MANDELA CATALOGUE: All Videos So Far EXPLAINED

thank you to the patrons for supporting the channel [Music] I fuddled that was the only way to describe it the leads I'd been given were as coherent and linear to follow as fnaf's lore this lay was supposed to be Duck Soup yet here I was trapped back to the wall in the Ice House of my mind then something was testing a knuckle at the door this Mandela catalog case would take a lot more than a mug of Joe and a few winkless nights to crack but I'm grateful I'm not alone in this gig my YouTube channel was hitting on all eight and I can't thank you the audience enough for that your support has kept me going pushing me to do better and I can't express how thankful I am for the recent Channel growth still I felt like I was being watched not just by the viewers at home but that something someone was right behind me Mandela catalog got you stumped who are you and why do you look exactly like me you really do not pay very close attention I'm your alternate I'm here to help you unravel the Tangled mess you've got yourself into what so you're telling me you're here to help me break down the Mandela catalog Episode by episode then do a thematic analysis along with explaining the story elements and then providing context of the future of analog Horror in general Bingo why are you helping me oh don't worry I'm not doing this on my own time I needed something to sweeten the pot foreign if you like what I do here on the channel go to patreon.com saganhawks for exclusive content voting on video topics q and A's and a behind the scenes video about the making of this video right here if not enjoy the rest of the video thank you to the patrons the Mandela catalog is an analog horror series created by Alex kister that was initially released over a year ago and since then it's absolutely exploded as one of the faces of analog horror online up there with the likes of local 58 and the Walton files the series is broken up into volumes collections of vignettes and tapes that explain major story beats along with shorter videos here and there that introduce new things and fill in the gaps to give a bit of context the Mandela catalog follows in the footsteps of plenty of other Series in the analog horror genre a style of horror that most often replicates the look of old VHS tapes in analog television now early on the Mandela catalog received a sharp mix of support and criticism some people said it was the scariest thing they'd ever seen others said it was Goofy and trope-filled and with its rise to fame everyone was watching to see where the series would evolve we'll get more into the community reaction to the series later but for now let's dive right into the Mandela catalog first I gotta find those tapes foreign um [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] this is our first step into the world of the Mandela catalog this video takes the form of a cartoon specifically The Beginner's Bible a series of cartoons from the 90s aimed at teaching children Bible stories this one specifically seems to be about the birth of Jesus as the Archangel Gabriel tells the Shepherds of Jesus's arrival however we'll quickly see that something is a bit odd about this tape as we move to the angel Gabriel coming to the Virgin Mary we see that his face is blurred out as well as his name at the start I am the the angel Gabriel I've come to bring good news he brings news to Mary in the form of creepy Whispers going to the closed captions on the video we can find a binary code that when decoded reads I am the one true savior I must reverse the delusion Joseph is next if you'll remember from our last video when we talked about Brandon Works worshiping an angel as a God is heresy so clearly our Angel Gabriel is not what he seems this false Angel then appears outside of Joseph's window and Whispers I I will go their greatest fear I will go your greatest fear wake up Joseph wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up yeah this thing's intentions are not good he visits the Shepherds again telling them that he is their one true Savior and notably saying I know that will come into play later and then this happens [Music] this is probably the second most controversial shot in the series we'll get into the most controversial soon some people say it made them lose sleep some people say it's goofy as hell personally it's goofy to me but horror is subjective so you know afterwards there's another message hidden in the captions this is an excerpt from Dante's Inferno a book about Dante's journey into through and eventually Out of Hell specifically this paragraph is when Dante sees Satan himself so now it's clear what this Angel really is maybe not Satan in the traditional sense but a powerful force of evil the Antichrist then we fade in and see a view of the landscape with red text appearing to be coming from this evil entity I deceived them as a side note I really love the aesthetic of the big landscape shots with the black sky and the red text the video ends with text from someone else praying that God will help them and then it ends in a genuinely pretty funny way so what do We Gather from this in the world of the Mandela catalog this entity who wendigoon calls the false Shepherd and I think that's cool so I'll say that too all the way back to Biblical times deceived humankind in this world it has taken over whatever Heavenly Powers existed and has deceived Humanity into secretly worshiping it of course they don't know this but God is no longer in power Instead This false Shepherd has taken control [Music] the Mandela catalog vol 1 is the first big chunk of the series and we learn a lot from this one it's a collection of different tapes starting with a PSA from the United States Department of temporal phenomena established in 1981. what this tells me is that whatever strange happenings are going down in this series they're not entirely secret the government has known about the following and trying to understand it at least since the early 80s and the fact that they're making this message out to the public means they're not keeping it a secret either so what is this strange phenomenon well that's what we're about to learn alternates described by the PSA as unidentified hostile organisms are entities that can take the appearance of someone essentially becoming their doppelganger sometimes they look identical sometimes they have biologically impossible features they warn against ever trying to make contact with an alternate with the exception of trying to kill them because instead of physically attacking you these alternates seem to have a strange ability to affect you simply by speech some kind of Supernatural psychological torment the government is telling its citizens to stay inside lock their doors and keep a loaded firearm at the ready seems awfully familiar an entity that poses as someone else deceiving them only using words some pieces are starting to come together and it seems this false Shepherd may be some incredibly powerful alternate this is further reinforced by our next section the think principle a general protocol the government is informing citizens to use in case of an alternate encounter tell an authority figure about your encounter hinder the alternate's movement identify the Class Type neutralize the alternate if safe to do so and oh along with the quote there's not enough room for the two of us it appears that at this point the alternates have begun to distort the tape for their own purposes this idea that they can manipulate what you see on television will become very important later eventually it corrects itself when we see that K was actually supposed to stand for know your place in reality especially as we see later on this emphasis on your mind thoughts and sense of self is going to be really important the alternates can look like you and use psychological