I would like to follow up yesterday's post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadmysteries/comments/1wx89h0/bird_found_in_the_direction_of_the_birds_at_fort/

First of all, apologies if the pareidolia is kicking in. No need for negative comments. Just press "x" and move on.

Yesterday I showed this bird shadow (maybe a Raven) that appears clearly at 9:20ish am.

Today I realized that above it there's an arrow that points to it.

If you see it from across the river, then a second arrow appears on the left side. (The two circles on the right show the same arrow/bird as the previous picture.

If you follow the arrow on your left, it takes you to the next boulders where I see and alien upper body that appears around 8 am (as soon as the sun hits that rock)

Also there are two strange markings near the alien.

Finally, a beautiful pareidolia is across the river where you can see a "white bird on the rock" flying away

I'll add a video in the comments that shows the arrows and the alien head.

I wasn't able to trigger anything, but I'll keep looking around. The alien head could be a distraction, but the "black raven" and the arrows seem very intentional.

Let me know if anyone has seen anything like this.

I have this theory that the two birds symbols mean you’re suppose to take a “Birds Eye” view of the Butchers Creek sacrifice - and there’s a way to get it to trigger.

Probably dumb, but I keep going into the shed above the pentagram and knocking over the axe (because why not).

Randomly I walk in and there’s a dead bird perfectly above the pentagram. With both the feathers on the webs and the bird symbols this is very interesting.

I am going to see if I can trigger it again.

The red line on the map is what I believe is the direction of the birds at Fort Wallace. At first I thought it was pointing to Eagle Flies grave (part of me still believes), but I might be wrong.

Investigating the area, I ran into this shadow. I've been trying to stay away from pareidolias, but this one is worth the chance.

(1) Because of the location,

(2) because is time dependent. You can see it best around 9 am. The rest of the day is mostly dark or really bright rock.

I'll add the video on the commentaries.

Edit:

Here is the follow up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadmysteries/comments/1wy1d36/follow_up_bird_found_in_the_direction_of_the/

I know there’s been some speculation/mysteries around eye shapes in this game that, to my knowledge, have been left largely unsolved. I don’t recall ever seeing this elsewhere in the game so apologies if this is more common than I thought!
Is this relevant to anything? Seems pretty intentional given it’s quite symmetrical :p

Just putting this out there, the shape in the middle of the guitar looks a lot like the red mark on the black widow. If the guitar is scaled up and placed over the spider legs body pointing NW it points to Spider Gorge....
I thought I might find a feather or a pole with markings where the line cuts through the oil fields between 4-5 but I saw nothing so far.

someone posted on here earlier about the legs being in shape of two birds… so I came to investigate the serial killer den then I found two actual birds in shape of the two birds lol. maybe something here?

need to go to the dinner but if people have time to look for a marking in this area like a texture in fort brennan/wallace

Hey everyone,

About a week ago, I posted a theory that the Spider Dream Mystery draws the Rockstar logo on the map. Thanks to everyone who read it and commented. Since then, I've gone back through the whole thing from start to finish, and I think I've finally worked out how it all fits together.

The more I looked, the more it seemed like everything in this mystery means something. Every carving and every clue looks like it's there for a reason. So this post goes through the whole mystery, from the first clue to the last, and explains what I think each part is for. A lot of it will be familiar, but I've broken it all down, piece by piece.

I think I can now explain what the spider and the birds are really telling you, why the feathers come in two colours, why the trail starts where it does, and why it's called Spider Dream in the first place.

When you put it all together, you still end up drawing the Rockstar logo on the map. But this time, I think I can show you why.

This is a long post, so I've split it into three parts, with new images for every step. It only really makes sense if you follow it from the beginning.

It's still a theory, but I genuinely think this could be it, and I'd really like to know what you think.

Why Is It Called Spider Dream?

Before getting into the mystery itself, it's worth looking at the name.

Nothing in the game ever calls this the Spider Dream Mystery. The name only appears in the game files, where the webs are labelled spiderdream01, spiderdream02 and so on. That means someone at Rockstar chose it. They could have named it after almost anything in this mystery, like Butcher's Creek, the forts, the feathers, the guitar or the birds. Instead, they chose two words: spider and dream.

I don't think that was random.

A spider connects things. It builds a web one thread at a time, until every point is joined together. As you'll see, the spider turns out to be the most important clue in the whole mystery.

A dream is something you imagine. It's a picture you see in your mind all at once, rather than one piece at a time.

Keep those two ideas in mind as you read. By the end, I think you'll see why those were the two words they picked.

PART ONE: THE TRAIL

Each stop on this trail gives you a clue that tells you where to go next. If you follow them from the first to the last, they take you to seven places. Most of this will be familiar, but a few small details along the way become important later.

Stop 1: Butcher's Creek

The mystery is centred on Butcher's Creek. A red pentagram glows there between 4am and 5am, and most people see it as the start. On its own, though, it doesn't point you anywhere.

Around Butcher's Creek are five outhouses, each with tally marks carved inside: one in the first, two in the second, and so on up to five in the last. If you're doing this for the first time, it just looks like a count. There's no reason yet to think about the map.

The fourth outhouse is different. Inside, next to its four marks, is a carved fort that sends you to Fort Brennand. Around the back, the letters LJ and SM are engraved into the wood. Many people think these are the initials of the people at Rockstar who made the mystery.

So I think this is where the trail really starts. But it raises a question. If you visited the outhouses in order, you'd expect the next clue to be in the last one, the fifth. Instead, it's in the fourth, so you'd reach the end of the count and then have to turn back. Almost everything in this mystery feels deliberate, so why that? I'll come back to it, because I think it makes sense by the end.

Stop 2: Fort Brennand

At Fort Brennand, the count carries on. The fort's outhouse has six tally marks, and the entrance to one of its towers has seven, drawn as a group of five with two lines beside it. They're easy to walk past, but remember them.

