The Mount Gordo ghost is one of Grand Theft Auto 5’s spookiest Easter eggs, but it’s not just a fun bit of horror thrown into the game. Fans have pieced together bits of GTA 5’s story to theorize about who the Mount Gordo ghost really is, and it has a particularly dark origin story.
GTA developer Rockstar is notorious for packing its games with unexplained Easter eggs. Red Dead Redemption 2’s mysterious Francis Synclair mural, for example, contains cryptic depictions of the supposed time traveler’s exploits, including a meteor headed for ancient Egyptian pyramids. Grand Theft Auto 5’s most notorious curiosity is the mysterious Mount Chiliad mural. Players theorized for years that the mural concealed some big secret, like a jetpack or a hidden bunker, but a recent theory shows it’s most likely just an instruction manual for making the game’s UFO Easter egg appear.
Finding GTA 5’s ghost requires similar steps to finding the GTA 5 UFO, but without the story completion requirements. Players should head up near Mount Gordo’s peak. There, a rock at the edge of a cliff has the word “JOCK” splattered onto it, written in what looks like blood. The ghost will appear above the rock between 11 p.m. and midnight, but it disappears if a player gets too close, so players should walk away from the rock before waiting for the ghost. It’s also reportedly possible to hear spooky screams when viewing the ghost from a small campsite near Mount Gordo’s base.
The ghost is nothing but a silent JPEG, and its appearance doesn’t give much away about its identity, but the “JOCK” message is very telling. GTA fans may recognize the name as that of Jock Cranley, a politician featured in GTA 5’s story content. Before getting into politics, Jock was an aspiring stuntman in Blaine County - the rural, northern part of GTA 5’s map where Mount Gordo is located. A page of the in-game Senora Beach newspaper features a story about the death of Jock’s wife, Jolene Cranley-Evans.
According to the paper, Jolene fell to her death from the cliffs above El Gordo Lighthouse in May 1978, following an argument with Jock. Jock had wanted to move to GTA 5’s Los Santos to grow his stuntman career, but Jolene disagreed, leading to troubles in their marriage. Jock was suspected of pushing Jolene off the cliff, but he was released from custody due to insufficient evidence. The ghost, then, is clearly Jolene, who has written “JOCK” on the rock where she was pushed in order to tell passers-by the real truth.
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Grand Theft Auto 5 released on September 17, 2013.
