GSGW c220
Chapter 220
note: i'm changing how Dolphin and Pony call Soleum: from Employee to Mr. Employee, just to make it more formal
The tone of the post takes a sudden, chilling plunge.
Because of the blackout, the footage had been lost, and the station hastily aired a special compilation episode—<Hot Talk Talk First Half Special>.
Episode 166.
Screenshots captured from various panelist and audience shots in that patchwork episode scroll past, attached as photos.
And…
This time, there is no need to circle anything or zoom in like before.
Anyone reading the post already remembers the man’s face.
Black eyes.
A smiling mouth.
In every clip from those old talk-show variety programs—where everyone is laughing and chatting—the man in the footage is the only one looking directly at the camera, standing among dozens of people.
Episodes 157, 158, 160, 162, 164…
In every single episode that was cut together and aired as Episode 166.
In the corner of those cheerful variety scenes—
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The thing is… before this, that man had never been found in those episodes. If he had been, people wouldn’t have said he only appears in Episode 6.
But when the clips were re-edited and aired as Episode 166, suddenly he was there.
Before, he definitely wasn’t there. Or at least nobody noticed him… But now he was.
And look at this comparison.
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Two photos appear side by side.
One is a zoomed-in capture of the previously discovered “Man in the Screen,” circled in red.
The other is a zoomed-in capture from Episode 166.
When the two images—framed in almost identical compositions—are compared…
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His expression changed.
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Only the man in Episode 166 is smiling with all his teeth showing.
And the pupils in his black eyes, staring toward the camera, look strangely dilated.
Even through the low-resolution image, the eeriness is unmistakable.
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Apparently he had that expression in every highlight clip where he appeared.
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A phenomenon that sends a chill down your spine.
Realizing this was not something ordinary, the broadcasting station eventually began taking measures internally among the production staff.
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After that, they started checking everyone entering the set more carefully—whether it was a studio set or an outdoor filming location.
Panelists. Audience members.
They wanted to see if anyone resembled the “Man in the Screen.”
It was the early 2000s, after all. Back then they didn’t go to such lengths to verify people’s identities.
So when they suddenly started being that strict about it, word spread among the celebrities and on-site staff during filming.
Apparently the captured image of the “Man in the Screen” started circulating around that time too.
All kinds of rumors popped up. Rumors saying that he was a PD who died in a broadcast accident, he was the former station director’s son who committed suicide, he was a construction worker who died during renovations at the station, or that some occult horror special aired years ago had summoned something strange…
But none of it was ever proven true.
Whether they held memorial rites or performed shamanistic rituals, the phenomenon never stopped.
He kept being discovered…
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Eventually, the production team changed their approach.
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So what did they do after that?
They just kept deleting him.
Once the final edit was finished, the editing staff would replay the footage over and over, searching for the man.
If they found him, they cut the scene out. Eventually he stopped appearing in the broadcast versions… and the urban legend gradually faded away.
Since the man stopped being found, people lost interest. Sometimes someone would claim he had appeared again and post a screenshot, but it would turn out to be a different person with a similar look.
In the end, the whole incident just… died down.
At least, that’s what I thought until now.
I recently heard something chilling from a friend who works as a TV writer.
This is getting too long, so I’ll post the rest in the next part.
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And then—
“…And now… it’s appearing again.”
After finishing her brief recollection of “Document 1,” Lee Seonghae watches as the PD swallows hard and speaks with a pale face.
His expression is filled with fear.
“You mean… the Man in the Screen?”
“…Yes.”
That strange and terrifying phenomenon that once appeared in a now-defunct broadcasting station…is now appearing again in the variety department of the modern MBS channel.
“We’re doing our best to delete it or avoid it… but it doesn’t seem like something normal. So we agreed we should call in professionals.”
The two Field Exploration Team employees have suddenly become exorcism experts, but their naturally calm personalities kept their expressions relaxed.
It doesn’t really matter what the problem is.
“As long as you can make it stop appearing—whatever ritual or method you use. Preferably… peacefully, if possible…”
“Of course. Don’t worry!”
Once the company collects it, the phenomenon will disappear from this broadcasting station anyway.
Lee Seonghae smiles faintly as she recalls the countermeasures for the ‘Man in the Screen.’
Current estimated classification: C–D grade darkness. Displays typical supernatural symptoms appearing within video media.
If not witnessed: Appears more frequently.
If witnessed: Appears in more aggressive ways.
Estimated containment strategy: Manage the entity’s abnormal appearance frequency and aggression, endure for an optimal amount of time, then store the video data in a medium that cannot be replayed, and move it to an appropriate storage facility.
Failure may result in death.
The proposed response plan included in the documents is more thorough than expected.
It’s practically a clear manual, though the text repeatedly mentions that the method hasn’t been fully verified yet.
