Ranking of the 12 Most Popular Creepypastas
Ranking updated in 2026
A creepypasta is a short horror story circulating on the internet, designed to scare or disturb readers. The term comes from the combination of creepy and copypasta (an internet term that refers to texts repeatedly copied and pasted on forums and social networks). They can be stories, diary entries, transcripts videos, etc., which are sometimes accompanied by corroborating images or videos.
Have you read the anthology of the winners of the 1st Creepypasta Contest?
SLENDERMAN
I had always been a quiet child. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I learned from an early age that sometimes it was better not to talk. Especially when you are the only one who sees things that others cannot. It wasn't until years later that I realised that what I saw that night was not a figment of my imagination. It wasn't a nightmare. It wasn't my mind playing tricks on me. What I saw was real. And it still is.
My family used to spend summers in an old cabin on the outskirts of a small town surrounded by thick woods. It was the kind of place that seemed to exist outside of time, where the days passed slowly and the nights were as black as a wolf's mouth.
The first time I saw him, I was only eight years old.
I had gone out into the woods with my older brother, David. We were forbidden to stray too far, but the curiosity and stubbornness of a ten-year-old outweighed any warnings from our parents. We walked beyond the stream, to where the trees grew taller and the shadows deepened. I remember the air felt thick, heavy, as if something invisible was crawling between the hundred-year-old trunks.
Then, I saw it.
At first, I thought it was a tree. A pale, thin trunk standing in the undergrowth. But when my eyes got used to the gloom, I noticed the difference. It had arms, long, bony arms that hung at the sides of its body like sleeping snakes. It had no face, just a smooth, white expanse where the eyes, nose and mouth should have been. And worst of all...
He was watching us.
My breathing became erratic. I turned to warn David, but when I looked back, the figure was gone. I didn't say anything at the time. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was denial. But it wouldn't be the last time I would see him.
As the days went by, strange things began to happen. Shadows creeping across my bedroom window, a constant feeling of being watched, whispers in the night that seemed to come from the forest. My mother said they were just dreams, that the darkness and loneliness of the countryside made my imagination work against me. My father, on the other hand, would barely look at me when I talked about it. As if he feared my words were true.
The breaking point came the night David disappeared.
It was late afternoon, and the wind was knocking on the windows of the cabin as if trying to warn us of something. My mother was asleep on the sofa, exhausted after a long day, and my father wasn't home. David said he was only going out for a moment, that he heard something in the woods and wanted to check it out. He asked me not to tell mum. And I, as always, obeyed.
Minutes passed. Then an hour. Then two.
When my parents realised he was missing, the whole village turned out to look for him. Days and weeks went by without a trace of him. In the end, he was presumed dead. But I knew the truth. I knew who had taken him.
More than twenty years have passed since that night, but the memories are still fresh in my mind. Eventually, I began to investigate. I discovered that what I saw has a name. Some call it the Slender Man. Others know it as Slenderman. An entity of unknown origin, seen for centuries in ancient paintings and stories. It appears in forests, near children and teenagers, lurking in the dark until it decides to take its victim. No one knows where it takes them. No one ever sees them again.
Some people say it is a manifestation of fear itself, a being that feeds on our anxiety and despair. Others believe it is a creature from another dimension, slipping between the spaces of our reality, always watching, always waiting.
What I do know is that no matter how much you run. No matter how hard you try to forget. If you've ever seen it, it will never let you go.
I know this because a few days ago, when I looked out of the window of my flat in the city, I saw it.
Standing on the street corner, between the flickering street lamps.
Looking at me.
Waiting.
Jeff The Killer
I don't know how much longer I can keep this hidden. Writing it down won't make it any less real, but maybe it will help me understand what happened that night... the night I saw Jeff.
It all started in the suburbs, in an ordinary house. No one expected something so horrific to be brewing there. Jeff was a normal kid... or so it seemed. He lived with his parents and his brother, Lou. No one paid much attention to the pale-skinned, sunken-eyed boy, until the rumours started.
