Follow the White Rabbit
[English Translation of Russian forum post from __ dated February 27th 201X.]
The White Forest Kids Show
kusrat1133
Does anyone else remember watching this old TV show? It was something I used to watch as often as I could when I was a child. My parents got it into their general routine that as soon as it was time to watch it, they'd let me be alone with it. I wanted to talk about it today because after feeling pretty nostalgic, I wanted to see if other people had similar fond memories. After this post I'll probably look into seeing what happened with it by myself.
As said in the title, it was called The White Forest. It was a game show for children pretty much, with the prizes being something small like a month's supply of cereal or something. The original run of the series went from 1996 to 2000 from what I recall. It would usually run during the children's block on NTV, sometime around lunchtime. I'll describe how a general episode of the show goes if the timeframe isn't enough.
The host of the show was a white rabbit named Skok. He was a decently big hand puppet that would always be running around or sitting down onto a wall or something so that the actor for him would never be seen. If I had to describe what he sounded like, it'd be a high pitched, old man with a slight English accent. Anyways, the show would always start with Skok being late for an important event. A close friend's birthday or meeting with some business people.
Along the way, he'd bump into a group of five children. These would be the contestants of the game show and they were going to try and help Skok get to his destination in time. And to do that, they'd need to go through the White Forest and solve the animals’ games in there to progress. From what I can recall, there were four stages to every episode. And the first stage the kids would go through would be the trivia quiz.
This part of the show was held in a room that had big branches for tables for the kids to sit behind. That alongside the sky painted behind them gave the impression that they were meant to be high in the sky. The animal that hosted this segment reinforced that, with it being a large white owl called Ooh. I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable whenever he was on the show because he was just a completely static doll that stood in the center of the room. Even if the actor was talking, he wouldn't move his mouth or head. The tone of voice I'd describe Ooh to have was lofty and a bit low in pitch, along with always enunciating the "oo" in words.
The trivia quiz itself wasn't all that remarkable, it'd just be a mix and match of questions of all kinds of topics. The winner of the quiz would just be the one who gets the most points, which would just go to the end of the show to see who won. After that quiz show, Skok would come around and take the kids down from the tall tree and to the ground below by some huge tree logs that were on the floor, with some fake grass on the floor to show this off. Two of the logs would be hollowed out and from within those logs would be the hosts of the next challenge, two badger brothers called Bar and Suk.
They were two, small hand puppets that were played by two separate people. The two of them would always do a small comedic skit where Bar would play the straight man and Suk would play the wise guy that's always trying to wind up Bar. While Bar kept his black with white stripes fur clean and always stood up straight, Suk would have white with black stripes fur unkempt and would always be hunched over. Bar had a sharp and mostly serious tone while Suk had an easy-going, near bubbly tone.
The two would host a DIY challenge where the kids would have to replicate a drawing or finish a puzzle under a set time limit. They'd get a general idea of how to do something like how to draw a rabbit or little hints on how to get through a maze before getting to work. Whoever was the most accurate got the most points. Bar would come and visit the kids while they were drawing or solving puzzles on the floor to give some advice while Suk would do his best to distract them. I had some genuine laughs watching the two go at it, it was probably my second favorite segment.
After the DIY challenge, Skok would come along again to the kids and mention how time is starting to slip away. They head down the wooden logs and into the ground below where they enter a room painted entirely brown. The host for this game was the ant queen Zhguchka, with her ant colony providing back-up. This was a pretty large puppet, made up of three sections that were controlled with sticks by three people. The tone of voice Zhguchka had was gentle and wise, like how you'd expect a sweet old grandmother to sound.
Each of the children got a table shaped to look like a stretched out ant hill and they all had a musical instrument to play. Sometimes it was a xylophone, other times a triangle and for one episode I think they had a ukulele. The challenge would be to listen to a piece of music and then to play the right note at the right time once the song played again. Getting the beats right would get you points, with a small bonus being given to anyone who didn't miss a beat.
After the musical challenge, Skok and the children would continue along underneath the ground. But Skok would always wound up falling into a hole without meaning to. And falling down in there, he'd find himself in the den of his natural enemy, Mehoil. Skok would always be stuck inside something when the kids got around to the den, sometimes within a locked cabinet or high on a bookshelf. The room layout would always change a bit but it'd always be reminiscent of a simple living room.
This was my favorite segment of the show. The children would have 10 minutes to try and get Skok out of his predicament. It was essentially an escape room segment, but with the ever present threat of Mehoil coming closer for the kids to worry about. I don't remember if the show ever properly revealed Mehoil. But there were always glimpses of him. Through the windows, he looked to be a tall, white and furry creature.
Sometimes the windows would be low enough to see his large claws on his hands. And when things got really dire and the time limit was getting close, he'd be right by the door trying to unlock it. You could only see his black eyes against his white fur. He'd always be snarling too, ready to eat what had fallen inside his home.
