The scary thread
- Thread starter Mcupobob
- Start date
Recommended Videos
He was, but I don't actually know him and when you are half way through reading a horror story which is genuinely sending a few shivers up your spine the last thing you need is to hear a loud groaning noise right next to you.Marmooset said:
1) Yes it has.Vilcus said:
2) Most people would have trouble staring at a fixed spot in any static image for five minutes.
3) The video doesn't give you the chance to do so because there aren't five minutes of that image in it.
4) The text build-up is cheap mind-game tat.
5) The soundtrack is annoying.
6) The image does not change. It didn't seem to change, either.
Seriously, it doesn't change.
Screenshots in time order, duplicated below with yellow horizontal and pink vertical lines marking features. The pink lines are copy-pasted from the right-hand (latest) image to the others.
[http://img837.imageshack.us/i/notsoscary1.jpg/]
All those screenshots cloned at 20% opacity onto a white background twice, including the coloured blobs I added under them the second time:
[http://img832.imageshack.us/i/notsoscary2.jpg/]
I could barely see the increasing opacity to track where I'd been with the clone tool for the last couple of layers there. It doesn't change.
All those screenshots cloned at 20% opacity onto a white background twice, including the coloured blobs I added under them the second time:
I could barely see the increasing opacity to track where I'd been with the clone tool for the last couple of layers there. It doesn't change.
I risked this thread, seeing as it's the middle of the day.
Upon reflection, that was a terrible idea, seeing as I'll just remember it later when I'm trying to sleep.
And yet, I want more. If I wasn't such a wimp, I might have been able to contribute with something scary I've found on my internet travels. But, I do not...
Upon reflection, that was a terrible idea, seeing as I'll just remember it later when I'm trying to sleep.
And yet, I want more. If I wasn't such a wimp, I might have been able to contribute with something scary I've found on my internet travels. But, I do not...
Yea, it isn't that hard to see. The image does not change, but I've seen people who have been fooled by it. Also, I don't think the image changing is what it was originally supposed to portay. The video is just s sham, and I wanted to use another one, but most of them were either too short, or they had the weird untranslated Japanese text and stuff, and I wanted to go with english. Staring at it is supposed to unnerve you for some reason. I personally think it's just a picture, but I had nothing else worth posting (other stuff that's possibly true, but not that creepy). Also dang, ninja'd by someone I haven't seen. Owell, I'll go on being startled by all the screamers on this thread. Also your images don't work here I guess (at least I can't see them).Shoqiyqa said:1) Yes it has.Vilcus said:
2) Most people would have trouble staring at a fixed spot in any static image for five minutes.
3) The video doesn't give you the chance to do so because there aren't five minutes of that image in it.
4) The text build-up is cheap mind-game tat.
5) The soundtrack is annoying.
6) The image does not change. It didn't seem to change, either.
Seriously, it doesn't change.
Screenshots in time order, duplicated below with yellow horizontal and pink vertical lines marking features. The pink lines are copy-pasted from the right-hand (latest) image to the others.
All those screenshots cloned at 20% opacity onto a white background twice, including the coloured blobs I added under them the second time:
I could barely see the increasing opacity to track where I'd been with the clone tool for the last couple of layers there. It doesn't change.
Wow, I'm really stupid. I saw your post when you first posted saying you would remove it but I only just now realized I should go back and remove the quote from my post.Dango said:
Also another story.
When Anita found him, her immediate reaction was to put him in the foyer next to the stairwell so he could be decorative. Not everyone would have one, and the way his arms stuck out just so would make him a suitable hat rack. She realized, almost too late, that this might have been in bad taste. But what, she thought, was a woman supposed to do when her husband went and turned into a glass statue overnight?
She had heard of this happening, of course. It just seemed to happen to other people; one day they were perfectly normal and then the next, someone found them frozen. Clear. She had heard of it, but had never seriously considered it happening to her. The people this happened to were far too glamorous; celebrities and the like. Certainly not to him. She was a widow now. That made her feel old at thirty-seven years and she was sure she didn?t like it.
After a week she quietly filed a mortician?s report and sat down to a cup of hot tea. She hadn?t broken it to his family yet, though his sister had been calling. She told her he was away on business. There was no reason to tell them yet. The Quentins could wait another day to hear their little boy wasn?t okay. At that very moment it occurred to her that using her husband?s remains as a hat rack might be poorly received by the general public.
