I’m sure that if you’ve been on the internet long enough that you’ve probably seen these videos titled something like “[X] moments that live in my head rent-free” or “[X] moments that I can’t get out of my head”. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, these videos are basically compilations of “iconic” moments concerning a character that’s from a movie, show, or game.
Anyways, I’ve been getting a lot of these kinds of videos recommended to me recently. Some of the characters I have recognized, while a lot of the others I haven’t, but overall, I tend to try not to click on them. The only time I had was about a week ago, because the character in question was from one of my favorite movies. I gave the video a like after I watched the entire thing, which is probably why these clips kept popping up for me.
One night, while I was laying in my bed, I lazily watched some random video on my phone. The room was completely dark with the exception of the phone glow, illuminating my face. I know it’s probably not the healthiest thing to do right before bed, but I was bored and just couldn’t fall asleep. None of the videos were interesting enough to me though. I continued to scroll away through countless posts, looking for something new, something that was interesting. I reached the bottom of the page. Again. I sighed and refreshed, ready to start the process all over again. From the top. But I didn’t need to scroll any further. As soon as the page reloaded, the top video instantly caught my eye. What got my attention was the fact that the thumbnail was completely black, which greatly contrasted with the colorful and bright pictures that many of the other videos had. The video was also titled:
“Zældör moments that live in my head rent-free (PART 1)”.
My first thought was:
“Who the hell is Zældör?”
As stated before, there have been some of these videos where I haven’t recognized the character. But I mean… “Zældör”? Curiosity, as it always does, got the best of me, and I clicked on the video.
The video started off exactly like how the thumbnail looked, complete and utter darkness. I watched the screen for a good fifteen seconds before I realized that there was some slight movement going on. I turned the brightness of my phone screen up all the way, and while it didn’t help that much, I could at least see a little bit. What I saw was a dark room. Occasionally the scene would fade out, and another video of a dark room would fade in. In the final clip, there was a large window as well as a sliding glass door. The camera was pointed towards the window, and I could see that the outside was even darker than the room. A few more seconds passed, and nothing happened. I started to get bored again. I checked the amount of time left on the video, which showed 10 minutes. “10 more minutes of this crap?” I thought to myself. I was just about to give up and turn off my phone, when I spotted a slight difference. Behind the window, in the dark, there was what looked to be a pair of two, tiny, white dots, horizontal to each other. I knew for a fact that those weren’t there before.
Still confused, I continued to stare at the two dots. The more I looked at it, the more the dots started to resemble eyes. I could even start to make out a lumpy inhuman silhouette that surrounded it. Here’s a screenshot that I took:
I chuckled. Was this someone’s poor attempt at making a scary video? It looked like the eyes and silhouette were sloppily drawn onto a still picture of their living room window that looked out onto their backyard. The title of the video didn’t even make any sense. Was Zældör supposed to be the “monster”?
I clicked off the video, slightly disappointed, and went back to searching for something good. I refreshed the page, and was met with yet another black thumbnail video and this title:
“Zældör moments that won’t get out of my head (PART 2)”.
While I was slightly annoyed, I still clicked on the video, wanting to see if this one was any different. The only main difference was that the video was taken from the top of a staircase now, pointing downwards to the bottom. “Zældör” was there again, but this time the silhouette was poking its “head” around the corner of the wall at the bottom of the stairs. I did notice that Zældor’s face was slightly more detailed, though you couldn’t really tell since everything in the video was bathed in darkness. I clicked off the video. I knew it wasn’t real, and that “Zældör” didn’t really exist, but I still felt like maybe I shouldn’t watch these kinds of things right before bed.
After closing the video, I tried to find something that wasn’t scary, and as luck would have it, I did. It was a painting video with some relaxing commentary. An excellent choice to fall asleep too. The nice bright colors of a well-lit art studio were certainly a nice change from the dark and bleak places that I saw in the previous two videos. An ad started to play, so I clicked onto the comment section. I might as well see what people have to say while I’m waiting. This was the first comment that I saw:
“Just a friendly reminder that Zældör is always watching you”.
I nearly dropped the phone out of my hands. I looked back at the screen as a million questions filled my mind.
What did those weird videos have anything to do with this one?
Was this some kind of internet meme that I’ve never heard about?
What the hell is going on?!
Determined to find out what “Zældör” was, I exited the video, and went to the search bar. I didn’t even need to type anything for results to come up.
“Zældör, king of the new world”
“How to precongulate like Zældör?”
“Who is Zældör?”
I clicked on the last result and found a video with an unfamiliar man talking about Zældör. But he never actually explained anything. He just rambled on about how Zældör will be “both the destroyer and savior of our world”. My brain was beginning to hurt. Nothing was making any sense. I clicked onto the comment section again in hopes of finding answers. But they were just as, if not more, confusing.
“Zældör lives in my head rent free and I can’t get him out please help me”
“Can we just appreciate the amount of precongulation that Zældör does?”
“Just a friendly reminder that Zældör is always watching you.”
I scrolled down further, feeling more and more sick at every single comment that I saw.
“Zældör is best I love Zældör”
“Let Zældör into your mind, and he will let you into his new world.”
“All hail Zældör, destroyer and savior.”
The comment replies weren’t any better. All of them just repeated “Zældör will be king” over and over again.
I had even more questions then before.
Did my phone get hacked?
Was this because I clicked on those videos?
What the hell does precongulation even mean?!
I was beginning to become more and more creeped out. It might seem ridiculous to you, but when you’re alone, in the dark, and see stuff like this, you might feel different. I went to the app settings and clicked on my watch history. Sure enough, all of the videos that I watched were there.
“I know,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just clear my history and it’ll stop coming up.”
So that’s what I did. And it worked. I even tried searching up Zældör again, but nothing about him came up. It was almost as if the videos never even existed. I sighed in relief, before opening up a writing document on my phone to type everything down. I couldn’t just pretend this didn’t happen. I would share this with the world. But as I was typing this, I received a text message from an unknown phone number.
“Zældör doesn’t forget”. The text was in blue and underlined, which meant that it was a link to… something. Now I know it’s not the best idea to just click on random links, but I felt like this was somehow important for me to see. Even though I was scared, I still wanted to find out what was going on. So I clicked on the link, and it took me to some unfamiliar website. The only thing there was a video, titled:
“Zældör now lives in your head rent-free (PART 3)”.
Before I could even think about what that meant, the clip started to play. Like before, the video showed some dimly lit room in a house. For this video, it was taken from the inside of a room, pointing towards a door that was half open, with darkness on the other side. This time the video had sound, which was in the form of someone breathing heavily. There was no sign of Zældör. Yet.
As I looked closer, I realized something.
The door in the video looked exactly like my bedroom door, that was right in front of the foot of my bed. It had the same posters I did and in the same spot too. I was freaked out now and exited the website entirely, before returning to the writing document to put this all down. But even though the video was gone, I could still hear that same raspy breathing, as well as the sound of a door creaking open. I lowered my phone enough that I could see my bedroom door behind it. I swear I closed it before getting into bed. But it was now open. Exactly like in the video. The only difference was that in the video there was nothing behind the door, but in my room, I could see two white beady eyes, peering through the crack, staring directly at me.
Suddenly, all my thoughts of fear vanished, and they were replaced with new, and better thoughts. Thoughts that told me that Zældör will make everything better. Thoughts that told me what precongulation was. Eventually, the one thing left in my mind was Zældör.
Zældör will be king.