tactics to make you well end things this battle is mostly one of the Mind the video continues explaining the different types of alternates doppelgangers who look exactly like you or someone you know type two what wait where's type two as far as I can tell at some point this video was edited down from the original but in the original it listed one of the types as a detectable and used an image of the false Shepherd we saw earlier while it seems that for one reason or another Alex decided to retcon this section and a few other bits from this video to me it points to the fact that the false Shepherd and alternates are very least connected final type of alternates are those with biologically impossible features and that's the end of this section Now we move on to the next section which is in a very different format we see two people Mark Heath cliff and Caesar Torres who are marked as victim 1 and victim 2. we hear a phone call between them Caesar's mother has collapsed and Caesar is taking her to the hospital he asked Mark to stop by his house and turn on their security cameras while he's gone Mark reluctantly agrees one important thing to note about their conversation is that they seem to have both seen the PSAs telling them to lock the doors and stay inside again this is not a secret the government is hiding or a small scale event only affecting a few people like say a Marble Hornets this is widespread also worth noting is the most controversial shot [Music] [Laughter] I don't want to beat this dead horse more than it has to be but let's just say this did not trigger the intended response in audiences mostly because it looked like an already established meme at the time however it does actually have some relevance the broadcast is telling everyone to stay indoors and yet for some reason Caesar is trying to get Mark to come out knowing that these alternates can disguise themselves as anyone seeing Caesar's face distort like this seems to suggest it's not really Caesar Mark drives to the house and turns the cameras on and then even more confirmation that Caesar wasn't actually Caesar we hear what I think is supposed to be Caesar's mother who are you get away from me I'm so sorry but it sounds more like a 20 year old doing an Emma longevine impression more than a mother the voice acting in these earliest videos is a bit rough before we see Caesar's face distort completely it seems that by the time Mark got the phone call from Caesar both Caesar and his mother were already dead and the alternate was just trying to draw a mark out and it worked because the next line we see is it followed me home Caesar and we see Mark boarded up in his room for days as the alternate torments him outside notably he says no one has come to help me which will gain further context a little later on finally Mark breaks and opens the door shooting into the darkness at the alternate but we see from the text on screen that this was a bad decision a face runs up to the camera and we see that Marquez typed slash kill mark in Minecraft but in real life look I'm trying not to get demonetized here this is further reinforcement of the idea that the alternates aren't really directly killing you instead making you do it yourself instead of knocking down the door and mauling Mark they stalk outside his door for days tormenting him until he broke next we have a training video from the Mandela County Police Department training what are essentially auxiliary 911 operators when there's an overload of calls this is a training video for people who take those excess calls it seems to be the officers themselves for fire medical and crime related incidents it's pretty straightforward however for alternate encounters we see that they are told explicitly not to send help lie to the caller tell them that help is on the way until they stop screaming but be careful if you speak too much the alternate may hear you and you might accidentally reveal your fear another reinforcement that the alternates are a psychological threat using your fears and tormenting you it also shows why no one came to help mark this threat is so dangerous and we have such little information about how to combat it as the video says at the end nothing is worth the risk nothing is worth the risk nothing is worth the risk nothing is worth the risk if you've been attacked it's already too late this moves us to our final section of volume 1 toddlers stress assessment it appears to just be a series of visual and audio stimuli checking how your child reacts to them it feels like a pretty similar setup to the opening of Pizzeria simulator or the Chica squimpest tape it's all pretty uneventful at first except possibly the use of goat sounds [Music] goats are often associated with the satanic and demonic Aesthetics either way the video is eventually interrupted by pages from a story Mark Heathcliff wrote when he was a child it's about a strange man this Intruder who watched and tormented Mark as a child one night this Intruder character will become increasingly important but so far it's not entirely clear what he is an alternate why did he leave Mark alive we will learn more about the Intruder and more about this whole situation with the children watching the television but for now that's the end of Mandela catalog volume 1. all right well I did elaborate on some things but I feel like I'm left with more questions than answers what I gather these alternates have been around since Biblical times but for some reason in the 1980s they start popping up more and more they can look just like us and use some kind of psychological warfare to torment us until well we take another way out I guess that's what you are now you're getting it still I don't understand why you're not using any of your psychological fear tactics to try and get me to going through the self-checkout aisle more so I don't understand who this false Shepherd is or what's going on with the Intruder their leader the hive mind why don't you play the next tape to find out [Music] our next tape is called intruder alert it opens with this delightful lad informing us that we then cut to a PSA about child safety what things your child might be exposed to on the TV violence scary imagery or some sort of entity stealing them away through the TV something that exists on different wavelengths if you hear your child crying at the TV they recommend only entering once the noise has stopped we see the mother in The infographic go inside to see her child is missing and this face on the TV and then distraught at the sight of her missing infant she does the Hokey Pokey I'm trying to keep YouTube off my back but it's getting harder to do so this seems to be more psychological warfare from the alternates they exist on different spectrums able to torment you even from your TV and for some reason steal your children away more ways for them to get you to end it yourself something to note however is that we keep seeing this guy specifically this face it's possible we're not just looking at alternates at large but also some specific entity that comes through the TV as well also keep this specific incident in mind it may be more relevant than just a hypothetical example created for this PSA moving on an emergency alert interrupts the tape telling us that thousands of children have gone missing in many different counties including Mandela County as well as bythorne County which will be important later the emergency alert urges everyone to keep their children away from the television the government seems to understand that this epidemic of missing children is tied to something coming through the TV from here we move on to a video created by the Mandela County Police Department documenting the investigation of what appears to be the aftermath of what happened to the woman in the PSA an officer was sent over to the victim's home to