooky. The camera was placed low and angled up at about thirty-five degrees, just enough to frame out most of the street light, which gave the shot an ethereal lens flare in the top right-hand corner of the frame. The 12mm lens (a wide angle) stretches what the eye can see. The sidewalk is long, and the rows of buildings converge somewhere far away in the darkness.
Thirty seconds of the same conditions exists with only the sound of steady traffic and the camera operator speaking to his cohort. His not so deep male voice says,
“This will look great. I miss doing this. The weather is perfect on a night like this.”
The cohort laughs, but there’s a cough edging his amusement as if he has a cold or is merely choking on water he had attempted to swallow.
If you advance the footage frame-by-frame in the high definition quality that once sat on Vimeo, then you could see that shortly after the cohort’s third cough a light actually appears on the hood and windshield of the car. This is a light that has appeared straight above the car. As it begins to reflect across the entire hood, a burst of light, like a camera flash bleaches out the image. It is pure white. No adjustment of brightness or contrast could develop any shapes in three tenths of a second for which there is pure white. Then the image betrays a frame that when viewed still looks like the Etch-A-Sketch of Zeus. Click the next frame and the next and it is the same variation. But if you didn’t pause, if you watched the video as it played out then you saw an image that felt burned into your eyes. Much like when you stare at the sun for too long.
In that burst of light, you are left with the image of distraught faces staring back at you. The cohort lets out a loud hoot, “What the hell was that?”
And the camera operator’s voice cracks, but he doesn’t say anything that is picked up by the camera’s built-in microphone.
“Did you see that? Did you just see that?” the cohort says in a strange mix of excitement and possible anger.
“I…” That’s all the camera operator manages.
“I don’t know, man, I don’t know. That was too weird.”
“I just saw my dad,” the camera operator says.
They both go silent for eight more seconds of footage, the camera does not move. In the distance, you hear another voice react to something. Similar to the cohort, there is a hollering expletive of awe and anger. Just before the sound is made you can see in the distance a bright light in two frames appear like a spear shooting down from the night sky.
The video clip that was posted online is fifty three seconds long.
It was originally posted April 29th 2009 with the title: ‘What did we see?’
It was removed sometime in 2010.
2. THE CAMERA OPERATOR
We will call the camera operator, Sam Carpenter, after two of his favorite film directors. He is, at the date of this interview, thirty-one years of age. He was twenty-six when the video was captured. Sam agreed to meet with me after I proposed my intentions of this project as well as when I presented him with additional interviews and research I had conducted.
His voice is deeper than it appeared in the video footage, but not by much, though I had assumed they did not use an external microphone and instead the sound captured in the clip is the result of the less than adequate stock microphone in a Canon 7D. Sam confirmed this. Though he made several implications that they had an external microphone attached to a Zoom HD recorder that they used on other projects regularly, synchronizing the sound in postproduction. I do not believe that they were recording sound, since the traffic noise would not have been conducive to their initial intention. They would’ve planned to create a soundtrack or a voice over.
Presently, Sam Carpenter has a thick beard that could use a trim, but it is not so bushy that he resembles most of Richmond’s more artistic crowd. Rather it is a beard that would look at home on a 1970’s film director, un-manicured and dark, but not unruly.
He dresses in a beat up tan or once olive colored work jacket, it is frayed around the wrists and the pockets on the front have small holes beginning to form. Sam assures me this is the same coat he was wearing that night and I have no reason to doubt him. To his credit are a pair of kind green eyes that look tired more than anything else. He drinks h
ot tea that he brewed prior to our meeting. He smiles as he tells me it is vanilla chai. His teeth have a yellowish stain that leave me to believe this is more than a special treat, but a habit.
Sam does not make a lot of gestures with his hands, he spends more time trying to place them where they will be out of the way, or he might spin his stainless steel mug while he searches for his train of thought. But he is otherwise a rather normal looking person. Despite the beard, he would not raise an Amber Alert or be selected for search at an airport for anything other than randomness. In fact, I would believe he attends church and was perhaps a boy scout upon first glance.
We met on a cold rainy day in March 2013. It was not the first attempt as he had cancelled several dates based on having no one to watch his newborn daughter, whose slightest mention does bring a sparkle to surface in those tired green eyes.
Why has the video clip been removed?
SAM: It needed to be, it was causing too many complaints. People figured out who posted it, like you did. Tracked me and (Will-the cohort) down and it was all just friendly harassment, but I have other things I want to accomplish as an artist and I didn’t want this to be my ‘thing.’ You risk getting pigeonholed. Kind of like that guy who did Blair Witch Project. What’s his name?
The Clip was re-posted several times?
SAM: Yeah, it took effort but the people who snagged it off Vimeo were forced to then remove it from the other sites since I made enough of an issue about it and own the rights to it. You send out a take down letter. All those sites are paranoid. They acted real fast. The pages would work for a few hours, but the video was gone in seconds it seemed like.
And now it is impossible to find on the Internet?
SAM: Perhaps, you know there were no physical copies ever, and I did my best to delete every copy I found, this isn’t like the Star Wars Holiday Special. It should be as close to gone as it can be. But I recognize that nowadays people snag things off the web all the time. But I hope, I really hope that the clip is gone once and for all.
Wouldn’t your assistance in my documentary project encourage people to seek it out?
SAM: I hope not. I hope that when I’m done telling you everything and you write it as I say it and all, then people will realize it’s nothing. And I think the story you want to tell is like that game everyone plays as kids, ‘telephone’. When you whisper one thing in someone’s ear and everyone keeps passing it along until it reaches the last person who tells the first person and it shows how people interpret something differently and then poof: misinformation. I’d rather the video clip be forgotten or just appreciated for being a good special effects video. Because that’s all it was supposed to be.
