Good evening, it’s Spooky Boo. Broadcasting to you from the lighthouse in Sandcastle from KSND, the sound of the sea. It’s a cold and foggy night here in Sandcastle. I hear the mermaids are having a celebration for one of their newest members. He blended in rather easily since he was the Sandcastle lifeguard.  You’ll be able to read all about him in the short story Mermaids of Mayhem when my paperback comes out next month.

Tonight I have for you two very creepy computer stories about ghosts in the machine and beings that cause self-mutilation. If that isn’t freaky enough, Patreon members get an additional story tonight about the dangers of drugs. If you aren’t a Patreon member yet, be sure to check out my Patreon page for extra stories that are sometimes NSFW, you know, not safe for work. You will also get signed copies of books, extra fun, newsletters, and more. Check it out at www.patreon.com/spookybooscarystorytime.

Now let’s begin…

Crimson Butterfly

I’m always waiting for that strange, paranormal thing to happen to me, because I just didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. It sounded so far fetched, but I wanted to believe. My friends and I are horror fanatics, even after the things that happened to us eight years ago.

We were fourteen, loved watching scary movies, and playing scary video games. One of my friends, Angela, had a favorite game called Fatal Frame. She had played it some time ago, but it was a rented copy, so she couldn’t show it to us. However, we went over to Blockbuster (heh, remember those?) and tried to find the game. They didn’t have it, but they did have Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly.

Angela and I were immediately attracted to its beautiful cover; creepy and dark, two identical girls with long black hair and a red rope tied to their kimonos, linking them together. There were candles and red butterflies in the background, and the image was bordered with what looked like red paint strokes. We rented it, very excited to play.

I was staying with Angela because my parents went on vacation to France for four weeks. We invited our friend Sarah over to spend the night. Sarah was also excited to see the game, even though she was not as “brave” as us, for lack of a better word. It was pretty late at night, for it was the summer and we didn’t care about sleeping late in the mornings. As I popped the disk into her PlayStation 2, Angela read the back of the case and laughed.

“What?” I asked, and she showed my the back of the case.

“It says, ‘warning: do not play this game alone,'” she replied. Sarah and I laughed.

“I’m gonna enjoy this!” I said excitedly. Sarah and I were Angela’s audience, for she was the best in horror games. I thoroughly enjoy watching people play video games, even as much as I enjoy playing them myself. Sarah was sitting on Angela’s bed, and Angela and I were sitting on the floor right in front of the TV. I know, I know… bad for your eyes, yadda yadda…

We played through the night. At some point, we got so lost, we had to look at a walkthrough. We didn’t like doing that, but sometimes… you just gotta. We reached the ghost called Kusabi, who seemed to be summoned by Sae, one of the ghost twins who looked just like Mio and Mayu. We learned the hard way that we couldn’t defeat Kusabi at all. He wouldn’t take damage, and guess what! He killed us in one hit! So we had to start again from the last save point, which was found in front of the door that lead into Kusabi’s room.

Now, I’ll need to tell you that Angela’s PS2 has seen a lot of action, meaning, it was getting old and frequently caused disks to either freeze or load very slowly. So, upon entering the Kusabi room, the game froze on the completely black loading screen. We waited a few minutes, and finally realized we were going to be waiting for a long time.

So, for at least a half an hour, Angela, Sarah, and I were talking about stupid crap like all teenagers do, when Angela wanted to get up to get a snack. I loved her to death, but truth was, she wasn’t exactly… skinny. She was actually quite heavy. So what she did to stand up was put both hands behind her, resting on the edge of the bed, and pushed herself up. She ended up doing some odd twisting thing that amused Sarah and I, so we asked her to try it again. She sat back on the floor and was about to repeat the action, when she stared at the TV, horrified.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“I… just saw a face… on the TV…” she said quietly. When Angela is scared, she rarely actually screams. I do however, and so does Sarah. Anyway, we looked at the TV and saw nothing but black screen.

“You must be smoking something,” I joked. None of us did drugs, of course, but we would say things like that for a laugh.

“Just watch, maybe it’ll happen again…” said Angela. Sarah moved to the end of the bed to where we were sitting and held onto us. Then, as we stared, a frighteningly white ghostly face faded into view on the screen. It was a woman with a sunken-in face, and eyes dark and lifeless. Her hair was black, stringy, and sticking out at odd angles. There was no blood on her, but her face alone was disturbing enough without it. The three of us screamed, including Angela, and we flashed out of the room, shutting the bedroom door behind us.

Sitting on the living room couch, we were completely silent, petrified. None of us had actually seen a real ghost! But was that an actual ghost, or was it part of the game? I ran this by the girls.

