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Myst

This was sent to me via Facebook today and while it's a good read, I highly doubt that it's real. The Facebook user that sent it can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002283361656

And his youtube page is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/aitrusdni

Edited on 5/21/11 at 2:30 AM: He sent me another message and uploaded 3 additional videos which I have included at the bottom of this article.

Here's the story he sent:

"Hi, you don’t know me but I have something for you. I was going to post this on 4chan but I saw your blog on stumbleupon a few days ago and got your contact info instead. I’m just afraid that if I posted this on /x/ the thread would die and my story would go unsaved. I know you say most of the stuff on your site is fake but I hope you post this anyways. Besides, I’m not sure how much longer this computer is going to last without shutting off and I need to give my proof to someone else in case something happens to me or my computer. I’ll probably send this to a few others as well, just in case. Here is my story:

I had happened across a YouTube video about a Myst speed run a couple weeks ago and it interested me. I figured I could do it faster so I started looking for my old copy of Myst Masterpiece that my dad had given me when I was younger. I searched everywhere for it but had no luck. So, assuming that I had misplaced it, I drove over to my parent’s house and searched there too. No such luck. As I was driving home, a bit bummed that I had lost my copy of Myst, I saw one of those buy-sell-trade places that usually carry video games, books, DVDs and the like. I decided I might as well stop since it was on the way and everything. It was a pretty average sized store set amid a small shopping center with a grocery store and some other shops. As I walked in I noticed that it was empty except for one employee, despite the fact that it was pretty well stocked; they had everything from original GameBoy games to new PS3 releases. As I browsed the PC games I realized that even though there were a few copies of Myst 3 and 5, there was no Myst. Hoping for some dumb luck, I asked the guy at the counter if he had seen a copy of the game recently.

“Hang on, I think I have,” he said, walking towards the back. I waited a minute and when he came back I was pretty excited to see that he had a copy of Myst Masterpiece in his hands, the exact version that I had once owned. “I’m not sure if it’s been tested yet. If you want I can still sell it to you and you can return it anytime this month if it’s not working.” I quickly agreed since it was such a short drive anyways and paid him the 5 dollars.

When I got home and popped open the jewel case, I realized that I just bought my OWN copy of Myst back from this guy. My dad’s initials were right there on the inside of the case, just like I remembered from my childhood. Now, my mom is pretty well known for donating my old stuff to Goodwill without asking so while this wasn’t impossible, it was definitely strange. My dad used to put his initials on all his old computer games, and it was for sure his handwriting, so I know it’s not just coincidence either. A little annoyed at shelling over money for something that used to be mine, I popped the game in and installed it. A few quick adjustments and I was ready to play.

I thought I’d try just running through to practice. I stalled on the fireplace passcode but I remembered it pretty quickly and practiced punching it out a few times before finishing my run. When I got to second try I thought I’d record my run just to see how much the video capture might slow down my progress. I quickly found that fraps doesn’t recognize Myst as a game (since it’s so old) so I just had to set my camera up on a tripod in front of the screen. I started it recording, ready to see how my first official time but instead something odd happened. As I ran through, I flipped up all 8 switches but when I got back to the first one, it was switched down. Obviously I have video proof of this which I will upload to YouTube. What was really strange was when I flipped the switch back down, the secret compartment refused to open, despite flipping the switch back and forth a few times. Naturally, I went back to check the other switches, because something weird was going on. Video capture takes up a lot of space on my SD card so I turned the camera off to explore. I wandered the main island for about twenty minutes, finding that about 30% of the time, the switches I returned to were not in the position that I left them. I thought jokingly to myself that perhaps Sirrus and Achenar didn’t want me to find the white page, even though I was a bit bummed at the time, thinking my game was glitched so that I couldn’t do the fast win anymore.

I went to bed after that and didn’t play the game for a couple more days because I had some homework due after spring break ended. When I started playing again that weekend, I decided to just replay the whole game for the sake of nostalgia. Starting out, I wasn’t recording anything, but had my camera handy. I started up a new game and just sort of pretended that I had never played it before. I explored the island, read Atrus’ note to Catherine and started to slowly piece together the puzzles, even though I remembered most of them. Regardless, I started a new ‘Myst journal’ to write down and sketch all the important clues because that what I did the first time I played. The first weird thing I noticed was that I could view the Ti’ana grave marker. Please note that I am playing from a Myst Masterpiece disk that my dad bought for me years ago. Ti’ana’s grave is only viewable in RealMyst, which I do not own. Seeing her grave there freaked the hell out of me, especially since the zoom in on it was so… out of place. It’s like someone swapped the RealMyst shot into my game; it seems pointless to even provide a screenshot for it since it would just look like it was from the newer game. After finding the grave I was a little on edge and decided to stay away from the ghost switches for a bit so I headed into the library to browse the bookshelf. When I got into the library I saw the red and blue pages next to their respective books and decided to go ahead and add each one and see Sirrus and Achenar’s attempts to win me over to their cause. First I approached the blue book and opened it up; gratefully, all I got was the usual blue static. I got the same thing with the red book, so I went ahead and added the red page. After the ominous ‘you just added a page’ music, I cracked the book back open and waited to see Sirrus. Instead I got a repeat of what I saw before I added the page. Startled, I clicked away from the book and turned back to Achenar’s book. I added the page and opened the book to find the same thing happening. All blue static; no voice, no face.

