“That One Web-survey Horror Game” by Roto Mola August 28, 2020
Content Warning: surrealism, assault, creepypasta
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(If you're sensitive to themes of molestation, however slight, please do not read this story.
There are also no real persons involved except myself, and it's non-explicit.
This story was originally supposed to just me musing on raru.re about a random and surreal experience I had, but it felt too long and may have been inconsiderate to just make a series of posts. I've tried to format it the same way for effect.
If you can relate to the content or just have some feedback, feel free to reply as normal in the thread. Enjoy!)
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So I managed to lose a lot of sleep last night. Lately I've become particularly fond of those bait-and-switch type horror games. You know, the kind that start off as something innocent and fun, and then it ends up slowly spiraling down into something strange and terrifying?
This time it took the form of a survey you might find on the web, like the personality tests that took off during the late 90s and 2000s.
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The questions and answers were normal radio-selections, and they started off innocuous enough, asking things like “Do you live in a quiet neighborhood?”, “Have you ever owned a pet?”.
Of course I already knew what I was getting into. Sure and soon enough the questions started to get more personal, and more obsessive. “Have you evr shared a passionate kiss with Someone?” “do u or have u ever known anyone named 'Eliza'?”.
The horror aspect had begun. The spelling was getting weird. The capitalization was becoming inconsistent.
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Every time I clicked my answer to a question, the next one to appear would be stranger than the last. As far as I could tell from the content, the author of this survey was obsessing about a lost loved one.
Sometimes they weren't even questions, rather they were just statements with varying degrees of sensibility and maybe a True/False response.
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Eventually things did seem to get a little strange. I felt a little weird as I was getting close to the end. This game was... different from other horror games.
I thought there was some kind of sound coming from my laptop as I was reaching the final parts of the survey. It was distracting. I was having a little trouble focusing.
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The last message of the 'game' finally appeared. For some reason my eyes just wouldn't focus on it, and there was definitely some kind of ringing sound coming out of the speakers. Was it some kind of auditory-induced hypnosis?
I always liked to believed that I carry a lot of willpower. Last time I was in the hospital and put on a sedative, during the recovery period I tried to stand and focus for as long as I could to see if I could fight it. I thought I could fight something like this as well. I think I was winning...
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I mustered all of my concentration to read what the message said, and finally the letters coalesced into a barely coherent form. I saw that it was just one short line — something I should have expected. Something obvious.
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'LOok beHInD YoU'
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That's when I felt the sensation of something cold and clammy on the back of my neck... Someone's fingers brushed against me.
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I whipped my head around... but nothing was there. I was just lying alone in my bed with my laptop and nothing but the wall directly behind be. I thought I heard a voice: 'Made you look.'
To be honest, I was impressed. For a game that relied on some kind of hallucination, the response was excellently timed.
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When I looked back at my laptop though, I found that it had somehow turned off. Up until that moment I was quite amazed that an auditory suggestion could pull off something like this, but now I was quite annoyed to know that a browser app could do something like this to my computer.
That really shouldn't be allowed. It took some time to boot everything back up and browse back to the game.
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Of course the survey wasn't there anymore. Instead what was displayed was a link to some source code that, while I assume it was supposed to be the game's programming, perhaps as a gift for finishing it, it honestly just looked like gibberish to me.
The game must have created a cookie or something so that it would show me something different the next time I tried to access it. At that point I was just done. I wasn't going to bother trying to decipher this. It was fun while it lasted.
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However the strangeness doesn't stop there. What's strange is that none of this actually happened. This was all an elaborate dream that my brain concocted up last night. There's no actual browser game, and that's why all the details of it are vague and fuzzy.
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My dreams are unusually vivid. They have a tendency to create vast, intricate worlds with surprisingly complex characters. I often find I don't want to leave these places before I wake up. I've fallen in love and had my heart broken at dawn more than once.
This wasn't my first rodeo, and I sometimes wish I could at least take a part of these dreams with me into the real world, which leads me to my next point...
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Remember that part of the dream, where at the end of the survey game that sound plays, and then something comes out... and touches the back of your neck?
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If you were expecting an auditory hallucination here, I'm sorry to disappoint! I don't know how to do that.
Instead what actually happens is far worse.
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As far as I could tell, I was the only one ever in the room that night. I can hear anyone coming or going, and there really is just a solid wall behind me. I have keen awareness of my surroundings, even when I'm asleep.
But when those fingers touched my neck during the dream, a part of my brain was telling me that they were real.
And I couldn't react. I couldn't wake up.
Because at that moment... My body was in sleep paralysis.
👻