And so Anita began the difficult task of finding a place for him. At first she kept him to the study, in front of the fireplace. He kept her company with her tea. But soon she began to find that sitting with the countenance of her dead husband reminded her of her widowhood, so she moved him to the garden and used him to scare the crows away from her tomatoes. He did little to dissuade the crows, however, and soon became their favorite perch. Finally, she hauled him to the attic. She kept the rest of her glass figurines there, and didn?t see why he should be treated any differently.
Somehow, it all seemed normal at the time. Everywhere you looked someone was at it. The glass bodies seemed to multiply. When she called her husband?s mother and told her, tearfully, that he had passed away, she burst into hysterics and told her that so had one of the grandchildren.
Anita was uncomfortable, and then she hung up.
When the man who cut her lawn succumbed as well, she began to worry. Now it was affecting her everyday life, which was something her husband and niece had not generally been part of. Her husband worked constantly and usually slept when he graced her with his presence. Her niece, whose name she couldn?t even remember, lived in Florida.
She put entirely too much sugar in her tea and shivered as she drank it. She did miss her husband. Sometimes. And now she would have to trim her own lawn.
Her first hint that something might have been a bit off was when she found her neighbor, frozen solid while pulling the weeds in his yard. The next day, while shopping for groceries the bag boy, with a crackle, transformed, still clutching her biscotti. She tenderly wrenched it from his grip, glanced around halfheartedly, and didn?t pay.
Then the news reports began to get very tiresome. First it was strange, isolated events. Then it was an epidemic, then a pandemic, and then it was Susan Shepherd reporting to you live from New York City and?crackle.
Ting.
Suddenly, she wasn?t reporting. Suddenly, she wasn?t even alive.
There was panic after that, and lootings and riots, or so Anita saw on the news. She kept to herself these days. Her sister hadn?t called in weeks. She half expected her to be found, phone in hand, sitting at her kitchen table, never to move again. A week later, the police confirmed her suspicions: her sister was found not at the phone but in bed. Three relatives now dead, Anita found in horror that she had run out of tea bags.
It had been months since Anita found her husband, and her lawn was long. The four houses around hers couldn?t claim a single opaque resident. She?d taken to not leaving the study for days on end, sitting by the fire with her tea while her husband sat in the attic, staring at a wall. He wasn?t needed in the yard anymore, not since the neighbor had frozen there. Anita came to miss him in the study, but he tended to alienate visitors, of which she found she was having less and less these days.
At first, she?d gotten dozens of calls for funerals of her husband?s mother, friends, old boyfriends, but soon even the funerals died off. There were too many to throw.
The television only worked sporadically, and when it did it showed news. It told her to lock her doors and windows. It told her there were people who thought this would pass. People who were trying to take things from those who had turned, so they would be wealthy when they and the rest of humanity came out the other end. It used the word anarchy a lot.
The futility of the this did not escape Anita, but when the looters came, as the news assured her they would, she thought the best way to be rid of them, and quickly, would be to set out a plate of lemonade for them and to point them in the direction of the attic, where she kept an odd assortment of expensive-looking things that had, at one point, been her grandmother?s. That, she thought, would keep them happy while she kept to the study with her husband, for she hadn?t had use for the china in years, anyway. It annoyed her, though, when they woke her up in the middle of the night.
Roland had robbed a lot of houses, before and after it became commonplace, but thought that few had ever looked as empty as this one. He received a terrible shock when Anita spoke.
?Hello,? she said, wiping sleep from her eyes with one hand and holding a candle in the other. ?Attic?s that way.?
Roland had been greeted many ways upon entering a house he planned to rob. This was not one he was used to.
?I?m going to have some tea,? she said, and began walking slowly away. Roland?s mind reeled for a moment, and then he set off for the attic.
In the kitchen, Anita sleepily sipped Earl Gray when Roland trudged down the stairs with a sack over his shoulder and came upon her. He stopped mid-step and looked at her carefully.
?All those people up there??
?The glass ones??
Pause. Sip.
?Yeah, the glass ones,?
?What about them??
Sip.
?Why did you-?
?Think of it as a sort of a tomb.?
Roland decided he?d stay.
Anita mistrusted him at first but soon found it was a great relief just having him around. She was running low on food and it really was lovely to have someone to break into a grocery store with. As much as she knew how low the chances were of her finding anything dangerous, the lonely streets seemed much less so with a companion. He tended the garden, collected rain water for drinking and bathing, and even sometimes sat with her by the fireplace, sharing a seemingly endless stockpile of tea with her,
?We?re going to run out of food, you know.? Roland mentioned. ?Even just between the two of us, there?s only so long that that store will hold out.?
