by stormbreath
crewtime 07/04/25 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
MR BLEAK (always written in that manner, never Mr Bleak) is not a true crime case anymore. MR BLEAK is no longer a collection of witness testimonies and physical evidence, neatly cataloged and controlled. (As much as that can even be said to have happened in this case.) MR BLEAK is not even really a cohesive narrative any more.
MR BLEAK is a legend. MR BLEAK has entered our horror mythologies, in the same way that the Zodiac Killer and the Night Stalker and the Shape and Dracula have. He is remixed, played upon, discussed and rumored. There are many stories and tales about him — and nearly all of them are completely false.
At the core of it, it is likely that there was an original MR BLEAK. Early on, before all the false leads and fakers started to come in, the narrative clearly points to a very real, very present paranormal threat. But it isn't long before the cases start conflicting, details don't line up right, and people are proven liars. Imitating his victims. Despicable.
This is a little outside my regular wheelhouse, but I think it is a good time for a special episode. I'm going to try and put together a timeline and overview of the case, a summation of all of the conclusive evidence in the matter. The things that are fully known, and not just believed. That means some very popular (and I will agree, very likely) theories won't be included — like the Ritcharsin as the true second incident. I have to draw a line somewhere.
But I will have a Part Two this time, with an overview of the legends on this case. Here, I'll get into the MR BLEAK apocrypha, which might be more than the original case! And we can see how this case has evolved and distorted beyond the canonical eight cases.
I think it is important to keep this in mind throughout. Watch how this case gets distorted, being as famous as it is. And then consider how a less well known case, with even poorer grasp on the details might get twisted.
Maybe it's happened to all my cases.
PART ONE: THE CANON
I think the best way to begin is to go over MR BLEAK's modus operandi.
In the canonical eight cases, MR BLEAK does not appear to have any particular preference for victim. He attacks men and women of several races, ages, and social classes. The most common factor is that most tend to already be alone or isolated when they first encounter him. Two victims are within earshot of others, while the eighth and final victim was proximal to other individuals but not paying attention to them.
All victims were in the Pacific Northwest area, within about a three hours drive of Portland. Several of the canonical eight are in Portland city limits, while the furthest away is in Seattle. There is a mix of urban and rural environments during this stage.
Incidents would begin with MR BLEAK making casual social contact with the victim early in the day. The form of this would frequently vary, but all victims recall seeing MR BLEAK before he would attack them. This would [! — always be within twenty-four hours —] of meeting. Interestingly, he victims would not always be alone during this time, and MR BLEAK would often interact with companions.
Commissioned sketch of MR BLEAK based on canonical eight cases.
This is generally viewed as a sort of taunt by MR BLEAK, a sort of warning that he was coming to get the victim. The first victim was skipped in this regard, but MR BLEAK seemed to relish in it during the second and on all future attempts, seeming to grow more emboldened during repeat visits.
No later than two sunrises after initial contact, a victim would be displaced into a alternate reality closely resembling our own, but where the light was duller, the colors greyer, and often much more fog. Electronics, automobiles, and any sort of complex mechanics would rarely work corectly, if they even powered on. There would never be anyone else in these realities. MR BLEAK would often appear, and taunt the victims. Rarely, MR BLEAK would physically attack the victims.
However, whenever victims were returned to baseline reality, they came back in good physical condition and in good health. Despite whatever MR BLEAK had done — in either the other dimension or this one — there would never be any evidence left behind. MR BLEAK could never be found based on witness testimony.
The first case took place in 19XX, when BL …
second
On the evening of Blankember XXtth 19XX, MR BLEAK first appeared before Helly Sims on the Pacific Crest Trail. Helly was an experienced backpacker, with this being her second thru-hiker of the Pacific Crest Trail, after three successful hikes of the Appalachian Trail. Helly stumbled upon him at [campground].
