Headscratchers / Until Dawn

Due to the inevitable discussions of different parts of the game, All Spoilers Are Unmarked.

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Sam's clothes

• Why didn't Sam retrieve at least her leather jacket when she found the dummy? Wouldn’t it make a bit more sense than continuing to stroll around in the towel?
  • She wasn’t expecting to have to go very far - not knowing about anything else happening since she left Josh, Chris, and Ashley, she thought they were just in another room, waiting for her to appear. By the time that it sets in that this is more than just a prank, she’s downstairs and about to be ambushed.

Taking Josh away from the cabin

• Besides plot is there any reason to drag Josh away to the shed instead of just tying him up inside the house? A lot of problems would have been avoided that way. The Flamethrower guy wouldn't have died. Josh wouldn't have died/become a Wendigo, they could have gotten the cable car key off of him to get off the mountain, etc. Obviously Josh is unhinged, and Mike sincerely believes he was the one who killed Jess, but if they believe that tying him up in the shed will be enough to keep him contained until the morning, then tying him up to a pillar inside the house that's not exposed to the elements would be just as effective.And rather than just leaving Chris alone with Josh, all of them could keep an eye on him.
  • Most likely, they just didn't want to listen to/be around him. He did just put them through Hell, after all, and keeps justifying it by verbalizing the guilt that all of them feel about Hannah and Beth's disappearance. Even though what happened in the cabin is the one part of the story so far that he had nothing to do with, keep in mind, too, that most or all of them believe that he killed someone, possibly by ripping off her jaw. Considering how elaborate all of his actions were, they're probably frightened of him and cautious about having him inside of a building that he's rigged up with complicated traps and special effects.
  • And, at the point that they decide that they need to put Josh somewhere that is not with them, the gang believes that he alone is the cause of the weirdness on the mountain. It's only after Mike and Chris get back to the lodge that Emily arrives, revealing the existence of the wendigo that attacked her - as mentioned above, they're still of the belief at this point that he may have killed Jessica, to the point of doing so violently and brutally. Even if she survived to that point, Mike STILL saw her violently pulled through a window and dragged to the elevator shaft. Would you feel comfortable staying in a building with someone who you believed had done that, to the point of having to stay the night until the snowstorm dies off and it's safe to take the cable car back down?

The behavior of the creatures

• The Wendigo behavior is confusing. Sometimes, as the Stranger says, they seem to drag out the deaths, but with the exception of Jess every death of the main character by the Wendigo is instant. For some reason she drags Jess around screaming for like a quarter of a mile, and will THEN kill her instantly if Mike didn't choose the fastest options.
• Then there's Josh. Their behavior in regards to Josh is even more confusing. They spy him tied up in the shed, and since Josh doesn't have broken or ripped off arms they clearly had to have realized he was tied up and cut the ropes so they could drag him off. But despite clearly letting him live and leaving him be to go into his insane delusions she'll then suddenly have a change of heart when he goes into the water and decide then he needs to die unless he says her name, at which point she'll drag him off again.
  • The circumstances where Hannah attempts to take people alive might actually suggest why she doesn't do it more often. Jess was the first character she attacked, and she pretty obviously intended to follow the standard modus operandi and keep her alive for awhile (which, on top of fitting with the wendigos status as sadistic Always Chaotic Evil cannibals, also makes some sense in terms of food "storage"). Mike successfully chased her down, though. That, combined with the way that the wendigos hunt by staying behind cover until they get into a position where they can quickly lunge at their prey (or leading their prey to their cover), suggests that they're ambush predators who can't beat their prey at an endurance race. Given that Hannah will drop Jess, alive if Mike is fast enough, she probably really doesn't want people to catch up with her when she's exhausted, or to lead them to her lair. Knowing that there are multiple people who might pursue her to recover a live victim, it makes sense that Hannah would want to carry off only corpses that no one would want to risk their life to retrieve. Josh being the only exception makes sense, because he's bound to a post and isolated in a shed. Once she realizes that people will still search for him, she dispatches him just as quickly as the others.
• Hannah will drag Mike under water but then release him without hurting him, but later on at the cabin if she discovers him she'll give him a bad wound and just toss him around instead of the insta-deaths the others get. So a part of her still remembers Mike and the feelings she had for him but she won't recognize her own brother unless he says her name?
  • To be fair, Josh is yelling "You're not real!" very loudly at her in the cutscene because he thinks he's hallucinating again. It's entirely possible that she thought that Josh not recognizing her as his sister (which is pretty important, as you note) and loudly denying her existence is enough for her to decide "screw it, he's too annoying to keep around".
• The Wendigo sometimes seem very intelligent, othertimes they seem like just mindless beasts. They were smart enough to throw Jessica's phone through a window to give her an opportunity to grab her, waited for Matt and Emily to climb the radio tower before destroying the support beams, mimicked Jessica's voice to lure Ashley and/or Chris to open the trap door, recognized that Josh was tied up and cut the ropes without harming him, etc. But when you actually see them in person they just mindlessly charge at you. Granted, once you're within the immediate vicinity of a Wendigo you're likely a dead man walking anyway so they can dispense with the bait and move onto the hunt. Unless you have a weapon with significant knockback potential, or know to remain motionless, brute force is all that is really needed considering their strength and speed. But still, if they had applied the smarts they had used for bait to the hunt they could have had a better chance of surviving. Wendigo charges, gets shot and knocked back. "Hmm, let me try that exact move again." Gets knocked back again. "Third times the charm."
  • The Wendigos are intelligent, but also kind of animalistic. That probably goes a long way to explaining a lot of their behavior, but particularly this point. Once one fully takes over its new host, the main mental change seems to be an absolutely overwhelming, predatory hunger. Kind of like an exaggerated version of the prey drive felt by some carnivorous animals when they see something running away. They're still able to think at a reasonably high level, enough in Hannah's case that she's still able to write. It's just that all she's able to write about by the end is how hungry ahe is, and pretty soon after whatever motive she still has to describe her experience fades away. It makes sense that a creature like that could come up with detailed plans to lead someone into a trap, then completely forsake planning once it actually saw "food".

Ashley's hypocrisy

• I've seen people complain about Ashley locking Chris out of the cabin if he chooses to shoot her during the Sadistic Choice even when she basically tells him to do it, but it does make sense. She wanted to feel heroic for Chris sacrificing Josh to save her life and thus felt she should do the same when it came down to a choice between her and Chris. But even if she was being completely genuine then it does still bring up a disturbing truth: Chris would sacrifice other people to save her life, but not his own. He values his own life more than hers. When things settle down and she has time to reflect on this then I think it makes complete sense that she wouldn't let him in the cabin while he's being chased by a creature with murderous intent. He's already shown he's willing to throw her life away to save his own once. Whos's to say that when she opens the door he won't immediately grab her and throw her to the creature to distract it and then lock the door to ensure his own survival? Some people forget that you're watching these characters in a safe place, so it can be easy to roast them for their choices from behind a moitor, but Ashley had already been through a hell of a night prior to that moment and was probably running on pure adrenaline. Seemingly seeing one friend die, being stalked by a 'ghost,' chased and knocked out by a psycho twice(and possibly decked in the face), and then had the person she had a crush on decide to try and kill her. Her deciding not to risk being sacrificed again seems a perfectly logical decision under the circumstances.
  • Ashley's dialogue in the second trap scene is admittedly rather obtuse, so I'm not surprised that complaints about this scene are common. I do agree that with all the high-stress events Ashley goes through, her locking Chris out is plausible, if not entirely sympathetic.

Flamethrower Guy and Hannah

• Why didn't Flamethrower Guy find and help Hannah? It made no sense why he wouldn't at least check on their bodies. He either would have found that Hannah survived, or had left to go through the mines on a broken leg. He certainly would have gone after her and seemed to know the mines and terrain well. Hannah survived for 30 days before giving into her hunger and eating Beth. Certainly plenty of time for Flamethrower Guy to find her if he ever bothered looking.
  • He probably didn't have the run of the mountain just then, since it was crawling with rescue workers and police, and he'd have been within his rights to assume the girls are dead. You can find the base of the cliff they went over as Emily, and it's at least a thirty-meter straight drop onto naked stone, into Wendigo territory.
  • You think with his knowledge about how the Wendigo spirits enter those who commit cannibalism, he would make sure there weren't two dead bodies laying around to eat. And the risk that one of them survived to eat the other.
  • We see in the Stranger's conversations with Chris that he's an old, cynical man who's prone to assuming the worst, as when he says Josh is probably dead. Everything he knows about the Wendigo says that by the time he got to the area where they fell, both girls would be gnawed bones even if they'd survived the drop. He was barely willing to go out of his way to save Josh, who'd been alive as recently as ten minutes prior, so why would he cut through the Wendigo-infested sanitarium, or the tunnels underneath it, to the equally-infested mines, just to find two girls who are almost certainly dead?
  • The only free Wendigo at that point was Makkapitew, he had either killed or trapped the rest, and he killed Makkapitew as soon as Hannah and Beth fell. The sanatorium was infested (though they were all caged), but there were no Wendigos in the mines (until Hannah turned).
  • If one assumes that all of the Wendigos that are imprisoned in the cellblock when Mike visits it in 2015 were imprisoned there before February of 2014, there were at least six more on the prowl, as there were 12 miners who "survived" the collapse in 1952, and at least one of them lives in the mines, as that's the one that chases Matt and Jessica.
  • Doesn't the Stranger's journal mention that he's killed six Wendigos? If so, then that should mean that there were no Wendigos in the mines during that time. Of course, if he wrote that entry after killing the Makkapitew, and counted its death as one of the six, then that would leave at least one Wendigo unaccounted for (assuming the Makkapitew was never held in the Sanatorium, which judging by its Native garb, and the Events of the Past where his grandfather was hunting it, is a likely possibility).
  • That's a fair point. I'd forgotten about his mentioning that he'd killed enough of them to figure out that killing them isn't the best plan. Still, there are at least three in the sanitarium when Mike goes through, one in the mines to pursue Mike and Jessica, and six or so under lock and key in 2015, plus Hannahpitew... which means, if he killed more than two over the course of writing his journal, there might have been Wendigo on the mountain who were created from sources besides the miners, or there are Wendigo somewhere else.
  • Simplest answer: Dude probably just assumed that Hannah and Beth died from the fall. The "Events of the Past" segment does mention that the Flamethrower Guy killed Makkapitew not just because it was his job, but because it was him avenging Hannah and Beth for their deaths.
  • I can understand him assuming Hannah died, but why not call the police to tell them where Beth and Hannah fell so the cops could find the bodies and give the families proper closure? The entire incident would have been avoided (as well as his own death) if he had simply made an anonymous phone call.
  • I think it's safe to assume that Flamethrower Guy simply made no calls about the girls because of the Wendigos being on the Mountain. He knew what was at risk (Flamethrower Guy being found, the Wendigos being found, more fatalities). He knew what he was doing, assumed the twins dead, and tried to control the situation as much as he possibly could. And Hannah was the ONLY Wendigo chasing the teens until Mike blows up the Sanatorium. Even then, the only Wendigos that seemingly make it out (as you see many spirits escaping after the explosion, one up close), don't appear until in the Lodge "showdown". Hanndigo is the only on that can kill the all of the teens (being why you can always see the butterfly in every kill).

The Plan

• Josh's entire plan to make his friends suffer really only directly affected Samantha, Chris, and Ashley. Sam, who was Hannah's best friend, tried to stop the prank against her, and the girl Josh leaned on for emotional support afterwards. Chris, who was Josh's best friend, and had nothing to do with the prank. Ashley was part of the prank, but was not a major player. Meanwhile, he didn't seem to have anything planned for Mike, Jessica, Emily, and Matt. Mike was the focus of the prank against Hannah. Jessica had thought it up. Emily wanted back at Hannah for liking Mike. Matt filmed it. But their misfortunes were all caused by the Wendigo and not directly by Josh.
  • I think this was in part done to give Hannah some revenge. Being she's the only Wendigo that kills the teens.
  • Best I can come up with is that Josh had something planned for Emily, Mike, Jessica, and Matt. It's just that the Wendigo had other ideas.
  • It could be argued that Josh targets Chris and Sam cause they are the people closest to him (Chris being his best friend and Sam his crush). His "pranks" could then be interpreted as a cry for help rather than to serve as revenge
  • At the beginning Josh said that Chris and Ash needed a "Traumatic Event to bond over". I think that in his own twisted way he was trying to be Chris's wingman. In some playthroughs it even worked.
  • Aside from that, it could also have been a matter of their betrayal cutting him deepest, in a "I'd expect that from Mike, but you?!" mentality.
  • Short answer: Logic wasn't really clicking with him at the time. Long answer: Chris and Sam wouldn't have been shown in Matt's recording of the prank because they weren't there, but possibly Josh believed that they were also involved since everyone else was and that they had simply been off-screen and silent in the video. Even if the group told him and the police the truth about who was involved in the prank (some of them would have at least considered lying because that's not something anyone would want to admit), his mental illness seemed severe enough that delusions and paranoia could cause him to believe that they were equally guilty, and he targeted them because they were the closest to him out of the group and he probably would've wanted to punish them most for the "betrayal". But given Josh's line about wanting to spend "quality time with each and every one of you," it seems like that as the second troper suggested, he meant to "prank" everyone and was getting the people least involved done first. (Even if he knew Chris and Sam were innocent, he might have been targeting Ashley directly in his pranks, with Chris suffering with her because Josh did, in his own messed-up way, intend for them to finally be pushed together under the extreme circumstances and with Sam unfortunately just getting caught up in it.) After that, Emily and Matt would've probably been next on the chopping block, with Jessica and Mike — the ones most involved — last as the big finale. (Imagine the "pranks" he would've cooked up for them...) As Josh came clean after the second trap, he probably either expected Ashley, Chris, and Sam to laugh it off, forgive him, and possibly even help him prank the others, or — as he showed no problem revealing everything with Mike in the room, in this scenario one of his previously intended future targets — he had simply lost even more of his remaining mental stability and ended up going off the rails on his own plan and ruining it because he wasn't thinking straight.
    • Just a little piece of information that sort of makes this explanation somewhat confusing. While playing as Ashley following Chris to find Sam, you can enter a room where you can play a video of the prank on Hannah. In this video it shows Sam telling the others it wasn't a good idea.
  • Well, it is mentioned on the Fridge page that Josh may have been planning a prank for Mike and Jess at the cabin, considering the picture of Hannah was the only photo there, so he may have planning to get around to them, but Hanndigo had other ideas.
  • Another popular interpretation is that Josh, in his skewed mental state, wanted to make Chris and Sam the heroes of all of it, believing that he would be giving them all the glory when the video went viral. As for Ashley, as said earlier, he could have been trying to be Chris' wingman in his own twisted way. Considering his father was a filmmaker, and he probably grew up around movie sets, learning about what goes into making successful horror films, it would make sense that he'd put his closet friends center-stage, while simultaneously punishing them for the exact thing he's angry at himself for: not doing anything to stop the prank.
  • Notice that Josh doesn't actually harm Sam; he'd know what she's allergic too (since she mentions they got close after his sisters' deaths - and the fact that they've been friends for at least a year and she'd probably turn down any food/object she is allergic too) so wouldn't hurt her with the needle. Notice, all that Josh does after he catches her is lock her up — he doesn't actually lay a hand on her. It could be his way of saying "I need you out of the way, but don't want to hurt you" - especially as she was the only other person (apart from Beth... who is dead) that tries to stop the prank, she's just too late to do so. As for Chris - well, the pranks all seem set up for Ashley, and Chris just seems to get swept along to get the two together.
  • Josh has a really low romance stat, skewed mental state, and deep familiarity with horror movies. Like the above, Chris and Ashley scenarios are stated to be attempts to force them into each other's arms using terrifying events since they're both too meek to make the first move. Josh probably wants to be romantic with Sam too since they have similar chemistry but he's still using the horror movie themes and takes the role of the psycho stalker instead of a matchmaker. Short version, Josh is REALLY bad at dating.
  • Assuming Josh was the one who left the Kama Sutra in the cabin for Mike and Jess to find (and considering he was the one who suggested they go there in the first place), he might have been planning to film them having sex, as revenge for filming Hannah taking her shirt off for Mike.
  • Maybe he resents them all for not going after Beth and Hannah.
  • Someone has already made a very good justification for this is Fridge. Josh clearly struggles with not being able to have done anything for either sister due to being passed out drunk during the incident. You could even say that he hates himself to some very great degree. So as it was already stated, it's very likely he's projecting his self-loathing from not being able to stop what transpired with Hannah and Beth onto Chris and Sam since they ultimately couldn't prevent it either. I think Hannah may have ruined somewhat of anything Josh had planned for the rest of them. As it does seem he had something planned with separating them.
    • Dr. Hill even asks Josh whether it's worse to cause the events that lead to someone's death or to allow someone to die through inaction. It's clearly a question he's been struggling with and he seems to lean more towards the latter, considering his targets and his own self-loathing.
  • None of you have assumed that maybe Chris is in on the plan and he got Josh hammered out of his head so that he couldn't stop the prank from occurring, which is why he goes after Chris. Chris got him drunk, so he couldn't stop his sister's from dying...
    • True, we haven't. But, I believe that's because Chris never came across as that type of guy. And you can even get hints that he was in no way involved when, if Ashley speaks negatively or with no remorse about the prank, Chris's relationship bar with Ashley goes down. When they find the room in the basement that has the prank footage play, Chris even comments to Ashley about her being such a willing participant. More or less disgusted by her decision to take part. Not really the attitude of someone that took part as well.

