Welcome to Gaia! ::

Here's A few Vids to start off:

The Grifter

The Grifter

*Can't post video

FEAR THE PIGS, LOVE WOLFMAN

Freaking Gaia isn't working with me

There's supposedly a secret embeded message or something

PAGE 13

Hello, /x/.

Those of you who have been here for some time doubtless know of pages 11 and 12. Just insert 11.html or 12.html in the URL to access them. Now, I'm not much of a computer person, so exactly what these pages are for is a mystery to me. But they do have a purpose, I am sure. These pages are no oddity. They are no less earthly than pages 1 to 10.

But did you know about page 13?

I discovered page 13 in a thread a few months ago, which gave screenshots of the page and a complicated set of instructions to access it, which I will not post here for the sake of safety. Besides, I've found that there are many ways to access it. You just have to be determined enough, and a way will open.

Accessing page 13 will grant you a blank post with a bizarre date. I have heard that, sometimes, instead of the standard FILE DELETED, there is an image attached to the post. The content of the image varies from the incredibly disturbing from the mundane, from /x/ mainstays to images that can't be found anywhere else on the internet. But I myself have never witnessed this, and I can't say for sure whether or not it is true.

Most who visit the page can only stay for a few seconds before they experience a violent computer error that immediately closes the browser. Some older models of Windows blue-screen the instant the page is opened. There are ways to extend your stay on the page, but there isn't much you can do on it, and despite all your best efforts it will eventually close. I have tried to save the page and examine its code, but doing so invariably results in a corrupted file.

So what is page 13?

My own theory is centered around the Philip Phenomenon, discovered by Toronto researches in the 1970s. You can find more information about it online, so I won't bother explaining it in depth here. Basically, the researchers created a ghost by pretending it existed. The power of belief creates ghosts, or perhaps simply attracts existing ones. Either way, having enough people who believe in ghosts together in one place is probably a bad idea.

Now, this is just my theory, and I have no proof to offer for it.

But I believe that /x/ has created a ghost, and I don't think it's friendly.

SUPER MARIO 64

I always liked Super Mario 64 when I was a kid. I remember playing it at my aunt's house all the time. Well, one day a pop-up appeared out of nowhere as I was watching gameplay footage on Youtube. I was a little startled, and was about to close the window, until I realized that it was a website showing of a mint condition copy of Super Mario 64 for sale. There was a picture and everything. I usually don't trust these things, but the feeling of nostalgia overpowered me, and I wanted to buy it.

The whole business was peculiar, seeing as how the owner of the game wanted the buyer to send an envelope containing $10 to and address on the site, instead of using something like PayPal. What made things even more strange was that when I tried to gain access to the website (I wrote down the URL) after encountering...problems with the game, the page was nowhere to be found.

A few days after the $10 was mailed, I got a package containing the new copy of the game. The first thing I noticed when I opened the small box was that the "official sticker" with Mario flying in the air was apparently peeled off or something. In it's place was a piece of duct tape with "Mario" crudely written on it in permanent marker. I felt a little ripped-off, but as long as the game worked, I didn't care.

I got out my Nintendo 64 and put the cartridge in. The screen turned on with the familiar Mario face that you could stretch and twist aimlessly. I remembered laughing all the time at the results as a kid and decided to mess around for old times sake. I moved the cursor over to Mario's ear and pulled it to elven proportions. I was going to do the same to the other ear, when the TV suddenly produced loud static. Mario's whole head started deforming and twisting in ways that I didn't even know were possible for the model. Random sound effects from the game started playing along with the static. As all this was occurring, I could hear a faint voice whispering in Japanese. The voice was stammering and whimpering.

I immediately shut off the game and tried again. I didn't bother with the Mario head this time. Just selected a new file and started playing.

When I selected the file, the game skipped the opening monologue by Peach and the courtyard outside. Mario was just placed right inside the castle. Creepier still, Bowser didn't say anything either. I tried to ignore it and played anyway. However I also noticed that their was no music. Just dead silence. Their weren't even any Toads around to talk to. The only door I could enter was the Bob-omb Battlefield. The other doors wouldn't even respond to my button commands.