MR BLEAK made casual conversation with Helly throughout the night. MR BLEAK explained that he was likely to get go faster than her but end up stopping for a few nights to sketch later down the line, so she might catch up to him even if he got ahead of her again. The manner in which he brought this up to Helly seemed defensive. She dismissed it as him being courteous, not wishing to scare her, as he showed her the sketch book and gave her one.
fourth
fifth
sixth
seventh
eighth
After the [eighth] case, the national was gripped with incredible fears of MR BLEAK. It is generally accepted that the publicity at this stage led to an incredible number of
PART TWO: THE APOCRYPHA
We have discussed the canonical eight cases, but they are nothing compared to the overwhelming number of disputed cases that followed. These form a sort of apocrypha to the MR BLEAK story. Many believe that at least some of these were real, but many of them are provably false. They couldn't have happened, and those that came forward with them recanted and said they had been lying.
- That keeps me up at night. How many victims did he have that were afraid to come forward, because they knew they'd be treated like lunatics? How many people does he taunt, just for a minute or two?
When he sees you around the corner, and sends you into that other place?
PART THREE: THE REVELATION
I have spent a long time researching this post. [It is my largest to date by far.] There is both a tremendous amount of evidence, as well as a tremendous amount of falsehood. But there is a reason that I decided to do this much research. I had to.
I think that MR BLEAK is real.
And I think that MR BLEAK is still out there.
I think that MR BLEAK is a white American man, currently in his late sixties or early seventies. He lives in the Portland metropolitan area, but likely not Portland itself. It might be somewhere in the states of Washington or Oregon. I think that Salem, Oregon might be a likely location, or a suburb of there.
But not quite. I think that MR BLEAK might live in another world. I think that MR BLEAK might live in a world just like ourselves, where different people live just like us. Our worlds are similar enough he can blend in here with ease, but he doesn't live here. This is his hunting ground, not his home.
But I don't just think that. There's another element to the case. One that makes this story fit on Parawatch even more. One that makes this the *LEGEND* of MR BLEAK — the one that will keep you up all night.
I think that everything in the canonical eight cases is true. I think that of the Apocrypha, perhaps [], [] and [] are true.
But I think that I have found the ninth case that should be considered caninical. I think I have found the case that explains all the other cases: the missing piece that will put everything into perspective.
It is the story of Jonny Hank Augusto, and if all of his memories are accurate, took place on Halloween, 19XX. This is about eighteen months after the last canonical incident, representing a normal, if a little short, cooling off period from his last incident. Some of you may have recognized my lack of mention of Jonny previously. His is a very well known case — but I had to save it for here.
The thing about Jonny's case is that he didn't exactly remember it on the morning of November 1st. Jonny remembered it years later when a recurring nightmare began, in which he began to get more and more of a picture of what happened. Desperate to figure out the story, he underwent hypotherapy to restore his memory of the event. His story has remained relatively consist under hypnosis, and goes as follows:
Jonny Hank Augusto was working as the overnight manager and front desk of the Black Duck Motel in Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast. Being Halloween night, he had taken care to decorate with Halloween ornaments, and had a bowl of candy ready for trick or treators. MR BLEAK had checked in at the front desk at the start of the day, around 6am, having called ahead specifically, explaining that a redeye flight and lack of hotel in Portland had meant he'd arrive rather early. Jonny was happy to oblige, and checked MR BLEAK in.
Shotly after Jonny Hank's shift started and just before midnight of Halloween, MR BLEAK came to the front desk. He explained that he was having trouble with the television in his room, and asked if Jonny could come take a look at it. Jonny went into the room, and found that the television was displaying a strange feed of a reflection of the room, except without anyone inside. MR BLEAK rammed Jonny in. The alternate world did not share the reflection.
Johnny quickly exited MR BLEAK's room and returned to the lobby, only to discover the lights no longer worked and no one was to be seen in the hotel or nearby, despite proximity to local bars. MR BLEAK exited the hotel after with a baseball bat and chased Jonny out to the beach, where he caught up with him and brutally attacked him. MR BLEAK then dragged Johnny into the water, and sat down next to him.