Anita shrugged and stared into her tea. Even she had to admit the great mound of canned goods they had made in the grocery was beginning to run low. Her eyes settled on the fire and it was a moment before she answered. ?So what do you suppose we should do??
Roland shrugged. ?I don?t know. Leave??
Anita didn?t answer.
After two weeks, they had eaten nearly all of the food they had brought back from their last trip to the store and agreed, Anita a little grudgingly, that they would keep walking after this next trip to the grocery and see where it led them. There was nothing for them here, Roland reasoned, and besides, maybe they?d find other people.
Their lives became a long journey from food source to convenience store to market to people?s basements, sleeping when they could and traveling as they pleased. They took what they needed, carried what they could, and moved on. Roland led them, taking to this life with complete ease. As they walked, he shouted things back at her like ?Lovely, isn?t it?? and she never answered. He found her silence unnerving.
Eventually, after weeks of traveling from convenience store to grocery to mini-mall, they came upon a set of high cliffs, with a sheer drop to the sea. Anita had liberated a bottle of wine from the last supermarket they slept in, and the two of them sat with it and watched the sun rise.
?I?ve been thinking, Anita,? Roland said gently, ?that the world ended.?
?No,? was her answer. It was the first time she had spoken in months.
?Yes, it did,? he said, with not a little sadness in his voice. ?And it forgot to take us with it.? With this thought, he stood up and began the long hike back down the cliffs. Anita looked back after him for a long time.
She shattered as she hit the bottom.
She had heard of this happening, of course. It just seemed to happen to other people; one day they were perfectly normal and then the next, someone found them frozen. Clear. She had heard of it, but had never seriously considered it happening to her. The people this happened to were far too glamorous; celebrities and the like. Certainly not to him. She was a widow now. That made her feel old at thirty-seven years and she was sure she didn?t like it.
After a week she quietly filed a mortician?s report and sat down to a cup of hot tea. She hadn?t broken it to his family yet, though his sister had been calling. She told her he was away on business. There was no reason to tell them yet. The Quentins could wait another day to hear their little boy wasn?t okay. At that very moment it occurred to her that using her husband?s remains as a hat rack might be poorly received by the general public.
And so Anita began the difficult task of finding a place for him. At first she kept him to the study, in front of the fireplace. He kept her company with her tea. But soon she began to find that sitting with the countenance of her dead husband reminded her of her widowhood, so she moved him to the garden and used him to scare the crows away from her tomatoes. He did little to dissuade the crows, however, and soon became their favorite perch. Finally, she hauled him to the attic. She kept the rest of her glass figurines there, and didn?t see why he should be treated any differently.
Somehow, it all seemed normal at the time. Everywhere you looked someone was at it. The glass bodies seemed to multiply. When she called her husband?s mother and told her, tearfully, that he had passed away, she burst into hysterics and told her that so had one of the grandchildren.
Anita was uncomfortable, and then she hung up.
When the man who cut her lawn succumbed as well, she began to worry. Now it was affecting her everyday life, which was something her husband and niece had not generally been part of. Her husband worked constantly and usually slept when he graced her with his presence. Her niece, whose name she couldn?t even remember, lived in Florida.
She put entirely too much sugar in her tea and shivered as she drank it. She did miss her husband. Sometimes. And now she would have to trim her own lawn.
Her first hint that something might have been a bit off was when she found her neighbor, frozen solid while pulling the weeds in his yard. The next day, while shopping for groceries the bag boy, with a crackle, transformed, still clutching her biscotti. She tenderly wrenched it from his grip, glanced around halfheartedly, and didn?t pay.
Then the news reports began to get very tiresome. First it was strange, isolated events. Then it was an epidemic, then a pandemic, and then it was Susan Shepherd reporting to you live from New York City and?crackle.
Ting.
Suddenly, she wasn?t reporting. Suddenly, she wasn?t even alive.
There was panic after that, and lootings and riots, or so Anita saw on the news. She kept to herself these days. Her sister hadn?t called in weeks. She half expected her to be found, phone in hand, sitting at her kitchen table, never to move again. A week later, the police confirmed her suspicions: her sister was found not at the phone but in bed. Three relatives now dead, Anita found in horror that she had run out of tea bags.