But the kids would always be able to save Skok and get out of Mehoil's den before it was too late. Once out of the den, they'd be out of the White Forest and precisely where Skok would need to be. While everyone got a medal for helping him out, the kid who got the most points at the end of the show would be rewarded a special prize. After thanking them all, Skok would run along to where he had to go while the kids waved goodbye. And that was a standard episode.
I had some friends back in school who used to watch the show with me. We were pretty much obsessed with it. Despite an obviously low budget, we didn't really care for that when the rest of the show was so fun. With how the animals interacted with the kids and kept up a fun atmosphere with the exciting gameplay, it was a genuine joy to see episodes with it. One thing we talked about was getting on the show. We went through strategies on how to give signals for the trivia questions and training to solve puzzles like in Mehoil's den. One of us even took up art classes to be the best at Bar and Suk's challenge.
But I believe it was an episode before number 20 was when the show took a noticeable dive in quality. Something must've gone wrong with the budget limits because nearly everything on the show was getting either replaced or taken away. Every actor aside from Skok was replaced.
Ooh was now sounding like a man who has half-asleep all the time, Bar and Suk were obviously being done by teenagers who never acted before and Zguchaka now had a cold and much more whistled tone. Their puppets also started to degrade with each passing episode, no longer being kept in good quality. Except for Skok. Alongside the fact that his voice actor was kept for Skok, I think that was only the case because he was voiced by the creator of the show.
For the stuff that was taken away, the props for the show were starting to be thrown out. Anything that wasn't the puppets or exits and entrances for the kids to go through were being taken away. Bar and Suk got it the worst, their DIY room being reduced to nothing but a single table and some poorly painted walls.
Mehoil's den also got a huge brunt of it, as the room layout never changed for the rest of the episodes. The only thing that was different were some slightly different puzzles. Even the number of contestants were being cut down, it went down from five to three.
After those budget cuts, the show only lasted for a few more episodes before it was canceled. Me and my friends were really heartbroken. We loved that show and just as we noticed it was starting to lose its quality, it was already taken from us. The rest of the school was talking about it as well, this was big news. Although the rest of the kids weren't so much heartbroken as they were immensely curious.
There were all kinds of theories and guesses that were made for why the show took a nosedive in quality and why it was suddenly canceled. Some went the logical route and guessed with things like a downfall in ratings or a lack of faith from the network. Then there was the crazy stuff like staff members suddenly passing away during production or heated arguments involving the creator and the network that lead to him getting sacked. For whatever the reason, The White Forest was gone.
I'll probably get back to this forum when I do my own research for the White Forest. Even if I only find some news on the details for why the show was canceled, I'll be sure to come back here and brief you guys on it. In the meantime, I encourage you all to talk about the show! Even if it was taken from us so soon, the show will always have a special place in my heart.
[Next post from kusrat1133 appeared on page 3 of the thread.]
RE: The White Forest Kids Show
kusrat1133
Hey guys, I finally got some new news about The White Forest. This is going to be some stuff that I'm sure many of you will have a hard time believing but please, take this into consideration. Before I begin though, I just want to thank all of you guys. I didn't expect this thread to have become as popular as it did! It felt really nice to watch the comments talk about the episodes and for your favorite moments from them, it brought back some lovely memories.
And of course, there were discussions about the abrupt end. I'll put it mildly when I say this: I thought the shit that the kids in my old school theorized were crazy. You guys have brought it to a new level. But regardless, that's not why I'm here to talk again. If I had to speak up every time I saw a weird comment on the internet, I wouldn't be able to leave the house. No, one of you guys suddenly got my interest.
It was a comment left by a certain "lightinthewindow" that got my interest. Obviously you guys have more than likely read that comment so I'm not going to repeat verbatim what he said. I'll just break it down simply into saying that while he doesn't remember the White Forest as I described it, he remembered watching a show that had the similar characters with similar events. Not only that but he remembered watching it way past the mid 90s and into the early 2000s.
As soon as I could, I contacted lightinthewindow to get further information on this version of the White Forest. While he didn't exactly remember every detail about it, he could recall some parts of it. He knew that it was an educational show instead of a game show, that it featured the same characters of the show I was talking about and that it was airing on a local TV channel in Cheljabinsk. He said the channel could've been ATV-12 and that it aired from around about 2002-2003.
He also mentioned that he still might've had some recordings of the show left over, since his father had a habit of recording all of the channels to rewatch them in his spare time. But a problem presented itself when he mentioned that he couldn't remember which days the show was on. So if I wanted to see it, I'd have to sift through hours upon hours of broadcasting to watch the episodes that were made. It took a while for me to make a decision since I was going to have to waste a lot of time just watching the continuation of a show I used to watch when I was about 10 years old.