investigate but felt an overwhelming feeling of dread took one photo and left another officer came by and later set up a camera to take photos every five minutes and through these photos we see the man in the TV's face in the darkness along with one of the most iconic and effective horror moments in the series up to this point a censored image which is described to us as the victim's body being tampered with by an invisible force a very eerie mental image interestingly at the end we see that the man in the TV has not been identified but the police are sure that this is isn't an alternate if it's not an alternate then what is it finally in the end we see a message from someone named Lieutenant Davis who's a name you should keep in the back of your head and so ends Intruder Alert yet again more questions than answers now we've got this fall Shepherd the alternates the Intruder the man in the TV it's too many conflicting stories they all have to be connected somehow you don't have all the answers yet but there's plenty of time to find out think about it what do you know well the man in the TV seems to Target children for whatever reason and he doesn't kill them like the other alternates which make people take a long walk off a short pier he just makes them disappear so he isn't really an alternate then the intruder the Intruder targeted Mark as a child and for whatever reason spared him and what if the man in the TV say when he first appears in the beginning of the video I am inside your home maybe I'm in the TV and the Intruder aren't so different now you're getting somewhere but let's not delay much longer you've still got tapes to look at foreign [Music] metaphysical awareness disorder is another short video this time breaking down what seems to be the cause of the alternate's ability to make people end it all this Affliction has been named metaphysical awareness order or mad it has a 97 rate of mortality the cause of death of course being resetting your own character with only three percent surviving important to note is the cause of mat learning information that is not desired to be known to me this begins to paint a better picture of alternates by learning your fear they are able to construct the one thing to say that would terrify you the most to drive you to taking yourself out note though that it specifies information that is not desired also that it specifically warns against practicing religion or philosophy things that may make you begin to think about more existential topics or connecting yourself to God we know in this universe has been replaced by the false Shepherd now that we have a better idea of what the alternates are actually doing we can move on to our final video before Volume 2 exhibition foreign [Music] exhibition is pretty long but surprisingly simple it opens with more of The Beginner's Bible this time with the story of Noah meaning we're going even further back than before that comes back at the end but for now we can tell something is not right as we move on to a photo of a child spoiler alert it's Mark Keith cliff in front of a church it reminds me of the supposedly cursed painting the hands resist him we then see a reel of footage discovered from Mark's house by the police specifically Lieutenant Thatcher Davis from intruder alert the footage shows Mark wandering his home driving around and visiting a church at night he seems paranoid and scared finally we see his TV turn on and a face slowly creep up the man in the TV aka the Intruder finally an image of someone upside down outside his window one of these biologically impossible alternates it seems Mark has been haunted by these entities for a long time before the events of volume 1. in addition we can see that Mark was religious possibly going to church for safety not knowing that it may have been his undoing considering the information we learned from the Mad video then we cut back to Noah's story The False Shepherd is punishing Noah making him bring what I assume are the alternates on the boat as well hidden in the captions is another quote from the Bible and no wonder for Satan disguises himself as an angel of Light finally it ends with another message from the Department of temporal phenomenon an order is being placed to destroy all TVs and mirrors an effort from Humanity to stop the alternates and the video ends so Mark's been haunted by these things for a long time in fact they've haunted Humanity itself for a long time all the way back before the New Testament even and only now in the 1980s the government team didn't want to do anything about it although to be fair back in biblical times people didn't have TVs in their homes it doesn't make me think though in the story of Noah he loads two of every animal onto an ark it makes me think that perhaps these alternates weren't alone and maybe they came in a pair with the Intruder either way we're on to volume two now [Music] Volume 2 gives us a significant shift forward in time from the 1980s and 90s to Winter 2009 the premise is two delinquent amateur ghost hunters from bythorne County Adam Murray and Joseph Marshall marked victims just like Caesar and Mark get a call about a haunted cat the woman requests they stay for three nights while she's away to put the cat's soul to rest Jonah seems to take the whole thing less seriously while Adam is a little more straight and narrow they hot wire a car and head to the house but there's something here to note they talk about alternates but almost as if they don't know if they're real wondering if it was all media panic and mentioning the Banning of televisions there aren't even alternates and the mayor was just too stupid to just make that entire infographic yeah but then like why are we getting getting the first place maybe because every maybe it's Mass hysteria right do you think this is the rise of the war on alternates you will arrive at your destination in 10 minutes holy [ __ ] that's actually really useful I mean they didn't have to outline these things did they like I doubt that guy's face could appear on something like this and you know kill you I don't know no they did not it seems for a while this Banning of TVs has actually worked and the alternates are so rare that some people don't even believe they exist Adam and Jonah arrive at the house and it may not be noticeable at first but this is a huge red flag this is Caesar's house from volume one the woman wasn't real at all this was an alternate luring them to their deaths after arriving they start to suspect there's nothing there at all Jonah seems creeped out by the house and they consider leaving before a scream comes from inside the house and Adam decides to go back inside and spend the night while Jonah waits in the car Adam's equipment seems to start being manipulated by alternates repeating things Jonah is saying and making them think the other one is talking who am I coming through I'm clear oh my God behind you shut up oh my God behind you dude seriously stop oh my God dude [ __ ] quit what the hell I do dude that's not funny well that's not funny there's a cut in from The Beginner's Bible of Eve getting Adam to bite the Apple this is pretty great paralleling whatever decision our Adam in the video is about to make is going to be a mistake and he will be punished for it as Adam sleeps a voice comes in over his walkie book you are followed my voice [Music] there's a bit to unpack here but let's just see how this plays out the voice tells Adam to open his eyes and a face appears Whispering we would assume that this is an alternate giving Adam mad but as we'll see Adam seems unfazed so what's going on well a message in the closed caption spells it out for us patients report multiple sleepless nights after their symptoms initially become apparent it is not difficult to avoid however the patient must actively try to seek it out this message seems