Setting up the plan

• Josh would have had to spend a considerable amount of time setting up the horror show for his friends, coming to and from the Blackwood Lodge on his own. He did all of this on his own. How was he never caught by the Wendigos during this time?
  • The Wendigos only hunt during the night, many of them have been captured by the Stranger, and the Stranger has been making a point of keeping an eye on the Washingtons' house, since it's the only place left on the mountain where people will actually show up on a given day. If Josh wasn't in the habit of regularly hanging around outside the house after nightfall, he'd have been fine, especially considering how far north the mountain is. In the summer, you wouldn't see sundown until, what, close to midnight?
    • Also Hannah/Makkapitew is in charge, maybe some lingering remnant (like the one that keeps her from killing Josh if he calls her name) made her keep the Wedigos from attacking him, or at least avoid the place she was humiliated so badly.
  • Hanndigo was the only Wendigo roaming freely on the mountain. It's safe to say that had some reason into why Josh was never attacked, considering she probably stayed in the mines for the majority of her first year. Any other time she was out the Stranger was on on her ass trying to capture her.

Sam and Josh

• At the end of the game, should Sam survive, she mentions that she felt she had a connection with Josh. My question is, is Sam referring to fact that they were close friends, or did she have a thing for Josh? Or is she just saying that they were close because she was friends with Hannah and Beth?
  • Given their banter, my best guess is that it's intentionally open to interpretation.
  • Dr. Hill groups all the eight characters together in pairs to ask which one you like more. Everyone is paired with their significant other. At least in Josh's mind, he is paired with Sam.
  • That's...uh... oddly sweet?
  • There is a theory that Sam came to the lodge as much to hook up with Josh as she did to honor Hannah and Beth. You can see this in how flirty their dialogue is. Sam had spent a lot of time with Josh and they seemed to bond. Just like with Chris and Ashley, it felt like it was up to Josh to make the move and Sam was waiting for it. The problem of course was that Josh was sick, and past the point of any relationship. So he was only sending false signals to Sam. That is why Sam acts and sounds so hurt about Josh when she says she thought they made a connection. This was someone she might have been falling for and thought was better.
  • Well, in fairness, they may not have been entirely false; IIRC when you take control of Josh later in the game, his feelings towards Sam under the status section indicates that he still feels pretty good towards her. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the documents in the basement indicate that when Josh got out of the hospital in May of 2014, he was in good mental health- so there's a strong possibility that he was interacting with Sam normally at the time. There's some ambiguity in this because I think Josh's perception of reality is pretty warped in the game: I think, like someone else on here mentioned, that he was messed up enough that he thought his friends wouldn't take the prank as seriously as they did, that they might even laugh it off. It's clear that he was angry at everyone (including Sam) but how much of that was him genuinely wanting and intending to hurt them, versus him thinking it was all a game (while hurting them in the process) is difficult to tell.
  • He mentions laughing it off in relation to how Hannah and Beth can't do the same. You definitely can interpret it as in his mind he's only thinking about the night in comparison to his sisters dying so the sole fact that no one was supposed to get physically injured is enough for him to consider everything to be a big game or a proper apology and assuming everyone else would eventually think the same once they know they're safe.
  • You're actually given an option at some point within the "therapy sessions" to say "it's just a game" so you could assume Sam and Josh would have headed towards a romantic direction despite the situation. I just don't think it ever registered with him that he could possibly hurt any of his friends. Josh at least found Sam attractive and had a bit of crush on her. That much is obvious with the way they interacted with and teased each other. I think the reason he never acted on those feelings, besides his mental instability, was because his focus was on setting everything into motion for the anniversary prank.

Searching for the key

• Later in the game (Chapter 7 I believe) the survivors say they need to find Josh because he has the key to the cable-cars and put their lives at risk even though they know that Emily/Matt/both called the rangers to come rescue them in the morning, that wendigos only hunt at night and that there are only three hours until morning, why don't they just stay put in the "safe room" in the cabin until morning when the wendigos stop hunting, the cavalry will arrive and they will be relatively safe? Why do they have to find the key to cable-cars and put their lives at risk?
  • Mike goes it alone to find the cable car keys, the rest of the group are initially content to stay in the room until Ashley reads the Wendigo journal, prompting Sam to go after him. Purely from a game-design point of view, it's also possible for Emily to die before reaching the lodge, meaning on some player's paths none of them would know help had been called, and the Stranger only told Chris that the wendigos hunt only at night, so if he dies then the others would not know that it would be safe to stay hidden until the sun came out.
  • If Emily makes it into the safe room, she isn't wholly sure that they're going to be rescued (her line here is something like "Sure, I guess") and one way or another, Mike's not going to want to stay in that room with her. He'd rather do something than nothing, so he decides to go after Josh for the cable-car escape plan. Sam also realizes upon reading the Stranger's journal that they aren't safe; the journal specifically mentions that killing the Wendigo is a bad plan and that being in a building is paradoxically less safe, because you're outside the protection of the Stranger's improvised wards.
  • I thought they left to warn Mike about the fact that there was more than one Wendigo. Besides, the Stranger was the one who effectively told them to get to the basement, so he would've thought they'd be safe there. Actually, come to think of it, how did the Stranger's improvised wards work, exactly?
  • As shown in the final chapter, the Wendigos still managed to enter the lodge anyway, so staying put might've been a bad idea. Just imagine if the Wendigos broke in earlier, and found any of the survivors... yeah.
  • The reason Mike leaves to get the key, is because he doesn't believe them to be safe anywhere but off the mountain. And with not knowing for sure anyone is actually coming or when, and their only hope of help fending the Wendigos off dead, he took action for himself to get whomever still alive to safety. It turns out they'd would have been safe all along had they stayed put. If Emily is shot by Mike in the "safe room" her body is never disturbed, as you don't see her down in Hanndigo's lair. The Wendigos would have possibly never came to the Lodge had the teens not led them there.

Police and evidence

• How did the police miss so much easily-found evidence and clues during their search for Hannah and Beth, and apparently not even look over the nearby sanatorium or the mines who aren't exactly a secret or desolate and the first place where they'd logically search.
  • No one except Flamethrower Guy knew exactly where they fell, thus it's entirely possible they searched in the wrong area first. If we continue along that theory, then additional factors like potential storms and whatnot could have covered up any evidence that wouldn't be easily seen until it thawed out. Bear in mind, Hannah became a wendigo within 3-4 weeks. So couple all the above together and it's not too much of a stretch to say they just missed her. As for Beth's remains, well, not too many people would think much of a few shattered bones unless they knew the details. Course, the likely answer is the writers just didn't think about it.
  • There's a snowstorm the night of Beth and Hannah's disappearance, which would've covered up many of the signs of their passage, so that's out. The top of the mountain is an isolated location that's only accessible by helicopter or cable car, which limits the resources they can bring to bear. Finally, the tunnels are old, unstable, cover half the mountaintop, and quietly inhabited by superhuman, cannibalistic murderers. It's entirely possible that a couple of rescue personnel never came back from the tunnels under the mountain, and even in real life, a full-scale search and rescue effort will pull back if they think they're in danger. It also takes a lot of effort for Mike and Sam to make it into the flooded underground cavern where Hannah spent the last month of her life, so Hannah might have accidentally confounded the rescue attempts by barricading herself inside one of the least accessible parts of the tunnel complex.
  • Following the death of the Alpha wendigo the same night as the disappearance of the twins, it's very likely there wasn't any wendigo roaming freely in the mountain until Hannah's transformation. They were either dead or locked up beneath the sanatorium. It actually makes more sense. You'd think people would realize there really was a problem with this mountain if whole teams of rescuers began to disappear in the mine without any proof of a cave in. Not really excusable however is the fact that the rescue team never found anything weird in the sanatorium where there was lot of weird to be found.
  • The remoteness of the region and inclement weather would limit all their search options considerably, and the radio broadcast Sam is listening to in the introduction says the rescue teams did check the sanitarium. All we know is that whatever they did do, and there was apparently a significant search effort, they didn't go deep enough into the mines to find Beth or Hannah and they didn't find Beth's phone, which both Emily and Matt comment on as strange. Anything after that's conjecture, and we're already talking about a cursed mountain with deathless, supernatural inhabitants, so it's easy to figure something went wrong.
  • As a side note, the interview with the sheriff in the introduction sounds a little stranger and more evasive once you've cleared the game. One wonders if she, and by extension all local services, know better than to push too deeply into Blackwood.
  • The Sanatorium was checked but it was also a condemned building, so I doubt they made much effort there. It possibly doesn't fit with what the teens described as happening and quiet possibly wasn't even in the direction that Hannah and Beth ran. We see with Emily and Matt that the two places weren't in the same direction. The climate of the area is another factor. Lastly, on the board in the Sanatorium, there's a news clipping about a man (Flamethrower Guy's grandfather) dying due to an attack of something like a Bigfoot. Flamethrower Guy writes "LIARS!" on the same news clipping. This could very well indicate that he was suspicious or knew of how much they actually knew about the death of his grandfather or more so what caused it. Which is entirely possible due to the reporter caught snooping around when the miners were rescued in the 50's. So this could explain why they didn't thoroughly search for the Twins.
• Why would they interview Jess? She's obviously suffering from a head wound and/or blood loss (she looks so woozy and her eyes are so unfocused) so anything she would've said probably couldn't be used as evidence in court. Why not just take her to the hospital?
  • They probably gave her some treatment to stop the bleeding. And what she has to say might help in one case, if Ash chose to ignore the wendigo imitating her. If Ashley was freaking out over thinking she left Jess to die, at least the cops can reassure her.
  • She could have already received some treatment as stated above. Jess could have insisted to do her interview right then, As well, multiple people were either dead or missing and possibly presumed dead, so it was time sensitive. She did spend the most time in the mines unaccounted for so they could've being holding her because she was a suspect.
• Maybe they didn't miss the gravestones but assumed "oh, these are some of the miners who died after being rescued/bodies retrieved from the mines", especially if it was only local gossip from 60 years prior, probably not in their lifetimes. Or, on another note, the pass card to get into the main part of the Sanatorium is still in one of the empty morgue ovens because Mike finds it... implying that the police couldn't find it and were only able to investigate the beginning part of the Sanatorium. After all, if they did get deeper in, they would have found the Stranger's hideout and the police woman says his whereabouts are "unknown"... and his whereabouts would be known if they'd gotten in to the Sanatorium.
• So basically the 'significant search effort' knew there were two missing girls on a mountain during a snowstorm and failed to efficiently search the 2-3 locations they could've been seeking shelter in. They would've looked in the day by the way. There would've been helicopters and so on. There would've been groups of people in lines going through the forest. People investigating the lodge and trying to track them. The phone GPS checked. All the teens would've been interviewed and not only did they not find them, they didn't even find the stranger that lives in the mountain or any of the wendigo? I find that pretty hard to believe.
  • As mentioned above, a real rescue team will recall their rescue efforts if they feel that their lives are at risk, and since the Sanatorium and Mines are effectively deathtraps, they likely wouldn't get very far. Plus, the locals do seem to have some knowledge of the Wendigos (though whether they genuinely know about them and are covering it up, or if it's just superstitious paranoia is up for debate), and may have limited their search efforts as a result.
• As others have mentioned, real search and rescue teams will step back if they're at risk, and there's a lot of risk on Blackwood Mountain - the sanitorium is a death trap that was shut down quickly after the entire staff was murdered, much of the mountain is underlain by a structurally unsound mine that could very cause a cave-in, and so forth. It's a dangerous place to search, although it sounds like the disappearances did draw some significant media attention. It doesn't seem likely that the police knew anything about the Wendigos or the mountain other than that it had a reputation for being dangerous, since at the very end of the "Josh Lives" ending they send at least two police officers down into the mine unwittingly to their deaths.

Wendigo habitats

• The Wendigos are fleshless spirits that can inhabit those who cannibalize human flesh... so why aren't they a scourge in more temperate, or even tropical climates? Why are they confined to the far north? Various islander cultures practiced cannibalism in their early history, and the Aztecs even systemized it, but there is nothing in their mythology that resembles the wendigos seen either in myth or in the game.
  • Maybe it's like Smithe, where there are multiple pantheons of gods, spirits and legends inhabiting various part of the world. Maybe the wendigos are a specifically North American problem, and there is other similar yet different beings all over the world, like, say, the chupacabra further south, the Beast of Gevaudan in Europe, or the Baba Yaga in Russia.
  • The Wendigos are a specific myth of the northern American tribes like the Algonquin, and have strong thematic associations with winter, northern climates, and cold. The ones in Until Dawn are still lurking in the place where they were created 60 years later, which suggests these particular spins on the legend are extremely territorial, and the legends of the mountain suggest that the spirits themselves may be bound to it.
  • I'm no anthropologist, but the Wendigo legend presented in the game—that people who resort to cannibalism become dangerous monsters—seems like a story that would be told to deter people from eating each other during periods of starvation. Perhaps the islanders and the Aztecs had no such myth because cannibalism was not taboo to them and not something they felt they needed to discourage.
  • The practice of cannibalism in different cultures might mean that Wendigo do not exist in that part of the world. Otherwise that particular culture would have been totally overrun. For example, the Aztecs practiced cannibalism. This means there are no Wendigo spirits in Aztec territory (modern Mexico). The same with other cannibal cultures.
  • It is mentioned that the Wendigos' stick to the mountain, perhaps they are bound there, perhaps at one time or another Wendigos' roamed anywhere they wanted but someone or something trapped them in the mountain, it would fit with the common myth in some Native American stories that they tended to trap demons and evil spirits in such places like mountains or those rock pillars, Blackwood might have been one of those places, and the miners accidentally broke the seal when they dug into the mountain, but the seal keeping them on the mountain still isn't broken.

Kill wendigos

• According to the game, killing a Wendigo will release its soul to possess someone else, so killing them isn't the best solution. It's an awesome detail that adds a new layer of desperation to the game. The problem with this is that cannibalism has become an extreme rarity in modern times. The Wendigo myths first gained popularity among Native American cultures, who lived in a pre-industrial society in a region where food was inherently scarce. Starvation and famine were constant, dire threats and cannibalism was a valid, if distasteful, way of coping with it. Today, we produce far more food than we even know what to do with, and even isolated northern Canadian and Alaskan towns are in little danger of famine. With instances like Hannah's being more of a freak accident than a common occurrence, there are probably far more wendigo souls than there are bodies to possess. Wouldn't it be better to destroy the few bodies they do manage to claim (as there are hundreds more queuing up for a body anyway) or is cannibalism a more common occurrence than I realize?
  • If the spirit's already inhabiting a body, it's effectively trapped in a nearly invincible, deathless prison. If it's not, then it's a potential hazard that can pop up at any time. It's choosing a known situation over a potentially unknown one, and "rarely happens" isn't "never happens."
  • The Stranger's diary and the video after finding all the totems leave the implication that only a finite number of Wendigos can be active at one time. Also, they are Perpetual-Motion Monster, so if you manage to capture every single one and contain them, it won't matter if someone tries cannibalism because no Wendigo spirit will be available to transform. Note that Wendigo!Hannah is notably bigger, more vicious and powerful than the others, despite being the youngest, suggesting she was possessed by the spirit of the Alpha Wendigo the stranger killed just after Beth and Hannah fall to their apparent death.
  • A good point, but does the game ever make it clear exactly how many Wendigo spirits there are? There could be three... or there could be hundreds.
  • Adding to that, what would happened once the stranger finally died of old age, did he had a successor in mind? Sooner or later those Wendigos beneath the sanatorium are getting free, the metal on their cages and shackles won't last for eternity, the building itself will crumble and the Wendigos will be free. Considering everything, exterminating the Wendigos might indeed be a better long term solution, though there is simply no definitive way to absolutely get rid of them.
  • The Stranger's diary notes that once a person is possessed the Wendigo spirit makes them want to kill and eat others. It's not made clear whether that occurs before or after they initially feed. It's possible that once possessed it takes a herculean effort to avoid eating the people around you in an effort to avoid the full blown change.
  • It's actually made very clear but can be easily missed. The Spirit possesses its inhabitant first. The power the spirit has over the person causes them to crave human flesh, even if only to cause the transformation.
  • Hannah's diary suggests it happens after you resort to cannibalism, after all, it took a full month for the Wendigo possessing her to finally begin the transformation and make her scribble stuff like HUNGER!! on the diary.
  • Not necessarily. Hannah could've fought the hunger for that long. I think her scribbling "HUNGER!" and the other intelligible scribbles are more indicative that she was already possessed. Then she resorted to the cannibalism after possession which then started her transformation. Even after her transformation, she never eats (that we see) human flesh again. She instead keeps all her "friends" bodies as if they are trophies to her or valuable possessions even.
  • In most versions of the mythology, the spirit can either possess someone if they eat human flesh, or if they hear the Wendigo's cry on the north wind, in which case they gain a hunger for human flesh.
  • The previous point I think is an important one. The Wendigo spirits seem to have the ability to influence vulnerable humans into resorting to cannibalism, at which point their victim is free for possession. Just look at Hannah's diary. Since Wendigos don't appear to be able to write, it was obviously written while she was still human. Also look at how quickly Josh was possessed in his ending. In his mental state he would have been easy to manipulate. If a spirit without a host has this ability, that adds a whole new level of danger to letting a spirit go free.
  • If we look at the case of the miners, their transformation seemed highly subdued, if not even halted. Since only twelve out of thirty miners were rescued, they had a LOT of food to subsist on before being rescued, which could explain why they seemed so 'normal.' It wasn't until after they went without flesh to eat that they began to transform. The files found in the sanatorium state that the miners seemed completely healthy after being rescued, and then their condition started to change. Perhaps the transformation begins as a manifestation of the craving- after Hannah eats, she forces herself not to eat more. The miners had plenty to eat, so they didn't transform until after being rescued.

