The Mannequin Man

Urban legends have terrorized the minds of people old and young for centuries, monsters of the mind manifesting in our nightmares and becoming our reality. These entities immortalized in our thoughts, the very same creatures that fuel our paranoia have thrived and adapted to our modern day era. Some of these legends are more real than people realize. We aren’t alone in our world, enigmas of the earth hide in the shadows everywhere around us, just beyond the light we are gifted with every morning. There are entities in our world in every dark corner, beckoning those that cross their path to follow them into the abyss, where their victim can only pray that death is the only thing that happens to them.

Sometime in June of 2008 a mysterious video was posted to YouTube Titled “Mannequin Man”. It went so under the radar that it didn’t catch the public eye until three months after its initial upload. A 4chan user by the username of IpostCreepyStuff shared a link to the video on a random page of the site. The video itself was only forty one seconds long. It opened up on a very shaky shot of a dimly lit living room window revealing what appeared to be a front lawn with the censor lights on. Everything else outside was pitch black, so we could assume it’s sometime in the middle of the night or early morning. Panicked breathing could be heard from behind the camera. Other than the faint sound of crickets the beginning of the video is eerily silent. After a couple of seconds a muffled low growl could be heard from outside, causing the person behind the camera to whimper. A moment later an unknown milky white lanky creature ran past the window on all four limbs at an inhuman speed, causing the person recording to scream and the video to cut out abruptly just as they turned to run.

The strange video left the 4chan community completely baffled. The origin of the video came from an uploader with the username JasonStar. Obviously this caught the attention of horror enthusiasts and the video began to spread like wildfire. With little to no answers of the video’s origin, the internet got to work on investigating the mysterious creature. When the audio is enhanced on the original video, around the thirty second mark when the creature is coming into view, the sound of metal screws squeaking could be heard when the creature moves its arms and legs. It’s as if it were some poorly constructed suit.

A YouTuber by the name of AshleyCunnings re-uploaded the video with the video brightness enhanced and color quality adjusted, it’s also zoomed in specifically on the creature. In this somewhat-sharper quality, it can be seen that the creature has very little to no muscle on its ultra-thin body, and it visually has no eyes or nose, but has a disturbingly wide mouth with teeth like a shark and a long dark pink tongue with much salvia flooding off of it. Oddly, it’s noted that the creature has no features on its skin rather than its pure white texture, and its feet look like that of a doll but with sharp edges where its toes should be.

The only other thing notable about the creature is its mannequin-like hands. They’re relatively small like that of an average person, but seem to have what looks like sharp fingernails that are covered in dirt and possibly blood. It’s theorized by the length of its legs that it could be around six feet tall. Displeased, many horror enthusiasts bashed the creature. They claimed it was some cheap knock-off of “The Rake” by some failing horror creator trying to gain any ounce of publicity; Though it did gain a moderate following of people trying to delve deeper into its mystery. Weeks had gone by with the conspiracy theorists of the internet trying to put this case to rest. Nobody was really sure what to believe at the time, as there hadn’t been any other information to connect the video to. Eventually, someone finally spotted something in the video that extended the trail. Another YouTuber by the name of HorrorDebunked once again toyed with the video’s brightness and managed to see a street sign in the background. It was very blurry from the quality, but it was believed the sign said “Koontz St”. Many people began searching for this street sign all over the net. The only theory people were able to come up with was that the road was possibly somewhere around Pennsylvania.

Sightings and articles began rising all over the net about this creature that the world had dubbed “Mannequin Man”. From what everyone could gather from all these sightings and little pieces of information, the Mannequin Man was a nocturnal creature that made its presence known in 2008, behind that no other records have been found. It’s thought that with its intense speed that the Mannequin Man does not reside in one area, but constantly travels to different areas as it hunts. Notable locations it has been sighted have been various places around Miami Florida, Phoenix Arizona and Bakersfield California. It’s theorized by these places that The Mannequin Man is warm blooded and survives in the extreme heat. It has never been spotted outside the U.S. or anywhere too cold. From other various data collected from sightings, it’s theorized that the lowest temperature the creature could hunt in is sixty degrees. Though it prefers higher, hotter temperatures.

The musk of their scorching prey, their flesh cooked by the sun and the salty sweat to make them taste extra juicy make humans not only easy to track, but an enticing meal. Allegedly, a mysterious internet chain letter started a rumor that the Mannequin Man is known to only hunt women between 18-24 years of age. While for men the alleged victims have been 16-30 exactly. The message went on to claim that the creature is selective with its prey’s age range because human meat is the freshest in a person’s youth, making it the best food to hunt. The eerie message concluded that if you did not send this message to twenty people by six a.m., you’d be the Mannequin Man’s next victim.

With no more clues left to investigate, the video and the creature within it finally began to die down. The trail had gone cold and people had finally started to forget about the morbid entity, until two months later on the night of August 24th. Twenty four year old Erica “French-Vanilla” Rose had gone missing after not coming home from work, she was reported missing around 7:15 am the next day by her dad David Crowley. Erica and her father had lived alone, after her mother died in a drunk driving accident a few years prior. She had changed her last name to Rose, in honor of her mother. Erica hadn’t had a significant other and she was helping her father pay the bills. Her nickname stemmed from her friends, saying she always had a French Vanilla coffee in her hand. Erica had been working at the coffee shop “Hot Stuff” and was to close up that night. At about seven a.m. the next morning, one of the managers named John Dean came to open up shop, but was baffled to see it was never closed the previous night. Upon entering for further inspection, he found a horrifyingly macabre scene near the emergency exit.

