Nostalgia is a funny thing. One minute you’re talking to your friends about how much you miss the carefree days of your childhood, and the next you’re fearing for your life, wishing you had never revisited those memories in the first place.
This is exactly what happened last night. After a night of heavy drinking, I came home to my best friend to FaceTime her and debrief her on all the usual antics that occurred. Amidst the giggles and silly stories, I remembered an old website I used to frequent when I was around 9 years old.
I was hit by a tidal wave of memories of sleepovers where we would read scary 2 sentence stories and scream when we heard a twig snap, or heard someones mother knock at the door to ask if we wanted more cookies. It took me a while to remember the name of the website but I knew that they tended to upload urban legends and popular tales like ‘Annie96 is typing…’ or ‘My Name is Carmen Winstead’
After 30 minutes, I was finally able to find it: scaryforkids.com
Instantly, I smiled at how corny it was. The formatting was subpar and the pictures of monsters on all the categories were comical at best. The website had definitely changed though. I never remembered it to be a particularly dodgy website but there were pop up ads everywhere, along with new tabs like ‘scary games’ and ‘scary videos’ that were never there in the first place.
As a child, I would open up this website to read scary stories that were organised by category- there isn’t really much else to say about this site, it wasn’t particularly terrifying either. I just liked the feeling of cuddling up in bed and trying to scare myself to the point where I couldn’t sleep. I’m sure many of you have done the same.
This is where things started to get weird.
I was starting to get frustrated by all the pop-up ads on the site but just as I was about to turn on my ad-blocker, I received a message from chat support on the site (yet another feature that I did not recognise).
My blood ran cold.
The message read: ‘Hi _______, glad you’re back!’
Somehow, the website knew my full government name and that I used to visit it. Bear in mind that I used a family computer to read these creepy tales and didn’t have a phone or google account at the time. And also note the fact that I was on incognito and there was definitely no feature that allowed users to create accounts to read stories.
At this point, my friend had gone to sleep and every time I rang her, I was met with ‘FaceTime failed.’
I was starting to get restless, so I decided to simply get rid of the tab and go to sleep rather than engage with any possible internet trolls waiting for me on the other side.
Within seconds, my phone buzzed with a notification from the website, even though there was no app feature- it was so strangely formatted too:
‘Come on, didn’t you miss me?’
I cursed under my breath and tapped on the notification, where I was forced to choose between two responses which read:
‘Yes! So much!’ and ‘No. Go away.’
I chose the latter as I started to grow intolerant but soon regretted my choice.
My phone vibrated and in all red caps, the message read:
“WRONG ANSWER. TRY AGAIN. YOU HAVE 2 REMAINING ATTEMPTS.’
As the fear set into my bones, I decided that the best choice was to be kind and compliant, so I chose the first option.
‘Great! Of course I missed you too! In fact, I’m on my way to see you!’
Now I’d completely lost it. I dialled 999 and waited for my phone to ring. I was not going to be the girl that was stabbed to death for visiting an old website. All I could hear was static on the other end before ‘Call failed.’
Tears welled up in my eyes as I kept getting multiple messages like:
‘God, it’s so cold out here.’
‘You still have that sycamore tree in your driveway.’
‘I can see through your room the same way that I could all those years ago.’
‘You’re so grown up now.’
‘I wonder how soft your skin is. I’ll make sure it won’t hurt too much.’
I caved and tried to reply but again only had 2 options to choose from:
‘Can’t wait to see you!’ or ‘Can’t wait to see you!’
I helplessly clicked on the first option and was met with
‘WRONG ANSWER. TRY AGAIN. YOU HAVE 1 REMAINING ATTEMPT.’
Through wracked sobs I clicked the only other option, knowing that my doors and windows were locked at least.
‘WRONG ANSWER.’
At this point, I’ve been staring at my phone for 10 minutes in disbelief, waiting for the worst to happen. I know most people would pass it off as some idiot playing a prank but I can’t, not when I can hear the scratching and humming at my door.
He keeps singing my name over and over.
Please just don’t click the link. It’s not worth it.