But eventually I agreed to it. I think I just wanted to have more fun in the White Forest. Once I sent a reply saying that I was okay with watching the full broadcasts, it took about 4 days before I got a reply from lightinthewindow. It was a batch of 10 broadcast recordings, each of them about 9 hours long. Going through the first two, I saw nothing of the show. I almost gave up about halfway through the third one but when the fourth hour came, I finally got what I was looking for.
The show was now called "Tales of the White Forest" but it still had complete involvement of the original creator. As a matter of fact, it was only made by the creator. His name was the only credit of the show. Like lightinthewindow said, this was an educational show. Following through with the original show, the host was still Skok. His voice actor was still the same, with the same tone of voice as before. I think it was still the same puppet as before too. He was now dirtied enough to look grey instead of white and the seams were ripped in places.
The decorations for the set were also rather poor, giving the very noticeable impression that the show didn't have any budget. Skok was sitting on a simple working desk with nothing else on it and the walls behind him had a very poorly painted sky on it, made with watercolor paint. Following on with the fact that the show was now educational, it followed a similar format to the original show.
By that I mean that there was a theme for each episode and all of the segments for the show were going to follow that theme, with Skok giving smaller speeches in-between the segments. The segments followed a similar kind of pattern with there being a theoretical part, a musical part and a part that I'd like to talk about at the end of this post. For this episode, the theme was space.
After Skok introduced the general theme of Space in the intro, the episode moved into the theoretical segment. It was hosted by Ooh, with the same static doll as before. While the voice actor tried to emulate the acting done by Ooh's original one, it was really obvious to tell that it was the creator of the show again. It reinforced the point to me that this really was being done by him and him alone.
The segment mostly consisted of Ooh sitting on the work table alone while the camera panned around a hastily and poorly painted version of the night sky. He recited some facts about all kinds of things in space. Everything from the Solar System to the planets and stars and all kinds of things. It got a bit strange at times when the camera focused on Ooh as his doll had seen much better days. He had lost the lower part of his beak so when the camera looked straight ahead at him, it'd look like it was always shouting something.
It was odd but nothing too serious. Next segment was the musical one (I guess doing Bar and Suk at the same time was too much for the creator?) and this one was hosted by a new animal. It was a thin, black stick bug called Derevjashka. He was the drummer of a band called "922Hz" and acted like a stereotypical edgy teenager. I'd imagine that was done to both latch onto the demographic of kids who grew up after watching the original show and because the creator couldn't afford a female voice actor.
This was easily the best segment of them all as Derevjashka would play a beat on the drums that was vaguely familiar to a space themed song and the kids on the other side of the screen would play it back. He would chime in with some compliments as the segment went on as the beat got more complex. The creator of the show put on a cool voice for Derevjashka, going from mopey to impressed by the end of the segment. I kinda got into it myself near the end of it, I'm sure I would've loved to have seen this when I was a kid.
The thing that did let it down though were the visuals. The drums were shoddily made out of paper mache and the music was obviously done in post production. And for Derevjashka himself, his puppet more closely resembled a black, headless skeleton than anything else. It moved very clumsily too along with the creator's voice work, slamming its arms into the drums instead of using the sticks on its hands. But still, I had an enjoyable time with it.
But the last segment was the strangest one of them all. There wasn't a name given to the segment at all so I'll just refer to it as the maze segment. It came completely out of nowhere for me and if it wasn't for the fact that it only just barely fitted the theme of the episode, I'd go as far to say that it didn't belong on the show. The general vibes and....everything about it was just odd.
It started with a random kid who was never introduced in the episode before standing before a doorway painted white from the back. From what I could see from the camera quality, the inside was painted fully black and the walls were made of bricks. All of a sudden from out of nowhere, a voiceover came in that began to tell the kid that he was on a dangerous planet. If he wanted to escape, he would have to escape the maze. He'd also need to be careful as there was someone inside the maze who could catch him if he was too slow. The kid looked pretty anxious, keeping his arms close to him before tripping over himself as he entered the maze.
From that point forward the camera views would switch from one perspective to another for about every minute that the segment went on for. The first camera view was a top down view that was high in the ceiling. The whole maze looked like inside some kind of airplane hanger, involving a lot of dead ends for the kid to trap himself in. Other than the black walls, the only other thing I could see of the maze was the white floor.
It reminded me of one of the puzzles I saw in a Bar and Suk segment once, a maze that the contestants would use a pencil for traversing the maze with. Instead of a pencil though, it was just the kid by himself. Even from up above the maze, it was easy to tell that he was getting stressed out.
But my eye soon drifted towards the second person in the maze. It was a large, white point that moved pretty slowly. It reminded me of something from the original show that I couldn't quite put my finger on until the camera view switched to the second perspective. It was now a POV shot of the other person. It was low quality in both the audio and video but I could still hear the heavy breathing of the person holding the camera. He was just slowly walking through the maze, going through all of the twists and turns of it. Only being able to hear his footsteps and heavy breathing made this really creepy to me.