to suggest along with the term information that is not desired to be known that Adam was unaffected because unlike Jonah who was hiding Adam went looking for answers here because he is actively seeking out this information it doesn't affect him and therefore he is immune to the Mad continuing Adam doesn't respond to Jonah for a long while before finally showing Jonah that a door that was previously locked is open a door to the basement where a cat's meow is echoing from Jonah tries desperately to convince Adam not to go down and in their argument we learn some context I wish we never looked for him because she is dead and God and we were never gonna get her back what did you just [ __ ] say to me so we have an idea of what might be motivating Adam someone in his life maybe a mother or sister or partner or friend disappeared and Adam is looking for answers Jonah drives off and Adam makes his way downstairs it turns out the source of the meowing was an analog TV at the bottom Adam sits down and the Man in the TV aka the Intruder appears Adam asks who he is to which he responds you don't remember before his Spirit Box plays voices telling him no one is coming to help him we cut back to Jonah in the car as a voice over the radio taunts him for leaving Adam behind he pulls up to the side of the road and we hear what sounds like either a grunt of anger or pain before things go silent and the tape ends well at least this one's story is pretty straightforward Adam and jonan get lured by an alternate Adam driven by someone in his past is determined to find answers while Jonah leaves but Adam's encounter with the man in the TV in the past does raise some questions I can only draw two conclusions as a child Adam may have had a sister who was taken by the man in the TV before the TV destruction act but my other thought I think makes a lot more sense it connects back to the intruder alert video the woman whose child was taken is it possible this child didn't disappear forever but when he came back his mother was well dead and gone as Jonah puts it we may learn more of that later but it does bring up one more burning question why did the man in the TV say you followed the shepherd you are a fool follow my voice instead if we are to believe that this Shepherd is the false Angel we've been talking about and the voice is of the man in the TV then the man in the TV and the false Shepherd May in some ways be adversaries but if that's the case what is the man of the TV's motive I guess we're going to have to continue to find out [Music] I'll be covering these next two videos in one section as they're very short and similar a foray into digital horror the first video mymovie.mp4 is a Windows Movie Maker style ghost caught on camera video however nothing of note really happens here other than some spooky images and videos notably though this video seems to take place in Caesar's house yet again the next video appears to be a low quality video of a soccer game interspersed with dark footage of someone filming around their house at night at the end it zooms into a doorway where there might be a figure it's so dark and compressed it's hard to tell while there's not a ton of new information what these give us is some more World building other people experiencing these things now in 2009 the alternates were pushed away for a bit but it's possible they're making a comeback but now we move on to the final volume vol 3 buckle up foreign [Music] is by far the best out of them all in addition to that it also provides a lot of context and expands a lot of details we've seen so far so let's start we open with the exterior of the house from intruder alert the house where the child disappeared and the mother ended up dead audio plays and we hear the mother trying to comfort her child then we hear a phone call and an image on screen gives us some context it's between the mother and her ex-husband who's the father of the child also of note their last name is Murray that last name may be familiar Adam Murray these are Adam's parents Lynn Murray the mother tells the father Jude Murray that she needs help the baby won't stop crying she also notes that she's had the TV unplugged for weeks Jude agrees to come over the following night we cut to an absolutely stunning shot of someone likely Adam watching the TV so it turns out he still has access to this TV this seems to be why it was the television destruction act and not the unplug act we'll get back to Adam and his family's story in a moment for now the video moves on to the speech from Thatcher Davis it from before commemorating his promotion to Lieutenant as well as for a character named Sergeant Ruth Weaver from there we hear a message left by a teacher to the police asking them to check on Mark Heathcliff who has been absent for a while this transitions us into the initial investigation into Mark Keith Cliff's death as initially detailed in exhibition we see footage and photos of the investigation Mark's Body bullet casings as well as fingerprints some of these fingerprints belonging to Mark Heathcliff others belonging to someone else probably an alternate most notably though are the video and audio recordings and pages from Mark's notebook video showing Shadows beneath his door audio recording of voices outside his door side note on that actually I think this is my favorite part in the entire series something about the way the voices try to imperfectly replicate the way people talk is so eerie what time is it it's just after me I'm nervous prototype inside the notebook we see Mark journaling to himself and to God praying for protection the last bit of Journal however questions who have I been praying to Mark realizes the deity he's been begging for help is the very one that has been tormenting him moving on we see that Caesar is now a known alternate and the police have put a warning out about him we then move on to a section covering the Murray investigation we're moving back to Adam and his family's story we start by seeing a clip from a children's show called The might of the subconscious this TV segment Stars Stanley a puppet who's a direct reference to limbo a character created by Jim Henson it becomes clear rather quickly that this isn't your regular children's TV show Stanley explains to the viewer how to create an imaginary friend and manifest it into reality it ends with the quote can you keep an even bigger Secret I think it worked your new friend is somewhere in your house now it's up to you to go and find them from here we hard cut to a 9-1-1 call between Jude Murray and Lieutenant Thatcher Davis Jude reports a man in his house this appears to be happening while he's gone to visit Lynn at the beginning of the episode Davis seems to believe this is an alternate encounter and follows regular procedure detailed in volume 1 asking Davis if the man looks like anyone he knows to which Jude replies I have never seen anyone in my life that looks anything like him this throws off the initial idea that it's an alternate it seems Adam was watching Stanley and the imaginary friend was indeed summoned into his house now we're seeing a connection the sergeant from earlier Ruth Weaver calls in to tell Davis that the officer that was already checking out the place just it out this is the officer from intruder alert that arrived took a photo and left due to a terrified feeling Weaver and Davis arrive Place cameras like we saw before and determined they need to do an in-home investigation they arrive back at the house and find Lynn's body somehow Davis gets separated and Encounters this imaginary friend who starts by mimicking his voice from the darkness identify yourself then it runs quickly down the hall and then slowly creeps out singing the most terrifying rendition of Amazing Grace Davis runs making his way back to the police station telling Weaver through the walkie-talkie