They say everything changed when Jeff and Lou ran into a group of thugs. A fight broke out, and although Lou tried to protect him, it was Jeff who lost control. Something dark awoke in him. He lashed out at the aggressors with an inhuman fury, as if something inside him had been waiting to get out. But the worst came next.
One of the thugs pulled out a knife. The fight became brutal, chaotic. Jeff covered his face as a blaze of alcohol and fire engulfed his skin. When he woke up in the hospital, something in his face had changed forever.
The doctors did their best. His skin was pale, his smile seemed to be etched on his face, and his eyes... his eyes never closed again. The night Jeff came home was his family's last normal night. He locked himself in the bathroom, laughing in the gloom. He looked in the mirror and picked up a knife.
-It's beautiful! -she murmured as she cut her cheeks past the burn. I didn't want to stop smiling. Never again.
That night, his mother heard noises and went to check. She found her son standing in the dark, his face covered in blood and his eyes wide open, inhuman.
-Jeff... are you okay?
He looked at her. He smiled.
-I've never felt better.
The blade sank into his mother's flesh before she could scream. His father ran up the stairs, only to find the same smile waiting for him in the gloom. Lou was the last. When he opened his eyes, his brother was there, knife in hand.
-Shhh," Jeff whispered, leaning over him. Go to sleep.
Since that night, Jeff has disappeared. They say he's still out there, hiding in the shadows, waiting for the light to go out. If you ever wake up in the middle of the night and feel someone watching you... if you see a smile drawn in the dark... Run. Don't look back.
Because Jeff the Killer has already chosen his next victim.
The Russian Sleep Experiment
There are stories that should be forgotten. Stories buried in archives that no one should dig up. But what I am going to tell you now is not just a story. It is a fact, a real experiment... and a warning.
It was the 1940s, in the midst of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was looking for any advantage, any weapon that could give them ultimate control. So a group of military scientists were ordered to test an experimental gas designed to keep soldiers awake for days. The goal: to eliminate the need for sleep and create unstoppable warriors.
Five political prisoners were selected. Enemies of the state, traitors... disposable. They were locked in an airtight room, with a month's supply and a system of microphones and one-way observation windows. The gas began to flow. At first, everything went as expected.
On the first day, the prisoners conversed normally. On the third day, they started talking in whispers, mumbling nonsense. On the fifth day, paranoia settled in the room. They accused each other of conspiring with the investigators. On the ninth day, all became silent.
Scientists feared the worst. The only sign of life were the heart monitors: irregular heartbeats, but present. The cameras showed no movement, and the microphones picked up only a faint sound, as if someone was scraping the walls.
On the 15th, the decision was made to open the chamber. When the gas was removed and the door opened... what they found inside was something no human being should ever see.
The prisoners were no longer men. Their bodies were mangled, their skin ripped to shreds and their flesh exposed. Not from torture, not from gas - they had mutilated themselves. One of them lay dead, his abdomen ripped open and his organs scattered as if he had tried to devour himself.
The others, still alive, looked at the scientists with bloodshot eyes. They did not try to escape. They just smiled and said:
-We need more gas...
The soldiers were ordered to execute them, but the prisoners fought with inhuman strength. They did not sleep, they felt no pain. One of them, his jaw hanging, whispered before he was shot:
-We are you... we are what you hide in the darkness... what we have always been.
The last survivor was strapped to a stretcher to be studied. A horrified scientist asked him:
-What are you?
The creature smiled with torn lips.
-Have you already forgotten? We are the madness that lurks within you. We are what happens when you close your eyes... and never open them again.
And with a final laugh, the prisoner was executed.
Smile.dog
I don't know if anyone will read this in time. I don't know if it will do any good. But if you ever receive a file called smile.dog.jpg... don't open it. Don't look at it. Don't share it. Because once you see it, it's too late.
It all started with a story in the darkest corners of the internet, a rumour about a cursed image. It was said that whoever saw it would suffer unbearable nightmares, visions of a dog with an unnatural smile, human teeth and eyes filled with an indescribable evil.
