”[Trigger Warning](#s “Graphic Violence, Self Harm, Suicide, Child Death”) “
I’ve loved horror movies for as long as I can remember. By horror, I don’t mean the ones that are nothing more than some sadistic man’s fantasy, where blood and gore are the main actors of the film. I’m talking about the ones that really try to frighten you. The ones that make you feel uneasy as if something is right there with you. The ones that make you afraid to glance over your shoulder into the corner of the room and see what might be lurking there.
I don’t really know why I like this type of media so much, maybe there’s something wrong with my brain that gets off by being scared, but perhaps there is something more. I don’t really know how to explain it really, all I know is, when I get that feeling of fear and uneasiness, even when it is only for a second, the world around me changes into a much more magical place and in those seconds the veil between reality and fantasy vanishes making suddenly everything possible.
This the reason I consider canon for my obsession or at least, that’s what I tell myself in order to avoid seeing a psychiatrist. this way I can still continue to see myself as a sane person… Which, for honesties sake, there are times that I believe I’m not.
Despite my obsession with horror and horror related subjects I am above all a skeptic and I never believed in the supernatural, although part of me always wanting to. I guess I was just like agent Mulder from the X- files you know? I’ve wanted to believe. I don’t know why was that though, it is quite stupid when you think about it, but I’ve couldn’t help to feel so disappointed by how boring reality was. it was never being anything more than what was right there in front of you. without any real mysteries to be uncovered. the world we live in is Just a magic-less place, boring and without anything beyond our mundane existence.
A depressing conclusion that lead me to a depressing existence, making me long for something more. So I did all that could do, I became obsessed. obsessed with horror.
Yes, I know perfectly well the whole point of any type of media is to take us on journeys to worlds beyond ours. so… why was my obsession so focussed on a specific genre? That my anonymous friends, is a brilliant question that, maybe my future shrink will be able to answer.
Anyway, as I got older, I’m not sure if horror movies became boring and less believable or if I simply outgrew them. What I am sure about though, is that getting that sweet uneasy feeling was getting harder and harder. Each new release felt like the bar was being set lower this meant that finding something to satisfy my cravings had become almost impossible. Until a week ago there is…
Up until then, all my free time was wasted researching for something to appease my hunger, often finding nothing at all or worse, disappointment. A month at passed since I’d came across something remotely interesting, and my growing hunger was becoming unbearable. it was all I could think about a cure for my permanent itch. I searched everywhere, blogs, forums, dedicated sites and I even tried using different search engines, just to ensure I wouldn’t missed any wild gem.
Desperate I went, to 4chan hopping the community could provide any guidance. /tv was the first place I ran too, but all the suggestions I’ve gotten were the same popcorn flicks that couldn’t even keep me awake during their 90 minute runtime. Frustrated I moved my business elsewhere, to the infamous /b board.
Here, a fellow anon, prompted by my post where I vented my frustrations, replied me with a link to a website that, according to him, might finally put an end to my quest.
The URL appeared randomly generated, ending with the even more infamous .onion suffix. I wasn’t dumb enough to blindly click on a link, so my first action was to google it, sadly this brought me nothing. The second course of action was to pry for more info from my the fellow anon, but I got only one reply from him “guaranteed terror”.
I not going to lie, was afraid to access the site due to all of those dreadful stories that we all heard about the deep web, so for a good while I stared at the message, mulling over the different scenarios of going through with it. My first fear was of getting my identity stolen, the other was to stumble upon something far darker than I was ready for. Snuff I would be able to endure, but something involving kids? Nah! I would get scared for life. My mind then decided to recall all stories of guys getting their rock off by trapping people into seeing or downloading that type of nasty business and before you’d know it, you’d, have Chris Hansen in your kitchen and a crew from the FBI waiting outside. Still, despite all that, my mind kept trailing off toward the possibility of finally getting my fix.
I resisted for as long I could, but in the end, I folded like the like drug addict this sick need had turned me into. So I did what we all knew I was going to, I download tor, pasted the link URL and clicked enter.
My heart raced as the paged loaded, with me leaning forward towards the screen and flinching whenever it glitched. It won’t surprise anyone that as soon as the page appeared I was filled with the bitter taste of disappointment. It was my own fault though. During those brief seconds of anticipation, I allowed my expectations to rise to impossible heights, so anything other than disappointment was never going to happen.
The layout was as basic as you get. A single page with a simple black background and a white header stating in all capital letters - what you are about to see is real, see it at your own peril.