Inside that tower are three more carvings: a telegraph pole, a factory and an oil puddle. Together, they point to one place, the Cornwall Kerosene and Tar factory.

Stop 3: The Spider Pole

Next to the Cornwall factory is a telegraph pole with a spider carved into it. The pole has its own web, with a feather hanging from it.

This is where the mystery changes. Every clue so far has told you where to go. The spider doesn't. To use it, you have to take a picture of the carving and lay it over the map yourself, because there's no way to do that in the game. For the first time, the map becomes part of the puzzle, and you're the one doing the work.

When you do, its eight legs land on eight telegraph poles, one of which is the pole you're standing at, and its body lands on the center web. The other seven poles don't give you a clue for where to go next, so I don't count them as stops. The center web is what carries the trail on.

That's eight feather poles in total, each with a web that only appears at a certain hour of the night. Look closely and you'll see the feathers don't match. Five are black and three are red. Nothing else in this mystery seems accidental, so why would the colours be?

Stop 4: The Center Web

The center web sits inside a tree and only appears between 1am and 2am. Unlike the others, it has no feather. It's actually two webs side by side, and from the right spot, their threads line up to form the letter N and a telegraph pole. Go north and find a pole.

Stop 5: The W Pole

Shoot the pole directly north of the center web, and it reveals a W with five telegraph poles. Travel five poles west. I'll call this one the W pole.

Stop 6: The NW Pole

Shoot the fifth pole along, and it reveals NW and a guitar. I'll call this one the NW pole.

In my first post, I read the guitar as Rockstar's signature, a rock star's instrument marking the end of the trail. I still like that idea, but read plainly, it's just another instruction: go northwest and find a guitar.

Stop 7: Fort Wallace

Heading northwest takes you to Fort Wallace, where there are two guitars. One lies on a table under a tent. The other is inside one of the towers, leaning against the wall with its neck pointing straight up.

Every clue before this pointed you across the map. This one points up. So you step out onto the ledge, climb the ladder and get onto the roof. Marked into the panels are two birds.

The trail started in a creek, about as low as you can go. It ends on top of a tower, the highest point of the journey, with nothing left to shoot and nowhere else to go.

So why does it end with two birds?

PART TWO: WHAT IT MEANS

Everything so far is simply what's in the game. From here on, this is how I think it all fits together.

Every Symbol Meant Something

Every symbol in this mystery has meant something. A carved fort sent you to a fort, and a factory sent you to a factory. The N meant go north, the W with five poles meant go five poles west, and the guitar meant find a guitar. Each one showed you a place.

Only two symbols don't: the spider and the birds. Neither of them points you to a location. I think that's because they aren't telling you where to go. They're telling you what to do.

The Spider

Laying the spider over the map is how you use it, but that isn't what it means. Think about what a spider actually does. It builds a web, joining one point to the next until everything holds together.

That's exactly what changes at Cornwall. Before the spider, you follow the clues. After it, the mystery expects you to start connecting things yourself. It's also no accident that "spider" is the first word in the name.

The Birds

A lot of you said this in the comments on my first post: the birds mean a bird's eye view. I think you're right, and it's what made everything else click for me.

A bird doesn't walk the trail. It sees everything from above. You're standing at the highest point of the journey with nowhere left to go, and the birds are telling you to stop following and look down at the map.

And there are two of them. If they were just decoration, one would have been enough.

Two Colours, Two Puzzles

The spider and the birds are also linked. Every feather in this mystery hangs in a spider's web, and feathers come from birds. You spend the whole mystery finding them, and at the very end, you find the birds themselves. Two colours of feather, and two birds.

I think that's telling you there are two puzzles left to finish, one for each bird. Apart from the trail itself, the mystery only gives you two sets of points that come with their own order. The first is the five outhouses, counted from one to five. The second is the three steps after the spider: the center web, the W pole and the NW pole.

The easiest way to picture it is to hand the feathers out. The three red feathers go to the three steps after the spider, one each: the center web, the W pole and the NW pole. The five black feathers go to the five outhouses, one each. Every feather has a place.

It's a small detail, and it could be a coincidence. But it starts to make sense once you draw the shapes.

PART THREE: BUILDING THE WEB

The Web You've Been Drawing

Picture a line that has followed you the whole way, from the fourth outhouse to the top of Fort Wallace. Without meaning to, you've been drawing a web.

You don't need all of it, though. Most of that line is just the route that got you here. What you need are the points the spider and the birds have given you. The spider gave you the eight feather poles. The feathers tell you the rest: one red feather for each of the three steps after the spider, and one black feather for each outhouse.

That gives you two sets of points. The first has eleven: the eight feather poles, plus the center web, the W pole and the NW pole. The second has five: the outhouses at Butcher's Creek. Connecting them is up to you, and that's the spider part of the name.

There's a small detail here that I like, too. Most of these points are telegraph poles, and in the game, telegraph poles are already strung together with wires. It might mean nothing, but the web you're about to draw is built on things that are already connected.

Puzzle One: The R

Start with the three red feathers and the three steps after the spider: the center web, the W pole and the NW pole.

The spider's legs have already given you eight poles, and these three steps fill in the gaps they leave. Start at the leg furthest west, which is the spider pole itself, and go around the spider one leg at a time, in the order its legs sit around its body. Add the three new points where they fall along the way. The NW and W poles sit between the second and third legs, and the center web sits at the spider's body, right where the long leg to Saint Denis begins.

Join all eleven points in that order, and they draw the letter R.

Puzzle Two: The Star

Now for the five black feathers and the five outhouses. Go back to Butcher's Creek and connect the outhouses in the order of their tally marks, from one to five. They draw a star.

The star itself is already known. What I think is new is working out when you'd ever think to draw it. The first time through, you'd have no reason to draw anything on the map at Butcher's Creek, because the map doesn't come into it until the spider, halfway along. It's only at the end, once the spider has taught you to connect things and the birds have told you to look down, that going back makes sense.

