El Hombre Esponja

Back when I was 10 years old, in 2001, I used to be a very sheltered child. My parents were afraid of bad influences and violence in the media, so I was never allowed to watch much TV or play video games until I was 14. Until then, however, I always had heard stories of cartoons from my friends at school. My overprotective parents never let me go to my friends' houses, but at school they were always talking about the latest episode of whatever cartoon. Back then I lived in a small rural town in Mexico. One cartoon my classmates were always going on about was "SpongeMan" (The original name in Spanish was "El Hombre Esponja"). They seemed to love it, always too much, and teased me because my parents wouldn't let me watch it. SpongeMan was a cartoon that, as I later learned, was a dub of the world famous SpongeBob SquarePants. However, it was not the "Bob Esponja" dub that everyone is familiar with now. Nobody ever talked about "Bob Esponja"- it was always "El Hombre Esponja". My classmates seemed obsessed over this cartoon, and I was really disappointed I was not able to watch it. Ever since I first went to school, as soon as we were old enough to be watching TV, everyone was talking about cartoons; but around my 10th birthday, everyone started exclusively talking about "El Hombre Esponja". In fact, my classmates seemed almost obsessed with it to an unhealthy level, I frequently found my friends missing at school, and rumors that people were faking being sick to stay home and watch SpongeMan. All everyone talked about was SpongeMan- discussion of other cartoons slowly drifted away, and all people ever talked about was that little yellow sponge. They didn't talk about it like they did other cartoons though- usually discussion of cartoons summed up to "hey there, did you see in episode of yesterday?" on the playground. They talked about SpongeMan non-stop, and discussed the episodes in great detail- I knew a lot more about SpongeMan than any other cartoon, because everyone was always talking about every little detail of the episodes. They didn't just briefly have conversations about it on the playground, either. All of my classmates were talking about it during class, no matter what the teachers did to stop it. Their grades fell, it seemed that their entire lives became dedicated to SpongeMan. This wasn't just being a fan- this was an unhealthy obsession, and it spread through my whole class like an epidemic. However, this soon spread beyond my classmates just talking too much about SpongeMan. My classmates started to act... oddly. They started coming to school sleep depraved and dizzy, like they'd been up all night. Some even fell asleep in the middle of class. Others vomited in the middle of class, even though they didn't seem to be sick. There were also many classmates with inexplicable nosebleeds, and sometimes everyone would break down crying and vomiting, and stayed in what seemed like a trance of inexplicable, deranged behavior like crying on the ground and screaming, and saying “Keep watch” over and over. This could go on for hours on end, and no matter what the teachers, school nurses, and principals did the students did not react to any punishment and they just kept acting like animals. As the days and weeks went on, this behavior got worse. Eventually, I was the only sane man, being terrified by the deranged state of my classmates but having not a clue as to what happened. As time went on, 2 of my classmates even went missing, with nobody knowing or caring what happened to them. Then one day it just...stopped. Everyone went back to normal, exactly as it was before the SpongeMan craze. Nobody even noticed the 2 missing students. However, even after the whole ordeal, my classmates still seemed..off. Sometimes they stared into the distance, with an odd gaze, in a trance-like position. After a few seconds, they went back to normal like nothing happened. When I asked them what happened to the SpongeMan craze, they would just scream and cry but eventually go back to normal. After the ordeal, my classmates and friends also became more reclusive. While their personality hadn't changed that much, they seemed a lot more introverted and nervous than before, like they'd gone through a traumatic event. However, as time went on, even this faded. Eventually, everything went back to normal, and everybody seemed to calm down and the symptoms were gone. However, the traumatic weeks of classmates flopping around on the floor, screaming and crying, still haunted my memory, and it will forever. As the years passed, I went to high school (secundaria), and I forgot about the whole thing, with only faint memories. In 2005, when I turned 14 and was finally allowed access to TV, one of the first things I watched was the Bob Esponja dub of SpongeBob. Something about the show seemed very, very familiar to me. I just couldn't quite put a finger on what it was, and I decided I was just misremembering. I watched the show a bit, but I soon grew out