MR BLEAK rambled to Jonny for a bit like this, but generally he waited there in silence for a few hours, sitting on the beach. [ Jonny could not make full sense of the conversation, unable to make proper connections in the moment. Jonny remembers this related somehow to the MR BLEAK case that had made headlines, but had been somehow unable to connect the dots in the moment. ] He does, however, remember the final thing that MR BLEAK said to him.
"If you can't remember something, and you can't feel that it happened to you, and you don't even know it happened to you, do you think it really even matters if it happened at all?"
Johnny Hank Augusto thought it did, but he didn't think his captor did, and he lied in the hopes of mercy.
"No. I don't think it did."
"Yeah. Me neither. Good for you to think that. Night, kid."
Jonny looked up just in time to see MR BLEAK point a handgun at him, and pull the trigger. The flash of light blinded hin.
The next thing Jonny knew, he was slumped in the front desk at the Black Duck hotel, just after 1 AM. He had no memory of almost anythig after his shift started — having forgotten even MR BLEAK's complaint about the television. He assumed himself to be tired from working the night shift, brewed a cup of coffee, and continue with his job. MR BLEAK checked out the next morning like nothing had happened.
Almost immediately after he left, Johnny put the strange visitor together with MR BLEAK. He wasn't able to begin remembering his encounter for years, but it still effected him subconsciously, and he left the night shift behind in the new year, after only a few months on the job.
Jonny thought himself just a lucky man for the next five years after his encounter with MR BLEAK, thinking that he just narrowly avoided the wrath of MR BLEAK. However, after a series of recurring nightmares began to occur on the exact five year anniversary, Jonny began to remember. He found himself back on the beach, hearing new rambling lectures from MR BLEAK. Sponsored psychotherapy [ten or fifteen] years later gave the clearest picture of Jonny's case, and it is one of the popular cases alongside the canonical cases, even though there is no proof at all of Jonny's story — that even the first instance could have been the dream, or that his memory is blurred or altered.
Jonny Hank Augusto's case was by no means the first case to emerge as a buried memory or something similar. Many of these initial cases, ones that preceded him in coming forward, eventually recanted their statement. They are some of the most lurid and salacious. Mr. Augusto's story is not that. He has never changed his story, or taken it back. And for MR BLEAK stories, it is tame and restrained.
I believe it. I think that MR BLEAK's question is the key to all this. Already, victims would be unable to feel or see any evidence of their experiences, leaving them to doubt their experiences. What if MR BLEAK had taken it a step further?
When MR BLEAK first began his work, in the earliest of the canonical eight, he doesn't injure victims. It isn't until the fourth victim that he actually attempts to harm them. While previous victims had been injured — most notably Helly Sims — during his previous attempts, it isn't until he actually inflicted intentional harm on a victim.
But what preceded this case? The Helly Sims case, where MR BLEAK is at his weakest. One of the only moments that seems to challenge the image of him as the LEGEND. Helly Sims fights back against MR BLEAK and wins, [injuring him] and escaping. They eventually make it back to civilization, but both are horribly exhausted and weakened by the experience. This is the only time MR BLEAK seems to ever suffer a lasting injury.
I think that MR BLEAK was genuinely caught off-guard by Helly. She stabbed him and got away. The story of how she ran through the woods, chased by MR BLEAK for a week? I'm not sure that's actually what happened. I think MR BLEAK only let her live because he couldn't find his way back to civilization either. He wasn't chasing her. He was following her. Because he'd have died of exposure without her.
MR BLEAK knew, after the Helly Sims incident, that he couldn't keep doing this forever. That some of his victims — not all of them by any means, but some — would be able to fight back. So he started cheating. He learned how to reset his own body, and then he learned how to reset his victim's bodies — evidently, the skills were transferable enough.
And after a while, after his cases started to get more attention and prominence, as he started to get bolder and push the lines of believability, he learned how to reset their minds as well. A logical extension of what he was already doing. It is telling to me how Jonny Hank Augusto knew about MR BLEAK, but there was a mental block preventing him from connecting that figure to the guest in his hotel.