The portrait to Bob-omb Battlefield wasn't the usual picture. It was just a stark white canvas. I was still trying to convince myself that these were just minor glitches, and that they wouldn't effect the gameplay at all. Once I entered the portrait, the image suddenly went from a blank canvas to the Lethal Lava Land painting. You know, that slightly unsettling image of the flame with the evil smile? Yeah, that's when I started getting really suspicious.

The mission select menu came up, and yet another weird detail was present. Instead of "Big Bob-omb on the Summit", the mission was called "TURN BACK". I have no idea what drove me to press A, but I did.

The level seemed normal. Everything was how I remembered it. I thought I could finally enjoy my favorite childhood game. But then I saw him. Luigi. I was absolutely shocked. He was never in this game. His model wasn't even a Mario palette swap. He looked like a completely original model. Luigi just stood there until I tried to approach him. He started running at unexpected speeds. I followed suite and went through the level. Strange things happened as I pursued him. each time I picked up a coin, the enemies and music would get slower, and the scenery would look darker in color and more morbid. It kept gradually getting worse until I collected a 5th coin. Then, the music just stopped. The enemies laid down on the ground like they were dead. I was seriously freaked out, but I kept chasing Luigi.

I went up the hill. No cannon balls rolled down trying to knock me over. I really wasn't surprised at this point. Luigi was always just out of my sight as I ran. Once I reached the summit, I saw yet another object out of place. A small cottage was all that was seen on the top of the hill. Luigi was nowhere to be found. The cottage was certainly od looking for a Mario game. It was old, plain, and broken down. Regardless of my fears at that moment, I had Mario enter the cottage.

As soon as the door closed. A disturbing picture of a hanged Luigi immediately popped up along with a very frightening scare chord. It sounded like a violin screech accompanied by loud piano banging. Mario fell to his knees and sobbed for roughly 5 minutes, then the screen irised-out.

I returned to the castle. Mario just slumped out of the painting. The image switched from the Lethal Lava Land portrait to the image of Luigi hanging himself. The room was different this time. It was now a small hallway. Toads with blank expressions and white robes lined the sides of the hallway. Their was another painting at the opposite end that just completely and utterly scared me. It was a picture of my family It wasn't even a photo from the time Super Mario 64 was released. It was a very, very recent photo. I remembered posing for it last weekend.

I reached for the on/off switch on the N64. There was no way I was going to play this anymore. However, when I flipped the switch, the game was still on. I flipped it back and forth, but to no avail. I tried unplugging the whole system, but it never left the screen. I was even still able to control Mario. I couldn't just leave it on forever...so I kept playing. I went to the photo of my family, and jumped in. Only one mission was available, of course. This one was called "Run, Don't Walk". I selected the mission. 'Let's-a-go'...

The level started in a flooded hallway with platforms floating on the water. Mario landed on one of these, and the camera turned to show what was behind. A silent black void was slowly approaching Mario. It didn't look like anything. It didn't even look like finished graphics. Just a giant, blocky, black blob. I started jumping from platform to platform. With no goal in sight, I kept running, the darkness slowly but surely gaining speed. This kept going on for what felt like hours. I was really doubting there would ever be an end. Mario was just going in circles. Finally, the black blob/void/thing caught up with Mario, and enveloped him in darkness. He didn't scream or resist at all. It just consumed him.

Mario fell out of the painting and back into the castle. I lost one of my 3 lives. The room was different now. Some of the Toads were gone, and the painting looked different. My family and I were in the same positions, but our bodies were partially decomposed. It looked too real to be photoshopped. It looked more like someone just took our dead bodies and posed them.

Regardless, I jumped into the painting again. Mario was in an small room. There was still only one mission available. It was called "I'm right here." spelled just like that. I selected the mission and prepared for the worst. Mario landed in a small, dark room. There no visible way out. The room was empty except for a piano in the corner. I knew what that meant. i was stuck in there with the Mad Piano. I approached it and it started chasing me as always. There was no way to damage it, so I had no choice but to let Mario take damage.

When he lost all his health, the usual death animation didn't happen. Mario just got mauled by the piano. He fell as his blood and guts spilled on the floor, and the camera panned to a top down view of his corpse. A distorted version of the merry-go-round music from Big Boo's Haunt played as the screen slowly transitioned from the in-game shot to a photo-realistic sketch of Mario's dead body in the same view as the shot. It was very unsettling. I was crying softly as I gazed upon the image. I lost another life.