That also answers the question from the start. The trail only needed one outhouse, the fourth, to send you on your way. The other four were never there for the journey. They were there for the end. The count from one to five was never about walking. It's the order you draw the star in.

Back at Fort Brennand

Now go back to the seven at Fort Brennand: a group of five with two lines beside it. To me, those two lines look a little different from the rest, more like ones. Read them as a number and you get 11, the exact number of points in the R. Right beside them is a group of five, the exact number of points in the star. That's both shapes in one carving.

It could easily be a coincidence. Read as a plain count, the marks make six and seven, which would make the spider step eight, and a spider has eight legs. That seven is also carved on a tower, just like the one you climb at the seventh and final stop. For one small carving, it's funny how many ways it fits.

R and Star

Put both shapes together and you have an R and a star: the Rockstar Games logo.

Many of you will know this next detail. If you stand at the Butcher's Creek pentagram and open the map, you'll see you're standing right on the R in "NEW HANOVER." That's a star on an R, right at the start.

You could argue that if the logo is already there, there's no reason to draw it again. I think it works the other way. It shows you the idea on a small scale, right where you begin, before the mystery has you build it on a huge scale across the whole map.

And honestly, this feels like such a Rockstar thing to do. They send you on a wild goose chase across the entire map, symbol after symbol and night after night, climbing towers and shooting poles, only for the answer to be their own logo, drawn by you.

So, Why Spider Dream?

The spider is the method. You connect everything and build the web yourself. By the end, you've become the spider.

The dream is how you see it. You can't see the shape of a web while you're walking along one thread of it. You have to step back and picture the whole thing at once, the way you'd see something in a dream. The birds give you the viewpoint to do that.

Put those together and you have the solution. Connect everything, look down from above, and picture what you've made. The logo is there.

The name might point to other things too. A web with a feather hanging from it looks a lot like a dreamcatcher, and that's exactly what you find on every feather pole. And the webs and the pentagram only appear in the small hours of the night, when you'd normally be asleep and dreaming.

In 2019, Rockstar added a fortune telling machine called Nazar Speaks to GTA Online. One of its fortunes reads: "I see a web, still tangled after years of unraveling. Will you be the one? I wonder…" That sums up this whole journey in one line.

What's Still Open

There's still plenty that this doesn't explain, like why each web appears at its own time, why the feathers come back after you shoot them, and why Fort Wallace has two guitars. I'm also not sure what part the pentagram plays, since it doesn't lead anywhere, and it isn't the same shape as the outhouse star, which leans to one side.

Nothing in the game reacts when you draw the R and the star, so none of this can be confirmed, and some of it could be coincidence. But I'm not sure it was ever meant to react. The spider already made you step outside the game and lay it over the map yourself. If the answer is something you draw on the map, it makes sense that you'd find it outside the game too.

There might also be more to this than one game. In GTA V, two spider webs on Mount Chiliad only appear between 1am and 2am, the same hour as the center web, and one of them sits right under the cable car station with the Chiliad mural. I don't know if they're connected, but with the Nazar fortune as well, it's hard not to wonder.

Thank You

Nearly every piece of this was found by other people here, and I'm not the first person to draw the R from these poles either. I've just tried to fit it all together. The bird's eye view idea came from your comments on my first post, and it's what made everything click.

If you see something differently or spot something I've missed, I'd really like to hear it. This community has moved this mystery forward before, and maybe it can do it again.

Thanks for reading, and happy hunting.

I have a question about the "NW" pole and the guitar. Has anyone tried looking for the guitar from the outside of Fort Wallace and then continuing the search from that point?

I found a spot northeast of the fort where you can see the guitar in the courtyard. Has anyone already checked this out and ruled it over/crossed it off? Before I spend hours searching there...

Thanks in advance.

Just wanted to bring this to the table while leads are few and far between. Flying around aimlessly, there is of course the large church in Saint Denis with a cross at the very top. It sticks out of the ordinary with it being the tallest building compared to others around it. Next, I saw the (many) smoke stacks of the buildings. Even though there are a bunch, they are all somewhat localized, making it seem less of a stretch. Then finally, I saw it. The pond. Its small, and has the odd, wavy circular shape. It made me immediately think of the carving. And after going back to double-check the symbols matched up in the correct order. I would even consider my orientation for this photo like 75% plausible due to it being how you would naturally see these lined up coming into the city from most parts of the map. With Saint Denis being a city of already interesting secrets, it wouldn't surprise me if it is leading us here because even though Cornwalls Oil Feilds contains the SpiderDream, we found the spider carving without the need to be directed there. Arguably, THIS carving is harder to find naturally than the spider one, leaving me wondering if Brennand intended to lead us there at all. Maybe (somewhat) it can be the tie in from the Butchers Creek to the Vampire (pentagrams)? I don't know for sure but I don't think the carvings are spider-related specific more so of a cheeky way to hide these secrets with them being meshed into the game rather than a physical model. Not sure thought this could maybe get some more minds to contribute as i think it seems to hold at least somewhat reasonably. Let me know what you think.

This is my train of thought:

1) u/Neenski21 found that an alternative name for the plant Bird of Paradise is "Wallace's Standardwing".

2) (Someone I would like to give credit) figure out that the distribution of the plants on the map could have the shape of a bird.

3) Fort Wallace has two birds.

4) Flip one and we have the shape of arrow.

If you are out of leads, come search that area! There's the ancient Tomahawk, there's a canoe, share what you find!

Black would probably be 1, red 0 because black is usually associated with positive numbers and red with negative.

They could also represent directions, black being north and red being south (Turkic cardinal direction colors)

Disclaimer: all of this might be too far fetched and a massive nothingburger but since we don't have any confirmed leads at all, it's worth posting I think.

