Web Video / kepther e

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kepther e is a Found Footage Digital Horror series active between April 2017 and January 2020, originally released on YouTube on the "kepther e" channel.

The series consists of 114 videos, largely comprised of assorted footage from different sources, most with default file names, with the videos ranging wildly in length between a few seconds to just over a half hour long. At an initial glance, the footage appears to consist of random B-roll of scenery taken around an unnamed suburb, but slowly and steadily, the catalogue begins to portray more disturbing material: dead animals, creepy candid shots of women, and flashes of graphic, bloody violence, all collectively revealing a secret "project" hidden beneath an unsuspecting town, claiming countless innocent people within it.

On January 2020, the channel was abruptly terminated without explanation, likely due to the series' graphic depictions of violence and nudity. The series can be found through third-party YouTube reuploads and on the Internet Archive, arranged by order of release date.

This series provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Past: The series was released between 2017-2020, and the only marked date in the series is of Nest home security cameras dated to May 2016.
• Ambiguous Ending: The penultimate video, titled "end", depicts what appears to be Matt's car being driven off and abandoned in a road at night, seemingly by Kevin after disposing of Matt's body, while the actual final upload, "old house", is simply silent footage of what appears to be the inside of the three-story house, but even more aged, dusty, and filled with debris. This implies a Distant Finale of sorts where the house has been utterly abandoned, but there's no hint as to who is filming the video, why, and many of the loose ends regarding Alex, Kevin, and their project are unanswered. On a metatextual note, the entire channel being wiped shortly after these uploads leaves it inconclusive if there was meant to be more in the story before it was forcibly halted, or if it had reached its intended conclusion as implied by the video titles.
• Ambiguously Evil: Despite the series beginning in portraying Alex as a voyeuristic creep and an accomplice to a bizarre series of ritual torture and murders, it becomes increasingly clear that he's being manipulated over the matter. A discussion among other accomplices elaborate that Alex appears to be autistic or at least not having fully sound judgement, with Kevin preying on this to manipulate him to do his bidding. Upon a reevaluation of the series with this knowledge in mind, one can spot that none of Alex's acts go worse than stalking potential victims (as far as we can tell, he's never involved in any of the torture or murders himself), and in fact, he appears to deliberately leave behind a tape for Eloine and Matt to find, seemingly to warn them, raising doubt over exactly how malicious he is in his participation. He's later described as being "interested" in Eloine, but it's unknown whether this was merely an innocent fondness, or something more malevolent like with Kevin.
• Anachronic Order: The videos aren't uploaded in a chronological order, and such an order has to be pieced together through file names and in-video descriptions of events (including a recurring raccoon carcass in the three-story house whose stages of decomposition can act as a marker in the timeline), which isn't helped by there being multiple POV characters. Fortunately, the narrative formed by the videos order by release date is fairly comprehensible, setting up the dramatic stakes and forming an arc of their own when viewed consecutively.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Based on the terrifyingly sparse conditions the bagged man in the three-story house is left in, along with a few hints in videos like "pills" (from the title to the contents of said video where Kevin delivers various instructions, presumably to the man), it's strongly implied that he's been drugged out of his mind in order to make him a passive, compliant slave for the "project".
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • A pink ribbon tied around a tree in the woods is spotted a few times in early videos by both Alex and spotted by the couple, identifying them as living in the same town, and also identifies a location where in "clap 1", the naked captive disposes of a dead body.
  • The camping couple discovers an unmarked mini-DV tape at their site, which "DV100115" reveals belonged to Alex. Its contents remain unknown, but it becomes the subject of a later video, also titled "DV100115". It initially appears to be footage of Alex and the "DSCF" accomplice out camping, but the latter angrily discovers that someone in the project lost a tape and demands to know where it is before Kevin finds out. This strongly suggests that Alex, for whatever reason, had willingly planted the tape to be discovered and tried to cover his tracks.
