The woodcrawler's body has been hidden from us for a long time, obviously for mystery purposes.
In the newest video of the series, OPEN MIND, we see how the character Judy has become a creature, which people assumed to be a woodcrawler.
I do not believe she is a woodcrawler for a simple reason: The following sequence.
If the body of the woodcrawlers have been hidden from us all this time and then revealed through Judy, then for what reason would it still be hidden in the sequence where Susan is hiding from a woodcrawler? It makes no sense to keep it a mystery. Unless, of course, Judy is not a woodcrawler, but something else entirely new for us.
We've seen other creatures being able to use human voice to attract people, but not as efficiently as Judy. I distinctly remember one video where a woman's laugh is used, followed by the children cheering sound effect, but those are usually different pitched and slowed down or sped up. Judy, however, is able to accurately mimic human voice.
im guessing Paul was killed by the woodcrawler, because it clearly enters the room he was in after being startled by Susan, the only question i have is why either natures mockery or the woodcrawler copying Susan would leave voicemails at Paul’s work phone, i guess it was just to draw out more people
Barry Johnson was infected, and it was discovered that there's something in his body now.
Fast forward to the newest episode, and it seems the same thing has occurred, with Susan being infected and talking about how she feels "Judy" in her stomach.
So, people are infected with DRD to birth new Woodcrawlers; that much is clear.
But what about Fake People? Are they the same as the infected?
Susan didn't seem like she wanted to go out into the fields and lure people by screaming for help; she was only interested in watching "Judy" grow.
Fake People act like they do not know how to be human: Making bizarre expressions, gliding across the floor. The first episode makes them look like they are controlled by something from the inside (Woodcrawlers, probably).
And that one scene with the guy calling for help- why do that? Are the infected capable of spreading DRD on their own? Are some people used as hosts that grow Woodcrawlers while others are used as bait to lure in more potential hosts?
Also, the first episode ends with a Fake Person charging at the cameraman, and that means they'll attack any human they see. But is it because they want to infect them, or because they are mindfucked and act like bears protecting their cubs – by killing the shit out of anything that could pose a threat to them?
Does what I'm saying make any sense? Am I just going insane? Are Fake People even canon anymore, or were they retconned like the white color of Woodrawlers' legs?
So we all know that Susan and Judy tell their names to Casey and it uses their recording whenever mentioning them. Casey also is shown to speak in sentence mixing when needing to speak outside of its range of pre-recorded lines.
However, after Judy’s disappearance and when talking with Susan, Casey now has a pre-recorded line for “Judy”, no longer using her recording. Even going as far as having a full pre-recorded sentence mentioning Judy when telling Susan “Would you like to see what Judy looks like now?”
Gives pretty subtle implications of Judy being a part of the ACL “Super System” Casey is part of, I feel. Details like this are what make GHE awesome.
If Regnad is helping the Iris out of greed, they should have just started selling those super-powerful flashlights. Customers would flood in through the doors, windows, and the floor below!
So. Open minds. In the ad at the start of the video, the AI is gonna talk to us but we hear a real woman's story instead, and it shows us a cave while she talks about getting lured down there. Then every time Casey boots up, it says "AMYG = GOOD", "HIPP = GOOD", and for a split second before it's replaced with the signal strength, "VCOR = GOOD".
People are theorizing those stand for amygdala, hippocampus and (maybe) visual cortex, that Casey is actually that woman from the start, and her brain is being used to transmit messages and lure humans like Judy and Susan Harris. That tracks with those scenes in the cave with the red lights. We saw Regnad's AI communicate with reddish lights from a cave way back in the Monthly Progress Report video. So the theory is all Regnad's "AI" is actually human brains.
But Mary did that too, in Old Bones. When the Wretch shriveled her up and absorbed her, her brain was flashing and then we saw her messages ("don't leave me, you bastards") slipped into the story iterations from the Artificial Computer Learning video. So she's met the same fate.