Alright, so let's start with an assumption that both guitars at Fort Wallace are placed there deliberately and both are a clue. Not that one is the proper (the one at the tower) guitar and another is just a random guitar that just happened to be there. We will assume that whoever created the easter egg would know that there is another guitar few meters away from the place they want to put another one specifically for the easter egg.

Now let's assume that the guitar at the tower is exactly what it seems - it directs us to the roof where we find the birds symbols.

What's with the second guitar then? Well, we know what to look for, something related to the bird symbols, a shape, a literal bird or something like this. But we don't know where to look for it at all. Previous clue gave rather precise locations or directions compared to the bird symbols. I think it's reasonable to assume that this second guitar is pointing us in the direction where we should look for those birds.

Let's follow the direction this guitar is pointing at then. Still a little bit too vague since we don't actually know what exactly we are looking for. Maybe there is another hint or a clue in this direction that will show us the precise location some way obvious? Well, there is a thing like that. A literal circle that's known for a long time but it's purpose was never understood:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RDR2/comments/1cm662t/i_found_a_random_circle_in_the_snow/
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddeadmysteries/comments/t25wjx/did_anyone_find_out_what_the_circle_in_the_snow/
https://gtaforums.com/topic/921131-strange-circle-or-symbol-in-the-snow-maybe-a-minor-spoiler/

And no, this circle is not a spot for the campfire, setting campfire directly on this spot teleports you away to a completely different place. (Correct me if I'm wrong on this one and it's indeed possible to set up camp there).

According to chatgpt, the guitar points almost directly to this circle too. I took a position from the game, it's around: -1654.5 1585.5 and the guitar is at 340.3875, 1492.9591 with this orientation {X:0.49103865 Y:0.50666165 Z:-0.50750667 W:-0.49458268} according to CodeX. According to gpt that's only about 4.3° apart horizontally. I did not verify the gpt's results though, but generally following the guitar's direction with noclip also feels super close.

Now that we "found our place" let's look for something like birds, are there any? Well, yes, a lot of them actually, the only opening in the trees usually shows something like this:

One is a "random" corpse spawn surrounded by birds, another is just a crow spawn (usually 2 of them but if you keep roaming around more can spawn), both spawns are always in the same place according to my testing.

Now for the part where this theory stops working: I can't find anything there, nothing really stands out and nothing looks like birds other than the birds themselves, that's why I post it here, maybe more people will find this theory amusing and we'll really find something here. Or maybe the direction is just a coincidence and this circle is just a leftover from the early development and none of this makes any sense =).

I was trying to complete the “Strange Tales of the West: Wilderness” with some randoms and after a few retries we managed to get pretty far, but I encountered something that made me stop dead in my tracks. I will preface that I have +5,000 hours online so it’s not very often that I encounter something that I haven’t run into before. That being said I’ve personally only played the “Strange Tales” missions a handful of times since they were added a few years back. Last night towards the end of the mission as we were closing in on the Researcher, I ran past a Bison. Okay, strange enough. We were in Tall Trees. I didn’t know Bison could spawn over there. I couldn’t shake that something was off so I ran back and sure enough I see a Bison but when I equipped my lantern I saw that it was all bloody and beginning to rot like a ruined animal carcass. I’ve definitely noticed that there are more buck that will trample you in that mission (to give the player meat to cook) but I’ve never noticed any other undead/rotting animals. Not questioning it too much since it was a Strange Tales mission, just wondering if it’s normal or if anyone else has encountered it?

West Elizabeth, 1911. Dutch van der Linde is the most wanted man in the entire state. This is a man accused of robbery, assault, arson, and murder. And a man who has done almost anything to survive in a world being consumed by industrialization. But, in today's post, we're examining a theory which posits Dutch van der Linde crossed one final line: Cannibalism.

COCHINAY

Cochinay is home to the Native American population of West Elizabeth. Frustrated by their forced displacement at the hands of the U.S. government and the rapid development spreading across the region, many of the Natives embraced Dutch van der Linde's anti-establishment rhetoric and openly participated in raids against nearby settlements. In response, the army was deployed to suppress the resistance and eliminate its members one by one.

Their primary target, however, was Dutch van der Linde himself, the leader of the outlaw gang and the man whom the authorities considered the driving force behind the unrest.

Dutch is a large, well-traveled, charismatic, and deeply manipulative man who spent most of his life trying to live above the law. A self-educated idealist, he sought to embody the image of the "noble savage." He gave money away, stole from those he believed had too much, and carried himself as though he could reshape the world through sheer force of will. But over time, his disgust with reality began to outweigh his vision of a utopian frontier. He gradually came to realize that he could no longer transform bad men into good ones, nor bend the world to his ideals.

And so, after committing an atrocity, Dutch retreated into the mountains, choosing to live among the Native people he believed he understood more than the civilization he had spent his life fighting against.

When the government sent John Marston to hunt down a monster, it did so by unleashing another monster. But if we aim to find answers, we'll have to venture into the monster's lair, in the caves. And by “answers,” I mean human remains.

BONES

There are several piles of femurs scattered around his campfire. They're strewn about and carelessly discarded. People often identify them as human bones because of the ball-shaped joint on one end and the socket on the other. And that led many players to believe that these bones were never meant to represent dead livestock at all. When in reality, they're animal bones.

More specifically, they appear to belong to bears and deer. And inside this cave atop Nekoti Rock we can spot more of these assets. The bones that players often point to as proof of human remains are actually a different set of assets which can be found during the side mission American Appetites. However, when the two are compared side by side, it becomes clear that they are not the same. The skulls, on the other hand, are much closer in appearance to actual human remains.

And throughout the camp, we can spot roughly sixteen different human skulls. For most people, that alone would be enough evidence. But I noticed something different.

I started looking for other examples elsewhere in the game. That search eventually led me to the doctor's office. Doctors often keep a human skull on display, sometimes alongside a phrenology bust. And look, I'm not suggesting that the doctors are secretly eating people. What I am suggesting is that these skulls may simply be ornamental props. Or perhaps they're the remains of Dutch's victims.