• Disposing of a Body: "clap 1" and "clap 2" sees footage of the naked captive, seemingly ordered by Kevin as part of the project, burying a body bag in the woods (containing a purple sweatshirt seen on a stalked woman earlier in the series), followed by an extensive washing of blood off the concrete floors within the three-story house. This doesn't work in the long run, as Alex soon captures footage of what appears to be police uncovering the bodies, which happens to be a point where Kevin appears to take more dramatic actions in covering up his and his "project's" tracks.
• Dramatic Irony: One of the later videos is suggested to be Alex in a vehicle, where as he pulls out from a parking lot, he's abruptly stopped by Eloine, who rushes up to the window to seemingly greet him, only for her to suddenly realize she's got the wrong person and leaves. Not only did Eloine accidentally come face-to-face with her stalker without realizing it, later footage in the series establishes that he appears to be within the car of Matt, her boyfriend (presumably, she saw the car, correctly assumed it was his, but upon seeing someone else behind the wheel, she assumed she made a mistake without double-checking). Even more haunting, the entire reason Alex is in this car is that Matt — after arriving to the three-story house — was murdered, and Alex is in the process of ditching the vehicle to dispose of evidence.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: In their first videos, as the couple pass by the old three-story house, questioning who owns it and if anyone has lived in it, Eloine's dog can be seen pointedly staring off into the woods, very likely detecting something fishy going on before any of the humans do.
• Found Footage: The series is assembled from multiple sources of found footage from different characters of different sources (a stalker creeping on women in the suburbs, a couple recording a vlog during a camping trip out in the woods, etc.) who end up gradually crossing over with one another, leading to chaos. One of the first major events in the series of this crossover is even marked by Eloine discovering a lost mini-DV tape at their campsite.
• Gut Punch: "prey", the eighth video. The first few videos are fairly uneventful aside from only minor glimpses of graphic finds and odd behavior from the unseen cameraperson (later named Alex) candidly recording people from a distance. However, "prey" depicts him recording from the outside of a woman's house at night — presumably one of the women he'd previously been following at a mall — getting up close to her window and recording her getting into bed without noticing him, confirming him as being creepy stalker at the least.
• He Knows Too Much: The cameraperson behind the "DSCF" videos mentions having gotten into an altercation with Kevin over her handling of their "project", specifically of saying too much about it, especially during an active police investigation where their murder victims' bodies have been discovered. Given how chronologically, the "DSCF" videos end after she gets involved in disposing the bagged captive, followed by darkness and silence, there's a good chance that she was killed for her failure.
• Karma Houdini: It appears that by the end of the series, Kevin is the only member of the project still alive, having successfully killed his accomplices (including Alex and the "DSCF" girl), countless victims (including the bagged captive, "company", and Matt) and disappeared into the night.
• Leave the Camera Running: The series only infrequently uses editing to cut between shots in videos, and a good chunk of videos appear to be completely unedited long shots focusing on innocuous things like outdoor scenery, especially those taken by Alex (the cameraperson behind videos initially marked with "DV"). One of the strange and most unsettling quirks throughout the series is that the matter of patient, quiet observation is consistent regardless of whatever it's filming, from trees to people sleeping in their beds to naked torture victims, to what is seemingly a just-offscreen execution, making the series an eerie showcase of juxtaposition and Mood Whiplash. The final "IMG" video — accidentally recording long after its cameraperson, Matt, is killed upon entering the three-story — is left in silence for ten minutes after his body is dragged away, before the camera is discovered and picked up, presumably by his killer.
• Locked Out of the Loop: One of Alex's friends appears aware of Alex's involvement with a "project" led by someone named Kevin, but the worst he seems to know about it is that they are keeping and filming a dead raccoon, being otherwise entirely in the dark about the permanently naked, blackbagged prisoner held captive in their base, nor all the terrible murders Kevin is committing, though despite this, it's still bad enough that he wants nothing further to do with Kevin and tells Alex to stay away. Him being unaware of what's going on means that, when Matt discovers Alex's "lost" tape and demands an explanation from him, he can only surmise that Alex himself is harmless and informs Matt where to find him, inadvertently leading Matt to the three-story house, where upon entering expecting to find Alex, he's suddenly killed by Kevin.
