Greylock Tapes Explained- The Best New Analog Horror On YouTube’s Biggest Mysteries

If you haven’t heard of Greylock currently streaming on YouTube with eleven videos ranging from just under two minutes to twenty minutes, you are missing out. For a while, fans of Analog Horror have known what the power of some cool editing software, a talented producer, and a great story builder can produce. Think of Analog horror as the indyest of all indy entertainment companies. Some tell their stories across multiple platforms, and they can be auditory as in podcasts, visual like YouTube or TickTock, written, or combinations of any or all of these things.

Typically, they are found footage-style recordings or descriptions of recordings dating from 1960 to 1995 and predate the internet. They are often grainy, heavily warped, and deteriorated. One of the predominant features of analog horror is the element of cosmic or supernatural elements. Ciphers, cryptic messages, and unnatural meanings are embedded in every scene. Some of the best include Marble Hornets, the Backrooms, and Dionae House, which started as screenshots of emails and text messages and grew into a multi-website rabbit hole of seemingly endless proportions.

There is no shortage of these types of stories out there, but few are as committed to mythos and world-building as Rob Gavagan’s Greylock. The ancient evil Lovecraftian Big Bad at the heart of Greylock is only hinted at, but enough information is doled out; you are thoroughly unnerved. There are contagious malformities like an evil virus that is jumping from person to person, mutating their bodies and hollowing out their souls to make way for any number of demons or thoughtforms as they are called. They are waiting patiently for a host to call home. Here’s what we know about what is happening and how it is all connected.

What are Thoughtforms?

Thoughtforms are things named and researched by the US Army to gain the upper hand in war and spying. At some point, someone thought it was a great idea to manifest beings out of thin air using nothing but sheer will. We don’t know precisely at what point someone understood we were potentially unleashing demons of an unimaginable size that couldn’t be controlled. Thoughtforms seem to be plucked from our darkest places and embody our worst natures.

They are violent, aggressive, uncontrollable, and, in some cases, highly manipulative. Scattered throughout are scattered clues that they are either created through Jungian willpower or were conjured from an ancient place and have been trapped in the Earth since its earliest days when a small planet crashed into our world and lodged an ancient evil we couldn’t begin to understand.

Thoughtforms are an extension of the Buddhist belief(Tulpas) that humans can materialize beings through intense concentration. In Greylock, they are cannibalistic body horror nightmare fuel that became infected after coming into contact with something dangerous in tunnels a group of construction workers, and archeologists were tasked with investigating and clearing. Through a series of messages from the foreman Paul Morelli, we learn everyone who went into the tunnels below Mount Greylock was affected by something that made many sick and others outright altered beyond reason.

We are shown a series of before and after photos detailing each of the most affected men and their symptoms. Most were irrevocably altered in horrific ways, and their personalities became dangerous. One of the men’s body chemistry was so changed that he vomited a crossive substance that was destructive to everything it touched.

Little was known about the life cycle of the Thoughtforms. Some scientists believed they had been living with humans since the very beginning. We saw them as ghosts or poltergeists; in reality, they were energy creatures that might have the ability to gain corporeal form as time passed. Greylock does not make it clear if all the terrible things that happen in the series are a result of possession or the finished physical state of something masquerading as human. The home invasion video with the emergency broadcast system update lists 49 home invasions over the course of one night, which seems excessive for a single group to perpetrate unless they were supernatural. This lends credence to the theory that the Thoughtforms were more than simple “ghosts.”

In all likelihood, the Thoughtforms are cosmic evil entities that can alter recordings, as in the orientation video when the message becomes glitchy, as the Thoughtforms are being described as completely harmless. Humans, particularly powerful men, are foolhardy, greedy idiots who think they can control and use the spirits as military and political tools to take over the world. It is why John F. Kennedy was killed when he opposed the addition of technology in every home and office. It is also why things like this ancient evil are able to so easily manipulate us into helping them.

What happened in the tunnel underneath Mount Greylock?

The Thoughtforms can manipulate reality, induce amnesia, and replicate sounds and forms. As a result, we don’t know if Paul gave the order to go back into the tunnel and didn’t remember doing it or if the evil was already out and manifested a physical presence who looked and sounded like Paul. A human-shaped energy monster is caught on the trail camera, and it is possible this entity took Paul’s form to order the others into the tunnel. We do know whatever was happening in the tunnel affected all the food in camp, made it rotten, and made the communication equipment unusable.

Clues indicate that whatever affected the equipment also affected the news media. The planet that slammed into Earth may have carried with it this cosmic evil summoned by the government experiments that later trapped the demon in the tunnel. At this point, the energy being is out and tearing like wildfire through people.

What happened to Arnold Eugene Rivers?

Rivers first went into the tunnels when Paul Morelli’s company was exploring it and became so ill he was taken to the hospital. He made numerous attempts to leave the project, and SimioDyne rejected all. Although he made a recovery and was not turned into a monster like the other men, he eventually was killed by something that was able to break down his door, mimic a police officer, and a bird. Although we don’t see what happens to Arnold, his screams and the wet sounds coming from the aftermath indicate he was ripped apart and potentially eaten by something.

A tiny child giggles after saying something: “Was a monster.” Who this child is and why she is there, we don’t know, but it may be a grown-up form of the missing babies like Tiffany’s that disappeared or the children from the experiments decades ago that we are seeing in our time as shadows from the past. It could also be Katy, who was apparently kidnapped by the monster in 1994. Since we don’t know if the entities are bound by time like humans, anything is possible.

What happened to Tiffany Crisaldi in Greylock?

Despite seeming like a side character, Tiffany is an integral part of the story of Greylock. She is a child who was experimented on using manifest techniques. Later, she is the young woman who died of a broken heart after her baby disappeared from her womb at the doctor’s office during an ultrasound appointment. The baby could have been a Thoughtform that was incubated in her womb and removed when it was time to be released, or she could have manifested the child using the skills she learned as a child. The father of her child was coincidentally Alex Marsh, who we first are introduced to in the orientation tape number three. This makes it clear there is a massive conspiracy at play here that has probably been influencing lives since the 1960s.

It’s possible everything we have seen and heard about Thoughtforms is a misdirection meant to disguise the real monsters, cosmic demons from before the universe existed that have been worshipped forever by different people for different reasons. All of the discussion about manifestation, concentration, and Jungian philosophy could be a means to let the demon in. It’s also possible these are two different entities that have been warring since the beginning of time, and we are stuck in the middle of it. The Thoughtforms were the ones who tried to alert us to the fakeness of the news report, while the demons killed the reporter to ensure his silence. The one sure thing is humans are dumb and terrible at containing stuff we shouldn’t be meddling with.