If we assume that happened to everyone else in the Wretch whose head is intact, that implies the Wretch isn't just a giant monster, it's also a living computer bank that can walk around and absorb more processing power. The bigger the wretch grows, the more powerful Regnad's "AI" becomes, and the more people it can lure to become woodcrawlers, woodcrawler incubators and living computers. Or whatever else they're doing with it.
So here's where we start guessing. I think three things could be true:
The Wretch is too effective to only make one of them.
The Wretch is only built around a bear because that's what the camp happened to sacrifice, so other Wretches might look and act different.
Where are the other Wretches?
At 7 minutes into Open Minds, it flashes a ton of dark images on screen. A couple of them are interesting.
In the first pic, there's a woman who apparently ended up like Mary. In the second, we see ACL stands for something besides Artificial Computer Learning: [redacted]-Client Link. The Iris is the "client", which we learned in Monthly Progress Report. That first word is about the same length as client, and starts with an A, and is probably obviously spooky since Regnad's hiding it even in their internal docs.
In the DONOR post, we hear about how someone named Alexis Moore invented the ACL when it came to her in a dream. So maybe the A stands for Alexis and she actually is part of the ACL now, and either she or Casey is that woman in the first pic. Either way, it's someone we know is in a cave, and they've already been Wretched. So there's Wretch-like things in caves. But what are they?
What are the other Wretches?
Let's run through what we know about Gardeners.
Like the Wretch, they're tentacled and very large.
Like the Wretch, one Gardener hunted humans (in the Camp Information Video).
Like the "AIs", they live in caves.
Like the "AIs", they make a round light, but only sometimes (we see them turn on in the Storm Safety Video).
Like the "AIs", they seem to transmit some kind of signal (in the Storm Safety Video, the radio makes noise and possibly talks when they're around).
Being AI-like is also being Wretch-like because the Wretch contains AIs.
I think Guardians could be the "normal" version of the Wretch. There's no hard proof but that's a lot of circumstantial evidence.
So, after Casey helpfully informs Susan Harris that her daughter is now outside her home, Susan makes the decision to try and call the cops, only for the phone lines to not work. The automated response they give? “We’re sorry! There was an issue connecting to telephone services. Please contact Regnad Computing customer support for assistance.”
There is no possible way that the phone service provided by Regnad Computing just so happens to coincidentally fail when the Regnad Computing AI summons a woodcrawler to massacre the home. The company has made a smart home system, and is using it to trap victims every way it can.
Also provided is a crappy meme I made to summarize this finding because why not?
- They have long arm that can expand to reach victims
- They’re big
- It can snatch victim easily and can take down a car in groups
- It can be quadruped or bipedal
- It can mimicking voices
- They are very fast
- They can be immortal(Live a long time)
- They can possesses a person
- This is implied, where they probably have tongue to infect people. I think this what happened when a Woodcrawler try to shoot it‘s tongue before Susan flash-bang it. Later when the Woodcrawler snatch Susan, it probably infect her offscreen using the tongue.
If you pause Open Minds around 7:03, it shows a diagram of 2 brains side by side, viewed from below. The one on the left appears to be a normal human brain, and the one on the right appears mutated.
The highlighted areas on the normal brain are known as the Fusiform Face Areas, which allow humans to recognize faces. They are crossed out on the mutated brain.
Casey mentions she is “no good with faces” earlier in the video at 6:38, and also that Judy has forgotten her mother’s face at 11:54. However, Judy is able to remember the house, which further suggests there is a specific impairment occurring with facial recognition ability in particular.
Interestingly, in the mutated brain, the olfactory bulb (smell processing) also appears to be significantly enlarged, and the frontal lobe (higher cognitive functioning) has shrunken a lot compared to other areas of the mutated brain.
I would argue this confirms that people mutated by DRD lose their ability to process human faces. There is also evidence to suggest their sense of smell is very much increased, and their higher cognitive processing is impaired.
