Tower of Silence

January 19, 2003 --
Indian officials ventured into a deep jungle, investigating several missing persons reports from a nearby city. What they found was a "Tower of Silence," or dakhma. Zoroastrians use these sites to dispose of bodies in the open air.

While sites like these are not uncommon in certain parts of india, several peculiarities hint at something more unusual...

1. None of the bodies depicted in the photograph were identified. Villagers from nearby, though initially surprised at the sheer number of corpses in the dakhma, proved unable to recognize the bodies. The corpses also do not match the descriptions of the missing people.
2. There were no animals around except for maggots and flies. Zoroastrians rely on birds (i.e. buzzards) to dispose of the bodies, in the belief they are contributing back to the Earth. Officials found the corpses relatively untouched by any sort of animal.
3. There is no official count of the bodies. In fact, little work was actually accomplished at the site and, perhaps, this is why only one photograph has emerged. Officials avoided the spot - not only because they felt uneasy looking at it, but for the following, as well:
4. The deep pit in the center of the photograph was filled with several feet of festering blood - far more than the bodies on the outside could ever supply. The stench was so unbearable that many of the officials began to get nauseous when they first approached the dakhma.
5. The expedition was ended when a villager accidentally kicked a small bone into the pit, penetrating the coagulated surface of the pool. A massive burst of gas from the decomposing blood erupted from the pit, splashing those looking into it, along with the photographer.

Those caught in the explosion were immediately sent to the hospital, where they were quarrantined for possible infection. They became delirious with fever, shouting about "being tainted with the blood of Ahriman" (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite never having admitted having any familiarity with the religion.

In fact, many of them had no idea what the dakhma was when they had found it. Delirium turned to insanity as many began to attack hospital staff until they were sedated. The fever eventually killed all of them.

When officials returned with HAZMAT gear the following day, the site was empty. All the bodies had been removed and, astonishingly, the pool of blood inthe pit had been drained. All that remained of the incident was this photograph.

The Creature of the Road

There was once a very small, quiet rural village. It was so small there was only one main road leading out of it, along which visitors often travelled to and from the village. However, there was one important rule the townsfolk held about this road: never go it alone.

This was strictly enforced by the villagers, but one curious young boy from the village decided to break this rule; he set out one day, when no one else was round, to explore the road alone.

As he approached the trail for the first time, he realized there was something very odd about it. Although he knew there were always people coming into town, the road itself looked like it had hardly been used.

Grass and weeds had grown across the whole path, and it was so poorly maintained that they reached all the way up to his waist, making it difficult to walk quickly. However, this did not deter the boy.

Determined to make his trip worthwhile, he pushed on into the overgrowth, looking back over his shoulder occasionally to make sure no one was watching. He moved quickly, hoping to get out of sight by any passers-by.

However, the boy's pace was cut suddenly short by the sound of something moving in the grass next to him. The boy's heart skipped a beat as he stopped in his tracks, looking and listening for the source of the disturbance.

The overgrowth was so thick he couldn't see anything, but he could hear the sound of something crawling in the grass near his feet. He could tell it wasn't very big, but something about it gave him a horrible feeling...the feeling of being hunted.

The boy was overcome by a growing sense of hopelessness as he realized he had travelled too far down the road to make it back before the creature reached him, and the grass made it hard for him to move quickly.

Suddenly, the boy sensed he was being watched. The creature had spotted him. From the corner of his eye he could make out a wide pair of eyes and long, sharp fangs fixated on him. The boy's heart was pounding as he turned to face it.

Suddenly, a hand gripped his arm. The boy jerked and looked, only to see the face of one of the elders of the village. "You fool! Don't you know better than to come here alone?" The man grabbed the boy and ran with him back to the village.

The boy's heart raced as he sensed the creature following him, but it never overtook them. They ran, gasping for breath, until they had escaped back into town.

After they caught their breath, the old man scolded the boy for ignoring the villagers' warnings. When he was done, he looked up and sighed. "I guess you're old enough. You deserve to know."

The man led the boy to his house. It was a very big house and, as they entered, the boy saw massive shelves filled with books about creatures he had only heard of in myths.

Mysterious men in lab coats sat around, studying them. The old man led the boy to a back room. He faced away, saying, "I'm going to tell you the truth about what you saw today..."

All of a sudden, the man turned to the boy, glaring at him, his piercing gaze freezing him in place. "But first, I'm going to ask you one question..."

Circle

Alright, people. I’m here because I need your help. I haven’t got a lot of time (it’ll be dark soon, you see). All I need is a name. It’s too late for me, I won’t be able to do much, except pass on the name. That’s the key, the key to staying alive, is to the name. Reminds you of Doctor Who, right?

Everytime the Doctor figures out the name of the thing, what it is, it stops in its tracks, and he says something witty or figures out how to beat it, or at least he gets to run away with his sidekick. Damn, Doctor Who. Nerdy as fuck reference at a time like this. But I’m frazzled. Sun’s going down. Then it’ll come for me.

It started last summer. I just got my Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy (sounds like a fucking waste of money, but I already had a job lined up, so, lucky me, I guess) and my half-brother, his girlfriend and I were roadtripping all over Europe. We’re all spoiled rich white kids, except my half-brother’s girl friend, Sarah. She’s spoiled rich and Greek.

Anyway, we did the whole damn thing, starting in England and France and then all around the whole continent, and it was really cool. An amazing experience, even if it ate up a lot of money. We planned to end the trip in Greece, where Dave’s (that’s my half-brother) girlfriend’s family owned some estate on an island. She and Dave kept joking about hooking me up with one of her cousins, and I was getting pretty excited for it.

Plus, I really had gotten into my major, and Greek mythology, so I was hoping to learn all sorts of cool stuff, and maybe see some ruins.I saw them, all right, and I wish I fucking hadn’t. But I’ll get there.

So we get to the island, and we meet Sarah’s family, and her cousin’s are hot alright, fucking gorgeous, but they don’t want anything to do with me. In fact, they seem more interested in Dave, which pisses off Sarah more than anything else. So she decides to use me as an excuse to get Dave away from them, and go see some caves on the other side of the island. Which hurts my chances with these fabulous Greek ladies even more, but hell, I’m a nerd; caves are cool, and I wanted to see ‘em.So off we go.

And when we get there, it’s everything you’d expect. The beaches were all white sands, beautiful, and sunny. These caves were volcanic or something, I dunno, but the rock was all black and shiny, like, perfect photo contrast. Anyway, Sarah’s leading the way, chatting us up the whole time, clinging to Dave. I can tell they’re getting all romantic, and they never really wanted me along in the first place (I had just been an excuse to get away) so I decide to do the polite thing.

I know, I know, you never go off alone in a scary movie or that shit, but I was on a tiny, beautiful, sunny island in Greece, couldn’t have been more than a square mile, and I had a flashlight.So as David and Sarah stay in the main chamber of the cave, sucking face, I flick on my flashlight and head deeper into the caves, and I can tell it’s kinda veering off to the right, and down a little, but I’m not worried, see, that’s the big difference. In horror movies and scary stories you always get worried before the bad stuff happens, but I didn’t.

No hairs standing up, no goosebumps, just calm. And I can still breath fine, and walk fine (just crouching down a little) when suddenly the floor was gone. I fell for a few seconds into pitch blackness.

I hit the ground hard. I would find out later that I fractured my tailbone, but at the time it was just a dull hurt. I had fallen on what felt like a bunch of dry sticks, and I had dropped the flashlight. Still, I wasn’t panicking yet; the flashlight had been one of those super-sturdy mag-lights, and I was sure I could find it. That kind of confidence, my friends, is rewarded.

My fingers closed around the cool metal of the light and I’ll admit, there was a brief moment where I was afraid to turn it on. I murmured a quick little prayer to Whoever was listening, and let my thumb pause awhile before pushing down the rubber button. The flashlight flicked on right away, but I almost wished it hadn’t, because I could see the floor all around me, and what had felt like old, dry sticks. Bones.

Really old ones. I mean, like, these could’ve been Socrates’ bones, that’s how old they were, crunching away underneath me. After about a minute, I got over my panic, and started looking around a little, objectively.There were a lot of bones, enough to cover the floor of the ten foot by ten foot space. The walls were thick black, the same volcanic material of the rest of the cave, except for one point, about five feet off of the ground, were something had been painted on the wall in red.