I didn't believe in such things. Until I met Mary.
Mary was a journalist obsessed with investigating the phenomenon of Smile.dog. In 1992, he interviewed a woman who claimed to have seen the image. The woman was completely disturbed. She kept repeating that the dog visited her in her dreams, that it whispered things to her in a language she did not understand... that it told her to share the image, to pass it on to someone else.
-If you share, he'll leave you alone," the woman said with terror in her eyes. But if you don't...
Mary never finished her article. She locked herself in her house, went mad and, years later, took her own life.
I wanted to know the truth. I searched for the image in the most hidden forums on the web. And one day, I got an email with no sender. It only had an attachment: smile.dog.jpg.
I opened it.
I can't describe what I saw without despair. It was a dog, or something like it. Its fur was dark, fuzzy, as if the image was damaged. Its eyes... God, its eyes were red and glowed with an indescribable evil. But the worst thing was the smile: a stretched, unnatural grin, with perfect, too-white human teeth.
That night I had my first dream.
I was in a dark room. I couldn't move. And there, in the corner, was he. Smile.dog. He was looking at me, smiling. He didn't move. He only whispered:
-Diffuse me.
I woke up screaming. But it wasn't just a dream. Every night, it came back. Closer and closer.
I tried to delete the image. It didn't work. It replicated itself on my computer, on my mobile. It appeared on screens I didn't turn on. In emails I didn't send.
It's driving me crazy.
And now I know the truth.
There is only one way to get rid of Smile.dog. There is only one way to stop it appearing in your dreams.
You have to share it.
So... tell me... Do you want to see it?
Candle Cove
It all started with a conversation on an old internet forum about forgotten children's programmes.
Someone asked:
«Does anyone remember Candle Cove? It was a weird puppet show that was on local TV when we were kids. I remember it being really scary, but I don't know if I dreamt it.»
The funny thing is that several people responded saying that they also remembered the programme.
«Yes, I used to watch it with my brother. It was about a little girl called Janice who talked to pirate puppets on a ship.»
«Yes! I remember the villain, the Ripped Skin Man. He was hideous, he looked like he was made of old leather and flaps of flesh.»
Each response made the story more disturbing.
One user mentioned that the programme had a strange atmosphere, with creaky background music and garbled dialogue. The characters were clunky puppets, with erratic movements and distorted voices.
But then someone asked a question that made the conversation freeze:
«Remember that episode where the kids were just looking at the screen and crying?»
There was silence in the forum. Then several people said they also remembered something similar.
«Yes... the children did nothing, they just stared at the camera and sobbed without moving. There was no music, just a low hum.»
Nobody remembered what happened next. Only that, after that episode, they stopped watching Candle Cove.
One user, intrigued by the mystery, decided to ask his mother if she remembered the programme.
The answer froze him in his tracks.
«Honey... when you were a kid, you always said you were watching Candle Cove. But when we watched TV, there was just static.»
Backrooms
If you ever feel the world around you distort for an instant... if you get dizzy for no reason in a building or have the sensation that reality has fractured for a second... then pray.
Because you could have fallen into the Backrooms.
It all started with a rumour on the internet, a theory about what happens when you «un-clip» reality. A glitch in existence, like in a buggy video game, where you accidentally walk through a wall or the floor and end up somewhere you shouldn't be.
The Backrooms are a space that should not exist, an endless maze of yellowish rooms with damp carpets and a buzz of fluorescent lights that never go out. There are no windows, no exit doors, just endless corridors with an oppressive atmosphere.
And the worst thing is not being trapped there.
The worst thing is that you are not alone.
LEVEL 0: THE HELL OF THE CORRIDORS
It is the first level. The best known. An infinite space of monochrome rooms, with a musty stench of mould and emptiness. There are no clocks, no signs of time. Only the sound of your footsteps and the echoing hum of the fluorescent tubes.
It is said that there are rules for survival:
- Don't run. Sound travels too well here.