• Madwoman in the Attic: Throughout several videos within the three-story house, Alex passes by a completely naked, emaciated man with a bag covering his head, presumably as a captive, trapped in an almost totally dark concrete room with only a few sparse objects like a chair, a dog bowl, and a waste bucket. For whatever reason, Alex passes by this captive without any acknowledgement repeatedly, and who exactly this man is and why he's here is a major mystery, especially when in later videos, he's let out in the daylight (still bagged and naked) dragging dead bodies out into the woods, with later videos (namely "pills") establishing that it was not voluntary on his part.
• Made a Slave: In the possession of the project is a man wearing nothing but a bag tied over his head, kept alone in a dark concrete room with no amenities, presumably one of the project's victims drugged into compliance. He gets ordered to dispose of the bodies of later victims by burying them in the woods.
• Male Frontal Nudity: Inside the house Alex has made his base is a completely naked man with a bag over his head, who Alex repeatedly walks past without any buildup or fanfare but has very clearly visible genitals.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Kevin, whenever he's seen partaking in the torture and murders of his victims, is dressed in pseudo-regalia involving a dark black cloak and what looks like a plastic mask that nevertheless obscures his face.
• No Name Given: It's easier to list the characters who are definitively named than those who aren't, and even those in the former don't get named until some time has passed in the series. The POV cameraperson of the "DSCF" videos and accomplice to the same project as Kevin and Alex isn't ever given a name, and none of the victims are ever identified by name.
• No Title: A lot of the videos lack titles, being uploaded with default file names from whatever device they were presumably filmed on. The most information that can be gained from them is the differences in filming format, ranging from DV tapes coming from DSLR cameras to "IMG" files coming from iPhones, which indicates a completely different POV character.
• Old, Dark House: A three-story house is a recurring location within the series. On the outside, it seems like a perfectly ordinary residence in the middle of a suburb next to the woods, but as the creator couple remarks while passing by, it seems like nobody has lived in it for years. It turns out to be the secret base of operations of Alex, a naked man kept captive in a dark concrete room, and a secret organization that both of them serve.
• The Quiet One: Alex rarely speaks, or at least isn't shown speaking much through his POV videos. Even when interacting with friends who address him directly, he appears to be nonverbal. During a conversation in one of the "DSCF" videos, the camerawoman and her friend discuss Alex, casually speculating that Alex might be autistic or otherwise mentally unwell, explaining his abnormal, compulsive behaviors.
• Rewatch Bonus: Many of the video titles are esoteric, if not outright meaningless, but "clap 1" and "clap 2" end up taking on significantly more meaning following "pills", where Kevin describes his orders to the naked bagged man, and can be heard saying "Three claps means something needs—" and "Four claps means it's time to go." This establishes a scheme for orders that "clap 1" and "clap 2" were presumably named after, which, based on the contents of the videos, they respectively probably mean "bury the body bag of a murder victim" and "clean up the evidence".
• Riddle for the Ages: Just what the hell is the "project" that Kevin was masterminding that led to all the terrible events in the series? We can clearly see the consequences of it — people being inducted, victims being captured, enslaved, and killed, with their suffering being recorded in various ways — but it's never exactly elaborated why Kevin is ordering for this to happen. The bizarre, cult-like pageantry and ritual forms of torture he enacts also go without elaboration, and the series ends with it unknown what ultimate purpose this would have served.
• Rotating Protagonist: The series has multiple POV characters, delineated by the file types of their video titles:
  • Videos recorded on "DV" tapes are largely from Alex, an unseen stalker who records scenery, people he occasionally follows home, and the inside of a three-story house where a naked black-bagged prisoner is held captive.
  • The "P" videos come from a young couple (named Eloine and Matt) vlogging themselves with aspirations of starting a YouTube channel of their own, who unknowingly stumble into the horror show during a camping trip. A few "IMG" videos are released later in the series and feature Matt as he's trying to document crucial conversations with others, the file name suggesting he's recording himself using his iPhone for safekeeping purposes.
  • Video starting in "DSCF" are seemingly innocuous vlogs recorded from the POV of an unnamed young adult woman. Most of the footage is entirely unrelated to the other stories, but one of the videos sees her casually discussing with someone their awareness of Kevin, Alex, and their project, indicating their involvement.