But then the cameraman raised his hand in front of the camera.
It had white fur on it, with long black claws at the end.
I only just realized then that this was meant to be Mehoil. Or rather, a guy in a Mehoil suit.
The whole segment lasted for 15 minutes, getting stranger and stranger with each passing minute. I swear I could hear the kid scream a bit near the end as Mehoil got close to him. But he eventually found the exit and managed to escape. As soon as he walked through the door, the screen cut to black instantly. Some text then appeared on screen with a shoddy win sound effect. It only just said "Congratulations! You escaped!". After that the episode ended with Skok on the table, saying goodbye to the viewers and asking them to come to the forest again soon.
Once I finished watching the episode, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of conflict. On one hand, I finally got to see a continuation to the show I had a huge love for when I was young. But on the other hand, it felt like the worst way for a continuation to be made. The shoddy decorations were clearly just made by the creator himself, despite the fact that he had a whole crew with him for the White Forest. And of course...the maze segment.
Despite that, I want to try and find more episodes of this show from the batch of recordings lightinthewindow gave me. It might be a case of naïve thinking but there's a part of me that wants to believe this version of the show got better. I'll come back with another post as soon as I get the chance to. After all, I still love the show with all of my heart.
[Next post by kusrat1133 appeared on page 5 of the thread]
RE: The White Forest Kids Show
kusrat1133
Hello again everyone. Been a while since the last update, huh? I've been watching through all of the recordings that lightinthewindow has sent me. I managed to find more episodes for Tales of the White Forest within them. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but something that was gnawing at the back of my mind ended up being true. This update is going to be more disturbing than previous ones so you guys better be ready for that.
I'll start everything from the beginning. After watching the first episode and making my first update post, I called ATV-12 through its contact phone number to see if I could learn anything more concrete about the series straight from the source. The operator didn't know the show straight off the bat of course since it'd been over a decade since it was released but he obliged my request to search through their records to learn more about it.
The show aired specifically from June 2002 to October 2003, from weekend days at a block of 9AM-10AM. The series had 18 episodes with each of them being 45 minutes or so long. From what they had, the show was being sent in from Ozyorsk, within the Chelyabinsk region. Whoever was sending the footage in was also the creator of the show. The channel itself didn't seem to have any problems with the creator since he was paying for his slots on time. The show only stopped airing because communication with the creator stopped all of a sudden.
That was all the operator managed to get from a quick search of the records. I did ask if they still had the recordings for all of the episodes and if it was possible for them to be sent to me. And while they did have the recordings, I would need to visit their HQ in order to receive them. On a car ride alone, it would've taken me 30 hours to be there in-person. Putting it bluntly, I have a job. I would rather spend that 30 hours earning a paycheck than waste two and a half days for some crappy version of a kids show I once loved.
So I had to refuse. Once that phone call ended, it was time for me to just continue watching the recordings that lightinthewindow sent me. Out of all of the ones he sent me, I only found three more episodes on recordings 4, 5 and 8. There wasn't really anything of note to talk about with the first two episodes since they were more or less the same as the space episode. As a matter of fact, they were much more tamer.
The two kids from the maze segment in those episodes weren't at all disturbed or worried. Hell, I think they were excited to run through that maze. It got me thinking that the first episode I watched was a bad first impression. Maybe that kid was just a lot more nervous than he should've been. I mean sure the segments were still out of place of the general episodes but that might've just been to fill out airtime, to catch the 9AM-10AM block perfectly. This show didn't need to be scary.
That's when I watched the last episode that was sent to me. It already presented itself as a strange episode with the intro. For the first time ever, Skok's tone of voice was different. It wasn't as sophisticated and controlled as it was before, it sounded like he was completely stressed. Skok introduced the theme of the episode as friendship. After the intro, the segment with Ooh was normal. It was just him going over the foundations of friendship and fun activities that can be done with them.
But in the intermission from the theoretical segment to the musical one, something strange happened again. While Skok was giving a small speech introducing Derevjashka, the background music suddenly got cranked up. It was loud enough to make it so that I could barely hear Skok. There was some kind of high pitched noise mixed in with it as well that I couldn't put my finger on what it was.
I only managed to figure it out when I rewatched the episode. That high pitched noise was a child screaming. Hidden by the background music in post-production.
Like the theoretical segment before, the musical segment was more or less normal aside from a minor visual glitch. Once that was done, it was time for the maze segment. The contestant chosen for this was a young teenage girl, somewhere around about 12-14 years old if I had to guess. She was a lot more scared than the kid in the first episode I watched. She didn't want to go inside the maze, screaming about something I couldn't understand.