- Don't stay in one place for too long.. Something might find you.
- If you hear anything other than the buzzing of lights... hide.
Because there are creatures in the Backrooms. Beings that have no faces, that creep through the corridors without making a sound... until they are too close.
THE OTHER LEVELS
Some say there are over 1,000 levels, each stranger than the last. Some are vast oceans with no horizon, others are abandoned cities where the sun never sets. Some are others like you, trapped, surviving, going mad.
But they all have one thing in common: there is no way out.
THE TESTIMONIES
On Deep Web forums, there are accounts of people claiming to have escaped from the Backrooms. They say the last thing they remember is tripping, falling to the floor... and then waking up in a yellow corridor.
Days or weeks later, without food or water, they simply «un-clipped» back into the real world. But they were never the same again.
Some say they can smell the humidity in the air when no one else can feel it. That they can hear the hum of lights even when all is quiet.
And the scariest thing...
That sometimes, when they open the wrong door in their house, they see for a second the yellow walls of the Backrooms.
Just for a moment.
But enough to know that have not yet fully escaped.
1999
When I was a kid, I used to watch TV every day after school. It was 1999 and back then we didn't have internet access like we do now, so TV was my world. I lived in a small town in Canada, and although the main channels were the usual ones, there was one local station that caught my interest: channel 21.
It had no commercials, was not listed in any programme guide, and yet it broadcast children's programmes. Or so it seemed at first.
My memory of channel 21 is hazy. I remember the signal was weak and the picture quality lousy. But something about those programmes kept me hooked. There was no background music, the sets were basic, and the characters... well, they didn't exactly look like actors.
For a long time I thought it was all the imagination of a bored child. Until I started to investigate.
And I discovered that I was not the only one who watched those programmes.
One of the earliest programmes I remember was called Booby and was about a hand-shaped puppet that «taught» children about life. The puppet was crude, with badly sewn button eyes and a disproportionate mouth. It did not speak fluently, but stuttered and paused strangely between sentences.
The episode I remember most was about «friendship». In it, Booby held a rag doll and insisted that it was his friend. But when the doll «tried to escape», Booby would scream in a distorted voice and bang it against the table until its head came off.
The episode ended abruptly.
Another programme was called Mr. Bear's Cellar, and that's the one that haunts me the most. It was a live-action show starring someone in a brown bear costume. Mr. Bear lived in a dark basement and talked to the children who visited him. But the strange thing was that the children never responded.
In one episode, Mr. Bear told a child to come forward for a «bear hug». The boy, visibly uncomfortable, stepped forward and the screen cut to black. The next scene showed the bear sitting alone, swaying slowly and mumbling something unintelligible.
The image became blurred and the transmission ended. But the worst came next.
Years later, when I was a teenager, I searched for information about Channel 21. It seemed as if it had never existed.
Until I discovered an old article from 2001.
The headline read: «Man arrested for abducting and abusing children in the 1990s».».
The man was from my city. He called himself Mr. Bear.
Police found tapes in his house, recordings of his «show» in which he invited real children to his basement. Most of the missing children were never found.
Some episodes were said to be so disturbing that they were never made public.
My blood ran cold when I read that the latest documented victim of Mr. Bear disappeared in 1999.
The same year I was watching Channel 21.
Terrified, I searched through my old memory box. I had kept drawings, toys... and letters from when I was a child. And there it was.
A yellowish envelope with children's calligraphy on the front:
«For my special friend.»
My hands trembled as I opened the letter. Inside, there was a message written in red crayon.
«Hello, my little friend. I hope you're well. I would have liked to see you in my basement. But don't worry... someday we can play together.
- Mr. Bear.»
I had never read it before. I didn't remember receiving it.
And the worst thing... I don't know how it got to my house.
Since then, I have tried to forget about it. But a few weeks ago, on a cold case forum, someone posted a terrifying message:
«Does anyone remember Channel 21? I think it's back.»
Attached is a link to a video uploaded just a few days ago.
