WHEN A 4CHANNER WENT MISSING : CURIOUS CASE OF ALEX FROM TENNESSEE

 

The mystery of Alex from Tennessee serves as one of the prime examples of unexplainable occurings on the dark side of the web. Read ahead to know more about what exactly happened with this 4chan user.

It all begins on April 24th 2013, when an anonymous 4chan user, under the username "Anon2q8e" uploaded a challenge post to the website, in which he asked the website users to visit a certain location to receive some kind of 'prize'. The user also attached an image with this post, in which the accurate co-ordinates of the location were mentioned too.

THE ORIGINAL POST MADE BY
 THE ANONYMOUS USER

The co-ordinates led to a bunch of abandoned warehouses in a town named Elizabethon. This anonymous user and his post were then subjected to ridicule by the entirety of the website because everyone was of the belief that this was yet again one of those online internet scammers and all of this stuff was nothing more than fake.

But all this was not stopping the unknown user from doing what he was doing; they kept spamming more and more posts, trying their best to insist people to accept his challenge.

But sooner or later, their posts started to take an eerie turn and now the page was upto uploading creepy stuff like images of decomposed hands and other human remains. 

Along with these images, the user was constantly referring to an alleged "was friend", who was supposedly the human remains now. Next, was yet another attempt to lure people into his challenge. The next three posts from Anon2q8e were the end of his 4chan journey. All three images followed a very cryptic theme. The first image was of a black plastic bag, which the user claimed to be containing the "prize". The second image was of a pitch dark underground cellar and the very final image was a handwritten note which reads, "Please come - April 24th 2013".

THE LAST THREE POSTS FROM ANON2Q8E

Now's where the title character of this incident gets involved in this madness. On 29th April 2013, i.e exactly 5 days after the initial challenge post was made, a 4chan user named Alex, finally decides to check out the location in Elizabethon, which had been the hot topic of discussion across the website since the last 5 days. 

Alex was from Tennessee and this was the same state where Elizabethon town is located and hence he drives up to the place and starts documenting his findings on 4chan, one by one. Now time to go through what did Alex post on his account.

First comes the image of these green bottles, with the caption "Dark as f*ck, looks like he was growing something".

                                     

On further exploration, Alex finally finds the plastic bag, whose image went viral on 4chan few days ago and allegedly contained the so called "prize" in it. He gathered up all his courage and opened the bag, only to land findings which were nothing less than terrifying. Inside the bag, was a small creature wrapped up like an Egpytian mummy, and alongside it was a folded paper plate on which a message was written. It reads, "Open prize, hide eyes."

Alex wasn't really sure about what the creature was and hence he uploaded an image with the caption, "Mummified bat or rat and plate"

Next up, he investigates the paper plate, and on opening it, he found a hard drive, and on the inside of the plate, were more handwritten words. They read, "Plates a date. A very important mate. You shouldn't have come here. I lied.

As Alex ventured deeper into the warehouses, his chain of seemingly peculiar, spooky and weird findings just kept on getting elongated. Now, he found some drug containers and a rusty mailbox, which according to Alex,
contained animal body parts. He uploaded the images of both of the findings in his next post and captioned it as follows : "Holy sh*t, above my head is a f*ckload of old pills. Valium and others. Older than me some of them. Mailbox.. more dead animal bits inside."

At this point, Alex heard the footsteps of somebody outside, and he sensed the arrival of the mysterious person at the scene, who was the mastermind behind all this. He enters a deep state of fear and anxiety and now was worried about saving his own life. He then started to search for ways to somehow escape the warehouses without falling in anyone's notice and that's the last we ever heard of him. 

During this time period, he wrote three 4chan posts and these were the last 3 posts ever done on his 4chan account. They read :

"I hear someone outside driving really slow over the gravel. I think it's time for my date. I am going to see if there is a second door. Dark as sh*t. Phone flashlight is shit. What the f*ck is this?"

"Ok no other doors, but a crawl space and a window thing. Gonna exit that way, I hear the f*cker."

"Window thing isn't a window. It's some other vent sh*t. Turning around and leaving through sh*t wood door. Jesus!"

And with these last words on his 4chan account, Alex suddenly disappears from the world and was never heard from ever again.

A lot of theories were raised by internet users, of which two were the most popular ones. Some believed that Alex, was tortured, killed to death by the anonymous 4chan user Anon8q2e. But the others claimed that Anon8q2e was Alex himself and he was doing all this just to mess around with the people. This might be true, considering the fact that he was typing stuff on 4chan while escaping, which is quite not possible for any human stuck in such a situation. This is a valid point to be pondered upon for sure, but the lack of concrete evidence to support either of the theories, makes this an unexplained internet mystery.

It's year 2023 and more than 10 years have passed since this incident took place, and with time the mystery just faded away, leaving behind nothing but just unanswered questions and thoughts in the minds of netizens. "Where is Alex now?", "Who was Anon8q2e?", "Was it real or just an ARG?" are the FAQs. And until either of the 2 users speak up again, all these questions would probably remain unanswered forever.

And with that, I, Jayesh, would like to sign off. Really grateful to all of you for reading it till here. Meet you soon with more dark web tales and spooky stuff from across the internet. Till then cheers, take care and have a good day! :).