On November 9th, 2004, the game Halo 2 was released on the original Xbox.
Most of the guys in my friend group who still have time for video games will tell you that it was the best one and I’d be hard pressed to disagree.
The campaign was probably one of the most badass things to come out at the time, and I’d say that it’s aged pretty damn well over the years. When I want to sit down and play through a classic Halo game, I’ll usually reach for 2. Don’t get me wrong. I still love the other games in the original trilogy. They’re iconic for a reason and while I can’t say the newer games live up to the hype, I also can’t bring myself to hate them. Maybe it’s the nostalgia talking but it’s still Halo, the series I grew up with. And even if it isn’t as good as it used to be, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
Halo 2 was the first game I ever got to play online and I was on just about every night. Usually I’d just play with some of my friends, we’d murder the shit out of each other and hang out over voice chat. Sometimes we’d join some of the public servers and play with other people, but not often. The people you meet on Xbox Live have a certain reputation and it’s for good reason. We didn’t always feel like putting up with it so we just kept to ourselves.
Most of the time, I was playing with a guy named Miles Chester. Miles and I had known each other for the better part of our lives. I honestly don’t remember a time when we weren’t friends.
He was an absolute beast with the Battle Rifle and since you can find tons of them all over every map, he was always a threat. Me, I tried to make use of the SMG you always started with. I usually picked up a Plasma Rifle to dual wield since it paired well with the SMG.
Now, if you’re familiar with Halo 2, then you might’ve heard of ghosts. Not like the alien gun motorcycle that’s part of the game. I’m talking about something a little more in line with what most people think of when they hear the word ‘ghost.’
People were speculating about them a lot a couple of years after the game came out, and they even claimed to see them in the games sequel, Halo 3. According to the people who believed in them, ghosts were unidentified players that would just sort of spawn in during an online multiplayer game.
These unidentified players would behave erratically. Usually, their character model wouldn’t move, so they’d just glide around with their gun aimed at the ready. They’d be invincible to all damage and have unnaturally good aim, firing perfect headshots faster than the game should realistically allow them to, even when you were standing behind them and they could even throw plasma grenades perfectly so that they’d stick to you every time, no matter where you were, killing you instantly.
Most reports of ghosts were probably just hoaxes made by people looking for attention, but there’s a few that people swear are legit.
If you look around online, you’ll probably find something about the Ghost of Lockout. That’s one of the few that people believe is the real deal. Supposedly, a couple of guys caught some video of this random, unknown player joining their game. He didn’t show up on the scoreboard, and had all the weird traits I described above.
After they posted the video, a bunch of other people claimed they’d had a similar experience playing on that same map.
The map in question was called Lockout. It’s an icy research facility or something with three floors and winding halls. It was one of the more popular maps out there, and admittedly, it was one of my favorites too.
Naturally, people came up with a bunch of theories trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. A few people suggested that the ‘ghost’ was actually just another player who’d tried to join the game and gotten glitched. They were probably moving and playing normally, but the game had messed up loading their character in or something, meaning that no matter what they were actually doing, their character model was displayed just gliding around, facing the same direction.
Their ‘supernatural’ shooting and grenade skills were explained away as either the mystery player just legitimately being that good, or more likely, another glitch.
Halo 2 had an infamously rocky development history, and as good as the final game is, a lot of people have admitted that behind the scenes, it’s basically held together with the coding equivalent of duct tape and gum. So the multiplayer glitching out really bad online wasn’t exactly the craziest theory out there. The ghost easily could’ve been the perfect storm of internet lag, and glitches.
However other people had some more colorful theories. I remember seeing a whole forum back in the day suggesting that the ghosts people saw were caused by the developers attempts to code bots into the multiplayer. The theory was, they’d been working on bots during development, but ultimately scrapped them when they couldn’t get them to work right and that somehow, you could activate that code in the game to re-enable a bot. Since it was unfinished, the animations and AI weren’t exactly functional, which explained the way it glided around and had perfect aim.