It was a fragment of Mr. Bear's Cellar. Same bad quality, same dark basement.
But this time, Mr Bear looked straight into the camera. And he said:
«Welcome back, my little friend. I've been waiting for you.»
Laughing Jack
My name is Joe, and until recently I had a son named Thomas. Now all I have left is emptiness, fear and the memory of a ghoulish laughter I should never have heard.
It all started a few weeks ago, when my son started talking about his new «imaginary friend». It didn't seem strange at first. Thomas is only six years old, and it is common for children to make up friends to play with. However, this was no ordinary friend. His name was Laughing Jack.
-Dad, Jack wants to play with me," he said one night as I tucked him into bed.
-Who's Jack, darling? -I asked curiously.
-He's my new friend. He lives in my wardrobe and tells me jokes. He's always laughing, dad. He's always laughing.
I thought it was cute. All children have imaginations, don't they? So I just nodded and kissed him on the forehead before turning off the light. But something in his voice made me uncomfortable.
Things got strange before long. One morning I found a handful of old, sticky candy on the floor of Thomas's room. I hadn't given him any candy. We didn't have any at home either. I asked him where he had gotten them.
-Jack gave them to me," he replied with an innocent smile.
That night I made sure to check the wardrobe before I put him to bed. It was empty. I closed the door and convinced myself that it was all a child's game. But in the back of my mind, something gnawed at me: a sense of alertness, as if there was something else in that room.
As the days went by, Thomas began to behave strangely. He talked to himself more often, laughed in the middle of the night and mumbled things in the dark. When I asked him, he would only reply that he was talking to Jack. But the worst was when I found him crying in the corner of his room, hugging his legs.
-What is it, little one? -I asked, alarmed.
He looked at me with red eyes and whispered:
-Jack got angry with me.
I tried to calm him down, telling him that Jack wasn't real. But later that night, I woke up to a noise in his room. A creaking sound, as if someone was walking across the floor. I rushed in and saw something that made my blood run cold: Thomas was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the wardrobe, as if hypnotised.
-Thomas! -I shouted, running towards him.
But before I got there, the wardrobe door opened by itself. A foul stench filled the room, and for a second I saw... something. A thin, tall figure with abnormally long arms, a large, pointed nose and a grotesque grin, with teeth sharp as needles. His eyes were two black pools of emptiness, and his laugh... oh, his laugh... was high-pitched, distorted and deranged.
I ran to my son and took him out of the room. I didn't look back. That night we slept in my room with the door closed. The next day, I called a priest to bless the house. But nothing changed.
Thomas stopped sleeping well. He looked exhausted and haggard. He told me that Jack was visiting him at night and that he was getting «meaner and meaner». I didn't know what to do. I couldn't help him. Then, one night, it all came to a head.
I woke up with a piercing scream. I ran to his room and found the bed empty. The window was wide open, and a trail of blood stained the sheets. I searched desperately, calling out her name, but there was no answer. Then I saw her.
The music box.
It was old, with a clown painted on the lid. I hadn't seen it before. It sat on her bedside table, open. It played a creepy tune, childish but sinister. As I approached it, the music stopped suddenly, and laughter echoed in the room.
A laugh I will never forget.
The case is still open. Thomas was never found. The police found no signs of intrusion, no fingerprints. It was as if he vanished into thin air. But I know the truth. I know something took him. Something that came out of that wardrobe. Something that should never have existed.
Now, at night, when the house is silent, I hear a melody. A music box melody, and a distant, mocking laughter, waiting for me in the dark.
Abandoned by Disney
I've always been a curious guy. Not the type to get into trouble, but the kind who can't resist a good mystery story. And when I heard about the abandoned Disney park, I knew I had to see it for myself.
You may have heard of it: Mowgli's Palace. A themed resort inspired by The Jungle Book, built in the 1990s and abandoned before it opened. According to the official story, Disney closed it because of legal problems with the local government. But if you spend enough time in the right forums, you'll find stories about employees who disappeared and visitors who went in... but never came out.
