The Monument Mythos

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The Monument Mythos is an analog horror web original series featuring a number of Eldritch locations across The United States the viewer is likely to already know as national landmarks.

The series spans multiple universes, each with their own alternate histories. The genres of the videos vary greatly, typically being documentary style, but sometimes veering into found footage.

Available on Mister Manticore’s YouTube channel, and ran from 2020 to 2023. A playlist can be found here.

Tropes used in The Monument Mythos include:

• Adult Fear: The many deaths from the crowd crush in Cairo resulting from people stampeding into an area with no outlet is a completely realistic and horrifying outcome, with no direct supernatural cause.
• Alternate History: Many things in the The United States occur differently than in real life. There are multiple universes, and so multiple alternate histories.
  • A number of presidencies emerge that are different from real life, and the technological development is different as well.
  • The storming of the United States Capitol on January 6 and the Suez Canal being blocked by the Ever Given happen, albeit very differently compared to in real life, with the Ever Given resulting in a mass casualty event in Cairo and January 6 occurring during the presidency of James Dean.
  • Zepplins are called Rockefellers, due to the Rockefeller administration providing Germany with Canyon Crowns to build them with.
• Apocalypse How: By 2020 Alcatraz has reached west Texas. In the projections land is replaced by a black void, meaning it’s probably not great for those who live there.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses: A visual example, if an odd non-human one. In DEANDISASTER The bodies of those who tried to get to a siren in dean disaster pile up around it in a mound, leaving the siren peaking out atop them.
• Badass: President James Dean personally intervenes against the attack instead of staying in the bunker during DEANDISASTER. While he sustains many injuries, he survives.
• Big Applesauce: The Libertylurker resided beneath the Statue of Liberty, and a special tree was moved to the Rockefeller Center.
• Big Head Mode: A non-game example. The Canyonggalan, or Canyon Crown possess huge heads. According to CANYONCROWN they make an area smell like vinegar, which they use to shrink their heads from their large size.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: A few examples:
  • The corner folk are seemingly capable of traveling between and jumping between planes.
  • Alcatraz Island is capable of extending itself. Exposure to radiation speeds it up through reproduction, and by 2020 it extends to west Texas.
  • The Special Tree the Washington Monument was built around. The monument can bend, and has odd capabilities.
  • Special trees in general seem to be connected with alternate worlds, can sing, and some claim they are more manlike than tree, despite appearances.
• Body Horror: Riley Tillon had his internal organs folded.
• Christmas Episode: ROCKEFELLERTREETRAGEDY is a Christmas story, though not a happy one.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Grasserman thinks that George Washington died, and a double was placed as president.
• Cool Ship: The Ever Given ship is not only capable of blocking the Suez Canal, it can also stride across Egypt on its massive crab legs when attached to the Suez Canal Crab.
• Dug Too Deep: John D. Rockefeller resorts to hiring diggers to move a special tree after cutting it down and blasting it with dynamite prove ineffective. It takes them several years to dig out the tree.
• Eldritch Location: A few examples:
  • Many American National Monuments are this.
  • The Cave beneath the Maize factory. The video showing it ends with a warning not to visit as "they have not been fed in years".
• Enforced Technology Levels: In MAIZEMOVIEMAKER it is shown that the American government recalled personal computers early on in their development, citing "a risk to American lives and infrastructure", with the last American personal computer being shut down on television in 1990. In 2000 a more primitive looking "Maize Movie Maker" machine is released.
• Everyone Is Satan in Hell: Those opposing James Dean liken him to Satan, such as with a poster saying "JAMES DEAN IS SATAN" in DEANDEMOCRACY.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The ship Ever Given, also known as the Suez Canal Crab while they are joined. The Egyptian Military attempts to quarantine those who were in close proximity.
• Going for the Big Scoop: Howard Melrose leaks a classified government document, and as a result lives in exile in Egypt.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The United States of America Department of Technology is established after President James Dean makes an impassioned speech to Congress.
• Historical Domain Character: Many make an appearance or are referenced.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty in LIBERTYLURKER.
  • Ronald Reagan in LINCOLNLOOKER
  • James Dean, Richard Nixon, George Wallace, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, and Stanley Kubrick appear or are mentioned in DEAMDEMOCRACY.
  • George Washington, or at least a double, plays a central role in DELAWAREDOUBLE.
  • John D. Rockefeller, Fiorello La Guardia, and John D. Rockefeller Jr are shown or mentioned in ROCKEFELLERTREETRAGEDY.