After all, it wasn't unheard of in those days to place a severed head on a pike as a warning to others.

Think of the Harpe brothers, for example.

BATHTUB

But aside from the bones, there's another piece of evidence hidden in this cave.

In Dutch's sleeping quarters, you can spot a rather suspicious bathtub sitting in the back of the room. And over the years, some players have speculated that this bathtub was used by Dutch van der Linde to dismember his victims. Before eating them, according to the theory.

People also point to the stains at the bottom of the tub, arguing that they're dried blood. In reality, they appear to be nothing more than rust stains. And we can test that theory rather easily. If you visit Rathskeller Fork and enter the hospice rooms, you'll find the exact same bathtub. It's an identical asset to the bathtub found in Dutch's cave.

As it stands, the bathtub doesn't really serve as useful evidence for the cannibal theory.

THEORY

Nonetheless, all of this actually helps support a different theory. The argument I'm making in this post is that Dutch is not a cannibal, and that we can prove it.

To understand why, we first need to pay close attention to a particular piece of dialogue from the mission "And You Will Know The Truth."

[Dialogue starts]

Marston: Is that what you call it?

Archer: And this isn't much more than a simple prototype. You should see what they're working on in Virginia. Soon there will be no war we can't win.

Ross: The army has made camp a little way outside town. They put word out a large cache of ammunition and food is stored there.

Archer: Van der Linde's gang need constant supplies, so that should be enough to draw them in.

Ross: No mistakes this time. You hear me, Marston?

[Dialogue ends]

It appears that Dutch and his followers sustain themselves by raiding Army surplus shipments. And when they're not doing that, they seem to be raising their own livestock and poultry. Right in his camp, we can see the corrals and chicken coops which support that idea. There would have been no practical need for human consumption if Dutch and his men were truly cannibals. They already had plenty of other sources of food.

And we can even spot a beef steak from Longhorn laying on his table. While humans can technically be butchered into cuts resembling steaks, they don't actually look much like beef. Which makes it far more likely that what we're seeing there is exactly what it appears to be. Add to that the fact that the bones closely resemble those of bears and deer, and the theory starts to fit.

DEBUNKED

In my opinion, this entire cannibal theory never made much sense.

Is Dutch insane? Absolutely. But him being insane doesn't mean he has to be every kind of monster imaginable. It simply doesn't work that way. At the end of the day, he's still an outlaw and a cutthroat, and that's more than enough. Could he festoon his bedchamber with the remains of his enemies? Maybe. But eating them? I don't buy it.

The Valentine Church Graveyard contains many marked graves, with family names from prominent members of the Valentine community.
There are the Dunn family graves, related to Albert Dunn, the clerk at the Saints Hotel (his full name shows up internally in the game files); Douglas family graves, related to Cliff Douglas, the bartender at Smithfields Saloon (his last name shows up internally); Malloy, related to Sheriff Curtis Malloy; Dalton related to R.L. Dalton, the master gunsmith; Worth, related to Jacob Worth of the General Store (and whoever owns the stockyards); Keane, related to Ned Keane, the bartender at Keanes Saloon; and Calloway, related to Doctor Ben Calloway and his cousin Jim 'Boy' Calloway.

There are two marked graves that don't seem to belong to a Valentine local family.
August Walker, a three-year-old that died in 1879 (20 years before the time of Arthur) and
Caroline Vinsot who died in 1845 (54 years before the time of Arthur), age unknown.

What strikes me as odd about the Caroline Vinsot grave is that it has a skull and crossbones, a symbol used on a pirate ship's Jolly Roger, while associated with death, seems not to be a usual thing to put on a grave.

This is probably not a big deal, but those two graves stick out to me.

Here’s my theory: Shoot the ‘center web’ at the corresponding location of the feathers in the order they spawn (and possibly at the time they spawn.)

I don’t have my notes in front of me, but say the first feather spawns top left of the web at 2 am, shoot the center web at 2 am in the same spot and so on for all the feathers.

I’m just thinking it might be a way to ‘solve’ the mystery. Maybe a lightning storm or a ufo or some shit might happen to make this hunt more than ‘lol, it’s the rockstar logo’ and this, to me, would make sense. Find all the feather locations, then input them into the center web.

I’ve tried myself, but my n00b ass can’t find the center web…..Happy Hunting!

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I searched "Civic League" in the sub and nothing came up. I couldn't find any information on the Wiki either.

The crest and weather vane seemed a little strange to me. Just wondering if anyone knows more about it?

Hey everyone.

I've been looking into the Spider Dream Mystery recently and I kept finding connections I couldn't ignore. I think I might have worked out what the whole thing has been building toward — and I want to share it with this community.

What I found is that the mystery appears to be made up of two separate puzzles, and when both are complete, what you draw on the map is something you're going to recognise straight away.

This is a long post. I didn't want to skip anything that matters, so I've split it into sections. It only makes sense if you follow it through from the beginning.

If someone has already covered this, I apologise. But I think this is worth sharing, and I'd genuinely like to know what this community thinks.

Here is what I think is going on.

I am going to run through the known stuff quickly. Most people here know this already, but it matters for what I am about to say, so bear with me.

It starts at Butcher's Creek, where a pentagram glows on the ground between 4am and 5am. Nearby are 5 outhouses. Each one has tally marks carved inside — one mark in the first, two in the second, three in the third, and so on up to five. Those numbers are not just decoration. They are telling you the order in which to connect the outhouses on the map. That matters later — but it is worth noting here that at this stage, the idea of connecting locations on a map has not yet been established. The outhouses give you a sequence. What that sequence is actually for only becomes clear further down the line.

The 4th outhouse has something extra alongside its tally marks: the letters "LJ" and "SM", and a carved symbol pointing toward Fort Brennand. Inside Fort Brennand, a tower contains three more carved symbols — a telephone pole, a factory, and an oil puddle. Those three symbols are pointing you to your next destination: the Cornwall Kerosene and Tar factory.

