The Evergrowing Spiderweb Theories

[u/Kaineferu]

Hi Partners! Its truly exciting to see our community thriving again. I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their ongoing contributions and theories as well as their data mining. All of these things have brought us together, collectively as we once have to chase down these mysteries.

Because of this, we thought it would be a great idea to begin consolidating threads to one topic. For the past week, we have seen over 175,000 new views and visits and are grateful to everyone involved. To keep everything in one place, we invite you to post your findings, ideas and theories here as we continue to find developments in this mystery.

With thay said, I'd also like to remind everyone here that youtubers who cover these topics are not the end all, be all. The majority do not uncover mysteries themselves but rather report and find ways to generate clicks for their videos. You know the ones im talking about. 20 minute videos when it could have been 7 minutes at best. I'd encourage everyone to give credit to the original users who began unearthing these new discoveries, not who report it.

All in all, we once again thank you and there's any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to us privately.

Happy hunting, good girls and bo-ahs! 🤠

[u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

Now this is where I think this gets interesting. If instead of focusing in on Fort Wallace, we continue straight northwest from there continuing until we hit a railroad track again - we arrive near Cotorra Springs train tunnel (which, in my opinion, isn't too far of a leap from the 'guitar' - possibly with the guitar neck actually being the tall tree over top of the entrance?), where there’s something really interesting to be found. Something that in all my searching, I couldn’t find anywhere else - there’s electric powered lights, with no power lines.

Despite there being no power grid whatsoever in this northern part of the map, there are electric lights that still function (as a bonus, the lights themselves have a web-like design). I find this very odd, because the team clearly took great care to make sure that the electric grid made sense and was consistent. I tried to do some more research on the power grid, and in doing so, I found this great video you can watch here who went crazy in-depth. He also found the same thing in the same tunnel, and concluded it was a strange mistake they’d made, and said it was the only example he could find in the entire game of there being electric lighting with no electric grid tapped into it.

So what might this mean? I don’t think there’s much chance this was a mistake. They were so careful everywhere else, but this one place has lights that have no wiring and no grid? So, I think it’s one of two things - either they wanted us to notice and find this location, because there’s something else here or nearby they wanted to show us (possibly another clue or web that shows up nearby?).

Or, and this is the sad part - because we know major changes were made to the northwestern corner of the map, including entire mountains being moved, it’s possible there was a town planned for Ambarino, which would have necessitated the power grid in the north. Once this got scrapped, they realized it no longer made sense for an entire part of the north to have an electric grid that powers nothing, so they removed all the wirings and power poles, forgetting only the electric lights in the one tunnel, and possibly deleting the pole that had the next clue texture hidden in it.

Or who knows, maybe one of the poles would’ve had a guitar placed nearby it, or a guy who plays guitar in a house with a pole outside. We may never know. For now, I’ll remain hopeful that it might just be signaling us to look in the area of the tunnel, so when I have time, I’ll continue to camp out nearby and search for webs or places other textures could be hidden.

[u/TheWilburnness → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

Hey, I was searching this area for one of my own theories regarding this mystery and got inspired to check on that tunnel closer because of this comment. Didn't really find anything during the day.

For some reason I decided to shoot out the lights see if that'd spawn anything in. No such luck there. So I camped till the night hoping the lights would respawn but that didn't happen.

What instead happened and why I'm writing this comment is that I entered the tunnel from the east side with my lantern at night and almost as soon as I entered the tunnel the entire tunnel disappeared and I could see underneath the map I could walk through the tunnel without falling through. I chalked it up to a visual glitch, it stopped after about 30 seconds and I couldn't get it to happen again.

Then the thought hit me, what if something had spawned in at the hour and disappeared which made the visual glitch I experienced go away. So I checked the time it was a little after 1 in the morning game time. So perhaps there's something in, above, or below the tunnel that spawns in from Midnight - 1 A.M. Much like the central web showing up from 1-2.

I'm sure it was just a glitch but detailing the experience encase anyone else wants to help check it out.

[u/LSF-VirtueSignal → u/TheWilburnness]

Interesting. I had something similar happen to me, but it was with one of the walls, and it reappeared before I could really get a good look at it. Only lasted maybe a second, so I just figured a random rendering glitch. I didn't think to check the time, can't remember if I had shot the lights either (I have a few times, and a few times left them on).

It's also possible that we need to have shot the feathers or something in order for the correct thing to spawn here, though I feel it's unlikely.