The photo of my family was shown again. We were even more rotten then before. The view zoomed into the painting, like I was warping again. I was greeted with a shot of Peach's castle from the outside. The castle was crumbling in ruin. The fields were on fire. The sky was pitch black. Bowser's laugh played on a loop in the background as children mockingly chanted "You couldn't save her!". This went on for a long time, until, a close-up of of Peach's face accompanied by an extremely loud screech interrupted the loop without notice. Peach's mouth was wide open as if she was screaming, and her eyes were empty, black holes.

Suddenly, I was back in the hallway as Mario was once again ejected out of the painting. Now all of the Toads were gone, and me and my family looked positively repulsive. Maggots were wriggling around in holes in our flesh. Guts were spilling out of our bodies. My dad's eyeball was hanging loose from its socket. It was too much to bear, but something still urged me to trudge on. I jumped into the painting, with only one life remaining.

This time, there was no name for the mission. Just a blank space where the title would be. I selected the mission, and Mario landed on a very small island in the middle of the ocean. There was a solitary sign. It only read "DIVE". I did just as it said and entered the water.

The ocean was dark and empty. There were no fish. I wasn't even able to see anything in the water besides Mario. I swam downwards. I kept going for quite some time, yet Mario never ran out of breath. I counted roughly 10 minutes of swimming until I decided to go back up. Just as I turned Mario around, it came. A huge, and I mean huge Unagi the Eel came out of nowhere and swallowed Mario whole. I was dumbfounded. It went by so fast I wasn't even sure what I saw. The Game Over screen didn't show up. All that happened was a fade-out.

The photo of my family and I was shown again. We were plain skeletons now. Once again, it looked very real. I couldn't move the camera at all. It just stayed focused on the picture. I shut off the game and turned it on again. I chose my file, but it just went to the skeleton photo of my family. I tried this about 3 more times before giving up. I desperately wanted to stop, but some force kept me from walking away. I decided to select the only other saved file. The camera once again focused on the skeleton picture, but this time they were in a different position. As if they were a different family.

I always found this one interesting

TOOLBOX

You wake up one morning to find a note taped to your mirror: "Don't worry, I took care of everything." Your clothes have been freshly laundered, the bathroom is spotless, and your garage has been organized. Even your faithful old toolbox has been replaced.

Later that week, there's another note on your mirror: "GET OUT OF TOWN." Paper-clipped to this message are several grainy photos of police in a taped-off section of a field. One of them is carrying your old toolbox in his latex-gloved hand.

I can't help this. BUT THEN WHO WAS TOOLBOX? I'm sorry, let me make up for it with some delicious pasta. c:

A Candle Cove Anecdote

Loved this show. Horace Horrible was my favorite. I remember looking everywhere for his action figure but Kiddie City and KB had never even heard of the line. I finally found a talking Horace, good as new, at somebody’s yard sale, though I didn’t see a house around and never saw those people again. I was pretty excited, and ran right to my friend’s house to gloat.

When his mom answered the door, she let out the most guttural scream I’d ever heard, absolutely scaring the s**t out of me. She told me to get lost with “that thing” and slammed the door in my face. My kid-logic concluded that she must have known I bought a toy from a stranger completely unsupervised, and that it must have been an even more serious crime than I thought.

So, I did my best to keep Horace hidden, especially from my own parents, but his voice chip was pretty damn loud, and every so often he’d go off by himself, like his battery was dying. My mom kept asking if Marble (our cat) was in my room…I don’t know how you mistake that goofy chuckling for a cat.

It was subtle at first, but after a few days he started to smell weird. His voice kept getting weaker and more garbled, and his joints kept getting looser like they were ready to drop off. I was afraid of getting caught and we didn’t have trash pickup, so I did what a rational child does when he thinks he has contraband and buried it in the woods.

I never found another one or figured out what was wrong with him, but it’s the weirdest thing; a tree grew where I left him, I s**t you not, in just a couple weeks. It never grew leaves and it never got much taller than me, but it’s there to this day, and every summer it swarms with disturbing numbers of flies.

Anyway lol

TRAPPED FOR A DAY ON A RATHER QUIET INCLINE

Johnathan was very hyper on Wednesday night. He had chugged 4 energy drinks, eaten half his weight in junk food, and was now running around his home and jumping off of anything he thought to be high enough.

