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Thoughtforms
The main antagonistic force of the series, thoughtforms are Greylock's take on tulpas: beings manifested from human consciousness and desires that take on a life of their own. In general
- Body Horror: The ones that have a corporeal form are an emaciated skeletal monstrosity and another being an abnormally tall, masked humanoid.
- Humanoid Abomination: All of the thoughtforms that have appeared in person have been humanoid figures with disturbing appearances, though tape 003 mentions that they can also look like animals or even abstract forms.
- Tulpa: Their introductory video begins by explaining the concept of tulpas, before proceeding to refer to them as thoughtforms for the rest of the series.
- Would Hurt a Child: They apparently have no qualms about who their victims are, up to and including children, with one confirmed to have killed a young girl, and another heavily implied.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: They essentially run on this trope, taken to a horrifying extreme.
White Masked Thoughtform
An aggressive thoughtform that appears throughout multiple videos, recognizable by its white mask.
- Big Bad: Heavily implied to be the main supernatural threat of the story, as it's present at many of the series' major events.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Chronologically, it first appears in the woods of Mount Greylock, stalking the miners there.
- Early-Bird Cameo: A glimpse of its white mask can be spotted in unexpected visitors, when the person filming is attacked.
- I Am a Humanitarian: Going by the sounds, it appears to eat its victims.
- Voice Changeling: Capable of repeating words it has already heard in the voice of the people who spoke them.
- White Mask of Doom: The only thing we really know about its appearance is that it's wearing a white mask with black veins.
Katie's "Imaginary Friend"
A thoughtform that invades Katie's house, presenting itself as her imaginary friend.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: Its brief appearance makes it appear to have glowing white eyes in a skull.
- Dem Bones: We don't get a good look at it but it looks rather skeletal.
- Faux Affably Evil: It pretends to befriend Katie before brutally murdering her.
- Imaginary Friend: Played with. The thoughtform claims to be one, but Katie is confused by its existence, claiming she's never had one.
Skeletal Thoughtform
A thoughtform that breaks into Charlotte's dog kennel.
- Dem Bones: Appears as a giant, bloody skeletal figure.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Subverted, none of the dogs in the kennel seem to react to its presence. In fact, when the thoughtform appears all the dogs stop barking and end up in a trance-like state.
- Running on All Fours: It does this while on the roof of the kennel.
- Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere: It has the ability to make the doors and windows of the kennel disappear.
SimioDyn & Unit 13
SimioDyn is giant tech company that is a household name in the America of The Greylock Tapes. Unit 13 is a secret US Government agency devoted to studying the supernatural. The two partnered to conduct research into thoughtforms, to disastrous results. In general
Percival C. Rothwell
The president of SimioDyn (at least he was in the sixties) who ardently supports the government's National Access Initiative.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Not only is he the president of a massive tech company planning to use the NAI program to spy on every American household for nefarious purposes but he's also the apparent one who ordered the assassination of JFK because the president refused to go along with it.
- Faux Affably Evil: His speech about the initiative makes it seem like he truly cares about making all Americans equal through accessibility. His hit on JFK quickly proves otherwise.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He makes a disparaging remark about Kennedy's Irish-American background in his rant about having his NAI impeded.
Alex Marsh
Tiffany Crisaldi's boyfriend, the father of her unborn child, and a member of Unit 13 tasked with using the thoughtform manifestor.
- Early-Bird Cameo: He's mentioned by name in the third video before making his voiced appearance in the tenth.
- Happily Married: Him and Tiffany seem to be a loving couple - until the loss of their child and Tiffany's subsequent death.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Despite being part of Unit 13, he seems unaware of what has happened to Tiffany.
- Token Good Teammate: Unlike all other members of the conspiracy shown so far, Alex doesn't seem to participate in any child experiments, delusions of godhood or luring unsuspecting civillians into Mt Greylock. The worst he may have done so far (maybe, possibly) is accidentally impregnate his girlfriend with a thoughtform rather than a real child.
Tiffany's Psychologist
Tiffany Crisaldi's psychologist when she was six years old, implied to have been working for Unit 13 for their thoughtform experiments on children.
- Psycho Psychologist: Uses an unsuspecting child to conduct strange hypnosis experiments.
Frank Porter
The supervisor of the excavation project on Mt. Greylock.
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Paul notes that even though every other telephone line to the outside world has been cut, he can still contact Frank, but it's unclear if this is some supernatural event that Frank's phone is somehow immune to, or if Frank had arranged this.
- It's unclear if he ever responds to any of Paul's voicemails from sleeping dogs, or if Paul is just talking into the ether.
- Faux Affably Evil: He hires Morelli to do excavation on Mt. Greylock, and tries to convince Arnold to return to the tunnels, all while seemingly well-aware of the negative effect the mountain has on the people around it.
- The Ghost: Though all of Paul's messages are addressed to him, and Arnold describes talking to him, Frank himself is never seen or heard from.
Morelli Construction and Mining Company
A construction and mining company hired to mine the area around Mt. Greylock to prepare it for some kind of construction project SimioDyn has planned. Paul Morelli
Head of Morelli Construction, whose text messages form the narrative of the sleeping dogs video.
- Break the Cutie: While he's not exactly cute, when he's first shown, his picture has him smiling and happy. He sounds cheerful and even a bit excited during his first phone call to Frank. As the video goes on and his experiences get worse and worse, it becomes a distressed frown.