of cartoons and mostly forgot about the show's existence. About a month ago, I was thinking about the cartoons I used to hear about in the early 2000s like The Powerpuff Girls, and Fairly OddParents. Eventually my mind came across SpongeMan. Remembering those horrifying memories of my friends going insane, I got a little scared and with an adult mind realized just how bizarre that was. I decided that something was not right about that cartoon, as no cartoon I watched after I turned 14 had that effect, and I've never heard of anyone else going insane from a cartoon. A little frightened, I decided to look "El hombre esponja" up on Google. However, I didn't find anything relevant, other than one result. One of the top results was this cartoon with a catchy song. This cartoon was Bob Esponja, and the song was called "Un Hombre Soy" (Now That We're Men in English). Seeing this, I instantly made a connection. That cartoon that I watched a couple episodes of in 2005, after my strict family finally let me watch some TV, was Bob Esponja (SpongeBob). I remembered how I felt that something was off about that cartoon- I really enjoyed it, but it gave me flashbacks to the traumatic SpongeMan moments and I wasn't sure why. Then, I realized something. My classmates' descriptions of the characters and episodes, seemed to match up with the characters in SpongeBob. I found an online site called "KimCartoon", where you can watch any episode of most cartoons. Watching the first few episodes of SpongeBob sparked my mind- SpongeBob, known in Mexico as Bob Esponja, is the same cartoon as the bizarre SpongeMan. At my own risk, I decided to watch a few episodes of the first season. Sure enough, they all matched my classmates' detailed descriptions. However, I didn't go insane or exhibit any of the symptoms and oddities my classmates did. I just thought it was a fun, ordinary cartoon. I kept waiting for something strange to happen to me, but it just never did. Eventually I watched enough of the show to move onto the second season, and I stopped recognizing the episodes. I still remembered the descriptions of the characters, but I wasn't familiar with any of the episodes. Eventually however, I stopped watching the show, worrying that I was getting addicted to it because I was watching it so much. However, I was extremely curious about the similarities between this show and SpongeMan. As such, I continued investigating the matter, since I didn't seem to be suffering from any effects after watching. After reading more about the show, I was convinced SpongeBob was SpongeMan. However, nobody seemed to have ever heard of SpongeMan, and no matter how hard I looked I could not find any info on it. Nobody seemed to be going insane from the show either. I asked on the internet forum SpongeBuddy Mania, but nobody had ever heard of SpongeMan and everyone was just confused. Perplexed by this situation, I decided to do a deeper investigation into this mysterious dub. I looked through old records, detailed advanced website searches, I searched every tiny space of the web to find anything I could about this show. I asked people in real life too, but nobody remembered anything. Eventually I came across a mysterious website called "CartoonDubIndex". The site appears to now be taken down, unfortunately. When I first accessed the site I attempted to use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to make a copy of it, but due to the site's configuration it would not allow me to do so. As such, there is no remaining record of CartoonDubIndex. The site’s URL was an IP address, making it impossible to even track the site by domain. However, I found a page on the site about El Hombre Esponja, under a list of "Obscure/existence unknown" dubs. This site had a wealth of information, even on extremely obscure dubs like this one. Apparently, the dub was made by a company known as Dynamo. This company, active from 2000 to 2007, made a number of cartoon dubs, all extremely low quality and released only to select local stations in small towns in Mexico. Oddly, each of their dubs only aired in one town each, all of them very small towns spread in seemingly random locations through Mexico. In addition to SpongeBob, they dubbed old Hanna-Barbera cartoons like The Flintstones and The Jetsons. However, the odd thing about their dubs is that they all had unique names to other dubs of the shows, and they all had no information available about them but on this site. As I continued browsing the site, I noticed that the site had a comments section for individual dub pages. Due to the obscurity of the site, there weren't many comments- most of the comments were just spambots or a few anonymous users making seemingly random comments. However, the comments section for SpongeMan had one interesting post. I saw a post from a user named “gjo” that seemed to be a link to a video file. The video file was named “el-hombre-esponja-capitulo-04.mp4”. I didn’t want to click on the link, since I thought it might be