On June 20 in 2009, the web series known as Marble Hornets was born. It followed the story of a college graduate named Jay who receives tapes from the production of his friend Alex Kralie’s movie, also titled Marble Hornets, and notices horrifying events transpiring during his viewing. This leads him on a quest to find out what exactly happened to Alex. On June 20 of 2014, five years to the date after the beginning of the series, Marble Hornets ended.

Marble Hornets was intended to be a short project spanning the length of one summer, but it ended up becoming so big that many other people started their own YouTube channels that are similar in both content and style to that of Marble Hornets. Troy Has a Camera (commonly abbreviated as THAC, with Troy referring to the head writer and Jay’s actor, Troy Wagner) the group responsible for the creation of Marble Hornets, had ended up giving birth to a genre.

While Marble Hornets was already joined by hundreds of other fan-made channels of similar styles, recently, THAC added one more series to the list- in the form of their new series, Clear Lakes 44.

Beginning on August 3 of this year, the series strays just a little bit away from the familiarity of Marble Hornets while still feeling like home to veteran viewers. It seems to have a much greater focus on mystery, as opposed to horror.

As of the writing of this article, the series is nine “broadcasts” (which essentially serve as episodes) in and the plot still seems highly ambiguous. The only real things that have been clearly established are some of the characters.

While the plot has a degree of anonymity, Clear Lakes 44 is nonetheless exciting to watch and speculate about. Although no official statement from THAC has been released, it seems as if they want the fanbase to make theories about what’s going on and slowly piece together the plot with the pieces of information provided to them by the broadcasts.

For those looking for a unique series to get into, Clear Lakes 44 may provide for an interesting new pass time. Additionally, those that want to contribute things to a fanbase will also find a home when watching (and theorizing about) Clear Lakes 44. It overall has some very unique things for almost everyone, and will hopefully unfold to be a great series.