Last semester, a film student named Jacob submitted a video that made me so horrified that I had to call the dean at 1.00 AM. She advised me to turn the clip over to the police.
I teach filmmaking at an art college in Maryland. During the Covid lockdown in late 2020, my filmmaking course was online.
My usual first assignment would have the students go out and film any setting. With an online class, the students just film around their houses. Most students were happy to show off their gaming setup and action figures collection.
A student named Jacob put his camera on a tripod and filmed a dead oak tree in his backyard for about five minutes. I asked him to film some close-ups. He replied that he was too afraid.
For continuity editing, I normally have students film a chase sequence or a snowball fight. For online, students just filmed themselves cooking or playing with their pets. Jacob submitted a video of himself tying a noose. He then hung a mannequin on the same dead oak tree.
I started to get creeped out, but I had to put on a brave face. Horror and film students always go hand in hand. I don’t want to appear like I was easily spooked. I jokingly asked Jacob if he was no longer scared of getting close to the tree. He said he wanted to scare it. I asked who, and he replied the jester.
For the next assignment, Jacob submitted a clip of a man who I thought was Jacob put on a medieval jester costume and a smiling mask dancing around the dead oak tree. It was in black and white and was beyond disturbing. I’m used to horror movies being submitted to me by students. But those were gory and wild (and fun). This clip was just eerie. I asked him where he got the costume. He said that wasn’t him. I didn’t press further (usually I would ask, but with online class, I just assumed it was a family member).
After class, Jacob messaged me privately and asked if his videos of the tree made me sick. I was confused and thought he meant if I was sick of seeing the same tree over and over. Against my preference, I said no. If he found a muse which inspired him, then he should stick with it as long as he can. It felt like the right thing to say at the time.
I found out from other professors that Jacob began incorporating the dead oak tree into all that he did. In photography class, he retouched a photo of a car crash onto a photo of the dead oak tree. In digital illustration class, he drew the dead oak tree with a bunch of dead animals hanging from it.
Other students noticed Jacob’s obsession with the dead oak tree as well and started talking to me about it. An aspiring YouTuber named Matt asked me if he could submit a ‘Let’s Play’ for an assignment. I normally would say no, but because everybody was in home isolation at the time, I thought, why not? Just add a lot of narration. Matt then invited me to watch him play Pub-G live on Twitch. When I did, I was amused to see that Jacob was one of his team members.
I asked Matt after the stream how he knew Jacob. Matt said that Jacob was his neighbor only a few houses down the road from him. And to my surprise, they didn’t live that far from me either, only two blocks away. I even thought about walking over to see Jacob’s dead oak tree after the covid lockdown ended.
Matt told me what happened to Jacob back when they were in middle school. Jacob was home alone and a man knocked on the door, telling Jacob that he used to live in that house. The man asked his father to build him a treehouse, and just when the father was about to finish it, he fell from the tree and broke his neck.
It’s been over two decades since he moved away, and the man told Jacob he just wanted to see the oak tree again. Jacob didn’t let him inside but said that he can go around and look at it in the backyard. Jacob played video games until his parents came home, where they found the man in a full jester costume dancing around the tree.
The semester after, in early 2021, Jacob wasn’t taking any of my classes, but a cinematography professor video-call me about one of Jacob’s videos. The assignment was to light up a night scene, and Jacob just filmed a handheld POV shot of him circling around a tree with a flashlight. She told me that the tree in the video was not a tree in Jacob’s backyard. Jacob told her it was a tree in my backyard. I didn’t even end the video call, I just sprinted out onto my balcony to take a look at my tree, and then took a look at the footage again. It was. I was so frightened I could throw up.
I video-called Jacob immediately. I asked him to turn on his camera so we could talk face-to-face. Without sounding angry, I asked him why he was in my backyard. He explained that he cut down his dead oak tree last semester. The dead oak tree that was featured in his work after that had always been my tree. I just realized that none of his works that featured the tree after my class was a video. Jacob used the photo of my tree he found on my Facebook profile.
Jacob said that an entity wearing a jester costume had been sneaking into my backyard, slowly killing my tree. I didn’t notice my tree was dying because it was during the wintertime. Jacob was at my house that one time to try to capture the jester on camera. He did it once during the Mise-en-scène assignment, and that was when he knew it was not just him who saw it.
I was frustrated and scared, but I didn’t want to upset him. I told him that he should have told me if he was coming over.
A few days later, at about 11 PM, Matt was live-streaming and I was watching him on Twitch. I was shocked to see Jacob burst through Matt’s bedroom door. He was covered in cuts and bruises. Shards of glass were all over his body, and his shirt was soaked in blood. Fresh blood was still dripping down from his forehead. Matt fell out of his chair screaming at the top of his lungs, rightfully freaking out.
I’ll give Matt credit for not cursing and chasing Jacob out of his room. Matt asked Jacob what was wrong. Jacob looked into the camera and asked if I am watching. He told me to look in my backyard. The jester was there.
There were about 20 people in the chat, some of them were my students. I @ a dependable student in the chat, asking her to call 911, and told Matt to render basic first aid for Jacob.
I went outside to look, and I was shocked to see a car crash into my tree. I didn’t hear anything because I was wearing headphones, and apparently, none of my neighbors did. I couldn’t even see the car until I turned on my backyard light. But the crash was a big one. The car was totaled and there were shards of broken glass everywhere. Nothing was on fire. The car’s engine was not on.
Just when I was about to call the police, I got a notification that someone had uploaded a large file to our department’s file storage. I opened it, and it was a video clip said to be uploaded by Jacob’s username. It showed Jacob placing a camera on the backseat of his car. He turned from his driver’s seat and stared into the camera. My mouth was wide open when I saw another person in the passenger seat, wearing a jester costume. Without turning back around to face forward, Jacob, still looking into the camera, just stepped on the gas and crashed into my tree. As the crash happened, I could see the jester’s unmasked face in a split second. It was not human.
I decided to call the dean after I called the police. She was equally horrified after looking at the clip. She told me to save the clip in case the police need it.
She asked me who the man in the jester costume was. She probably didn’t pause to see his monstrous face. I told her that I couldn’t find anybody else at the crash. But, I had a gut feeling that Jacob saved me from the jester that night.