Non-Exist-ENT
Big things are happening in Buckhorn, South Dakota! Part Nine saw major breaks in the Buckhorn case concerning the murder of Ruth Davenport--the woman who was discovered dead in her apartment beheaded with her body missing and the corpse of a beheaded Major Garland Briggs (whose head is still missing) positioned in bed just below her severed head. The prime suspect, Bill Hastings, is a local school principal whose fingerprints were found all over the crime scene, but who maintains his innocence, claiming (back in Part Two) that a bizarre dream about the Davenport murder is his only connection to the case. Yes, he and Davenport were having an affair, he admits, but he loved her and is not guilty of her murder. Hastings and Davenport were up to more than dancing in the sheets, however. As Detective Mackley reveals in Part Nine (27:26), "It turns out that William Hastings along with the help of Ruth [Davenport] the librarian was researching and publishing some strange little blog about some alternate dimension." The plot thickens when Agent Rosenfield reveals the bizarre contents of Hastings' recent posts: "About one week ago, Hastings ended his blog entry with this cryptic sentence: 'Today we finally entered what we call 'the zone' and we met the Major.'" (28:00) And when Special Agent Preston interviews Hastings in person (40:45), we get to hear it straight from the horse's mouth: Preston: "Mr. Hastings, are you the author of an online journal or blog entitled The Search for the Zone?" Hastings: "Uh huh, yes." Preston: "What sort of things to you write about?" Hastings: "Different things." Preston: "Approximately two weeks ago, did you write an entry about what you described as an alternate reality?" Hastings: "A different dimension. Yes! But it's real! It's all real!" When Preston confronts him with his claim about "meeting the Major," Hastings tells a fascinating story. Ruth Davenport, a librarian, is "very good at uncovering hidden records and she had indications that if we went to a certain place at a certain time we would enter the dimension and make contact with a certain person. And so we went there...and the major was hiding there, or "hibernating" as he said, and other people were maybe going to find him and he wanted to go to a different place and so he asked us to get him numbers--important numbers--coordinates. And we found them in the place he told us go, a secure military database. Ruth wrote them on her hand so that she wouldn't forget." (41:45) (Looks like I might have been on to something in "Flipping Terrifying: Does Davenport Mirror Palmer?".) There's more to the story, which I'll cover in detail in the episode guide, but the big news for this post is that Bill Hastings wasn't just whistling dixie when he said "It's real! It's all real." As it turns out, his website, The Search for the Zone, is indeed live online at http://www.thesearchforthezone.com. Suffice it to say that web design isn't exactly his forte, but it's still a terrific little easter egg with a significant collection of things to peruse and read. How much of it will be plot-relevant is anybody's guess, but what we have here seems to be a sanctioned supplement to the series, and so perhaps information within these documents will end up functioning in a way similar to The Secret History of Twin Peaks as a trove of inputs that provide perspective on various characters, plot-lines, and mythology arcs that don't receive sustained treatment in the series itself. Here are some things to check out while you're nosing around on the site: 1. "My older journal entires"--After a paragraph on how "forces from deep dimensional space" might have "splintered time" or effected "the assassination of President Kennedy" in some way, Hastings offers us an opportunity to "Click here to read my older journal entries." When we do, however, it takes us to an "Http Error" message which then kicks us over to an 11:00 minute static-filled video (mostly a black screen with flickering lights and some fuzz) with music from the third season of Twin Peaks--Badalamenti's "Falling," Chromatics' "Shadow," "I'm a Good Man Old Skool Hip-Hop Mix," "I Love How You Love Me," NIN's "She's Gone Away," and a few others. It's really just viral marketing in the end, but an intriguing form of it, at least. 2. Reading Links--These go surprisingly deep and look and feel a lot like some of the real conspiracy sites out there that offer a pastiche of half-baked theories and genuine insight into various scientific and historical phenomena. The aesthetics are definitely a time-warp. 3. .Wav Files of Electrical Interference--Looks like good ol' Wild Bill Hastings has been tracking the woodsmen around and making recordings of their signature sounds. 4. A Chance to Sign Up for The Search for the Zone Mailing List...which is actually, disappointingly, just a ploy by Rhino to get email addresses to shill the Twin Peaks soundtrack. They have to pay the rent, I guess, but I'd rather get stuff in my inbox under subject headings like "The Science of Parallel Universes" and "The Horizon Project" on a regular basis than just opportunities to buy music. Not that I won't buy the music. I'll probably buy the music. Ok. I'm buying it. But I still want the crazy articles! 5. Invisible Coordinates Leading to the Convenience Store--Located just underneath Bill Hastings' incredibly prestigious list of web accolades is a set of coordinates that remain hidden until you scroll over them. Once they appear, you may click on them to be taken to mysterious video of the convenience store where the woodsmen hang out.
5 Comments
Phil Welch
7/10/2017 04:05:49 pm
No mention of the coordinates at the bottom of the page, nor the Convenience Store video that plays when clicking on the coordinates?
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Thanks again, Phil! Your comment prompted me to realize that I had not actually succeeded in publishing the final version of the post, but only the penultimate draft. Thanks to your comment, the omission you pointed out as well as a number of other minor changes that should have been reflected in the original posting now appear as they should have. Much gratitude!
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Phil
7/11/2017 12:42:49 pm
Glad I made the comment! Can't wait to read the revised final draft!
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Justin
7/11/2017 12:35:05 pm
Second tree on the left on the bottom of page clicks through for an ad for the soundtrack
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Mr. RoqueMonitoring the situation from a well-designed chair somewhere in Grand Rapids, MI Archives
August 2021
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