"It's all a game. We're in the Matrix." The bizarre and unexplained death of Erin Valenti

She was a 33-year-old tech CEO with no mental health history. She called her parents from a California highway speaking in disconnected, paranoid language. Five days later her body was found in the back seat of her rental car half a mile from where she was last seen. The cause of death was officially listed as an acute manic episode. Nobody who knew her believes that is the whole story.

Fear & Wine  |  May 2026

In October 2019, Erin Valenti flew from Salt Lake City to California for a tech founders conference and a leadership seminar. She called her family every day. She was excited. She had dinner with her first boss on Sunday evening and told him the seminar had helped her reconcile her work troubles. She was looking forward to coming home.

On Monday afternoon she called her parents to say she could not find her rental car. Once she found it she called them back. And the conversation that followed has never been adequately explained.

She told her mother: "It's all a game, it's a thought experiment, we're in the Matrix."

Her father said she was talking a mile a minute and was not making any sense. Her thoughts were disconnected. She mentioned Thanksgiving. She mentioned the Matrix. She sounded, to the people who knew her best, like a completely different person.

A San Jose police officer contacted her by phone. He reported she was not making sense. He drove around looking for her. He did not find her. Police classified her as voluntarily missing.

Five days later, a volunteer found her body in the back seat of her rental car at 6500 Bose Lane -- half a mile from her last known location. The car had been sitting on a residential street for five days. Her body was in the back seat. Not the driver's seat. The back seat.

The official cause of death: natural causes following an acute manic episode.

Her husband Harrison Weinstein was a psychologist. He said: "There's never any history of anything like this -- no mental health diagnosis, no hospitalization, no substance use, no arrests -- as clear of a record as you can get."

"It's all a game, it's a thought experiment, we're in the Matrix."Erin Valenti's final words to her mother -- October 7, 2019

Who she actually was

Every news story about this case described Erin Valenti the same way. Tech CEO. Missing. Found dead. Mental health episode. What most of them left out was how extraordinary she actually was.

Verified -- Erin Valenti's biography

B.S. in Business Administration, summa cum laude, Georgetown University, majoring in Finance and International Business.

Venture capital investor at Summit Partners, a $20 billion fund, where she led direct investments in communications and fintech.

Director of Product Development at Overstock.com, managing a team of 250 engineers.

Founder and CEO of Tinker Ventures, a product development agency with 120 employees across Salt Lake City and Lahore, Pakistan, building products for clients including Facebook, LiveNation, and Skullcandy.

Finalist for the Women Tech Awards ceremony in Utah on the night she disappeared.

No prior mental health diagnosis. No hospitalization. No substance use history. No arrests. Her husband was a psychologist. He said immediately: this is not her.

The seminar nobody talks about

Before the tech conference, Erin Valenti attended a three-day leadership intensive called Create Powerful, run by a California-based executive coaching company called Ontocore. The seminar was held in Laguna Niguel. She attended on the recommendation of a friend whose own coach was running the retreat.

Ontocore describes Create Powerful as "an intense immersive live course designed for individuals who are committed to personal and professional growth" that promises participants "a new relationship with fear."

After the seminar, Valenti called her family and said she was energized. She had dinner with her first boss and talked excitedly about new business ideas. Friends described her as happy and engaged all weekend.

Four days after leaving the seminar she was speaking in disconnected, paranoid language and was dead within hours.

Verified -- What we know about Ontocore

The founder and principal of Ontocore is Brandon Craig. The only independent written review of Ontocore found online was authored by someone whose LinkedIn page identifies them as Brandon Craig, the founder and principal of Ontocore.

Nobody from Ontocore has made any public statement about Erin Valenti's attendance at their seminar or her subsequent death.

Ontocore continues to operate and market the Create Powerful course.

The car anomalies that have never been explained

Verified -- The car scene

The rental car, a grey Nissan Murano, had no tracking devices -- unusual for a 2019 rental vehicle.

The car was not found for five days despite over 1,500 volunteers searching and her husband and mother physically in San Jose handing out flyers.

The car was found half a mile from her last known location on a residential street where it had been visible to residents for five days.

Her body was found in the back seat. She was the only driver. She was found in the back seat.

Police had classified her as voluntarily missing, which reduced the urgency of the forensic response.

Her toxicology screen was clean. No conventional substances were found.

The theories -- labeled as speculation

We are going to say the quiet part out loud. There are three theories researchers and investigators have proposed for what happened to Erin Valenti. All three are clearly labeled as speculation. We are not asserting any of them is true. We are saying they deserve to be named.

Theory one -- The brainwave interface connection

Speculation -- labeled as such

Before her death, Valenti had published content on her Tinker Ventures website referencing CTRL-labs, a company working on drug-free brainwave interface technology that reads neural signals to control computers without physical contact.

CTRL-labs was acquired by Facebook in September 2019 -- weeks before Valenti's death -- for a reported price between $500 million and $1 billion.

A woman publicly writing about brainwave interface technology died of a sudden neurological event weeks after the company behind that technology was acquired for a billion dollars. We are not asserting causation. We are noting the timing.

Theory two -- The high-control group parallel

Speculation -- labeled as such

Multiple researchers have drawn a structural comparison between Ontocore's Create Powerful course and high-control group recruitment methodology -- specifically NXIVM, which targeted high-achieving professionals.

Kristin Snyder was a NXIVM member who became erratic and disappeared in Alaska in 2003 after attending an intensive NXIVM course. Her behavior before disappearing has been compared to Valenti's final phone calls.

There is no documented link between Ontocore and NXIVM. We are noting the structural comparison exists and that nobody from Ontocore has publicly addressed the questions surrounding Valenti's death.

Theory three -- Directed energy and Havana Syndrome

Speculation -- labeled as such

Havana Syndrome is now documented as a real phenomenon caused by directed microwave attacks. Its symptoms include sudden cognitive disruption, confusion, disconnected thinking, and disorientation -- consistent with what Valenti displayed in her final hours.

Directed energy exposure leaves no toxicological trace. Valenti's tox screen was clean. That rules out conventional substances. It does not rule out directed energy exposure.

We are not asserting she was targeted. We are noting that the documented symptom profile of directed microwave exposure overlaps with what her family described, and that the official explanation has never been satisfactorily explained.

The full episode is coming

We have spent weeks on this research. We are recording a full Patreon exclusive episode covering Erin Valenti's complete biography, the Ontocore seminar, the car anomalies, all three theories in depth, and what we actually believe is the most plausible explanation based on everything we have found.

We label every fact as fact. We label every theory as theory. We do not ask you to believe us. We ask you to look at the information and decide what you think.

This episode is not part of the Silence Pattern series. It stands alone. But if you have been following our coverage of missing and dead scientists, the directed energy thread in particular is going to feel very familiar.

The full Erin Valenti episode is coming to Patreon.

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We are healthy. We are well. We are not suicidal. We are not experiencing any psychological distress. We are podcast hosts who found something and decided to keep saying it out loud.

All facts sourced from Business Insider, Mercury News, KTVU Fox 2, WSAV, Women Tech Council, and Frank Report. Theories are labeled as speculation throughout. If you or someone you know is in crisis: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline -- call or text 988.