A circle. Just a harmless, unobtrusive circle, albeit one that was painted in a dulled crimson that almost had to be human blood. I suppressed a shiver and walked over toward it, my feet crunching on them bones them bones them dry bones (ha-ha), and I get right up close, shining the light on it, and still, it looks innocent enough, just out of place. So I reached my finger up and gently tapped the red circle.

Then I felt it. All of the fear and anguish and horror that I should’ve felt when I first fell into the place. I could feel something, like blood and screams and pain washed over the walls of that tiny chamber like layers of paint, and before long I realize it’s me who’s screaming, not for help but just in this guttural, caveman fear.

Dave and Sarah found me almost right away. I don’t really remember them showing up, or pulling me out of that place, but I must’ve been screaming right up until they pulled me out, because for the rest of the trip, they kept asking me what I’d seen. I couldn’t tell them about the circle, I don’t know why.

Whenever they asked I’d just say “Bones. I saw Bones.” And for the most part, they left me alone. They had each other. The trip ended two days later, and I was incredibly relieved to get on the plane. Because since I had gotten out of that cave, I hadn’t been able to sleep. I’m not the kind of guy who can go days without sleep, hell, I don’t even like to stay up that late.

But the night after I got out of the cave, I just lay in bed, awake, unable to move, just feeling anxious all over. Every time I’d close my eyes, I’d feel the need to tear them open right away.The second night after the cave, the night before we left for home, was worse. It wasn’t just anxiety anymore. It was the feeling that something was making me feel anxious.

My eyes would scan the darkness constantly, obsessed with the feeling that there was some entity creeping along the edges of my vision, hunting me, watching me. I never saw anything, no monsters; just felt it.But the second I stepped foot on that plane, I felt safe. Secure. I slept the whole ten hours home, and felt well-rested enough to forget about the whole ordeal.

Until it caught up to me. I don’t know exactly how much time passed, not more than two weeks, and by then I honestly had forgotten about the creepiness. I had just started a management position at an office owned by a friend from college, and was adjusting (pretty well) to all the money I was going to be making.

Life was looking up, and I was happy, all was well, yadda-yadda-yadda. Then it caught up to me. The first night was the same, just anxiety, worry, the inability to sleep. I was concerned, but figured I was replaying the experience or was maladjusting to work or something. I tried to shut it rationally from my mind and get over it.

The night after that, I even got a little sleep. Of course, the third night, the anxiety was back with a vengeance, and I sat in bed all night, lights on, looking and listening for something, something that was out there, hunting. That was two weeks ago.

I know you don’t believe me. Ignoring all of the monster stuff, a person can’t go that long without sleep, but I must’ve. I can account for every single minute that’s passed these last two weeks. During the day, I’m fine. I did take naps, that’s probably what saved me. But every night, the anxiety would get stronger, and stronger, and the feeling that something was there would overwhelm me.

I knew it now, knew it was some tangible, existing monster, but I just couldn’t know what it was.If I could find out what it was, what it looked like, what it wanted, I could stop it...or fight it...or run. Who am I kidding? I know what it wants. It wants me. And even with a name, I won’t be able to fight it. But maybe, if I find out what it is, before it gets me, I’ll write its name on my walls. Or draw a circle. Time now, anyway. The sun’s set, and I can really feel it.

Tonight’s the night. It’s hungry.

(This story is credited to a person called Allen Jacoby.)

Hhidaka

You all know that game for the Gamecube called Super Smash Bros. Melee, right? The fighting game with all of the Nintendo characters (Mario, Fox, Kirby, Ganondorf, etc.)? Well, you can find all of the scripts, models, textures, and files in the game if you can access the files using a program.

One script, called "Char.txt," contains all of the variables and move sets for the in-game characters. Each character has a TXT file that refers to their models, too, in a folder called "Char".

In order to add my texture hacks, I needed to copy all of the files to my computer. While copying, I noticed there were 26 items, but I was sure there were only 25 characters. To make sure, I explored the filenames. All of the normal files were there; there was Cfalcon, falco, Dkong...then I came across Hhidaka.

I opened the file and noticed his variable number happened to be "666". I assumed they must have randomly generated the numbers, otherwise it'd have been between 1-26. His texture file was located in "E:\SSBM\textures\Char\modeltexture\Hhidaka.

The contents of the folder were quite disturbing. What I saw was a PNG file of a Japanese girl dressed like a hooker. She had been stabbed and mutilated to the extreme, especially at her stomach; it was cut clean. It was called "Hhidaka.png" and was the main model texture.

I absolutely couldn't believe my eyes. Why the hell would that be on the disc?

I eventually remembered that I had bought this used from a flea market. It had no instruction booklet; it was replaced by what I thought might have been cheat codes or a walkthrough written on a sheet of printer paper.

I got out the case and unfolded the "cheat codes". Instead of cheats, I saw some Japanese writing. I couldn't translate it at the time, so I went back to the computer. I checked the script and saw that Hhidaka was a hidden character. To unlock him, you had to (from what I understood) KO the purple-colored Peach four times in a row without taking damage, while playing Ganondorf.

I found it odd, but I ended up doing it. After KOing Peach for the fourth time, it went to the new character screen. Instead of a battle, it showed a video of a Japanese woman who murmured things in Japanese. A knife was in her eye.

Because my parents were home, I quickly turned the volume down and waited. I did not dare to look full on, but I did peek every now and then. It went on for four minutes until the sound of a gunshot rang out and the woman's head jerked back. Then it cut to black.

It displayed two things on the screen: "Hiroki Hidaka's taste for blood shall be quenched!" and "You have gotten the HH trophy". I looked in the trophies, but found there wasn't an actual trophy displayed. The description was still there, though. It said, "FINDING THIS WAS YOUR MISTAKE."

At this point, my Gamecube restarted itself and went to the normal SSBM menu. There wasn't any music or sound, now that I think about it, but I began a match. I chose the thumbnail-less Hiroki Hidaka and pitted myself against Kirby. Corneria was the stage. Nothing happened for a moment before text popped up on the screen that said "FINDING THIS WAS YOUR MISTAKE". My finger immediately went for the power button.

I must have pressed reset instead, as the game didn't shut off. I could hear the disc spinning rapidly, as if trying to play Crysis 2 on a laptop. The TV started displaying the same Japanese woman with the knife in her eye, but instead it was a still image. There was a caption that said "Play as Hidaka and this could be you".

I later found out the Japanese text on that paper that came in the game's case translated to the exact same words and was even signed by Hidaka. It turns out he's a Japanese serial killer who was executed on December 25, 2006. That was the same Christmas I bought the game.

Buried Alive Model

Often referred to as its code name, the Buryman Script, the Buried Alive Model was to be found on the final story of the Pokémon Tower in the spot of what has been replaced with the Marowak ghost. According to the scripts assigned to it, the Buried Alive Model was intended to be the "boss" of the tower. Upon reaching the top floor, the following conversation would have taken place.

Buried Alive: You're...here.
Buried Alive: I'm trapped...
Buried Alive: ...and I'm lonely...
Buried Alive: ...so very lonely...
Buried Alive: Won't you join me?

After this, the battle would have been initiated. One in "battle view," the Buried Alive Model appears to be a decaying human corpse attempting to crawl out of the ground. It has been programmed to have two White Hands, a Gengar, and a Muk. Strangely enough, a protocol for Buried Alive's actions after defeat wasn't written.

In the case of the player defeating him, the game would freeze. However, an unknown programmer is said to have wrote a speciic ending that was supposed to play once Buried Alive was defeated.

In this ending, Buried Alive was to have stated, "Finally, fresh meat!" followed by several lines of Gibberish. He was to have then dragged the player into the ground surrounding him. The scene would finish with a typical "Game Over" screen. However, in the background an image of Buried Alive devouring the player was to have been shown.

Especially strange are the protocols for after this scene. The cartridge was to download this image to the small internal memory contained in the Game Boy, overwriting the title screen that normally accompanied a Game Boy turning on.

Afterward, whenever the Game Boy was started, the player would view this same image of Buried Alive devouring the player character from the Pokémon games as a sound file known as staticmesh.wav was played. The intended purpose for this effect, unlike many of the other factors leading toward LTS, is unknown.

White Hand Sprite

Known in the code as WhitHand.gif, this was scripted to appear as a Pokémon on the third floor of the Lavender Tower. It is divided into four separate animations: an introduction (the "cry" a Pokémon unleashes before a battle), an idle, and two attacks. These attacks are unknown, as they are listed simply as "Fist" and "Brutal."