It had been months since Anita found her husband, and her lawn was long. The four houses around hers couldn?t claim a single opaque resident. She?d taken to not leaving the study for days on end, sitting by the fire with her tea while her husband sat in the attic, staring at a wall. He wasn?t needed in the yard anymore, not since the neighbor had frozen there. Anita came to miss him in the study, but he tended to alienate visitors, of which she found she was having less and less these days.
At first, she?d gotten dozens of calls for funerals of her husband?s mother, friends, old boyfriends, but soon even the funerals died off. There were too many to throw.
The television only worked sporadically, and when it did it showed news. It told her to lock her doors and windows. It told her there were people who thought this would pass. People who were trying to take things from those who had turned, so they would be wealthy when they and the rest of humanity came out the other end. It used the word anarchy a lot.
The futility of the this did not escape Anita, but when the looters came, as the news assured her they would, she thought the best way to be rid of them, and quickly, would be to set out a plate of lemonade for them and to point them in the direction of the attic, where she kept an odd assortment of expensive-looking things that had, at one point, been her grandmother?s. That, she thought, would keep them happy while she kept to the study with her husband, for she hadn?t had use for the china in years, anyway. It annoyed her, though, when they woke her up in the middle of the night.
Roland had robbed a lot of houses, before and after it became commonplace, but thought that few had ever looked as empty as this one. He received a terrible shock when Anita spoke.
?Hello,? she said, wiping sleep from her eyes with one hand and holding a candle in the other. ?Attic?s that way.?
Roland had been greeted many ways upon entering a house he planned to rob. This was not one he was used to.
?I?m going to have some tea,? she said, and began walking slowly away. Roland?s mind reeled for a moment, and then he set off for the attic.
In the kitchen, Anita sleepily sipped Earl Gray when Roland trudged down the stairs with a sack over his shoulder and came upon her. He stopped mid-step and looked at her carefully.
?All those people up there??
?The glass ones??
Pause. Sip.
?Yeah, the glass ones,?
?What about them??
Sip.
?Why did you-?
?Think of it as a sort of a tomb.?
Roland decided he?d stay.
Anita mistrusted him at first but soon found it was a great relief just having him around. She was running low on food and it really was lovely to have someone to break into a grocery store with. As much as she knew how low the chances were of her finding anything dangerous, the lonely streets seemed much less so with a companion. He tended the garden, collected rain water for drinking and bathing, and even sometimes sat with her by the fireplace, sharing a seemingly endless stockpile of tea with her,
?We?re going to run out of food, you know.? Roland mentioned. ?Even just between the two of us, there?s only so long that that store will hold out.?
Anita shrugged and stared into her tea. Even she had to admit the great mound of canned goods they had made in the grocery was beginning to run low. Her eyes settled on the fire and it was a moment before she answered. ?So what do you suppose we should do??
Roland shrugged. ?I don?t know. Leave??
Anita didn?t answer.
After two weeks, they had eaten nearly all of the food they had brought back from their last trip to the store and agreed, Anita a little grudgingly, that they would keep walking after this next trip to the grocery and see where it led them. There was nothing for them here, Roland reasoned, and besides, maybe they?d find other people.
Their lives became a long journey from food source to convenience store to market to people?s basements, sleeping when they could and traveling as they pleased. They took what they needed, carried what they could, and moved on. Roland led them, taking to this life with complete ease. As they walked, he shouted things back at her like ?Lovely, isn?t it?? and she never answered. He found her silence unnerving.
Eventually, after weeks of traveling from convenience store to grocery to mini-mall, they came upon a set of high cliffs, with a sheer drop to the sea. Anita had liberated a bottle of wine from the last supermarket they slept in, and the two of them sat with it and watched the sun rise.
?I?ve been thinking, Anita,? Roland said gently, ?that the world ended.?
?No,? was her answer. It was the first time she had spoken in months.
?Yes, it did,? he said, with not a little sadness in his voice. ?And it forgot to take us with it.? With this thought, he stood up and began the long hike back down the cliffs. Anita looked back after him for a long time.
She shattered as she hit the bottom.
Agreed. I rolled off of my exercise ball/chair in fear at that and hit the floor. I wish there was a way to freeze that .gif so that wouldn't happen and I could read the stories on the pic in peace. Stories don't bother me, but pictures do.hyperhammy said:FUCK YOU!!! I almost died...S.R.S. said:Go to ED and search creepy pasta.