to meet him there if she gets out after arriving Davis request backup from nearby County police but is met with silence and then it seems the friend followed Davis to the station it creeps terrifyingly towards him using the voices of different people to taunt him before lurching forward in a pose reminiscent of Jesus on the cross in the captions we see the name of the victims Caesar Torres Ruth Weaver Mark Heathcliff as the creature seems to warp and meld its own face Davis shoots it and we see a new creepy face in the dark followed by the message there's not enough room for the two of us Lieutenant I interpret this and more context for this will appear in a moment that this imaginary friend has now become Davis's alternate we see a shot of a wall of the police station which shows the slogan every day gets brighter before our final shot the eye from the beginning and there ends volume 3. foreign that would have been the end of it but it's not over until it's over two new videos dropped recently they're short but they have important information nonetheless but before we get into those let's recap really quick Adam from Volume 2 was Lynn Murray and Jude Murray's son as a child a TV program clearly broadcast by the alternates or the man in the TV caused Adam to summon an entity an imaginary friend Adam disappears at least momentarily and his mother well we know what happens these are the same events we see in Intruder Alert but with more context the imaginary friend then attacks Jude the father these events seem to be what caused Adam's determination in volume 2. but what happened to him between his disappearance here and the events of volume 2 are unclear officer Davis and Weaver go to investigate the scene and Weaver is presumably killed by this imaginary friend the imaginary friend follows Davis to the police station where he turns into his alternate so is Davis alive well we'll find out in the next tape foreign [Music] gets brighter is our follow-up to Volume 3 and it starts as a recording from Davis after the events of volume 3. Davis seems to have survived and confirms that that thing walked out of there looking exactly like him mostly Davis talks about his role as Lieutenant everyone is expecting him to be strong and have the answers but he knows just as little as they do and he's starting to crack however he's determined to kill that entity if it's the last thing he does also notice it's shown wearing a hoodie that looks oddly similar to the Intruder what the [ __ ] is happening I don't know not yet let's move on to our final video old Mandela police site leak yet another foray into digital horror we see someone recording their screen showing off the website for a Mandela County Police along with this we see a screenshot of an email from Sarah heathcliffe some relative of Mark Clearly possibly his sister considering the image from exhibition and then finally an image of a login portal and believe it or not this is a real site and includes lie within so to wrap up our breakdown before we get into the theories and Analysis let's take a look at the site foreign the website seems to be cutting us forward in time again early 2000s specifically it seems to be 2004. so a few years before the events of volume 2. let's see what we can find the first thing that jumps out at me from this is the in remembrance page for Weaver and Davis now this would imply they're both dead but remembrance is in quotes and we know that at the very least Davis made it out of the encounter in volume 3. so it's possible this is relating to Davis's resignation or something of that sort along with the info from this first page there are a few different links to different pages to start let's look at the recruitment page this one is pretty small but what it tells us is that either the Mandela County police are losing officers either from resignation or falling in the line of duty or that the alternate problem is severely outnumbering them we also notice that it says to contact Mr Davis notably not Lieutenant Davis but I think we're still talking about the same guy here did Davis resign and is no longer a lieutenant is this a different Davis perhaps a family member of Thatcher Davis it's not exactly clear but this is more evidence that they Davis is likely still alive moving on our about page seems to be pretty uninteresting until you scroll to the bottom of the page someone has added the text at the bottom you never had any idea what you were doing you cowards the grand year of 92 leaving me then there's a lowercase t almost looking like a cross with a link the link leads us to a page of the three wise monkeys aka the See No Evil Hear no evil speak no evil monkeys exactly this message is relevance isn't entirely clear except for reinforcing the internal battle between the alternates and you their attempts to whittle your mind down and the only way to win against them is to either avoid thoughts of a certain nature altogether or not fear them at all there's another page as well a link to some local news information we see a reference to the soccer game from the earlier video but the main thing we learn is that the population of Mandela county is drastically decreasing and the news is trying to reassure its citizens to stay now let's move on to the good stuff the staff login portal there are actually multiple different logins that take you to different air areas talk about the first view first as there are really more Easter eggs than a big part of the story first if you enter John as both the username and password it takes you to John moment or it did I can't seem to get it to work anymore but I think it's supposed to or it was supposed to my thought is that these weird creatures are either scrapped or not yet seen designs for entities we'll see later or a reference to something else entirely that I'm not aware of there was also one that took you to a meme page referencing the programmer behind the website but again for the life of me I can't find the info on that anymore but let's get to the part you've all been waiting for using the username Thatcher davis92 which we can get from the Gmail screenshot and the password every day gets darker we gain access to Thatcher Davis's account and from here can view multiple new pages first we can find a page that lists media discovered in relation to Lynn Murray's death mostly stuff we've seen but it's interesting nonetheless we get in-universe recognition of Stanley and his similarity to limbo as well as the use of The Beginner's Bible and the anomalies that occur in those clips tips next we get interviews from a few characters Sarah Heathcliff Adam and a woman named Evelyn Miller who appears to be Adam's girlfriend maybe these are all in relation to an investigation of the bythorne Paranormal Society I have a couple thoughts about this first by the time the events of volume 2 take place the BPS is already considered a delinquent and wanted organization so considering this takes place in 2004 and volume 2 takes place in 2009 this could be bps's first run-in with the law it's also possible that while the main site hasn't been updated since 2004 this is actually in the aftermath of volume 2 and Davis is still using the site either way these interviews are pretty telling first off we see that Sarah heathcliffe Mark's sister has joined the BPS maybe like Adam this early experience with the alternates led to her to join the BPS to find answers when the police provided none Evelyn and Adam seem to have conflicting stories Evelyn seems to be worried about Adam's behavior and sudden falling into the deep end of these investigations while Adam says Evelyn is making things up about him judging by Adam's asshole-ish behavior and defensiveness I'm more so on Evelyn's side here the thing that makes me think this is maybe post Volume 2 is that Evelyn mentions Jonah but he is nowhere