The Strange “Blank Room Soup” Video Mystery And The Solution

In 2005 YouTube was launched as a service for users to host and broadcast home videos and artistic or news content.

Immediately the internet community embraced the new platform, which offered amateur video content creators the chance to promote their work to billions of people.

Ten months later, one of the darkest videos on the internet appeared on YouTube by user renaissancemen, one that would begin endless rumors about what it represented.

We decode the unknown, examining another mystery, the legendary “Blank Room Soup” unexplained video published on the internet in 2005.

Warning!

While the video does not contain disturbing content, the unusual nature of the visual suggests malevolent acts such as torture might have taken place.

The Original Video: Freaky Soup Guy

The video was originally titled “freaky soup guy” but later popularized on the internet as “Blank Room Soup”.

(The original upload on YouTube “freaky soup guy” - 2005)

Four short videos circulated the web since 2005, each more mysterious than the other. However, the later parts don’t make any difference to the story besides minor details.

The “freaky soup guy video” is the most interesting one, and the information we collect can direct us to a solution, yet it is always difficult to determine all the events that transpired.

First, this is not a dark web video, as many suggest. It was first published on YouTube in 2005 and republished on numerous websites. Yet plenty of content creators added more mystery in this case and ignored solid facts to enhance the enigma of the story. Some were just following possibilities with limited odds rather than examining the evidence.

Three more videos followed the original one, but the original source is now missing. Still, they seem to be a follow-up to the creepy story of torture.

(part 2)

In this scene, we observe a new item, a soda can, that stands on the desk at the bottom right of the screen. Also, the camera is in a slightly different position, but it also appears this is the same room. The electrical socket in the wall looks different from the first video, but apparently, the angle perspective gives us a distinct view of the wall.

The only difference is that one of the two customed persons charges toward the “soup guy” at the end of the video.

This display of aggression suggests torture or a threatening situation.

Maybe this cut indicates that an experienced director used this technique.

(part 3)

The third video of this mystery is out-of-doors (probably in a backyard) and shot during nighttime. Someone in a strange costume carries a rope-tied victim to an unspecified place. Here we observe the supposed victim wearing glasses and a hat, although he does not seem similar to the person in the previous video.

(part 4)

The last video offers nothing of value in our quest for answers.

Solving The Riddle

The first video presents a person who seems forced to eat a bowl of soup while two masked individuals enter the room and pat the man on the back. The man then sounds like he is crying.

The man’s face is hidden, making identification impossible.

So many questions already arise since this is not an ordinary home video, but it even implies a crime might have occurred.

First things first — The RayRays

Raymond S. Persi (IMDB) is the creator of the costumes and the characters they represent. Persi is an animator, director, and voice actor that worked on several Simpsons episodes and many Walt Disney productions.

The characters are called RayRay and were part of a performance directed by Raymond Persi.

Persi created these characters that performed live in various US locations with modest success.

Furthermore, the YouTube account “renaissancemen” (which uploaded the original “Freaky Soup Guy” video) belongs to Persi.

YouTube wasn’t the only platform he uploaded the video. He did the same with Daily Motion and Metacafe.

YouTuber Reignbot Further Perplexed The Mystery

YouTuber Reignbot, in 2015, further increased the mystery by including an assumed email exchange with Raymond Persi.

Here Reignbot suggested that Raymond Persi was unaware of the magnitude of the mystery on the internet, which would seem unreasonable since the Blank Room Soup story was already notorious in 2015.

According to Reignbot, Raymond Persi replied to her email in 2015 and mentioned that someone stole the costumes after a show. Also, he explained how weeks later he received an email with the “Blank Room Soup” video as an attachment.

We cannot be sure about the validity of this email exchange between YouTuber Reignbot and Raymond Persi, the creator of RayRay.

Certainly, though, he was the person who publicized the video by uploading it on YouTube, and later on Metacafe (a website that dissolved in 2021) and Daily Motion.

The Solution

After examining this story, there is only one solution.

Persi and his team staged the video.

Probably, no theft of costumes happened, and Persi didn’t discover the video in an email, but he produced the video, and might have also performed as the protagonist (the “creepy soup guy”)

Nobody stole the costumes. Even if someone did, that was not the culprit in the video.

Persi and his team published the videos on the internet to trigger the mystery and generate publicity for RayRay. Today it appears as a mystery tape taken from the dark web, but this is not the case.

Raymond Persi created a YouTube account (“renaissancemen”) supposedly to share the video with his group.

It is a bizarre explanation, though, since Persi publicized the video on YouTube, instead of contacting the police to investigate what seemed like a possible crime.

The solution to the puzzle leans in one direction when adding the descriptions of the video on each platform:

“A clip of people who look like us doing something to someone that we would never do. We promise.”

(on Daily Motion, video is set to private)

A suspicious description. Let’s examine the rest descriptions RayRay gave on the Freaky Soup Guy video he uploaded on the rest platforms:

What’s happening in this clip and why do these people look like us! (source)

Also, the description on the YouTube video:

We don’t know what this is. (source)

YouTube would have taken it down if it wasn’t staged, although, with YouTube, we never really know why and how it works.

This case seems closed, though, unless new evidence appears.

The Motive: Generate RayRay Hype

Apparently, Rayray wasn’t progressing as Persi wanted, and perhaps he assumed some extraordinary publicity on the internet could help generate hype.

It seems this didn’t happen, though, since the video remained a mystery, but Rayray still received little attention from the internet.

The Rayray concept was intelligent and maybe the approach Persi wanted to follow as a career. Persi unlocked the true potential of Rayrays, but the internet was not ready for them.

Still, he created one of the most fascinating internet mysteries, so we are grateful for this.

Persi and his team were behind the video, as we discovered tons of evidence proving this theory.

Internet mysteries are fun, but some seem super-enhanced by YouTubers and grow more than they should.

Conclusion

With the information available, odds suggest this is the only explanation.

However, it is perhaps Raymond Persi himself that should explain the unexplained:

• Why didn’t Persi contact the police when he discovered the theft of the costumes?
• Why didn’t he call the police when he received the video?
• Why did he upload the video on YouTube, and why his partners republished it everywhere on the internet?
• Why he used such figurative descriptions in the video posts?

Maybe Raymond Persi considered the video a parenthesis in his career and regarded it as one that wouldn’t help him with the course he had selected.

He worked for Walt Disney, the Simpsons, and in productions related to children. A dark artistic touch wouldn’t assist him in his field but could have caused harm instead. So, he denied any involvement with the production.

Persi felt trapped and liberated by producing creepy internet content using a side-project that might have had a better chance with an internet mystery surrounding it as a promotion.

Thus, he desires no association with the “Blank Room Soup” video and denies producing it to this day.

• Cover Picture: by PublicDomainPictures, on Pixabay

Content published in this article is used for research purposes and falls within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of images used in this article, and have an issue with the use of said material, please notify me.

• Originally Published at Medium, on my profile: Ex Cathedra

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