The Mysteries of the Strange Man’s Cabin Explained

Rockstar Games’ opus Red Dead Redemption 2 is widely hailed as an incredible achievement in gaming. The tale of Arthur Morgan and his exploits with the van der Linde gang marked a new high point for the medium across all its aspects, from breathtaking technical presentation to impressively immersive gameplay and high-quality storytelling. With all those qualities coming together in harmony, RDR2 was a truly engrossing and epic Western video game adventure in every way, and its landmark status and legacy are assured in the history of gaming.

Rockstar is also famous for including an amazing amount of detail in its game worlds, arguably among the best in the industry. Red Dead Redemption 2 is no exception. It contains an astounding number of secret locations, rare events, and unique interactions scattered throughout. Many of these have been discovered by dedicated fans since its release, and even to this day players are finding more. While they can range in tone, some less outlandish than others, there is one particular mysterious occurrence in RDR2 that may be the most unnerving of them all due to its contents.

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The Strange Man’s Mysterious Cabin in Red Dead Redemption 2 Explained

While exploring its massive world, players can come across many strange encounters in Red Dead Redemption 2. But it’s a small otherwise unassuming ramshackle cabin called Bayall Edge, deep in the bayous of Lemoyne, that’s home to a host of eerie elements with unsettling implications. Inside this dimly-lit dwelling are various decorations surrounding an unfinished blurry painting sitting in the center. When playing as John Marston after the epilogue, this painting slowly resolves into a full portrait of a mustachioed man in a black suit and top hat. After visiting the locale four times and looking into a mirror, players are treated to a final vision of the man himself standing behind them before he vanishes completely.

All the above seems to confirm Bayall Edge as the confines of the character known as the Strange Man. Fan theories and speculation run rampant about who or what Red Dead Redemption‘s Strange Man really is, with prevailing trains of thought pointing to him as an apparition of Death or the Devil. Whatever his true nature, he has been shown to know a great deal about many characters, their inner selves, and their destinies. This is evidenced in the collections of smaller paintings, carvings, writings, and sketches that reference various people, places, and events from the game. Many of these objects contain information that would otherwise be impossible for anyone else to know.

Certain facets of the items will actually appear differently depending on previous player choices and current honor level. For example, the smaller pictures will be of deer and eagles if a player has higher honor in RDR2, while vultures and wolves adorn them instead if low. A poem on the table outlines the fate of Jimmy Brooks, an NPC that players meet as Arthur, and who they could either save from falling to his death, or not, reflecting their handling of the situation back at them. Nearby, a map depicts the cholera-stricken town of Armadillo, with an ominous note ostensibly penned by the Strange Man implying he had a hand in the happenings there.

There are a number of other places in Red Dead Redemption 2 that contain secrets,, but the Strange Man’s cabin packs a compelling amount of creepy clues into its quarters and offers additional, if still somewhat vague, hints about one of the series’ most enigmatic characters. Everything contained in Bayall Edge points to the Strange Man indeed “knowing you,” and that is perhaps the most worrying mystery of all.

Red Dead Redemption 2

Platform(s)

PS4, Xbox One, PC, Stadia

Released

October 26, 2018

Developer(s)

Rockstar Games

Publisher(s)

Rockstar Games

Genre(s)

Action, Adventure

Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

Engine

RAGE

ESRB

M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol

How Long To Beat

50 Hours

Metascore

97