Damsel

Stephanie (aka Damsel) remains a source of great mystery in the EverymanHYBRID ARG.

Who is Damsel?
First introduced through her blog, it is still unclear exactly how she became connected to the EMH cast. Since she does not sign her blog posts, and there are no references to her name on the site, the fans dubbed her "Damsel," short for "damsel in distress," since most of her blog entries alluded to a force that was persecuting her, and to a secret past. Her name remained a secret for months, and even in videos like "Damsel" where her real name should have been audible it was covered by audio distortion. After nearly 7 months her real name, (Stephanie or Steph) was finally confirmed on Dec 19, 2010 when Jeff referred to her by name in a tweet.

Initially not a lot was known about Damsel. She had explicitly refused to give her true name, and most of what was known about her had been deduced by her posts rather than outright stated by the girl herself. She claimed to be in the age of "teenage angst", and that she had attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts and moved to Princetown at about the same time she started her blog. She has an interest in art -- she paints and draws, and has posted some of the results on her blog. She's a loner, and before her disappearance Damsel's only friend had seemed to be Jessa. She alluded to horrific events past, and to her parent's being killed in a house fire. She hinted that she was at least aware of the existence of Slenderman, if not that she was being outright pursued by him. Most of her past was only hinted and alluded to, and her responses to direct questions were filled with prevarication and sometimes lies.

Finally, after it looked like she had been arrested and removed from the game the truth became clear. The evening of her arrest and commitment to a mental facility Damsel announced that she had left a blog post to be automatically posted at an unspecified future date. When speaking of her parent's death she had originally lied, saying "I came home from school one afternoon. The house was a half acre of ash." but on Halloween the automatically queued post revealed the truth:
 * "That day, when I said that I arrived home from school to a half-acre of ash… was not entirely accurate. I came home from my classes and everything was normal. My family’s house was older and relatively sizable. Made of fine, decaying lumber. Easily combustible. Upon setting foot within the threshold, I immediately felt something in the air. Something was terribly off. The house was silent. No sound from my siblings, no familiar clicking of my mother tending in the kitchen, no sound of shuffling from desk-to-shelf in my father’s study. And then I saw the bags.


 * Through the large sliding glass door, I saw them all, each strung from the old ash tree in the center of the backyard. I… I opened each one. I just had to be sure; you would understand. I was covered in a bit more and more of my family with each inquiry. I took the opened bags and went upstairs into my parent’s master bedroom and laid down on the gigantic bed. I placed each of the bags around me, resting one last time with my family. The bags that still held their contents bulged towards me in a comforting embrace.


 * I saw myself in the mirror. Perhaps my body was still in shock because I wasn’t crying, not yet. I was drenched in the blood of my siblings and parents and I couldn’t feel anything. I knew He did this to me. The one I had been seeing in my dreams since I was a baby. He wanted me out of the house. I don’t know why, but He willed me elsewhere. I burned my house. I set the fire. I don’t care who knows anymore because by this time, I’m sure they would have coerced this confession from me. By this time, I will have been (accurately) proven guiltyGUILTYGUILTYGUILTY."

After the investigation of her family's deaths Damsel was medicated but she has said in her blog that she has been avoiding taking her pills. Also, she has a bad relationship with the police, and had hinted at being harrassed by them in the past -- it had been theorized that she was accused of causing the death of her parents, or that some deaths due to Slenderman might have been blamed on her, and the truth about her past bears out that theory.

After the death of her parents she says "I was alone and He told me to go north." There is much speculation about her relationship to Slenderman fueled by this statement.

Damsel has outright admitted she's witholding information for fear of the consequences of "talking too much". She seems convinced that the more people talk about the Slenderman, the more powerful it becomes. She has said she's willing to help those who already "know", but she refuses to spread the knowledge to those who don't. She has stated that the last time she did, the people who tried to help her died (during another "trip up north"). Damsel also feels that she has become somehow tainted by her contact with the Slenderman, and that all the people she grows attached to are destined to die.