Stranger vs wendigo

• Everything-but-fireproof skin, can climb any surface, effective night vision, can lift upward to 7251lbs... Holy shit, the stranger had beyond balls of steel to go after those thing alone. For the record, and for those users of the metric system, wendigos can apparently bench press two cars, more than three tons of weight. I'm not even going to ask how a sanatorium had the equipment to calculate that level of strength, but how exactly do you trap and contain those things without access to adamantium cages and the teams to put them into position. The stranger was beyond badass, even the Predator would shit his pants at the idea of hunting a wendigo, let alone trap it alive.
  • They're also really dumb, you can turn invisible to them by standing still, and they tend to hunt solo. It doesn't mean the Stranger isn't a badass, but they have clear weaknesses that a clever hunter could easily exploit. They also aren't that strong; one of them is in the sanitarium basement being held back by not much more than a steel chain.
  • The note reads "725lbs" not "7251 lbs". The lowercase "l" looks a lot like a 1. I made that mistake, too, but thought "That can't be right," and double checked. It's definitely an "l". Otherwise it says "7251bs", and I don't know what unit of measure a "bs" is. 725 pounds is still a lot, but a way more reasonable than seven thousand pounds. It's also odd that they would say "upwards of" and then a VERY precise number. 725 is a much more generic number that fits with "upwards of".
  • They probably only had the ability to test up to 725 pounds using what they had available and found that the infected workers could lift that and not be at their limit. So "upwards of 725lbs" meaning "we tested with 725 pounds of stuff and it looked like it could take more."
  • Exactly. So we only have the measurement of 725 lb, not over 7000 lb. 7000 lb should be enough to break through the cages, chains, and such. 700 lb isn't. So adamantium cages aren't needed. Along with foreknowledge of their fear of fire (thanks to his father), and their vision being limited to movement, the stranger isn't quite as superhumanly badass as the OP makes him out to be. Just a Badass Normal. Make no mistake, he's still badass, just not a "fighting people who can hurl cars" badass.

Stranger's bait

• I wonder who the dead guys that the Stranger was using as Wendigo bait were. Unlucky hunters?
  • Considering how close to the morgue that trap was, it could have been from a dead worker.
  • Especially, if one finds the doctors office as Mike, a note can be found that says something along the lines of "They are dying out there", meaning that the sanatorium had been COVERED in corpses at one point of all the patients, nurses, doctors and whatnot. Those plus whatever corpses might have been in the morgue before the outbreak might have been plenty enough to lure the Wendigo into the cages and keep those few that were outside busy, especially if The Stranger kept the bodies cold and thus more or less preserved.

Seance

• In the scene with the seance, for a brief moment there is a humanoid (not Wendigo-like at all) figure standing between Ashley and Chris in the background, accompanied by a scare chord. But Josh is sitting there at the table with them at the time. Who the heck was that? It looks feminine, implying that it's the ghost of the sister you're contacting, but...
  • If Sam doesn't get caught she comes across some timers hooked up to batteries with names like "TV" and "lights" taped on them, showing how Josh could be present and have the other things go on at the same time. The figure is just another one of those effects like the others seen by Ashley and Chris to unnerve them, although neither saw it during the séance.
  • It's the same ghost puppet that Josh used to scare Chris and Ashley in the basement.

Hunting wendigos

• Predators have a tendency to target the weakest and least dangerous prey. Heck, even lions single out the sickest member of a herd whenever they have a chance. Why then do the Wendigos insist on hunting down the humans who (potentially) thwart them time and again throughout the night? There are entire herds of deer wandering around, and any one of them would provide far more food than a measly human. In particular, all the grief the stranger caused them for the last sixty years should have ingrained in their minds that Humans=Fire/Cages/Traps/Misc._nasty_stuff. If anything, their past experiences should have taught them to avoid humanity like the plague.
  • They're possessed by evil spirits that feed on cannibalism. It isn't a natural animal that learns to avoid hard prey, it's a supernatural demon that craves human flesh. The only animals we see it kill are a deer (which is done right in front of Mike and Jess, and was left alive, so it could have been meant as bait) and a wolf, which probably attacked it. Neither are eaten, simply torn apart. I would suppose that these evil spirits and their hosts don't even need to eat anymore, they just have an overwhelming desire to consume human flesh. Humans may be hard prey, but they are the only prey, and when they are in the area so rarely, you have to make do. Even natural predators will go for healthy prey when they have no other option.
    • If you notice, Hannah as a Wendigo never actually eats humane flesh after Beth. So the deer was likely used as bait for a scare tactic as well as for her to eat if she needed. I believe Hannah fought the craving after her initial cannibalistic feeding.
  • Upon replaying the game, The Wendigos are indeed following the behavior of predators hunting hard prey. If they had swarmed the lodge at the very beginning of the game, it would have all been over in minutes. Case in point, neither Mike nor Jess had the means to effectively fight them in the cabin where they were ambushed, yet it waited to strike until their backs were turned, fled immediately afterward, and may even be driven off. If that Wendigo had pushed it's attack, those two would have been dead meat. It's probable that the humans only stand a chance at all because the Wendigos were being overly cautious.
    • Well, the stranger does say that the Wendigo stalks its prey long before it attacks. And with Hannah being the ONLY Wendigo hunting them up until the showdown in the Lodge, I think it's fine to assume the circumstances were vastly different with her in some degree. The Miner Wendigos attack immediately upon sight of the teens. But, that could be due to the period of time it went without human flesh.
  • It's also possible that the Wendigos are not entirely motivated by hunger. The way they preform some of their kills suggest that they don't just want to eat the characters, but actively despise them. Considering how they have suffered for decades at the stranger's hands, they would naturally view any human as a threat that needs to be dealt with ASAP. They DO associate humans with fire, pain, and imprisonment... and they are pissed.
  • It is heavily implied that the wendigo kills we see outside of the after the majority of the wendigos' escaping the sanitorium, are all Hannah!Wendigo, who has a good reason to be pissed at the group, note that the Stranger said they take a long time to kill people prefering living flesh, but all the wendigo kills are extremely quick and brutal, cruel mercy from a formerly human friend, as well as revenge?

Cannibal possession

• Can a Wendigo spirit possess a person if they were already a cannibal? Among the cultures of the Algonquian peoples where the legend originated, cannibalism is regarded as the ultimate taboo. But there are cultures where the partaking of human flesh isn't just normal, but lauded. So if a person from that culture (or maybe just an escaped cannibalistic serial killer from prison) were to find himself in the snowy mountains inhabited by Wendigo spirits, will they still succumb to the their influence? In addition, if two people found themselves stuck in the mines like Beth and Hannah, and one of them remains alive long enough to give the other consent to eat their body before dying, will the remaining survivor still be possessed anyway?
  • As for your first question, there is no definitive way to answer that question with what the game tells us. My best guess would be no; any type of meat in your system would pass through or disperse within several weeks at most. As for your second question, the Wendigos are taking advantage of the act of cannibalism itself, not the disposition of the person being victimized. Human meat is human meat regardless of whether it was freely offered or not. This is a sentiment upheld by the Cree Indian culture, who's folklore the Wendigos originated from, so it's a pretty safe guess that it applies to the ones in the game as well.
  • What if a person didn't [i]know[/i] they were eating human flesh. Like if one were injured, and the other went to hunt food for them, but is actually getting flesh from some dead friend who ended up a ways away? Or if a large chunk of meat on a bone is found nearby, and they mistake it for deer meat or something wolves left when its actually wendigo leftovers or something?
  • Presumably, they would turn into a Wendigo. I don't think the spirits would care whether or not their host knew that they were eating human flesh, so long as it provided them with a body to inhabit.
  • There are 3 possible explanations:
    1. The possession is triggered spiritually: wendigo spirits might take advantage of people's mental state after committing cannibalism rather than the act itself. In that case, it makes sense that mentally troubled people such as Josh can be influenced by wendigo spirits to cannibalize and complete the possession. Someone whose culture doesn't discourage cannibalism might be immune to wendigo spirits. A cannibalistic psychopath who feels no remorse can either be immune as well or turn into wendigo as soon he/she steps on the mountain, depends on his/her specific pathology. Regarding the last question, if they don't know, nothing happen. If they eventually learn of that later, it's a whole different story.
    2. The possession is triggered ritualistically: the act of cannibalism itself allows the wendigo spirits to possess the perpetrator. In that case everyone is vulnerable as long as they ingest human flesh on the mountain. Regarding the last question, it needs to be specified whether consent is required for the ritual. Also whether they must do it on their own or being force-fed count.
    3. The possession is triggered biologically: It doesn't make sense because human flesh is not distinguishable from animals nutritionally. But if this is the case, as long as the act of cannibalism happens either on the mountain or just right before entering the mountain, they are vulnerable regardless of consent and guilt.
    • I understood it as, that the wendigo spirit possesses "its victim" and THEN causes it to crave human flesh until finally they succumb to the craving. This actually makes perfect sense into how Hannah acted in the final days (going by her journal in the mines). Also. Flamethrower Guy even says, "should any man or woman resort to cannibalism while in these woods, the spirit of the wendigo shall be unleashed." Plus to solidify that the possession happens first, Flame thrower Guy's journal says to quote, "The Wendigo 'grows' out of cannibalism! When a human is desperate and craves food, trapped on the mountain in the fierce winter storms. When he has eaten nothing for many days, the Wendigo spirit will begin to possess him. Even the strongest man is weak to it. He will kill without remorse - often those companions who have travelled with him. He will eat the flesh raw from the corpses. I have seen this happen, many years ago, a craving for flesh that cannot be sated. And then the change begins.

Lack of abilities

• For a horror game focusing on Wendigos, why does Until Dawn leave out some of the more terrifying parts of the myths? In the original stories they can turn into wind to move at incredible speeds, and they grow bigger and less humanoid the more human flesh they consume. Both of these traits would have served to make them scarier. (Not to mention that some versions gave them some seriously creepy physical features like burned-off feet, and constantly bloody lips and fingers.)
  • Turning into wind would pretty much make the game impossible. The Stranger couldn't lock them up, and the characters couldn't outrun them or slow them down. The humanoid thing actually does seem to be present in the game, as Josh is still fairly human when the rescuers discover him and the most inhuman wendigos are the sanitarium ones, who have been around for fifty plus years.
    • The humanoid theory is definitely present. The miner Wendigo hadn't eaten human flesh in a while (no specific time is disclosed). And Hannah, didn't eat anymore human flesh after she devoured Beth's decayed body.
  • In regards to Wendigos turning into the wind; it's possible that that aspect about the Wendigos was misinterpreted by those who created the myths (assuming the myths in this universe were based on Wendigo encounters and not the other way around). As we can see in game, they are unnaturally fast, and in short bursts, it almost looks like they're teleporting from place to place. Given that speed, it's understandable that the folk tales would make the assumption that they were able to turn into the wind.
  • Yeah, I can understand that part. Leaving out the more monstrous physical features is still a bit puzzling
  • A part of the myths concerning Wendigos is that they become more demonic with every bite of human flesh they consume. It's possible that the wendigos described above truly do exist in the Until Dawn universe, but the ones encountered on the mountain simply hadn't eaten enough victims to obtain those features yet.

Josh filming

• How could Josh have been filming everyone during the prologue while he was passed out drunk? From what we know, he'd only planned on pranking them after the incident. Then again, the Washingtons are big movie fans, so maybe they just had cameras running automatically for some reason?
  • I thought all that footage came from Matt filming the prank?
  • That's true, but why would they let Josh keep the tape though? I mean, showing it to him is one thing.
  • They may have forgotten the tape in the lodge in all the confusion. Josh could have then easily found it on his own later, without any of them knowing.
  • Matt recorded the prank on his smartphone though, presumably his own. Being the friend-shaped friend he is, it's hard to imagine him keeping the footage from such a disastrous night.
  • You're forgetting to factor in that the police very likely took "copy" from Matt to analyze or had a copy of it made for their use. I'd assume that the copy would then be handed to the Washingtons after they were through with it since the primary focus is Hannah. There's also the possibility that Matt sent it to the other teens phone or even posted it online (since that's apparently what Josh was going to do going off the comments he makes about filming them). They'd presumably not start to worry over the twins until after some hours passed giving the events that preceded. So they wouldn't realize the seriousness in the video and what it caused to not send it yet.
  • If we're talking about the film reel that Chris and Ashley can come across, then it in general makes no sense as it shows clips of where everyone were hiding, just like the player was shown at the beginning, which in no way Matt could have filmed from behind the closet. The whole film is just Fridge Logic.

Replacing revolver

• When did Mike replace the revolver he found at the sanatorium with a semi-automatic pistol?
  • Josh's dad was a gun nut. Mike likely grabbed one in the lodge. A semi-auto is a lot better for self defense than a six-shot revolver. Even a .357 magnum will run out and need a time-consuming reload.
  • He's waving around the .45 that Josh loaded with blanks, because he just wants to scare Josh and doesn't actually want to kill him. He'll say as much if you make the right choices during the conversation between him, Chris, and Josh. Mike will then go back to the revolver when the Stranger knocks on the cabin door.

Informing the public

• Why didn't the Stranger ever inform the public about the Wendigos? None of the characters (including Hanna and Beth) would have been put at risk in the first place had they been forewarned, and he would probably have received aid and support from the political sector and/or scientific community. All he would have needed were a few videos, a few tissue or bone samples from those he torched, or even just the documents and other clues found all over the sanatorium. Even if people were initially skeptical, a live video of an active wendigo would at least have sparked a scientific inquiry.
  • Well, isn't that exactly what the Sanatorium staff was doing before they were all slaughtered? Flamethrower Guy, shows he less than trusted anyone besides himself capable enough to handle the wendigos. Plus, it's hinted at that he wasn't exactly wanting to be found. Especially not by the authorities. He even gave verbal warnings that people needed to stay away from the mountain.
  • Made even more jarring in that shooting a video would be a piece of cake. He doesn't even have to go and try to film them while fighting them, as he has several of them captured in the sanatorium, providing the perfect opportunity to get video evidence of them to show to authorities. One could say he doesn't have the money to buy a camera or phone to film them, and we never do find out how he earns a living, but the fact that he has a flamethrower, several firearms with plenty of ammunition, and a box of cigars suggest that he does earn a living somehow and likely goes down the mountain and into a town to buy whatever he wants or needs, so why not buy something to film the wendigos?
    • He did say the Mountain was his and/or of his people. So, he is in some form Native American and probably made by on his surroundings in the environment mainly. The firearms he had were older models, so he could've inherited those from his grandfather and he also could've made his own ammunition. He seemed like a very resourceful man. Let alone anything he had could've been something he had bulk of/inherited.
  • Let's say you're a scientist and you're visited by a man who lives on a mountain, and claims that there are nigh-indestructible supernatural monsters who also live on the mountain. What would you do? Clearly, this man is a nutjob who escaped from an insane asylum, so let's call the police and ignore his psychotic ramblings. The evidence of a hermit who lives on the mountain would not do much to convince the scientific community of the existence of the Wendigos, especially if the only sources of evidence are coming from said hermit. As for telling the cops, I'm fairly certain he did tell them, considering the radio interview mentions 'a man who has an interesting relationship with the Washington family... and the mountain is important to his ancestors.' So the Stranger likely told the cops and they either A) didn't believe him or B) are covering it up. Option B is the most likely one, since in the aforementioned radio interview, the sheriff sounds rather shifty and evasive on many of her answers as to what's happening on the mountain. Not to mention, during the police interviews at the end, the cops seem a little too eager to shift the blame to either the Stranger or Josh for the events that happened during the game.
  • MIB confirmed?
  • Fair point regarding the cops, but still, the point stands that using video tape evidence would make cops or scientist a least a tiny bit curious as to this guy's claims. Especially scientists, since he wouldn't even need to use the term "monsters", he could simply say he discovered a new, cave dwelling species unlike anything he has even seen, and that he managed to capture some specimens. That on top of a video of the wendigo in the cages should make at least one scientist out there even the slightest bit curious.
  • Again, the evidence of a hermit who lives on a mountain and claims that he's found a new species of humanoid cave dwellers is not going to be taken seriously by any rational person. For a scientist to believe the existence of these creatures, the person whose introducing them would have to be A) someone trustworthy and/or B) have someone else backing up those claims. The Stranger has neither of those, and frankly, he probably doesn't have the time. From all indications, he's up on the mountain every night, trapping and/or killing any Wendigos he comes across. He doesn't really have the time to set up video footage and send it to any scientific institution. Plus, if the police are aware of the Wendigos and are covering up their existence, then it's even less likely any evidence will be believed.
  • You guys are looking at it all wrong. It's not that people won't believe him, if he presents evidence that the wendigos are real people will look into it. WHICH IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE WANTS. If scientists learn there's a new humanoid life form unique to the mountain they're going to send people to try and study it. And the more people get killed by them the more they'll try. The Stranger is trying to keep people OFF the mountain so there won't be anyone for the wendigos to hunt and kill or possess to make more wendigos. He tried warning people before and was ignored, he can't be specific without attracting a lot of attention. The wendigos are stuck on the mountain so if he keeps people away from it, the problem is solved.
    • This is more on point. He certainly did not want more wendigos created and wanted to minimize/capture the ones that were already there. And that's something he knew ONLY he could do.