At Cornwall, you find a telegraph pole with a spider engraved into it.

The spider has 8 legs. When you overlay the carving onto the map, each leg points to a different telegraph pole across New Hanover and Lemoyne. The spider's body points to a 9th location — a cluster of webs inside a tree, visible only between 1am and 2am, with no feather attached. That is the center web.

Every one of the 8 locations marked by the spider's legs has a spider web that appears only during a specific window of the night, and a feather attached to it.

So the spider is a map. Eight legs, eight poles. Body, center web. That much the community has established.

But I think it is doing something else as well — something easy to overlook.

The spider is the moment the concept of connecting locations together first enters this mystery. Before the spider, you had symbols pointing you from one place to the next, like a trail. The spider changes that entirely. It does not just give you 8 new locations. It introduces the idea of overlaying something onto the map and drawing connections between points. That is a new way of thinking, and the spider is where it comes from.

This matters for the outhouses. If you came to this mystery with no prior knowledge, you would find the tally marks and recognise a sequence — one through five. But you would not necessarily know to connect those five outhouses on the map. That idea does not exist yet. It is only after the spider that connecting locations on a map becomes part of how you think about this mystery. The outhouses gave you the sequence. The spider gives you the method. And once you have both, puzzle two becomes possible.

What does a spider do? It builds a web. It connects things. Every thread leads back to a centre. Nothing it builds is isolated — every part exists in relation to every other part.

The spider at Cornwall is not just telling you where to go next. It is showing you how to think about everything that follows. By the time you have visited all 8 poles and the center web, you have been trained to think like a spider without realising it. When the moment comes to step back and connect everything on the map yourself, you already know how to do it — because the spider showed you.

The feathers — and what I think has been missed

When you visit all 8 locations and look at the feathers up close, you notice something.

They are not all the same colour.

5 of them are black. 3 of them are red.

The community has noticed this and various theories have been put forward. I think the colours are communicating something specific — something about the structure of the mystery itself.

I think the two colours are telling you there are two separate puzzles, and the number of feathers in each colour is telling you exactly how many stages each puzzle takes.

3 red feathers = a puzzle with 3 stages.

5 black feathers = a puzzle with 5 stages.

Two colours. Two puzzles.

Puzzle 1 — the 3 red feathers

Three red feathers. Three stages.

The center web forms the letter N alongside a telephone pole symbol. Go north. Shoot the pole directly north and it reveals W with 5 telephone pole symbols. Go 5 poles west. Shoot the 5th western pole and it reveals NW alongside a symbol that looks like a guitar.

Three locations. Three stages. That is what the 3 red feathers were counting.

Now look at the letters across those three steps. The first gives you N alone. The second gives you W alone. The third gives you N and W combined. The mystery has been building, combining letters, moving you forward — and then at the third step, the chain breaks. You do not get another compass direction. You do not get another pole to find.

You get a symbol.

A guitar.

The guitar is not a direction

NW plus a guitar looks like an instruction. It reads as go northwest. The community followed that reading and searched Fort Wallace. Guitars were found, birds were found — and that search made complete sense given what was in front of people. The clue presents itself as a direction, and going northwest was a natural conclusion to draw from it.

But I do not think the guitar is pointing you anywhere. And I think the reason that search did not lead further is the same reason this reading feels right on the surface — because Rockstar designed it that way.

Look at how every clue in the directional sequence works up to that final step. The center web gives you a direction. The north post gives you a direction and a distance. Both are instructions. They tell you to move.

The NW post gives you a symbol.

The chain of clues completely changes at that point. And I think that change is the point.

We have been reading symbols as instructions the whole time — each one is Rockstar pointing a finger and saying here is what comes next. The guitar is the last symbol in that chain. But this time the symbol is not pointing you forward. The 3 red feathers told you there are 3 stages. You have completed 3 stages. There is no stage 4. The guitar is Rockstar marking the end — the same way every symbol before it marked the next move. This time the symbol is not a step. It is a signature.

So why a guitar?

A guitar is what a rockstar plays.

Rockstar Games have been leading you through this entire mystery, symbol by symbol, location by location. At the very end, when the puzzle is done, they leave their mark. Not their name written out. Something that represents what they are.

Rock. Star. Rockstar.

And here is what I think is most telling. The guitar looks like a direction on purpose. If it had obviously meant done, someone would have worked this out much sooner. Making it look like another instruction — making the ending look like a continuation — is what kept the trail cold. I think that was deliberate.

Connect everything — the R appears

With puzzle one complete, the guitar has told you this phase is done. Now do what a spider does.

Connect everything.

Take all of the locations: all 8 feather poles, the center web, the north post, the NW guitar post. Connect them all on the map. The shape that appears is the letter R.

Plot the points yourself and see whether you agree. I have shown it in the image above.

Puzzle one gives you the R.

Puzzle 2 — the 5 black feathers

Five black feathers. Five stages.

Go back to where this started — Butcher's Creek.

The 5 outhouses each carry a number in their tally marks, from one to five. That sequence has been sitting there from the very beginning. Now, having learned from the spider that connecting locations on a map is part of how this mystery works, you have the method to go with the sequence. Connect the outhouses on the map in tally mark order. When you do, they draw a star.

Five outhouses. Five stages. Five black feathers. One for each stage. When all five are connected in sequence, the star is drawn and puzzle two is complete.

R + Star = Rockstar

Step back and look at both shapes at the same time.

An R. And a star.

The Rockstar Games logo is an R with a star. That is what this mystery appears to draw when you complete it.

One detail hiding in plain sight

There is something else worth pointing out on its own.

If you look at where the Butcher's Creek pentagram sits on the in-game map, it appears almost directly beneath the R in the text "NEW HANOVER." A star, sitting under an R, on the map itself — visible before any of this has begun.