Damsel's Blog
Damsel's blog canyouseethewords (with annexed Twitter youseethewords) was first spotted/alluded to in the EMH video named Sleep Lab Part 1 - Sleep Deprivation, where Evan can be seen reading it. How he discovered her blog is currently unknown.

Early in the summer of 2011 it became clear that HABIT had assumed control of the blog, posting violent videos of serial killers and claiming a relationship with them. Evan made a post there announcing that Steph had abandoned the blog, leaving it to HABIT, and would no longer be posting there. However, on January 6, 2015, a new post from Damsel was added, presumably from the post queue function.

Connection with EverymanHYBRID Cast
In the beginning, it wasn't clear what the connection between the EMH videos and Damsel's blog was, until it was revealed that the "friend" Damsel referred to in her posts was Jessa, Jeff's girlfriend. However, Damsel has repeatedly stated she doesn't know Jeff, Vince, or Evan, even if Jessa has talked to her about Jeff, and even if the followers of her blog almost immediately pointed her to the YouTube channel. Damsel says that before Jessa's disappearance they were all supposed to meet up, but now that the old menace has resurfaced, "avoiding them is unavoidable".

Despite this, she has posted a pic of the three eating at Hoagie Haven, stating she "passed" them. Also, a few days after A Day in the Life was uploaded to their channel, she posted The Beatles' song by the same name.

A more mysterious connection can be found in the coordinates she received on two different occasions, (in one case only receiving half of them, while the other half had been given to Vince --Slushpops and Surprises). Both sets of coordinates have led to the discovery of mysterious boxes.

Also, in a video posted of her and Jessa, a person can be seen running by in the background who was later identified as Evan. This, coupled with the fact that he was viewing her blog in the "Sleep 1" video, has led some people to theorize that Evan may be stalking Damsel, or at the very least trying to establish a  connection with her.

An argument between Jeff and Damsel on Twitter shows that both parties don't trust each other.

At 0:54 of Jeff's video In which I assume the role of a 13 year old MySpace girl. there is a brief flash of a drawing of Slenderman with the words "GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY" scrawled across the page. The similarity of this drawing with the statement from Damsels queued post that "By this time, I will have been (accurately) proven guiltyGUILTYGUILTYGUILTY" has lead to a lot of speculation regarding Damsel's true involvement in Jessa's disapperance.

Her Commitment
After the infamous Twitter fight between Damsel and Jeff, it seems like Jeff pointed Damsel to the police as a suspect, or at least a person involved, in Jessa's disappearance. Damsel's last post on her blog is about being put on suicide watch and into a mental health clinic. She announced that, not knowing how long she will be gone, she had posted an explanation of sorts in her post-queue. That post appeared on Halloween night and explained the truth behind her parent's deaths as well as her complicated relationship with the police and with doctors.

The Twitter fight and the subsequent events brought Evan, who as we know follows CYSTW, to post the Injustice video, in which he criticizes Jeff's behaviour towards Damsel. However, as time passed, Jeff has indicated remorse at whatever actions he took that lead to Damsel's interment; following the realization that the trio had been led to Centralia merely to be presented with yet "another puzzle," Jeff became insistent that the crew track down and consult Damsel for help. {C}Damsel seemingly signed off permanantly at the end of her post-queue. But a later appearance in the video .... (one of the "hidden" videos,) signalled that she was still important to the game. However, she did not move or speak in the video, and the ambiguity of the "hidden" videos is such that the footage of her may have been taken at any point in the game.

During the 11/26 UStream Jeff again expressed regret for his part in having Damsel incarcerated, and reiterated that they had a plan to help her, though he did not relay any specifics about the plan.