A pool of now dirty blood was on the floor, and spattered behind it was a trail leading right to the exit. Now, this caught my attention. I wasn’t one to get mixed up in other people’s affairs. Due to my anxiety I always sat back on the sidelines my whole life. I wanted to be useful at least once. So, I did something I would never usually do. When a search party was being formed, I volunteered. I thought maybe I could do something useful and good for someone else and my community. I was a slave to anxiety my whole life. So for once I decided to be the one in control and do something good for someone else while getting out of my house for the first time in months.

Six days of searching lead to little clues, and hope dwindled for her widowed father. On the final day, something alarming happened. Near Erica’s house just off the road was a patch of woods that leads to a small river. The sun was low in the sky and the clouds were dark. Nothing was right anymore, the whole neighborhood was on edge. Kids were beginning to spread stories, nobody was staying out late anymore. The police finally decided that we should all do a small search in those woods. I felt my paranoia was up to its old tricks again, but I swallowed hard and with a heavy sigh I carried on. My heart slowly began to pick up the pace as we trudged into the woods. It was truly one of the eeriest moments in the case. There was a slight chill in the air, an invisible unease within the search party so thick that the air around them felt compressed and pressurized. Smothering everyone with each heavy bated breath. The woods were agonizingly quiet, yet somehow every little sound felt amplified as the darkness began to overthrow the comfort of the lessening light. The coming darkness began to make us feel boxed in, surrounding us like a pack of hungry wolves circling its prey, stalking their every move. Paranoia was tugging at every man and woman in the party like a leech sucking the blood of its host. Proving its dominance and provoking weakness and fear as the absence of light became more and more evident.

My group gradually began to feel smaller as the woods felt like they were growing and becoming more hostile as we transversed deeper into unknown territory. Sharply turning our flashlights at every sound, hearts racing. Truthfully, I even began to hope no new evidence would be found here, in fear of what we might’ve stumbled upon. I think the others felt the same way. Nobody said a word but we could tell that we were all thinking the same thing. Everyone wanted to leave, especially me. My anxiety was rising, I didn’t want to be there anymore than they did, but the thought of leaving a helpless person to rot didn’t sit right with me. I was tired and nauseous, but determined. My stomach was swirling and burning with intense nervousness. I hated it out in the woods. I was looking hard at all my surroundings as much as my vision would allow in the dark. When someone snapped me out of my trance. “Up there! In the trees!” one of the members shouted with fear in their voice. One by one, beams of light chased after each other, looking for whatever was causing one of the members distress. Confusion and anxiousness slipped into my head as my eyes followed the bright beam of my flashlight.

Her eyes were the first thing I saw as they met mine. Unblinking, Erica’s head hung upside down as she was laying on her back, her spine nearly Making a perfect horseshoe. She stared into my eyes with silent agony. It wasn’t on her face, but her eyes spoke when her voice no longer could.

They had looked wide, terrified at the revelation that they were going to die. She knew these were her last few moments on this earth. She knew she couldn’t stop it, and the only thing she felt was petrified. Her skin was black and blue, her lips bloated and a deep purple. The color had faded from her eyes, and there were dry lines running down her cheeks from where she had been crying. Her mouth hung agate, as if she was struggling to let out one last agonizing scream for help. Dry blood stained the branches and the leaves growing among them. Her stomach had been impaled on a sharp branch, bits of flesh breaking off on edges of the branch and tearing off Erica’s body. To my horror, I felt bile rise from my stomach as a realization hit me, all we found was her torso. Her rib cage had deep bite mark wounds on both sides. So many thoughts began to run through my head. I felt so much sympathy for this poor girl. When the body dies, the brain keeps functioning for seven minutes. In those seven minutes, people feel everything. They’re very aware they are dying, and they lose all sense of time. So the seconds begin to feel like decades, an endless infinite number of years filled with pain and agony, unaware of when they will finally be granted death. Part of me wondered if that’s what Erica went through in her final moments, I hate to think that she suffered. Who was going to look David in the eye and tell him we found his daughter torn in half from the waist down?

I replay the events as they unfolded in my head, over and over. I can’t stop picturing her face, staring down at me from the trees. Every night I’m haunted by nightmares of finding her lifeless corpse. The lower half of her intestines hanging out of her waist, intertwined and draped over the branches like vines. I’d wake up almost every night in a cold sweat, before realizing I’m safely back in my bed. Over the weeks I began to almost regret being a part of the search party. Ever since that night my anxiety has crippled me and my day to day life. I eventually decided to get myself into therapy to talk about that night in the woods. The last few nights have been a little better recently, and I’ve slowly gotten better about dealing with my anxiety.

The memories of that night still occasionally resurface in my mind, but I try my best not to dwell on it. Still though, I had never seen so many teeth in a bite mark before.