OT: http://www.creepypasta.com/the-gallery-of-henri-beauchamp/
There is a version of this made in Garry's Mod that was pretty creepy with it's visuals, but I couldn't find it.
EDIT: Found it.
http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=711680
EDIT x2:
Holy Hell. I hate you. I really need to stop reading this thread. But I'm mezmerized.RatRace123 said:Well, I don't know if anyone else is scared by this but
Bam, creepy asian girl! Terrifies me to no end.
Me too! I was reading this on work today and almost called in shenanigans for silly "summoning" and then the face... I fell of the chair, my coleagues looked at me like I was on drugshyperhammy said:FUCK YOU!!! I almost died...S.R.S. said:Go to ED and search creepy pasta.
Here's some creepy videos, most of which use that favorite old gimmick of freakish little girl. Might be nightmare fuel, might make you laugh until breathing is difficult, different perspectives and all that.
[http://skary.net/movies/]
EDIT: Fucking links... Well, it brings you to the site, at least.
[http://skary.net/movies/]
EDIT: Fucking links... Well, it brings you to the site, at least.
alright, heres one i wrote recently, being the author i cant really say if its any good or not, so a bit of feedback would be great,
Pokemon Snap- Game Over
(By Interspark)
I walked into the old electronics shop in town, I went there every time I went into town in the hope of them having any N64 games handed in (I?m something of a collector). I walked up to the counter, there was a man already there so I waited behind him. He looked terrible, like he hadn?t slept or bathed in weeks, he was pretty desperate to offload something to the cashier but he wouldn?t take it. Eventually, sobbing slightly, the man walked off. Slightly confused, I walked up to the counter without taking my eyes off the man leaving the shop, noticing my confusion, the cashier said,
?I dunno what the big deal is, he wanted to give us a copy of Pokemon Snap, but I wouldn?t take it because the cartridge is in too poor condition, if he hates it so much I don?t see why he can?t just throw it away!?
Hardly believing my luck, I bounded after the man who had just left the shop,
?Sorry? I say ?but the cashier in there tells me you?re trying to get rid of a copy of Pokemon Snap??
From the look on the man?s face you?d have thought he?d just won the lottery! He thrust a beat up cartridge into my hands and, without waiting a second, he ran down the road laughing manically. Chuckling slightly at the man?s erratic behaviour, I looked at the cartridge. I could see why it wasn?t sales material, it was scratched, cracked and had the sticker torn off, but as long as it worked I was happy.
Later that day I went home and put the cartridge into my N64. Nostalgia flooded back to me as the canny intro music played. I erased the existing file and started a new game and, shortly later, was in the ZERO-ONE and on the Beach Zone. It went swimmingly, I even got a snap of the elusive Lapras and, before long, unlocked the Tunnel Zone.
That was when I started noticing that something was wrong?
I played this game all the time when I was young and I could have sworn that the Pokemon on the Tunnel Zone were as lively and active as the ones at the beach. Figuring I couldn?t trust ten year old memories, I took pictures of the immobile groups of Kakuna, the shuffling Pikachu, the Magnemite, which I distinctly remembered trying to scramble your camera with their supersonic attack, but now simply floated in the air and allowed me to snap away. When I got back to the lab I almost jumped out of my skin! Not a pixel had changed in the photos I had taken, but what I was seeing was definitely not what I had seen in the tunnel. The Pokemon were glaring. Pikachu looked ready to bite my head off! The Kakuna?s triangular eyes were filled with hate and the Electabuzz I had seen looked like it was about to leap out of the screen and throttle me! Professor Oak was understandably very unhappy with the photos and gave me very few points. Reluctantly, I went back to the tunnel. This time I could see it, every Pokemon I saw loathed me, they wanted me dead, the Kakuna hung down on their threads and stared, a shot that would bag me tons of points but I couldn?t bring myself to lift up the camera. I spent most of the rest of the level with my eyes shut tight with fear. Later, I opened my eyes a crack to see that the ZERO-ONE had stopped, an Electrode had rolled in front of me, its eyes twisted into an evil grin. It began shining, this was when I overcame my fear, a shot of an Electrode exploding was worth thousands of points, I held down the Z button to focus the camera?
The view switched to third person and the Electrode exploded, taking the ZERO-ONE with it, Todd Snapp collapsed to the ground, mangled and burnt and the screen faded to black. The words GAME OVER in bold red letters appeared.
