11B-X-1371

11B-X-1371
A black and white image of a figure in a dark robe with a long leathery bill pointing down from the face and glass-lensed goggles concealing its features. Its right hand is held up, palm facing the camera, with a light in the middle of the palm. Behind it are decrepit brick walls with large window openings, through which a forest is visible.
An image from the video
Release date
  • May 9, 2015 (2015-05-09)
Running time
2 minutes
CountryPoland

11B-X-1371 is a 2015 viral video sent to GadgetZZ.com, the Swedish tech blog that publicized it. The black-and-white segment is two minutes in length; its title came from the plaintext of a base64 string written on the DVD. It depicts a person wearing what appears to be a plague doctor costume walking and standing around in a dilapidated abandoned building, with a forest visible through former window openings in the wall behind it. Accompanied by a soundtrack of loud, discordant buzzing noise, the masked figure holds up a hand with an irregularly blinking light. The film did not have any credits or claims to authorship.

Messages, many in commonly used ciphers and encryption systems, have been found hidden in the video and its sound spectrogram, as well as images of tortured and mutilated people.[1] Most of the messages have been decoded by participants in an ongoing Reddit thread, and the images sourced to notable murder investigations such as the Boston Strangler. They have been interpreted as implying a threat of bioterrorism against the United States, although it has also been speculated that the video is in reality a prank, a viral marketing stunt for an upcoming film or video game, or a student film.

After it first came to light in October 2015, it was found that it had been posted to YouTube several months earlier, along with a similarly threatening message in binary code. The poster of that video, known as AETBX, has suggested to inquiring journalists that GadgetZZ is not telling the truth about how it came to possess the video. Internet investigators managed to establish that it was filmed in the former Zofiówka Sanatorium outside Otwock, Poland, sometime between November 2013 and the video's release.[1]

Three months after the initial controversy, an individual going by the name of Parker Warner Wright claimed to have created the video. He told The Daily Dot that it was intended as an art project, and released a sequel video, "11B-3-1369".[2] As a way of proving his identity, he challenged viewers to create an exact duplicate of his plague doctor mask.[3]

  1. ^ a b Wehner, Mike (October 22, 2015). "That creepy puzzle video just keeps getting creepier". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved November 2, 2015.
  2. ^ Krahbichler, Johny (January 1, 2016). "Part Two Of The Creepy Puzzle "11B 3 1369"". GadgetZZ.com. Archived from the original on 2016-01-24. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
  3. ^ Wehner, Mike (January 19, 2016). "The most disturbing viral video now has a sequel, and we spoke to the creator". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 2016-01-22. Retrieved January 23, 2016.