Ouch! The boy on the bus turns around. Did someone pull out one of his hairs? He looks around but the girl in the seat behind
him is staring out the window. She’s so quiet and always keeps to herself,
he doesn’t think it possibly could have been her. The boy turns back around wondering if he
just imagined it, unable to see the small smile forming on the girl’s face. The bus stops and the girl practically sprints
off and up the sidewalk to her house. She runs past her mother without saying hello
and goes straight into her bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her. She sits at her desk, opens a drawer, and
pulls out a small bag. She reaches into the bag and takes out a folded
piece of paper. “Congratulations on your purchase of a genuine
Knotty Stalker! Do you love someone, but they won't give you
the time of day? Do you wish you could hear what they say about
you behind their back? Well wonder no more! Using this fantabulous product, you can keep
track of your loved ones' every move, their every word!” The girl imagines herself watching a tiny
version of the boy on the bus right here on her desk, seeing everything that he does,
listening to his secret thoughts and desires. If only she knew him better, then she’d
have the confidence to talk to him, and could get him to like her as much as she liked him. She reaches into the bag and pulls out the
Knotty Stalker. It doesn’t look like much, just a little
doll made from a woven and twisted length of red string
She looks back to the instructions. “All you have to do is get a single hair
from the head of the object of your desires, slip it under a loose string on our Knotty
Stalker, and see what you've been missing!” The girl reaches into her pocket and takes
out a single strand of hair. She holds the hair up to the light, looking
at it. If this works, it will mean all of her dreams
coming true. Just like the instructions said to do, she
takes the hair and slides it under a string on the doll’s body. She sets the doll down on her desk and waits…
and waits… and… nothing happens. She picks up the instructions again, turning
them over, but there’s nothing else except “Another wonderful product brought to you
by” blah blah blah. Where were the rest of the instructions on
how to get it to work? Why wasn’t the doll coming to life? What a piece of junk! What a… wait… what was that? The girl leans in close. Is the doll… breathing? She’s startled as the doll turns its head
over its shoulder, seemingly looking right at her, or rather, right through her. “Coming mom” the doll shouts, before standing
up. It starts to walk in place, looking like it
is opening invisible doors, and then sitting down on a chair that she can’t see. It looks like it’s pretending to eat dinner. The girl’s eyes widen. The doll is alive, it’s really alive! It’s actually showing what the boy is doing
right now. The Knotty Stalker has worked. The girl is fascinated by watching the little
doll that gives her a peek into her crush’s life. She skips her own dinner so she can watch
him finish his. She watches as he sits, probably watching
TV, takes a shower, and gets ready for bed. It may all just be a little doll acting it
out, but it feels like she is there with him. She watches the doll sleep for hours before
falling finally asleep herself, her head resting on the desk next to him. The next morning, she passes by the boy and
his friend sitting together on the bus and goes to the very back. She gets as low in the seat as she can so
no one can see her and takes out the doll, holding it up to her ear. She listens to one side of the conversation
as the boy talks about the action movie he watched last night, Weapon of Mass Extinction. The boy talks about how much he liked it and
how it’s his new favorite movie. This was perfect, it’s exactly what she
needed. The next day in school, as the boy is putting
things into his locker, the girl approaches. She pretends to trip and drops her books in
front of him, the books scattering on the floor in front of him. The boy helps her pick them up and notices
the DVD she dropped… Weapons of Mass Extinction. She explains that she brought her favorite
movie to school to loan it to a friend. What a coincidence that they both happen to
love the same film. The boy and the girl, bonding over their love
of low budget sci-fi action films, start spending more and more time together. No one has ever understood him the way that
she does. It is as if she has known him for years, even
though they’ve only been friends for a few days. Things move quickly though, and before long
he realizes that he is having romantic feelings for the girl. This is all the girl had ever wanted. And it’s all thanks to the Knotty Stalker. Things are going so well in fact, that she
imagines she won’t even need it much longer. But then something strange happens. She is sure she heard the boy tell his friend
that he loved baseball, but when she brings up the idea of going to a game together, the
boy looks at her like she was crazy. He hated baseball. After that things seem to change. The boy is still so nice when they are together,
but now it sounds like he is talking about her behind her back. She worries that she has been wrong this whole
time, that he has just been messing with her. This stupid doll isn’t making her dreams
come true, it’s making her life a nightmare. But wait, who is the boy talking to? She leans in close to listen, is he… with
another girl? Listening to one side of the conversation,
she hears the boy tell someone that this is all just a big joke, a prank he is pulling
on some dumb girl. Are they… no, they can’t be… kissing?! The girl is in a white, hot rage. She can’t believe he would do this to her,
after she was nothing but perfect to him. She throws the doll across her room. She’s going to confront the boy and whoever
he’s with. She’ll teach him a lesson. She’ll teach both of them a lesson. It’s starting to rain as the girl gets her
bike out and starts to ride to where she knows he is, the spot that was supposed to be their
own special place. Cars pass close by on the narrow road, splashing
her with water but she doesn’t care. She finally reaches the picnic spot where
