Top 10 Early Internet Scary Stories of All Time

In Karda. I remember citing those things were so difficult. It was they didn't really have like an example of it. There wasn't a Wow, we're really talking about how to cite your sources from a cd rum. Yeah, we're making grade A content here, so to site your Internet dorses you guys, here's what you're supposed to do. Oh no, I think we've jumped the shark. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle for people who may not know, like, I used to work a lot with Internet stuff and websites and blogs, and I used to make memes. Actually took a picture of a couple of things that I found the other day as I was cleaning my room, like of old boxes and stuff, of me drawing little the pre meme, a little Edwin drawing a pre meum. That's so cute, a pre meme. It was like I would draw them, take a picture of them, then fix them up and then they would look like hand drawn or how do you say gifts gifts or gifts gifts okay, gifts, and people would share them around Tumblr was amazing for us. Stumble Upon was amazing for it. It was like this whole culture. People would steal your stuff and you would be like, hey, give me a give me a link for that, and you would rank because back then it was so easy to take the number one spot. Then everything changed. But now I think things around the Internet, they hide a lot of things in plain sight, so they're still there. But along those things were the super creepy just either images, videos, games, and stories. Oh I'm excited. I'm excited for this throwback. I've been noticing that around Instagram and TikTok there's a ton of let me tell you about this fact, let me tell you about this scary thing. Yeah. So anyway, I came up with a list of there are some of my favorites in there and some other stuff that I found. So right now I'm gonna give you the official Scary Mystery Surprise Top ten early Internet Scary Legends of All Time of twenty twenty three. Here we go. Do you have any more things to add there? Of the week, So, there are quite a few here, and they're ranked in what I find the most interesting. Beware though, like some of these get really dark just I want to throw it out there. If you're sensitive to topics like suicide mutilation, I would don't get graphic with it at all, because that's not my I don't like that, but it did traumatize me as a kid. Also, depending on you don't get graphic with it, but I might get graphic with sound effects later. So I guess you've been weren't now? Remember these are just Internet legends, right, so take them for what they are legends. There's no confirmation that they're true or that they're not true. So I'm just gonna give you the list and then we'll see if you agree with my the way that I rank these. Starting with number ten, Polybius, the game that Never was. In Portland, Oregon, the government started running a psychology experiment through an arcade game. The game was called Polybius, and it started showing up in several suburbs of Portland. I remember this, Oh my god, why what God? Keep going? That's so weird. It's unlocking core memory. People started going crazy for this game. A whole commotion of people were fighting for not being able to play it when it was their turn. They just couldn't get enough of it. But They say that men in black would sometimes be monitoring the game from out of the corner, just hiding there, talking into their sleeves and the radios or whatever. Those who played the game would suffer through several side effects, including seizures, amnesia, night terrors, and hallucinations. However, after only just one month, the game disappeared and was never seen again. But still internet legend. Creep me out. Maybe there is a government conspiracy. There's a lot of them. Number nine, the Russian sleep experiment. Now this one we've probably talked about, or other people I've talked about, then they know all about it. This is a creepypasta. Basically, it's copy pasted story. I mean, that's where it comes from. Creepy pasaka from that. It took me forever to understand that, and that used to share it. It used to get shared around the internet back in the day. And if you didn't share it, we all know what would happen. A creepy cursed or something would appear. Something somebody in your family would die, something happened. I would never share it. I always risked it because I know how annoying it was to get spam back then with those chain emails, which thank god, I don't get them anymore from people that I know. Think about it, like they used to be everybody used to send those all the time, and then now no one sends them. And now if you get junk mail, it's not a creepy story. It's like somebody pretending to need money and Nigeria, or pretending to want to send you a large transfer. Oh, you've won the lotto, but you need to send me your bank account for first. This story talks about five tests subjects that were part of an experience meant about what happens when you don't sleep, which supposedly took place during the Soviet era. They were stealed in a gas chamber that would pump gas that would keep them awake, and they were under constant observation. About a week in, they started acting strange and their conversations would start getting darker, and as the days went on, they started to tear off