'If things go well, the Security Member might not even need to step in!'
Better to call them only as a last resort.
“Well then… I’ll guide you.”
“Yes!”
The PD leads them toward the editing room.
No Entry
Interior Construction in Progress
The door opens.
Creeeak.
Contrary to the sign posted outside, the editing room stands intact—dark and empty, without a single person inside.
All the monitors are turned off and equipment powered down.
“We put the sign up so no one else would wander in. As for editing… well, anything urgent that absolutely requires the equipment gets done here during the day. Otherwise we try to work outside the station—at studios or even from home.”
A modern solution that would have been impossible at the broadcasting station that shut down years ago.
These days, editing programs and hardware have become standardized and widely available.
Perhaps because no one has been using it, the editing room feels strangely cold—heavy, as if the air itself has settled.
“Hmmm…”
After quietly looking around, Kang Yihak opens her mouth again.
“Well now… this isn’t just something mild that’s attached here.”
“…!”
She clicks her tongue and speaks seriously.
“Ah, this… yeah. It looks dangerous.”
“……”
“If that’s the case, we’d normally need more time and more preparation.”
“H-how long would it take?”
Kang Yihak turns to the PD and speaks solemnly.
“Congratulations.”
“…Excuse me?”
“You’re extremely lucky. The item we brought with us today happens to be a very powerful sacred object we obtained with great difficulty.”
Tap.
Kang Yihak lightly taps the carrier.
“So we can skip the preparation time. Normally, this would go far beyond a simple additional fee—we’d have to completely redo the quote for the service.”
“Ah…”
Kang Yihak looks at him reassuringly.
“But this time we’ll just handle it for you.”
“…!”
“You’re busy people, after all. And you bring laughter to the public. Even if it means we take a bit of a loss, we can endure it this once.”
Her dazzling sales pitch leaves the PD—already exhausted and shaken with fear—staring blankly before finally nodding.
“Th-thank you.”
“Haha, please keep making great broadcasts in the future. …However.”
Kang Yihak frowns.
“From now on, the editing room must remain sealed for three days. No one is allowed to enter.”
“Yes!”
“And since the schedule is being extended like this… we’ll inevitably have to charge extra. Even we can’t help that much.”
Her smooth explanation continues—mentioning how their line of work makes it difficult to register as a normal business, so payment would have to be made in cash or valuables. Before long, the PD rushes down to the first floor of the broadcasting station to withdraw money.
He even removes the gold accessories he’s wearing and hands them over. Kang Yihak accepts them with a wide grin and reassures him as she sees him off.
“You can go get some proper sleep now!”
“Thank you…”
The moment the PD disappears from the editing room, Kang Yihak turns back to the others, hands full of extra profit, looking thoroughly pleased.
“Now we just say that thanks to our abilities, we finished something that would normally take three days in only one!”
It’s an outrageous level of cunning.
/tn. and shamelessness lmao
“Oh.”
Lee Seonghae, who has been watching her silently, finally speaks.
“You’re really good at deceiving people.”
“Deceiving? Not at all! I just know how to create additional income in ways where nobody really gets hurt or loses anything!”
Kang Yihak quickly divides the gold and cash into three portions.
Her hands move skillfully, calculating the market value as she splits it.
“Anyway, if this problem gets solved he’ll save a lot of money later. And even if not, he’ll probably get reimbursed by his bosses or the company.”
“……”
“So come on, this works out perfectly. We split it among the number of people here—me, Dolphin… and of course, our stylish Security Employee!”
Kang Yihak quickly turns toward the carrier and holds out a piece of gold.
“To Mr. Employee?”
“Of course! If cash isn’t convenient, we can pay in gold instead. What do you think, Mr. employee?”
There’s no way it would actually take it—
Tap.
“……”
“See?!”
Kang Yihak silently throws a victorious celebration into the air, convinced the being inside clearly understands the greatness of gold.
Lee Seonghae freezes for a moment, then bows her head slightly toward the carrier and asks seriously,
“Um… do you need human money?”
…Tap.
“Should we give you more?”
Tap.
“Then… does the company not pay your salary?”
Silence.
The carrier remains quiet. It somehow feels like the mascot inside is confused. Maybe she shouldn’t push it too far.
'But… it really does seem like they aren’t paying them.'
After thinking it over, Lee Seonghae decides to ease the kind employee’s mind.
By talking about work.
“I’ll work hard!”
Tap tap.
Does that mean she doesn’t even have to work that hard? Such a kind person!
“Well then… should we start preparing to enter now?”
“Yes.”
After the brief capitalist commotion ends, Kang Yihak quickly walks to the entrance of the editing room and closes the door.
Thud.
The editing room becomes a sealed chamber.
