Marble Hornets

Marble Hornets is a YouTube web series inspired by the Slender Man online mythos. The first video was posted on YouTube on June 20, 2009, following a post that its creator, Troy Wagner, created on the Something Awful forum the previous day.

To date, there are 92 videos on the main channel (87 entries). The series also has 39 accompanying videos from a side-channel, "totheark". These videos, as well as the eponymous "totheark", have been featured multiple times throughout the story. As of June 16, 2019, the principal channel has over 100 million views.

Plot
The series follows Jay Merrick (Troy Wagner), a young man who attempts to find out what happened during the filming of Marble Hornets, an unfinished student film helmed by Jay's friend, Alex Kralie (Joseph DeLage). Three years before, Alex abruptly ended the project after only two months of production. Before cutting contact with Jay, Alex gave him the tapes containing raw footage from the film and told Jay never to talk about it with him again.

By watching the tapes, Jay discovers that the filming seemed to be hampered by a figure known as "The Operator" who constantly stalked Alex no matter what time and place; Whether on set with his actors, walking his dog to the park, or at his own home. Alex‘s physical and mental state became affected by The Operator such as Alex having severe coughing fits, severe paranoia to the point of affecting his personality making him more stressful, irritable, and aggressive towards his cast and crew members, and buying tons of tapes to film himself in order to catch footage of The Operator on camera. Along with this, Jay also finds that the tapes have extremely bad audio and visual problems such as audio distortion, visual distortion, static, inaudible audio at times, missing footage, and no audio. Most of these are assumed to be The Operator‘s doing. Jay does speculate that some of these problems might be Alex’s doing instead. The Operator soon begins invading Jay's personal life, inducing him to set up cameras in his apartment. Posting the tapes to YouTube as "Entries" also nets Jay cryptic and threatening responses from a user known as "Totheark".

Jay's investigation leads him to meet with one of the film's cast members, Tim Wright (Tim Sutton), and sends him to the abandoned house of another cast member, Brian Thomas (Brian Haight) where Jay finds the house trashed and finds several important things there such as a bullet casing, a pill bottle, a bunch of Alex’s drawings, a water bottle in a closet door along with blanket, and a trail of blood upstairs that leads to the bathroom where Jay finds dry blood in them sink, and that the lights don’t work. Throughout his visit, Jay hears lots of strange noises and briefly has a severe coughing fit. Jay decides to take the stuff he found. Totheark then responds to Jay with a video revealing they were the ones making the strange noises and were watching Jay the whole time. Jay then uploads footage of he, Alex, and Tim doing a scene together while The Operator was standing outside watching them through the window. Jay then notes that he is disturbed by the footage since he has no memory of it ever happening. Jay then decides to go back to Brian‘s house in case he missed something important, where he has his first encounter with a masked figure who tackles Jay before having a seizure and then Jay waking up the next day with the knife he brought with him gone.

Jay then uploads the next entry revealing that like Alex, he himself had been filming himself for a while but found nothing important and recorded it to a hard drive until he found footage of the masked figure watching him sleeping before Jay disappears for 2 hours. Totheark then responds to Jay with a video showing where Jay was during those past 2 hours. Jay then uploads the next entry where he analyzes all of the stuff he found during his first visit at Brian’s house. He finds that the pill bottle is empty and has had its label torn off even though he didn’t find it like that. He also finds that bullet casing he had is missing. Jay suspects that Totheark is behind this. Jay then looks through Alex’s drawings and finds a message telling him to go to a tower. Jay visits a red tower to find a tape that shows Alex leaving his cameraman Seth Wilson (Seth McCay) in an abandoned building when confronted with The Operator, with Alex subsequently determining that all of the cast and crew of Marble Hornets are "gone". Eventually, threats of stalking from Totheark causes Jay to flee his apartment, which is subsequently burned down. Jay receives video in the mail of Alex and his girlfriend, Amy Walters (Bethann Williams), being attacked by The Operator. As a result, Jay sets out to find Alex.