Johnathan was 19 at the time, and was home alone. While years later he was able to laugh himself for being so childish as to jump off of his bed for fun, at the moment his head smacked onto the hard wood floor, no one was laughing.

His parents got home 20 minutes later, and rushed their unconscious son to the ER. He was lucky to only have a minor concussion, and he was conscious within 2 hours.

When Johnathan awoke he was in a rather quiet hospital room. He had no "room mates", and there wasn't a single doctor or nurse in sight. There were 2 sounds he could hear.

The first of which was the steady "beep......beep....." of his heart monitor, which to his relief, was showing him as stable.

The second was not near as comforting. On the rooms wall mounted television was nothing but a snowy static image, accompanied by stereotypical white noise. Johnathan felt bothered by this, so he reached over to a small beside tray, in which he could see the remote.

He flipped through every channel. Comedy Central. Static. Syfy. Static. ABC. Static. Nothing was coming on. He flipped it off, thinking it to be a faulty cable connection, he hit the call button to summon a nurse.

"Of course. Shitty TV, shitty response time...."

Johnathan trailed off. He looked at the clock on the wall, and read it as 3 o'clock. Being an old style clock, it did not indicate AM or PM.

He thought for a moment, and stood up. The curtains were closed, so he assumed it was day time, as they would be shut to keep light out.

"One way to find out."

He pulled them back to see nothing but a thick grey fog, the outlines of several tree's visible, but not much more.

"Or maybe night time it is...Where the ******** is the nurse?"

Ironically, it was then that he met the first abomination that he would face in his transformed quiet little town (which was built on top of an incline, or a hill, if you'd like to call it that).

The thing that came shuffling through the door at that very moment might have very well once been a nurse. But now it was a shell of its former self.

Its bones bent in odd ways, and you could hear cracking noises as it stepped. Its face was covered in bloody bandages, its uniform stained with various fluids. And in its hand was a rusty scalpel, which was the first thing Johnathan noticed. And the only thing he really needed to notice.

It was enough to put him in battle mode, and he soon was holding his trusty remote as if it were a deadly weapon.

Running towards his "nurse", he swung the remote smack dab into the center of it's skull. He brought it back up, then "twack!" again. Right across it's forehead.

After 3 more strikes she was down and Johnathan was gone. He ran out into the hall to see only more disturbing imagery.

The walls were covered in rust, chipping paint everywhere. Holes in the support beams were visible, as were the support beams themselves.

There were several more nurses in the hallway, but they were slow and Johnathan was fueled by fear. He breezed by them and into the stairway. He looked at the floor number.

"3? Thats not bad, I'll be out of here in no time at all"

Opening the door to the ground level, he was greeted with a huge black hole. The floor was almost non existent, save for a 6 inch wide strip running from the stairs to the exit.

Realizing it to be his only way across, Johnathan slowly walked on the strip. Calmly breathing, arms out at his side, he kept good time.

Reaching the end of beam he leaped out of the building. He stopped himself from doing some sort of a victory dance, because he had a feeling there would only be more monsters to come, and he didn't need to draw more attention to himself.

Turning on his heel he saw some things he would never forget. Behind him was a tall man with a pyramid mask over his head. This in itself wouldn't of been so terrible, had he not been carrying the largest knife Johnathan had ever seen, and had he not been raping a nurse and what seemed to be a living mannequin. Both at once.

For a moment Johnathan contemplated on how much skill and practice it would take to rape two people at once, then dismissed it as he realized that if he could rape two at once then he might be able to take on a third.

Pyramid head didn't seem to notice as the teen boy in a night gown sprinted into the fog, trying desperately not to confront anything.

He wondered for several hours, sneaking by monsters. Then at about 6 PM (Turned out it was PM, according to a digital clock he saw in the abandoned video store) he found a clothing store that seemed safe enough and got some pants and a shirt on. Can't be fighting monsters half naked.

Luckily he also found a knife in the street. It wasn't too great, but it would work. All he could hope for was to survive the day.

He then made the decision to head on home. He felt he'd be safer if he made a homecoming of sorts. It was a few miles away, but at 10 PM he arrived there. Oddly enough he didn't see a single monster on the way.

