Strange posters started appearing around campus in October. Some of them showed chilling pictures of Temoc staring directly at the viewer with fright-inducing text overlaid on the mascot’s face. Others showed a class photo of 14 students surrounding the old Temoc suit’s glass prison with the word “MISSING” printed at the top. An observant viewer might notice the QR code on each poster and think to scan it — and end up on a hair-raising new website.
According to the website, students were asked to stay near the Temoc suit, located in the old Visitor’s Center, throughout October. One day, the security cameras cut to static, and 14 students were allegedly reported missing Oct. 14. Police allegedly began investigating. The students’ professor disappeared the next day. The UTD crime log conveniently reports none of this. Soon thereafter, the Temoc suit vanished as well, and, by Oct. 20, reports of creepy Slenderman-like drawings around campus started to surface. Each page reads like a missing persons article, stuffed with statements like “expect an increased security presence” and “we appreciate your understanding during these difficult times.” One of the pages depicts Temoc hacking the website and sending an ominous warning to all viewers.
It seems UTD’s infamous mascot has come to life.
Temoc — especially his older iteration — is notorious for giving students the creeps. His orange hair, huge eyes and ear-to-ear smile, initially meant to indicate joy, has ironically made the mascot a poster boy for uncanniness and unease. Capitalizing off this emotion, this semester’s class of students taking ATCM 4330, Culture Jamming, decided to run a social experiment and see if they could jumpstart their own local legend.
The orchestrator wasn’t the course’s instructor, professor xtine burrough, but a student: ATEC senior Katie Sowders. The experiment comes from the course’s final group project requiring students to hone in on the course topic of “culture jamming.” The students decided they wanted to create an ARG, or alternate reality game, where they invite unsuspecting students to explore the dramatic spree of missing people on campus and question if our mascot had really come to life.
“I think of it [culture jamming] as trying to shock the culture and keep them on their toes,” ATEC senior Wyatt Spicer, a student participating in the project, said.
Sowders, burrough and others drew inspiration from ARGs such as “Marble Hornets” and “Slenderman,” wanting it to be Halloween-themed and to help spur UTD to develop its own urban legends.
“I was saddened that my friends at other schools had all this superstition and talks of hauntings and cursed history,” Sowders said. “UT Dallas just has the scary mascot.”
Finding a white squirrel on UT Austin’s campus means good luck before a test. Texas Tech’s campus sits atop supposed miles of forbidden tunnels. One of SMU’s now-deceased presidents supposedly haunts a library. But UTD has no such thing, Sowders felt.
The students aimed to craft a story that didn’t involve insensitive topics such as real deaths or missing persons cases while still striking real fear. One topic quickly stood out for its personable connection to campus and oft-reported aura of terror: Temoc.
Spicer said that the legend of Temoc coming alive one day, kidnapping the students and professor and sending out a warning to all of UTD wasn’t meant to cause harm, but to trick people into thinking something happened. During the project’s rollout, 50 posters were placed throughout campus, some hand drawn and some computer-made, and the website is still being updated one month after the experiment’s start.
Both Sowders and Spicer describe the experiment as a success. Sowders said people have asked her about the strange posters around campus without knowing she was involved in their creation, meaning the project managed to impact UTD’s culture by sticking in students’ minds.
“It’s been a dream of mine,” Sowders said. “Even if it’s not as big as other urban legends, the fact that people are talking about it makes me happy.”
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