  • Helen Keller is shown in DEANDISASTER. It all but stated that her deafness was cured, as deafness was eradicated in the United States.
  • Flinders Petrie and the sculptor Philip Reed in GIZAGUARDIAN.
  • Thomas Crawford is the artist who worked on the statue of freedom.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The sculptor Philip Reed has this happen to him in universe by members of the A.D.A. due to the Statue of Freedom "falling" and killing over 150 people. This is despite having been installed by him around 100 years earlier.
• Human Popsicle: Either George Washington or his double is found frozen in the Delaware river on Christmas Eve, as reported on in December 27, 1976 WBOC-TV broadcast.
• The Juggernaut: The ship Ever Given is not slowed by a number of barricades as it approaches Cairo.
• Landmarking the Hidden Base: The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, contains the Libertylurker and effectively a mass grave.
• Living Statue: A few examples:
  • An odd variety. The American government puts someone inside the Lincoln monument, where they can only peer out of his eyes be fed an odd suit. At least once the wrong person is chosen.
  • The statue of Freedom for the Capital was made with a father's body parts that were cut with Giza glass, and is quite capable of movement. Nina, his daughter, is in there too.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Pulls in many Historical Domain Characters.
• Monumental Damage: Played with.
  • Typically inverted, bad things happen to people at monuments.
  • In 2000 the Washington Monument is vandalized with Graffiti.
  • On August 7th, 2003 Mount Rushmore is defaced with graffiti.
  • Played straight with Cairo Tower, which is significantly damaged and eventually toppled when the Suez Canal Crab stumbles into it.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In ALCATRAZATTACK radiation therapy is tried on Alcatraz Island. Instead of having a projected movement of landfall in 1995-2000 and subsequent elimination of San Francisco from 2010 to 2050, it created many clones of the island and accelerates the process, reaching west Texas by 2020.
• Not the Fall That Kills You: Happens off screen in WASHINGTONWORMHOLE. People who enter the Washington Monument are housed to the top of the hollow interior, then dropped.
• Nuke'Em: At the request of the Egyptian government, and with approval from both Congress and the United Nations security council this is how Hillary Rodham Clinton deals with the Ever Given, using an indirect strike of low yield on the Suez Canal to create waves that would dislodge the ship. It successfully dislodges the ship, leading it to get up on its crab like appendages and leave the canal.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: It takes the Americans four years to stop making changes to the plans of the Pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.
• Oppressive States of America: A few examples.
  • Within a week of the siren attacks, President Dean rounds up hundreds of thousands of Americans with anti dean views and sends them to camps near national monuments. They return with new personalities and physical appearances, implying successful education, or potentially replacement with an alternate universe counterpart.
  • President Rockefeller reinstitutes slavery for those who are transformed into Canyon Crowns, and this is at least in part an anti-union measure.
• Our Angels Are Different: The "Air Force One Angel" in AIRFORCEONEANGEL.
• Our Presidents Are Different: James Dean becomes the 37th president of the United States.
  • John D. Rockefeller is revealed to be a two term president in an alternate world at the end of ROCKEFELLER TREE TRAGEDY.
  • In SUEZCANALCRAB, Hillary Rodham Clinton is president on April 6, 2021.
  • The American president has the authority to designate someone a Lincolnlooker without a trial for as long as they are president.
• The Plague: The Infection is repeatedly mentioned in graffiti on monuments.
• President Evil: What a proportionally small number people in universe believe James Dean to be.
• Pyramid Power: In STARRYSPHINX, it is revealed that the Egyptian pyramids are in fact the tops of towers, which extend down Infinitely.
• Richard Nixon the Used Car Salesman: Happens a few times.
  • Richard Nixon himself looses the presidential race to James Dean, who becomes president in his stead.
  • President Rockefeller invokes this directly, being confused why children from the other world think of him as a wealthy industrialist rather than the president.
  • A medical center is named after Walt Disney.
• Rushmore Refacement: Happens to Mount Rushmore at the end of RUSHMOREREVENGE, though it’s more of a distortion of existing heads than an ego-trip.
• Schizo-Tech: The other universe has things like heat rays in March 2021 and medical androids circa the 1970s, but the TWTTR machines of March 2021 look barely more capable then a cell phone from the late 1990s.
• Unobtainium: Giza Glass cuts flesh strangely. When decapitated with it, the head still lives.
• Weaponized Landmark: A few:
  • Confederate Prisoners of War are lead to the unfinished Washington Memorial during the American Civil War.
  • A odd example more about suffering than destruction. The Lincoln Memorial is used as an instrument of torture for one person the President of the United States just doesn’t like.
• Western Terrorists: Opponents of President Dean unleash an earsplitting sonic attack across the United States by commandeering all air raid sirens to go off at very loud volumes.