Dr. Hill and the prank

• Dr. Hill obviously knew about the "prank" Josh was planning on his friends and was trying to convince him to stop it. So when he realized Josh wasn't going to stop on his own, why didn't he contacted Josh's parents or Josh's friends directly in order to warn them? For a psychiatrist, he doesn't seem like he's taking the proper steps to prevent massive psychological trauma to a group of teenagers!
  • Dr. Hill is actually a hallucination. He can't tell anyone.
    • He wasn't just in Josh's head. He was real and they're text and invoices that prove so.
  • It all depends on when and how he realized that Josh was going to go through with his plan. If he only knew for certain that Josh was going to execute his prank on the day it was happening, then Dr. Hill was too late to do anything, especially since no phone signals could get to or from the mountain. Besides, I don't think a psychiatrist would have the numbers of his patient's friends on speed dial.
  • Dr. Hill was also likely paralyzed by the shackles of Doctor-Patient Privilege. If Josh spoke of his plan during a session, then Dr. Hill couldn't legally do anything, since Josh's plan didn't include committing any serious crimes that would give him wiggle room if the Washington's later tried to sue him.
  • Josh is also on the outs with his father, so calling Bob Washington likely won't have as much of an effect as Dr. Hill would prefer. Josh mentions to Sam at one point that his father has simply stopped paying attention to him, and Sam can find an invoice that bills all of Josh's therapeutic expenses straight to Washington's production company in California. Also, yeah, doing anything other than trying to talk Josh out of the prank is a massive breach of doctor-patient privilege that would open Dr. Hill up to legal repercussions and would certainly end his working relationship with Josh.
    • That alone isn't really indicative that Josh and Bob are on the outs. I mean, it was Bob after all that allowed the teens to come up the mountain. As Beth even says such. I would say that their relationship is strained due to Bob's focus on his horror directing career. Bob's actions certainly wouldn't win him no father of the year trophy, but they weren't of a man who was on the outs with his son.
  • It's also possible that he didn't know just how bad the "prank" was actually going to be, just that Josh was going to do something that would scare his friends a lot.
  • Actually, if someone is threatening harm to themselves or others, doctor-patient privilege is no longer applicable. However, it's possible the actual Dr. Hill knew little of the plan, and he was only informed from what we see, since he was in Josh's mind
  • Josh most likely only told Dr. Hill that he was going to prank his friends on the anniversary while recording the whole thing. If that even. Dr. Hill's text to Josh seem more out of concern to him not taking his medicine than of his prank on his friends.

Ax

• Why did Matt leave behind the ax on the ground floor when climbing up the park ranger station when knowing there's a killer around?
  • Do you want to try climbing a ladder at night in winter during a blizzard with high winds while trying to hold a fire ax? He doesn't even have a belt he can hook it onto.
  • If it's that or be unarmed while entering a tower that just broadcast my location with a huge motion sensor spotlight, then I'd risk the winds. Matt climbs down one ladder already while holding the ax without a problem and it's not impossible to think of some way to transport the ax regardless like only climbing half way and handing it off to Emily who's above him. The problem is that he leaves the ax not only far away, but on the only path up the tower, so if the psycho instead found them and climbed the ladders, they're completely blocked off from their only weapon at the time.
  • That's your call. Mike made a different one. He's a teenager in a bad situation, not a tabletop role player who habitually min-maxes every situation to his maximum possible benefit, and he decided he couldn't climb the ladder while holding the ax.
  • No need to get sarcastic. It's not hard at all to climb a ladder with one hand. This troper regularly carries heavy objects into and out of his attic by himself. A fireman's ax would be a piece of cake (I've carried other types of axes). You could tuck it under your armpit with the head just sticking out. Even high winds wouldn't cause you to bump it enough to harm yourself. Likewise, you could use the head to hook the rungs, or you could just grip it and climb using the side of the ladder. Firemen do this all the time in intense conditions wearing 45lbs at least worth of gear (reference: my firefighter ex-girlfriend). A guy like Matt would have no difficulty finding a way to carry that up the ladder. As the above troper states, he doesn't even have to carry it the full way, just enough that he could hand it off to Emily. Leaving it behind is just plain dumb.
  • Matt is not a trained fireman capable of carrying heavy gear up straight ladders. He leaves the ax behind for game development reasons. If he dies, Emily wouldn't take it with her because she's already carrying the torch. When the radio tower collapses, there's a physics rendering for Emily alone and when accompanied by Matt. Including the ax would needlessly require a third since neither would hold onto it during the collapse.
  • Game development is the only really logical reason, but in regards to story, it's not at all hard to carry those up a ladder. No training required. Granted, Matt never really comes off as the brightest bulb so I just have to chalk it up to him being dumb.
  • It was done for plot purposes and plot purposes only. Purely for speculation. Think about it. You're set up to believe that the "Psycho" placed the ax in the door to the lift only after finding it missing when Josh takes you around back to enter the Lodge (as he clearly wanted someone to see it was missing). You also find a freshly vandalized maintenance room as you search to see it the lift will work. So, Matt leaves the ax at the bottom of the tower to make you believe the Psycho had been following them the whole time and took the opportunity to try and kill them by cutting the support cable with the ax. Only if the player payed very close attention would you have seen Hanndigos hand swiping by to cut the cable in half.

Moving objects

• Probably a stupid question, but if wendigos can only see moving objects then how do they navigate their environment? Consider how close Wendigo!Hannah got to Sam during the climax; If she's incapable of sensing a still object less than a foot away, what stops her from bumping into walls or tripping over objects any time she tries to go somewhere?
  • You see a couple of different scenes from the perspective of a Wendigo over the course of the game, and it's not that they can't perceive immovable objects at all, but rather that moving objects stand out in their vision in high contrast. If you aren't moving, you're basically part of the wall as far as they're concerned, and they don't have any other senses that make up the difference.
  • True, but while the game makes it clear that it's incredibly difficult for a Wendigo to see an immovable human, it also shows that it shouldn't be impossible. If a wendigo is staring directly at a human-shaped object less than two feet away, it should be able to guess what it is; if they cannot comprehend a person at such close range, how do they comprehend other inanimate objects?
  • Not particularly well. Going off of the Stranger's Wendigo trap in the sanatorium's morgue, the Wendigo aren't terribly bright or clever and are mostly good at chasing, climbing, sadism, and ambush tactics. They're also native to an incredibly isolated part of the world and as such, most of them are sixty years out of practice hunting anyone who isn't the Stranger. If they were in the habit of attacking human-shaped objects based entirely on their inadequate perception, that habit has likely been broken by decades of accidentally maiming suggestively-shaped rocks and tree branches.
  • A bit of fridge logic; if Wendigos don't differentiate between inanimate objects, how did one find Jess's phone, and then chuck it through the window? Probably because it was switched on and making noise. Even though it looked no different than any other rock or debris, the sound it was making attracted the wendigo's attention.
  • No fridge logic needed. The Stranger's the one who threw the phone. He's visibly stalking them almost all the way to the cabin, and there's no reason why the Wendigo would even know what the phone is, let alone return it to its owner.
  • A wendigo chased Mike and Jess into the cabin, and was peering through the windows periodically until it attacked. I'm uncertain that the stranger and a wendigo could be in such close proximity to each other for so long without a fight breaking out. Also, if the stranger wanted to return it, he would probably have knocked on the door and left it on the doorstep, not smash a window open which would compromise the cabin's insulation. I got the impression that the wendigo was attempting to bait or rattle the teenagers, not return lost property. (if true, then this tactic actually worked, as it lured Jess into the perfect spot for an ambush).
  • I'm not so sure it was the Stranger who threw it. I've considered the possibility, but it begs the question; why would he do that? Why not just go after the Wendigo himself? Getting back to the Wendigo's sight; I think saying that "they see movement" is a bit oversimplifying it. Several times, we see from their perspective that movement appears as a blue-white color, but that only appears on humans. At one point, during the escape from the mines, Emily can drop rocks to delay the Wendigo's pursuit. At that point, we see a brief shot from its perspective, but the only movement it registers is Emily's running, not the rocks falling. With that in mind, it seems that when they see movement, they mainly see human movement, and as to why... they're supernatural cannibalistic monsters possessed by spirits, it's clear that they're not natural creatures.
  • Process of elimination. The only things in the woods besides Mike and Jessica at that point are the Stranger, Hannah the Wendigo, and presumably several terrified, fleeing elk. The Stranger is the only individual on that list who would recognize the phone for what it is and want to give it back, even if it's in a dismissive, "here's your phone, you idiots" way; the Wendigo would not know what the phone was, who it belonged to, or why it was vibrating at them, and they do not exhibit any behavior throughout the rest of the game that is deliberately there to "bait or rattle" a target. They see, they hunt, they attack; that's it. The Stranger is the only actor in this scenario who makes any sense for it. The Stranger can also stalk the Wendigo effectively because he knows when to remain still, and as his Wikia page suggests, he may have just wanted to get Mike and Jessica away from the front door for a minute, or at least away from the hunting rifle.
    • And they do not exhibit any behavior throughout the rest of the game that is deliberately there to "bait or rattle" a target. That's not true, at one point, a Wendigo mimics Jessica's voice to potentially lure Ashley to her death. Another indication as to their intelligence is when Hanndigo cuts the supports to the fire tower, letting it collapse into the mine shaft with Emily and Matt trapped inside. Finally, near the end of the game, when Sam and Mike cross through the water to get to Josh, the Hannah Wendigo is revealed to have been in the water, and yet it did nothing to attack. Why? Because it knew that the only way for them all to get out of the mine, was to go back through the water. The Wendigos are a lot smarter than you're giving them credit for, and with all that in mind, it seems more likely that the Wendigo hurled the phone through the window. As mentioned above, it seems unlikely that the Stranger and the Wendigo could be in such close proximity without some sort of conflict breaking out between them, and throwing the phone in the window had the desired effect of drawing a victim into close proximity with the door.
  • As I recall, we see, from Hannah the Wendigo's position, Mike and Jessica making out through the front window of the cabin right up until they hear the window shatter, without anyone hearing the music from the phone. I'll admit the Wendigo's intelligence varies throughout the game, particularly with the fire tower incident, but I refuse to believe that Hannah as a Wendigo is capable of picking up and muting a phone, then turning it back on before she wings it through a window.
  • Why couldn't it be Hannah? If the Hannah Wendigo retained any of her memories (and there are several scenes throughout the game, (including the one we're talking about right now) that indicate that she did), then she would know how to work with a phone and turn on the music. The only other person who could've thrown the phone through the window was the Stranger, and frankly, it makes even less sense for him to do that. Besides, if the Wendigo was watching the front of the house, then it would've seen the Stranger retrieving the phone and thus start a fight between them. And at any rate, do we even know if the Stranger is near the cabin at that point? We know he's shadowing Mike and Jess initially, but there is no indication that he's still following them after they exit the mine.
  • As for "they see movement," that's literally what the game tells us; it's entirely possible that the way it's depicted is a technical limitation, as "Wendigo-vision" would be an actual recreated "set" in muted colors occupied by a character model that's reskinned in blue-and-white "infrared." Also, yeah, supernatural creatures get to have their own rules.
  • Its probably the Wendigo; why would the stranger, who is trying to protect them, create a hole... in which the Wendigos can use to break down the weakened glass/smash open the door? It was probably the Wendigo checking to see if the moving things it could see actually were human.. and when Jess yelled, saw they were, and pounced... but only took her because she was the only one that reacted/moved in response. Mike was hidden by the other walls (and the Wendigo was on the other side of the house to him to grab Jess through the window opposite him).
    • I just want to add to this, I believe Hanndigo so quickly pounced on Jess due to her mouth and the fact that she was talking about Mike, The guy Hannah was pretty much in un-reciprocated love with. Hanna was very much indeed a rare among the "species" of Wendigos. Her actions shouldn't hold any stance for how others would act. At least that early after transformation and along with her choosing to consume no more flesh after her transformation.
  • It was the Wendigo being a clever hunter: it threw the phone through the window in order to distract one of the humans in order to make snatching the other human easier. It's easier to pick off your foes one by one if you separate them first.
  • The games leaves to believe that Hanndigo was the one that threw the phone. Likely as bait. Hanndigo baits in several different parts of the game and despite other Wendigos, Hannah shows a relatively more advanced intelligence after her turn. As she still holds memories to a degree. Proved when Josh recognizes her, her choice in collecting her friends instead of eating them including Beth's head, and based off how she treats Mike. She NEVER kills him or tries to. She only throws him to get him out of the way. His only deaths are caused by himself or Sam. Considering the strength of Wendigos, it's safe to assume Hannah could have been far enough away from the cabin that Mike and Jessica wouldn't have heard the phone until it was inside. As far as the Stranger goes, Mike sees him after Jess falls down the elevator shaft and has the chance to shoot and then follow him under the metal door. I'm not sure it's possible the Stranger could have made it all the way from the cabin to the mines without Mike, Hanndigo, or Jess seeing. Especially Jess if the Stranger was tracking Hannah. Who also happen to be the one watching Mike and Jess on their way up to the cabin, not the Stranger.
    • It's confirmed to be Hanndigo that throws the phone. When showing what previously happened in the last chapter, you see in "Wendigo Vision" then you see Mike retrieving the phone/the after effects of the phone being thrown.

