Most people grew up with a happy little show called Pingu. Pingu was a show that had a clay penguin named Pingu and it showed his adventures. The characters spoke some sort of penguin language.
The original show ran from 1986 to 1998. There were apparently two unreleased episodes that were later released a year later.
Now, this is where it starts becoming curious. When I was 5, or 6, I saw the beginning of a Pingu episode called “Pingu’s Punishment”. I only saw a bit of it, but what I remember was Pingu was very angry, and his mother began smashing plates. I also remember the episode was about Pingu playing outside when he was supposed to be doing chores. My mother came in at the plate smashing part, shut off the TV, and told me that dinner was ready.
I was looking at the episode list on Wikipedia to find that no episode called “Pingu’s Punishment” was released.
I thought this as an adventure to myself, and I contacted Trickfilmstudio, the company that made Pingu. I asked them for a complete production guide of Pingu. They sent it to me via mail.
I looked at it, compared it to Wikipedia’s list, and I noticed something was wrong with the final series. “Pingu Helps Grandfather”, which was the 23rd episode of series 4, was missing. At the bottom of the list was an episode titled “Pingu Ending”. I asked for a synopsis, but they refused to give me one, stating it was personal information.
I then googled “Pingu Ending- Unreleased” and “Pingu’s Punishment”. Then, I found something. It was on rapidshare. The file’s name was “Pingu Punishment Unreleased Last Episode.zip”, and I downloaded it. AutoPlay came up, and I viewed the folder. It contained two files. One was a notepad file. It was titled “fear.txt”, I opened it. It read:
This is an unreleased episode from Pingu, dated 1998. They originally planned to end the series, and this was actually aired in some countries. Watch at your own risk.
I began to feel a bit suspicious and my heart pounded. But my curiousity overtook me. I opened the second file, and avi file.
The first part was the same episode I saw when I was a kid. However, something felt off. The theme song was disorted, and instead of Pingu’s usual “meep meep”, there was backwards audio. I recorded it with Sound Recorder, and it played “you can’t survive like this beyond death”. I found that very creepy, but continued with the video. I got to the part where Pingu’s mother was smashing plates. Suddenly, it cut to black. A blood curdling scream was heard. It faded back to the kitchen. Pingu’s mother was sitting on a stool crying. Only it sounded real. She began crying and it started to sound like laughing. Suddenly it cut to Pinga. Pinga was lying down on the floor. Her head was ripped off. I paused it there. I felt sick. But what made me sick more was it wasn’t clay blood. It either was food colouring, or it was real.
I continued it. Pingu’s mother began crying. Suddenly, it cut to a black and white video of two scientists going into a slaughterhouse. It showed a bunch of cows getting slaughtered. Suddenly, it showed a penguin on the conveyor belt. The crushers crushed the penguin to pieces. It began showing pictures of dead penguins. It cut back to Pingu’s mother crying. A trampoline was in the kitchen. There was also a fan. She jumped up to the fan, and blood splattered everywhere. The body of Pingu’s mother fell down. It showed pictures of the dead bodies of Pingu, Robby, and the other characters. An old music box playing “Hush, Little Baby” faintly played. I paused it to go to the bathroom to vomit. I felt really nauseous and sick after witnessing what I just watched. I continued the video. A disorted voice said something backwards. I recorded it and played it reverse. It said “Your life will be all pitch black in a few seconds. You must be smart enough to play this backwards, becaause you’re stupid enough to believe me”. My chest pounded. The credits were in Times New Roman. The background continued to show the disturbing images. It closed with a picture of a mask with red eyes. The mask suddenly said in the disorted voice: “Darkness begins now”.
Suddenly, my computer froze. Then, the lights flickered, and the power went out. The power came back a few seconds later.
I was now shaking, and I wanted to find the source of the film.
I got in contact with Carlo Bonomi, the voice of all the characters. I pretended it was an interview, and I talked about Pingu. I finally mentioned “Pingu’s Punishment”. He stopped, and he asked where I had heard that before. I explained the entire thing to him. He then told me the story.
During the 1998 season of Pingu, there was an writer/animator named Ted Goldman. Ted was a quiet man, who usually wasn’t that sociable. Sometime during the middle of the season, Ted’s mother had been trying to reach something from the upper shelf. The ceiling fan was still on. She got decapitated. Ted was immidiately hurt by this. He began submitting morbid ideas, such as Pingu killing all the other characters. He even asked Bonomi to do a voice of Pingu dying. Goldman found out that Pingu was closing production at the end of the season. Ted passed off the episode as the season finale. Right after they had watched the episode, they discovered Ted was being charged with animal cruelty, beastiality, and murder. Ted left an apparent suicide note claiming he was going to live in Antarcitca. However, no records claim he was ever there; and he was last spotted in Santa Barbara, California purchasing a gun. They never found him.
I became shocked. Then a thought occured to me to play the entire episode backwards, starting from the part before the disorted voice. I heard a scream, a shout, and a very eerie voice that said something that still haunts me and plagues me to this day:
“The only way out of this hell is suicide”.
Comments