It was hard to understand the voiceover segment since it mixed in with the screams. The best I could say for what was said is "Uh oh! You've made your friend sad. Don't cry now, you can fix everything you did wrong! Go into the maze and say you're sorry to your friend!" It took about 2 minutes or so until she finally walked into the maze. I think she might've understood there was nothing else for her to do.
The camera view changed to the bird's eye view shot, prominently showing the young girl screaming to be let go as she ran through it. Mehoil walked through the maze as he normally did, ignoring the screams. He just walked as slowly as he normally did while the camera views kept cutting like they usually did. When it got to 10 minutes in the maze however, things took a stranger turn.
When the POV shot came back in, Mehoil began to run. It wasn't as fast as her but he was still moving much more quickly. He breathed more heavily into his suit and while he ran, he started to scream alongside the girl. It was hard to tell what he was saying because of the audio quality but...I could feel what was said in a way.
It was pure vitriol. It was of a rage I had never heard before, coming out of him like he was a predator angered by his prey. He kept running through the hallways, searching through the maze to find this girl. When the camera view changed again to the bird's eye view, it was easy to tell that the girl was running faster and screaming louder than before. The mixture of despaired and rageful screams that collided together into an awful cacophony...it made me sick to my stomach.
It was more or less the same when it changed back to Mehoil's perspective. Or was. That changed when he saw her. Her back was turned to him and he took full advantage of it. He broke into a sprint and chased after her. She turned her head and screamed and just before the two collided, there was nothing. The screen turned black for seconds that felt like eternity. Pure silence was heard. Then the blackness faded to reveal something I didn't ever expect to see. It was Mehoil, standing in front of the entrance of the maze.
The first thing I noticed was his height. He was a giant. While the kids could only reach about halfway or so up the door, Mehoil completely covered it. The ears on his head may have just barely crossed the top of the door but it still gives credence to his height. The shade of his fur had changed from what I had seen when I was a child. It was gray, like how Skok was now.
He was wearing some kind of buttonless shirt over his suit. It had blotches of dark colors on it, it looked like a shoddy attempt at a Haiwaiian shirt. His stomach and hands were covered in black stains. It was hard to tell because of the video quality but I could only guess that it was blood. I saw his plastic, black eyes. His head was tilted down but he was looking directly into the camera. Looking at me.
That image was there for as long as the blackness was there before. The shoddy win sound effect played soon after before text appeared on-screen in front of Mehoil that said "Congratulations! You've made your friend happy again!" And then the maze segment ended, and it was time for Skok to say goodbye. But it was different from what he usually said. He said this:
"Now for some of you, this episode will have scared you. But you must understand that no evil action was done here. That was shown to help you see what a bad friend looks like and for what needs to be done to them. I'm sure you won't make that mistake like she did. Life is better now that you know this! Good night and good bye, my dear friends."
When the episode ended, I just sat there trying to process everything. It didn't feel real to me, I was in a dream or something. But it wasn't. And now that I had watched that episode, that gnawing thought came up and saw this episode as proof for what I believed. Those kids were being kidnapped. Some of them couldn't process what was happening but some of them did.
It still doesn't make any sense to me though. Who in their right mind would build a maze in what could've been his home, wear some old bear suit from a decade ago and put all of this into a TV show for people to watch? Hell, is he still alive? Is he still doing this, kidnapping kids and making this show in another city? There's too many questions that I currently don't know the answer to. I will guarantee both you guys and myself that I will find the answers to them.
I'm going to come back and make another update post when I find as much information as I can, as soon as I can. If there's any reason why I'm doing this, it's for the White Forest that I knew and loved.
[Next post by kusrat1133 appeared on page 15 of the thread.]
RE: The White Forest Kids Show
kusrat1133
Hello everyone. I would like to apologize for the long wait since my last update. For a long while I didn't have any kind of useful information to give you that would warrant a full post from me. That coupled with my own life getting in the way, there was barely any time for me to make a full investigation by myself. But I promise you that amount of time you have all waited for is worth it. Because I now have the biography for the creator of the show, and the reasons why the original White Forest was canceled.
After a day after making the post, I decided to share what I had learned with a childhood friend of mine. I'm sure you all can guess that he also watched the White Forest with me when we were kids. I told him mostly everything, from my initial post and lightinthewindow to the new show and the strange segments in it. The only thing I neglected was the friendship episode. That was an intentional choice, since I didn't want to freak him out too much.
He was shocked at first, as you'd expect. But then he said that he'd be able to help me out with my investigation of the show. Or at least, his dad would. Around the time when the White Forest was in syndication, his dad worked as an operator for NTV. If there was someone close that would know who the creator was, it would be him. My friend gave me his email soon after and I sent him a message the following day.
I gave the excuse that I was making a college project about the history of NTV and to help out with it, I wanted to ask some questions for someone who worked on the channel. To be more specific, I wanted to learn more about an old children's game show that had aired a decade ago. I didn't tell him the exact reasoning because I didn't want to disturb him too much. That and to not look like a psychopath in the first message.