Em and Mike

• Are Em and Mike actually in an affair? Because on the wiki it states that Em and Mike were actually trying to make amends over Mike ditching Em for Jess so that they could still be friends (which actually makes sense as their interaction seemed less romantic and more friendly).
  • If Ashley gives Matt the telescope so he can see Mike with Emily, Matt will be suspicious and on edge in the lodge, which allows you to press Emily on the issue when she's hanging off what's left of the fire tower. At that point, she'll admit to cheating on Matt with Mike. The wiki is fan-made content and may have been adjusted by someone who hadn't seen that sequence.
  • I think it was left for the viewer to decide. It's never implied on Mike's end that he was having an affair with Emily (which probably would've changed his behavior with her after he believed Jessica dead), and isn't brought up or hinted at again after Emily and Matt fall off the tower. Since the route to getting Emily to apparently confess to the affair requires that Matt repeatedly insist that she tell him "the truth," to the point that he ignores her pleas for help as she's about to fall from a collapsing tower, an Alternate Character Interpretation is that Matt (who quickly jumps to "so you fucked him!" after she only begins saying she "was confused") is being a Crazy Jealous Guy insecure in his relationship with Emily, who isn't really doing much to make him feel like she even likes him (especially after Matt sees her interact much more friendly with her ex-boyfriend through the telescope), and that intelligent, resourceful, persuasive Emily realizes that he doesn't believe her and won't get off the subject and help until she tells him what he believes. Note that immediately after Emily "confesses," she says "Now will you please get me off this goddamned tower?!" People being interrogated under threat or torture may tell their interrogators whatever they want to hear to get them to end the interrogation, and confessions under duress, like Emily was in, are hardly solid proof.
  • The question was "Is Em cheating on Matt with Mike?" not "Does Em possess intelligence that could be used to thwart a terrorist strike?" According to what the player is capable of learning in-game, yes, Emily is cheating on Matt, and Mike is cheating on Jessica.
  • That doesn't change the possibility that Emily only said that she cheated because that's what Matt wanted to hear, not because it's actually true.
  • If Emily escapes the mines, she and Mike actually embrace for a few seconds and take a few moment to comfort or reassure each other in clear view of the others, so they obviously feel close enough to feel genuine concern for one another. In Emily's relationship menu, Mike and Matt are held in equally high regard, in spite of how Mike dumped her earlier that year. To feel as strongly about the man that jilted her as she does for her current boyfriend is pretty telling. On Mike's end, his relationship stats show Emily being only slightly behind Jess in terms of affection, but still twice as high as any of the others (Matt is held in the lowest regard, so he clearly doesn't approve of the relationship). My guess is that Mike And Em aren't entirely over each other, although Mike is starting to drift toward Jess, and Em is in the process of deciding between him and Matt.
  • They still have strong feelings for each other, but we never see them actively cheating, so it's probably up to the viewer to decide if they think it actually happened or not.
  • We have to remember that Mike and Emily had only broken up a few weeks before they return to the lodge. Their romantic relationships with Jess and Matt, respectively, are fairly new. They are not quite over each other yet. Emily in particular seems to be deciding between her new relationship with Matt or pursuing Mike once again. Mike seems more into Jess, but the player also has a few chances for him to stick up for Em, raising his relationship bar with her and lowering it with Jessica. And of course, he has the choice to not shoot her in the safe room.
  • I think both interpretations are true; Mike and Em WERE cheating on Jess and Matt with each other. But by the time Ash saw them through the telescope, they had decided that, for the sake of their new relationships, they should stop seeing one another and move on. Mike seemed to be doing that fairly well, but Em just wasn't ready yet, hence why she picked a fight with Jess. Regardless of what really happened between them, I highly doubt she would STILL have feelings for Mike after being threatened by him.
  • Mike was a player so it's easy to assume he was or would have easily cheated on Jess. By his interactions with Jess in the cabin, he chose her because she seemed more simple than Emily. So in simple words, he liked that she was a a ditsy promiscuous girl (he more or less says this if you make the right choices) in comparison to Emily who was high maintenance and demanding. He cared for both but has more history with Em so that's why we see them together on the telescope. Emily clearly still had feelings for Mike and was confused (as she even says so) on who she wants to be with. Mike wanted to pursue the path that was simpler and that'd get him laid easier. No time is given in when Emily and Mike separated.
  • Mike's feelings for Emily don't go much farther than "still friends" if we're going off of what we actually see in the game. Sure, he hugs her twice and shows concern for her safety, but he can also side with Jess against her, and he shows too much overall concern for Jess' well-being and happiness outside of player choice to make the idea that his relationship with her is motivated by him viewing her as an easy score plausible. Emily's feelings for Mike are more complex, since she's obviously jealous of Jess; if any cheating is going on between them, it seems likely that she's the one initiating. But what's especially interesting is that her relationship score with Matt improves if he acts hostile towards Mike in their first encounter; she compliments him on acting "alpha", and clearly expects him to side with her against Jess (and Mike, by proxy) later on. Most likely, Mike and Emily aren't really cheating at all; Emily may still have some lingering romantic feelings for him, but she'll push them aside if Matt shows that he cares.
    • But given the fact that if you choose to side with Jess over Em, it leads to Jess almost naked. It's obviously what his intentions were. Sure Mike had concern I'd say for everyone. Some less than others. They had all known each other for a while and all experienced the traumatic event together. That's sort of a given. Even if he was cheating, why wouldn't Mike still be concerned that Jess is being drug off by who knows what? (Hell Matt is even concerned if he finds her in the mines.) Especially with the previous years events. Mike is a friendly popular guy. He was friends with them all. Again more so with some than others. I do think it's open for interruption, but it's also blatantly obvious these two characters (Mike & Emily) cared greatly about one another even still. Emily was just beyond what Mike wanted. Which was something easy (not necessarily sexual, though a bonus). As he even says so in the cabin to Jess.
  • When my sister played through the game, she compulsively checked the status menu at every opportunity. Once inside the cabin with Jessica, she was confused to see Mike's "Honesty" meter dropping with almost everything he said. This occurs even if he's being nicer to Jessica and not dismissing her insecurities. But if he's cheating with Emily, the Honesty drop makes perfect sense.
  • There was a Halloween livestream with the developers (Tom Heaton and Jez Harris) in 2018 during which they mentioned that one of the girls was going to be pregnant in the original story, but they didn't state which. They also specifically say that Emily was not cheating on Matt, even though he can force a confession out of her on the firetower. I think if Emily was intended to be pregnant with Mike's baby it really makes a lot of pieces fall into place. They'd be keeping it from their respective significant others to not blow everything up, but still having to sneak around to figure out what they're going to do about it; stuff that might look like cheating from the outside even if it isn't. It also would explain why through the binoculars it looks like Emily is freaking out and Mike is calming her down.

Blackwood police

• There is a lot of speculation that the Blackwood police are intentionally covering up or hiding the Wendigo presence on the mountain. The question is; why? What would they gain from such a difficult, dangerous task? Additionally, if they are aware of the wendigo problem, why are the police in the secret ending caught off-guard by Wendigo!Josh? You would think that they would be smart enough to have anti-wendigo gear, especially when traversing their favorite nesting ground.
  • If you go back to the start of the game after having cleared it, and listen to the interview with the sheriff on the radio broadcast Sam's listening to, some of her answers seem evasive or suspicious, which has been extrapolated by hyperbole into a genuine conspiracy. That said, it would make sense if there was a healthy local taboo against spending too much time on or around Blackwood Mountain, whether it's ghost stories about why the sanatorium closed or anecdotes about would-be hunters who came home in a box.
  • They don't seem to know that the Wendigos exist, for the reason you mentioned in the "Josh Lives" ending. But the county sheriff's "more than you know" remark definitely suggests that the mountain has a reputation for being dangerous - the sanatorium abandoned quickly after the entire staff was mysteriously murdered, the structurally unsound mine underlying much of the mountain-side, the rugged terrain (it appears to be completely impassible to any ground vehicles aside from possibly snowmobiles in the winter), and disappearances of people on the mountain over the years.
  • Unless I missed it, there's no actual proof of anyone knowing what happened at the Sanatorium. Or they assume with the collapse (presumably caused by Wendigos wrecking havoc) caused the deaths of those all inside and deemed to dangerous to further explore. Or else all the evidence (such as the videos/pictures) would have been removed so no one could find it. They knew at least one person (Flamethrower Guy) besides the Washingtons was on the mountain.So they'd defintely not leave that lying around for someone to found. Considering the condemned building poster, I'd say the latter is a likely good guess. I guess Flamethrower Guy could have as well added the poster for his own convenience. But obvious there's an order of chain to go through to get that sort of thing approved. So I think it's safe to assume more along the lines that the police knew of strange happenings among the mountain but not of what caused it. The only thing that even indicates suspicion that they knew something (besides the radio Sam listened to) was that on the newspaper clipping Flamethrower Guy had up in the Sanatorium of his grandfathers deaths. Of which he had marked "LIARS" on.

Moving bookcase

• Was the moving bookcase and hidden room always there? It looks like the bookcase was just put in front of a door to room that was always there, but wouldn't someone have noticed? It is possible that Chris and Ashley just don't remember the layout of the house well enough to know a room was there before. But that seems like a big risk for Josh to take that could have broken the immersion of his plan. Also did he build the mechanism, for did he have contractor come and install it? It is a minor point in the story, but on replays it just does not make much sense.
  • The hidden room is in his father's study, which lacks any features that would cause the kids to have spent a lot of time in it, relative to the rest of the house. Even if Bob Washington didn't have a preexisting secret room in his private study out of the sheer glee of being able to have one, the space behind the bookcase is basically a closet and wouldn't take that much effort to install. Besides, Chris and Ashley are rattled from a possible brush with the supernatural and haven't been in the cabin for a year; neither are in a frame of mind to notice minor architectural discrepancies.
  • That would make the most sense, to have it already installed. It also seems likely that Josh could have easily have found it, if he did not already know about it,
  • Absent of anything else, Bob Washington is already the kind of dude who thought it would be awesome to build his mountaintop retreat on top of the ruins of an old sanitarium that closed under mysterious circumstances, then fill it with creepy relics and film props. It's entirely appropriate given what little we know of the guy that, given the chance to build his dream house, it'd have at least one secret room.

Flamethrower Guy's grandfather

• Why was Flamethrower Guy's grandfather on the mountain? FG's motive for being there is pretty clear after you hear that Makkapitew killed his grandfather, but why was gramps on the mountain anyway? Was he one of the trapped miners that didn't partake in his dead coworkers or was he already a wendigo hunter?
  • In the Events of the Past video, the Stranger mentions that his grandfather had been hunting the Makkapitew for years but it always eluded him, so it's likely that being a Wendigo hunter is the family business.
  • Yeah, if you look at the legends of the Wendigo, a "Wendigo hunter" is a figure on par with a vampire or werewolf hunter in European legends. Basically, the Stranger's grandfather is the Van Helsing of Wendigos and the Stranger's picking up where he left off.
  • To add onto everything that's already been said, Flamethrower Guy also stated that this was his mountain while confronting the teens about what was really lurking about. During this explanation he says something to hint or out right says his native forefathers/ancestors. Leaving to believe that he is of some sort of Native American decent. So with the Wendigo coming from Native American folklore then that would explain why his grandfather was on the mountain to begin with as well as why he was hunting the Wendigo.

Surviving infrastructure

• It's weird how much infrastructure has survived considering the mine and the sanatorium have both been closed for fifty years, and that they're both still on a power grid. Some of that's probably down to the Mystery Man, but one wonders if there was more going on up there than we saw.
  • Maybe The Stranger decided to re-enforce some of the infrastructure? He is trying to trap the Wendigos, and fragile structure wouldn't hold them up for long.
  • The best answer to this is the fact that the Washingtons had at least two buildings (Lodge and Cabin), the lift, as well as the walking way to said places that required electricity. As we know, there was a tunnel that led from the Lodge to the Sanatorium and the old hotel that was under the Lodge. So it would have been easier for the Stranger to keep up the Sanatorium. Also it could've been finely built and what decay was seen was due to years passed with no proper maintenance. I believe the building was condemned to keep people out rather than it actually being condemned. Why else would things still be more or less left as they were right after the Wendigos slaughtered the staff? Or another plausible reason could be the Stranger or his grandfather could have placed those signs to keep people out.
    • To add, the Lodge is right on top of the old hotel. Which the tunnels underneath lead to the Sanatorium. That's explanation enough as to how there was electricity. The entire place being in close enough proximity of each other, would be on the same grid.

Escaping from the mine

• Emily escaped from the mine fairly easily once she restored power to the elevator. Why didn't Hannah do the same thing? You'd think she would've explored every inch of that place and gotten out.
  • Emily had to do a lot of climbing around and exploring to get the power on, Hannah broke her leg in the fall.
  • But then how did she manage to dig a grave for her sister, and then dig it up when she was starving? Digging up even a shallow grave takes a lot of effort barehanded.
  • It's not like she had anything else to do, and there are old shovels lying around everywhere in the mine.
  • The last person to see her was the stranger at the top of the cliff. She probably assumed he called for help and they would be looking for her where she fell. She didnt want to miss her rescue by exploring a pitch black mine.
  • If Hannah tried to explore the place on her own, a Wendigo might have killed her?
  • All known wendigo save for Makkapitew were contained or dead, and he was busy getting flame-broiled by the Stranger. She would've been safe for a while, at least.
  • Again, even if the Stranger had captured every Wendigo Mike finds in the sanitarium cellblock before Hannah and Beth's accident, that's still only six of them or so. There are still a few of them running loose, at least one of which lives in the mines.
  • The other six were dead according to the Stranger's journal. Twelve miners ate the other eighteen in 1951, and the Stranger trapped half of them, and killed half of them. The only wendigo in the mines was Hannah after her change, though it is odd how some of the others got loose before the sanitarium was blown open.
    • No Wendigos are loose before the Sanatorium blows up. There two explosions, both caused by Mike. The first wasn't as big and was pretty located. This is what caused some to possibly become free to roam the Sanatorium (if there even ever weren't free to begin with). Still they were trapped to the Sanatorium until the second explosion. Which was big enough to bust out the wall and shake the ground/ceiling where Chris and Ashley were in the old hotel.
  • Again, there are still enough incidental Wendigo running loose in the sanitarium and the mines, aside from Hannah, to suggest that the Stranger's Wendigo-fighting experience isn't entirely earned from what he's gone through on Blackwood Mountain. There's at least one Wendigo who isn't Hannah in the mines.
  • At that point, there were no Wendigos out and about. The Stranger pretty much confirms this in the "In the Past" video. The Makkipatew was the last of the Wendigos that was free and he killed it. There was ONLY Hanndigo that was out in the open on Blackwood Pines Mountain. Not until the "showdown" in the Lodge were more wendigos than Hanndigo free out in the open. The area that the Wendigos were kept in was closed off, so even if some weren't chained or imprisoned, they were contained. If all were chained/imprisoned up, it wouldn't make much sense as to why, while Mike is exploring the Sanatorium he finds the bear trap if not to catch the loose Wendigos inside the Sanatorium. Or at least to bait them had they got loose. There's also the possibility that after the first explosion Mike causes, it freed those that were loose inside the Sanatorium. Counting the ones chained up and the two that were loose, that's enough to equal the amount of miners that were left after the 18 that didn't survive.

Leaving the basement

• Why did the group leave the safe room/basement? I can understand Mike's anxiety of being a sitting duck with wendigos on the loose, but the Stranger mentioned that they only hunt at night. Plus, rangers will be coming to evacuate them in the morning. Finally, by the time they were all in there, it was about 5am. They only had to wait a couple of hours for sunrise, and after that they would basically be homefree. Yeah, they would probably need to fortify the basement - make it easier to hide/defend themselves, but there was no real reason to leave when you really think about it.
  • Whether Emily lives or dies before that point, the group have no way to know whether she actually got in touch with the rangers, and if she did, whether they will be arriving as promised. This is obvious if she doesn't make it back to them, but if she does, even she momentarily implies doubt that they will arrive in time. Mike leaves to get Josh's key so that they have a backup plan in the event that the rangers don't show up or the wendigos aren't gone by then, and Sam and the others leave shortly after because they had read more about the wendigos and feared that Mike would be in over his head on his own (and depending on the player's choices, those fears are warranted). Finally, potentially stupid decisions during times of extreme crisis, even with the information necessary to survive as is, aren't exactly uncommon in real life.
    • Pretty much this is correct. They never were certain that they were even safe in the basement as shown when Mike says he's not waiting around like a present for the wendigos to unwrap like on Christmas morning. I think the reasoning behind everyone else leaving after Mike was because they discovered reading the Stranger's journal that there were multiple Wendigos kept in the Sanatorium which Mike didn't know.

Assuming Josh has the keys

• Mike's assumption that Josh would have the cable car keys seems like an extreme leap of faith to risk your life on. It's more likely Josh left them in a drawer somewhere, as he never expected anything to get life threateningly dangerous, and there's plenty of places he could hide the keys where the others wouldn't find them, such as his monitor room. Just because it turns out Josh did have the keys doesn't make it anything less than dumb luck.
  • Mike's the kind of character who wants to do something. They're standing in the monitor room at the time, and the key doesn't seem to be in evidence. If Emily makes it back to the cabin at all, Mike wants to leave, because either way he's done something pretty horrifying; if she doesn't, then he'd rather go do something than sit in the monitor room for four hours and wait for a rescue that he doesn't know is coming. It's a characterization beat in the service of making the sanatorium level possible, and it fits with how Mike was portrayed up to that point.

Leaving weapons behind

• A lot of the characters have a nasty habit of leaving weapons, like their guns, behind.
  • They don't have proper holsters for weapons, and keeping guns with no bullets is pretty senseless.
    • It's more senseless to leave behind a weapon (shotgun) that actually slows the threats lurking about down when there's potential of finding more ammo. Considering Chris confirms that Josh's dad Bob Washington was a survival/gun nut, it was likely for them to have found ammo lying around somewhere in the lodge.
  • Matt leaves the ax behind because he doesn't want to try to climb a ladder one-handed, Mike either leaves the revolver behind so they can shoot Emily if she turns or drops it out of guilt from shooting Emily, Chris loses the shotgun in a fall, Mike runs out of shells for the sawed-off and uses it to seal a door, and the rifle Mike takes from the smaller cabin jams or runs out of ammo, so he discards it. (It takes a bit to un-jam a bolt-action rifle, and it jamming at all suggests it's really dirty from disuse.)
    • Matt leaving the ax was more for plot purpose to make the player suspect the Psycho as being the one to have cut the support cable.
  • This is by far one of the stupidest things in game. One in particular, when Mike chooses to place the shotgun in the door versus the pipe/shovel Sam carried.