Under the headline was a list of clickable links, that would lead me to the perilous stuff. The warning gave me no pause, I was a seasoned player and pretty much all the content I’d seen lately had the same message. Although, in retrospect, this was the forbidden web so perhaps I should’ve taken a few moments of consideration.
Without giving it a second thought, and with little to no expectations I clicked the first link. Almost instantly, a new window popped up and after 2 seconds off buffering, a video started to play.
“Case #1 Philadelphia” it read in a white, times new roman font. I leaned in closer towards the screen anticipating the horrors the dark web had prepared for me. The clip started like all “real movies”, with footage from a shaky handheld camera recorded in a wooden area during the dark hours of the night. “Boring!”I shouted at the screen, already feeling the dread of the upcoming disappointment. The snooze fest stretched for a while, with nothing happening for the first minutes. It was the typical heavy breathing noise coming from what seemed to be a man who have had an overly generous dinner and was now regretting his late evening stroll through the park and It was filmed of course, POV style.
Nothing spooky, nothing out of the ordinary nothing at all really.
In my head, the wobbling stroll continued for an hour, although the video tracker only marked 6 minutes, during which the only uneasy feeling I was getting was from motion sickness. Finally, the scenery changed, kind of… Leaving the thick woodland behind, the man entered a clearing, where at first glance there wasn’t anything special about it. He continued further into it, and as he did something came to focus.
Bulging from the ground was a mound of dirt and the first thought that glanced my mind was grave. Freshly filled by the looks of it. My instinct was to rush towards my mouse and place the courser over X. This reaction however was not because I was scared, although I was but not for the reasons I’d hoped for. At the time, my brain immediately related grave with body and for some Freudian reason I’m not sure about, body with sex. As I said, I was a bit freaked out about being on the dark web, and as most of you know, stories about it always revolve around some grotesque kink, and this my friend was not something I intended on having in my memory bank. Thankfully, for the time being, there was no body, and neither was any freaky stuff and because of it, I was finally intrigued.
The man approached the mound inspecting it from all sides. Nothing special about it so far but something did feel wrong. I leaned forward as the man placed the camera on the ground, about 3 to 4ft away from the grave. The man then revealed himself to the camera, slightly overweight and with a very unflatteringly bald crown. Might as well shave it all off, I thought chuckling. He said something, but it was completely unintelligible. The sound came off as static only random words could be understood. This was most likely a post-production type of edit, but to my ears, it sounded real enough thus making my interest rise even higher. The man gestured as he talked, reminding me of a toddler when trying to tell something of the most importance but his vocabulary hasn’t reached that height yet. Finally after his incompressible, yet important monologue, he turned towards the grave.
Honestly, I had no clue what was going to happen, but from all the potential outcomes this had to be the worst. The man simply knelt in front of the mound, staring at it in silence. Strange stuff no doubt, but far from engaging let me tell you that, and after a few seconds my attention began to stroll away from the clip. I was about to call it done, when finally something happened, although it wasn’t Anything exciting by anyone’s standards. Using his bare hands, the man started to dig into the mound.
This time there was no static in the sound and you could hear the man’s grunts with each shovel. His rhythm began to intensify and in less than t minute he had become more mole than man. He grunted furiously as he dug, throwing dirt over his shoulder, some of it hitting and shaking the camera. Then his grunts became static again. This is it, I muttered between my teeth already preparing for something to happen. But again, nothing came. After a few seconds, the static disappeared and grunts resumed their normal gruntiness. All the while The man kept digging at that same furious pace. Then came a new sound, the rustling of something slithering through fallen leaves. It lasted only for a minute before the static appeared again and this time it came with something else. A moving shadow that appeared in and out of frame for only a fraction of a second. The man kept digging, either unaware on simply ignoring the happenings behind him.
The strangeness of it all was ringing the right notes for me, and I leaned in just a bit, my mouth salivating with excitement. Feedback shrieked through my ears making me wince in pain, and in front of me, the forest began to swirl as if someone had thrown the camera into the air. I cursed at the screen, infuriated by the cheap trick. The camera landed after a few moments showing us the night sky. The grunting had stopped and silence ruled the night.