“It’s a ghost game,” I whispered. “Maybe the game unfroze, but it was left alone long enough for some sort of… screen saver to show.”

“Video games don’t usually have screen savers,” said Sarah, trembling. “That was something… oh God… that was something…”

“Calm down, maybe Sam is right,” said Angela. “Let’s… let’s go check the game…”

“I’m not going back in there!” Sarah exclaimed.

“Fine,” said Angela, sounding annoyed. “I’ll go.” She went back down the short hall and into her room. After a few seconds, she called out, “It’s okay! The game unfroze!” Sarah and I slowly entered the room, looking at the screen. Mio and Mayu were standing next to the red lantern, which was the save point. I exhaled softly.

“Let’s play something else…” I suggested, and the others agreed. Angela took out the Fatal Frame II disk and replaced it with the Sims 2.

We played for quite some time, trying to see whose character would last longer without a shower, while Sarah watched from the bed again. Then, one of my goals was to change clothes, so I went to the dresser. It loaded slowly, but eventually got there. I put my alien girl into something sexy, and then exited. We waited, watching the familiar screen saying, “Saving game. Please do not turn off your console or disconnect controller.”

This honestly took forever. Angela started complaining about her piece of shit PlayStation, when the screen suddenly started to flicker.

“Aw, don’t tell me my TV’s going out too!” she exclaimed. The screen turned completely black, and the Sims 2 background music began skipping like an extremely scratched CD. Then, to our horror, that same ghostly face appeared right before our eyes. I couldn’t breathe.

“No…” said Sarah weakly. “No no no no no no no…” She was letting out terrified squeaks as we stared, unable to take our eyes off the face. The ghost’s eyes slowly looked right at us, and then began to move her lips, as if speaking, though no sound came out. Angela jabbed the power button, turning the TV off, and all three of us ran into the living room again.

All of us agreed to sleep out there instead of the room; we just couldn’t handle being in there. It was so unbelievable, we had trouble sleeping. Finally, somehow, we managed it.

We slept in until like one o’clock in the morning. Angela’s mother complained about the noise last night and wondered why the hell we slept in the living room. Angela was about to tell her what happened, when we suddenly noticed Sarah was gone.

“Maybe she went home in the middle of the night?” I suggested.

“Let’s go check,” said Angela. We got properly dressed, left the house, and made our way down the road; Sarah didn’t live too far away. We knocked on the door, and her mom answered.

“Is Sarah here?” I asked her.

“No, I thought she spent the night at your house,” said her mother. Angela and I exchanged worried looks and hurried back to her house. We searched every room, including Angela’s, but Sarah was nowhere to be found.

The police were called, and they conducted a search. Angela and I spent a few days trying to get a hold of our other friends to check if they’d seen her, but no one had. Her mother was a wreck, but the police assured her they’d find Sarah.

“Should we tell them what happened?” I asked.

“Sam, do you really think they’d believe that we saw a ghost?” she said angrily. “I dunno what we should do, okay? What the hell happened? Why did that ghost show up?”

“Maybe it was the game…” I said softly.

“A haunted horror game? How often do you hear about those? Usually it’s completely innocent games like Majora’s Mask or Sonic the Hedgehog.”

“I can’t think of anything else it could be…”

“Let’s go see if the other copies at Blockbuster have the same warning on the back cover,” said Angela. We took the game with us so that we could return it. After dropping into the return slot, we went over to check the other copies. Each one said, “WARNING: Do not play this game alone!”

“Well that’s not it,” I said. “Did we just… get a haunted copy or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Angela. “But it appeared when playing the Sims, so it must’ve transferred onto my PS2! That bitch!”

“What do we do?” I asked timidly.

“We could go around the internet and see if anyone has seen her too,” Angela replied.

Returning to her house, we immediately hopped onto the computer and feverishly searched Fatal Frame forums for any hint of a haunted copy. We found absolutely nothing. We decided to create an account on one of the forums and post a new thread.

“my friends and I recently rented fatal frame 2 for ps2, and somthing really strange hapened. my crappy PS2 froze and after a wile we saw a ghost woman on the screen we though it was part of the game but than we were playing the sims 2 and she showed up again! now our other friend is missing, and we dont know what to do!!! sas any one else experenced this????”

“How is that?” said Angela after she finished writing the post.

“Sounds good, but…” I fixed all the spelling and punctuation errors in the post and submitted it. We actually sat there and refreshed it like every ten minutes, but we only got replies saying, “you’re BSing,” or, “it’s a fuckin ghost game!”