Jess' cell

• I may have missed the explanation somewhere, but who throws Jess' cell through the window? Josh is at the lodge and I don't think that throwing the phone would occur to the wendigo. That leaves the Stranger, but why would he do so, when Mike and Jess just got into safety, which is where the Stranger would presumably want them to stay, right? Also, anyone but the wendigo moving around the cabin would be in serious danger - if what happens to Jess is any indication.
  • In all likelihood, it was Hanndigo who threw Jessica's phone through the window. As you said, Josh is at the lodge, and I don't see how throwing the phone through the window would benefit the Stranger in any way. Meanwhile, the Wendigo easily benefits from doing that, as it draws Jess closer to the door, allowing it to grab her. As for why that happened; the Wendigos are clearly smarter than people think, as shown several times throughout the game (such as cutting the cables to the radio tower, imitating Jessica's voice, etc.), and since the Wendigo was Hannah (who likely still had some of her memories) then it would know how to operate a phone and play music.
    • The music was already playing when Jessica dropped it. She turned it on while her and Mike were making their way to the cabin.
  • I disagree; nothing the Wendigo do over the course of the game suggest that they would still recognize what the phone is, as with the earlier discussion. Somebody ought to tweet at Larry Fessenden or something and settle this.
  • Who else could it have been? None of their friends were near the cabin at that point, so they're out. The Stranger is a possibility, but how does tossing the phone through the window benefit him in any way? Furthermore, how could he retrieve it without the Wendigo noticing him? And why draw Mike and Jessica's attention to the fact that someone (or something) is outside? Especially since he could just run out and engage the Wendigo directly, or lead it away from the cabin. Plus, do we even know if he was near Mike and Jess at that point? I mean, we know he's following them as they leave the lodge, but there's no indication that he was still following them after they left the mine. The Wendigo is the only option that makes any sense, as it benefited from throwing the phone, it was likely the only being outside, and it would've seen where the phone had fallen.
  • Like I said, we should probably tweet at Fessenden to settle this, because going around and around like this isn't convincing anyone. I have a hard time believing that anyone could think it was anyone besides the Stranger.
  • The Wendigos are supernatural cannibalistic monsters who are bulletproof and can only be killed with fire. They are smart enough to wound a deer and use it to bait Mike and Jess. They are smart enough to cut the support cables to the Fire Tower so that they can reach Matt and Emily. They are smart enough to perfectly mimic Jessica's voice and potentially lure Ashley to her death. And yet, throwing a phone through the window to draw Jess outside is so hard to believe?
  • It's not so much not believing that the wendigo is intelligent enough, but believing that a wendigo with claws and whatnot is capable of actually controlling a touch-screen phone. Although I must admit that the thought of it sitting on the snow and trying to get the music player to work is sort of funny, it isn't (in my opinion) realistic.
    • Jess had already turned the phone on while on the bridge leading to the cabin. So Hanndigo turning it on hersekf is a pointless argument since it was already on. It's absolutely possible and believable That Hanndigo threw the phone from a distance considering her strength (being that you want to argue they would've heard the music as she got close to the house though I disagree.) You've got to think, it was the back room window and there was a snow going on. As well as wind, they are on a mountain. So it's possible she could have threw it without them hearing anything until the window broke.
  • The supernatural possessed college girl turned cannibalistic monster is fine, but her being able to operate a touch screen is unrealistic?
  • Would it really be that difficult to turn the music player on? She'd just have to swipe the screen and then tap a specific part. Not that hard, even if your fingers now have claws on them. Hell, for all we know, the Wendigo could have done it completely by accident (not an impossible scenario) and thought "Eh, I can work with this."
  • The sum total of my objection is that throughout most of the rest of the game, Hannah and the other Wendigos do almost nothing that a particularly clever animal couldn't do, with the possible exception of cutting the support wires to the fire tower. Hannah doesn't use her claws to pick the relatively flimsy deadbolt on the tower trapdoor, for example. She barely recognizes members of her immediate family, and otherwise behaves like a particularly sadistic ambush predator. There's nothing "arbitrary" about my skepticism on this, especially when Hannah doesn't appear to have fingertips anymore with which to work a touchscreen.
    • I think Hanndigo was trying to screw with Emily and Matt at the Fire Tower, not actually get inside with them. I think she wanted them separated or at the least vulnerable in her territory in the mines. Also Hanndigo presents a remarkable amount of intelligence compared to the other Wendigos. Even if we only see them briefly. Hannah was different by far, from the rest. As for her not recognizing immediate family, she does. It may have took Josh recognizing her but that still proves her intelligence and memory. The Wendigos vision would obviously make it hard to, if not impossible to recognize them based off appearance.
  • Also, a lot of touchscreens require for your fingers to be at least a little warm. Do the wendigos produce body heat? With all the legends mentioning things like the wendigo having hearts of ice I'm a little doubtful. On the other hand, not all legends about the wendigo are accurate, such as the turning into wind part.
    • The wind aspect could have easily been misinterpreted. Considering how fast they move, you could say they move with/like/through the wind.
  • Actually, the music player on the phone was already on before Jess ever dropped it. She turned it on herself when she and Mike were on the way to the cabin, and you can still hear it in the background in some scenes. Hannah just picked the phone up and tossed it through the window after it drew her attention.
  • As a related note, I've noticed that the wendigo's (or at least Wendigo!Hannah) are very reluctant to enter buildings. Why I'm not entire sure, but it provides a clear reason why they would want to lure the teens outside.
    • The stranger had them locked up inside the sanitarium for years; That must have sucked even by cannibalistic-murder-demon standards. Also notice how they don't commit to a full-on assault until the night is nearly over, even though they could have slaughtered all the characters with impunity when they first arrived; the stranger had cowed them so thoroughly for so long that they were hesitant to assault a handful of angsty teenagers.
    • Although I think it's very likely the wendigos were in some form scared of the Stranger, I don't believe that is the reason Handigo killed them near morning. That would actually be untrue if you manage to get Jess killed on the first try. It's still late night then. The wendigos habits are to stalk their pray, then kill. The Strager was always somewhere behind Handigo trying to trap her (being why you can see either the stranger standing where Mike jumped down from, or Handigo watching if he doesn't). So if anything, The Stranger put halt on Handigosnattempts to kill. It's actually perfectly referenced when if, you do not get to Jess in time as Mike, Handigo kills her. If the wendigos are reluctant to go indoors, I think it's due more to the fact that it's unfamiliar to them and less open.

Teleporting wolf

• So the second time you explore the Sanatorium as Mike, he can be accompanied by a wolf he possibly befriended earlier. There are several parts here that don't make any sense however as the wolf will disappear and magically appear again while Mike's running through places, specially noticeable is his second to last escape where he walks for a long while without the wolf, and you get the choice whether to barricade a door or not when a wendigo chases him. After this choice the wolf will suddenly appear again and Mike will talk to him as if he was with him all along. Whut? The problem here is that many people would refrain from barricading the door as they didn't realize the wolf was still with him; and this causes the wolf to be killed. I guess this isn't really a Headscratcher as it is just pointing out the creators having made a cheating NPC mechanic.
  • I know it's not much of a headscratcher, but if I had to throw my two cents, my theory is that Wolfie knows his way around the sanatorium, having lived with the Stranger for a (presumably) long time, hence why he could find his way back to Mike pretty quickly.
    • Thus, Wolfie knows all of the nooks and crannies a human may miss. Especially, if Wolfie had been down there with the Stranger during the times of capture. The Wolf would need to know great places to hide in case of the Wendigo spotting and pursuing him like his poor brother wolf.

Wendigo!Hannah's confusing actions

• So Wendigo!Hannah is implied to recognize her former friends, especially at the ending where, if she kills Sam, she does it way less brutally than she killed everyone else (since Sam was her best friend), and with Mike, she won't even kill him, but simply grab him and slam him against a pole (since he was the guy she liked). So how come it is that, unless Josh calls out her name, she doesn't recognize her own brother?
  • I'd quibble with the idea that Sam's death is "less brutal" than anyone else's, since she gets visibly eviscerated.
  • It's actually worse: a severed head will black out within 30 seconds and die within four minutes. You can survive disembowelment for a good long while as you slowly bleed out. If anything, Hannah, like Josh, attacked Sam more brutally because she didn't stop the others during the prologue.
  • Hannah comes across as being pretty selfish from the start of the game. She's only too happy to strip for Mike, despite the fact he's going out with one of her friends, and Emily mentions that Hannah has been 'putting the moves on him' for quite a while beforehand. Wendigo!Hannah is just as obsessed with Mike as she was as a human, given he's the only one she doesn't try to actively hurt. You could argue that her Wendigo nature played up this obsession further.
  • Perhaps Wendigo!Hannah is saving Mike for a more er... "traditional" Wendigo treatment. Per the stranger's notes her gore attack might be meant to stun and/or immobilize Mike. The next step will have something to do with the poor guy's skin.
  • That's possible, but she had plenty of chance to kill him once she actively started to pursue them all to kill. She had perfect opportunity to immobilize him and capture after Jessica fell down the elevator shaft. But, she doesn't. She sort of watches him adoringly you could assume.
  • If Hannah truly did recognize Mike and still have feelings for him, she probably would've grabbed him and dragged him off to keep him in the mines for herself forever and force him to be with her the way she did with big brother Josh when she recognized him. Presumably she wasn't watching Mike "adoringly" so much as a sadistic predator stalking its prey, the same way she has been stalking him and Jess up to the cabin and the rest of her friends for the time leading up to her attacks. Contrary to what many fans believe, she also actually does kill Mike - if Sam doesn't distract her from him, Hannah slashes his abdomen open and holding his head in a way that could badly injure or disable him if landed incorrectly, bodily throws him hard into a pillar. The music that then plays is the same as when any character has been fatally injured, and it's this scene (not the scene of the cabin blowing up with him still inside) that plays for his death, indicating that Hannah's attack was a death blow and sealed his fate. Additionally, if Sam doesn't flip the switch, Mike does so himself and in the close-up of him using his lighter, his abdomen is visibly torn open, bloody and gory (see the bottom-left corner of the 3:29-3:33 timestamp in the linked video). (He also isn't shown moving his lower body or sitting up, which could mean he was partially paralyzed from the waist down from the attack and explain why he didn't try to get up and run.) Hannah wasn't treating Mike with kid gloves anymore than Sam, she was killing both as quickly and brutally as Josh (when she doesn't recognize him), Flamethrower Guy, and the rest of the friends. She's just an unusual wendigo in that she kills more quickly than they're supposed to, but as Flamethrower Guy speculated she has just enough humanity to not kill Josh and want to have him stay with her if he says her name and triggers her memories of him. She was shown distraught and heartbroken upon realizing Mike had pranked her and if she remembered what Mike and the others did to her and her sister, she probably would not have warm fuzzies about him still and would've been even more vicious in her attacks on them.

How did Hannah survive that long in the mines?

• So Hannah fell from a great height, broke her leg, and ended up in the mines. In the middle of a snowstorm. How on earth did she manage to survive for thirty days without succumbing to the cold/hunger/the fact her leg was broken? She most likely was able to drink melted snow to satisfy her thirst, but as for the rest? She wasn't wearing warm clothing either. It just seems unlikely that an unprepared teenage girl could last that long.
  • Pretty sure that Beth gave her coat to Hannah before they fell. In fact, I think that fact is mentioned in Hannah's journal down in the mine, so that would explain how she survived in the cold. As for the broken leg, it's possible she knew first aid and was able to fashion a makeshift splint from materials in the mine. And as for hunger, well we know what happened there.
    • Beth indeed did give Hannah her jacket as shown before they run the end of the cliff as well as Hannah mention such in the journal.
  • Plus there are all sorts of things lying around in the mine that she could've used to make a fire, such as the lanterns that are lying around everywhere. Hannah was a professional-level athlete—you can find a photo of her in the cabin as Mike that mentions she could've been a contender for the Olympics in tennis—so she's in very good shape.
• The real question is how she survived that long in the mines without getting eaten by the wendigos.
  • Because there are no wendigos in the mines at that point. The Stranger says this in the "In the Past" video. The Makkapitew was the only one that had evaded him. As for how Hannah survived for so long, since the Stranger killed the Makkapitew that night of the prank, it also possesses Hannah that night which is what kept her alive. It is what made her crave for human flesh and it adds up to how she was able to do some of the things she describes in her mines journal.

Wendigo Vision

• If the Wendigos see moving objects, how do they tell the difference between people and trees? Unless the wind totally stops at night, the Wendigo should see the leaves rustling. Also, how can they tell if a human has eaten another human? Do they appear a different colour or something?
  • This was discussed in depth in the folder "Moving objects." The short version is that while the Wendigos primarily see movement, they mainly see human (and possibly animal) movement. There's a specific point where Emily is being chased by the Wendigo and she pulls a bunch of rocks down to slow it. During that sequence, it cuts to the Wendigo's perspective, where Emily's movement is still registered, but the rocks aren't. Considering that the Wendigos are supernatural in nature, it's obvious that they can primarily register human movement, while everything else is in the background, allowing their prey to really stand out.
• In a similar vein, if the Wendigos can only see through movement, how can they see a corpse? I don't believe it's ever said they have superior smell, so there should be no way they can find their kill after they're done. You could argue "It's already in their hands", but there are several times where the Wendigos don't kill the person and still drag the corpse off anyway (Matt's first possible death, for example).
  • Maybe they somehow mark their kills with their scent or something. Or at least they know the general area where they left it, and they can search the inert background. The Wendigos can navigate the woods in the dark from the trees; they aren't blind to the background. Its just they have trouble distinguishing if something is prey or not by if it moves. If it moves, kill it. If it doesn't move, its probably a log.
  • The vision of a wendigo much reminds me of thermal vision. So who's to say that heat isn't some part of their vision along with movement. And Chris brings up their sense a smell in a way to which Flamethrower Guy say that they can smell.

Old vs. young Wendigo

• I read the theory that Hannah is the most powerful Wendigo because she's possessed by the spirit of the Alpha, but couldn't it also be because of her age (not her physical age, but the amount of time she spent in that form)? The scene where she's chasing Chris has him shooting her in the face with his shotgun several times, and she just shrugs it off and keeps going. Later, when Sam comes to Mike's rescue in the mines, she's able to knock off a different Wendigo's head with a shovel. How can a shovel in the hands of a frail girl do that, but not a shotgun to the face? Then again, that Wendigo is possibly one of the miners and therefore decades old, so could it be that a Wendigo gets weaker with age (just like humans)?
  • Well the unlucky Wendigo had its bulletproof skin burnt off, leaving it vulnerable to melee attacks. To be fair, Sam is athletic so she might have some strength in her strikes. Perhaps the spirit can only empower its host's skin but not the flesh beneath. Time might have wasted Wendigo bones and muscles.
  • Maybe some of the wendigos didn't get much to eat? Wendigo legends do say that they get stronger if they eat more. So being deprived of their daily bread surely must have an effect on them, right?
  • Why does everyone want to make the Wendigos more than they're established to be? The one that Sam decapitates with the shovel is clearly on fire after being caught in the sanataorium explosion, which means it's lost the layer of armor that the Stranger mentions to Chris, in the manner that the Stranger described. That's it. That's all you need. Without that layer of supernatural, flammable protection, it's a skinny dude with osteoporosis.
  • Don't forget the superhuman speed, stamina, strength, and razor-sharp claws.
    • And teeth.
  • This is kind of a no-brainer, really. It's explicitly stated by Flamethrower Guy that they're vulnerable if you burn their skin away, and that particular wendigo was completely seared.
  • Plus Flamethrower Guy says that it will only slow them down. Which it does. It knocks it backwards when Chris shoots it. Also, the only Wendigos on the mountain was the miners and Hannah. The burnt wendigo that Sam killed that was after Mike was one of the miners that escaped when Mike blew up the Sanatorium. At which point is the ONLY time the miner wendigos are out in the open on the mountain during the game.
  • I think this is possible. Think about this: Mike can somehow either outrun or manage to escape out from being underneath ones attack then out run it a ways before Sam comes to the Sanatorium to find him and rescue him. So, sure the miner wendigos are still strong but not like Hanndigo. We don't know if it's due to being years out of practice of hunting, years without human flesh (unless the Stranger had a stock pile we know noting about besides what was in the morgue, or simply them not being a makkapitew. Age could be a factor. I don't agree with that in particular nor do I about them eating human flesh because Hanndigo never eats another human again after Beth. So being the Makkapitew seems to fit the bill.

The Fatal Grudge Achievement

• So we know that should Chris decide in the Chris VS Ashley trap (where they're both bound to chairs, save for one of Chris's hands, to be able to control the gun with) to even point the gun at Ashley, this will unlock the "Fatal Grudge" achievement, and ultimately end up with Ashley refusing to open the door for Chris despite his pleas, resulting in him being decapitated by a wendigo right in front of her. But there is no proof that the result of what Chris decides to do in the Ashley VS Josh trap (the saw trap, where ultimately, Josh is the victim of the saw, no matter who Chris decides to save). So why would Ashley hold such a grudge if Chris pointing a gun at her was the only thing he did that was intentionally against her? Wouldn't she also be upset with him for choosing to save Josh over her earlier in the night? And even if Chris accidentally sent the saw to Josh after telling Josh that he would try to save him, wouldn't she still be pissed off that his first thought was to save him over her? (This is even more grudge-inducing due to the fact that if Chris says he's going to choose one person and then leads the saw to the person he was trying to save accidentally, he'll go on and on about how he didn't mean to do it and that he would still try to find a way to save them, not even acknowledging the other person, whom he just admitted was lower on his list of priorities.) So why does Chris's first decision with her not affect the outcome of whether or not you get the "Fatal Grudge" achievement?
  • I've been asking myself the same thing, but Ashley's behavior in general doesn't make much sense to me. After all, she is the one who tells Chris to sacrifice her instead of himself in the second trap, and then gets angry at him if he actually does so. Maybe she's just too scared to think clearly? Or she thinks sacrificing yourself to save someone else is always the right thing to do, whereas choosing between the lives of two others is a different story? Either way, Ashley's grudge would be more understandable if it was only triggered by Chris choosing to kill her in both situations, but as it is, I would go with a mixture of my two theories.
    • Ashley never explicitly says for Chris to shoot her. She says. "Let me choose to save you." Which in no way actually interprets into her consent into him shooting her. I believe she wanted to choose to shoot herself rather have him make another hastily decision. And, we are led to believe that Ashley nor Josh knew who Chris picked. They couldn't see the set up and there was a barrier of the sorts between them. Plus the "psycho" recording was playing the whole time so it's doubtful they'd hear everything Chris is saying to himself. Let alone over their pleas for help. I also remember some dialogue between Ashley and Chris. Ashley is thanking him/consoling of the sorts while traversing down stairs to head into the basement, Chris's attitude is indicative of guilt. Kind of showing more so that she doesn't know Chris chose her had you picked Ashley over Josh.
    • Ashley couldn't have shot herself; both her hands were tied, and only Chris' right hand was free, so he was always the one who Josh wanted to make the choice. Chris taking Ashley up on her offer would have necessarily led to him shooting her regardless of how she phrased it. The most likely explanations are that she either didn't expect him to go through with it, or that his willingness to do so still caused her to reflexively hesitate later long enough for him to get killed.
  • Maybe Ash never really expected Chris to go through with shooting her (the guy did confess his crush on her, which he didn't during the first trap)? Stupid answer, but if we had to start throwing theories around this little doozy. Or maybe Ash was just way too traumatized from seeing Josh getting "sawed" in half to care about anything else. Or possibly just Ash just taking the second trap more personally (no third party in that trap, plus the aforementioned confession from Chris).
  • From a play through I watched, then Ashley will thank Chris for choosing her over Josh after the first trap even if Chris didn't, implying that she didn't realize his choice. After all, doesn't he just say "God, Ash...I'm sorry" if he chooses Josh? To Ashley's ears it doesn't necessarily mean he's not saving her, he could just be apologizing for her situation, also she's too panicked to think. Second, it's possible to point the gun at Ashley in the second trap without shooting her, and she will kiss Chris later. She only lets him die if he actually fired the gun.
  • Exactly. If Chris chooses to save Josh, but the trap "misfires", Ashley will assume Chris meant to save her all along, and he won't have the heart to correct her. What I want to know is why Chris acts as though the player has let the timer run out, even if you actually make a choice; he says "I can't decide!" (implying the player didn't shoot either of them) and acts surprised that the gun fires blanks when he tries to shoot the Psycho, which you'd think he would've noticed already if he tried to shoot himself or Ashley.
    • I think this is just a minor missed point that was never corrected.