After a conversation with UnFiction user rhiannon regarding the "hidden" videos, Jeff seemed to realize that in order for the cast to see those videos they needed outside help. This seems to have finally set in motion the plans to rescue Damsel. In the most recent video, titled "Damsel", the boys went to the institution where she was being held, now revealed to be the hospital where Jeff works, and using Jeff's keys they released her and helped her, reluctantly, leave the grounds. As they drove away Damsel revealed that she had been scheduled to be released that day.

In HospitalFire.wav, Damsel's name is edited in order to cover it up. It can easily be reversed and heard as "Stephanie," later confirmed in a tweet to be her name. Hospital Fire relays some serious timeline inconsistencies surrounding the timing of Damsel's rescue and release from the hospital.

Since her rescue she has been staying with the boys waiting for the police to stop watching her home. She has been sleeping in Evan's room and he has taken up residence on his own couch. She resumed posting to her blog again until January 13th, 2011 when she made a video announcing that she was discontinuing the blog since she didn't need a place to vent anymore due to her newfound friendship with the guys. A few months later, in April, she began making sporadic blog posts again, but eventually abandoned the blog for good after HABIT began posting there.

In a tweet from Vince on Halloween 2012, Vince mentioned that he "doesn't know where Steph is", but it was eventually revealed that she had been staying with Evan.

Steph and Evan
Following her time in commitment, and subsequent rescue by the boys, Steph had been staying with Evan and sleeping on his couch. It was revealed in HALLOWEEN HANGOVER that they had begun a relationship. In A Vinny/HYBRID Christmas it appeared that Steph was performing an at home pregnancy test, presumably to determine if she was carrying Evan's child. The results of the test were not revealed at the time, but it was made clear in Twenty-four months that she was indeed pregnant. In Next Evan, at this point completely given over to HABIT, appears to be cradling the child, an unmoving Steph in the foreground of the shot. However, based on the memories shared by Evan in WAKE UP, it appears that HABIT killed, and possibly ate, the child, along with her.

Zeke's Warning
In what appears to be a minor crossover with the series Seeking Truth a video on youtube, Left Behind.m4v was posted by someone called TheMysticisDead. The video seems to show the last moments of Zeke Strahm, star of that series. In one part of it, he has this message for the boys: "You Hybrid boys, keep your eyes and ears open okay? Your buddy Evan... however bad he is now, it's going to get so much worse before it gets better. It's funny... she'll talk about what happened to her parents, but not about what happened to that group she was traveling with. Just a thought."

This seems to refer to the group that she travelled north with, following her parents' death. She referenced them in a post to her blog on August 15, 2010, saying: "Telling my story only got the last group who tried to help me killed. Was that a fun trip north." This seems to be the only previous mention of the group she travelled with.

Fairmount Steph
In the Corenthal papers we had frequently seen a redacted name, who Corenthal described as being a "visual artist." This had been speculated to be Steph, and the events of The Hidden Videos, wherein Steph and the boys seem to speak in a trance as the young Corenthal children, seemed to confirm that speculation. Finally in the Corenthal Letter Dated 2-27-1975 Stephanie's name appears unredacted, confirming that she is one of The Mining Town Four. As relayed in the Corenthal Report dated 12-14-1971 she was also called "Stephie" by Jeff and the other Mining Town boys.

Fairmount Steph and three other children were adopted by Dr. Corenthal and his wife Maryann, and taken away from the children’s home. He described the four children as being haunted by personal demons. In 1980 Corenthal wrote a journal entry that is visble on the Ink Ribbon describing the possible death of Fairmount Steph.

Steph’s relationship to Fairmount Steph is unclear at this time, but there is certainly a connection. This connection is part of the basis of the Iteration Theory.

Damsel's Videos (CYSTW)

 * Moving In
 * Second Video (untitled)
 * Third Video (untitled)
 * Yesterday

Other Appearances

 * Mentioned in Cops Checked, No Body
 * Mentioned in Injustice.
 * Mentioned in Centralia
 * "Damsel"
 * December & early January
 * A Vinny/HYBRID Christmas
 * Next
 * A Vinny/HYBRID Christmas
 * Next