While viewing the animation has been proven to be hazardous, viewing the individual frames of the model has been proven to have no adverse effects. The White Hand is depicted as a shriveled, slightly decayed hand with sprising attention to the detail: flesh is peeling back from the bone and several tendons dangle realistically out of the wrist.

The first attack is the hand balling into a fist and swinging forward. However, the "brutal" animation is missing several frames. The hand seems to open up, then cuts out. After a few seconds, it reappears, closed again. No record has been found of these missing frames.

Family Portrait

Boy on the Stairs

This picture was taken in a dark, empty room of the Amityville House.

Knocking on the Door

(THERE WERE A LOT OF IMAGES AND I DECIDED TO USE THE IMAGESHACK EMBED PLAYER TO PUT THEM UP HERE. SOMEHOW IT DIDN'T WORK. BRB.)

When I was about twelve, my friend Kayla told me her parents had bought a second house in Sommerville, Texas and a few weeks later, she invited me along. It was a small neighborhood, so her parents had bought a golf cart to travel to their neighbors if needed, and a lot of people had them, so it seemed liked a good idea.

One day, we charged it up and headed out with a sack lunch, determined to find a nice park or picnic spot. Kayla’s parent’s had gotten the golf cart for her birthday, June 21st. So we had mostly been swimming and we hadn’t seen much of the neighborhood, but now it was a crisp December weekend, we had our cardigans on and were expecting to find something interesting.

I grabbed my camera I had brought with me and we headed out. We drove into a secluded part of the neighborhood we hadn’t noticed before and were horrified at what we saw... and smelled. It smelled, to say the least, like dog shit. We covered our nose but were determined to keep going. Then we saw it, I turned on my camera and took several pictures.

We got up super close (still holding our noses) and the dogs were laying on something; we couldn’t tell what it was. Then the neighbor came out, his eyes that creepy blue like in horror movies and his face written in pain. His eyes locked on mine and he was hobbling towards us on his cane as fast as he could. Kayla screamed and sped away; all I could remember were those horrible blue eyes, burned into my skull.

As I try to remember those blue eyes I get a massive headache. But I must continue. We drove and drove for about thirty more minutes in silence until we were deep in the neighborhood. It was now getting really cloudy and I was about suggest to go home when suddenly, the golf cart broke down. The charge should have lasted about 8 more hours and the battery was fine.

It took us awhile but we finally managed to push it to the side of the road as to not abstruct passing cars. Kayla took the key and walkie-talkie that we had in case we needed help, (signal wasn’t so good out there) but it was dead too. She turned it on and off but it wouldn’t let us talk, we could only hear the other side, what her mom would have been saying.

She put the walkie talkie in her pocket and banged her head against the steering wheel, and stayed like that for a good four minutes. I sat next to her, just staring at something up ahead in the road.

“Kayla.” I said, shaking her shoulder, telling her to lift her head. She lifted her head and her orange hair whipped my face as a gust of wind hit us from behind, it was so hard I turned to see if the wind brought something else, like a piece of cardboard or maybe wood. But there was nothing behind me, so I faced Kayla again.

“What’s that?” She asked, looking straight ahead where I had. She got out of the golfcart and I followed her.

“I- I don’t know, it looks like-“ She shushed me as we were close to it. It was a broken mirror. I attatched a lot of pictures of the mirror, and I took so many because it had writing on it, I took pictures of some of the writing but here is all of what it said. (misspellings included)

“Derek James Cotton!! You are so lame, Steven says your a fagget, (unintelligible) Dick, Derek is Gay, You suck a big cock. Derek, Steven, Loues + Kacy”

By now, we were pretty freaked, but only kind of. Why would someone leave a mirror here? What we thought happened was the mirror must have fallen out of the back of the truck, but wouldn’t you here it and go back to clean up the mess? Another thing we were shoving into the back of our mind was maybe it was there on purpose. That whoever put it there meant to, or maybe they smashed it and just dumped it there.

We tested our theory with a piece of glass, we figured it didn’t just drop because when we threw the glass in the street as hard as we could; it didn’t break until hit it against the ground a few times. It also looked like this Derek fellow, or perhaps someone else, had smashed the mirror before dumping it here, as the frame and cork that held it up behind it, was hanging on by the glue, which was pretty new looking despite being dry and crumbling.

We tried to think reasonably but we kept thinking that Derek did this, and we had to find Derek. Kayla asked what we should do; I said we should clear the glass so as not to cause any cars tire’s to pop. We quickly picked up the pieces of glasses we broke and put it in the ditch next to the mirror. We headed back towards the golf cart but realized it was fucking pointless considering it was broken down and we had no way of getting home or communicating.

“Why don’t we knock on someone’s door?” I asked, but then I realized, besides the house with the dogs and the horrible stench and the man with the blue eyes, there weren’t any houses that actually looked like someone would be there. We walked up to houses that might have people in it and knocked on the door. Each time, I snapped pictures of the houses.

Kayla asked why I was taking pictures, I laughed nervously and said something about wanting to document it or look if it had anything we hadn’t noticed before. We got to this one house that was surrounded by a chicken wire fence, but we took pictures anyway, there were these two creepy masks on the fence that creeped us out and Kayla even pulled out her camera and took some pictures.

We moved onto a trailer that was obviously abandoned but at this point we were looking for anything we could use, or at least ask for directions because we were so deep in this weird part of the neighborhood we couldn’t remember the way we came. There were some cinderblocks that were stacked on top of each other so I stood on them and peered into the trailer, there were a pair of crutches and a wheel chair in a back room. After staring into the room for a long time, I felt a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and ran to the next house.

We ran to another house that was obviously abandoned, by this time, Kayla was almost in tears, and I was trying to keep a straight face, but I wanted to cry too. This house creeped us out also, it had the door wide open, and even when a big gust of wind hit us, the door stayed perfectly open, I could hear bugs and snakes hissing and clicking, making their normal sounds, but it was amplified by the emptiness of the house. Kayla grabbed my hand as I took pictures, her grip arounds my fingers tightened and I dropped my camera.

Then we heard a voice that still makes me get chills whenever I think of what it could have been, I hear it in my head every single night, even more now since I’ve had to dig up all these pictures and remember it all. I can’t remember what it said, I just remember when Kayla heard it she burst in to tears and ran, her hand still latched onto mine, so I had no choice but to run with her. For a long time we ran, and Kayla was crying. I remembered that I dropped my Camera but Kayla wouldn’t go back, I asked her if I could atleast go,but she said she would never let any of us go back. Ever. Again.

And this is where my half of the story pretty much ends, Kayla and I ran to the golf cart, which was now working fine, and turned on the walkie talkie (which was also working fine) I looked at the time on it and realized it was 1:36 only thirty minutes after we had set out. But it had felt like hours. I tried to show Kayla the time but she refused, she said we were going to drive home and never talk about this. Kayla and I went back to the lakehouse and didn’t talk about it, as soon as we pulled into the driveway, Kayla was all smiles, saying how fun it was, and that the golf cart worked fine, and when they questioned me about where my camera was,
Kayla persisted I hadn’t brought it on this trip. We went to bed early that night, well Kayla did anyway, and with nothing else to do, I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning my camera was in my hand, I thought maybe Kayla or her parent’s had found it or something , so I turned it on and saw the pictures I had taken, and new ones, these are the ones I found that I was SURE I hadn’t taken.

The last picture is the lake house, it was taken about the time we were eating lunch because when I woke up the next morning, Kayla’s mom had put away the chairs. I don’t remember seeing anyone out there at that time, (and I think I would have, I was staring out the window) but I do remember seeing broken glass and a tooth where in the street.

Shortly after the trip Kayla died, they said she swallowed her tongue after having a seizure. At the funeral I couldn’t bear to see her dead, it was too much for me, and I left early. I went to Kayla’s grave today, it was very nicely put together, and I was going to take a picture but my camera died as soon as I turned it on, I was able to take some pictures of the outside of the funeral home and around some smaller graves. It was a nice spring day, so despite the graves the cherry trees were in bloom and I had a feeling of optimism.

I got to Kayla’s grave and almost had a heart attack at what I saw; they were four items on the grave. One, the teddy bear from the picture that had mysteriously appeared on my camera, two, the larger mask that had been on the chicken wire fence, three, the smaller one with intricate red paintings on the eyes, and four, a note with a picture attached, “Kayla” it said, I turned it over to look at the picture, it was a picture of Kayla, in the hospital after she had died, there were red X’s over her eyes.