Then, there were a lot of people who just said the whole thing was just a hoax made up by a couple of guys looking for some attention.
Me, I didn’t really have much of an opinion on the whole thing at the time. It was just sort of one of those internet oddities you sometimes found floating around. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t.
I think I showed the video to Miles sometime in 2006, we laughed about it and went on with our lives. I don’t think either of us thought we’d ever have our own ghost encounter and if you’d told me what would happen back then, well I’d have said you were full of shit…
We saw the Ghost of Lockout for ourselves in August of 2006. Miles and I were both around 17 at the time. We’d just graduated high school and would be off to college in a month or so. We’d both gotten into the same school, so naturally we’d made plans to room together and were in the middle of getting our stuff packed. Neither of us had ever lived away from home before, so I guess I found it a little comforting to know that I’d have a familiar face nearby.
Miles and I spent a lot of that summer playing Halo together. I guess neither of us thought we’d have much time to just chill and hang out once the semester started properly, so we were trying to enjoy it while it lasted. Everyone around us seemed adamant that college was going to be some stressful, crushing hell and kept drilling it into our heads just how much work it would be (real encouraging) so I guess you can’t exactly fault our thought process.
I remember it’d been a Saturday night. We’d both stayed up late, chilling in our respective rooms as we played. We’d spent some time online, getting shot at by strangers and after one guy had a meltdown and started screaming every slur under the sun at us, we figured we’d had enough and switched to a custom game between the two of us. I picked Lockout because it was always a fun map to fuck around on and we loaded in.
I don’t really remember what Miles and I were talking about as we played. I know that he’d headed straight up the sniper tower to grab the sniper rifle, just like he usually did. Meanwhile, I went looking for a plasma rifle to pair with my SMG. It didn’t do me much good. He still got the first kill when I finally came for him up in the tower.
When I respawned, I went looking for something with a little more kick than a plasma rifle. I thought that maybe getting a needler (a gun that shoots exploding spikes) would help me deal with him, so I went after that and I nearly got killed again, when I had to dip into the open for a moment in order to get to where it spawned.
Miles landed a hit on me that wiped out my shields before I could get into cover again. Killing him was going to be difficult.
I vaguely recall telling him that he was an asshole for camping in the sniper tower, and he’d just laughed and told me to do something about it. I managed to find a needler without getting any more trouble from Miles, and was planning the best approach to take him down when I heard him swearing over my headset.
When I asked him what was wrong, he asked me how the hell I’d gotten a grenade stick on him. I told him I hadn’t. I was on the other side of the map.
Running back to where Miles had been, I saw his characters body lying near the bottom of the sniper tower. I took the sniper rifle off his corpse, before looking around. I knew that there were some explosive pieces of scenery at the top of the sniper tower. Maybe he’d blown one up accidentally? Judging by the blackened scorch marks around the tower, they’d obviously been detonated. Maybe he’d mistaken that for a plasma grenade blast?
I started heading up the sniper tower and as I did, I saw another character moving around on the other side of the map. At a glance, I thought it was Miles and zoomed in to try and snipe him. Although it only took a moment to realize that the player I was looking at wasn’t Miles.
For starters, his character had green and brown armor. This one had pure teal armor. They also didn’t seem to be walking. They just floated along the ground.
For a moment, I wondered if someone else had joined our game. I checked the scoreboard and didn’t see anyone else but us. When I looked again, the teal stranger was gone.
I mentioned what I’d seen to Miles and asked if he could see anyone else on the scoreboard. He told me he didn’t. I debated between going all the way up the snipers tower or trying to look for the other player before deciding I might be safer in the tower.
I kept climbing until I was looking over the map. I could see Miles down below, probably going for the energy sword. But looking at my motion tracker, I could also see a yellow dot nearby, growing closer to me. A yellow dot like that meant that someone on my team was coming towards me. But this game was supposed to just be the two of us. Miles was on the other side of the map and I shouldn’t have had anyone on my team!