That was the last thing I remembered before I awoke, on my floor, in my clothes, drenched with cold sweat. Noticing the scratched cartridge in my N64, I began to try and establish how much of it had been a dream, to only thing I was sure of was that the death at the end couldn?t have been real, Pokemon Snap was a kids game, you couldn?t die in it! Especially not in the way I had seen. I decided that I must have fallen asleep playing the game. I changed my clothes, had something to eat and then sat down to continue playing.
My save file was still there, so were the terrifying photos from before, the only thing that had changed was the route selection screen, the River Zone had been unlocked. Hoping the ?glitch? (?) was contained to the tunnel route, I selected the option and set off.
The river route was different, the Pokemon weren?t glaring, they were smiling, the same horrible, evil smile the Electrode in the Tunnel had on before it killed me. Terrified, I realised what was about to happen. I collapsed out of my chair and stumbled to the corner of the room, unable to turn away. The view switched to third person again and I watched as the ZERO-ONE was shattered between powerful jaws of a HUGE Cloyster. As Todd fell into the water dozens of Magikarp and Goldeen swarmed around and the river turned red with blood, ?GAME OVER?
Again I awoke on my floor, soaked in sweat. Unable to stop myself, I played again, and the same thing happened over and over,
Roasted by a Charizard ?GAME OVER?
Torn to shreds by a Gyarados ?GAME OVER?
Beaten to a pulp by a Kangaskhan ?GAME OVER?
More than a week later I could hardly think. The game was my whole world now, I couldn?t think of anything else, I couldn?t even think of my own name. I selected a new route, this route was something new. The ZERO-ONE trundled along the bottom of a deep crevice, I couldn?t see the sky at all. On both sides of me were all the Pokemon from the game, grinning expectantly, as if they were waiting for something entertaining. The ZERO-ONE stopped at the end of the crevice, there was a platform made of stone in front of me, almost like a stage. From out of the darkness swept a shadow that landed gracefully on the stage, it was Missingno but to my pulverised brain it was something completely new. Its face was made of two piercing red eyes and a small, red mouth. It opened its mouth revealing rows of sharp gleaming teeth, it ran its devil-like tongue along them and spoke with a grin,
?game over??
It swept into the air, gleaming with its signature Sky Attack, and shot towards me like a rocket, with its teeth bared.
I can only imagine what would have become of me if what happened next hadn?t happened? The telephone rang, in an instant my head snapped together, I realised where I was, who I was, I noticed the room around me, I noticed how hungry I was. Then I saw Missingno on the screen, still shooting towards me, I screamed and tore the N64 from the TV and threw it across the room where it shattered. I collapsed to the floor panting and wheezing. I answered the phone. It was my boss, wondering where the hell I?d been the previous week. Without knowing it, I think he may have saved my life, and I wondered how close the previous owner had come to whatever fate lay in Missingno?s teeth?
(By Interspark)
I walked into the old electronics shop in town, I went there every time I went into town in the hope of them having any N64 games handed in (I?m something of a collector). I walked up to the counter, there was a man already there so I waited behind him. He looked terrible, like he hadn?t slept or bathed in weeks, he was pretty desperate to offload something to the cashier but he wouldn?t take it. Eventually, sobbing slightly, the man walked off. Slightly confused, I walked up to the counter without taking my eyes off the man leaving the shop, noticing my confusion, the cashier said,
?I dunno what the big deal is, he wanted to give us a copy of Pokemon Snap, but I wouldn?t take it because the cartridge is in too poor condition, if he hates it so much I don?t see why he can?t just throw it away!?
Hardly believing my luck, I bounded after the man who had just left the shop,
?Sorry? I say ?but the cashier in there tells me you?re trying to get rid of a copy of Pokemon Snap??
From the look on the man?s face you?d have thought he?d just won the lottery! He thrust a beat up cartridge into my hands and, without waiting a second, he ran down the road laughing manically. Chuckling slightly at the man?s erratic behaviour, I looked at the cartridge. I could see why it wasn?t sales material, it was scratched, cracked and had the sticker torn off, but as long as it worked I was happy.
Later that day I went home and put the cartridge into my N64. Nostalgia flooded back to me as the canny intro music played. I erased the existing file and started a new game and, shortly later, was in the ZERO-ONE and on the Beach Zone. It went swimmingly, I even got a snap of the elusive Lapras and, before long, unlocked the Tunnel Zone.
That was when I started noticing that something was wrong?