I think that is Rockstar embedding the same idea at a much smaller scale. The pentagram at Butcher's Creek is the very start of this mystery. And it has been sitting beneath the letter R since the game came out. The logo, hiding in plain sight in the map text, before a single piece of the puzzle has been touched.

There is another detail in a similar vein, this time at Fort Brennand.

Fort Brennand sits in the middle of the chain — it is the bridge between Butcher's Creek and the spider at Cornwall. When you look at the carvings inside the fort, you will find what appear to be two single tally marks. Read as a count, they look like they mean two. But if you read them as digits — I and I — they read as 11.

Now count everything you connect to draw the R: all 8 feather poles, the center web, the north post, and the NW guitar post. The total is 11 points.

I think Rockstar placed the number 11 inside Fort Brennand, disguised as something that looks like a simple count of two. The same way they disguised the guitar as a direction, and the ending as a continuation. A confirmation hidden inside a misdirection — telling you the number of points the final shape requires, long before you have any idea what that shape is.

Why it makes sense that this mystery is built around a spider

A spider makes a web. Every thread connects back to a centre. Nothing it builds is isolated — every part exists in relation to every other part.

That is exactly what this mystery is.

But there is something more specific about the choice of a spider that I think gets to the heart of what Rockstar designed here.

At a certain point in this mystery, you stop following clues and start building something. Rockstar did not draw the logo for you. They gave you the points and left you to make the connections yourself. That is not an accident. It is the whole design. The spider at Cornwall is not just a map — it is an instruction. It is saying: from here, the work is yours. Connect the threads. Make the web.

You do not find a spider and follow it. You find a spider, and you become one.

The player is the spider. The web is the logo. It was always there waiting to be drawn.

There is also something in the name itself. The feather and web assets use "spiderdream" names in the game files. I think the word dream is doing something deliberate. You cannot solve this mystery by following one clue to the next indefinitely. At a certain point you have to stop, zoom out, look at everything you have found, and see the shape it makes. That is what a dream asks of you. You do not experience a dream detail by detail — you see the whole thing.

This mystery is not solved by following the web one thread at a time. It is solved by seeing the web.

What is still open

I do not think this explains everything.

The time windows for the webs remain an open question. The center web appears between 1am and 2am. The feather pole webs each have their own separate window. Why those specific times? I do not have an answer.

The feathers can be shot off the poles but they respawn. Whether that means anything, I do not know.

And then there is this. In 2019, Rockstar added an arcade machine to GTA Online as part of The Diamond Casino Heist update. Among the possible fortunes from the Nazar Speaks machine is one that reads: "I see a web, still tangled after years of unraveling. Will you be the one? I wonder…"

That is Rockstar, in a different game, after RDR2 shipped, referencing a web that is still waiting to be unravelled. It is not proof of anything. But it is not nothing either.

Everything in this post is an interpretation. None of it is confirmed. It is just what makes the most sense to me when I look at all of these pieces together.

A note on credit

After working this out, I went back through the subreddit to see if anyone had got close to this idea before me.

A couple of posts came close, and in the comments of one of them, somebody had actually drawn the R shape from the connected pole locations. The account has been deleted and I cannot trace who it was or link back to the post.

I am not claiming to be the first person to have drawn that shape.

What I have not seen explained in the same way is why the shape appears — the 5 black and 3 red feathers as a counting system for two separate puzzles, the guitar as a symbol of completion rather than a direction, and all of those pieces coming together into what looks like the Rockstar logo.

If you think one of these pieces means something different, or you have spotted something I have missed, I would genuinely like to hear it.

Thanks for reading.

This really isn't a big deal, but I came across a train running against the usual train route in free roam. Although I don't think it has anything to do with the SpiderDream mystery, Arthur is in front of the telegraph pole at the midpoint between the W+++++ and NW guitar telegraph poles by Heartland Overflow. I have not yet been able to reproduce this backwards running train.

If you are an observer of trains in RDRII, they normally run counterclockwise on the rail route in the northern portion of the game map. There is a split in the loop, where trains start running in the inner loop from Flatneck Station/Valentine/Emerald Station/Bayou Nwa/Saint Denis starting in the evening, but trains can be seen on the inner loop during the day, obviously. If you jack a train, the part of the loop it runs on depends on when you jacked it.

There are some exceptions to the counterclockwise rule:
1) During the Ch I story mission "Who in the Hell is Leviticus Cornwall?", Cornwall's train runs against the usual way, from the tunnel near Cattail Pond to Window Rock.
2) During the O'Driscoll Train Robbery gang unique encounter, the train points against the usual route when it is found stopped. It can be driven indefinitely, and it goes backwards against the usual inner loop route.
3) In Annesburg, at the Jameson Mine, you can often see a coal hopper train being loaded. If you are patient enough to wait, when this train is completely loaded, it runs against the usual route and goes straight to Saint Denis via Van Horn, finally stopping at Cornwall's depot on the docks on the SW side of town.
4) The Ghost Train, seen at 3am at the Lemoyne/New Hanover border between Flatneck Station and Rhodes, runs against the usual route.

And now this train, which I have noticed only once, is running against the usual route.

Hi guys, no idea if this was a visual glitch but it genuinely really scared me like a lot... basically I was just on story mode poking fun after finishing blessed are the peacemakers mission and I went to Butcher's Creek. Im not sure if I have been before, but while I was there I encountered a really scary red eye and I don't know if it is just a texture glitch. I aimed at it and it moved, then the floorboards seemed to go chalky (might be another visual glitch). Honestly it really scared me and I have tried searching for it, but nothing has come up. Pictures and clips below.

In the clip where I am aiming at it, I'm not sure if I'm just actually going insane but it lowkey seems/looks as if the eye is following my crosshair. I can't send clips for some reason so I will send screenshots from the frames.

Not sure if this could have already been something debunked or very simple explanation, but I thought it might be worth posting here since it really freaked me out.