to be found in these interviews and it seems like Jonah may have died at the end of volume 2. at the same time this could just be that they haven't caught up with Jonah yet the next page gives us more details but not too much new useful information about what happened to Mark again a lot more detail and I recommend giving it a read but not necessarily anything game changing another page seems to be investigating a lawyer named Mervin Marshall exactly what his relevance will be aside from looking like Saul Goodman is unclear at this point finally we have a link to another tape recording by Thatcher Davis in general it's more of a discussion of his breakdown and his slow loss of sanity and the toll the job is taking something to note about this and all of the audio recordings is the strange sound artifacting static odd background noise well I look like okay the best lead the community has come up with is running the audio through a spectrogram but nothing huge has come out of it maybe some garbled numbers or letters maybe it's possible it's just audio background noise maybe it's something more time will tell and just when I thought we were done as I was editing this video a new video dropped titled interlude while it doesn't add too much new information it definitely gives us a peek as to what's coming in volume 4. first we see more emphasis on the lowering population of Mandela County only 1075 by 2009. from there we see a message from Sarah to Adam branded with a 2007 date of the BPS her message explains that she gained access to more MPD files this seems like it may be what got them in trouble initially breaking into classified documents the file Sarah specifically finds is a new message from the United States Department of temporal phenomenon stating that we have eliminated the alternates well we know that's not true either the government has decided to lie to the public in order to to stop them from panicking or people inside of the government have been taken over by alternates maybe the late 90s and 2000s didn't really Stave them off they were just being strategic in who they selected finally we see a graph of different types of alternate assimilation flawed or imperfect assimilation perfect assimilation or overdriven assimilation here we see a nun with the alternate version being the face from Volume 2 followed by the message a messenger a new alternate has entered the ring and exactly its relevance I'm not sure we'll have to see what happens in volume 4. until then let's move on with the website out of the way and volume three broken down we have all the pieces of the puzzle now it's just about fitting them together which will be a much more difficult task what does it all mean really still don't get it [Music] I think I got it now the story of the Mandela catalog is told out of chronological order and the dates aren't always given so I've done my best to quickly put together a timeline of events which I'll then use to explain my view of the story being told so let's start we start in biblical times the things we see from The Beginner's Bible from there we cut forward to Mark's story starting as a child when he sees the Intruder and goes to church with his sister this is sometime in the 70s in 1981 the United States Department of temporal phenomenon is established and that's when we see a lot of these PSAs start coming out from Mad to the think principle in 1992 we see Mark's fate in volume 1 and to me it seems clear that not long after the events of volume 3 take place with Adam as a child and his mother's death sometime after that the TV and mirror destruction Act is put in place cutting forward to the 2000s Adam is grown up and he and Jonah along with Sarah Heathcliff Mark's sister become a part of or perform the bithorn Paranormal Society which eventually leads them to getting into trouble with the authorities not long after in the winter of 2 2009 the events of volume 2 take place which gets us pretty much up to speed so far so aside from a vague series of events what is the story being told here let's go back and start at Biblical times the earliest we see of course being Adam and Eve now it's fair to say not everything that occurs in these animated segments are a hundred percent accurate to reality they're one from a pre-existing piece of children's media not a first-hand account of events say like a police report or government PSA is two they've clearly been manipulated by some other entity but at the same time we're clearly seeing these edited to represent events that actually took place in this universe so I'd say we can trust them to some degree and the earliest thing we see is the story of Adam and Eve specifically Adam biting the apple and the serpent laughing to me this is where the false Shepherd wins and takes over this is the creation of sin Humanity's weakness Adam even comments specifically suddenly I feel kind of scared we know finding your fear is the main myth of attack for alternate so it makes sense to me that this is the origin Point moreover think about what the cause of mad is receiving knowledge that is not desired to be known in the Bible the Apple comes from the Tree of knowledge and eating it gives Adam and Eve the knowledge of Good and Evil literally creating their fears and ability to obtain the knowledge that alternates will use in the first place and if you need another point to this the serpent convincing Adam and Eve in the first place is Satan and we've seen multiple times before in this series The False Shepherd is constantly associated with Satan most specifically when the captions use Dante's description of seeing Satan as the false Shepherd is on screen unlike the story of the Bible the Fallout of this isn't just God punishing Humanity with original sin this is where the false Shepherd triumphs in corrupting Humanity overthrowing God that's my interpretation anyway of the Mandela catalog's version of the story from there we move on to our next section Noah is approached by the shepherd we see this but don't get a lot of context it's safe to assume however Noah was not happy with what he heard and that is why the shepherd punishes Noah by making him take something else with him on Arc I believe this is the origin point of alternates from there we move on to the creation of Christianity and here's where I think it gets really interesting in the Mandela catalog Universe I believe the entire origin point for Christianity as a religion is completely fabricated by the false Shepherd as a way to spread the alternates think about it it was never about corrupting Christianity the false Shepherd got there before Christ was born and because this is before mass media like televisions and such what's the best way to spread these alternates among humans religion which we know makes humans susceptible to alternates and Christianity as we know was very successful at spreading around the globe the Bible became a sort of form of mass media being a major factor for literacy in Europe eventually translated to every language imaginable and became one of the first books that people would just own in their very own homes that seems like a very successful way to spread alternates but soon there would be an even easier way between the 1940s and 1960s personal home television sets boomed from a few thousand to Millions now everyone had a little box that could be in information directly to them all over the world a perfect way for alternates to spread even faster this rise of alternates from the Advent of the TV can no longer stay under the radar and by 1981 the United States establishes the department of temporal phenomenon an attempt to understand and combat this growing Supernatural threat this brings us to our first real character moment in the story sometime in the 1970s Mark Heathcliff is visited by the Intruder for one reason or another it doesn't kill him