The Town That Never Existed was a web series in The Slender Man Mythos. The plot follows a student named Charles Ulysses, whose friend Darren was investigating an urban legend about a town that doesn't exist, called Ashton. Darren planned a visit to the site of the alleged town, gave Charles the coordinates, and was promptly never seen or heard from again. Charles decided to follow the coordinates he was given in an attempt to discover what had happened to his friend. This proves to be a very bad idea.
One unique element of the series was that, every several weeks, the videos all disappeared and new ones showing similar events showed up. It was heavily implied that these events involving Darren and Charles were stuck in a cycle of occurrence and re-occurrence. However, certain elements did change between iterations.
After the last iteration was deleted, the series was never re-uploaded to YouTube. It was long believed that there were no mirrors or public archives of it anywhere, with the only proof of its existence being the Wayback Machine's archive of the channel
(albeit without any way to actually watch the videos). Thus, for a long time, it was ironically The Series That Never Existed.
...That is, until almost a decade later, when someone generously uploaded a mirror of the series' second iteration to the Internet Archive. You can watch it here, but note that it's apparently out of order, and some videos from this iteration may still be missing.
This series provides examples of:
- Alternate Reality Game: In addition to the iteration cycle gimmick, the series also had a tie-in blog, some screenshots of which can be seen at the Internet Archive.
- Eldritch Abomination: Slender Man himself qualifies of course, but there's also a very Lovecraftian tentacle monster with one eye in the video H O P E F O R S A L V A T I O N.
- Found Footage Film: Par for the course in The Slender Man Mythos series such as this one. Charles's quest to recover Darren's lost camera is what sets the plot in motion.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: The video Tampered footage 2 has a couple. If you pause it at 0:11, you'll see a masked figure with a gun, and if you pause it at 0:43 you can read "THIS WILL NEVER END".
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The central gimmick of the series. It was deleted, re-uploaded, and then deleted again in multiple different iterations, of which apparently only the second one has been archived.
- Jump Scare: There are several throughout the series.
- the Hidden Segment is very slow-paced and quiet until the end, when we suddenly hear a loud gunshot and see a hooded person firing a gun.
- Encounter is nothing but a long, lingering shot of an empty hallway... and then the Devil appears.
- Lost Episode: More like lost iteration(s), because the second iteration is the only one that's been recovered so far.
- The second iteration has several unresolved questions, which may have been explained in the now-lost first iteration and/or subsequent iterations. For example, who is the name "Hermes" supposed to refer to? Is he the one-eyed tentacle monster, the guy in the white mask, or even the same as "the Devil" AKA Slender Man himself? And what is the role and significance of the Moses Ryland character mentioned in Permutation?
- Night-Vision Goggles: The videos that take place at night often have a green night-vision tint.
- Quieter than Silence: The videos in which the Devil appears often have no audio at all.
- Satan: This series' version of Slender Man is apparently called "the Devil" by the characters, although it's unclear whether this is meant to be literal or figurative.
- Scenery Porn: The videos that take place during the daytime often feature beautiful forests and trails.
- The Stoic: Charles is surprisingly calm and doesn't react emotionally to the various bizarre events he experiences, although this may tie into his status as an Unreliable Narrator.
- Time Loop Trap: Permutation implies that the "Groundhog Day" Loop is this for Charles, and it might even be literal Hell.
- Unreliable Narrator: The videos Convoluted and Permutation suggest that Charles is one.
- Unseen Evil: We never see who Darren's stalker is in Darren's footage #3, not even when said stalker picks up Darren's abandoned camera in the Hidden Segment. We also never see who it was who broke into Charles's home and set up a camera to spy on him sleeping in Return.
- White Mask of Doom: A mysterious figure in a white mask (perhaps the "Hermes" character mentioned in At the Park?) is seen in several videos.