We had some correspondence for a while and once we went through a few emails, my friend's dad got back to me with a pretty long email about the White Forest's creator. The two used to be in heavy contact, even going as far as to have the friend's dad be an operator for a couple of the episodes. Breaking down the email would just take too long on my part so I'll just copy and paste the entire email that was sent to me.
Dear [My Name]
I see now that you've got quite a fascination for this old TV show. While I don't fully understand why you want to know so much about this kids show, I do understand that it is important to you and your project. I'll tell you everything I know about the creator and the show he made. I hope this email will give you a good enough grade for the project.
As I'm sure you know, the creator's name was Anatoliy Pribrezhnev. But because of his grey, bordering on white hair, we used to call him White Rabbit. He joined the NTV channel sometime in 1994, as a voice actor and prop maker. He was very talented in both job titles, crafting intricate and beautiful decorations for the children shows he was on and in being a talented voice actor with a large vocal range.
As time went on, he climbed the employment ladder until he got the chance to work on his very kids show. It was a dream for him as even before he arrived at NTV, he was a writer for children's books. He even had his own series that he wanted to put to film, which eventually became the show you know as White Forest with the characters of Skok, Ooh and Mehoil, among some other ones that I can't quite remember.
A small fact for you. The original name suggested by executives was "Follow the White Rabbit", which was vetoed by Anatoliy for not being kid-friendly enough, so it was turned into the White Forest. Anyways, the general idea for the show was to have an incredible amount of interaction between the world of the show and the kids who played on it.
That was something Anatoliy was heavily insistent on with all of his creative projects, to make his stories as interactive as they could be. Even for his books, even if it was just having a paper line that the characters and reader would follow along through the pages, he wanted to help immerse children into his stories and make them believe in something the norm. It wasn't much of a surprise to hear that he wanted his new show to be a game show.
In terms of who he was as a person, he was an intelligent and respectful man. He knew what kind of show he wanted to make and he enacted a solid plan to achieve it. I wasn't aware of whether or not he had any close friends or family but to be frank, he didn't seem to need them. In his own words from a conversation we had "My only true love is my work, and the happiness it brings to children." But he wasn't perfect.
He was very stubborn about his own ideas, never wanting to compromise whenever something seemed impossible. He also hated needing to remake some of his props, seeing them as already perfectly made. I remember hearing about an argument he had with an actor about a single detail for one of the dolls that lasted for hours. It only ended when the actor gave up and allowed Anatoliy to do things his way.
Going back to the show, Anatoliy approached the show with full responsibility. He made the props himself, scouted the location for where the show would be filmed and hand-picked all of his actors. Just for an example, the audition process for Zhguchka (managed to remember her along with the others!) lasted for over a month due to Anatoliy being unable to find an actress who could provide the right intonations. He wanted the show to be perfect. And to that end, he performed as two of the characters - Skok and Mehoil.
I never really understood what Mehoil was about. He was the strangest character of the show because of Anatoliy himself. The suit he wore for Mehoil was the only prop that wasn't specifically designed for the show. It was a suit from his father, he himself described it as "The only good thing that he ever gave to me." Whenever he wore the suit on the show or in rehearsals, he didn't act like himself. He never spoke while he wore and, at times, appeared to be in a trance. Something wasn't quite with him and the suit. I presume it came from his childhood.
While he never went fully in-depth about his childhood, he had mentioned it was a hard one. Mostly coming from his father which, again, he never talked in-depth about. If I had to presume though, there seemed to be lingering effects of domestic abuse that followed him into adulthood. At times he spent hours away from the show to attend therapy and was constantly taking medication.
I think he might've been using the bear suit as a strange form of therapy. He would do odd things in that suit, like trying to open a locked door by turning the door knob over and over again or just walking through the hallways of the area in the suit. It was very strange but if it helped him work through whatever trauma he had and he wasn't harming anyone, it wasn't any cause for concern.
Development for the show was in full swing. There was a set plan for every episode of the season with all of the kids who'd attend it being decided. There was even a general plan for season 2 that would come once all of the episodes were filmed. And then everything fell apart. The show lost funding and was eventually closed.
One of the reasons why was because of some awful accusations that stated Anatoliy was a pedophile. He was hosting individual auditions for the children who participated and someone internally from NTV believed he was sexually harassing the children within that time. There didn't appear to be any substantial evidence backing it up but word had spread too quickly to rebuild Anatoliy's reputation.
The second reason for the show's eventual cancellation was much more concrete. The actor who had played Ooh went missing. After a day's work, he simply didn't return home and didn't go back to work the next day. He was reported missing soon after by his wife and a search team went out to find him. The prime suspect in his disappearance was Anatoliy himself, as the missing actor was last seen with him. Anatoliy's house was searched multiple times but nothing was found.