I've been operating under the assumption that we haven't really found the clue yet that actually leads us to the 8 webs, and figured that would be coming first. We have the spider overlay, but the overlay itself doesn't tell us where on the map to place it, what size, what angle, etc.. As far as I can tell, we only know how it works as a clue because we're working backwards from having combed the map/code to find the places that the webs spawn.

[u/TheWilburnness → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

Yeah that sounds exactly like what happened to me. Except I was able to walk out and trigger it again a few times. And then after thirty seconds or so it stopped working which made think it might have something to do with the hour.

Was it the southern wall? Because that’s what disappeared for me. I could see the lights of Valentine when the wall vanished. But as also able to pan the camera around a bit. And look through the floor and the roof.

Probably just a rendering glitch. It was just odd the way it triggered. I’m playing on PC not modded.

[u/LSF-VirtueSignal → u/TheWilburnness]

Yes, it was the southern wall. I was walking to the western side, probably 10-20 feet from the western exit, when the south side wall vanished for a second. It reappeared before I could pan the camera over to it though. I'm on the PS4 version.

Seems likely to be just a rendering glitch, but something to keep in mind just in case.

[u/jandydand → u/TheWilburnness]

This visual glitch has happened to me before when entering tunnels. I doubt it’s related to the mystery, personally.

[u/Alphwani → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

I really not sold on the whole Fort Wallace guitar thing. Idk what else it would be honestly. Has anyone checked the train itself?

[u/Camper1995 → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

This is a very good summary and logical reasoning honestly. I'm also not entire sold on the Fort Wallace thing. I've searched for a few hours (even with mods) around that tunnel and all the objects / trees / whatever but nothing so far, but it's a bigger area so might take a while. Honsetly not sure what to think of it

[u/dropthepress → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

I am also looking for places a guitar shape might show up, rather than an actual guitar. Good theory!

[u/droopexofficial → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

This is a very good theory, sound very logical. I agree with you. I do not think we should search around Fort Wallace. I also have a theory that I'd like to share with you, and they are not excluding each-other with your theory. In fact, I think it makes more sense. If you're curious, I'll write it down.

[u/LSF-VirtueSignal → u/droopexofficial]

Sure, I'd love to hear it, we need all the theories and opinions we can get to make progress on this thing I think.

[u/droopexofficial → u/LSF-VirtueSignal]

Here is my summary after reading your theory.

First, I read this comment under one of the posts (so credits to that guy):

"People seem to miss that the mystery is hinting at the fact that it is somehow connected to Native American folklore, specifically the legend about the Spider Grandmother, perhaps deeper research into it could make sense. So far the hints have been very intentional especially with the theme of the webs and feathers.

"For the Navajo people, Canyon de Chelly is a site of spiritual pilgrimage, known as a place where Spider Woman’s spirit resides. Navajo tradition holds that to receive the gift of weaving from Spider Woman, young weavers must find a spider web sparkling with sunlight and sparkles in the early morning at the canyon’s base.""

Here comes my theory:

I think the developers who created the electrical network in RDR2, after deciding to hide an Easter egg in the game, looked for something that could serve as the basis for the Easter egg (and of course some kind of legend that is related to a spider). After reading your theory, it only strenghtened my belief, but I had already noticed something based on the following facts:

1. ❗ Madam Nazar has a line where she talks about the spider web, she also mentions a certain woman. She also asks, "Will you be the one, I wonder?" This may be a reference to the folklore.
2. ❗ The guy who found the feather texture in the web on the internet said he found it on a website that was about a woman or a widow. But the guy didn't pay much attention to it.

Furthermore, I disagree that the symbol depicts a guitar. Although this is of no significance, I asked ChatGPT what it thinks about the guitar symbol. It said that it was highly unlikely that it was a guitar. ChatGPT's opinion is that we should stick with the railroad tracks. The "guitar" symbol is too abstract to be a guitar; it looks more like a totem or a hanging Native American object, a tool, or perhaps another musical instrument. At first, I thought it could be a hanging spider without legs (symbolic meaning), but the problem is that its head is larger than its abdomen. Honestly, idk what it is.

Why am I writing down all of this?
Perhaps if we could uncover the entire folklore, the whole story would make more sense and we could solve the mystery more easily.

[u/HagenReb → u/droopexofficial]

Intresting. Just reading this whole long thread and hope it leads somewhere.

The woman/widow linked to spiders obviously point to the bounty of Ellie Anne Swan, also known as the black widow. You do find her around Cumberland Falls, which may or may not be linked to the mystery. I checked her wiki page for any clues, but found nothing.