Ashton Bunston

Ashton Bunston is the main protagonist of the web series/ ARG "Project Evidence". In the first season he is left cryptic videos on his cell phone by someone in a smiling mask, in one of the videos the mask comes off and it is revealed that Ashton himself is Smiley, without realizing it. It is not confirmed in the first season why Smiley exists but it is heavily implied that he is working for the creature (who would later appear in season 2 and stalk Ashton and Evan). Making him a proxy. After Ashton finds out he is Smiley he throws the mask away and is never Smiley again. But not before he (as Smiley) had already forced Ashton's girlfriend Emma to commit suicide, (which led Ashton to continue investigating until the season 1 finale when he quit). In between seasons 1 and 2 people tried to email Ashton's gmail account but only one person ever got a response. That led fans on a journey through different websites of Airabie Lakes, the fictional town that Project Evidence takes place in.

Season 1:

In season 1 Ashton makes a YouTube channel talking about some objects he found. One of those objects is a pill bottle that he recognizes as the same kind his girlfriend takes (later confirmed to be to fight off the creature's sickness) and he interviews her for his channel. She confirms that the pills are hers and they decide to investigate the forest, which due to children going missing in it, has been closed off by the city. After around a week of no uploads Ashton makes a video stating he found Emma's(his girlfriends) dead body at her house, he states he found pills everywhere and thinks it was a suicide, but he says he saw a gun, a mask and bullet holes, meaning someone was forcing her to do it. He neglects (on purpose) that the mask was his, made for him by his older sister Jessica before she too committed suicide. Later he notices videos on his cell phone made by a person in the same mask. The person has a coughing fit at one point and the mask comes off revealing it to be Ashton himself. After that he goes to an abandoned house, the entire video is pixelated and sped up X2, (which is later confirmed in season 2 to be due to the creature's presence). Ashton makes another video inside the abandoned house where he finds the room that Smiley had used. He is then attacked by two people in hoods, one he ends up killing, one gets away. Eventually Ashton is taken by an unknown person, (who is later revealed to be season 1's main antagonist, Dr.Silence). Also Evan uploads a video of Ashton messing with a haunted journal. in the end though one of the hooded people and Ashton's younger brother Evan help Ashton get away and they work together to burn the place down, Dr.Silence is killed in the fire, as well as another hooded person and the one who helped Ashton is left behind, but their fate is unknown.

ARG:

For an unexplained reason, Ashton's gmail is hacked and one person gets weird emails, eventually being instructed to make a video asking one question and post it to YouTube. This kicks off the ARG. After that the player of the ARG gets a link to a police site for the fictional town of Ariabe lakes, Ontario Canada. Which leads to a site for submitting tips about cold cases, which has 6 videos that Ashton took. Most of them being creepy videos from a PSVita memory card that Ashton used his camera to record after the memory card was sent to them. After that Ashton and Evan go to the abandoned house and Evan puts the Smiley mask on and becomes evil for a few videos before the mask is buried, then in another video the mask is dug up by an unknown person, the mask is seen at the abandoned house but not really of any importance again.

Later Ashton and Evan are attacked by the creature before Ashton wakes up at home believing it to all have been a dream, (everything after season 1 until that video)

A transcription of the events of the ARG can be read here:

☀https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LCE3u-LobkZbVEWffiOHRNp607GugmAoCAsKv2LikyE

Season 2:

Ashton and Evan go to the abandoned house and find a laptop, they spend time trying to find the password, the laptop supposedly had important info on it but this plot was forgotten about pretty quickly. They are attacked by The Hooded One and are knocked out for 2 weeks. When they wake up someone has left clues for them around the inside of the abandoned house. Later, Ashton gets stuck inside of the shed of the abandoned house. After about a week he is teleported back home. Ashton is later warned by a man named Tony (who later stopped leaving messages and never contacted Ashton again) to look inside of his baby box, He does and finds an image left there. A black and white photo left for him by Tony that features the creature, proving that he has been haunting Ashton since he was a year old. Much later Ashton and Evan unmask The Masked One and question the person underneath. After that Ashton and Evan are kidnapped by Jeff The Killer (Project Evidence version, not the OG version.) They break free and Jeff is arrested.

Project Evidence: Awakened:

Ashton finds a bottle with notes in it. One of the notes tells the story of a relative of Ashton's who was taken out to sea by her uncle, raped and kept as a sex slave (at 8 years old by the way. Just to prove how dark the backstory of the series is) before a creature kills her uncle, which then causes the boat to crash on an island, where Ashton's relative stays forever. Ashton is also kidnapped. Not much else happens during Awakened.

Ashton on the villain's wiki: https://villainsfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Ashton_Bunston

Trivia:

During the current season (season 3. To be added once season is finished.) The Project Evidence Twitter had to tweet OOC (out of character) telling people to stop DMing the account to harass and bully him. The account also had a spike of gaining followers and multiple new tweets that were posted by Ashton were deleted. Only one tweet was ever reposted to the PE twitter. The reason for this is because a shared universe of different web series was considering adding Project Evidence to their roster, they chose to add the series and was planning on adding the PE lore to their "Nomadicverse". Three of the members of the Nomadicverse began criticizing Project Evidence and when Project Evidence's creator asked for those three members to be told to stop, the Nomadicverse kicked Project Evidence from their roster. The Project Evidence Twitter removed those accounts from following the account and has expressed that no member of the Nomadicverse is allowed to contact Project Evidence or it's creator. There is currently behind the scenes beef going on between the Nomadicverse and Project Evidence. Including a document released in the series stating "

☀ We’ve asked locals from around the globe. Nobody has heard of anything called “Brown Haze”. It’s like it NEVER EXISTED."

with Brown Haze being one of the series that started bullying.

Another thing said in the document is: "Daniel also has been waking up in the middle of the night screaming about something terrible in his nightmares. We recently asked what that thing is, he said “Dark Oculus”. Once again, nobody has heard of “Dark Oculus” either. "

Dark Oculus being another series bullying,

another line dissing one of the series:

Daniel also states that someone has been talking to him. We asked who and he said another patient of ours named “Robert Burgonson”. We have never had a patient with that name.

more:

We’ve recently had a patient named Eric Kerce commit suicide, we found his suicide note written on some toilet paper, it said “I have chosen to do this not because of my mental well being, but because of my friend Jake Hamilton, who seems to be obsessed with me.” Another one of our patients, named Melissa, keeps talking about something called the “Nomadicverse”. We have no idea what that is, we’ve done the research and asked around, nobody has any idea what that is. It’s like it doesn’t exist. Or if it does, nobody has ever paid attention to it."

" it's another universe where the entire population has something in their blood that makes them very aggressive and rude to everyone."