I didn't believe in any of that. But it seemed like a unique opportunity.
It took me weeks to find its exact location. Disney hides its secrets well. When I finally discovered it, I packed my backpack with a torch, a camera and a metal bat - just in case some wild animal decided I would be its lunch. I drove to North Carolina, parked my car away from the main road and drove into the jungle.
After a suffocating walk, I saw him: Mowgli's Palace, hidden among the trees, devoured by nature. The main entrance was rusted and overgrown with vines, with the welcome sign barely legible. “Disney's Mowgli's Palace”.
The strangest thing was the silence. Not a single bird, not an insect. As if the jungle itself avoided the place.
I cautiously made my way through what was once the reception area. Faded posters with the characters of The Jungle Book They smiled with unsettling expressions. The paint was flaking, and the smell of damp and mildew permeated the air. I continued to explore, passing through destroyed rooms and rotting furniture, until I found what I had come for: the amusement arcade.
The large hall had a ruined stage and rows of shattered seats. Banners with the faces of Baloo and Bagheera still hung on the walls. And in the centre of the room, there was a statue of Mickey Mouse... or what was left of it.
The statue was covered in what looked like... skin. As if someone had covered it with a dry, cracked organic material. Something told me I should leave, but then I saw an open door at the back of the room.
It had a rusty sign: «COSTUME CHARACTERS ONLY».».
My instinct was screaming for me not to go in. But my curiosity was stronger.
Inside, I found a cold, dark room. Rows of Disney character costumes hung on rusty hangers. Some were intact, but others looked as if they had been forcibly ripped off the mannequins. I walked among them, shining my torch on them, when I noticed something on the floor: a blackened carpet.
It was not a carpet. It was a hole. A perfectly square hole in the floor, with a ladder leading down into the darkness.
I knelt down and shone the light into the abyss. You couldn't see the bottom. An indescribable stench emanated from there, a mixture of rust, rotting flesh and something else... something that shouldn't exist.
Then something moved downstairs. A wet sound, like flesh crawling.
I backed away immediately, feeling my breathing become erratic. But as I turned to run, I heard a voice. A child's voice.
«Where are you going?»
My torch trembled in my hand. There was no one there.
«I thought you wanted to see Mickey.»
And then I saw it. From the shadows of the room a figure emerged. It wasn't a costume, though it looked like one. It was a giant Mickey Mouse, but its skin was not cloth... it was flesh. Black, rotting, dripping flesh. His eyes were dark, lifeless pits, and his mouth... his mouth was too big, with sharp teeth and bleeding gums.
«Abandoned by Disney.»
The voice boomed in my head, but his mouth didn't move. I did.
I ran without looking back. I ran through the jungle, I stumbled, I scraped my knees, but I didn't stop. I don't know how long I ran, but when I got to my car, my hands were shaking so badly that I could barely put the keys in the ignition.
I started up and drove away from that hellhole without looking in the rear-view mirror.
Since then, I don't sleep well. Sometimes, when I turn off the light, I hear his voice in my room.
«Abandoned by Disney.»
Gateway of the Mind
I don't know how much time I have left. What I saw, what I experienced... it is not meant for the human mind. Not for ours. But someone must know the truth. Someone must understand the horror of what we are trying to do.
I am the only survivor of the experiment. And although I'm still breathing, I'm not alive...
In the late 1980s, a group of scientists became obsessed with an idea: what would happen if a human being was completely cut off from his senses? Could he reach a level of pure consciousness, beyond physical reality?
The theory was simple: our senses limit us. They bind us to the material world. But if we remove them... what are we left with? Maybe, just maybe, we can see what's there? beyond?
The government secretly funded the experiment. They chose a volunteer: an elderly man with no family, willing to submit to anything to “know the truth”.
We called him Subject 01.
We underwent surgery to disconnect him from the world. His eyes were sealed, his tongue removed, his ears destroyed. His sense of touch and smell were blocked with advanced surgical techniques. No stimulation. No distractions. Just his mind and emptiness.