Two weeks later, they found his body. It was in a forest nearby where we filmed and he was in an awful state. He was covered in large cuts and gashes across his whole body. Some of his bones were broken. One noted detail was that his face was stuck in a look of pure anguish, his mouth left open to scream. It looked like he was attacked by some wild animal within the forest. The general consensus was that it was a bear that killed him, due to how common they were in the area. His death was officially ruled an accident.
The production of the show was stricken heavily because of this. Anatoliy was already running low on funds because of the show and now that Ooh was gone, they needed a new actor. As time went on, more and more people left the show because of those aforementioned reasons. Eventually it was just Anatoliy running the show alone.
When the show was canceled after filming its last episode, Anatoliy left NTV and effectively disappeared. His book series stopped publication and as far as I'm aware, there were no attempts to continue the show. There were rumours that he committed suicide but personally speaking, I believe he moved to a new town to find someting new to do with his life.
Well, that's all I know about the show and the creator. Again, I hope this information will do you well for your project. If you've got any further questions, don't be afraid to email me back. It's been nice to speak with you.
Sincerely, [Name of my Dad's friend.]
This email he sent me did answer a lot of my questions. But at the same time, it also made me incredibly suspicious about the creator for the White Forest. I'm still not satisfied with what I don't know. I'm going to keep looking for answers to this mystery and I promise you all I will be back for another update for you guys. It'll probably be the last.
I will say first though that my real life circumstances coupled with my current weekly job hours has made be incredibly busy as of late. But I will do my best to learn. For the sake of satiating my curiosity, to know what Anatoliy did.
[Next post by kusrat1133 next appeared on page 28 of the thread.]
Hello everyone, once again. I think I'm comfortable enough to admit that this is going to be the last update I'll give to you guys. This is because of two reasons. The first one is that I simply have too much going on in my life to continue investigating a children's show that aired so long ago. But the second reason is that as of now, I am satisfied with the answers I have gotten.
In the period of three months, I've been scouring the internet looking for any further information about the show or for where Anatoliy is currently located. From Reddit, Youtube, Twitter, the archives of /x/ on 4chan and beyond, I was relentless in my pursuit for knowledge. Usually I only found people who were just like me, nostalgic for a show they once loved and were wondering why the show was canceled.
But I have found three different posts from three different sources. I know that I'll most likely not get any closure from knowing what happened but these three posts have given me something to consider what the full picture is. That is all that I can ask for. I'll copy and paste the posts onto here after I say goodbye because I really have no time left to dedicate myself to just retelling these things.
If you wish to learn more about this show, then you need to take responsibility for that role. I'm sure there are many people out there who are far greater at researching than I am, who have a lot more time and interest on their hands to learn about this show and Anatoliy. I'm not going to disappear from the forums forever. I'll be more of an observer, watching how things go on from here. Although if you guys want your curiosity sated, I'll post the episodes of Tales of the White Forest that I currently have.
For now, I have to say goodbye. Thank you for the help and investigation. Thank you for your interest and thank you for your time in reading this. And once more, thank you for being a fan of the White Forest. See you soon.
First Post - News article from Chelyabinsk Daily, February 2003.
14 Year Old Girl From Ozyorsk Missing, Police Investigation Isn't Hopeful
Marisa Gorbusheva, the mother of the missing girl, reported her daughter as missing in the late evening of February 8th.
The report was made at 11PM after Alisa failed to return home after a walk with friends, after being told to return before 7PM.
Her last noted appearance was at 6PM, after being seen entering the bus she would usually take to go home.
Police investigation began soon after, where her backpack was discovered on the outskirts of the town. The only piece of physical evidence that was found was of a torn-off white ear, judged to be from a plush toy.
Eyewitness testimonies described "a man in a white bear suit" nearby the place where the bag was found on the night of the disappearance. Fingerprints on the ear itself only belong to Alisa.
Police will continue to look for Alisa. If you or a person close to you are aware of information pertaining to the disappearance of Alisa Gorbusheva, please contact the Ozyorsk police department or [Phone number removed].
Second Post - Anonymous Stalkers forum, July 2008. [Note from kursrat1144: Stalking in this context refers to the act of exploring abandoned buildings and stealing stuff from those places. Or essentially, urban exploring but with added criminality.]
Did any of you guys miss me? Your good pal is back once again with another update post. And this time, I actually found something interesting about this shithole of a city. Didn't even expect it but hey, I'll take what lady luck can give to me on this blessed day.
So before I found my lucky catch, I was just walking around the outskirts of where I usually live. I wasn't even looking for anything cool to explore, it was just a simple nature walk. I never had any hopes of finding someplace new to me because really, would a city with a population of 70k really be hiding any cool secrets?
You can imagine my surprise when I found out there was.
