The internet is a weird and haunted place full of moments that make you go
"What was that all about?"
Or worse...
"Oh god, I hope that's fake."
One Reddit user asked:
"What is the creepiest unexplained thing you have ever come across on the internet?"
And listen, I'm gonna level with you, I wrote this article at 11 at night sitting in a dark room. I've read some things, I'm a lil bit traumatized, my faith in humanity is currently ... strained. So strained.
Strained like Thanksgiving-pants-button kind of strained.
But I filtered out the truly awful and I sincerely hope you all do not read that thread for yourself if you have anxiety or ... like ... wanna sleep again ever.
I gotta go cover all the cameras on all my devices now.
They Don't Know
As a teenager I stumbled across a website which looked like one of those live cam sites, but then I noticed most of the people weren't engaging with the audience, and they were all kinds of people. Old people, kids, people of all different ages, ethnicities and whatnot.
I clicked on a random livestream of some oblivious teenager doing her homework and the people in the comments were saying stuff that made me realize she didn't know she was being livestreamed, nor did anyone else on the site.
It seemed to be some weird website of hacked webcams or security cameras where the people had no idea about it. It was creepy and I've never kept my webcam pointed at me when not in use since.
Who Answered?
Delete Call Me GIF by Black PrezGiphyI rang my Mum on WhatsApp to do a Video call. When she answered, it wasn't her. It was a man with his shirt off, middle aged (50's) with glasses on sitting on a couch. It sort of looked like a hotel room.
He had a foreign accent and said
"Yes ? Hello? Who is this?"
I hung up immediately and rang my Mum again. She picked up and she was on camera walking around near a pond.
It was absolutely bizarre and has never happened again. I'd love to know what happened.
I was just a bit frightened, I guess, because I didn't dial her number. I hit "Mum" as it's stored in the phone, so it's not like I could have misdialed.
South 32
So I decided to just type in something like mmmmmmmmmmmmm.com or something like it. Coca Cola used to (or still does) own a url like that. But just the same letter maybe 13-15 times. It came to a choppy video of a movie called South 32. It was cryptic and edited to just say "South 32" over and over again, for 4 hours.
So I tried a different letter. Same thing. And another letter. Same thing. The same website popped up for maybe 20 different urls in that type of sequence.
I tried submitting it to the internet mysteries subreddit but it didn't gain any traction and I don't believe it works anymore. This must've been 4 years ago now.
The short movie and a mining company were the only things I was ever able to find.
It is very strange, but I don't know if it's strange for a purpose or just for its own sake. It almost feels like something a paranoid schizophrenic would put together if asked to make a movie.
South 32 is a company made by a website squatter. They take the names of websites for big companies, then make gross/scary stuff on the websites until the actual company pays them for the domain name, in this case it's them trying to take money from the south 32 mining company. The movie south 32 was made with no budget in a short amount of time to make it look like they aren't domain squatters to legal courts when they really are.
South 32 was a debunked "online mystery" that amounted to one dude who made a living on cybersquatting on various websites and seemed to be trying to fleece an Australian mining company for a domain with their name attached.
- Xenton
Animal Abuse As Revenge
A lady on gaiaonline got mad at me in chatterbox. So she went on my profile and spammed it with gifs of someone beating a dog.
I remember seeing the first one and crying a lot because at the time I was like 11 or 12. She sent like 10 before I got her blocked and later banned.
I had to manually delete each comment from my public profile. Each gif was from a different point in the same video. It was really sad and I didn't go back onto my pc for a long time.
That's Not Me
My girlfriend at the time texted me a link to a local news article involving a trial taking place that day. At the top of the article was a picture of my girlfriend sitting in the court room with a group of others.
I expressed surprise since she hadn't mentioned going to court.
I was shocked because I thought she definitely would have told me. Then we would have had a conversation in preparation for that day since I'm in the legal field. This is literally what I do.
She responded, "That's not me."
We never did find out who it was.
Cereal Is Watching
Watching I See You GIFGiphyWhen I was a kid, I had some cereal that had website to visit to enter to win some prize or something, I don't remember the specifics. Anyway, when I entered that site into my computer, it didn't take me to some kid friendly site or anything, it took me to a blank white page with just the text:
"We have been watching you."
Cover Your Cams
I didn't come across it, but once when I was around 15 someone hacked into my computer. This is 100% true and i tell it as a cautionary tale often. I had a ftp file server at the time because I was in a long distance relationship and we would send stuff to each other via the file server.
One day I noticed someone had downloaded all of my photos from the server. I called my boyfriend and asked him why he was downloading stuff he already had. He swore it wasn't him.
I ignored it until several days later a screen opened on my desk top that was a window for my webcam and was on with me on the screen, and a chat window opened.
The person told me that if I didn't take all my clothes off they would use my mom and dads credit cards to buy all sorts of things. Luckily my parents were super cautious of using their credit cards on the internet (this was like 2002) so I knew he didn't have their card #'s.
He had used the ftp server to upload this chat/video program, and who knows how long they had been watching me.
I freaked out. I unplugged my computer and unplugged it from the internet and didn't turn it back on until I was prepared with fancy firewalls and security for the ftp server.
I tried calling to police and my internet provider but no one could help me. And that's how I learned hundreds of ip addresses and what they were, I watched my firewall like a hawk.
I never heard from the hacker again, but it sure scared the sh*t out of me. Now I cover my webcams.
Very Very Frightening
One time I was listening to my music play list on Spotify and the song stopped and I heard a staticy woman voice go:
"If anyone can hear this please respond, we don't have much time, they're.."
and it cut off and my music started playing again, I don't have ads and it wasn't in between songs it was in the middle of Bohemian Rhapsody when I was playing Rocketleague.
The Dog Survived?!
I was just scrolling through Facebook and came upon a video of a dog sleeping outside. It looked like the security camera of someone's front door. Few pairs of shoes beside the door. Door mat in front of the door. Set of stairs leading up to the door, then another leading up to the next level.
A few seconds later, a freaking leopard comes up the stairs and stops dead in its tracks when it sees the dog. I think...where the fk do leopards roam?? Leopards are something I could only see in a zoo, so I was intrigued.
And I was honestly expecting the door to open and some dude sh*t his pants because a freaking leopard is right outside his door. I'm waiting for the funny thing to happen.
It doesn't.
The video was just the leopard inching closer and closer to the dog, hunting.
I heard that somehow the dog survived, but f*ck whoever posted that video, it will haunt me forever.