sections of their own skin and muscles and pull out their organs. They did not want the gas to stop, like they wanted it on. They didn't know it, but scientists noticed that if the subjects would fall asleep, they would die. Eventually should I spoil it? Yeah, they all died. I really think people should read this story or at least get a summary of it, like a full story. It creeped me out when I read it. Number eight, the story of Lisa. Now this sounds creepy, all right, So honestly, I've already creeped out by just the name. Amy was a little girl who kept a diary and used to like to draw typical little kid stuff along with the normal demonic imaginary friend that everyone had at one point, and its name was Lisa, and she would write about her, like document her days and stuff. Amy one day takes her friend to school, like her demonic imaginary friend Lisa. But when she shows up to class, she's like here she is, her name is Lisa, blah blah blah. The teachers like, stop joking around, this was a serious thing or something like that, and she calls the dad and says, hey, your kid is acting weird or whatever. She gets in trouble, like she documents the whole thing. It's a diary style. She documents the whole thing. And eventually she gets in trouble because she went out at night, like in the dark, and she was like just went out on a walk with Lisa right by the way. She's a little girl, so she shouldn't be out there. So her dad pissed and he's Lisa's fake, get over it. So Amy then talks about her substitute teacher and her diary because her teacher hasn't shown up in a few days, and then her dad hasn't come back in two days, so she's that's weird, and that's what she does, she's documenting. But Lisa fortunately says that it's all right that now her teacher and her father are sleeping just like Lisa's daddy. Basically, they're dead. You know, in a way they deserved it, because what was Lisa doing to really bother anybody? Nothing? Nothing, nothing. They were just being jerks. So yeah, moral of that story, don't mess with imaginary friends anyway. Number seven The Rake. In the summer of two thousand and three in the northeastern United States, several events started hinting that a human like creature was roaming around at night, where witnesses, mostly around rural New York State, claim to have seen it, and it all peaked when an image was found. And you've probably seen it, have you seen the image. I don't know what am I looking at. That's the rake. It's like a cryptid, humanoid, human like thing. It looks like it's crawling, but it's yeah, it looks like it can stand up. Oh okay. I saw some other artists artistic depictions of it. You're not gonna like this. I hate that so much. There's something about the knees bending the wrong way that really just gets you. Imagine for me, I don't like it when people crack their knuckles. Gos it not that I don't like it, I just I get chills and weird, but it just it's like it's cracking its knuckles every time, but it's its knees. Oh, I'm getting like chills right now in my hands. I'm just assuming that's what it sounds like when it's walking. I imagine it like like walking like a spider, Like it can walk sideways like a crab. Eh Number six ted the Caver. It was a blog. This was probably the very first Internet legend that was categorized as a creepypasta ever, like the first, like when you try to really historically go back. This one is about this guy who explores caves. These people are called cavers. Now, I don't know why anybody would want to explore caves. In fact, it'd be my nightmare. They said that there's this really interesting feeling you get when you step into a cave that no one has stepped in millions of years. So these people light going underground, being by themselves in the dark, and just no thanks. This guy eventually finds a series of caves that leads him and a partner on an adventure, and it's trying to discover the source of these strange sounds and wind that he can hear from this hole about the size of maybe not quite like size of a head, but a little bit smaller. But they can tell you trying to light through it, that there's more to it. There's another side. It's like a little tunnel. So they try to drill through it and get to it, and eventually they do, and what they find on the other side is like nightmarish. Like when you're first reading about it, you're like, oh my god, what happened, especially considering that they say, oh, yeah, we finally got a crew together again. We're gonna go investigate. I will update this website as soon as we come back to give you guys the results and that's where it ends. Fuck. But the actual story of it, they explained what they found, like what the experiences were. They took a video camera. They actually have pictures of stuff, like they went to caves to take pictures of themselves there and stuff, and it looks so real that people thought it was real. There's this interview actually, this one guy who's really into creepy pasta and trying to keep the history of it alive. His name is Nick Bodick, and he interviewed the writer of Ted the Caver. They explains a lot of it in there. That's how deep, like I go into this stuff where I'm like, wow, I want to know who this is, who wrote this and what was their inspiration? Did they talk about what he saw up