• Sex Slave: Strongly implied during "snuff", which reveals several of Kevin's victims being women wearing bride's dresses being held captive and in various states of duress, with one picture depicting Kevin with one as "Kevin with company". Given that the treatment of a male captive involves leaving him completely naked and seemingly brainwashed to do Kevin's bidding, this has horrific implications for the treatment of the female captives.
• Snuff Film: Out-of-universe, the series is very much a work of fiction, but the found footage narrative it conveys periodically depicts what looks to be the preparation — and in some rare instances — the actual performance of an unseen party torturing and murdering victims, which is seemingly the goal of the "project" and its participants, including its camerapeople like Alex.
• Shout-Out: During the couples' initial camping trip before things all go to hell, they sing Britney Spears songs to themselves while setting up camp.
• Sound-Only Death: In the penultimate IMG video, Matt enters the three-story house to confront Alex, not knowing the danger he walked into, before his POV recording is knocked to the side and completely glitches out before cutting to black, with the sound of something quietly trickling (possibly blood), three loud claps (Kevin signalling his orders), and the sound of Matt's body being dragged away.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • The initial "P" videos are framed as raw footage coming from a young creator couple looking to make a YouTube channel, and the way they shoot themselves doing aimless activities in setting up camp pretty clearly establishes that neither of them have filmmaking backgrounds. One of the videos is a shot of Eloine silently and awkwardly walking down the road carrying camping gear, presumably to serve as B-roll.
  • Some of the "DSCF" videos appear to be normal footage of the unseen camerawoman and her friend recording themselves, which is revealed to be them learning how to use the thing. As such, some of the footage is awkwardly framed, paced, and at one point they don't seem to realize they've been properly recording until the very end.
• Suburban Gothic: Nearly all of the series occurs in a mundane suburb surrounded by woods, and it's secretly a home to stalkers, kidnapping, enslavement, torture, and murder. One of the biggest locations of such activity occurs in an innocuous-looking three-story house that's practically in plain view for all to see, with nobody realizing the horror and depravity taking place inside until it's too late.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: None of the villains throughout the series have any particularly standout features, and otherwise appear to be completely ordinary-looking young adults. The "DSCF" camerawoman in particular, based on her personal vlogs, appears to be an average, spunky young-adult woman who enjoys music and thinks of herself as a "romantic". You'd never guess that she was a voluntary accomplice in the project until the series shows her participating in an execution and discussing other members in broad daylight.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Keeping in line with the average suburban setting, all of the given characters' names are perfectly ordinary. The Big Bad of the series, the person behind the "project" involving kidnapping, brainwashing, and murder, is given the completely unremarkable name Kevin.
• Toxic Friend Influence: While we don't know the extent that Kevin was "friends" with Alex, Kevin is certainly a manipulator who strung Alex along into getting involved with his depraved "project". One of Alex's other friends seen in "DV100115" is aware of Alex's involvement with Kevin (albeit not fully in the know of how deep the rabbit hole goes), and expresses concern, telling Alex to stop talking to him.
• Uncertain Doom:
  • The last mention of Alex in the chronology of the series is by the "DSCF" girl, describing how he and Kevin apparently got into a fight over a missing tape, seemingly the one Alex purposefully left for Eloine and Matt, with her also mentioning that Kevin appears to be filming things himself instead of Alex now. Given how the episode "alex" doesn't appear to be footage recorded by Alex himself, and instead simply depicting a cloaked Kevin along with a graphic image of a man being impaled through the throat, it's strongly implied, though not confirmed, that Kevin may have eventually killed Alex.