he took her just a few days ago, and she sees a car parked nearby. It must belong to the evil seductress he is
with. The girl glares at the car. She grits her teeth until they feel like they
might crack, her fists are clenched so tight that she can’t tell if it’s the rain or
blood from her fingernails digging in that she feels running down her palms. But she doesn’t care. She’s going to show both of them what happens
when you break someone's heart. She takes a step towards the car and -
The car that struck her slams on its brakes. The driver gets out and rushes towards her… It’s the boy. Her boy. The older couple who were stopped on the side
of the road with a flat tire run over to help. The boy gets down next to her and cradles
her head in his lap and they have one last moment to look into each other’s eyes before
the light fades from hers. Unfortunately for all involved, their lives
would never be the same. But how could they have known that they were
the victims of an encounter with an anomaly that, while small, is extremely dangerous. One that is known to the SCP Foundation as
SCP-693… the Knotty Stalker. SCP-693 are multiple humanoid shaped dolls,
measuring roughly 18 centimeters in length, each made from a single string that is either
red, blue, yellow, or black, with onyx beads for eyes. Their clothing will vary in color and style
and seems to have no bearing on the properties of the doll. The string doll will behave exactly as one
would expect, showing no anomalous properties at all, until the owner takes the steps that
are spelled out in the instructions that always accompany SCP-693. The instruction sheet congratulates the owner
on their acquisition of a Knotty Stalker and explains that in order to use it, a single
hair from another person must be inserted into a loop of its string, at which point
the doll will “attune” to that person. The doll will then come alive, mimicking the
actions of the hair’s owner in real time including their speech. The doll will perfectly portray the attuned
individual for nine days, after which point it will become unreliable. The exact way in which SCP-693 begins changing
the speech and actions depends on the color of its base string, but in all cases, it’s
end goal is to drive the current owner of the doll… to their death. SCP-693 goes about this by feeding inaccurate
information to the owner. Dolls made of red string try to send their
owner into increasingly violent fits of rage, dolls comprised of blue string try to depress
their owner and lead them to self harm, yellow dolls want to make their owners attempt unwanted
acts of physical love, and black dolls encourage their owners to engage in activities and place
themselves in situations that are dangerous. Interestingly, SCP-693 will attune not just
to the living, but to the deceased as well. When a dead person’s hair is placed in a
loop of string, the Knotty Stalker will come to life just as it does when a living person’s
is used. But instead of acting out the speech and movements
of the person, the attuned doll will claim to be the deceased person and offer to act
as a spiritual guide to the owner. But just like with a living person, at the
nine day mark, SCP-693 will become unreliable, and will attempt to lead the owner down a
path that results in their death. Once an SCP-693 instance is successful in
causing its owner’s death, a new doll instance will appear and be found on the owner’s
body. Several of these dolls have been recovered
from Knotty Stalker victims and currently the Foundation has seven red instances, ten
blue instances, five yellow instances and one black instance in its possession. All instances of SCP-693 contained by the
Foundation were originally classified as Safe and kept in containment locker 12C-K, but
following the events of incident 693 - E, that classification was revisited. During this incident, a researcher returned
a Knotty Stalker doll to its containment locker but, in a lapse of judgement that went against
Foundation protocols, they forgot to remove the hair that had been placed in the doll. When the locker was next opened, the dolls
were observed to have all been moved. They were found in a circle around the accidentally
still attuned doll, which had been crucified upside down on the wall of the locker. It is unknown where the dolls acquired nails. After this incident, a camera was placed inside
of the locker and the results were surprising to say the least. It turns out that SCP-693 instances come to
life when they are not observed, even when they aren’t attuned. While they have not yet been observed engaging
in violent acts against each other, the camera has captured the Knotty Stalkers appearing
to reenact the final thirty minutes of their last owner’s life over and over. Following this new information, all instances
of Knotty Stalker dolls were moved to their own separate 25 by 25 by 25 centimeter steel
containers within the containment locker, and their classification was upgraded to Euclid. SCP-693 is one of the rare anomalies where
the Fondation actually has quite a good idea as to where it originates. And it was very easy to discover as well. Provided that they aren’t a deception, the
instructions that appear with each instance of SCP-693 are quite explicit about where
they came from. After congratulating the owner on their acquisition
and explaining how the doll works, the instructions close by extolling the Knotty Stalker as yet
“another wonderful product brought to you by The Factory.” For those unaware, The F actory is a place
with a long connection to the Foundation, though the details on that will have to wait
for another file exploration. All you need to know now is that the Factory
produces a huge amount of anomalies, and it appears that SCP-693 is one of them. There are theories that the dolls may have
been produced as an espionage tool, but as for why their primary purpose seems to be
driving their owner to their death? Well that we simply don’t know. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, and be sure to subscribe as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s
classified archives.