to a certain point it's fake. Like basically he goes he finds a cave. This is real, he says where it is and everything, and the story what he says he saw. It's like he crawls in like barely this after like months of trying to get to it. By the way, they're just scratching out. They're trying to carve their way in there, right and when he goes in. It's he's wow, I found this really cool thing. But he sees these weird like this weird egg shape stone and he's like, why does this sound like something's grinding, Like what is that sound? And he keeps going. He finds like drawings on rocks, and he keeps going, and eventually he hears a sound and he's like, all right, there's something in here, so he runs back or whatever. Then he goes in a second time with actually another friend goes in there and he refuses to go back, and he's just so panic that's he doesn't even want to talk about it. He's just nope, I'm not going to do it. And eventually, for I don't know. The third time, Ted the caver goes in for himself, and strange things happen, like the cord where he could communicate with the person on the outside gets cut off. He starts smelling this weird smell. And as they're escaping, like they're going up this rope, they're climbing back up and they finally make it to the top, they feel like something's pulling on and climbing up, so they cut the rope and then they hear you know, a thud or whatever, and that's where they said, Okay, that's when they leave it alone for a while. And then that's when they said we should probably go explore it again because he was feeling so weird and out of it. Him and the other person that saw the thing, they meet up at the same spot that they're just there to think about it from this urge to be there, and then they're like, we should go back again, and that's when he makes a post, Oh, yeah, we're going to go back again, and that's when there's no updates. I just told you the whole story. Damn it. No, that's good because I would have never looked it up. So at one point it turns into a fake thing. But back then, nobody knew about it. Nobody and a lot of people wanted to take credit for writing that story because it was an anonymous writer at the time, but it took a while for him to defend that it was his work and everything, and it was settled to it was that one guy who wrote it, and yeah, it's very interesting, but it was the first one that actually can be said that this is a creepypasta story. And then other times people come together to make up a creepy pasta and happened with number five slender Man. I knew slender Man would make the list. Yeah, this one was came out in two thousand and nine. From what I heard, it was a contest to come up with a creepy make up, a creepy monster or a creepy creature. And it's about this creature who's really tall, like a naturally tall, thin and wears a black suit. It's known for abducting, stalking, and traumatizing children. Well along with the booming social media era, like really started rolling because it was people would record themselves running like from nothing in the woods that they were Yeah, so people's kids. A lot of kids were recording themselves running over Oh my god, is slender Man. They would just run. There was this story that came out that this is why it became a little bit more newsworthy, which is really sad. But basically, this group of little girls said that they were going to go and go to Slenderman's mansion at one point. I don't know if you know about this, Mitchell I reason I've heard it before, but yeah, tell me more. Because there's also a Criminal Minds episode, So I might get the real story because I know there's a real story, but then Criminal Minds did an episode of it, so I don't know which. Okay, And this one, there's a group of three friends, actually two of them were friends, the other one was like an extra. A group of three friends that were somebody's left out. They want to have a sleepover because of a somebody's birthday. And they go and they plan, oh, yeah, we're gonna go find slender Man. But really in their minds are like, we need to kill this other person. So they hide a knife, they go out to a park during the day, and then they start stabbing one of their friends, one of those girls. It's disturbing, especially because they're young. I vaguely remember. And they were they doing it because they thought slender Man was real or something like that, like they could get to his house if they killed their friend or something like that. Yeah, something like that. I mean the girl survived, nobody died because in she was probably bleeding, like about to bleed out or something. But eventually she was found by a cyclist and then and the girls were charged for trying to kill somebody. Yeah, and if you created Slenderman and something like that happened. That would be tough. Like I understand, like creating lore whatever ted the caver. Yeah, that's are modern myths that you're talking about. That's where a lot of modern folklore is getting created, as on the Internet and creepy pastas, And I totally understand being a part of that, but it would be very tough to all of a sudden have your creepypasta folklore come to life like that. Yeah, some very troubled kids. Yeah, it's and I think about it too, Not that I have any stories that have gone super