Wandering through the forest, I saw what looked like a black square far off in the distance. Way too big to be a tree or a car. Never saw that shit before in the woods so you better believe I went straight to it. My stalking friends never gave any pointers about a place like this out here so it was either a death trap or it was a treasure chest waiting to be unlocked.
Of course, it could've just been a dumb farm so I kept my expectations low. But the closer I got to this thing, the more I couldn't help myself from getting excited. Because whatever this place was, it was looking more and more like it was a pristine place that hadn't been broken into before. Which of course means that this was a place prime for exploring.
Once I got close enough, I could only just about tell that it was a hangar of sorts. It was painted completely black, looked like something you'd see out of a military base in some kind of cartoon or whatever. Next to it was a simple shack. Even next to the dilapidated wooden shitbox, the hangar wasn't looking so hot either. The paint was starting to peel off, the pipe that was on the center of the roof was getting rusty and there was like a thick layer of dust on the two buildings.
All of this was just proof that they had been abandoned and unexplored. So pretty much, the best place for me. I went to the hangar first since it was the closest to me. There was just a normal sized door leading into the place that was closed, which swung open cleanly when I gave it a good kick. Once inside...for the first time ever stalking, I was at a loss for words. A hangar of this size would usually keep heavy machinery or some farm tools or whatever. This place didn't have that.
This hangar had a fucking maze made out of bricks. Not even just a small maze too, no this was a fucking massive maze. I couldn't measure the place out but if I had to make a guess, this shit was at least 70 x 70 meters. The whole hangar was being used to hold this maze. I didn't go into that thing because I didn't want to waste hours of my life trying to find some stuff in there and in trying to get out.
When I walked around the entrance of it, I found a VHS camera on a tripod. It didn't have any tape inside of it, it was just pointed directly at the entrance to the maze. Spooky stuff, right? I couldn't find anything else around the maze so I got out of there and checked out the shack. The place wasn't locked so I expected much less than the hangar.
The first thing that got my attention was the smell. Before you say it, it wasn't some corpse smell or whatever, I'm not telling some gay creepypasta here. It was like some really old paint on the shack walls, shit was so bad I had to cover my nose. Just like the hangar, this place wasn't being looked after anymore. Once I looked around, I kinda realized that this place was being used as a filming set. It had the kind of quality you'd expect for a filming set inside a shack in the middle of the woods, which is to say awful.
There was a sky painted on the wall, or at least something that resembled a sky. Most of the paint peeled off so the sky was my best guess. Up against that wall was a table and a camera on it. The camera was the same model as the one in the hangar, it didn't have any tape in it like that one too. Other than that, there was just a chair and some dolls inside. A headless doll of an owl, some kind of headless, black skeleton and a nice rabbit puppet. I took the latter home because it was cute and the only good thing there. It'll look nice with the other stalking trophies.
There was another door aside from the entrance that led to an office. Or at least, I thought it was an office. There wasn't a lot in this room like the filming set, where there was just a chair, a table and a pile of papers. Each of the papers had some drawings of some cartoon animals, with some actual quality being given to them.
First drawing was of a comic that started with the owl I think I saw on the floor scratching a bear with his claws with a mean look in his eye. Then a rabbit comes along and asks the owl to apologize for hurting the bear. Next drawing was him doing just that and of the owl and bear hugging. That was the whole comic. Next drawing was more or less the same but instead of an owl it was a fox that was biting the bear's ear. Third comic was a long one where it was just the rabbit and the bear playing chess. The bear won, if that matters to you.
Once I got done exploring that room, I made my way out of the shack and went back home. It was starting to get late and I didn't want my parents to get pissy at me again. In all honesty, I don't know what to make of that place. What kind of weird fucking mind would you need to have that be in the middle of the woods, together? The filming set I get to a degree because it's a quiet and convenient place to make some cartoons or whatever. But what kind of reasoning would you have for the maze?
I'll probably go back to that place another time, and do a more thorough rummaging. Could grab the cameras or the rest of the dolls. Hell, might even check out the maze while I'm at it. Maybe there's a pot of gold at the end or something. Let me know what you guys think about it, and for what else I might've missed or neglected to pick up. See ya soon!
Final Post - Post from r/HumanoidEncounters, November 201X.
Possible bigfoot sighting in the woods near my city.
Today was meant to be dedicated to picking mushrooms in the woods, as I usually do in this season of autumn. While doing that however, I could hear some footsteps in the distance, breaking some twigs.
I thought it was merely someone on a nature walk so I turned to say hello. But across from me, I saw a large animal with some dark-gray fur. It reminded me of a bear but I know for a fact that it wasn't because:
A.) There are no bears in the woods of the Chelyabinsk regions, especially not with that fur color.
B.) I'm confident in saying that it was walking on two feet, like a human being.
It didn't spot me, it just continued to go deeper in the woods. Any ideas for what kind of species this creature is?