I dropped it in horror and burst into tears. Then I heard the voice again, this time its voice rang clear in my head, my mind. My name. The voice made me fall on the ground and pass out from shock.

Then I woke in my house, in the living room on the table it said one word “Lauren” and on the back it had a picture of me, the angle was looking down at me, my eyes were closed and I was sprawled on the ground of the cemetery, my eyes, though closed were X’d out.

BANG BANG BANG.

Someone is at the door. I’ll be right back.

Dead Drop

I only got about half way through one film. The fucked up thing is it looked like it was the layout of the old appartments that were here before these were built. Granted this was only a few years back when the buildings I currently reside in were built, I could still tell the difference. There was a time stamp in the corner and everything.

Basically it started out with a person holding a camera walking into their appartment. Everything was normal for about 15 minutes or so, the person puts their keys on the counter, makes a poptart, and goes back into his one bedroom the appartment has.

I'm gunna go out on a limb and assume this person was a male based on camera angles and actions, though I could be wrong.

So basically, he goes back into the hallway that leads to the bedroom (Two doors, one sep. the living room from hallway, and second goes to actual bedroom.) He shuts the first door behind him and turns on the light. the hallway is covered with old fashion polaroids. I mean COVERED. The walls close to him are a little skimpy but the closer the hallway gets to his room they multiply and get closer together. Almost as if he built a nest of them leading to his bedroom.

He makes his way to his door and unlocks it. flicking on the light, the room looks almost as though he just moved in. average size, 14" by 10" room, queen size bed in the middle, a desk, a tv stand with just a tv on it, and that was literally it. It seemed kind of off. He placed the camera on the ground next to his bed and dug around behind the covers before lifting the sheet to reviel what he was feeling for.

At that very moment, I begged and pleaded that this was all a film project of some sort as the camera focused on a woman, probably age 23-27. Blond short pixie hair, distraught blue eyes, bound and gagged, clearly frightened and alive, but not making a sound. The entire time I watched this I had the mentality that it was all fake, just doctored to mess with someone, but then it got worse.

My skin crawled as he reached and grabbed her by the neck. he very violently yanked her out from under the bed. the camera was idle for a second or two while he rustled around and a quick cut into her lying tied up on the bed. it is now clear why she wasn't making any noise. It looked as though her throat was cut and, as it appeared to me, crudely stiched back up and healed in a very odd manor. But something even weirder caught my eye.

Her fear was seemingly no longer there. She was still breathing heavily but she seemed almost as if she was smiling. This once again put me in a stage of relief, as it looked much more fake. Perhaps someones odd sex play or something. But as I said before, it got worse.

As the camera looked at the girl on the bed, naked, tied, bound, gagged, bruised and bloodied, a knife is shown on frame. almost as iif the man is showing the knife to the camera while still having the girl in the background. I watched in horror as he walked over and pushed the kife tip into her shoulder. She squirmed her hips in the air almost as if she was getting sexual gratification out of this.

I was convinced at that point that it was fake, until he gashed open her arm with it. she bled quite a bit all over the bed, but not as much as i'd expected. after this I skipped around a bit just to see what else was in store for me.

Basically, as I skipped around, shit got real. at one point, he cut off a nipple and forced it into a stomach wound, at another point, she is missing an arm that is wrapped up and bloody of a stump, but her own hand is being used to feel around her body. All the while she is getting paler and paler, and all the time she looks like shes in more and more pleasure. At one point, her stiched up throat wound is re-opened somehow and being tickled with the severed hand. I'm talking some of the most gruesome shit I've ever seen. And I thought I'd seen it all dude.

At the end, I could barely manage to even watch anymore. I skipped to the very end and watched as he pins up a polaroid of the girls eyes, but that was all there was in the picture. Just the eyes. Just. The. Eyes. Right next to a picture of the severed arm, and an eyeless severed head. I fucking ran to my car and spent the week at my folks house. I have never EVER ran so fucking fast in my life.

If I can find my old, unimportant laptop I'll go to it tonight and megaupload something. I'll look for it when I finish my tale. Its two buildings over from mine embedded into the concrete under the staircase leading to the third floor. I wouldnt have noticed it if it hadn't been for that white out back in febuary when we got blocked in for two days.

I'll tell you what, I'll grab my camera for proof.

Imma try and break it out of the step so I can study it more. Its only about a 2 inch thick step, so how hard could it be? The only problem would be looking odd to neighbors getting it out of there.

As much as I want to share this with you and prove to you all that this fucked up shit is real, I'm not using my nice laptop to even go near that thing. I have well over 16 gb of my bands info/music/etc that I have yet to back up. I'm not risking anything happening to those files. I'll find my old windows xp laptop and be back one around this time tomorrow night for more posts.

I'll go and either get the usb drive itself out of the step, or ill put it on my old laptop and bring it with me to band practice after work. If I can't get it up on any video sites, I'll post screencaps and such. I'm a vocalist, I ain't gunna do shit else. So be back here round this time tomorrow, if not a tiny bit later.

(This is credited to a person called Nikoli Bearcrusher. A day later he admitted it was a hoax.)

barbie.avi

It all started at my friend’s party. He’s an artist who rented out a loft in the industrial part of town. If you can picture what a place like detroit looked like in the 1920’s- that’s what this area looks like. A bunch of old turn-of-the-century factories crammed into ten blocks. Most of them are abandoned. So I partied a little too hard that night and decided to crash on a couch at the loft.

I woke up at around 4 am; the sun wasn’t out yet but you could still make things out in the dim blue light. I went to the bathroom, carefully tiptoeing around the people that were passed out on the floor. As I was taking a piss, I tiptoed to look out the bathroom window and I saw the panorama of deserted urban decay. I remembered how much I liked places like this; it was so dark and devoid of life, and strangely serene.

I went back to the couch and tried to fall asleep. After 45 minutes of staring at the ceiling, I decided I didn’t want to be there any longer. I swallowed my pride and decided to wake my girlfriend up to beg her for a ride, since walking around the vacant streets at this time was not an option. Being an awesome girlfriend, she was totally cool with it and told me she would be there in about a half-hour, and that she would give me a call when she was outside.

My phone dies ten minutes later so I decide I would sit by the window and watch for her car. I sat there for a while and my eyes started getting heavy and I began to doze off. A crashing noise outside woke me up. It wasn’t loud, but just enough to snap me into reality. I looked out the window and scanned the area but i didn’t see anybody. Across the street from the loft near a mountain of garbage bags and one of those enormous dumpsters I see a computer and a monitor smashed against the floor that hadn’t been there before.

When my girlfriend arrives I go downstairs and greet her and just as I’m about to get in the car I remembered a friend of mine had blown out his power supply so i decide to walk over to the dumpster and see what I could salvage. The monitor was worthless but the tower seemed to have suffered almost no damage so I put it in the trunk and we drove off.

About a week had passed and I had completely forgotten about the tower until one day my girlfriend calls to let me know that it was still in the trunk and that she wanted it out. That night I brought it home and before I took it apart I decided to hook it up to my monitor to see if it still ran, and to my surprise it did.

It was an xp OS and it looked like it had been wiped clean. I guess out of morbid curiosity really, I decide to do searches for words like “porn” “tits” and “pussy” in hopes of finding some secret stash full of weird deviant porn the previous owner had forgotten about. Search came up nothing. Searched for picture Files – nothing. Then I searched for movies and one file came up. It was an .avi inside a folder titled “barbie” hidden in the WINDOWS/system32 directory. So I played it...

Now this is where it gets extremely disturbing.

The movie was about an hour long of what seemed like raw exported footage. The footage was of this woman sitting on a chair and talking against a white backdrop. I skipped through most of movie and it was all the same continuous shot. Then I decided to sit though the footage to find out what she was talking about...about fifteen seconds into the footage the audio goes completely bad and her voice is drowned in harsh static/background noise.

I couldn’t make out a thing. So I import the footage into final cut and try to mess with the levels to isolate her voice, it helped a little but I still couldn’t hear what she was saying. I’m intrigued now..and I begin to really pay attention to her face and body language. It seems that shes being asked some questions because she stops at times to listen, and then continues talking. About 15 minutes into the footage, her face begins to redden and contort as if the questions are bothering her… But she continues to answer them anyways.