viral or anything, but always think of it, like because I used to get questions a lot about some stories, and there was used to be like, hey, could you tell me what this website is? And I used to respond like, oh, this website is not real, story was fiction whatever. They would never respond, but it was like the fact that they believed it to me was like it's cool because you believe it, but then imagine there was something more sinister with it, where like you have to cut off a finger in order to do this, and that's why you gotta be careful about the same time, like, just don't cut off your finger, man. Yeah, don't stab your friend. Yeah, there was some failing on the parents part and the fact that they didn't catch this delusion or mental illness for sure. But yeah, it would be really hard to still be the author of that story and have something like that happen. Number four. This one warning here, Okay, warning this is I don't get into details, but it's heavy stuff. Squid words suicide. What wait from SpongeBob correct what? Yeah, squid word died. So I don't know if we have any SpongeBob fans in here. Okay, what, I'm still in shock. I'm in shock. But supposedly there's a lost episode or a version of an episode that was never aired. It's like an unpublished episode that an intern at Nickelodeon found out about and told the internet. He tells a story of him so made up. Just like this is like everything else you've said so far, I can go along with there's like a little bit of truth, but like that sounds so made up that I had an intern at Nickelodeon found the last episode. He tells the story of himself back in two thousand and five, and he talks about how the animators would come up with lout titles to early previews like, for example, how sex Doesn't Work or another time titles just imagine, I just imagine a bunch of guys, like a bunch of just really just guys coming up with things like that. In this one, he was shown a title called Squid Word Suicide. So after hearing all these titles or whatever, he was just like, ah, okay, whatever, let's watch it. So they start watching, and it's about the supporting character. So for people who haven't watched it or seen know anything about SpongeBob and this one, he Squidward is practicing for a concert because he plays clarinet, So talking, what are we talking about here? So anyway, there's this squid that lives under the sea and he plays the clarinet and he's practicing for a concert. Completely logical, it'll get what doesn't seem believable, then you have to cite the CD ROM in your bibliography. Anyway, So he's practicing or whatever, and as we're watching images flashed on the screen, it's just like a little glitch like whatever. And one of the animators or whoever's they're watching with him, they're like, that's weird. So they go back frame by frame, and one of the frames there's just a picture of a dead child, like dead, like mutilated. Yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, really bad. Anyway, the episode itself goes into when Squidward goes to a concert and he gets booed by the audience and Bungebob was there and he's also booing, which if anybody has seen SpongeBob square Pants, he wouldn't do that, like the character, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. So he thought it something was really off. And as the story keeps going, another image kind of flashes. So they go back and they see another one. And by the way, these are very like they're described really I honest say, really well, but they're just described and not yeah detailed of just guts and just overall just a bad thing. Anyway. Yeah, the story just gets darker from there with actual Squidwards death with a shotgun. Yeah, there's no way they could get that far. They'd be like, oh, you mean you don't want this episode where where one of the main characters kills himself with a shotgun. Oh, it's like that wasn't part of the storyboard. I thought, I thought you wanted this episode we spent all this time, we spent months animating it. You don't want it. You don't want the spliced child mutilation stuff in here? What do you mean you don't want it? So the story keeps going where like one of the managers or one of the head people from there, the lead animators or whatever, contact and they're like, hey, here's this thing. So he's obviously pissed and he's who did this and they try to find it. Anyway, the story develops into that that's the creepy pasta. But when you read it, when you read that post or whatever, you're like, wow, I think that's what makes it cool because it could be real, but really it won't be, Like I don't know. Yeah, Also, what a creepy work environment if that's real, If someone could get that far and animate something that weird, that is not a healthy work environment. No, no, I agree, Yeah, which is scarier than the creepy, posy work environment. Super bad, those types of things. It's like you would go to school and you would like in real life, like you would just and people would be talking about, hey, have you heard of a squid word suicide? It's no, and you're not cool. If you don't, so obviously you go read it and then you're traumatized by it, and then you can talk about it and you can keep spreading the word. So yeah, that was guilty. I was guilty of something like that. But