I turned around to head down the tower again and as I did, I saw the teal figure gliding up the ramp.
I shot at him with the sniper rifle. It should have been a perfect headshot… He should’ve dropped dead. Instead, I just heard the frantic sound of Battle Rifle fire before my character collapsed.
A notification popped up on screen. Usually, it would tell me who had just killed me. But instead it simply read:
You committed suicide.
I told Miles I’d just seen the guy again as I spawned back into the map. By this point, both of us were starting to get a little freaked out.
The teal character dropped off the top of the sniper tower and started gliding across the map again. Miles said he saw him nearby the instant before he got killed again.
A few minutes later, a plasma grenade came out of nowhere and stuck to my characters face, blocking my screen before I died. I didn’t even see the guy anywhere near me. I’m pretty sure it just came out of the wall.
The notification popped up on my screen again.
You committed suicide.
It went on like this for the next several minutes… We’d spawn in, and whoever the hell was in the game with us would just sort of appear… Sometimes, he’d glide past us, and we would just die. There was no indication that he’d even stopped to acknowledge us, save for the sound of gunfire, or the perfect blue arc of a plasma grenade.
I know we’d both shot at him. Hell, I straight up watched Miles unload his battle rifle into the guys head before he got killed. He didn’t even seem to take any damage. When you get shot in Halo, either your shield flashes, or your character bleeds. This guy did neither. It was like fighting an omniscient brick!
He was facing away from me when he killed Miles, but that didn’t stop him from ‘throwing’ another perfect plasma grenade right into my face again… And that was when I decided that I’d had enough.
I told Miles that this was bullshit, obviously, whoever was doing this was playing with some sort of cheat and I wasn’t about to just sit there and let him get away with it.
So I fought back the only way I could. I ended the game.
Miles called me on the phone a few minutes later. He was just as pissed off about the whole thing as I was. Neither of us had any idea what had just happened, and neither of us even thought about that stupid ‘Ghost of Lockout’ people had been talking about. Our consensus was that it was just some loser, crashing custom games and cheating for an easy win.
We both kinda just shrugged it off and made some plans to meet up again the next day. I wished Miles goodnight, and we hung up.
I wasn’t quite ready to turn in for the evening though. Hell, I had nothing to do the next day. I’d had enough of Halo for a little while, but I figured I’d put something else on to pass the time and take my mind off the complete bullshit that had just transpired. Judging from the fact that Miles seemed to still be online, he’d probably had the same idea.
I switched to a different shooter. An old James Bond game, 007 Nightfire.
I started up a new game and played through the opening level, where you provide covering fire for a French agent. Everything ran normally and I got invested enough to stop thinking about the jackass who’d crashed our game earlier. I cleared the first level and moved on to the second one, where you have to infiltrate a party at a snowy castle. All these years later, and I still think it’s a pretty cool level. I haven’t played Nightfire in years, but I still remember the giant courtyards of the castle and the patrolling guards. You could approach the level a couple of different ways, but the game rewarded you for the stealthy approach. For example, you could just walk in guns blazing, or you could jump down into a passing truck to skip the first section of the level and infiltrate the castle without being noticed. You could also disarm guards you snuck up on and disable the alarms.
I always liked the sneaky approach, it felt like more of an accomplishment to pull it off flawlessly. I started off the level by using the wine truck to enter the castle courtyards and from there, began to sneak around. I disarmed and disabled some of the nearby guards as I made my way closer to the castle doors. I was doing pretty good too, but I also more or less had the infiltration down to a science.
I’d made it to a section of courtyard where there’s a couple of snipers waiting overhead along with some searchlights. I’d already gone through the office to disable the searchlights, then used the stairs to make it up to where the snipers were. I took all three of them out from the doorway with my own sniper rifle, so I knew that the courtyard was more or less completely unguarded. I was just a short jog away from the door to enter the next part of the level, where you infiltrate the party.