It wasn’t until a week later we finally got a response. Sarah was still missing, and she was put on Amber Alert. We checked the forum again and saw a response from someone called AnOnOmOuS, and they had no icon.

“Hello, I saw your post and was shocked. This happened to me a long time ago, but I rented my copy from GameStop. After seeing the ghost woman on my screen, I tried playing my other games, but no matter which game I put in, she would always appear. I took the game back, thinking that would help, but it didn’t. Then I looked at my memory card and saw that every single save icon for every single game was just a black box. And then she appeared AGAIN without even being in game. I deleted the Fatal Frame II data, but that didn’t keep her away. I got a new memory card, transferred all my data onto it, but again it didn’t help. It seemed like the ghost had actually infected the games’ data completely. So then I tried erasing all game data on both cards, which was really sad because I had a lot of Final Fantasy on there, and those games are long. I tried playing another game, but she still appeared! I was so scared and so frustrated, I took both memory cards and smashed them with a hammer. They SCREAMED at me! I was so shocked, but then tried my game once again. I played for a few hours without any appearance of the ghost.

“I know it’s hard for any gamer to lose their save data, but there’s no other way. You HAVE to destroy your memory card. That ghost is like a virus or something, spreading itself through that disk. God knows how many people have gotten it! I don’t know why she’s in that disk, and I don’t care, just as long as I never see her again. I’m never renting another game. I’ll just buy it if I want to play it so bad…

“Sincerely, A Friend”

Angela and I stared at the response, which had also received many rude comments. Then we went into her room, turned on the PS2, and checked her memory card. Just as AnOnOmOuS had said, every icon for save data was a jet black, three dimensional cube, spinning slowly in their places. Just then, the ghost woman faded onto the screen, causing it to flicker with static.

“W-what do you want?” I asked the face, scared to the point that I started crying. The ghost moved her lips again, but we heard nothing. We even tried turning up the volume, but that didn’t make a difference.

“Why are you here?” asked Angela, much more brave than I was. The woman continued to mouth, but… nothing.

“Let’s just forget it!” I said, starting to feel a little hysterical. “Let’s just destroy the damn card!” Angela turned off the console and ripped the memory card out. Then we went into the tool shed in the backyard and found a hammer. Angela set it on the concrete of her back porch, raised the hammer, and hit the card viciously, once, twice, three times… a piercing scream emanated from the cartridge as it was broken.

“I think…” said Angela, shaking and taking shuddering breaths. “I think that will do it…”

“What’s that?!” I gasped, seeing a piece of the memory card that appeared to have scratches on it. It was the circuit that allowed the card to hold data. We found all the pieces and fit them together like a puzzle, and was astounded at what we found. “AnOnOmOuS” was the word scratched into the surface of the circuit. Was the ghost the one who replied to the thread we made? Why would she tell us how to destroy her?

“Sam, look…” said Angela suddenly. She was pointing at the ‘S’ written on it, and in very tiny letters was the name “SARAH” scratched into it.

“She took Sarah…” I whispered.

“Why…?” asked Angela. “And was it the ghost who responded to us, or was it Sarah?”

We went back inside and got back onto the computer, viewing our post. AnOnOmOuS’ reply was no longer there, and the entire thread had been locked. We searched Google for the mysterious username, but got absolutely nothing.

I’m sorry to say that we never found out who the ghost was, who AnOnOmOuS was, or where Sarah went. Like I said before, this really happened to us, and we never touched a rental game ever again. Even to this day, we try searching for the username, but we can never find it. Maybe you guys have seen it before? And every day I wonder who’s rented the disk… I wonder if they figured out how to destroy it… and what would happen if they didn’t…

What was the ghost woman trying to tell us? We never found that out either. We never found a name or anything. Why was she in a Fatal Frame game and not something else? How did she die? What was her connection to the game?

Angela ran an idea by me. She said that the first Fatal Frame was based off a true story. She said, “What if the second one had some truth to it too? What if that ghost was really in that village long ago?”

“But why would she haunt that specific copy?” I asked.

“Maybe she can only be in one disk, so she gets into the memory card?” she suggested. “I don’t know! I don’t know what goes on in a ghost’s head!” With that, we stopped discussing the matter. I wanted to just forget about it, but I couldn’t.

About a year and a half ago, Angela started doing drugs and became a whole different person, lying and using me and her other old friends. So I ditched her; I hate druggies with a passion. I have no idea what happened to her, but every now and then, I see her mom come into my work. I’ve never asked about her.