I was still recovering from the first jump scare when a loud screeching howl blasted through my earphones. This one was also so loud I was again forced to close my eyes in pain. I threw my headphones aside, not wanting any more of that. This isn’t horror, this is just a cheap trick, a toddler can do this? Where is the intrigue that’s going to keep me up at night? After the howl, the screen became black and the video stopped and that was it. So that’s what I’ve gotten as a solution to my itch and I’m not going to lie, for a moment I honestly thought that there was something there. But now, as so many times before, I was getting the empty feeling of disappointment.
Leaning back into my chair with my hands brushing the back of my head, I stared at the ceiling thinking of how could’ve been so gullible. It happened every time, I would get my hopes up, just to then end up 3 steps further back from where I started. I was upset by the outcome but furious for having fooled myself into believing that this might have been it… To think that I was afraid of going to jail due to whatever I might had encounter, most of all I was overwhelmed by embarrassment. I was a grown man god dammit, why was I always getting fooled like a child, was I going to start believing in Santa as well? My self-commiseration was interrupted when a new window popped in the bottom right corner of the screen. It was a chat box and someone had written a message.
“you didn’t like it?” Pestilence300 had written.
A cold chill ran through my spine and for the first time in months, true fear came over me.
“What the-” I started, but before I could finish another message materialised in the box.
” It looked like you didn’t like it… want to try again?” my whole body froze, and could feel my heart pounding furiously as if desperate to escape my body.
Was there someone spying on me!? I thought while my hand jerked toward my webcam.
Damp with nervous fear, my fingers slide along the cam’s cable as I tried to unplug it, taking me 3 tries to be successful. As I did the chat box flashed again, signalling a new message.
”It’s not like I care if I see you or not… Wanna try again or what? I promise that you like the next one. Pinky swear LOL” I was being watched, I thought as my mind was bombarded with all those nasty tales from the Dark web.
I knew I should’ve kept quiet, why couldn’t I control myself? My heart had increased its tempo and my stomach turned into a vacuum making me want to puke it out. The air became thinner around me, making me sure I was going to pass out. My mind was going into full red alert, shouting Danger at every second. What was I to do? Millions of thoughts ran through me ,too many to process and thus creating an incomprehensible cluster of information. I cannot panic, I said to myself failing to realize I was already doing so. I tried to close my eyes and take a breath as they say in all the self-help books, but that made things much worse. As soon as darkness came about, the imagery that was running through my head became far clearer.
But then, amidst the chaos, came enlightenment. I haven’t done anything wrong so there was nothing to fear from grabbing my phone and calling the police and ask for help.
My restless mind, which still hung in the background of my conscient thoughts, did not agree with that premise. Nothing could ever be simple, can it? I could call the police and ask for help, but what was I really supposed to say? This guy hacked me while I was watching a movie on the deep web and now I’m scared? that didn’t sound good, how was I to justify my presence there in the first place? “I swear officer I’m not into snuff or kid stuff, I just wanted to see a horror clip” yeah I’m sure they would believe me right away, Normal people use Netflix to watch movies, not the dark web. But I’m not normal, am I?
“SO!? “ the chat box flashed again, making all my thoughts vanish to focus on it again. Should I reply? And if I do what would my reply even be? For any sane person there was just one possible answer - no, thank you, but again, I’m not normal.
The urge started to rise again within me, and the more I stared at the screen the more I wanted to write YES. I mulled over the previous clip, it has been without a doubt a ripoff, but what if that had been intentional? What if it was nothing more than a simple triage? Maybe whoever was doing this wanted to see if I got what it takes to go deeper. Why would anyone go about doing it? My fleeting sane mind prompted, but I ignored it, that was a question for another time because Right now there was only one thing occupying my conscience.
The sick hunger that was in me grew stronger by the second, having gained almost full control of my actions and thoughts. My own safety was now secondary and all that mattered was the urge.
“What a freak!!” I screamed chastising myself for knowing how inevitable my answer would be.
”show me!” I wrote ashamed for being so weak and unable to control my own impulses. Nothing happened for a few moments, leaving me staring at the screen like a child waiting for her favorite cartoon to come on. The chat box flashed again, bringing in a new message.
“Are you sure? It’s gonna change your life ;)” it read and my addict brain went berserk screaming with rage for delaying its fix. My hand slapped the desk with enough force to send a wave of pain all the way to my toes, was this guy mocking me?
“YES” I typed in all caps, of course, ensuring pestilence300 could see both my determination as well as my frustration.
“Good, fasten your seatbelts you are in for a treat, see you on the other side :D” the chat box flashed again, giving me just a few seconds before disappearing and giving way to a new window. Moments later, a video started to buffer.