The Number of Wendigos

• A pretty long one here, folks: When we're in the Sanatorium with Mike, we see that there are thirty clocking in cards. Yet, when Emily is in the mine, we see a chalk board; "in" is smudged off, but "out" specifically states thirty SIX. If the thirty is correct, then it means that fourteen miners survived the cave in, not twelve. The twelve that go to the sanatorium, one that remains in the mines (and is the one we see the Stranger hunting with Emily!) and the Makkapitew. Six are known to be imprisoned in the Sanatorium and there is one in the mines. Hannah becomes the Makkapitew. That makes eight - with six unaccounted for. We know that there are at three dead bodies - discounting Beth - in the mine as Emily discovers them in her phone flashlight. So, with thirty in the mine, three died and were eaten (or survived and were killed later to be eaten!) and fourteen survived. This makes seventeen... with thirteen more unaccounted for. They were either eaten or also became Wendigos, making thirteen remaining miners and thirteen other possible Wendigos - giving us a total of twenty six remaining Wendigos, a dead Makkapitew and three eaten bodies. This raises to twenty seven when we remember that the Makkapitew possessed Hannah and made her a Wendigo. HOWEVER, If the thirty SIX is true, then we have thirteen remaining miners and twenty remaining Wendigos of which one - the Makkapitew - is dead, lowering it to 19. If we include the Makkapitew possessing Hannah, then it goes back up to twenty, giving us a total of up to thirty three wendigos on the mountain at once and the three dead bodies that Emily discovers. So - just how many wendigos are there actually?
  • What the what? Okay first of all I think you got the "In" and "Out" thing confused. "Out" is how many miners WEREN'T anywhere near the mines when the accident happened. Which means that the number 36 bears no relation to any of your calculations. "In" means how many miners were in the mines working when the accident occurred. Now I know it says 30 and there may be a conspiracy to hide the truth because only 12 made it out 'alive' and the newspapers said 'all 12 miners were found alive'. I dunno if it was propaganda or a mistake but you must understand that not everyone would have worked at the same place. They spread out like ants and it's possible 10-15 of them were nowhere near and didn't get trapped. You say there were 3 bodies on the ground? Then it's possible only 15 miners were trapped. 3 of them died and the other 12 in turn resorted to cannibalism to stay alive and became wendigo. The press didn't want a downer story or the mine owners wanted to hide the deaths, either way the news reported that all 12 of the miners were found alive. It's also possible that those three were killed in the cave in and then later eaten and everyone knew all along and when they said "all 12" they meant the remaining 12. It doesn't matter though. What we know from then on is that they were taken to the sanitarium, experimented on and so on, and eventually finished their transformations and turned into full on wendigo. Of those 12 wendigo the stranger has killed 6. This was in 1952 though so it's been literally decades between that and the events of the story and we know that killing a wendigo is only a temporary solution. 6 of those original wendigo were left, one of them probably the unpronouncable one (Makkapitew) and of the remaining 6, and any more that may have possibly been turned, one is free, living in the mines, so probably a miner, 1 is the Makkapitew, who was chasing Beth in the prologue and killed by the stranger, only to possess Hannah later and so on and the remaining 4 miner-wendigo were captured by the stranger and contained in the sanitarium. So to answer your question 12 Wendigos, 7 of them died, one came back as Hannah, leaving something like 6 wendigo left alive post prologue. Even if more people turned into wendigo there'd only be at most 12 wendigo.
  • Okay, this is less than understandable, but the Wendigos were all in the sanatorium except for the Makkapitew (confirmed in the "In the Past" video by the Stranger). Not until the "showdown" in the Lodge were there multiple (Hanndigo and miner wendigos) out in the open on the mountain. And to make things a little more clear, there were only 18 miners trapped in the structural collapse. 12 that lived to make it to the Sanatorium. The "36 Out" found on the chalk board near the clocking machine could've been a number of things since it's never specified exactly what it was suppose to mean.
  • The game explicitly states that 30 Miners were trapped by the cave-in, and 12 came out, meaning they ate the other 18. These 12 were locked away in the Sanatorium and became Wendigos. We know from Flamethrower Man's diary that he's killed 6, so including Makkapitew amongst that number, we have 5 dead Miner Wendigos and 7 left alive. Of those 7, Mike can kill two of them with a barrel explosion (5 left), two more in the Sanatorium explosion (including the one Sam decapitates, so 3 left) and then two more make their way up to the lodge to fight Hannah. That leaves only one left unaccounted for.

Jess' First Death

• The way Jess' first possible death plays out is a little...odd. The Wendigo pulls her out of the cabin, carries her over a very long distance while she's still alive and screaming the whole time, then kills her all of a sudden and dumps her body onto an elevator that descends deeper into the mines. But if Mike completes all of the quick-time events, she's still alive when the Wendigo drops her onto the elevator. Why? There's nothing Mike can do to force the Wendigo to let Jess go at any point, so what keeps it from killing Jess in the latter scenario before it drops her? Moreover, why didn't the Wendigo kill Jess when it first grabbed her instead of dragging her kicking and screaming all the way to the mine first?
  • If you look at the way the other deaths play out throughout the rest of the game, and listen to what the Stranger tells them the wendigos like to do with their prey, this could very well be chalked up to the wendigo wanting to "play with its food", in a sense. We learn through the Stranger that wendigos often like to tear off the skin of their prey before slowly eating away at it, and that may have been what the wendigo that took Jess was intending to do with her. But due to her screaming, and that the wendigo more than likely saw Mike (be it when it took Jess out of the cabin, or while Mike was running after her), the wendigo probably wanted her to be quiet so that nobody could find her and take her away. In the case that Mike makes all the right choices and gets to the elevator, the wendigo probably saw Mike chasing after her as a good thing, perhaps making its meal a two-for-one. (That, or, it was intending on killing Jess, but never got the chance due to Mike showing up.)
    • Hannah is the Wendigo that took Jess. Hannah is the ONLY wendigo that can kill the teens and the ONLY wendigo free until Mike blows up the Sanatorium for the second time. Which we do not see the other Wendigos until the "showdown" in the Lodge and Hannah stops them from killing any of the teens because she wants the glory of doing it/or want to preserve her former friends.
  • Another explanation is that Hannah (who is the Wendigo that abducts Jessica) has enough of her psyche left to want to get Jessica as far away from Mike as possible. Especially after Jessica makes a speech about how she is going to have hot, isolated sex with him, and nobody is going to stop her. Considering Hannah's ability to use a cell phone as a lure, mimic the voice of another person, cut a supporting wire on a tower, and her capacity to remember Josh under the right circumstances, its not implausible that, that part of Hannah's personality still existed, albeit twisted by the nature of the Wendigo.
    • I think this explains perfectly why.
    • If you wait long enough with Chris and The Stranger outside while going to retrieve Josh (I believe it's the dialogue after Chris asks if he can hide himself by covering his scent with garlic), Chris will ask if any part of their humanity remains. The Stranger speculates that it might. So this answer is probably the correct one.
  • I think Hanndigo was just toying with Jessica and as stated above wanted to get Jessica away from Mike so they wouldn't have sex. But, with Mike not being quick enough, Hannadigo rips Jess's mouth of to shut her up. Because, although Jess thought she was speaking to the other teens, she was really taunting Hannadigo and that pissed her off. So if Mike is quick enough, maybe Hannah didn't want to kill her in front of Mike. This part is honestly a mystery. It's clear she still thinks the way she did of Mike because she never kills him. And she had plenty of chance when you have the option to shoot Hanndigo after Jess falls down the elevator shaft. At that moment, it's almost as if she's admiring Mike at seeing him clearly for the first time in a year.

Wendigos' Sense of Smell

• Do they have one? Chris makes a sort-of joke about covering himself in garlic, and the Stranger says "oh, they'll still smell you." But later, we see Wendigos get right next to people, and as long as they keep still, they're fine. Why can't the Wendigos smell a human right in front of them?
  • My take is that the smell of humans is only noticeable when they move, otherwise they lose it. It's not the best answer, but if we had somewhere to start.
  • It could be that their smell travels in the wind as they move. But, my opinion is that they can smell perfectly even if you're still. The other Wendigos or Mike always end up distracting Hanndigo as she's closing in on Sam. So we never will have a definitive answer on that. In my opinion, The Stranger confirms their sense of smell when Chris mentions the garlic. But, it's never stated how strong the sense is.
  • It could be that their sense of smell is strong but not precise, meaning they might be able to smell a human from far away, but not be able to tell exactly where or what distance the smell is coming from. So it might be that, while in a room full of humans, they can smell that there are humans near them, but can't smell out their locations.

Through the Observation Scope

• When Jessica and Mike are wandering around the woods, they find a viewing scope and Jess looks through it. She says she saw something, and Mike looks, and a Wendigo face pops up. Mike has no reaction at all and doesn't tell Jess about it. What's up with that?
  • Oversight on the developers' part?
  • Actually, he does react - if you go to the trouble of doing a double take. Looking through the binoculars again results in Mike pretending he didn't see anything and dismissing Jess's sighting.
  • His reaction confirmed when doing a double take. He probably didn't react in the way we expected because it's not until later when the Stranger comes to explain the Wendigo, that Mike puts the puzzle together realizing just what exactly he saw in the telescope (he has a flashback). So he was likely dismissive because it happened so quickly it was difficult to decipher what it was. So why cause any freak out. Plus, there is the board right next the the telescope describing animals that can be found on the mountain. As such, that is why Jess and Mike initially assume Hanndigo is a bear.

Matt's Guilt

• Even if EVERYONE lives, Matt still feels vaguely guilty about something vague. Talking to the police, he talks about how he tried to help, but it "wasn't enough." Is this just Matt's lack of character development or does he actually have something to feel guilty about?
  • He sounds like he's talking about Emily's fall in that bit - since it sounds like Matt and Jess haven't been reunited with the other survivors by the time they're interviewed (Jess asks if Mike's okay), he could be worried about how she's doing, and/or about what she's saying about how he handled the situation in her interview.
  • No matter how you play Emily's fall, Matt isn't actually able to save her; she falls regardless. That's probably what he feels guilty about.
    • This makes the most sense.

The Totems Want Me To Do WHAT?!

• There are Guidance and Fortune totems in the game that oddly enough are options you would want to avoid. Guidance totem #2 depicts Mike amputating his fingers when he's caught in the hand trap, when Mike has a better option to walk past the trap. Guidance totem #5 show Emily giving Matt the flare gun, but if this option is taken it will lead to Emily almost being killed by Mike, additionally, she'll try to have Mike arrested for attempted murder in her police interview. It would be a far better option for Emily to keep the flare gun so that this would be avoided, yet no totems depict Emily keeping the flare gun. Fortune totem #4 shows Mike choosing not to shoot Emily, if he follows through with this Emily will try to press charges, again, Emily keeping the flare gun would keep Mike from pointing the gun at Emily, a much better option that is again not depicted by totems. And lastly, Fortune Totem #2 shows Matt escaping the wendigo in the mines, however, for this to come true Matt has to run from the wendigo, for this to come true Jessica would have to be abandoned to her death by Matt if she isn't already dead. And it's already well known that the only way to keep Jessica alive is to have Matt and herself hide.
  • Guidance Totem #5 can actually save Matt's life. While a bit tricky and probably something you won't get on your first try unless by accident, if you disagree with Emily and want to head back to the lodge as Matt and then you make her give Matt the flare gun and he tries helping her when the tower falls twice, when the wendigo attacks him instead of being placed on the hook he can shoot the wendigo with the flare gun and save himself.
  • The guidance totem's purpose is to guide you from keeping them from dying. So it shows you what to do to keep the character shown alive. Some just happen to have others that need to be combined to make them save everyone.
  • Guidance Totem #2 was one of the most useful. It clearly depicts the hand, and clearly depicts what will happen if you interact with it. It's showing you what NOT to do.
    • YMMV a lot on the "it clearly depicts the hand" part. The hand only appears for a split second, so it's extremely easy to miss it unless you watch the video in slow motion (which is impossible unless you're watching a Let's Play on Youtube). Most players will only see somebody's fingers getting amputated without any context, and it will only be in hindsight that they will realize what the totem was about. Unless the player is Genre Savvy enough to realize there's something wrong with the hand, but that kind of player probably won't need the totem for that. This and the trapdoor part with Ashley are the two situations where Genre Savvyness will help the player much more than the poor hints that the game gives you. Anyway, the OP is right about the totem giving you the worst advice should you fall into the trap.

The Sanatorium

• Why would anyone build a Sanatorium on top of a mountain range? That's not exactly a convenient place for mental patients to go to receive treatment. Also how did it get destroyed by Wendigos without anyone noticing it? You would think the destruction of the place and the slaughter of everyone in it would be a major part of the local area's history. Also, how did no one find any evidence of Wendigos after it was destroyed? The evidence of them is all over the place.
  • The Sanatorium was owned by the same Dr./man that also owned the mining company. It wasn't until the miners started to break through the mountain that the wendigo spirits were released into Blackwood Mountain and thus, at that point had no physical body. The cave in set up for perfect conditions to leave the miners vulnerable enough to be possessed and manipulated buy the wendigo spirit to then consume the bodies of those that had died due to the collapse.
  • Sanatorium was actually specifically built in areas like this because it was believed that clean, high-altitude mountain air was good for treating diseases. They were also chiefly intended for sufferers of physical illnesses, the most common being tuberculosis (some were refitted as psychiatric facilities later, but they're technically not the same thing). Most sanatoriums had fallen out of use by the early 1950s, so it's possible that Blackwood was on its last legs at the time of the mining accident, and nobody was too interested in gossiping about it anymore. Perhaps the patients still in treatment were those who had no friends or family to take them home - people that wouldn't be missed. Missing staff would have raised more concern, but we can't confirm that more than a few people were studying the miners, which means less relatives trying to figure out what happened to them. As far as not finding evidence, maybe people simply weren't looking for it. Unlike horror fans, local police, especially in the 1950s, aren't going to immediately assume "wendigo" based on weird medical notes (if they found them at all). Knowing what we do about the monsters, and considering how few corpses are to be found in the building during the game, we can assume all they found were trashed rooms and bloodstains. Filter this through the logic of trained police, add on the cover-up work done during and after by the mining company and the doctors, and consider how quickly public interest in a tragedy can fade. It probably looked like there was nothing else anyone could do after the first investigation. I'd imagine it also seemed like the final nail in the coffin for an already-dying institution.
    • I'm not saying the cops would know it was "Wendigos" specifically that did the killing, but the huge claw marks on the walls, mangled bodies, and medical notes would make it clear whatever did the killing wasn't human. There is also the video recording showing a patient turning into a Wendigo. That was right out in the open, so there is no way a trained police investigator would not have noticed it. Like I said, this should be a major part of the area's lore: The night everyone at the Sanatorium died unexplained deaths from something that wasn't human.
  • It's also possible that the Stranger or his grandfather had a hand in keeping people off the mountain. The mountain itself is inaccessible all but from a lift. There's a telegram that can be found that was sent out from the Sanatoriums head to another person that the media needed to be dealt with because someone was caught snooping around. You also can find the camera that is mentioned in another document that the guy from the media whom was caught, had it confiscated from him. Which was obviously done to further hide the secret of what really went on. It's possible that no one even bothered since it was an isolated place. Another possibility is that the destruction of the wendigos caused the building to be condemned and therefore that whomever assumed everyone inside were dead from the deterioration of the building. Lastly, an investigative team could have been sent to check out why the sanatorium suddenly went silent only to be devoured by wendigos and no further team was sent being deemed to dangerous by reason other than the wendigos since they wouldn't know but just assume weather or the mines. Wendigos might hunt at night but, had they stayed in the sanatorium when the people came to investigate they would've definitely killed them.
    • If an investigation team had been slaughtered, I'm pretty sure the cops wouldn't just give up after that. Cops aren't known to just write off the death of fellow cops without trying to find who is responsible.
  • As noted many times on this page, Blackwood has an established history of strange things happening on it and it's entirely possible that the cops decided to just not push their luck after the initial investigation team all apparently died mysteriously.