Without her around, my mind involuntarily started remembering the events that had taken place eight years ago… and that’s why I’m writing this. You may not believe me, you may refuse to believe me… but I want to warn you… to be careful when renting a game, especially Fatal Frame II. I know it’s kind of hard to find PS2 games now anyway, especially now they’ve announced the PS4, but some places have old and/or used copies, so just be careful. Since we never figured out what that ghost wanted, I can’t warn you of specific dangers, but it’s best to avoid it anyway. You can never be too careful.

And now, even though I’ve never seen another ghost, I can’t still say I don’t believe in them. I’m still a horror fanatic, but I can’t help looking over my shoulder periodically. I know I’m being repetitive, but I’m serious. Be careful, please.

—Sam

You know those eerie feelings you get when you are playing a multiplayer game and there is no one on the server, apart from you?

For instance; boot up Minecraft right now and scope around for some deserted server that is running, but no one is on.

Feels pretty weird, right? Well, this is what my hobby was: going around to these barely running games and seeing what people had left behind, not just Minecraft either. Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft. I used all of these games to explore the special servers nearly every day. I logged down what was on them: buildings, maps, announcements and then my friend would come along and wipe/build on what I had logged in. I would get paid about $50 for every server I cleared, depending on the size.

So anyway, I’m sitting there sipping on a Coke when my unnamed friend (due to security reasons) rings me up over Steam and says that there is this really big Indie game map that was just abandoned and he wanted me to check it out. He also mentioned that the map was larger than normal, so he would pay me around $100. So, I accepted and went to download the client. It was an old website. The design was pretty poor and it didn’t look very popular, so I speculated that he wanted me to just see if it was working. So I created an account and booted up the game. It looked normal enough, sort of like Second Life, that game where you play as yourself and run around and buy/build stuff.

So I started at the server maintenance screen and went over some of the hosting stats and found that the server was being run from a single tower that had a proxy. I couldn’t list the location to get a proper ping to report to my friend, but since he was probably going to delete it, I guessed I would just make it up. I scanned over the other active servers and it seemed like the only active one was this one. He was probably going to wipe it and demolish the company project, so I guessed that’s why I’m getting such a big bonus for it.

I logged into the server and the loading screen came up: hints, a bar and some pictures of people playing. The usual. After the screen had completed, my avatar was dropped into a little forest, what I assumed would be outside of any main city or town. So, I walked forward hoping that some sort of tutorial would guide me around but nothing happened. The graphics were quite advanced for a game its age, the forest spanned for ages and the trees were like that of Elwynn Forest of WoW. I told all of this to my friend as we kept the channel open for fast information.

After walking around in the forest for about twenty minutes, I came to a bigger than normal tree. It had this big door on the front of it that looked as if it had been carved into the wood by hand, kind of like the ones of Nightmare Before Christmas. But, anyway, the cursor came up with an interaction symbol and then the screen went black and my voice channel cut out. There was no loading screen, only the sounds of the poorly looped 8 bit music that was on the last loading screen. So I waited and waited until finally the game comes back in with my voice channel. The only thing in the entire tree is a big mirror, totally separating the middle of the tree from the other half. My character then walks up to the tree, without my control, and puts his hand toward the reflection. After this, I was suddenly brought to my desktop.

Along with the Icon of the game all the files are missing too. The http has also vanished along with it. I ask my friend if he cut the server and he replies an innocent “No.”

Anyway, he transfers the money to my PayPal and logs out.

So I go to sleep that night thinking about what I will spend my $100 on as I drift into sleep.

I wake up about six times that night. Always seeing that damn tree. It’s not even scary, just annoying. It’s a vividly recreated mirror just like the one out of the game and I keep touching it.

I get up at around 6am after being unable to sleep and decide to hop on the computer for the weekend and rummage about on Steam for some good deals. I get about halfway through watching some saints row trailer when I get invited to play some CS:S. The name was added to my friends but I don’t recognize him at all. The name, actually resembling mine, keeps flashing and after a couple of minutes, I decided to oblige.

The server is pretty normal, just a dust_2 with no announcements and him and myself on opposite teams. It must be a peer-to-peer because the server name is exactly the same as mine. I bet it’s my friend pulling a prank.

After I go through the options and get my game all set, I decide to buy an AWP to shoot this guy up with, but whenever I press the key I have assigned to bind the game freezes and goes back to normal after about two seconds.

So I decide it’s some buggy server coding and continue with the game with the trusty old Glock. After I run out of spawn I can hear a fair laugh/ giggle from the other side of the map. I brush it off a script of plug-in and keep running around. I look for this guy for about ten minutes when I am about to leave, but I see him in the corner of my eye running under the walkway. I follow him under, but when I re-emerge on the other side I see not the other side of the map, but the inside of a big tree and the large mirror stretched across my screen. The reflection is not of the terrorist I am playing as, but of me. Sitting there at my keyboard. I throw my headset off and check my webcam. Nothing is turned on. What the hell is this?