a virus. However, I saved the link in a notepad so I could view it on a virtual machine later. As I continued browsing CartoonDubIndex’s SpongeMan page, I found more and more interesting info about the dub. Apparently, only the first season SpongeBob episodes were dubbed. The displayed episode list of the dub had very literal translations of the English names for the episode names, almost like the episode names were put through Google Translate. Oddly, CartoonDubIndex also seemed to have a “Reviews” section for each dub. SpongeMan had one review, written by “gjo”, the same user who posted the link earlier. The review was written in Spanish, however I’ve translated it into English as follows: “This dub is shit. The audio quality is awful, like it was recorded in a garage with a cheap microphone. The voices are awful and don’t fit the characters at all. The dialogue makes no sense either; this is probably a literal translation of the original English Spongebob show. For some reason they seem to have edited the video, the colors are very off in the episodes of this dub and there’s weird artifacts in the video. Actually, something just feels wrong about this show.. every time I watch one of my old SpongeMan tapes, I feel odd. Something is just offputting about this version of the show. They must have done a really terrible job at dubbing it, I don’t know what’s with the changed visuals though. They thankfully haven’t put this dub on for years, they put Bob Esponja on now which is a lot better. I just remembered this as I was browsing this site so I decided to give my thoughts on it.” As soon as I saw this review, I decided to investigate “gjo”’s profile on the site. There was no content on his profile at all, other than that comment and that review. However, I noticed something interesting- CartoonDubIndex had a private messaging system. I quickly wrote a message to gjo, asking him about the dub. My message read as follows: “Do you have any further information about that “El Hombre Esponja” dub you commented on? I have memories of my friends at school watching it and eventually they had some sort of breakdown over it but I don’t know much about the dub itself. Can you send me more info on it, or those tapes you have?” I sent it, and waited a day or so. Eventually, he replied with the following: “You have discovered the truth. You do not want to know. Do not investigate further. Stop it now.” This was incredibly bizarre, but I figured he was just a troll and there was no point dealing with him any further. I then downloaded some virtual machine software and opened up the link that he gave me in a web browser. A video file started downloading, seemingly an episode of El Hombre Esponja. For being an 11-minute TV show episode from 2001, it had an unusually high filesize- 1 GB, for that matter. I thought this was strange, but I just waited and let it download. Once it finally downloaded, I opened it and it seemed to be the episode “Bubblestand”, or, as the title card voiceover said, “Burbujas”. The first thing I noticed that was unusual was that the video quality was abysmal, especially considering the filesize. The video was in a very low resolution and full of artifacts, even worse than a horrible VHS rip. It was close to unwatchable, but I continued anyways. As gjo had described in his review, it seemed to have several strange video modifications; there were several colour discrepancies, such as Squidward consistently being a shade of dark blue. As I continued watching the episode, I started to get a headache and felt dizzy. I got mildly concerned, but since I had watched these episodes before I kept watching it. Eventually, the show started to become even stranger, with things that I definitely didn’t remember happening in the English episodes happening. Characters were walking backwards, and I started to see strange flashes on the screen, with my screen going completely black for a few seconds at some points. But then, as the episode progressed, something so terrifying and inexplicable that it still haunts me to this day occurred. While watching the episode, I started to feel immobilized, along with a strange pain in my chest. The screen began to flicker up and down with multiple colours, distorting the video of the episode. The characters began to stutter and speak oddly saying things like “Do it”, “Go now”, and “Keep watch”. Suddenly, I passed out. I woke up in my own bed, unable to move. I heard unknown, distorted voices saying “Keep watch” over and over. My room was dark, and I saw distorted SpongeBob characters approaching towards me as I slowly regained mobility. I managed to get up and leave my room, and head back to my computer where I saw another episode of El Hombre Esponja playing. This one was MuscleBob BuffPants. I was dragged towards it, by some kind of force that prevented me from doing anything but sitting at my computer and watching it. It seemed thankfully normal, aside from the bad dubbing, but I once again felt odd while watching