Stranger Things and the Ballad of Yellow Echo

 

The Yellow Echo story goes like this:

He Had No Mouth. Just Eyes and the Smell of Static.

In spring 1962, teachers at a small Wyoming school uncovered a chilling mystery. Some 37 children from different grades, who barely spoke to each other, had all drawn the same eerie figure during art class—a tall man. No mouth, only hollow eyes and something in his hand: A cord made of hair.

They called him “Yellow Echo.” The children whispered that he only appeared when it rained, that he whispered through TVs and revealed secrets they shouldn’t know—like where a teacher kept his gun.

Two weeks later, that teacher disappeared, along with every single drawing. The only thing left behind was a tape recorder, still running, capturing a child's whisper:

“We didn’t draw him. We remembered him.”

Ever since Season 5’s Volume 1 of Stranger Things, there’s been a lot of speculation about Vecna’s latest incarnation, Mr. Whatsit, and how did Matt and Ross Duffer come up with idea. Now, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time features a character named Mrs. Whatsit and Holly Wheeler is seen reading the classic novel. It’s easy to see that Vecna tapped into Holly’s mind and became Mr. Whatsit.

However, as we all know, social media abhors factual explanations.

And, ever so easily, the legend of Yellow Echo was born.

Yellow Echo is now haunting social media’s digital backwaters and thousands have been sharing or reposting the story all over the Interwebs—and like that classic Telephone Game—there’ve been the inevitable embellishments. At its core, it’s a damn fine chilling tale of thirty-seven children, all of whom attending school in a nameless Wyoming mining town, and it’s noted that none of the kids allegedly know one another.

Which could happen in a small town circa 1962 . . . but I had red flags.

So, as the story goes, the Duffer Brothers found this intriguing story about thirty-seven students drawing the same image:

The charcoal sketches, executed with unnerving precision even by the youngest students, depicted a gaunt, elongated figure with skin like yellowed parchment. Where a mouth should have been, only smooth, taut skin stretched between hollow cheekbones. Its eyes—or rather the absence of them—were perfect obsidian voids that seemed to drink in light. A braided cord of human hair dangled from a skeletal thin hand. The children, when questioned separately by the school’s increasingly disturbed principal, insisted with eerie unanimity that the being they called “Yellow Echo” manifested only during rainstorms, pressing its lipless face against bedroom windows or hanging in the shadows, while whispering secrets and other things through television static.

The Yellow Echo entity allegedly revealed the location of a teacher’s revolver, hidden beneath the floorboards of his classroom closet or elsewhere in the classroom. Two weeks later, this teacher vanished without trace, as did every single drawing. At some point, authorities found nothing except a single reel-to-reel recording that has a child’s voice, barely audible above the tape hiss:

“We didn't draw him. We remembered him from before we were born.”

You must admit it’s a very creepy, unsettling story.

However, that’s what it is: A story, one worthy of Creepypasta; like Slender Man or Black-Eyed Kids, it’s just a creation of someone’s imagination and it never happened. Even researching known urban legends, Yellow Echo doesn’t exist—but I’m still looking. There are no news articles of something like this ever happening and the Wyoming mining town is never mentioned.

Plus, the Duffer Brothers never said Mr. Whatsit was based on some urban legend or Creepypasta.

So, if you come across the Yellow Echo story on Facebook or another social media platform . . . now you know the rest of the story.

That said, I’m looking forward to Volume 2’s debut on Xmas Day.

It’s going to be epic.

THE SATANIC PANIC WAS A HOAX LIKE PIZZAGATE AND QANON.

I had to write that in all caps. I needed to get everyone's attention.

Religious alt-right "paranormal investigators" are attempting to start another "Satanic Panic" and we can't let that happen again.

The McMartin School trials.

The miscarriage of justice surrounding the Memphis Three.

We have to stop it. Let's look at what happened in the past.

The "Satanic Panic" was a widespread moral panic and hoax that occurred primarily in North America from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, based on unsubstantiated fears of a vast, secretive network of Satan-worshipping cults engaging in organized child abuse, sacrifice and other crimes. These claims were proven to be entirely baseless, and no credible evidence of such a conspiracy was ever found by law enforcement or psychological experts. 

Origins and Spread:

Michelle Remembers (1980): The book, co-written by a psychiatrist and his patient, which detailed alleged "recovered memories" of satanic ritual abuse (SRA), helped spark the panic and provided a template for future claims.

Media Frenzy: Daytime talk shows and news programs, such as those hosted by Geraldo Rivera and Oprah Winfrey, uncritically reported sensationalist stories and "expert" testimony about SRA, amplifying the fear across the nation.

Recovered-Memory Therapy: Therapists used controversial and now-discredited techniques like hypnosis and leading questions to help patients "recover" memories of abuse, often inadvertently planting false memories.

Cultural Scapegoats: Anxiety over societal changes, such as more women entering the workforce and an increased reliance on daycares, led to these centers becoming primary targets for accusations. Other forms of popular culture, including heavy metal music and role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, were also falsely accused of being recruitment tools for cults. 

Key Cases and Debunking

McMartin Preschool Trial: This highly publicized California case (1983-1990) became the longest and most expensive criminal trial in U.S. history. Despite years of investigation and hundreds of accusations, no one was convicted due to a lack of physical evidence and the use of coercive child interviewing techniques.

West Memphis Three: Three teenagers were wrongfully convicted of murder in 1994 based on the prosecution's claim that the killings were part of a Satanic ritual. They were later freed in 2011 after new DNA evidence and an admission that the initial evidence was faulty.

Lack of Evidence: A major 1995 report by the National Institute of Justice concluded there was "scant to non-existent" hard evidence for large-scale satanic ritual abuse. The FBI also found no evidence of an organized, nationwide Satanic conspiracy. 

Legacy: The Satanic Panic is now widely regarded as a classic example of a moral panic and a modern-day "witch hunt," where mass hysteria leRd to ruined reputations, wrongful convictions, and the neglect of genuine child abuse issues. Elements of these debunked claims have unfortunately resurfaced in modern conspiracy theories like QAnon, which echo the same baseless fears of child-abusing cabals.

Debunking the Satanic Panic hoax and other conspiracies.