- Father to His Men: Most of his messages to Frank are about the concern he has for his employees. Unfortunately, he fails to save any of them.
- Trauma Conga Line: The events at Mount Greylock are this for him, as he goes from finding a strange place beneath the mountain, through his men falling sick and something stalking them through the woods, to losing his mind to whatever dwells beneath the mountain.
- Uncertain Doom: It's unclear what happened to him; while he's never confirmed to have died on Mount Greylock, neither is he listed as one of the survivors in old odd ends.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: He dismisses the tunnel beneath Mount Greylock seemingly clearing itself out overnight, believing that Frank has another crew come in and do the job, despite there being no proof that anything like that happened.
Arnold Rivers
An anthropologist working for Morelli, and the only person to descend into Mount Greylock and escape with his mind and sanity intact (for a while, at least).
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Subverted. While he admits that the discoveries beneath Mount Greylock could shake humanity's understanding of its own history, and he feels the mountain's pull, he ultimately recognizes how dangerous returning would be, and refuses to come back to the mountain.
- Foil: To Paul Morelli. Both work for the same company, but while Paul is rugged and a physical worker, Arnold is a nerdy-looking scholar; Paul chooses to stay on the mountain while Arnold leaves the moment he gets the chance; Paul trusts Frank Porter and keeps calling him for help, while Arnold immediately refuses any offers from Frank; finally, Paul suffers Uncertain Doom, while Arnold's death is caught on camera.
- Idiot Ball: Ultimately, his cause of death; while hiding from the monster in the closet, he panics and starts begging whoever is outside to spare him, which leads the white-masked thoughtform right to him.
- Properly Paranoid: He does not trust SimioDyn, and records everything he knows believing that someone will come to kill him; he is proven right pretty much immediately.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: All but flees Mount Greylock after seeing what's beneath it, and refuses to return no matter what SimioDyn/Unit 13 is offering him.
- Sound-Only Death: We never get to see him die, but what we hear is unambiguous.
101 WRAV
Alan Rosenbaum
The TV station executive of the station Don Wright's news broadcast airs. Evidently being told to inform his viewers that the home invasions were done by an anti-American group that has been dealt with, he furiously demands the show's producers find Don.
Don Wright
The host of his own news broadcast, Don Wright Tonight, which covers the events of the home invasions and proclaiming everything to be "back to normal."
- Facial Horror: Whatever killed him has made his face resemble the distortion seen in the hijacking.
Liam Hollander
One of the producers of Don's show, and the one who finds his body.
Others
Dr. Albrecht
The doctor conducting Tiffany's autopsy. His unusual findings suggest Tiffany may not have committed suicide after losing her baby, as was previously implied.
- Herr Doktor: Speaks with a very pronounced German accent and is a medical examiner.
Jim Melgren
A retired police officer turned private investigator. He was contacted by Arnold Rivers about his findings inside the tunnels of Mt. Greylock, and is implied to be the one viewing the tapes.
Katie
A young girl who gets murdered by a thoughtform posing as her "imaginary friend", in 1994.
- Blind Without 'Em: Implied to have extremely poor eyesight, as she's unable to see the thoughtform in her room without glasses.
- Children Are Innocent: Doesn't even consider that someone may have broken into her house or that the "imaginary friend" may be hostile - or if she does, she gives no sign of fear or concern beyond wondering where her imaginary friend came from.
- Death of a Child: Brutally murdered by a thoughform.
- Unwitting Test Subject: She mentions going to a strange doctor's office when wondering how she got an imaginary friend, implying she was one of Unit 13's experimental subjects.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: She dies in the same scene she's introduced in.
Tiffany Crisaldi
A young woman who loses her baby mysteriously, when he disappears from her womb during a check-up. She is revealed to have been involved in creating thoughtforms for some time, albeit as an unwitting child experiment.
- Ambiguous Situation: Given the reveal of her being a subject of Unit 13 experiements, it's unclear if Max, her unborn child, was a real baby, a thoughtform created by her husband, or a thoughtform created by her.
- Came Back Wrong: At the end of messages from the dead, she's shown breaking out of her morgue drawer with a manic grin on her face.
- Driven to Suicide: It's initially implied that the loss of her child drove her to suicide, before messages from the dead suggests she was killed by an outside force.
- Heroic BSoD: After losing Max, Tiffany is described as no longer being able to work, instead staying at home all day; Alex phones her several times a day to make sure she's all right.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Her child disappears from her womb during a check-up.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Her psychologist experimented on her when she was a child, releasing some malevolent force out of her mind via hypnosis.
Charlotte Melgren
Jim Melgren's daughter, and owner of a dog kennel. When something causes the power at the kennel to go out, she investigates, which proves to be a very bad idea.
- Body Horror: While waiting for the dispatched police officer to arrive, she bluntly states that she feels like her skin is moving, right before she starts screaming. Later, after the North Adams Police Department sends someone to her house, the officer enters the basement and discovers what remains of her, horrifically fused together with several of her dogs as they devour her intestines. And the kicker? She's still alive, using her last vestiges of life to beg the police officer for help.
- Death by Irony: She said that she was deeply changed by the dogs under her care, so the thoughtform had her fused and mauled by the very same dogs.