In the reflection my hand extends from my mouse and begins cutting into its arm with its nails, smiling the entire time while it does so. The cuts start appearing on my arms as he giggles and does so. I scream and turn off the computer, before fading to black, my face is flashed on the screen, all distorted and rotted.

I wait about four days before turning the computer back on.

I need to do this, I tell myself, for work. I turn the computer back on and start Word. The program immediately shuts down and begins booting up Battlefield 3.

“What?” I say out loud.

I wasn’t even using battle log. This is too suspicious. I am about to turn the computer off in fear of seeing my doppelgänger start going all cutty cutty again, but I see I was invited by my old friend.

The server is pretty normal; just a squad DM on Caspian border. I spawn and select my weapons. After this I alt tab and open a chat with my friend. Only static.

“Hello?” I say into the microphone.

Only static is returned.

“Come on, dude. Don’t do this now,” I say in hopes of getting a response.

“Whatever, let’s just play,” I say.

I run around the map, looking for my friend amidst all the bushes and trees lining around the gas station. I see a model run behind a building. It didn’t look like the silhouette of a normal model in game. I remember Dust_2 and decide to turn the computer off. I reach up to the power and press in once. I look back down to my screen and all I can see is that all the trees now bear the same door.

“Oh shit,” I say as I struggle to look away.

The power wouldn’t turn off as my character walks unattended towards the largest of the trees. The door opens, and guess who is sitting against the mirror? Sitting exactly like me, my doppelgänger stares blankly into the screen. He’s changed since the last time I saw him; his eyes are sunken, and his bones are now clearly visible over the fleshy creases in his face and skin. He grimaces and starts jabbing himself with a piece of wood.

“AHHAHahhaH,” I scream as his actions replicate on my body.

I reach for the cord as pieces of wood and splinter start cutting into my chest.

I finally grasp the cord and pull it out. The laughing and screaming die down on both ends of the voice channel.

I am rushed to the hospital and receive around sixty stitches for my cuts and gashes. I sell my computer when I return home.

A couple of days pass and things are looking down for me. I lost my job after having too many days off, still thinking about the tree and my doppelgänger. I began walking around the interior of my house, thinking about what I can do. I think about mirrors, me, insanity, and how I can overcome this bastard.

Then it clicks.

The mirrors and trees. I need to get back to the game. Knowing the http is downed, I realize I need to host it.

I buy a cheap Dell computer from my local store and set up a peer-to-peer host in the hopes I can just get me and this bastard in one room again. The server pings online as I enter what I remembered to be the host. Hashes and strings of code from any file residue I can find. After working for about three days, I finally get the server back online. The web address works and I brace myself as I click login.

The page is different. It had pictures of me losing my job, as well as my loved ones and crying people being killed. Beheadings, torture, cannibalism, and decapitation lined my screen as the game played that same howling noise when I first met this doppelgänger.

I log in, the loading pages going black once more as I am dropped into the forest again. It’s different; gore and blood splatter the entire landscape and bodies hang from the branches. They follow me with their black, cold eyes as my character progresses through the landscape. In real life, I’m shaking. The barriers of the game and reality slowly drift apart as I advance deeper and deeper into the forest. I am walking on my own now; no keyboard, no mouse. It’s me in real life.

I continue, falling over corpses as I keep going. I have to do this. I keep saying to myself, “I have to.”

Until I finally come to the tree.

I brace myself and walk toward the main door, screaming still ringing in my ears. It slows down to mere giggles as I walk toward the mirror. I see myself covered in blood, elongated features, black eyes looking at me. It starts rasping and crawling toward me, breaking the mirror. Now was the time. I pull out my pocket mirror with all my strength and show it to the doppelgänger. I heard a massive burst of screaming echoes, making my eardrums bleed as I held the mirror with all my willpower.

I suddenly awaken in my room, on the floor, covered in blood with the mirror laying to my left.

I calm down. It’s over.

I got up and collected myself. After a quick shower and a glass of water, I got in my car and drove as fast as I could to the nearest bridge over water. I got the mirror and threw it down into the water and began to walk home; safe, and a hero after defeating the doppelgänger.

That’s why I am writing this now, to save you the trouble of all of this. Be cautious whenever you join any type of empty or abandoned server. You might just start to hear the laughs and giggles echo toward you, and if you encounter your own doppelgänger, I fear for the worst. A couple of months ago, the police dredged lakes around the country and found mirrors exactly like the one I used to defeat him my first time. And I have a hunch he won’t make the same mistake again.