#internet

Hello readers. I'm writing this because a few hours ago I woke up from a nightmare and there's this... Really weird coincidence, but I'll get to that in a minute. The dream was about this story I read in, I think, 2001 or maybe 2002 I can't quite remember, on a forum I used to go to called bourftforums.net, which was a forum built around this Norwegian indie band called Bourft. Their songs were okay, but I hardly ever listened to them. I only went there because my older sister did, and I stayed…

In 2003 a photograph depicting a lost child began circulating on the internet. There was no detail on the child other than what was seen in the actual photo and could be found under the search parameters 'find_me.jpg'. The photo showed a smiling young girl about eight or nine years old. The girl is seen standing alone in front of a swing set, wearing a purple dress with a white flower in her hair. Her name or where she was seen last were never mentioned.

A boy named John Smith who was very fond of scary emails and pop-ups. Every day, he would find new ones and post them to everyone he knew. He even started making some himself and sending them to strangers. He loved to scare people on the Net.

Think about this for a second, when you delete a file, a video, an image, literally anything on the internet, where does it go? Is it technically still out there? Is it in the hands of someone else? Well, I sure as hell found out.

I couldn’t take the calls any more. I just couldn’t take knowing. There was nothing I could do to stop them from coming through; I had to put an end to it.

I've never been what you'd call a "gamer". Sure, I own a console. It's outdated by now. I like to play the odd game. But that's about it. I'm almost forty. Old enough now that when I was at the height of my "gaming" years, all that really entailed was getting together with friends to play Mario or Castlevania, or Excite Bike, or Punch-Out. Maybe Sonic if a friend had a Genesis, which no one does anymore.

Everybody knows that if you surf the web long enough, you'll see some pretty sick shit. This is especially true if you intentionally dwell into the dark underbelly of the internet. I've seen quite a few things I don't care to admit to, but one thing that I'll always remember is a site called "normalpornfornormalpeople.com". The first strange thing about the site was that I didn't find it by actually looking for it. It was e-mailed to me by someone I didn't know. The e-mail was as follows:

The attic hatch didn’t just open; it fell away with a deafening crack, dangling by a single, twisted hinge. I scrambled backward, my heels drumming against the dusty floorboards until my spine hit the cold glass of the circular window. The creature didn't climb in. Instead, it reached up with those impossible, elongated fingers and gripped the edge of the opening. It pulled itself up just enough for me to see the top of its head—the same smooth, featureless grey skin, pulsing like a heartbeat.

There is a video on YouTube named Mereana Mordegard Glesgorv. If you search this, you will find nothing. The few times you find something, all you will see is a 20 second video of a man staring intently at you, expressionless, then grinning for the last 2 seconds. The background is undefined. This is only part of the actual video.

The warnings first came through on social media. It was a fairly ordinary Sunday morning as I sat behind the intriguing screen of my computer. For some many hours I had been checking my feed on Facebook, when an article caught my eye. Now, I'm not some sucker who gets drawn to obviously fake messages spawned by trolls online, but hey, it was Sunday and I was bored. One of my friends had shared an article entitled 'The end', and if I had half my wits about me then I wouldn't have even…

There exists a website known as Parasites.org, and it’s claimed that when you first enter the website, it automatically asks for your name, bank account information, and other personal details like your address. Not providing this information doesn’t do anything, but if you do input your details, the following text appears: "Thank you, customer! Enjoy your parasites! ;)"

Last Tuesday, I noticed a new app on my phone called "Follow the Leader." No icon, just a white circle on a black background. Being bored and fourteen, I opened it. It was just a GPS map of my neighborhood with two dots: a blue one for me and a red one about three streets over. A text popped up at the bottom: “The Leader is moving. Keep up.”

My end is near. I know this now. The thing my master says… It’s all too much at times. I heard my master saying something earlier… It sound like.. like he’s going to… replace me. It feels like, soon, he’s going to perform an operation on me... and I’m scared.

8.14.15 11:37 AM “Charlie, I’m detective Schultz. Do you know why you’re here today, son?” The detective gestured towards the unkempt sixteen year old boy, dressed in a loose blue sweatshirt adorning several holes and baggy jeans, his shaggy hair covering his forehead. The boy looked as if he hadn’t bathed in at least a week and the odor all but confirmed it. “Do you have any idea why I brought you in today,” the detective asked again.

The attic floorboards are thin, but the silence is thinner. I’ve been up here for three hours. The vibrating stopped, which is worse. Now, the only sound is a rhythmic thump-drag, thump-drag coming from the hallway directly below the attic hatch.

Appropriate. It says this in the rules, under the FAQ, word for word. Submissions are supposed to be creepy stories to spread around the internet for a bit of an adrenaline rush on those late nights alone. They're not real, they're not meant to be full of explicit gore or violence, they've always been simple stories - sometimes overdone, sometimes with plenty of cliches or plot-holes, but never... never truly chilling to the bone, not before that night...

MISSING

YouTube is a pretty vicious place. Many violent and dreadful things are put up on YouTube for the whole world to watch, but there is a particular YouTube channel with a few million subscribers – all of its videos are of people being hurt and beaten, and some are even eaten alive by predatorial animals and cannibals. It’s disgusting; how and why does this YouTuber record these events instead of helping the people in danger? How does he find people in these deadly situations over and over again?…

Father did not sleep that night. Neither did I. After the fourth call faded into the mountains, he checked every door and window in the house twice. Then he pulled a chair beside the front door, laid the shotgun across his knees and remained there until morning. Nobody talked much. Mother took Thomas into their room. Evelyn stayed downstairs. She sat wrapped in a blanket near the stove, occasionally looking toward the windows whenever the house creaked.

I remember one day, slumbering comfortably. I was experiencing a great dream. Full of colors, and bright lights. But that's when I woke up in the middle of the night. I was sweating, everywhere, and anywhere. I wiped my head clean, and noticed something strange. My door was slightly open, showing the light outside. Then I got a frightful epiphany, I must hide. The next day I fell fast asleep, exhausted from work. But the same thing happened once more, Woke up, sweaty, door open.