About

Clock Man is a stop-motion animated Czech short which aired on Nickelodeon’s Pinwheel show. This short follows the story of a girl who is taken on an unpleasant trip by a mysterious “clock man”, but is returned to her room just before sunrise.For years, discussions about the film circulated online despite no official record of its existence, with some dismissing the story as a creepypasta.. In mid-December 2017, the film was discovered by The Lost Media Wiki as the short animated film About Dressy Sally.

Origin

In 2012, The Flood Forums member Commander Santa submitted a thread about his search for a short film aired on Nickelodeon’s Pinwheel show he remembered from his childhood that continued to haunt him for years to come. Commander Santa described the short as follows:

“This short animation was terrifying as a child. The scene is still burned into my mind (28 years later). It’s of a young boy sleeping in his bed. Above his bed is a ticking clock. All the lights in the room are off and it is very dark. Suddenly the clock begins to slow down it’s ticking and eventually it stops…on midnight. When the clock stops a Greenish/Bluish man climbs out of the clock. The boy wakes up just in time to see this man dressed in black grab him out of bed and kidnap him by carrying him through a window. The “Clock Man” takes the boy on some kind of terrifying adventure and brings him back to his bed before sunrise."

Commander Santa also provided a sketch of what he remembered about the short(shown below)

Initially fellow users were skeptical as Commander Santa’s story felt eerily creepypasta-like, especially when compared to Candle Cove. But with Commander Santa being a highly respected member of the forums, many tried to help in any way they could. In the first 24 hours, the thread received over 800 replies and several suggestions to what the animated short could have been.

Spread

Stories about the short film subsequently spread to other online communities, including 4chan’s /x/ (paranormal) board, the World of Warcraft TV Forums, Hippotank, Minecraft Forums, Yahoo Answers and the Bioware Social Network. Commander Santa subsequently consulted various cartoon collectors and universities, including the National Film and Television School, Vancouver Film School, University of California, Arizona State, Cornell and Brigham Young University.

Lost Media Wiki Search

On September 16th, 2016 The Lost Media Wiki, a website associated with the research and seeking of pieces of media considered ‘lost’ due to the difficulty of finding them, announced a shift in focus to the search of Clock Man specifically after the conclusion of its previous main focus, A Day With Spongebob Squarepants. That day, YouTubers BedHead Bernie and Dycate released videos detailing the search up to that point.

That same day, the Lost Media Wiki released an infographic detailing information known about the short (shown below).

Discovery

On December 11th, 2017 the Lost Media Wiki announced that they discovered the short film was a 1976 animation by director Dagmar Doubková. The cartoon had been uploaded to YouTube by the AAA Studio – Animated movies in September (shown below).^[5]

Search Interest

External References