Obscurity is something that I believe has gotten me the most microscopic level of fame. Sometimes, when I look up certain stories I’ve written about, I notice that my blog is either the top search result, or on the first page. It always fills me with happiness. However, at the same time, I feel kind of weird about it. I tend to not think of myself as anyone special, and I often just parrot a lot of what I see written on other websites.
Still, the level of joy outweighs that thought—and it’s a very, very, very minor reason why I wanted to cover today’s tale. Known as the Elevator Riddle, this is a story that… honestly doesn’t really feel like it can be properly described in any meaningful way. So let’s just jump right into it.
The Story
First up, a preface. I would say that the obscurity part of this story makes up about 1% of why I wanted to cover it. The other 99% is a fair bit more complicated. You see, this story was one I had plans to cover at the start of the year, but I ultimately couldn’t find a lick of evidence/documentation about it beyond an entry on the Forteana Map. As such, I opted to scrap the idea. In spite of that though, I decided that my detective skills weren’t really anywhere near as good as they could be (big shocker there). So I decided to forward the story—along with another one (which is known as “The Groves Kurt Incident” on the map)—to Jason Carpenter, who hosts “Dead Rabbit Radio”.
My thinking was that maybe he’d be able to find something on either story since he’s clearly significantly better at researching and finding information than I am, and I could at the absolute least have some closure on at least one of the stories. However, to my dismay, he couldn’t find anything on either of the stories. Still, I was happy to see that he took up my request. If you want to watch the video, click here; it’s really good.
After that, I kinda just stopped thinking about both stories. I figured that they were nothing more than stories made up by the creator of the map. Though recently, I felt the urge to try once more to find something, and to at least sate my desire to cover at least one of them. In the end, I went with the Elevator one since it’s the more fascinating of the two in my eyes. Sure, killer snowballs are fun, but there’s something really intriguing about a mysterious murder in an elevator (and it certainly comes across as more plausible).
Also, I’d totally be lying if I said I didn’t want an excuse to cover a really easy story. C’mon, cut me a break, I’ve had a rough year.
Anywhoozle, as stated before, this story is on the Forteana Map. I’ve used this map before to find some stories, and I will use it more down the road too. For this particular story, we must go back to the year 2015 (the specific date isn’t listed on the map). Once we’re back in time, we must then take a trip over to Ankara, Turkey; the specific location being the Cinemaximum Panora Theater. Once our tense changes have adjusted to that whole time travel stuff, we can then begin the story proper.
This movie theater, from what I can gather, is in fact real. I want to make that known right now, because what I’m about to say is one of the weirdest things out there. According to the map, the rotting corpse of a cashier by the name of Bilal Ruzgar was discovered in an elevator. That, on its own, is nothing special. However, the entry goes on to state that the body was there when moviegoers were waiting to go on, and that he’d been shot.
What’s stranger is that the entry states that nobody had heard any gunshots, nor had the “trapdoor” on the top of the elevator been tampered with in any way, and no one had seen the shooter[s] leave the elevator. Rather callously, the entry claims that this is “impossible”, though a murderer leaving the scene of a crime without anyone noticing is by absolutely no means something novel. You needn’t look further than when the Zodiac killer was stopped by two cops after his last official murder; he pointed them in the direction of the murder. The only reason he wasn’t arrested is that cops were looking for what witnesses claimed was a black man. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for the shooter to have blended in with a crowd should there have been no patrons waiting for the elevator. However, I digress, this isn’t the time for me to speculate since we haven’t gotten to the weird stuff.
No, that weird stuff comes… right after this next portion. Supposedly, the autopsy on Bilal’s corpse revealed that he had been shot two times in the chest by a 9mm pistol, though the first shot killed him since it ruptured his heart. Now comes the weird part: the autopsy also revealed that the corpse was four days old. This is in spite of the elevator having supposedly been in use the entire time, yet nobody noticed the putrid smell of decomposition emanating from about 3 inches away.
Ehh, I guess that ain’t too weird. I mean, cops didn’t notice the odor in Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment when they returned one of his victims to him.
That’s where the entry on the Forteana Map ends. I, admittedly, very much reworded everything they said, so I want to credit them with about 99% of the wording I just used. I also now just realized how often I have changed tenses in this write-up and I apologize for that.
I digress though; that’s really all I’ve ever been able to find on this story. So I now want to move onto the theories section because boy oh boy, I have a lot to say.
Theories
1. It’s fake
Truth be told, there are no theories—at least officially. As such, I came up with my own theories.
The first theory, and perhaps the most obvious one, I thought of is that the whole thing is, in fact, fake; it was just added to the map as a little gag by whoever created it.
The evidence I have for this theory is, admittedly, only based on my time using Bing and Google to try and find information on this story. I tried looking up the victim’s name and all I ever really got were results for Facebook. I then tried to look up if there was a murder at the movie theater, but that also came up empty. The most I ever got was a result about a shooting during a showing of “The Forever Purge”, which didn’t even take place on the same continent as this story.
If I’m to be 100% brutally honest, I could flat out end the story here; this is more than enough, in my eyes, to lay the entire story to rest. However, there is more one can put forward, so let us instead continue onward.
2. It was a real murder, but it was covered up (I guess)
Turkey is a country with a long and rather interesting history. In recent times however, it’s had its fair share of turmoil; a year after this murder supposedly took place, an attempted coup d'état took place, plunging the nation into a state of chaos. As such, I wondered if maybe this murder was completely overshadowed, but I find it hard to believe that something like this would’ve never made local news. Still, I guess it’s possible.
2a. It’s just a ridiculously obscure story
A minor offshoot of the theory above is that the entire thing is just insanely obscure. Perhaps cops just took a look at the case and shrugged, or maybe it was overshadowed by other, much more urgent crimes. I mean, Ankara has a population of 5.66 million (as of 2020), so I can’t imagine that this one lowly murder would be more than a minor blip on the radar of law enforcement. Especially if there was a potential serial murderer on the loose.
3. I dunno, aliens did it
Because why the heck not?
My Take
When I was thinking of possible theories, one thing came to mind. Perhaps Bilal was murdered elsewhere in the theater and then his body was placed there after the theater closed. Then I pondered, “why would he have been killed in the first place?” Such a question is one I couldn’t answer because I have no knowledge of Turkey’s politics, if there’s any level of organized crime there, or… really anything. Because of that, I feel that all signs point to the story being faked. After all, no information being available really makes it seem like the whole thing is just some gag the creator of the map did for laughs, or to throw off any unsolved mysteries enthusiasts.
Though, assuming that isn’t the case, I would hazard a guess and say that maybe the whole thing was buried because Bilal was killed by someone who had connections to police/media/some prominent person (or people). However, I sincerely doubt that because I feel I would’ve at least found something on a fringe website. I also firmly believe that Jason Carpenter would’ve been able to dig something up. I mean, if he can find sources for the crazy stories he’s covered, he definitely should’ve been ahead of my Z-grade butt.
Conclusion
If anyone from Turkey who reads this has any information on this story, I would really appreciate it if you commented and told me about it. Until then, I hope to see you all tomorrow when we’ll go down another floor to discuss something new. See you then!
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