Arriving home, he found no one. Not a soul around. His parents gone, his siblings missing, he decided to take a rest in his room.

He stepped in, seeing his room to look oddly....perfect. In a place that he had seen nothing but rust all day, this was a rather scary idea. For some reason or another, he felt he would of been safer with the rust.

He locked the door, and thought for a moment. After a moment he decided it was a bad idea to trust just a lock. He pushed a large dresser in front of the door. Hoping to god it was enough to keep anything out.

He laid down on the bed, intending to go to sleep. He had walked around for hours, and his feet were screaming out for a rest.

His bed faced the window on the opposite wall. And he stared out of it as he began to drift off.

A loud crash through the window jarred him out of his sleep. Opening his eyes he saw a long black arm in front of his face. It grabbed him by the neck. Soon the arm was joined by three friends, and he was pulled from the 2nd story window, out into the yard.

He looked up to what was holding him. He saw a man, in a suite. The man was taller then any basketball player and rather slender. This Slender man of sorts had 6 arms jetting out like the limbs of a tree. His skin was pale and he had a very memorable face. Reason being is that is was just flat skin. No nose, mouth, eyes, nothing but skin.

Johnathan screamed for help, but it was too late. He was suffocated in the arms of Slender Man and everything slowly faded to black. Death felt close. It would soon come.

Johnathan woke up screaming. He was where he had passed out, laying on the floor in his bedroom. Had it all been a dream?

He looked up at the TV and laughed. He remembered now.

On the TV was the pause screen for Silent Hill 2. He had fallen asleep playing his favorite game, and it had given him nightmares. He felt so foolish. He stood up, yawning, and pulled back the curtains on his window to see a thick fog and 2 men. 1 man in a suit, the other with a Pyramid mask on.

"F*ck my life."

Some people are very convinced this is real, so what do you think?

KILLSWITCH

In the spring 1989 the Karvina Corporation released a curious game, whose dissemination among American students that fall was swift and furious, though its popularity was ultimately short-lived.

The game was “Killswitch.”

On the surface it was a variant on the mystery or horror survival game, a precursor to the Myst and Silent Hill franchises. The narrative showed the complexity for which Karvina was known, though the graphics were monochrome, vague grey and white shapes against a black background. Slow MIDI versions of Czech folksongs play throughout. Players could choose between two avatars: an invisible demon named Ghast or a visible human woman, Porto. Play as Ghast was considerably more difficult due to his total invisibility, and players were highly liable to restart the game as Porto after the first level, in which it was impossible to gauge jumps or aim. However, Ghast was clearly the more powerful character–he had fire-breath and a coal-steam attack, but as it was above the skill level of most players to keep track of where a fire-breathing, poison-dispensing invisible imp was on their screens once the fire and steam had run out, Porto became more or less the default.

Porto’s singular ability was seemingly random growth–she expanded and contracted in size throughout the game. A Kansas engineering grad claimed to have figured out the pattern involved, but for reasons which will become obvious, his work was lost.

Porto awakens in the dark with wounds in her elbows, confused. Seeking a way out, she ascends through the levels of a coal mine in which it is slowly revealed she was once an employee, investigating its collapse and beset on all sides by demons similar to Ghast, as well as dead foremen, coal-golems, and demonic inspectors from the Sovatik corporation, whose boxy bodies were clothed in red, the only color in the game. The environment, though primitive, becomes genuinely uncanny as play progresses. There are no “bosses” in any real sense–Porto must simply move physically through tunnels to reach subsequent levels while her size varies wildly through inter-level spaces.

The story that emerges through Porto’s discovery of magnetic tapes, files, mutilated factory workers who were once her friends, and deciphering an impressively complex code inscribed on a series of iron axes players must collect (This portion of the game was almost laughably complex, and defeated many players until “Porto881″ posted the cipher to a Columbia BBS. Attempts to contact this player have been unsuccessful, and the username is no longer in use on any known service.) is that the foremen, under pressure to increase coal production, began to falsify reports of malfunctions and worker malfeasance in order to excuse low output, which incited a Sovatik inspection. Officials were dispatched, one for each miner, and an extraordinary story of torture unfolds, with fuzzy and indistinct graphics of red-coated men standing over workers, inserting small knives into their joints whenever production slowed. (Admittedly, this is not a very subtle critique of Soviet-era industrial tactics, and as the town of Karvina itself was devastated by the departure of the coal industry, more than one thesis has interpreted Killswitch as a political screed.)

