Method & provenance
The short version: none of this is real, and we will never pretend otherwise. MARROWPINE is a field archive of dramatized reconstructions. What follows is exactly how the records are built, what is invented, and how you can verify the provenance of every file yourself.
Is any of this real?
No. The creatures are not real. The sightings are not real reports of real events. Place names like Hollowell County and Marrowpine Ridge are composites, checked against real gazetteers specifically to make sure they do not correspond to a real place. We document folklore the way a museum documents a myth — seriously, in a fixed format — without claiming the myth is true.
What is real, then
The craft is real. The consistency is real. The provenance is real. Every reconstruction is a deliberate piece of work: a written field record, a shot plan built on real found-footage grammar, a controlled sound design, and a narration directed for restraint rather than spectacle. When we say a record is Class B, we mean it: the reliability grade describes the conditions of the record, not the believability of a monster. We grade our own files down, and we mark the ones with prosaic explanations.
How a reconstruction is made
- Source. We start from public-domain folklore and the recurring motifs of reported sightings — never a specific real person's account presented as fact.
- Record. The case is written as a clinical field record: case number, classification, chain of custody, exhibits.
- Reconstruction. Imagery and voice are produced with an AI-assisted pipeline, human-directed shot by shot. Witness audio is dramatized; there is no real recording.
- Restraint. The entity is withheld far more than it is shown. The dread is in the documentation, not in a jump-scare.
- Provenance. The finished file is signed with Content Credentials (C2PA), and the platform AI-disclosure is enabled on every upload.
Content Credentials (C2PA)
Every reconstruction carries cryptographic provenance — an open, tamper-evident record of how the media was made and that it is AI-assisted. This is the opposite of how disinformation behaves. We over-disclose on purpose. On platforms that read C2PA automatically, our own credentials make the labeling work for us. Each case page shows a provenance panel; signed files can be checked at contentcredentials.org/verify.
Why an archive, and not just videos
Because a single clip is disposable and an archive is not. The case number under a video is real — it resolves to this site, to the full record, the exhibits, the chain of custody, and the cross-references to other files. The video is the trailer; the archive is the work.
A note to skeptics, and to believers
If you arrived here asking "is the footage real," you have our answer, in writing, on the record: it is a reconstruction. If you stayed because the record is unsettling anyway — that is the craft doing its job. Both readings are welcome. Neither requires us to lie to you.