Characters

 * Troy Wagner as Jay Merrick: The person behind the "EverymanHYBRID" channel and the primary protagonist of the series until his death in Entry #80. A friend of Alex back in college, the series begins with Jay uploading the entries in an attempt to discover exactly what happened during the filming of Marble Hornets. He is shot and mortally wounded by Alex in Entry #80, after which The Operator takes him away.
 * Tim Sutton as Timothy Wright (AKA The Masked Man): A former actor from the Marble Hornets student film, he is the primary protagonist of season 3 of the series, first in collaboration with Jay and then as leader of the "Marble Hornets" channel following Jay's death in Entry #80 until the series' conclusion in Entry #87. He makes several appearances in the Entries and on the Totheark channel wearing a mask; he was unveiled as the masked man in Entry #35. His fate at the end of the series is unknown due to the ambiguous nature of the ending, although he is one of two human characters (along with Jessica) that may have survived the events of the series.
 * Joseph DeLage as Alex Kralie: The director of the original Marble Hornets student film project and one of the series' primary antagonists. Alex used to attend the same school as Jay, but transferred to a different one. A large portion of Season 1 consists of tapes he filmed for personal use and for his uncompleted student film Marble Hornets. He is stabbed and killed by Tim in Entry #86.
 * Brian Haight as Brian Thomas (AKA The Hooded Man): Brian was the lead actor in Alex Kralie's project and serves as the series' second antagonist. He appears throughout most of the Entries and on the Totheark channel as a hooded figure who works against Alex. He falls to his death during a confrontation with Tim in Entry #83.
 * Mary Kathleen Bishop as Sarah Reid: An actress from Marble Hornets. She appears in front of the camera only once. Alex confirms that he has killed her in Entry #86.
 * Seth McCay as Seth Wilson: The cameraman for Alex's film, Marble Hornets. Alex leads him to The Operator at the abandoned building in Entry #22. Alex confirms that he has killed him in Entry #86. He is likely associated with totheark, in part due to the fact that he owned several videos and sound recordings that Jay (and Alex) were not in possession of, and also being that he was the cameraman and co-editor of Alex's short film.
 * Bethann Williams as Amy Walters: Alex's girlfriend. Alex confirms that he has killed her in Entry #86.
 * Jessica May as Jessica Locke: A woman who Jay meets in the second season of the series. She is somehow connected to Jay as she has an adjoining room with him in the hotel, and consequently is somehow connected to Alex and The Operator. It is later revealed that she is the friend and roommate of Amy, hence her involvement. Alex believes her to be dead prior to his own death in Entry #86, but she is revealed to still be alive in Entry #87. Jessica is the main character of the Marble Hornets comic sequel, where she now works as a delivery driver in Rosswood Park while still haunted by her experiences with the Operator. She is one of only two human characters (along with Tim) that survived the events of the series.
 * Totheark: An anonymous figure who makes cryptic video responses to the Entries throughout the series. Their identity is never revealed throughout the series and it is entirely possible that it could be a group of people, as opposed to an individual. However, the most likely identity of Totheark is Brian, as the channel's posts are antagonistic towards Alex, a position which Brian, in his guise as the hooded figure, also maintains throughout the series, in addition to which the Totheark channel ceased to release video responses following Brian's death in Entry #83. Other potential candidates for the identity of Totheark are Seth and Tim (in his masked state).
 * The Operator: An entity of unknown origin who begins appearing to Alex during the shooting of Marble Hornets, and one of the series' primary antagonists. When Jay personally investigates Alex's disappearance, he starts to encounter The Operator as well. It is later revealed that Tim was the first person associated with Marble Hornets to have come into contact with The Operator, and thus the Operator's contact with other characters may have occurred via him. The Operator displays the ability to teleport or otherwise move in a logically inconsistent manner, to move people in a similar way, and inflict permanent amnesiac states in people. While the Operator rarely physically threatens the cast at any point, its presence is shown to have a harmful effect on the human body and psyche, causing the various hallucinations and fugue states of the characters. Repeated exposure to the Operator is associated with a hard, painful coughing sickness. There is no indication as to the intent or goals of the Operator.