Shortly after she begins to cry. She sobs hysterically for the duration of the film. One of the few words I could lip read was “skin”. She repeats this word many times throughout the footage and at one point she even pulls at the skin from her arm and mouths the word. She seems to be unhappy with her skin.

It kept on building and building and about 40 minutes in she was crying so hard she could barely look at the camera. She stops talking at this point and the rest of the footage is just her crying with her head down. Oddly enough she doesn’t get up or move...then it just goes black. I was fucking stunned.

I played the whole thing through many times that night, trying to find inflections and nuances in her movement that would reveal anything else about what was going on. I felt so dissatisfied, I wanted to know more.

That’s when I noticed that there was about 10 more minutes left on the timeline after the screen went black, and about 2 minutes in there was more footage. The footage was extremely shaky, almost unwatchable, and depicted a pair of legs walking along train tracks. my guess is that camera was accidentally left on as it was being carried somewhere.

The person in this footage walks along the train tracks for about 6 minutes and then turns into the forest and walks over what looked like foliage flattened by a piece of plywood. The person continues on this makeshift plywood road until the movie clip ends.

Now my heart started beating with excitement because there where train tacks a few miles away that looked very similar to the one in the video. I HAD to check this out. I called up my friend Ezra, hes 6’4 250 pounds of mostly muscle and convinced him to go on a little adventure with me. I’m no pushover myself, but I felt if was to go wandering in the woods looking for god knows what, extra muscle couldn’t hurt. This whole idea of investigating this video had me so excited I couldn’t sleep.

The next morning on a sunny Saturday, I took my flashlight, my camera, and my 7 inch ka-bar with a matte black finish and serrated edge and went to pick up Ezra. When I got to his house he wasn’t even awake. When I woke him he pretty much told me to fuck off. I was already packed and I had mentally prepared myself to do this so I decided to go through with it without him. I parked my car at the train station, took my stuff, and hopped onto the tracks.

After walking for about two hours , I saw a broken piece of plywood and my knees almost buckled with excitement. I searched the nearby foliage, and there it was, a little plywood trail leading into the forest. I walked slowly along the trail, paying close attention to everything. I would stop occasionally, kneel down, and listen for anything or anyone...but it was so quiet. This was one of the most nerve racking things ive ever done. I didnt know what to expect at the end of this trail.

The dense tree line gave way into a little island of grassy field, and then I saw it; it was a house that looked like it was being consumed by the forest. From the looks of it no one had lived there for 20 maybe 30 years. I got my camera and snapped a few pics. A few yards away from the house was a tool shed made of rusty sheet metal. I just sat there among the trees for a while, absorbing everything. I didn’t want to go into the open field, I had this bad feeling that something would see me.

It took me a while to muster the courage to up to the house. the door was partly opened, I pushed it in with the flashlight and was relieved that the inside was actually very well lit. I put my flashlight away, got my camera and took a few more pics. There was no furniture, the floor was riddled with bricks and wood and rubble, and some of the walls had huge holes in them. When I went in further to explore, I saw some things that I didn’t pay much mind to in that moment, but now that I think about them in hindsight, greatly disturb me.

The first thing that seemed a little odd, was that one of the doors in the first room, that I presumed led to the basement, seemed a little too new to be in this house, and that it was also the only door in the house that was locked. Also, when I made my way up to the second floor, I saw some chairs and a fold-up table that also seemed a little too new to be there. But what disturbed me the most for some reason, was the bathroom.

The dust on the mirror had been wiped away, and in the bathtub, I saw a clear plastic tarp that still had water droplets on it from, when I presume, it was washed cleaned. That’s when I heard something moan really loud and that’s when I jump the fuck out of the second story window and ran back to the tracks.

Halfway there I realized the moaning was most likely a water pipe expanding or contracting, and that little moment of relief gave into the horror that I felt when I wondered why the water would be running on an abandoned house in the middle of the fucking woods. Its been a little more than 2 months since this happened and I haven’t gone back there, nor plan to.

(Don't feel like grammar/spelling editing such a long story. Also, the uploader of the videos says that after uploading parts 1, 2, and 4, the OP of the original thread disappeared and never uploaded the other 3 parts.)

Lisa

(I'll type down what it says in each image because some of the writing is very light and I may have to resize the images. NOTE: These images may not be in order.)



This is Lisa. She is my friend. My mom and dad can't see her so they said she is an imaginary friend. Lisa is a nice friend.



Today I tried to plant a flower in the yard. I tried to plant it by the sandbox but Lisa said that's where her daddy is sleeping so I planted it in a cup of dirt.



Lisa is at school with me today. I brought her for show and tell but Ms. Monroe got angry because she can't see Lisa. Lisa got sad so she hid the chalkboard eraser.



Today Jonathin Parker stole my pencil sack. Mrs. Digman couldn't find it so she made him give me his pencils. Lisa came to school too but Mrs. Digman couldn't see her but she said she believes that Lisa is real.



I miss Lisa. Daddy is really busy at work. He didn't come home at the weekend. Mom is angry at him. I'm going to write a letter for Lisa.



Dear Lisa, I miss you. Please come back. I'm sorry when my dad was mean. You are my best friend.

Old Photo

During one summer in the 1950s, a group of friends found an old abandoned house in the woods. The entered to see what they could find. There was a hole dug in the ground filled with water. Three of the boys decided to swim, while the other stayed dry and took pictures of the house with his camera.

Thirty some years later, in 1982, a man was hiking and found an old camera. He took it to the local police station to try and find out who it belonged to. The police got the film developed. Most of the photos had been destroyed, save for a vew.

This picture is the last picture that was taken. It is unknown what happened to the boys' faces or why the series of pictures abruptly ended. The kids have never been identified and their bodies were never found. What is happening in this image still remains a mystery.

Boa

Boa was an imaginary friend I had when I was a kid. I don't remember much about him, but what I do remember happen to be very fond memories of him.

His lips were very dark - almost black - and his teeth were a disgusting yellow, as if they'd never been brushed. His feet were absolutely putrid, especially his toenails; they were yellow from fungus. He had talons instead of fingernails; they were very dark at the tips and got progressively lighter.

He had a lot of scars; they were very noticeable and stood out from his pale skin. I can remember staring at them a lot. They had a red tinge to them. The biggest scar was on his arm (if I remember correctly, it was his right arm). It was HUGE and stretched all the way from his shoulder to his elbow, as if his arm had been sliced in two length-ways at some oint. It bulged out from his skin like you'd see if someone didn't take proper care of a wound and it healed incorrectly.

The other scar was above his left eye. For the most part, it was covered by hair, but you could see a glimpse of it; it went diagonally towards his left ear. It stopped just short of his eye.

Anyway, I had a two-hour conversation about Boa with my mom this morning and wrote down some things that I found interesting or didn't remember. This was the first time in a while that I've asked about Boa and I was surprised at how much my mom remembered. Her first response after my asking was, "Those were terrible times." It took some coaxing, but she eventually started revealing more and more as the conversation progressed.

I was about five or six when Boa first came around. My mom said tht before I started playing with Boa, I kept asking, "Why does the man keep following us," and continued doing this for some time before I finally introduced the man as Boa. She felt that my cute childhood personality changed almost immediately after that; I began cursing like a sailor and having vicious temperament issues (throwing objects, yelling/screaming, spitting at, and biting, apparently). I really don't remember any of this.

The strangest part, she said, was that I began injuring myself. I would take knives and scissors and cut into my arms and legs. That was part of the reason I had to be checked out by doctors. They explained it as attention-seeking behavior and my parents were instructed not to give in to certain things but to only reward my good behavior and to ignore my bad behavior.

Shortly after that was the couch being sliced to bits and gutted. My mother seemed very baffled on the phone about how everything happened. For the most part, my parents blamed the odd occurrences in our house as a little kid starved for attention. My dad is a very scientific man who is not religious at all, while my mom does indulge in the possibility that some things simply can't be explained. At one point, she wanted to get me and the house blessed, truly believing that a single child couldn't do all the things that were happening.

I vaguely remember them arguing a fair amount, but again, my memory isn't the best when it comes to my childhood. My mom said that they were very closed to getting divorced at that time; it was nearly more than they could handle.