“…Turning on the screens.”
The central monitor lights up. On the desktop appears a variety show file that had been in the middle of editing.
And then another post appears on the screen.
The reason the people connected to the “Man in the Screen” urban legend are particularly afraid of editing rooms.
And the reason they are here.
[Has anyone seen this man on a PBS broadcast program? (Warning: image) – Part 2]
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Hi. A lot of people were curious, so I wrote the follow-up quickly.
In the last post, I said that the urban legend faded away because the “Man in the Screen” was deleted during editing, right?
And I mentioned that a friend of mine who works as a TV writer told me something chilling. Well…
The truth is, the claim that they deleted the “Man in the Screen” completely was a lie.
At first, it really was possible. They could remove the man and produce a clean final edit.
But as time passed… as more episodes accumulated… as more editing was done… Even after deleting him again and again, he kept being found.
And as that continued, his appearance gradually became stranger.
Before, if he was in a crowd you could overlook him unless you paid close attention. But at some point, he became the kind of thing that would make you hit the pause button even if you just caught a glimpse of him while passing by.
No one knows exactly what he looked like at that stage. The people in the editing room wouldn’t describe it. They only kept repeating one thing.
“It seems like he’s angry.”
Eventually the workload reached its limit.
No matter how much they deleted him, he kept appearing again. And in an industry already infamous for overnight work, the burden became even heavier. Even senior staff who normally wouldn’t touch this kind of task ended up staying up all night searching for the “Man in the Screen” and cutting out the footage.
Until finally… they came up with a new method.
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Cut it off at the source.
Completely avoid including any large crowd scenes where the “Man in the Screen” might appear.
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Just stop filming the audience entirely and only use their sound. Or zoom tightly onto a single reacting person.
That way, large groups of people won’t appear on camera in the first place, right?
If that happens, editing should get a lot easier. At least… that’s what they thought.
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The post continues, saying that after suggesting this method, the atmosphere in the department calmed down a bit. As if they had finally found a real solution.
The PD who proposed the idea and the assistant director both sighed with relief and headed into the editing room to try it. And the next day—
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Both of them committed suicide in the editing room.
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“….”
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The PD was hanging from the ceiling with a power cable. The assistant director had slit an artery with shards from a broken monitor and was found sitting in a chair.
Right in front of the door was a suicide note.
But the handwriting was such a mess that nobody could even tell what it had been written with.
My TV writer friend once worked with the PD who handled the aftermath of the scene. According to him, the note looked like something written by a person suffering from severe schizophrenia—random words scrawled without any logical order. It was so shocking that he only remembered fragments of it.
But one night, when he tried recalling those scattered words and putting them back together…he felt like he understood the general meaning.
Something like this.
——————————————————————————
The man in the screen does not want to be deleted
He is angry
Broadcast him immediately
I delivered the message exactly as it was
I don’t want to die
I’m sorry
——————————————————————————
The writer said he was so terrified that night he couldn’t sleep.
In the end, he even stayed at a temple for several days.
Even aside from that, most of the people working in PBS’s variety department were so shocked and terrified that the entire department practically shut down.
People around my age probably remember it, right? When the news suddenly broke that two people had died in the PBS variety department, and the station announced memorials while variety programs were canceled for two or three weeks.
That was actually because of this.
Even though they rebuilt the editing room afterward, the atmosphere never recovered. PDs began quitting one after another, and even writers and other production staff refused to sign contracts to work there.
So the people who worked at PBS back then all know the story.
People often say PBS shut down because of political struggles and corporate conflicts. But it’s clear that this incident also pushed the variety department into a state it could never recover from.
Still… there was at least one piece of good news.
When the station finally shut down in 2008, the urban legend of the “Man in the Screen” seemed to end with it.
.
.
.
But did you know?
This clip aired just yesterday.
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At the end of the post, a high-quality screenshot is attached.
“Elegant Midnight Laughter” – Episode 36, timestamp 6:23.
The MC and a single guest are chatting warmly. Then the camera briefly cuts to the production staff reacting.
Among the staff members—whose faces are blurred by mosaic—someone is sitting there.
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Do you recognize him?
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The Man in the Screen is looking straight ahead.
His teeth are fully exposed in a wide grin. His pupils are dilated. His eyebrows are twisted into an unnatural expression of rage.
And he is looking past the camera. At you.
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PBS shut down.
But another broadcasting company later acquired all of PBS’s equipment and staff and reorganized them.
Do you know which company?
MBS.
And “Elegant Midnight Laughter” is an MBS variety show.
……
You probably shouldn’t watch MBS variety programs live for a while.
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On the editing room monitor, something begins to appear.
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Because nobody knows what might happen.
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/tn. omg stop, this is scary
This is not good for my heart 🙈
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