pure pressure. Man, they'll get you. They'll get you. At least it was a cigarettes or anything like that. But it was just childhood trauma. That's all. Not cigarettes, but childhood trauma. Number three. The black eyed children. Now nobody knows what these things are. Have we talked about that. It feels like, well we did because they were I think we mentioned it in the Pipe Place Market episode because there's a lot of ghost children as a pipe Place market. Okay, so these things they were children between five and they go into their early teens. They have pale skin and black eyes completely black by the way, like not the white party is black. And they come up to people's homes. So they go and knock you, okay, and they're there. Nope, Yeah, thank god, I'd never opened the door for anything or anyone. The story spread around the internet, but tabloids of encounters with them have been around since the painties, and people claim to have witness or had encounters with them where they go pull up to a group of children and they all have black eyes. Ghost hunters have claimed to see them. Still there's no definitive Okay, these are gonna get a little bit, don't no, right, But that just gave me the chills. The black eyed children just got me for some reason. I don't imagine it. Well, you're pulling up and you're just like, what would be weirder is if you're pulling up to a group of children and most of them are normal, but one has black eyes all in the background. I think it's creepy enough to go pull up to a group of children. That's true, Hey, kids, are you the actual creep in that scenario that one black eyed child ghost be like normal being like, what are you doing? Creep? Oh, we don't want your candy. The actual good thing trying to stop creepers like you to pull up to a group of children exactly. And in fact, you learn that lesson quickly is that you stop doing that, because you will just pull up to a group of black eyed ghost children. It's a cautionary tale for adults. Yeah, that's what it's always been. Don't be away from children, Get away from children. There's no reason to ask them for help or talk to them at all. Don't approach children, they'll just be ghosts. I never thought of it that way. Look, every day you learn something. That's what life is about. Number two, The Blind Maiden. Now, this is an internet game. Basically, it's a website that's down most of the time. So we don't pay your hosting or whatever. It's just down. It's just this is dead. That's dead website. But on moonless nights, right at midnight, if you just hit refresh the website that is in the cycles of the moon, and you have to have all the lights off too, so it won't I don't know, it just doesn't. It won't work. Otherwise you need to have the lights off in your own Yeah, the moon has to be full, the lights have to be off, and then your internet will work. Correct. Now, Once you're there, you'll see pictures of eyeless children again huh, flashing in front of you. And then there's a warning not to click anything by accident. Plus there's a lot of warnings there. Are you sure you want to go into this website? Just click no for safety and we'll send you right back to I don't know. Club, Penguin dot Com or whatever. I like to look at penguins at night. I was referring to the Disney shows for sure. Go look at pictures of Peing Woods at midnight. You're in the Penguins at midnight. I'm in the dark in the Dark Club when I think it's owned by Disney. It's like this. I don't know if it's still alive. I don't know what it is. It's like a game. But anyway, as you're looking at the website, like the silhouette that's moving in the background, it's just kind of moving, and then it starts coming up to you and it's the Blind made it now. I saved the hyperlink on here, and I was saving it so that I could look like actually type it in now the Blind Maiden seeing if anything happens. It should be not working because it's not midnight and it's not working. Failed experiment. Oh wait, what does the Blind Maiden do? Nothing? There's nothing there. Oh she just supposedly she's supposed to come out and take your eyes out and just way to bury the lead. Ywin. They're supposed to kill you, So don't do it. Don't go to the website at midnight on a moonless night with the lights. Chances of that happening by accident are quite low, but not zero. Number one, mister Bear, Oh, I've never heard of this. There's this No, this one gives me chills, Like it's the story of a TV show. It's called mister Bear's Cellar. Now, this show calling it a show might be a little overboard because it's literally a guy in this cellar recording himself and it's like really low res. It's just and he's in a bear suit. Looks like would this have been on like public access? Is that what it's supposed to do? It's supposed to be like it's a good thing you ask. This is supposed to be like one of those low independent here's the show that's airing, but it shouldn't be airing, And so what the story's supposed to be about, like a show like that, like it would have been on a local network or something like yeah, like that or like internet transmission. Again, these are all stories that are like, oh, by the way, this is what used to happen, but really they're written or they're just legends. Did this show really exists? Is