but it does torment him for a long time Mark finds solace in his religion even as a child believing that God will save him little does he know his focus on religion would eventually be his downfall back to the Department of temporal phenomenon throughout the 80s and 90s as they begin to understand more about the alternates they begin releasing the PSAs and warnings we see for instance about mad the think principle and an order to shut off all TV sets and as we move into the 90s Mandela County for whatever reason is really seeing a surge in these events specifically so much so that the the Mandela PD has decided the safest thing to do is ignore calls about alternates and needs individual officers to start taking 9-1-1 calls because of the Overflow of emergencies in 1992 Cesar Torres is overtaken by an alternate and lures Mark Keith Cliff over the alternate follows Mark home and torments him for a long time before well we know what happens to Mark recently promoted Lieutenant Thatcher Davis works on the case but not long after the Heathcliff incident the MPD gets another call about a disturbance at the Murray residence Adam only a small child at this point has been targeted by an entity in the TV which has led him to summon an imaginary friend Adam is taken by the man in the TV though we know he is not the only one as thousands have already gone missing causing his mother to go and his father is soon dispatched by the imaginary friend Lieutenant Thatcher Davis along with Sergeant Ruth Weaver go to the house to investigate and Ruth is presumably killed by the imaginary friend Davis escapes to the police station where he has another confrontation with the entity he survives but the entity escapes having taken the form that looks just like him this imaginary friend was an alternate in the making the police force at the MPD headed by Thatcher Davis are slowly crumbling under the pressure of this threat after this point is when I believe the TV and mirror destruction Act is put into place if you'll remember Lynn Murray mentions that she had the TV unplugged for weeks following the guidelines of previous broadcasts but it turns out just turning it off isn't enough the supernatural force will find a way in if you have a TV in your home so all TVs and mirrors are ordered to be destroyed and for a while this works by the 2000s younger people aren't even sure if alternates ever really existed that leads us to Adam Jonah and Sarah heathcliffe Adam somehow returned from the clutches of the man in the TV V is now obsessed with finding answers for his mother's death although it appears he's not aware that she actually died just disappeared Adam becomes a part of the bithorn Paranormal Society along with Sarah Heathcliff Mark's younger sister similarly motivated by the alternate's effect on her family at some point the BPS get in trouble with the law and that is when we see the events of volume 2. Adam and Jonah are lured by an alternate to the same house where Mark was lured in the 90s Adam may have survived but Jonah was likely less lucky that brings us basically to where we are in the series likely with the Advent of the internet and YouTube as we see in our digital horror stints alternates are due for another rise so that's the plot of this series as far as I can tell there's a lot of moving pieces here so if something's wrong or you think differently let me know in the comments really though the series seems to have three main plot threads that all interweave the false Shepherd the satanic leader source of the alternates preying on Humanity the Mandela County Police the struggling Police Department crumbling under the vastness of the threat and the BPS where many of our other characters Sarah heathcliffe and Adam Murray specifically have ended up due to the alternate's effect on them there's still some details here that are a bit confusing who is the Intruder is he the same as the man in the TV what is the relationship between them and the false Shepherd how exactly do alternates work well there's not a straightforward answer to a lot of this but I'll try my best to give an explanation let's start with something we know Alex kister the creator has in fact confirmed that the man in the TV and the Intruder are the same entity I even double confirmed it with him while making this video just to be sure so they're interchangeable names now the question about how the alternates work and the relationship between the Intruder and the false Shepherd are a bit more difficult for instance it seems that this guy the imaginary friend AKA the guy that eventually turns into Thatcher's alternate looks like the Intruder so the Intruder is an alternate that can get summoned out of the TV by children he manipulates into manifesting him is that how alternates work is he special and while it seems the Intruder does have some alternate motive based on the way he talks to Adam it's possible he's just manipulating him because we don't really know what his motive would be otherwise the only other idea I have that's sort of coming to mind as I write this is that the Intruder TV man is actually the origin point of alternates through the TV those thousands of children disappearing are like fuel for an alternate to manifest itself where it will then kill the host family by giving them mad and then taking their place at the same time this doesn't always seem to be the case so I'm not exactly sure some questions may stay unanswered for now however to give us some closure let me quickly reiterate what we do know about alternates they can replicate our looks however sometimes they have biologically impossible features and abilities the way they kill humans is by first finding Their Fear something they can do apparently simply just by hearing your voice once they have their victims fear they will whisper something to them some existential truth so terrifying it gives their victim mad which has a 97 lethality rate in addition if that takes a bit too long they will continue to mentally torment their victim until well we know how this ends I feel like I finally got a grasp on the story what's the actual series of events are but what was the point what does it all mean let's talk see the Mandela catalog aside from having this very expansive story is actually incredibly rich with themes specifically I want to talk about five which I have named welcome to the internet who are you praying to your evil doppelganger fear in your own home and a response to tragedy and disaster let's talk about them starting with welcome to the internet in a similar fashion to Bo Burnham's inside the Mandela catalog explores how mass media affects us for most of human history we have been isolated to our little bubbles political cultural and interpersonal issues have been isolated to our small communities you hear what's happening within your immediate group perhaps you hear about larger scale news but very rarely with the Advent of mass media television and eventually smartphones we are constantly inundated with bad news Doom scrolling the fear brought right into our homes the disasters all around us at all times these are things that have always been with us but are now Amplified by our access to their existence a constant flood of knowledge this ties in so directly with what Mandela catalog is exploring I'm surprised no one has done like a cross media analysis of inside in the Mandela catalog in the Mandela catalog these issues are personified by the alternates at first humans are blissfully unaware of the issues outside of their small bubble but the access to new knowledge begins a Reign of Terror at first rarely bubbling up his communities evolve but with the introduction of mass media and television suddenly the alternates are on the rise at an exponential rate it's a very interesting parallel and Mirror to the pitfalls of the information age in the