The first week passed in silence. He couldn't speak, he couldn't scream. He just breathed, motionless in his padded room, under the white light of the facility. But in the second week, something changed... We found him mumbling.
He had no tongue, so he could not articulate words. And yet, spoke. His mouth formed voiceless sentences, as if he were conversing with someone. At first we thought it was delirium, a product of isolation. But then we heard the whisper.
It did not come from him.
The cameras picked up sounds in the room. Low whispers, incomprehensible, but present.
By the third week, Subject 01 stopped moving completely. His breathing was shallow, his body barely responsive. But his expression... his expression was one of pure horror.
One day, he simply burst out laughing. Dry laughter, broken, with involuntary spasms.
We ran to his room, unable to understand what was going on. And then he said it. In a voice that wasn't hers. In a voice that couldn't be human.
«I see them.»
No one dared to ask what he meant. But we didn't have to, because when Subject 01 lifted his head and looked at us, although it had no eyes, we knew there was something else in the room with us.
Something we couldn't see. Something that had been there all along.
The lights flickered. The security system collapsed. And in the darkness, we heard voices. Ancient voices. Voices that whispered things we were not supposed to know. We ran.
The records of the experiment were destroyed. No one should repeat what we did. No one should try to see. But now it is too late.
Because they already know we exist.
Y we are no longer alone.
Ben Drowned
My name is Daniel, and I need someone to listen to this. I don't know how much time I have left before... before it takes over everything. Before I drown.
A week ago, I found something I shouldn't have touched. I came across an old The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask at a second-hand flea market. It was strange, it had no label, just a piece of sticky tape with the word “BEN” scrawled on it in black marker. The seller was a strange old man, with sunken, glassy eyes, who stared at me when I picked it up.
-Are you sure you want that? -he said, in a raspy, trembling voice.
I nodded. It hardly cost a couple of euros and I was curious. When I left, the old man whispered something I didn't quite understand. It sounded like “He is waiting for you”.
When I got home, I blew the cartridge - an old habit - and put it into my Nintendo 64. The game started up as usual, but with a save file called “BEN”. I thought nothing of it and created my own file. I called it “DAN”, my name.
I played for a few hours, but there was something... weird. The music sounded distorted at times, with wrong notes, as if the melody was unnaturally broken and recomposed. The NPCs didn't speak properly, their dialogue was full of strange characters, as if the game was corrupted. And then there was Link's character....
Every time he looked at the screen, he felt that his eyes were empty. No pupils. Just two dark orbs.
The first night I had nightmares. I dreamt of the salesman looking at me from the corner of my room, with a smile that wasn't human. I dreamt of water, with a pale figure floating in the background. When I woke up, the music from the game was playing in my head, even when the TV was off.
The next day, when I turned on the console, I noticed something disturbing. My “DAN” file was gone. In its place, there was only “BEN”. I selected it, trembling, and appeared in Clock Town... but it was empty. There were no NPCs. Just silence and Link's mask staring at me with that dead expression.
I tried to move, but as soon as I did, a message appeared on the screen:
Why did you forget me?
My heart raced. I turned off the console. I didn't want to go on, but something in my head whispered that I had to turn it back on.
I did.
The screen flickered black before loading again. I was now in the Observatory Lake, with Link floating in the water. There was no music, just the sound of my breathing in the room. I tried to move, but Link was unresponsive. Then, a text appeared out of nowhere:
You can't run away.
The game froze. I turned off the console abruptly and walked away. I didn't sleep that night. I felt that someone was watching me from the darkness of my room.
The next day, I woke up with the TV on. The console was running by itself. On the screen, Link was standing in an empty field, but it wasn't the normal Link. His face was that of the statue in the Void Elegy: big, black eyes, a macabre smile. I didn't touch anything. Then, slowly, the character turned towards the screen, as if he could see me.
You died with me.
I turned off the TV and unplugged the console. But things only got worse.