Then, I heard a gunshot. Sniper rifle fire. I recognized it immediately. But something was wrong. This wasn’t the sound Nightfires sniper rifle made… The sniper rifle in this game had a sort of ‘crunchy’ sound when it fired. This was a booming gunshot that had a lingering echo to it. It sounded more like a real rifle.
It sounded… Well, like the Halo 2 sniper rifle.
James Bond hit the ground and the iconic blood trickled down the screen.
I’d just died.
I stared at the screen, confused for a few moments as the last checkpoint loaded. I was back on the truck, having just snuck into the castle courtyard. Maybe I’d missed a sniper up top? I was sure I’d killed all 3 and I knew there were only 3! Maybe it was a fluke? Maybe one of the other guards had wandered over and killed me?
I brushed it off and kept playing, going through the courtyard again. This time, I made it to the office when I heard the same gunshot as before. Bond died and as he did, I saw a telltale trail of smoke hanging in the air.
You see the same effect in Halo, when you fire the sniper rifle… I’d never once seen anything like it in Nightfire.
I stared in disbelief at the screen for a few moments, before getting mad and trying one more time. I didn’t opt for the stealthy approach this time. I went in guns blazing, gunning down guards on my way up to the castle gates.
I got through them and kept shooting. I took the same route I usually took to get up above the snipers and I went after them with an assault rifle, before sweeping the area to make sure that nobody else was there. I was clear! Completely clear! Then I heard the same rifle fire as before, and James Bond dropped dead again.
What the hell was this?
I swore and threw my controller onto the bed before getting up to turn the Xbox off, before staring at the blank TV screen.
Was my game glitching? Maybe some of the files were getting mixed up? Was that even a thing that was possible? I didn’t know, but that was just about the only explanation I had! I’d never once seen anything like this before and I’d never heard of anything like it either.
In the silence of my room, I heard something faint nearby… Like a voice, whispering something. Looking around, I could’ve sworn it was coming from my Xbox headset. I picked it up and put it too my ear, but there was nothing. Only more silence. Maybe my parents had the TV on downstairs? Yeah, sure. That was probably it.
I thought about turning my Xbox back on, and trying another game to see if I still had some issues. Maybe something that wasn’t a shooter… But I was already good and pissed off. I didn’t exactly feel like playing anymore.
I left the Xbox for a while, and just got ready for bed.
I met up again with Miles the next day at his place. We ordered some pizza and put on a movie and honestly, I was kinda glad we’d opted for that instead of more video games.
I did ask him if he’d noticed anything weird with his Xbox after we’d stopped playing the other night and he’d just shrugged and said he hadn’t actually tried playing anything. I’d thought he’d still been online after we’d called it a night, but maybe I was wrong? I didn’t think too hard about it, and told him about what I’d seen on Nightfire the night before, how that random sniper kept killing me and how I could’ve sworn they were somehow using the Halo 2 sniper rifle.
Miles listened intently as I spoke, nodding along before he finally said:
“Sounds weird as fuck, man. Maybe there’s a support line or something? Hope your Xbox isn’t damaged or anything!”
Yeah… So did I…
We never played any Halo that night. Neither of us even suggested it. We watched some movies, smoked a bowl and eventually went down to his basement shoot some pool. It was a pretty good day, all things considered.
We talked about driving down to the mall the next day to hang out, and when I left for the evening, he looked the same way he always did… Well… Mostly… I dunno.
Maybe it’s just me, but looking back at it, I wonder if I saw something in his eye. Something kinda… Shit, what’s the word… Melancholy? Like, his smile faded a little too fast. Maybe it’s just me… Maybe…
When I got home, my parents were out. I threw on some hot pockets for dinner, packed up another box of things for college, then went to my bedroom to crash and see if my Xbox still worked. I debated trying Nightfire again, but I didn’t really want to chance it. I went with something else instead.