same way I don't think it's a coincidence that the alternates kill you by giving you information that makes you turn on yourself as the effects on Mental Health that things like the 24-hour news cycle social media and mass media in general have at the same time there's a glimmer of hope to survive to keep moving forward we can't run and hide from these issues we have to face them head on that's my takeaway at least this series also explores a terrifying element of the unknown Eldritch in nature and a terrifying thing to think about what if your God was not a loving what if it wasn't really God you were praying to this whole time but instead a force of evil this idea of pulling the rug out from under you the one constant being completely flipped an Eldritch evil but also on a personal note the fear of having your entire world view shifted so suddenly and terrifyingly this kind of ties in with the concept of growing up and having our eyes open to the atrocities of the world as we see children play a strong role and they aren't killed for some reason instead just taken we see this strongly represented in the story of Mark Heathcliff we can watch in horror as Mark pleads with God until he finally realizes the evil has been what he's been praying to this whole time in the end this realization of the truth is likely what did him in I'd say ignorance is bliss but it's not like praying to this attacker was doing him any good either way it's a terrifying concept to explore and I think the Mandela catalog does it really well one of the more obvious horror tropes this series covers is that of the evil doppelganger this is a classic Trope that goes back to folk tales fairies stealing children away also something we see in the series and replacing them with an evil or imperfect copy from the thing to us plenty of horror media utilizes this it can sometimes represent an inner conflict but in many ways the fear comes from what an evil you would do to others Allah the thing who can you trust what is this other thing doing to your life one of the first times we see this idea explored is with Caesar Torres and Mark Heathcliff as volume 1 goes on you begin to realize you can't really trust anyone any phone calls any close friends could secretly be an alternate out to get you paranoia similarly we see this happen when Adam and Jonah are lured by the woman in volume 2 but I think most interestingly this is covered in Thatcher Davis's audio recordings the idea of seeing a perfect copy of you walk out into the world with no idea of what they could be doing to your reputation or to the people that trust you is genuinely freaky while not the most original Trope in the world it's following in a long line of great media and is exploring the concept in a really cool way the fear of things far away is one thing hearing terrible news or knowing about some instrumental issue in the far future we'll have to deal with but knowing that in the place you feel safest there's something lurking a home invasion that already succeeded from childhood fears of a monster under the bed to the terrifying reality of Home Invaders this concept of breaking the place you feel safe can terrify us in a similar vein the way Stanley slashed the Intruder works is similar taking the form of something as safe as a kid's cartoon and warping it grabbing children straight from inside their homes there's something that hits closer to home about the concept something that feels unsettlingly more real it's the type of thing you think about just as you're falling asleep that makes you get up and double check if your door is locked but in this universe by the time you get back to bed it's too late in congruence with our discussion of mass media and doom scrolling we are constantly inundated with disaster tragedy and seemingly unfixable issues climate change War these are issues that can't be solved by one person one organization or even an entire country they feel insurmountable like an inevitability it's that feeling of hopelessness that is explored here the ones you trust to help you in times of emergency turning the other way the alternates are such a massive issue the authorities are in the same boat as everyone else it makes you wonder if there's anything that can actually be done while talking to Alex he told me that one important aspect he keeps in mind while riding is exploring how people react to these sort of terrifying situations making decisions based on emotional response and not necessarily the most effective or logical one but again there is hope we see in the series the television destruction act seems to actually be a solution if a temporary one these slivers of hope that pop up around the series I think are really cool it adds to the tension we want Humanity to Prevail and these little bits of opportunity give us a chance to see that it's possible whether or not Humanity succeeds however is another question I guess the last thing to wrap up here would be what's the future of analog horror and how is the Mandela catalog affected strangely it seems most directly the Mandela catalog has inspired video games from the Mandela Invasion to Maple County quick games that take a bunch of direct inspiration for the Mandela catalog in the same way there are clearly a lot of new analog horror series that have taken inspiration from the Mandela catalog the smile tapes comes to mind though I haven't watched it I get the feeling more so though I think we'll see two outcomes from the Mandela catalog that will help evolve the genre in general number one is we'll see people creating content that completely subverts the tropes seeing the early criticism from the Mandela catalog and wanting to go so far from the conventions of the genre that will see some really weird and experimental new stuff which is always good at the same time others will likely see how well Alex has evolved the series itself especially recently and will start seeing a lot of people trying to replicate what makes these newest videos so effective most importantly though I want to leave you with what Alex told me in a discussion with him about the future of the series and analog Horror in general as time goes along I believe that analog horror is going to spread out into a bunch of little subgenres like it is currently with digital horror for me using the analog horror genre as a way to begin the Mandela catalog has been a very easy and effective way for me to get my point across even if I plan on taking it into more of an avant-garde Direction with volume 4. I've been experimenting with more surrealistic qualities that differentiates myself among the pack of the bigger series with volume three through three which I feel I set a standard for myself for the rest of my videos going forward foreign well I suppose I've exhausted all my questions and answers so far I guess the only thing left to do is check out my Twitter twitch second Channel and patreon still there's one thing I don't understand why was my alternate trying to help me for a detective you are not very bright all right if the answer is so simple why don't you just tell me you made the point yourself we need to reach a wide audience to spread and you've just spent the last hour talking about us what was it that you said how thankful you are for your recent Channel grow you used me I can't let you spread I can't upload this video that's not up to you anymore Sagan but we should wrap this up your audience has a new friend in their house that's just dying to meet them [Music]

Channel: Sagan Hawkes

Views: 815,194

Keywords: mandela catalogue, explained, analysis, wendigoon, alex kister, vol.333, volume 3, volume 4, analog horror, vhs, alternates, thatcher davis, mandela police, bythorne paranormal society, mandela county

Id: 4_P7nTlrPgc

Length: 60min 53sec (3653 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2022