As far as "Boa stories" go, my mom had three very distinct memories that involved Boa. One time, she came to check on me in my room and could hear me clearly talking to someone and a muffled sound that always followed. She opened the door to see me mutilating my toys and she, horrified, told me to stop and go downstairs. At that point, I turned my head towards her and demanded she shut the door. She told me no, and to come downstairs. I screamed, "Shut the god damn door." Cue the front door slamming. She said that scared the piss out of her.

The second Boa story was about the cat. My mom decided that she would start to embrace Boa and began to indulge me that he was there. She'd open doors for him and would pull up an extra seat for him. She even started setting a place at the dinner table for my imaginary friend. She said I would always laugh and say very demeaning things when she did nice things for Boa. My mom remembers inviting Boa to join us for dinner one night and I was shrugging, looking at the corner and asking Boa if he'd like to come eat with us. I suddenly stood in silence, as if listening to a response, cringed, asking, "Gross, do they even taste good?" I then looked at my mom and very nonchalantly said, "No, mom, Boa only eats cats."

It was her cat that she found outside, mauled to death. She said it looked as if he'd been sliced to bits with a knife and had been gutted. At that point she thought that Boa was the Devil or I was in the process of becoming a serial killer.

My personal favorite, and the last my mom had, of the three stories, was one day when my mom driving me home from day care. I had gotten kicked out for using my play scissors to cut a little girl's hair nearly completely off (her parents ended up having to buzz her head) then biting the shit out of her. I got in the car and was all smiles and songs as my mom berated me up and down.

She asked if I had something to say for myself and I replied, "Yeah, I'd like some mother fucking ice cream." My mom, very pissed, said there was no way in Hell I was getting ice cream. I then started talking to Boa and laughing hysterically before I began saying, "Poppity pop pop, Mom. Poppity pop pop," louder and louder each time. She asked what that meant and I responded, "Boa says you're a bitch and he's going to pop your tires." Not five minutes later, we were on the side of the road with two flat tires and had to wait for a tow truck to come get us.

About a week ago, I made a post in regards to a childhood imaginary friend I had named Boa. Since then, things have gotten...weird. I started to have these dreams...no...no, you wouldn't call them dreams, really...whatever they were, they were about Boa. They get more vivid each time I have one. I started to remember things from when I was a kid. Things I suppose I repressed.

I had asked my parents to retell stories of Boa in hopes that they would bring up funny memories and laughs. They seem to hate that I remember. They've started to argue again, worse than I've seen in some time. I thought if I just stopped and tried to forget, t would all go away...but it's not. I'm starting to get the feeling that Boa wasn't an imaginary friend...I'm just not sure where to go from here.

(The following are two question and answer responses from anon to OP.)

"Figure out what made him leave. It may be a clue. Was it that you stopped talking to/about him?"

I was trying to figure this out the other night while on the phone with my mom (who's become extremely reluctant to "indulge" me anymore). I remember being told that Boa was forbidden. I know I kept talking to him in secret for some time after but this just made Boa increasingly angry. Things in my house got really bad with arguments and yelling. I can remember having a really tearful talk with Boa, telling him he wasn't allowed back anymore. Boa wasn't pleased and made threats.

I can remember the conversation and having this intense pain, like someone suckerpunched me in the gut. After that, nothing. I have quite a few holes in my childhood memories. The ones that involve Boa seem to be the hardest to recall.

"Boa just seem demonic to me. Call it a gut feeling. You have any more specific details you can give about him? Things he said? Did he talk you into that strange behavior or did you just naturally start doing it while he was around? Sorry if you've already answered those questions. I wasn't around for the first Boa thread."

Boa would egg me on a lot and I tended to mimic what he said. Say my mom wouldn't give me something. He'd tell me what to do to get it: scream, yell, throw yourself on the floor, grab the chair and throw it towards her but not hidding her - those types of things. Then, when she'd give in, he'd always smile and say something along the lines of, "Stupid bitch," and I'd usually laugh and repeat, "Yeah, stupid bitck." I'm not sure what you'd like to know when you say, "more details," though.

As far as saying that Boa was demonic...well, it just breaks my heart. Boa could be very terrifying at times, with his stories and actions, but I have many fond memories of him. He was my best friend. I can remember being picked on and coming home in tears, hiding under my bed from everything. Boa would crawl under and tell me that "little cuntpickle isn't worth your tears," and how he'd grow up poor and alone while I'd be a prince. He'd wipe my tears and we'd play in the backyard.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Wheelie Breakers

I still remember that day around a year ago, the day that I had gone onto eBay. Around that time, a game not set for US release was coming out in Japan, so what I needed was a Japanese system; I’m terrible at modding things so I don’t even try.

Going to the best site that I can come up with, eBay, I went online to find a good priced Japanese Wii. As I went through the auctions, everything seemed to be a bit too pricey to me until I came across one that came across my eyes one that peaked my interest.

What I came across was a little more expensive (an estimate of ¾ more if I recall), more than the cheapest that I came across. Along with the Wii came two Wiimotes, a nun chuck, a classic controller, and 20+ games, most that I couldn‘t make out as they were strewn about. Now, like anyone else I was suspicious as I checked out his profile; it even said he had a 100% positive feed back.

Thinking back now, I shouldn’t have done it, but I remember leaning back in my chair thinking it over. “It sounds a little fishy,” I said to my self, but in the end curiosity won over me. I went over to my “fun” funds to check if I had any to waste. Seeing that I did, I went back to my computer and went to auction; oddly, I was the only one bidding, despite the time being almost up.

Upon winning the auction, I proceded to the check out and after that all that was left was to play the waiting game (I always lost that damn game). A couple of days had gone by and as I went to my email to clean out spam, I noticed an email from my auctioneer, which is odd as I don’t usually get that from many people. I opened it up, and began to read.

To XXXXXX

Thank you for buying my product, I have been wanting to get rid of it for a long time. I’ve been putting it up quite a few times, but no one wanted it, thanks once again.

From XXXXXX

As I read that, I thought it was weird; I kept asking my self why would anyone pass up such a great deal when someone has such a great background. Then it passed as I thought, “well, their loss.”

After a week, the UPS truck was pulling up my driveway and I came out and retrieved my package.

Upon opening the large box, it seemed very weird: in the box were two smaller boxes (more than likely with one holding the Wii and the other holding the games). It's not that it was weird, it's just that I wasn't expecting it. Opening one of the inner boxes, I found the system itself. Taking a quick look over it, it seemed to be in near perfect condition with a couple of smudges and a scratch - nothing that I couldn’t fix. Opening the second box, what I saw was what really took my breath away in shock.

In the box were the 20+ games that was promised, but more then half of them were still in the original packaging plastic. Picking up a couple of games, I carefully looked them over, as I thought they were brand new games still in their seal.

Looking at the pile of games that were in the small box, I had a real bad feeling for some reason. Looking over the games I saw a couple that I already had and some that I had wanted but never bought. Going down the list, one game caught my attention: “Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Wheelie Breakers." I easily recognized it as that I already had an English version. For some reason, I was looking over it a few times - why I don’t know. I figured it was that Lightning Bolt that appeared over the stadium it just always catch my eye.

Worried of some kind of mistake, I had try to email my auctioneer.

To XXXXXX

Hey, XXXXXX, if you remember...a week ago I had ordered some stuff from you from eBay. Now, I’m not disappointed with my purchase, but there seems to be a mistake. I had ordered used games from you, but I think you may have sent me some new games. It just feels odd, that is.

From XXXXX

A week went by, but after sending many messages and receiving no replies I gave up.

So, taking out the games, I began playing. A few weeks had gone by, and I was playing numerous hours on the Wii. Getting bored, I got up to switch out games. While going through the box to look for another game, that game once again caught my attention. Picking up Wheelie Breakers, even though I completed the English version, I finally decided to play it.

Looking over the game itself, the disc was probably the best condition of all the used games. I knew people didn’t like the game, but come on. Booting up the game, I came across the “press a button” menu; at this time it was strange. Out of all the used games, this was the only one without a save file on the system. So, starting a new game, I used my name from my English version: Breaker.

Playing the game, it was how it was when you usually play this game. Completing both sides of story mode, I worked my way up through the cups of the tournaments. As I unlocked all the cards in the shop, I began to buy them, in order to make my deck. After collecting three of every card, I noticed that buying a certain number of a card causes them to become "SOLD OUT," so I decided to make all the cards be sold out.