  • Eloine's fate is also left inconclusive. While Alex seemingly attempted to protect and warn her, it's Matt that attempts to further investigate, and he is murdered for it, seemingly without Eloine noticing, but while Kevin seemingly escapes scot-free, the intense amount of police scrutiny in the area would have made it unlikely that — after taking care of loose ends, from disposing of Matt's remains and his accomplices — he would have had time to finish Eloine off. That said, one of the last bits of footage chronologically is a security camera at Eloine's home, where in enters an unknown woman (possibly an older relative), where shortly after entering, there's a quiet hiss that could possibly be the low-quality audio recording, or the sound of a disturbance in the house. Either way, Eloine herself isn't seen again.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Played for Horror; a lot of the footage found — especially the "DV" tapes documented by Alex — covers random footage of nature and building, as well as disturbing sights like animal carcasses and bloodied torture victims with about the same level of weight and lack of fanfare. Within a single video, Alex spends more runtime focusing on a turtle crawling on the grass than a naked man with a bloodied bag over his head. With how casually this is treated by the footage, this gives a clear indication that Alex isn't there in the head, or at the very least gets really easily distracted.
• Villain Protagonist: One of the primary POV characters is Alex, a man who is established filming morbid subject matter, random scenery, and stalking various women throughout town, even following them to their homes at night, and is involved with an increasingly dark and violent "project" ran in secret within the three-story house. It's gradually revealed that he might not be as malicious as thought, with the videos seeing him demonstrate behaviors to protect Eloine from becoming a potential victim of the project, against the wishes of Kevin.
• Villainous Crush: Alex might have this for Eloine, made ambiguous by the uncertainty over the fondness he has for her (he is described as "liking" her, whatever that means), as well as whether or not you can even consider him "villainous" for his participation in the project. When Kevin hears about this, Kevin — just as ambiguously, but far more aggressively — states that he's "had [his] eye on her for a while," and tells Alex that when Kevin is done with her first, "you can pick up the scraps like a vulture." Whether you consider Kevin's plan being to simply murder her or make her into "company", the various implications are unsettling, to say the least.
• Wham Episode:
  • "DV100115" (the 66th video) is the longest in the series by a large margin (over 31 minutes long), and it packs a lot: a character officially names the POV stalker character as Alex, and a conversation confirms that his interest in women is known to his friends, but not his stalking behavior, nor the captive he has in the three-story house. It also establishes that Alex has been working on some kind of "project" with a man named Kevin that is apparently so disturbing that his friends no longer want to be involved with it. It proceeds to show him discovering the couple in the woods, stalking them until nightfall, and even shining a flashlight directly onto Eloine's face as she sleeps in her tent, confirming her earlier-established suspicions that someone in the woods was watching them. The video ends with footage of the naked bagged man out in the open daylight dragging a large black bag into a ditch in the woods, which the next video "clap 1" strongly implies to be the body of a murder victim.
  • "pills" depicts the first confirmed on-screen presence of Kevin, with Alex recording Kevin leading the naked bagged captive into the woods with a sledgehammer. Once Kevin recites instructions to the captive, the final one being "Four claps means it's time to go", Alex comes across the man's body, his head beaten to a bloody pulp.
  • "alex" sees what is presumably Alex being confronted by Kevin in the dark before cutting to a graphic image of a man being impaled through the throat, followed by a shot of the written message next to the decomposing raccoon, and specifically the rest of the message: "Please don't steal my TAPES. Please, God is watching."
  • "DSCF0041" and "DSCF0043" are very casual, uneventful in terms of actual events, but are impactful for what is discussed: two young women casually discuss their involvement in the "project" including Kevin and Alex, revealing that Kevin was "interested" in and inordinately kind to Alex, strongly suggesting that Alex is being manipulated, and the two are mentioned having gotten into a fight. Moreover, it establishes that Kevin had been ordering everyone involved to film what they were doing, suggesting that some of the "DV" tapes earlier in the series may not have been strictly Alex's perspective, but were recorded by Kevin.
  • "smut" depicts footage explicitly depicting victims of the project in various states of torture and murder, including a String Theory board of photographs with written annotations establishing who they are. In particular, it depicts women in wedding dresses next to a dark-cloaked man (presumably Kevin) who are described as "company".
• Word Purée Title: The title of the channel, and ostensibly the whole series, is "kepther e", the intended meaning of which is a mystery. Depending on the way you read it, it could be trying to spell out "kept here" with a misplaced space, "kept her" with an extra E (possibly referring to Eloine), or a corrupted portmanteau of "kept there".