Sanatorium Chapel

• Why does the Chapel need a security pass to access, but the morgue, admin office and medical wards don't? Surely the building where patients go to pray should be accessible to everyone, but the offices and store for corpses should be closed off to everyone but staff?
  • They did need a security pass. But, from how you enter, you just don't come across them the way you normally would. I remember at least two, possibly three times you could've had to use the key card, had circumstances not been that the building was deteriorated. The rest of the time you're coming in through ceilings, broken walls, or blowing your way through the exit. You first use the key card in the morgue after retrieving it from the dead orderly/nurse. It was a dressed up asylum so they would require all areas cut off to the patients.

Hannah In The Prologue

• Small one here, but it nagged me for the entire second half of the game. The last shot of the prologue is a loving closeup of Hannah and Beth's faces. As is expected of people who die suddenly and unexpectedly, their eyes are wide open, unblinking and staring. Of course, the big twist is that Hannah DIDN'T die, so why is the scene so (apparently) unambiguous? She looks the kind of dead you don't question. You'd think her head could have just been turned away from the camera to hide any facial movement. Is it really just for the sake of the shot's composition, or is there some type of temporary facial paralysis I'm not aware of?
  • Well, in the same shot, if you pay very close attention, you can see Hannah's body twitching. Personally, I believe that Hannah may have just been pretending in case the person that tried to pull them up (whom the player learns is actually trying to help them, something Hannah and Beth never get to find out) tried coming after them, or in case an animal found them. Like, Hannah was simply playing dead, in a sense. It would actually make sense for her to do that, specifically if we're to believe that she was afraid of the Flamethrower Guy. Alternatively, I also think it might have something to do with how cold it was on the mountain. When you shudder or chatter your teeth, that actually makes you feel COLDER, and Hannah may have learned that (having presumably spent a lot of her time on the mountain with her family), so she was trying to prevent herself from feeling colder than she already was, and trying to prevent hypothermia. Neither of the theories above are particularly sound, but would make some sense if the game regards basic survival tactics, I suppose.
  • There actually is a such thing to appear in a paralyzed state from shock. Then again, we're only shown a mere few seconds after the fall so there's really nothing unusual with how Hannah was. Especially considering she broke her leg and possibly had other minor injuries. But, the above stated is a good possibility too.
  • There's also the fact that she has just fallen off a fucking cliff that is at least thirty feet high! She's going to be in a hell of a lot of pain. She probably couldn't move until the pain subsided. Notice, only the brief flicker comes from her eyes before we lose the scene and the rest of her doesn't move. It's possible, given that she has a broken leg, that she couldn't move at that point. Remember, people can (and frequently do) break bones by falling down the stairs. Imagine falling from ten times that height and breaking your leg due to how your kneecap lands on the floor. She was lucky to be alive, even if she's not in one piece; Beth died in the fall, Hannah could've gone the same way!
  • Closing your eyes when in danger is a fairly automatic response, but it's still voluntary (as people who need to keep their eyes open in say, a firefight, will train themselves to do). A solid blow can cause momentarily paralysis, due to the spine and brain being jostled quite severely, so her eyes could certainly be frozen open for a moment. It's also very possible (and more common than media advertises) to be unconscious with your eyes open.

Hannah betraying Emily?

• So did Hannah know Mike was dating Emily, and chose to be with him anyway? Or did she now know, or assumed that they broke up?
  • This is why Hannah is such a divisive character. She knew Mike was dating Emily, yet she was still eager to hook up with him when given the chance. Emily isn't exactly a nice person, but they were still supposed to be friends. Hannah also never exactly hid the fact that she had a crush on Mike, and depending on how you interpret it, she can come across as being borderline obsessed with him.
  • Nothing really justifies what Hannah or the other teens did, but Hannah was very naive and childish even. Beth states her concern with just how naive Hannah is when she finds the note to Hannah. I think Hannah genuinely thought Mike wanted her. This is further backed by the rip out piece of a magazine quiz you find in Hannah's closet by Sam. (She probably thought he was finally taking notice to her after getting the butterfly tattoo as the quiz suggested she do for her to get his attention). Her thoughts probably didn't go beyond that to even think of Emily. Hannah was finally getting what she wanted after so long and hard of trying just to get Mike to notice her. I don't think Hannah out right tried to hurt Emily but in the same regard I don't believe they were that great of friends to begin with. She could've also assumed that Mike and Emily broke up. But, again I don't think her thoughts went to that because she immediately goes to the room Mike mentions upon reading the note.
  • What Hannah did was insensitive and selfish, but the others acted far, far worse. Not only did they deliberately give a love-struck girl false hope, but also broke her heart in a humiliating manner for no reason apart from their amusement. Nothing was stopping them from confronting/talking to her about her crush in an open and mature way. It also bears mentioning that as intense as Hannah's crush was, she didn't act on it until after she was explicitly invited into Mike's room. If Emily didn't want Hannah to betray her trust, she shouldn't have baited her to do so.

Twelve Miners

• There were twelve miners that were recovered and thirty in total; if they only ate one between then... then that leave eleven Wendigos unaccounted for - twelve, if we assume the Makkipitew was not one of them. We know that six were trapped in the Sanatorium ... so what about the other five? One is in the mine... but the other four?
  • Hannah is the only wendigo that's in the mines. The Stranger's journal confirms that he killed six of them and the rest were trapped in the sanatorium until Mike blows it up for the second time. Which causes the two that were already running loose inside the sanatorium to escape out onto the mountain and run to the lodge. There was only 18 miners that were trapped, 12 that were rescued. So the 12 that lived obviously ate the other 6. When Emily falls off the ladder and falls through the wooden planks, you can count about 4 remains (skeletons) there. The 30 clock in cards you find as Mike in the Sanatorium is there for the purpose of only showing us player that the guy who owned both the mining company and the Sanatorium tried to obscure the fact of how dangerous the mines were and those he endangered. He knew before the collapse that it wasn't safe.
  • The game explicitly states that 30 Miners were trapped by the cave-in, and 12 came out, meaning they ate the other 18. These 12 were locked away in the Sanatorium and became Wendigos. We know from Flamethrower Man's diary that he's killed 6, so including Makkapitew amongst that number, we have 5 dead Miner Wendigos and 7 left alive. Of those 7, Mike can kill two of them with a barrel explosion (5 left), two more in the Sanatorium explosion (including the one Sam decapitates, so 3 left) and then two more make their way up to the lodge to fight Hannah. That leaves only one left unaccounted for.

Flamethrower Guy's Board in the Sanatorium

• So while playing as Mike searching the Sanatorium/following Flamethrower Guy, you come across a board full of newspaper clippings and a map (presumably made by Flamethrower Guy). Both of which have some writing on them. It's clear that one mentioning a "Local Man Found Dead" says, "LIARS!", but on the map there's a few different writings, some that say "sightings" and others that hard to make out. What is it that Flamethrower Guy wrote on the papers?
  • Maybe someone can enhance a still frame from that section of the game. My opinion, it looks as if beside what you've already mentioned, that he'd also wrote on the far right side of the map "American Girls Died" (Hannah and Beth?) and somewhat below that "Father Died" (Flamethrower Guy's Father?). Hopefully someone can provide solid evidence that I'm assuming correctly because it's a very interesting piece of information for sure that would certainly connect some other unanswered questions people have.

How did Jess not die?

• So, Jess receives heavy head trauma when she falls down the elevator shaft. Henry VIII's survival from head trauma, for which he was unconscious for two and a half hours, was nothing short of a miracle (or a disaster, depending on who you ask!). Jess is unconscious, with head trauma, for nearly seven hours... so the head trauma and what resulted from it should have killed her anyway...
  • Honestly, plot purpose. People have survived far worse falls. And we are never given any definite injuries Jess sustains. We're left to make our own gander based on her appearance and the very few things she says.
  • Tap on the Head is unrealistic for claiming unconsciousness is harmless, but it should also be noted that neither is it definitive proof of permanent brain damage. Plenty of people get knocked out and wake up fine, and the timescale doesn't really factor into it. Personally I would be more worried about exposure.
  • Frankly, given the way the grid she is lying on, it doesn't come across as the fall would be that damaging. She didn't fall from a tall height down onto the grid; she was already lying on it, so her head, at most, likely gave one good bounce upon landing. And her being unconscious for so long was likely her brain choosing to go into hibernation mode to not only get Jess to forget what happened, since it would be traumatic, but also to keep her still, so that the body can work on fixing whatever it can fix. Like the blood clotting and everything, so she doesn't walk around bleeding profusely.

The Pranks Going On

• Why do the characters keep playing pranks on each other? They know that their 'prank' caused Hannah to run off and Beth to follow, leading both girls to disappear in the area. Did they just forget that it's a consequence of their previous pranking? Or are we supposed to just write it off as 'Teens being dumb'?
  • It may be similar to the effect a wake has on people. Some people can eat and drink, laugh and joke at a wake. Others can find this disturbing, or disrespectful. Some people are good at letting go of the past, others not so much. And, of course, some people simply force themselves to act merry, because they don't want to feel sad, guilty or hurt anymore. My opinion is that Chris and Mike, for example, are joking around so much because they don't want to have to think about what happened.
  • Part of it may also be that this is the first time in a while they are all together again, similar to the wake idea. While there is some distance between certain members due to what's happened, sometimes being around certain people just unconsciously brings out that side of you if you aren't aware of it (like when adult siblings get together, they sometimes regress to old family patterns). So the friends being around each other brings out that old pranking behavior, which they don't keep in check since they aren't the most introspective bunch. Might also add to why they didn't understand that the prank on Hannah was particularly cruel. On top of not knowing how deep her feelings for Mike were, the friends seemed to prank each other all the time with no harm, no foul before this point. The only one who really understood the emotional impact the prank would have on Hannah was Sam, who is Hannah's best friend.

Cannibalism

• Why does one turn into a Wendigo when cannibalism is done in a state of utter duress? It'd be understandable if turning into a Wendigo/getting possessed by a Wendigo's spirit is a punishment done to someone who enjoys consuming human flesh. The only times people are turned into Wendigo in this game is when they are honestly in a life-or-death situation: The miners and Hannah were stuck inside the mines for a long time, with no source of food around them and were starving. It took them being close to death to decide to eat something, even human flesh. Cannibalism is not that common for most of humanity. Did the Cree on the mountain consider cannibalism to be a terrible thing, period? Was it considered better to die of starvation than to eat another human?
  • This is part of the original Algonquin mythology. Starving or not, you become a Wendigo:
  According to legend, people, who were lost in the woods and starving, would resort to cannibalism and become Windigoes. These people would return home from the forest only to become violent and anti-social.
  They would gradually be overcome by the urge to consume human flesh, giving more power to the Wendigoes.
  • The only way to destroy the evil spirit was to kill the host and burn their body to ashes.
  According to different versions of the legend, there are several ways to get inhabited by a Wendigo, including being bitten by one, a shaman's curse, or dreaming of the Wendigo. Source
  • Now, if you want to apply non-spiritual interpretations to this, the act of cannibalism under duress would lead to severe trauma in people, making them very different, anti-social and tormented by their guilt and painful memories. This could have lead to the Wendigo mythology - sort of a mythological version of the experiences of PTSD, if you will.
  • Even if a person who committed cannibalism doesn't actually crave human flesh, the fact that they keep re-living the trauma in their mind involuntarily - "re-committing the act" in their minds - this may have been interpreted by Shaman as a type of possession. The Algonguin believed the Spirit world was very powerful - uncontrollable flashbacks would not have been viewed as psychological, rather spiritual.
  • It seems to be a ritualistic trigger, you eat human flesh on that specific mountain, it gives the Wendigo spirit license to possess you, it is also heavily implied that the Wendigos can influence people who are, as you say, under duress, to crave human flesh and want to consume it, and it is implied the worse state your mind is, the easier it is for the Wendigos' to influence you, look at the true ending, Josh was in the mine for what? A few days (I say that because, thanks to the group, now the authorities knew where to look) and already sharpened up and happily snacking on the Stranger's scalp, his mental state was obviously bad, and seeing what his sister had became might of unhinged him further, so he would've been prime Wendigo meatsuit material.

Chris vs. Ashley death trap

• While Chris wouldn't have known the gun was loaded with blanks if he chose to die with Ashley, wouldn't he have if he shot himself or Ashley? Why bother shooting the Psycho? Just acting out of panic or is it all roads lead to the same path deal?
  • Probably a little of both. The point of the death traps is that the choice is impossible and at least one of them is going to die, regardless of the choice Chris makes. His attempt to Take a Third Option by trying to shoot the Psycho (or he could have been trying to break the saw blades) is both a self-defensive panic move and a last ditch effort to save the both of them. Ultimately, though, it's just a means of avoiding the inevitable. Moreover, it is an inordinately bad idea to take the risk that a gun is possibly loaded with blanks by shooting yourself at point blank range (which is a horrible idea in general), or by shooting your crush who is crying and pleading with you to spare her, so it makes sense that Chris first shoots away from himself.
  • I'm assuming you're referring to the Psycho stepping out after Chris either fires the gun at himself or Ashley, and not when he fires up into the saw blades. I think it was probably just an instinctive thing. He didn't really have time to process why the gun hadn't gone off the first time, he just saw the Psycho, was holding a gun, and tried to fire it at him.

Police Investigation of the Flamethrower Guy

• Did he have a home off the mountain and was it lack of evidence against the flamethrower guy that kept police from pursuing him as a suspect? He'd have to give the police an address they could reach him at and didn't the mountain belong to the Washingtons? While the radio broadcast said Hannah and Beth couldn't have made it to the sanitarium, if he had to give that as his living place, wouldn't they have had to check and then found proof of the Wendigo? Is it just because they apparently could never have made it that they limited their search range?
  • Flamethrower Guy's status of residence is admittedly never made clear, but the police probably know that he has absolutely no motive - murdering the children of the family that's so rich it owns the mountain he lives on/possibly near when he'd be aware of the legal retribution it could bring him, retribution that would disrupt his mission of (as far as the police know) keeping people off of the mountain? Why shove them off a random cliff and leave the bodies, possibly to be found, if he has ready access to guns and flamethrowers and probably knows a lot of nooks and crannies to dispose of bodies in? That and the mountain being both structurally unsound and infamous as "that place where weird stuff happens" it's plausible that the police concluded that it wouldn't be worth the trouble investigating.

Chris's behaviour towards Ashley in the final scene/interview

• It's always bothered me that if Chris survives and Ashley doesn't, he never mentions her in his police interview. One of the reasons Ashley died in my first play-through was that I didn't realise she wasn't out of the lodge yet when Sam started the fire: with Chris's whole story revolving around being very protective of her, I didn't realise he'd left without her. I've never understood why, when their relationship is maxed out, Chris leaves the lodge without Ashley and then doesn't ever bring her up again afterwards.
  • Chris has gone through a lot of trauma in the last few hours and hasn't processed everything yet, he might even be deliberately not talking about Ashley because the subject will cause him to break down.
  • Let's not forget that we also only see snippets of the police interviews and not the whole things. It's pretty much guaranteed there's a lot of scenes that we didn't see, such as Chris talking about Ashley if she dies.

Trapping vs killing Wendigos

• The Stranger is adamant that the Wendigos should be locked away rather than killed, because killing them will release the spirit to potentially possess someone else. However, for possession to occur someone needs to eat human flesh, which is very unlikely since it'd require a specific set of circumstances. At least two people would have to have a freak accident up this mountain which hardly anyone goes to. At least one of them would have to survive, but be unable to get to safety, and they'd also have to be so well-hidden that any search parties would be unable to find them. Why then is the Stranger so set on keeping the Wendigos alive? Wouldn't it be much safer to kill them and risk the off-chance that someone would be possessed, than keep them locked up and risk the much bigger chance that they'd escape? If he'd done just that then there'd be none or only one Wendigo (Josh) left by the end of the game, as opposed to god knows how many are out there now.
  • While the Wendigo spirits may need someone to eat human flesh before they can be possessed, they also seem to be able to compel or tempt people into eating human flesh as well, slowly driving them insane enough to do it. With that possibility in mind, it's definitely safer to just keep the already existing Wendigos locked away as opposed to killing them.

If Chris dies outside the shed...

• If Chris dies outside the shed, those in the lodge are never informed that Josh's body has been dragged away. Everyone in the lodge, including Mike, should still think that Josh's body is in the shed, and they aren't going to double check now that they know a wendigo is around and it has just killed Chris and The Stranger. The only sensible thing to assume is that it has killed Josh, too, or that Josh has been left alone and is still tied up. So how does Mike still come up with the plan to go to the wendigo's lair and get the keys off of Josh's body? He has no reason to think Josh is in the lair, because Chris never came back to tell him that the body is gone.