Officially completing the game, this took me about a couple of months to do that (maxing out DP as well). Because I was finished with it, I wanted to do something big that I’ve never done before. I came up with an idea beat both paths of Story mode and complete all 4 cups, all within one setting to finally beat the game.

Upon completing the credits of the Fortune Cup, something came up that I didn’t expect. A message came up, like those that would pop up for when cards would unlock in the shop. I couldn’t read Japanese, but I recognized one symbol: “4.” I found that weird, but pressed a in order to continue; everything faded to black as usual.

As I was getting up to turn the game off, the screen faded back to normal. Instead of it going to the main menu, my character was at the starting line of a race. As this had never happened before, I sat down and waited for the starting countdown. A few seconds had gone by and nothing, so I took the controller and saw that I could move.

So, on Boron, I began riding off. Passing the starting line, I noticed something immediately: my screen was nearly blank. I looked over the screen and the icon which showed my life points wasn’t there, and the icon that showed my deck was also missing along with my hand. The only thing that was there was the map and the lap number but instead all it showed was “1/,” with no indication of the number of laps needed.

Going through the track, I noticed right away that the track I was on was the one where you duel Rua in story mode. Aside from moving the bike, I couldn’t do anything else that you would normally do; even when going over the AP or DP icons nothing would happen. Looking over at my map, I noticed that there was the only the red dot that represented my character. The track was eerily quiet.

Starting the next lap, I could have sworn that I heard something; of course there was no battling so it may have been part of the game. Going through the empty race track once more, I came across something else that was strange. Stopping so that I could “Check it out,” I could see Satellite across the water. It was different; the smog/fog that use to cover the city was gone and it looked different then I remembered from other times that I passed by.

Continuing through, I reached the start of the “3rd” lap and that time I could have sworn I heard something, but I wasn’t so sure. There wasn’t anything that I noticed this time around, except for that is was just as empty as when I passed by earlier. It was about half way through this track when something different happened.

According to the map, all the way back at the starting line a blue dot appeared and began moving down the track. The speed of the dot it self was moving faster than any other of the characters would, especially Jack, and it was quickly closing in on my very own dot, closing the gap in between us.

Coming up to the finish/starting line, the blue dot was just about on me until it began to slow down as it got closer. Reversing my view, the blue dot drove into my sight. A white motorcycle was behind me. The guy riding had white hair and was wearing a long coat that blew out with the wind; I couldn't make out his face.

For one reason or another the blue dot man wouldn’t pass me. He would stay behind me. As I crossed the line, the screen changed again; this time everything was there, except that the lap icon reset itself to “1/.” The life point icon showed that the man behind me was wearing some kind of mask, one with a scar over the left eye.

The duel started. I kind of felt a chill, but with my dragon deck I quickly special summoned Stardust Dragon from my hand. I spun around - I was going to meet who ever this guy was head on. I had Stardust attack the man. The man reversed the damage to my monster with magic cylinder, then summoned a monster I was shocked to see.

“Blue Eyes White Dragon.” I recall saying to my self, but I noticed there was something being said. This was not new, as the MC spoke in the game, but I couldn’t make out what he spoke of. I was caught off guard and my opponent had his monster attack. With the combined damage of his attack and the reversed damage from earlier, Stardust was destroyed. I felt something as, once again, that voice spoke. All could make out was, “My.”

I came across AP, as I wanted to go on the offense. I summoned Red Daemon Dragon and I placed a trap card on the field. Coming across another AP, I had RDD attack blue eyes. It connected and destroyed one of the cards in my opponent's hand. I heard some laughing from my Wiimote. The masked man attacked with Blue-Eyes, activating my trap “Scrap-Iron Scarecrow.”

“Stupid AI,” seriously. I had RDD attack once again, destroying Blue-Eyes White Dragon and destroying another card in his hand. “Hatred,” the voice came again. Suddenly, he activated a spell card, destroying RDD.

Following the destruction of Red Daemon Dragon, we came up to the second lap. A lightning bolt appeared in the back ground sky, which I didn’t think this game had. I saw a couple of cards under his icon. I wanted to get rid of his cards, so I summoned Black Rose Dragon.

At the time I summoned Black Rose Dragon, the man behind me summoned a monster of his own, Stardust Dragon. I gritted my teeth. He protected his cards. I quickly had Black Rose Dragon attack my opponent's Stardust. I heard a laugh again as I ran into a trap. He activated his own Scrap-Iron Scarecrow. “Our future,” he once again spoke.

The guy had Stardust attack my monster, taking out half of its health. He, once again, had Stardust attack my monster, which destroyed it. “4 to 4.” This I didn’t understand. Was he referencing what the game said before this started? I had aimed to get the next AP icon, but for the first time, he cut me off, causing me to go into a wall.

After spinning out, I got myself back on the track, but not before that guy attacked my life points. “Desperation.” This time, I was getting irritated; I was being mocked by a video game character. I summoned my own second Stardust, but this time the animation was different. His wings were more drooping and didn’t seem to be flapping as fast. I ignored it, placed a trap on the field, and a spell to recover some life.

The two of us attacked each other simultaneously with both Stardusts, and as both attacks hit eachother both our trap cards activated. My trap negated its attack and sent the damage at him. His trap, though, didn’t stop my attack. The damage was sent back at my monster. In the end, his Stardust was destroyed. At that, he lost a monster, he lost speed, and I passed him. My Stardust animation changed again, its limbs and tail drooping and its color slightly faded.

“Pain of others.” Okay, by now this guy was really getting on my nerves. He activated a spell card, which destroyed the rest of Stardust’s life. The destruction animation seemed a bit more dreary then what it was before.

Trying to get the upper hand, I quickly special summoned one of the Synchros in my hand and my second Black Rose Dragon. This time the animation was also different; a few of the petals were missing and others looked like they were wilted. Using Double Attack, I had Black Rose Dragon attack the masked man with no need of AP.

“Hesitation makes four,” the voice once again came from my Wiimote. He activated a trap; he must have placed it between my summon of BRD and its attack. It didn’t negate my attack, but damage was sent against my monster. He did take direct damage, though. He just laughed.

We came across the third lap. “A door has opened,” he spoke of he summoned a new monster.

“That’s not right,” at least, the monster isn’t among the 126 cards available. “Rainbow Dragon!”

I remember the winged serpent dragon even had its own roar. Getting some AP, the man attacked me, destroying BRD and its petals seemed to of burned away.

“Damn it,” I can recall myself saying.

“…the others…” was what I could make out from what came from my hand.

As I was ahead of the man, I activated Nightmare Steel Cage, causing my opponent to not attack. Using Dragon’s Mirror, I special summoned a dragon from my hand. My 2nd Red Daemon Dragon appeared; its appearance was different as well. It seemed like the red began reaching around its body and its wings seemed deteriorated. Having Red Daemon attack, he destroyed CED in one hit, probably the fact of its small defense.

We were coming up to the end, attacking once again. I reduced the person’s life points down to zero, but my attack didn‘t reach soon enough; he used a card to destroy RDD. Spinning out, I took this second before he recuperated, using a speed spell too get the upper hand.

I then crossed the line, I remember the sudden change in the field as the words “SURVIVE!!” came to the screen and the lap number once again reset to “1/”. The sky itself had became darker. The buildings around us seemed to become ruins with the side of the roads seemingly covered in flowers.

I remember knowing it was odd. I looked up at the map and saw that the blue dot was once again on the move, which was too soon for him to recuperate. I could hear his laugh coming from my hand.

The duel seemed to turn into a survival. Looking at the life points, he was at an advantage since his life points reset back to 4000. Looking now, I realized his mask was gone. I could barely make out his face, but it just seemed his one visible eye was just staring blankly ahead, as if at me.

Realizing what has happened so far, I needed to get ahead and destroy more monsters. Crossing over a long path of AP’s, I spun around, this time summoning Black Rose Dragon, destroying his trap cards on his field. Looking at Black Rose Dragon, there was a significant change this time: there were no roses. It looked like a Root and nothing more. Its own body seemed to be barely moving at all.

I didn’t know what was going on, but at the time it was exciting. I had Black Rose attack this man directly, but the attack animation seemed slower than usual if I remember correctly.

I looked up into the corner to see that he indeed took the damage. I was sort of relieved, until he summoned his own monster. He summoned Red-Eyes black dragon.