After solving the axe-code, Porto finds and assembles a tape recorder, on which a male voice tells her that the fires of the earth had risen up in their defense and flowed into the hearts of the decrepit, pre-revolution equipment they used and wakened them to avenge the workers. It is generally assumed that the “fires of the earth” are demons like Ghast, coal-fumes and gassy bodies inhabiting the old machines. The machines themselves are so “big” that the graphics elect to only show two or three gear-teeth or a conveyor belt rather than the entire apparatus. The machines drove the inspectors mad, and they disappeared into caverns with their knives (only to emerge to plague Porto, of course). The workers were often crushed and mangled in the onslaught of machines, who were neither graceful nor discriminating. Porto herself was knocked into a deep chasm by a grief-stricken engine, and her
fluctuating size, if it is real and not imagined, is implied to be the result of poisonous fumes inhaled there.

What follows is the most cryptic and intuitive part of the game. There is no logical reason to proceed in the “correct” way, and again it was Porto881 who came to the rescue of the fledgling Killswitch community. In the chamber behind the tape recorder is a great furnace where coal was once rendered into coke. There are no clues as to what she is intended to do in this room. Players attempted nearly everything, from immolating herself to continuing to process coal as if the machines had never risen up. Porto881 hit upon the solution, and posted it to the Columbia boards. If Porto ingests the raw coke, she will find her body under control,and can go on to fight her way out of the final levels of the mine, which are impassable in her giant state, clutching the tape containing this extraordinary story. However, as she crawls through the final tunnel to emerge aboveground, the screen goes suddenly
white.

Killswitch, by design, deletes itself upon player completion of the game. It is not recoverable by any means, all trace of it is removed from the user’s computer. The game cannot be copied. For all intents and purposes it exists only for those playing it, and then ceases to be entirely. One cannot replay it, unlocking further secrets or narrative pathways, one cannot allow another to play it, and perhaps most importantly, it is impossible to experience the game all the way to the end as both Porto and Ghast.

Predictably, player outcry was enormous. Several routes to solve the problem were pursued, with no real efficacy. The first and most common was to simply buy more copies of the game, but Karvina Corp. released only 5,000 copies and refused to press further editions. The following is an excerpt from their May 1990 press release:

Killswitch was designed to be a unique playing experience: like reality, it is unrepeatable, unretrievable,and illogical. One might even say ineffable. Death is final; death is complete. The fates of Porto and her beloved Ghast are as unknowable as our own. It is the desire of the Karvina Corporation that this be so, and we ask our customers to respect that desire. Rest assured Karvina will continue to provide the highest quality of games to the West, and that Killswitch is merely one among our many wonders.

This did not have the intended effect. The word “beloved” piqued the interest of committed, even obsessive players, as Ghast is not present in any portion of Porto’s narrative. A rush to find the remaining copies of the game ensued, with the intent of playing as Ghast and discovering the meaning of Karvina’s cryptic word. The most popular theory was that Ghast would at some point become the fumes inhaled by Porto, changing her size and beginning her adventure. Some thought this was wishful thinking, that if only Ghast’s early levels were passable one would somehow be able to play as both simultaneously. However, by this time no further copies appeared to be available in retail outlets. Players who had not yet completed the game attempted Ghast’s levels frequently, but the difficulty of actually playing this enigmatic avatar persisted, and no player has ever claimed to have finished the game as Ghast. One by one, the lure of Porto’s lost, unearthly world drew them back to her, and one by one, they were compelled towards the finality of the vast white screen.

To find any copy usable today is an almost unfathomably rare occurance; a still shrink-wrapped copy was sold at auction in 2005 for $733,000 to Yamamoto Ryuichi of Tokyo. It is entirely possible that Yamamoto’s is the last remaining copy of the game. Knowing this, Yakamoto had intended to open his play to all enthusiasts, filming and uploading his progress. However, to date, the only film which has surfaced is a one minute and forty five second clip of a haggard Yamamoto at his computer, the avatar-choice screen visible over his right shoulder.

Yamamoto is crying.