I had a copy of Tetris Worlds I threw in, figuring that it was the safest possible choice. It booted up just fine, and played about as well as it ever had. I mean, it was Tetris, no amount of bells and whistles were really going to change that. After the first few minutes, I got hopeful that maybe everything was fine and my Xbox was working okay.
Then, my screen went black. The green light around my consoles power button flashed red.
Fuck me… I’d heard about that, and it usually meant that your Xbox was toast.
I swore under my breath and tried to turn the console off. But no matter how many times I hit the button, it wouldn’t do it. The red light stopped flashing and solidified. I hit the eject button, and I could hear a loud grinding noise from the disc tray. I could smell something burning inside. Shit… This wasn’t good.
I tried hastily to think of some way to save my Xbox. I spotted the power cable nearby and pulled it out of the wall. That should’ve shut it down. But no… The red light remained. The grinding sound didn’t stop. My TV screen flickered to life again. I looked up.
I recognized the Halo 2 HUD and a starting SMG. The screen depicted a warm brown room, but I could see snow blowing past the camera.
It took me a moment to realize just where I was.
This was Lockout.
I picked up my controller and looked around. Behind me, I could see the mountain ranges in the skybox, and the rest of the map. I checked the scoreboard. It was just me, by myself. This had to be some sort of custom game. I tried to pause the game so I could quit, but the menu wouldn’t come up. I only had one choice.
I had to play.
I ran up a nearby ramp to an area across from the sniper tower, and jumped down into the central part of the map to make a dash for the sniper rifle. As I did, I saw a teal figure gliding up the ramp towards the sniper, and immediately turned to my right.
There was a gap in the floor nearby that led to a bridge between a room beneath the center of the map, and another tower. I managed to jump down to the lowest level to grab a shotgun, before following a ramp that would lead me up the side of the sniper tower to try and flank the Ghost.
I was killed by a perfect headshot the second I stepped out into the open. A notification on the screen popped up.
You committed suicide.
I spawned back in almost immediately, and went looking for a new gun. I could see a flash of yellow on my motion tracker. I decided to try heading down to grab the energy sword. My first effort ended with a plasma grenade falling out of the roof and sticking to my head. When it killed me, the same notification from before popped up.
You committed suicide.
My heart was racing faster than it should have. My Xbox was still making that loud grinding noise. I made one more attempt to reach the energy sword before getting killed by sniper fire. Again, the notification appeared.
You committed suicide.
I put the controller down and stepped back, watching as the game continued. The Ghost glided towards my immobile character before shooting him in the head. The notification popped up again.
You committed suicide.
I spawned back in, before almost immediately being killed again.
You committed suicide.
I wasn’t putting up with this shit. Whatever this was, I wasn’t going to just sit there and take it! I didn’t know how this was happening, but I knew there had to be some way to make it stop! I tried turning off the TV. No luck. It wouldn’t let me change the channel either. I went behind my TV and took out the plug. When that didn’t work, I took out the AUX cords for my Xbox.
The game kept going… Somehow, it just kept going… The same notification piling up in the corner.
You committed suicide.
I was running out of ideas. I sat still for a moment, watching my character get slaughtered over and over again… And as I did, I noticed that the notification had changed.
You will commit suicide.
Another death. Another new notification.
When you are alone. You will commit suicide.
What the fuck was this? I spawned back in. I died again.
Your life will mean nothing.
Another respawn. Another death.
They’ll say they miss you. But no one really will and you’ll know it.
Another respawn…
I realized that I could hear something aside from the sounds of my character getting killed. A low, whispering noise. The sound of movement.
I looked around before realizing that it was coming from my Xbox’s headset and I stared at it for a moment, my heart racing faster than it should have before I finally picked it up… I could hear a man crying.
