Reader, I hope this finds you in a better way than I am now.
Not too long ago, I was just your average fan of strange nostalgia videos. Lost media, Creepypastas, rumors about old video games. I gobbled all that stuff down and asked for fifths. I’m 33 and my relatives, older co-workers and even some of my friends never understood my fascination, particularly with the ghastly stuff. There was just something intriguing about the often horrifically subversive spin on childhood touchstones. It was like professional wrestling. Sure, I knew Squidward wasn’t a serial killer but it was fun to pretend.
Now I think a bit differently.
There were several YouTubers I loved and never missed an upload from: Ben10dough69, Ghosts of Gamecube Past, 8 Brit. However, my favorite by far was Casper Cowler. The others were entertaining but Casper was in a league of his own. Sometimes the YT drama shit would bog down everyone else—GOGP dissed Ben10dough69 at VidCon and that led to a call-out war that lasted the entire duration of Casper’s lengthy Cursed Earthbound Cartridge arc—-but Double C was simply a storyteller.
Casper’s claim to fame was his three hour video about what “really happened” when we were watching Adult Swim as kids. 55 million views and counting. He also did “Remember Pizza Hut’s Buffalo Crust Bites? You Shouldn’t,” “The Hunt for Nickelodeon’s Maniac McGee Movie” and “Pikachu Can DIE in Pokemon Yellow????????” Some of his work I would consider Emmy or Oscar-worthy. It was that good.
That’s why when I acquired a strange port of Super Mario Sunshine from a local flea market, I had to alert the greatest digital filmmaker of our time. He had been looking for a copy for years. It was mostly the same game and there was nothing “supernatural” about it but the changes were offputting and kinda creepy. The durians found in the fruit markets were now lemons and Yoshi could swim. Very liminal (pretty sure I’m using that word correctly.)
Getting in contact with Casper was very difficult. He was a notoriously private person. It was widely believed he used a fake name as there was nobody with that name who wasn’t already accounted for. You couldn’t just send him unsolicited material. There was no email address on his profile and even if there was, his postings were so infrequent now, my message regarding my find would be buried by the time he logged back on. It had been months since his investigation into a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament that may or may not have taken place at the Mall of America in June 2003. Usually these breaks meant he was cooking up something long and major but this hiatus was twice as long as the span between “There Was Going to be a Real Shark in the Jaws Ride????” and his three part quest to find a scary Hollywood Video commercial from the late ’90s a handful remembered.
I must have devoured every Reddit forum even remotely pertaining to the community before I found a lead. Ol’ Casper was burnt out and had moved to a cabin to escape his fame. The only clue was a blurry picture of logs and trees. I knew that place anywhere. It was only 70 miles away. I frantically collected the priceless gem and sped off to the sticks. My wife was befuddled. There was no time to explain. Surely when I said “Casper woods Super Mario Sunshine,” she knew where I was going and what I had to do.
I must have driven 20 miles into the forest before I saw a stack of wood that resembled the image in the picture. I was about to meet a genuine celebrity and struggled to cobble together a speech. Pulling into the drive, I heard labored grunts coming from the backyard of the cabin. Still rehearsing my pitch, I circled around and found the man himself chopping firewood. Reader, I squeed.
“Mr Cowler?” I mustered.
“Yeah,” he monotoned in between two giant swings. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m a huge fan. I’ve watched all your videos five times. I come bearing something you’ve been seeking.”
“Keep it. I’m retired.”
“Retired?”
“Did I stutter?”
“But why?”
“I’ll tell ya why,” he placed the ax down. “I was a fool to trifle in stuff I ought not have trifled with.”
“But you just make fun videos about old N64 games and lost specials that aired once on the UPN in 1997! What could have possibly gone wrong?”
“You like Scooby-Doo?”
“Well, sure. Who doesn’t?
“Remember how they spent 30 years building a reputation of unmasking crooked small business owners who were dressed as mummies?”
“Yeah?”
“That petty stuff whetted their appetite. They wanted a real score. Three decades of rubber and—-“
“Actually they encountered plenty of real monsters in the shows that were on in the early ’80s,” I corrected, helpfully.
“What happened when they got to Zombie Island?’
“They, uh—”
“They fucked around and found out!”
“What’s this got to do with your retirement?”
“Guy calls me up. Says he’s got something he’d think I’d be interested in. A lost episode of an old show we all watched as kids. It was an orange tape but this tape wasn’t made in Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida. It was made IN HELL!”
“Oh, cool. I love fake creepy episode stories. What show was it? Aah Real Monsters? Ren and Stimpy?”
“Doug.”
I blurted out laughing. Doug? The whole concept of “scary lost episodes” was built on the foundation that some of the actual ones were nightmare-inducing. Rocko’s Modern Life was a fever dream, Pokemon had a real broadcast that caused seizures, even the toddler misadventures of the Rugrats snuck in some terrifying imagery every now and then. I liked Doug but there was nothing scary about Doug nor could anyone make Doug Funnie and his pals scary. He and the show were as milquetoast as you could get. This is a dude who once spent an entire episode pissing his pants over the thought of eating liver and onions. He ended up not having to do it anyway!
“What happens in it?” I asked, kinda mocking a man I was losing respect for. “Does Porkchop get eaten by a Nematoad?”
“No!”
“Does Roger kill Doug with a killer wedgie?”
“No!”
“Does….”
“No more funny guesses!” Casper growled as he slammed the blade into the soil, my egging only prodding the nerves of his clearly eroded sanity. “See for yourself. If you dare.”
“Wait, you still have the tape?”
“Yeah.”
“If it’s evil, why didn’t you get rid of it?”
“I did everything I could to get rid of it. It followed me everywhere, even out here. Broke it. Burnt it. Threw it away. Mailed it away. I once smashed it to bits on that there porch and didn’t take my eyes off the million tiny pieces for an hour. Watched pot don’t boil, right? Bullshit. I went into the cabin and it had fully assembled itself on the coffee table just in the time it took for me to turn around.”
By this point I was impressed by the charade. Real Casper Heads know he got his start as a pranker. Maybe he wanted to diversify his content and return to his first love. Perhaps this elaborate hoax was why he hadn’t posted in a while. It was probably going to piss off half his fans but I saw some humor in it.
“So whatta say? You want to take a look?”
“Sure, I’ll bite.”
“Ok. I just have one question: do you believe in God?”
“Sure.”
“You won’t here in a minute.”
Casper led me inside the cabin and procured the tape. It was there, orange as Sunny D. I was impressed by the production value of this scheme. He was really going all out. Casper gave me one last chance to back out but I wanted to play along. He placed the “cursed” cassette into the VCR that was set up in a side room. I asked if Casper would tag along for an encore viewing but was swiftly denied a watching buddy.
The video started off normal. The logos the company used at the time and era-specific previews splattered across the screen. Casper had certainly done his research. I was laughing at a joke on the All That trailer when the screen turned black. The next 22 minutes were pure terror. It was like the brainwashing scene in A Clockwork Orange. In my case, there was nothing pinning my head back yet I still couldn’t avert my eyes, no matter how desperately I wanted to. I left that chair a changed man. Or something like a man.
“How was the movie?”
“Is……….is that why Chalky is green?”
“Mhm.”
I fainted; the adrenaline keeping me upright had left my body. When I woke up, I was in a facility. This is where I spent the next 18 months of my life. It was only meant to be a year but my rambling about evil cartoons extended my stay. The horrible images that only I and one other man have seen will forever be embedded in my brain. I’m doing better now but I’ll never be well again.