3. THE COHORT
Sam Carpenter’s cohort on that night of filming was a fifty-two year old we’ll call Will Castle. He graciously gave me two interviews, one before my interview with Sam Carpenter and one just two days later, at his request. I was happy to meet with him a second time, but it did not seem as if he had planned to until I told him parts of what Sam Carpenter had told me.
Will Castle is a smart man, you can tell that in his pauses. I might be reading too much into his life story but I believe he is one of the few quick wits that realized that saying something the fastest isn’t actually witty. He draws back, isn’t afraid to stutter and like his graying hair and wrinkling face it is a confidence only etched by time itself.
To contrast Sam Carpenter, he has bright blue eyes and a bit of disdain. He might be a prime suspect in a variety of cases only because he’s an old white guy who doesn’t donate to the pockets of the razor blade companies as often as others, nor has he let his facial hair form a respectful beard fitting of a college professor.
Will, seemed to buck the traditional requirements of American society all his life. Having been raised in a traveling Military family he had spent time in places like Germany and California and a brief few months in Italy and even as foreign a place as Atlanta, Georgia before returning to a place his family so often called home—Richmond, Virginia.
There’s a way he talks about the city that is romantic. As if he’s the abused wife who can’t admit to herself where she got her black eye and busted lip.
But there is no pause when we sat down at a local bar for beer aficionados. Will was quick to clarify statements made by Sam Carpenter.
WILL: I told him to take down the video. He’s the one who posted it. He’s the one who shared it. Don’t believe what (Sam) says. He’s a bullshit artist. He takes pride in that. And most of the time, guys like that, they’re fun. They rattle off to impress and entertain. Sam is very funny. The shit he’ll say with a straight face is priceless. But I don’t think Sam defines ‘entertainment’ the way you or I would. His sense of humor is dark, you know?
Care to elaborate?
WILL: Look, it’s funny. He’s that guy that you don’t ask for ideas for pranks because he’s going to take it that extra step where someone isn’t going to just laugh it off. Right?
Does Sam still post the video?
WILL: He better not. Yeah it pops up, I might not see it right away but he takes it down if I say something. But half the time he tries to pass it off like he didn’t post it. A year or two ago, I would’ve believed him if he said he went through a huge ordeal to get it removed but it’s just him giving it more time on the internet. Letting more people see it. He’s put my name on it. So they harass me. You read most of the message boards where someone mentions that clip and it’s my name.
Sam did not seem intent on letting people see the video, why do you say that he does?
WILL: (laughs) God, I bet he enjoys you. He’s not a magician. He’s just an ass. But maybe he’s convinced himself that he is. You know misdirection: ‘don’t look at this.’ He’s telling you to go look at it. I told you, he finds it entertaining. He can’t wait for you to see it. Have you been able to see it yet?
I have.
WILL: And boom. He was successful. You wasted all this time, and for what, a bad special effect he made on his computer. But enough people are saying it’s real. So you must think, ‘hey, it could be’.
Do you believe in what was captured in the video?
WILL: I told you already. When it happened it was quick but I know what I think I saw. I don’t know about editing videos and special effects that’s (Sam’s) department. To be honest, we were drinking. Sam and I were always drinking back then. I think it made it easier to tolerate his humor.
4. THE MENTOR
Most of the professors who taught Sam Carpenter at Virginia Commonwealth University had moved on. A couple had brief interactions and could vaguely remember him, certainly not by name, except one who had worked with Sam as recently as 2008, months before the infamous video.
KEVIN N.: He and his friend were their own team. I think his friend was in the Kinetic Imagery department. I don’t think he was in photography and film. But if they were working on a project for class then both were involved. His name was something, I can’t remember. But all their films were done together. In 2008, they were trying to make a feature length movie or something. They asked me to play a homeless guy in the background. It was fun. They had a lot of special effects planned.
(Sam) had done quite a few ones. Before muzzle flashes were an app you could drop in, he and his friend figured it out in Adobe Photoshop, and would alter frame by frame. They did a sword vs. assault rifle video. It was pretty good stuff. This was all before HD cameras and stuff really would’ve probably shown the rough edges. But he did little practical. He’d super impose castles into backgrounds, or use layers to add texture to locations and such. It wasn’t top-level stuff, but it was impressive given the tools he had at his disposal. It looked better than the effects in a SyFy Channel movie. That’s for sure.
Kevin N. had not seen the video clip in question, but he did agree that it could be part of a viral marketing plan or something. He’s seen a lot more filmmakers; especially independent ones who are taking the approac
h studios did with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The successful blockbuster film utilized a series of short clips, websites and eerie phrases to spark interest in the film’s villain, the Joker. The film grossed $534,858,444 according to the website Box Office Mojo.
KEVIN N.: You want people to be interested in your work. You give them a glimpse and a trail to follow. Earned knowledge is more rewarding. It feels cool to be apart of something no one else has caught on to just yet. And today, with the information for everything out there already on the web, you kind of have to find a way to be mysterious. Show just enough that they want to ask what it was they saw and how can they see more.
In 2009, Sam Carpenter and Will Castle posted a casting call in the Virginia Commonwealth School of the Arts buildings. The flyer mentioned “real-life horror” in the description and was looking especially for actors who were interested in “performance art.” Kevin recalled this and said it was part of Sam’s foray into using real footage in fictional stories. For instance, Kevin referenced a science fiction short film where Sam used footage from the fire that destroyed an in-construction VCU dorm in 2003. Sam lived about a block diagonally away in the 1100 West Broad Apartments, presently referred to as the Ackell Residential Center. The footage elevated the production value of the short film by providing it with an action sequence of rescue workers in the background as a massive blaze, that looked surreal to those who had become accustomed to the more Hollywood fashioned blazes.