I could hear the sounds of movement, and equipment being dragged around. The sound reminded me of the sound the garden hose in my Dad’s garage made when you dragged it along the floor.
There was the sound of a car door opening and closing before the man seemed to sigh. I heard him speak… Just a few words. But they made my blood turn to ice.
“Fuck it…”
It wasn’t the words that scared me.
It wasn’t even the fact that I recognized the voice. It was the fact that it was my voice. It was a little deeper, but it was still mine.
I heard a car engine start, followed by the sound of someone adjusting the seat. I heard myself sigh. It was a weary, exhausted sound. The car engine idled. I could hear myself breathing. And that was when I finally realized just what I was hearing…
This was the sound of my suicide.
My eyes returned to the screen. The same message appeared over and over again.
You committed suicide.
I screamed and threw my controller at the TV as hard as I could, shattering the screen and knocking it off its stand. But it didn’t stop the sound from coming through my headset. That just continued on until finally it slowly faded out into silence…
I told my parents that I’d been trying to pack up my Xbox when I’d knocked the TV over. Then, I’d dropped my Xbox in the panic. Everything was broken beyond repair and they told me that if I wanted a new one, I was going to have to pay for it. That was all just fine by me. I had bigger things to worry about.
Miles’ Mom found him in his bedroom the next morning. He’d hung himself in his closet, using a belt. She said that she found his Xbox on in his room. He’d been playing it just before he’d taken his own life.
I went to the funeral a week later… I watched my best friend go into the ground. And I told myself I’d never touch another goddamn video game after that.
But… Life goes on.
In my second year of college, some buddies invited me over to drink. They’d been playing Halo 3 and invited me to play… And I was already a little out of it, so it wasn’t that hard to convince me to give it a shot. Nothing weird happened. I just had fun.
A few months later, one of my friends and I beat the campaign together and I ended up digging out some of my old games to play.
It was a while before I dared touch Halo 2… But eventually, I ended up picking it up again. I just didn’t play the multiplayer.
I met Robin, my future wife in College. We started dating around the end of my third year, and in 2015, we got married. We had our son a year later… My little man, Adam. I was doing alright!
I never forgot about Miles but… Well… As time went on, the tragedy just seemed to get further and further away. I told myself that he’d probably just had some demons I’d never known about. It was horrible what had happened to him, but unfortunately these kinds of things do happen. People go to a low place, they don’t see a way out and they make a mistake they can’t take back.
I missed my best friend every day, but I kept moving on. No matter how tough things got, I kept moving on.
When I lost my job last year, I figured I’d still be okay. It’s been hard to find something else but I’m still looking. Even when me and Robin started fighting, I told myself that once I got out of this rut, it would all be okay. I didn’t handle it so well when I found out about her and one of her co-workers though… Maybe I shouldn’t have hit the guy. I mean, he was fucking my wife. He had it coming! But it made the divorce a lot harder…
They’re saying that I probably won’t get to see Adam. They don’t listen to me when I tell them that I’m a good father! I’ve even tried to show them, I’ve even took a temp job. It’s warehouse work and doesn’t pay much but it’s something!
It didn’t matter though… They said it wasn’t enough. Now there’s child support payments, rent, food… And not enough money to go around. I don’t really see a way out anymore. No matter how hard I look, I don’t see a way forward.
My savings are gone. I can’t afford the house I’m living in. The bills are piling up. My contract is almost up and I don’t know what I’ll do next.
I’ve been thinking more and more about the night that Miles died… I’ve been thinking about the things I heard coming from my headset. And I wonder if Miles heard something similar…
Maybe he did. Maybe he saw what was coming and decided it wasn’t worth it. Shit… Maybe he was right.
I’m trying to keep my head up. I really am. But every day, I think about what I heard that night and I get to wondering…
Maybe it would be better for me to just head out into the garage one night, take the hose, key the engine and sleep.
Yeah… Sleep…
Fuck it…