it on a VHS somewhere we don't know. So the filming was really bad. It was basically the dudes just there and he's singing all these songs about vitamin C. He likes to play chess, he likes to go camping. There's kids in the show. Imagine like a Barney thing which used to creep people out. We should have used that for childhood fears, because at one point I was creeped out by Barney, you word like, because I have a creepy pasta that I read about Barney. Anyway, he would he'd like to drink orange juice like he was just one of those bears, like a friendly bear anyway. So he's chill happy most of the time. But if kids during the recordings, if they try to leave the cellar, he gets upset. If they try to if they don't do what he's saying, he gets angry. He's one of those do you want to see on their good side? Anyway. As the story goes on, you discover that he's a satanist or occultist who has actually kidnapped the children and then sacrifices them. What and yeah, the orange juice is actually a type of drug to keep them sedated. Huh, that's the those are the things that shaped my childhood. Wait, so is it all one episode where you discover that the kids are like No, it's like basically okay. When I first read the Screwpypasta, it starts talking about it as actually those variations of it too, of people who were auditioning to go to the show, or there might be variations of us. They were making up stories similar to this one where these kids are auditioning to go on this show, but the parents are like, I don't know about this, but really it turns out to be a child molester in this story. He's just going through, like the person who's writing it, just going through different episodes that he's seen. He would think that it's weird that it turns on his TV and it's there, and he would watch it and it's really weird, and just talking about what it's like, like what it's about, like that, and that type of narration, which I love obviously, it's the type of thing that nowadays I want to do, like with such a I wish I could have a story that would spread like that. But again, back then, it was a lot different, Like people believe things in a different way back then, but it was so easy to spread chain letters and stuff. Now it's now you're lying anyway. That's the official list of Scary Mystery Surprise Top ten Early Scary Internet Legends of all Time with twenty twenty three. Stay away from the Internet. You guys only listen to Scary Mystery Surprise and that's all. We'll take care of the Internet. Honestly. Out of all of those stories, the one I can't get over is squid Words Suicide. Like that, I'm like traumatized by. But also I know it's so fake because no fucking intern like writing an expose on a secret episode. No episode that's that fucked is getting made. Yeah, it would take too much effort and too much money. But still it's so disturbing. Yeah, and by the way, if you do want to read it, you can just look it up like that squid Words suicide and creepy Pasta and search for it. You're gonna read it. It gets a lot. I don't think you should read it, Michelle. I don't need to go any deeper than that, because also it just makes me mad because I'm so industry adjacent. I'm like, there's no way they'd spend money on a practical joke. There's just no way. Maybe the script would get written as a joke, but there's no way they'd animate it and get the voice actors in there. You're paying the voice actors to come in, no fucking way. Yeah they would, Yeah, just to make joke thing. No, a really graphic, scary joke thing. That's like all the Disney films that like have weird like when people are like, oh, sex is written in the sky, when Muphosa sits down or whatever, It's like, what's the point, what's the point of that? The illustrator is just yeah, I you know what would be so funny. Yeah, this will get them, This will get them sex. It's like what It's like a good, good job, We're gonna hire you again for this next one. Great. I know that I always take a little bit darker than what we plan show. Like I said, Squidwards suicide was the most traumatic one for me, I think anyway, I'm interested in knowing what the audience, what their first experiences with the Internet were. I'm very curious because I experienced it at a certain point, like a certain stage of my life, so it was very different have you experienced it when you were older or younger? I'm curious, like, what was it? Like? What did you Was it on the phone? Was it on a I want to know about your first time you guys, tell me all about it. I want to know where you were. I want to know what device you used. You're walking a line, you are walking a line. But yeah, what was your scariest experience on your new internet, on the new thing that we called the internet? Tell us that, thank you, Michelle, you saved me, no problem. I knew where you were trying to go. That's what you weren't quite getting there. And this is why I need scripts, Michelle, I get it now anyway. Yeah, so let us know. I'm interested. I want to know. So what do you think of the list? Was I off? Whether creepier things that I missed or agerone? I want to know what did I miss on here? I'm pretty sure I missed something. What are we going to talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I guess it'll be a surprise. Bye Seeah