At that point, I wasn’t surprised. I knew I had played games before where the AIs could use moves that the regular player wouldn’t be able too. The man proceded to attack me with Jounochi’s rarest card, with my withered Black Rose Dragon barely hanging in there. That was until the guy played double attack to strike once more. I remember seeing what was like pieces of its body hitting the screen.

“Life” the voice once again spoke up through the speaker. With the extra stored up AP, he was able to attack me one again.

At that point, I was on my last batch of life, down 7 monsters and only having taken out 3. Thinking it over, how could my perfect Power House deck not work in this game? I knew I was going to beat this guy one way or another. I wasn’t going to reset the game at any cost.

Drawing a spell card, I activated it, special summoning one random Synchro monster from my hand. With only the one in my hand, I brought out Red-Daemon Dragon. Looking at the summoning animation, the once powerful Daemon had its head lowered down, its wings were completely gone, the dark part of its body seemed to be missing as it was filled with red, and its claws hanging to its side. Placing one card down, I had my Dragon begin my counter-attack.

“…help it…” I can’t put my fingers on what he said exactly though. He tried to attack me, but I was able to dodge. He just laughed. Waiting to bring my AP, I was able to strike while my opponent began his attack, canceling its attack and destroying Red-eyes.

“Reachable!” he spoke playing a magic card, special summoning a monster from his hand.

The monster he summoned was Cyber-end Dragon. I still remember its mechanical shriek. The man brought the battle close, having all three heads attack my monster, at the same time activating my trap, though not negating the attack. It sent damage back at his own monster.

Little more then half way through the track, I did something that really screwed me over: not looking where I was going. I ran over one of his field spells, Dark Hole, destroying the rest of Red-Daemon Dragon’s life, with what seemed as dust blowing into the air.

“Hell!” he once again attacked me, but with negate attack it was nullified. Looking at my hand, I saw my last monster in my deck. I needed to make the last monster count.

Coming upon the next lap, I was capable of summoning my last monster: my third and final Stardust Dragon. Looking at its animation, my breath was stolen. The color was gone. The wings were to the floor. It was as if it was not looking forward to what would happen to it, almost sorrowful. Of course the opponent would not allow me to wait as it stuck at my monster, taking away more then half of its life.

Finally making it to the last lap, the track once again changed. The field itself wasn’t too different, but the sky had become more lighter. It seemed as if there were wavy shadowy figures on the side of the road. My character's animation had once again changed. The white color seemed to have vanished, turned transparent. Attacking my opponent's monster, I took notice of its life points. My icon’s image had changed, as in itself the picture seems to have been disappearing. Noticing this, I soon saw that the background was getting lighter and whiter.

I tried to pay no more attention, for I had a duel to win. Coming across the long row of AP once more, I was able to attack again, causing more damage to the mechanical hydra. The masked man attacked me as well, causing me to use my last defensive trap card in my deck to protect my remaining monster. When I used rear-view, which I hardly ever used, I noticed that a trail of red tears were coming from his now being transparent face.

I came up to what would have been my monster’s last attack. Using it, I connected with CED, destroying it for good. It was then, at that moment of destruction, a new monster took its place. As that happened, Double Attack was activated, wiping out my last monster, the shock messing with my speed going forward.

“Future,” He was laughing, as if knowing that at this point I had nothing left to beat him with. Looking back to see the monster, it was a long serpent dragon. It felt like it was like Rainbow Dragon. Noticing my characters facial expression, the trails of red were flowing more like a river at this time.

We were half way and, at this point, I had nothing left. I just had to make sure that I got first place and that was it. Continuing on, I had immediately noticed that the background had definitely gotten whiter. It was even more so that the black shadows on the side were even more noticeable in their movements,

Looking once more at the life points, I noticed that my icon was nothing more than just an out line, but in it, too, there was the river of red in full color. That facial image above it was still staring...still seemed the same.

At this point, all I was doing was dodging. The monster behind his attack was like a large Synchro with its summoning animation, but purely black. It was simple to tell exactly when it was attacking and where it was from. The person was close to me, following right up behind me. I used a maneuver, using my spinning animation to make him crash out, making sure that he would not cross in front of me.

Using my last speed spell, I gained one final speed boost, hoping that this would be all that I needed to win. Noticing that the blue dot behind me was still far away, I figured that I could still be able to beat it.

I was coming up on the last bit of the track. At this point, there were more shadowed figures...as if they were all just watching me. At this time, I could see the finish line ahead of me. The background behind it was white, as if there really wouldn’t be anything left, but what was surprising was what was at the starting line.

At the starting line, every character that you could face off against were on the other side of the finish line. All the riders themselves were standing by their motorcycles like in the character select screen. All of them, from Yuusei to Jack, from Jaeger to the gold knight guy, from Ushio to Fat Albert police man. All around them were a group of those shadowed figures that were along the road, as if they were all waiting for me to cross over the finish line.

Well I wasn’t just about to disappoint them and lose my perfect winning streak on the game today. It was then that I was seconds from the end. I was going to win. I was going to show my awesomeness in front of everyone, but...

With one dark blast, my life points reached zero. I had lost. My motorcycle spun out of control, just in front of the finish line. Looking at my life point counter, there was nothing. Inside the emptied red box was nothing, as if the river of red was overflowed.

“All Gone” the voice once said. At that point, I saw the map as the blue dot came up closer to my red dot. As the dot reached me, it just disappeared. No one appeared beside me, behind me, or in font of me. All I saw ahead was the warm white light that I almost had.

I won't ever forget what happened next: everything that was on my side of the finish line suddenly turned black...except for my character. What was remaining of light suddenly shrunk away, leaving. I could feel as if everyone was leaving me, going on to where ever they were going. I was left alone in the that lonely dark.

After a few seconds, I was about ready to turn off the game, but I stopped as I saw what then happened on the screen.

My character’s motorcycle had burst into flames, engulfing him alive. He made no movement to even try to get out the fire, as if he wanted this to happen to himself. The river of red from his face was visible as the sound of 3 monster destruction noises could be heard over and over again.

The cries continued for a little while, until they began to fade away themselves. As the sound of their cries disappeared, my character was all alone again, burning, crying. I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him, and maybe a little bit for myself.

It was then that the flames began to die down. The animation itself began to die down, fading away into the background of darkness. He faded until he was no longer visible. I was finally about to go to finally turn off the game, but a lightning bolt once more covered the screen, turning to a high bright.

As the light faded away, I came a little closer to the screen to see if anything else were to happen. Nothing happened, except that as the light faded, a part of it didn’t. As everything else was dark, I could see the reflection of myself in my TV. The light below my image once again read that word “4”

The screen once again turned black. I waited for it to do anything else, but it didn’t. Eventually, the game returned to the “Press a button” menu. Just out of curiosity I continued and went onto the loading screen, but as I got there a new message popped up, one that I have seen in many video games that I knew what it said.

“The game data has been corrupted!”

Seeing that, I knew exactly what that meant and, turning off the game, I sat down to think about what I had just played. A few minutes had gone by, and I wondered if this was what that guy wanted to sell really badly that no body wanted. Going off to my computer, I brought up my email in order to talk to him, of what exactly just happened. Though there was still no reply to my message to him.

A few months had passed. I still ended receiving no replies from him, even after sending another message to him. I had gone to see his eBay account, only to have found that it was deactivated. Going to the forums, I had found a topic about him. It apparently spoke of how he deactivated his account and how during the middle of some his auctions he dropped them, even some that already bought stuff from him. People were complaining about never receiving their things, along with the normal death threats against his life.

I had gone over to my Wii, never once touching it since then, and those images came to my mind.

Looking down, I had seen that game. I never got rid of the game, it just didn’t feel right to me to just get rid of an already used game.

Picking it up and looking it over once more, I remember saying to my self, “Just what was happening.” My eyes once again went to that lightning bolt over the stadium, as that it seemed to still stick out to me. I was about to put it down when I noticed something. Taking the box once more and looking at that lighting bolt, I saw it once more.

Behind the lightning bolt, I saw it. I saw that man’s face, its same glassy stare that I never got out of my mind, only this time, it was no longer staring at me, as if there was no need too stare at me.

After time, I spoke to others about this game and about the image that I had found. People that had the game thought I was imagining it. Many people couldn’t even see the image that I was speaking about. Then that is when I came here, to share my story. Along with this writing, I had also placed the image that I had found on my box. Perhaps someone knows...

(I've edited this a bunch to fix the grammar as best as I could so it wouldn't be nightmare retarding the story.)