it, and I noticed that every time Sandy spoke, a distorted apparition of Sandy appeared in my eyes. I started getting the same symptoms as before and odd effects in the episode, so I attempted to get up and move away from my computer. My computer suddenly pulled me physically towards the monitor, and showed a full-screen black and white prompt screen, saying only “Keep watch”. It then showed a strange video, which seemed to be black with some occasional red lights. Suddenly, my entire field of vision went black. I heard a low-pitched, almost demonic sounding voice. It spoke the following words to me: “You are not supposed to have found out what we did. We tried to censor its existence. We tried to limit its control to children. We tried to stop that rip from being uploaded. But it was too late. You were so persistent, you just had to look for it, and you found it. I will let you live, but if you ever tell anyone else, I will be coming for you.” You may now be wondering why I am telling the world of these events, after the voice warned me. I do not fear him. He has no power over me. You see, that is what gjo told me. Shortly after the incident with the voice, I became determined to find out who gjo was. At first, I tried directly asking him, via private message on CartoonDubIndex. The day after I asked, he replied- with nothing but the phrase “You know me.” The next day, I randomly ran into someone on the street- as in, we physically bumped into each other while walking. Suddenly, everything around me went black, and it was just me and this other person. He looked very pale, and somewhat unkempt and stressed. Suddenly, I heard the demonic voice again, speaking incomprehensible gibberish, but not before returning to a normal voice saying those iconic words, “Keep watch” and “Go now”. I started to hear nothing but random flickering between a demonic voice and a normal voice, and meanwhile this strange man was just staring at me, with a cold stare in his eyes. As I was about to drop dead from pure insanity, it all stopped. I only heard one, normal voice, saying: “I am gjo.” I woke up in an abandoned building. It was made of bare concrete, and seemed to have been untouched by humans for years. There were moss and insects coating the walls and floors, and it was completely silent. There were no windows, only tiny lightbulbs somehow staying on, barely managing to light the hallways. After running through the building in a panic, desperately trying to get out, I came accross a dark, almost entirely unlit room filled with unmarked VHS tapes, an old CRT TV, and a VCR. I felt a sense of dread and tried to run back out, but the entrance had somehow sealed itself. With nothing else to do, I turned on the TV, and popped one of the tapes into the VCR. The TV lit up. A red and black screen appeared, resembling a Spongebob title card, with the words “Tea at the Treedome” on it. A distorted, depressed-sounding voice came out of the TV, saying “Té en el Treedome”. I knew immediately what I was seeing. I tried to turn the TV off. Nothing was happening. I ejected the tape, which surprisingly worked. The image on the TV suddenly changed to a distorted, low-quality image of the pale-faced man I saw earlier. I started to hear footsteps in the distance. Panicking, I inserted another tape to get rid of the disturbing image. This time, the title card for the SpongeBob episode “Big Pink Loser” appeared. I remembered watching this episode in English, but did not remember hearing anything about it from my friends who watched the show as children. But unlike with the last episode, there was no voice- I merely heard a set of disturbing, extremely low-pitched tones, that felt like they were physically piercing my eardrums. Suddenly, the tape flew out by itself. I heard a shattering sound. The entrance to the room was wide open, and light was flooding in. Two people walked into the room. Two children. My friends from school, who had gone missing after watching the show. Behind them stood the pale-faced man, who I now knew was gjo. I heard demonic mumbling again, as he pushed the children into the room, and tried to push me inside. I ran out. He began to chase me, screaming in a demonic voice words that I could not even begin to interpret. I found an exit- an old, rotten wooden door. I broke it down, and ran. I ran as far as possible. I don’t even remember what happened, but I ended up back on the street of my home. He’s stopped chasing me. I’ve been safe here at home for two days now. I’ve developed a fascination with SpongeBob. But every so often, whenever I try to watch an episode, I will hear the voice again. I will see the distortion. They have control over every time I see a fragment of SpongeBob content, even a small clip. They will insert SpongeMan into it. And they’re getting better. It takes longer and longer for me to notice each time. They will get me eventually.

I just heard from a friend- he says he didn’t remember SpongeBob having such weird background music.