That night, my computer turned itself on. A text file was open. It said: BEN.
I deleted the file. I turned off the computer. But as I walked away, I heard the sound of the Healing Song, played backwards. And then, a laugh. A laugh coming from the turned-off speakers.
The next few days were hell. My phone was filled with messages with no return address, all saying the same thing: You shouldn't have played.
Images appeared in my gallery, pictures of my room taken while I was sleeping. In one of them, there was something in the corner. Something that shouldn't be there. A silhouette with empty eyes.
Last night, I dreamt of water. I was trapped at the bottom of a lake, unable to breathe. When I looked up, I saw a figure floating above me. It had my face.
I write this now because I don't know how much time I have left. My reflection in the mirror does not move when I do. Sometimes it blinks before I do. I feel that something is crawling in my head, that something is watching me from inside.
I hear laughter, even when there is silence.
If you find a cartridge with the word “BEN” written on it... burn it.
Don't play games.
Don't let him in.
Polybius
I should never have touched that machine.
If I could go back in time, if I could warn myself before I put the coin in the slot, I would. But it is too late. Too late. The damage is done, and now I can't get the sounds, the flashes, the numbers - my God, the numbers - out of my head.
This was years ago, when there were still arcades full of kids with pockets full of coins and an insatiable hunger for records. I was one of them. I had heard rumours of a new machine, something special. It had no flashy logo or artwork on the casing. Just a name in white letters on a black background: Polybius.
-They say the government put it in," a friend whispered to me as we stared at the machine in a dark corner of the room. That it does weird things with your head.
That only made me want to try it more. I was always sceptical of such stories, so I slid a coin into it. The screen came to life with an explosion of lights and geometric shapes that spun and pulsed to the rhythm of a hypnotic sound. I felt a slight dizziness, but I ignored it. A text appeared on the screen: Welcome. You are ready.
There were no instructions. Just a black background and a set of moving shapes. I pressed buttons at random and felt the screen respond immediately, almost as if it knew what I wanted to do before I did it. My pulse raced. The images changed colour abruptly, flickering with such intensity that I had to squint. But I couldn't look away. The sound was a mixture of buzzing and distorted notes echoing inside my skull.
I don't know how much time I spent playing. I lost track of space, of time. Around me, the world ceased to exist. All that mattered were the patterns, the pulses of light, the numbers flashing on the screen. Numbers that didn't seem to follow any logic, but somehow made sense inside my head.
And then... something changed.
The screen filled with flashing lines and a figure emerged between them. It was not part of the game. It couldn't be. It was something else. Something looking at me. A face, no defined features, just a void where the eyes and mouth should be. You are special, said a voice, but it wasn't coming from the speakers. It was coming from inside my head.
I jerked away from the machine, panting. I looked around and noticed that the place was empty. The music and hustle and bustle of the arcade had vanished. I blinked. How long had I been there? My watch showed the same time as when I had started playing, but I knew that couldn't be true.
-Are you all right? -asked the owner of the shop.
I nodded, but my head was spinning. I went home with the feeling that something was following me, that something had gone inside me.
That night I had nightmares.
I dreamt of the faceless face, the numbers on the screen and voices mumbling incomprehensible words. I woke up sweating and with a throbbing headache. But the worst thing was that, even with my eyes open, I could still see the numbers. They were there, on the walls, on the ceiling, on my hands. They were with me everywhere.
The next few days were a blur of fog. I couldn't concentrate. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw geometric shapes moving in impossible patterns. My ears buzzed with the sounds of the game, even though it was silent. My mind was not my mind. Something had stayed inside.
I tried to go back to the arcade to see the machine, but it was gone. I asked the owner and he only told me that they came to take her away. He couldn't tell me who they were. Or he didn't want to tell me.
But I know it didn't disappear completely.
Because every night, when I try to sleep, I hear his call. I see the numbers floating in the dark. And I know that, somewhere, Polybius keep waiting, attracting others like me. Maybe you will be next.
Maybe you've already played... and you still don't know it.
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