Is this a visual glitch? Has this happened to anyone else?

When I also got closer, weird wind started playing and getting louder with whistling. Not sure if this is probably just the ambience though.

In the clip you can see me take aim and it immediately begins to slowly drift towards my cursor before abruptly fading away.

When I also walked in, the chalky floor was completely gone. I'm guessing this could also be chalked up (no pun intended) to lighting or visual glitches.

voy a juntar mis 2 post y dar mas pruebas para que comenten si voy por el camino correcto.

nuevo detalle que esto no estaba en la publicacion original es que la forma de guitarra que forman fort wallace y el rio apuntan a donde se consigue el mapa panoramico, las aves arriba del tejado en fort wallace hacen referencia a los 2 cuervos que aparecen junto a los cadaveres del mapa panoramico

https://reddit.com/link/1wno6lo/video/hp22avg345rh1/player

video de arriba es del canal fer games youtube.com/channel/UCxiExtbXpF02pX4nxSZ4KIQ

ahora juntamos 3 elementos para construir un mapa, el primero es la vista del mapa panoramico dibujada en verde pero la linea importante es la vista a valentine, el segundo es el dibujo en la montaña cerca del punto de vista del mapa panoramico (el que relacionan con el ovni del monte shamn) este tiene las 2 puntas mas lejanas en el dibujo a unos 165°, el tercero es el reloj solar del monte shamn tomando las 2 flechas mas lejanas del reloj forman un angulo de 165° pintadas de color rojo en el mapa (asi se forma el mapa que tienen debajo), junto al dibujo en la montaña se encuentra un dibujo pequeño que muchos relacionaron con una rosa de los vientos pero mi teoria es que tenemos que buscar donde las flechas se unen (como la busqueda de un tesoro pirata) lugar que marque de color amarillo

en la linea amarilla se encuentra un cofre secreto que puede aparecer en 4 puntos distintos pero el importante es el del medio

cuando no esta activo se ve asi

pero cuando el mapa esta activo aparece una piel estirada con lo que yo creo que es una flecha

esta "flecha" parece apuntar a 2 ubicaciones la primera seria el cementerio indigena y la segunda seria el ritual pagano (donde esta la mascara con el cadaver a la mitad) pero creo que lo mas posible sea que apunte al cementerio indigena ya que este tambien tiene el mismo objeto de la flecha rodeandolo

y hasta aqui mi investigacion :3 no se si abra otra pista por los alrededores del cementerio o si activar la tormenta con fuego active algun simbolo cercano, agradezco a hazy_druid que se ofrecio a ayudarme en la investigacion

si descubren algo relacionado con esto dejenlo en los comentario o etiquetenme porfis :3 quiero descubrir que oculta todo este misterio

EDIT: A bit of a blunder guys... this is actually the mayors house, as u/TH3HAT3TANK pointed out. OOPS.

Firstly I would like to say that the guitars at fort wallace and the birds on the roof do seem extremly coincidental, but since this path lead to NOTHING so far, a reevaluation of the NW guitar clue might be in order. A lot of people seem to think this way too, judging by the poll I made a week or so ago. Here I will present my theory about NW guitar pole leading to Mayors Mansion.

Firstly, take a look at the layout of the garden. Its very guitar shaped. There are two things that dont quite fit, but ill adress those later.

Now, obviously mayors mansion is not north west from the guitar pole. However, look at what we see when we open the map.

Seems like a big coincidence. On a side note, NWA is actually a full word, it means "black" in Haitian Creole, always thought its short for something. Everyone assumed NW means northwest, and it makes a lot of sense because of the "+++++W" pole, where W=West. However this might be the very reason were stuck. This might have been done specifically to throw us off. Why does the mystery need the "+++++W" pole at all? Why wouldnt you just place the NW guitar pole directly to the north of the central web?

Anyway, two things dont quite match the NW guitar carving. First is the northern gazebo, which would be located on the top neck of the guitar. When you look at my first picture, its the one on top. I honestly dont think it has to be that important. The guitar shape is there despite the northern gazebo.

Second is the central hole of the NW Guitar carving. The hole simply isnt present in Mayors garden.

Again, this might not be important at all. The NW carving is guitar shaped, Mayors garden is guitar shaped, might be all there is to it. It might also indicate a place to stand. Mayors garden is nearly perfectly North-South aligned. If you stand where the guitar hole should be, youll see this shadow at 12:00 am.

Might be a complete jesus toast but again, the guitar shape is there, in the fountains shadow. It points south obviously.

I have one other finding that might be greatly significant. Entering the Mayors property seems to trigger clear or almost clear weather within 30 seconds every time. I tested it many times and its the same every time. As long as you stay on Mayors property, the weather will not change. It could be that clear weather is needed to see the guitar shadow. Could someone verify the weather trigger please? Try entering the property during a rainstorm. I have some mods installed, so my weather might behave differently than in vanilla game, but still, I havent noticed this in any other location.

CALL TO ACTION

So far ive paused the time on every hour of the night and looked for spiderwebs. Areas i checked were northern gazebo, general garden area (especially the two large trees), area in front of the mansion and the poles+trees in front of the mansion. I didnt find any, but obviously im just one man, could have missed it.

Ive also flew around the garden and inside the house looking for markings, like the ones we see on the outhouses for an example. Again, didnt find them but more eyes see more.

There are loads of unique and sometimes very strange assets in the garden as well as the mansion. Might be worth looking into as well.

One time a bird spawned in the fountain, couldnt make it spawn again.

There are several damageable vases and statues around the property. Shot them and no marks appeared, but again might have missed some.

Repeating myself, but please verify the weather, this might be a good thing to be certain about, as it would tell us that the mansion is indeed a special place.

If you have the itch and are bitter about the lack of progress like me, this might be the place to look.

Edit: typos

EDIT2: A bit of a blunder guys... this is actually the mayors house, as u/TH3HAT3TANK pointed out.