I played this game all the time when I was young and I could have sworn that the Pokemon on the Tunnel Zone were as lively and active as the ones at the beach. Figuring I couldn?t trust ten year old memories, I took pictures of the immobile groups of Kakuna, the shuffling Pikachu, the Magnemite, which I distinctly remembered trying to scramble your camera with their supersonic attack, but now simply floated in the air and allowed me to snap away. When I got back to the lab I almost jumped out of my skin! Not a pixel had changed in the photos I had taken, but what I was seeing was definitely not what I had seen in the tunnel. The Pokemon were glaring. Pikachu looked ready to bite my head off! The Kakuna?s triangular eyes were filled with hate and the Electabuzz I had seen looked like it was about to leap out of the screen and throttle me! Professor Oak was understandably very unhappy with the photos and gave me very few points. Reluctantly, I went back to the tunnel. This time I could see it, every Pokemon I saw loathed me, they wanted me dead, the Kakuna hung down on their threads and stared, a shot that would bag me tons of points but I couldn?t bring myself to lift up the camera. I spent most of the rest of the level with my eyes shut tight with fear. Later, I opened my eyes a crack to see that the ZERO-ONE had stopped, an Electrode had rolled in front of me, its eyes twisted into an evil grin. It began shining, this was when I overcame my fear, a shot of an Electrode exploding was worth thousands of points, I held down the Z button to focus the camera?
The view switched to third person and the Electrode exploded, taking the ZERO-ONE with it, Todd Snapp collapsed to the ground, mangled and burnt and the screen faded to black. The words GAME OVER in bold red letters appeared.
That was the last thing I remembered before I awoke, on my floor, in my clothes, drenched with cold sweat. Noticing the scratched cartridge in my N64, I began to try and establish how much of it had been a dream, to only thing I was sure of was that the death at the end couldn?t have been real, Pokemon Snap was a kids game, you couldn?t die in it! Especially not in the way I had seen. I decided that I must have fallen asleep playing the game. I changed my clothes, had something to eat and then sat down to continue playing.
My save file was still there, so were the terrifying photos from before, the only thing that had changed was the route selection screen, the River Zone had been unlocked. Hoping the ?glitch? (?) was contained to the tunnel route, I selected the option and set off.
The river route was different, the Pokemon weren?t glaring, they were smiling, the same horrible, evil smile the Electrode in the Tunnel had on before it killed me. Terrified, I realised what was about to happen. I collapsed out of my chair and stumbled to the corner of the room, unable to turn away. The view switched to third person again and I watched as the ZERO-ONE was shattered between powerful jaws of a HUGE Cloyster. As Todd fell into the water dozens of Magikarp and Goldeen swarmed around and the river turned red with blood, ?GAME OVER?
Again I awoke on my floor, soaked in sweat. Unable to stop myself, I played again, and the same thing happened over and over,
Roasted by a Charizard ?GAME OVER?
Torn to shreds by a Gyarados ?GAME OVER?
Beaten to a pulp by a Kangaskhan ?GAME OVER?
More than a week later I could hardly think. The game was my whole world now, I couldn?t think of anything else, I couldn?t even think of my own name. I selected a new route, this route was something new. The ZERO-ONE trundled along the bottom of a deep crevice, I couldn?t see the sky at all. On both sides of me were all the Pokemon from the game, grinning expectantly, as if they were waiting for something entertaining. The ZERO-ONE stopped at the end of the crevice, there was a platform made of stone in front of me, almost like a stage. From out of the darkness swept a shadow that landed gracefully on the stage, it was Missingno but to my pulverised brain it was something completely new. Its face was made of two piercing red eyes and a small, red mouth. It opened its mouth revealing rows of sharp gleaming teeth, it ran its devil-like tongue along them and spoke with a grin,
?game over??
It swept into the air, gleaming with its signature Sky Attack, and shot towards me like a rocket, with its teeth bared.
I can only imagine what would have become of me if what happened next hadn?t happened? The telephone rang, in an instant my head snapped together, I realised where I was, who I was, I noticed the room around me, I noticed how hungry I was. Then I saw Missingno on the screen, still shooting towards me, I screamed and tore the N64 from the TV and threw it across the room where it shattered. I collapsed to the floor panting and wheezing. I answered the phone. It was my boss, wondering where the hell I?d been the previous week. Without knowing it, I think he may have saved my life, and I wondered how close the previous owner had come to whatever fate lay in Missingno?s teeth?