MARIO

Mario's first appearance was in Donkey Kong, released in 1981, and he has been in over 200 games since then, making the Mario Brothers franchise the most profitable game series in the world. It stands to reason then that there would be good Mario creepypasta out there somewhere and again, I'll leave it to the reader to decide if the story is real.

"MARIO" is a 'Super Mario World' hack posted on popular ROM site SMW Central. The story is written by a user of the site named Adam and the ROM patch was uploaded by a user named M A R I O though the latter account no longer exists. The original ROM can be downloaded here (though I haven't personally tested it): MARIO

The following is Adam's story.

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(Note: This is a true story, and sums up what was going through My mind as I was playing this, and I had no idea I was about to be bullshitted the way I was when I played this and I can say it is by far the creepiest hack I've played. If you were on IRC you would have heard me talking about it as well, but anyways it's late at night, and I don't have a lot of time, and I need to get to sleep, so this is all I have time for...)

So, it all happened, on tonight of all nights. I was bored, obviously contemplating what I thought I could do to waste time as I chatted with the people in #smwc. We had good times, and shared a few laughs together. Out of boredom, I decided to patrol the "Hacks waiting to be moderated" section. Seems that we had quite a bit, 33 if I recall correctly. The first few hacks I saw when I sorted them by date were a couple really horrible ones with bad screenshots to boot. Naturally showed these hacks to the centralites currently on #smwc. We were laughing at how bad some of them were, but then I got to a hack called "MARIO". Just that, nothing more, nothing less. The description seemed quite odd, as if some Japanese hacker was trying to translate the original plot of Super Mario World into English and failing horribly. I showed this to kieran and he started laughing at the description, it reads as follows:

"As you play the role of Super Mario plumber, verify that you are beautiful Purinsesutozutouru again Bowser kidnapped the evil king. It is your job to save her! This hack includes six levels of very long."

I simply dismissed this as someone trying to act Japanese and release a crappy hack with some edits, or so, that's what I thought this was, at first...

Curiosity got the best of me. I decided to download the hack. Not knowing what I was in for, since the single screenshot of the hack was the title screen with nothing but the letters "MARIO" from Super Mario World's title screen. I thought it was a little odd how there were no dates or anything either, as hackers usually place their names and dates on the titles to mark when the project was started.

So, when I opened the hack, I was greeted by 2 files. One called 3007014, a simple .txt file 27 KB in size, and the IPS file, simply named "MARIO". For some odd reason I wanted to see what the author of the hack had to say, but I opened the hack in Notepad but there was nothing but indistinguishable symbols and letters and punctuation, sort of like how when you open a rom in a text editor like Notepad. Seemes like the author just completely copied his ROM to .txt form, though I could be wrong. Taking a closer look, at the top of the .txt file mixed in with the gibberish I find the only thing that looks like English there. Here is a piece of what I found:

Luigi's Mansion

(You won't find this picture in the game but it was the original back drop for the "Game Over" screen that was scrapped for something a little less frightening.)


I'm sure everyone's heard of Luigi's Mansion but just in case, here's a recap.

Luigi is finally the star of his own 3D gamecube game. After receiving a strange letter from his brother Mario, Luigi travels to a mansion that he thinks he has won in a contest. When he arrives at the mansion he is greeted by mad scientist, Professor E. Gadd who explains to him that he just met, and lost, a man with a red hat. He then explains that the mansion had just recently appeared and is haunted by ghosts. He equips Luigi with a flashlight and the Poltergust 3000, a vaccum-like ghost container that resembles something from Ghostbusters, and sends Luigi on his way.

When it comes to graphics, Luigi's Mansion, though not quite as groundbreaking as Super Mario 64, has it's share of impressive effects. When it comes to dynamic lighting and attention to detail this game was pretty ahead of it's time. The shadows cast and areas lit by Luigi's flashlight behaved very realisticly and the movement of ambient objects affected by the Poltergust were extremely convincing. Fabric would stretch, fires would die from lack of air and small objects would race towards Luigi when using the vacuum. Shadows and highlights could be traced easily to their sources of light as through they really existed. And that's part of what makes this story so strange.

If you played the game before you may remember the telephone room. It was a small, simple attic room with a ringing telephone that you could answer. However, if you answered the phone and waited for a lightning strike, you could see something a little too creepy for a children's game in the back of the room. The shadow of Luigi's body, not touching or connected to the floor in any way, appears on the back wall and ceiling of the room, as though Luigi had hung himself.

Below I've outlined the shadow as best as I could to show what parts of the body are visible. I can't tell if the shape on the right is his arm or the Poltergust. Even if it is a glitch, it seems strange that it's the only glitching shadow area of the game.

I'll let you decide for yourself what the shadow really is, but don't forget about all the other creepy stuff you can find in pretty much any Mario game.