I sat at my computer, scrolling through endless games on my favorite downloading site. Illegal of course, but who pays for things these days anyways. I had tried a bunch of things already, and was quite bored with the typical shooter, racing, and other games; that’s why this one caught my attention.
I had never heard of it before, Simulscape it was called. There was no description, no reviews, just a download link. I probably should have left it alone, but curiosity and boredom got the better of me. I moved my cursor over the little black arrow and clicked it. Nothing crazy happened, no pop-ups were released - it simply downloaded in a matter of minutes and opened the start screen when it was done.
“Can you escape?” Read the cheesy, “blood drip” font bouncing at the top of the menu. There were two choices - start or rules. I clicked rules, and three bullets showed on the screen: 1. Don’t get caught 2. Avoid traps 3. Leave the house and you will win
I thought it was oddly vague, but thought it was probably a low budget game some coder had developed in their spare time. I closed the instructions and clicked start.
It took a while to load, but when I did a hyper-realistic camera feed popped up - think surveillance footage in someone’s living room. My character stood in front of it, in the middle of the room. He was blonde with wide, wild blue eyes and a medium build. He had a strange helmet on, and was wearing what looked like a green prison jumpsuit.
I experimented with the controls, and learned how to move my character around. It was typical PC gaming, and very simplistic. I walked around the room until my character stood in front of the door. I had him turn the knob and it wouldn’t turn - a message popped up that said “try finding a key”. I proceeded to walk around the room, picking things up and opening drawers until I had a key. I took it to the door and opened it, no big deal.
The feed cut out, then returned showing a different room - presumably where the locked door had led to, as my character was standing in an open doorway. Before him stood two doors, above which was a message scrawled in red ink “choose wisely”. There was nothing else in the room, and I sat there for a minute thinking. I had no idea what to pick, so I approached a door at random - I chose the left.
When I opened the door the feed cut and jumped to the next room. I saw my character enter, the door slamming behind him. He began to cough, and smoke started filling the room. The camera’s view was soon obstructed and when everything went black, a text box popped up saying “you lose. Try again?” I clicked yes, and after a five minute loading screen I was back in the same room. I had expected the same character, but instead I was now a black woman. She had short spiky hair and was wearing the same green jumpsuit.
I had her try the door, and again needed the key. I walked to where I had found it previously, and opened to the next room with ease. This time though, after progressing into the two door room, I chose the one on the right. When it opened, the feed cut and the new room showed. The door didn’t shut behind her, smoke didn’t fill the room. I figured this was some kind of puzzle, and you just restarted it each time. A memory and logic test I guess.
This room was filled with strings - almost like a spiderweb. I had to control the woman, jumping when I needed to, ducking, and weaving left and right. It was challenging but fun, and my years of gaming helped me to control her with ease.
I jumped when I heard my dog start barking, and accidentally hit the right arrow, sending my character into one of the strings. Where her arm hit the string, there was a huge red cut. I shuddered as the camera showed me her face - it was incredibly realistic and gruesome. What an odd detail to show. I made it through the rest of the room without incident and opened the next door.
My character entered a room where simply scrawled on the wall was the word “RUN”. And that I did - I had her move quickly. As she was running, there were rocks to avoid. I didn’t see one and she tripped flying forward and landing on her face. I tried to have her get up, but she kept falling when leaning on her bad arm.
Something then came running up to her - a hooded figure wielding a knife, which I assumed had been what she was supposed to be running from. It grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up before slotting her throat. It then cast her to the ground and looked directly at the camera, grinning horribly at it before the end screen popped up. “You lose. Try again?” I clicked no and shut off my computer, going to bed a bit disturbed.
The next day after coming home from work I sat down with my dog to watch some TV. I’m a bit of a news junkie I hate to admit, and when I flipped to the local station I nearly shit my pants.
“We are following a breaking story. Reports say that two bodies were found in a field near a local elementary school. They have yet to be identified, but what can be released is that one was a blonde, white male and another an African American female. The female had wounds on her throat and arm, while the man had no physical signs of injury. It is presumed the victims died around the same time, and further details will be reported as we get them.”
I immediately cut the power to my screen. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that I knew how these people had died. The video feed, the look of horror on the woman’s face as her arm was sliced, and the way the hooded figure stared directly at me - it was all too much. It wasn’t a game, it wasn’t pretend. I was escaping with real people - that’s why the character had changed, that’s why it was not a game I had heard of.
I’m sitting here writing this to get it off my chest. I can’t go to the police - I would get blamed for the murder, I’m sure of it. I can’t keep it to myself though. Whoever these people are - I mean, were - I want to tell them I’m sorry. And to you, reader, I want to tell you never to play the game Simulscape; I can promise you that you will live to regret it, and others won’t live at all.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/fjorjs/i_downloaded_a_game_from_the_dark_web_now_i_must/
Etsy closed my shop today due to copyright infringement. I have filed a claim, because I received two fraudulent infringement reports. Long story short, someone was using the lawyer's email address from Jack Daniel's and repeatedly reporting my listings. I did have 1 claim from her previous to those that was valid in which I immediately contacted her and made it right (I was not aware the actual bottle shape of JD was trademarked and had used a picture showing the cornders of the bottle).
I have spoken with the lawyer in question, she confirmed I am and have been in compliance and that she has let etsy know. Etsy did confirm with me that they had confirmed the infringement claims were unauthorized and that I could relist.
I am guessing because I hit three strikes in their system, they shut me down automatically without recognizing that the past two were invalid. I have two questions:
-Does anyone know roughly how long it takes for them to get back to you once you file a claim to get your shop reopened?
-They say I can still fulfill orders, but everytime I click orders it goes to a blank page. And I can't log in to the app because it says I am not a seller.
HELP PLEASE. I have about 10 open orders that I need to ship out, and am losing business while my shop is closed.
Source: https://community.etsy.com/t5/Managing-Your-Shop/Etsy-closed-shop-can-t-fulfill-orders/td-p/17951087
I bought some perfumes from a guy in Italy via ebay in May last year which he sent via EMS. Months and months passed and I received nothing. I checked the EMS tracking website and it said that they had left Italy a few days after I purchased them.
I opened a dispute with Paypal and I sent them all the details including a screenshot of the tracking information.
They then sent me a ‘standard’ email claiming that I had received the package and my dispute was then closed! I appealed their decision again stating that I never received the stuff and again they sent me the same standard email!
After searching around for a while I found their telephone number in Luxembourg and I spoke to a guy there and explained my case. Basically, he didn’t want to know! After countless emails and being ignored by Paypal, I finally decided to dispute it via my credit card. I got the money from them within a week, no questions asked!!!!
I think the package got sent back to the seller and he pocketed the money as well as the merchandise!! and since he has Paypal plus, Paypal took his side.
Paypal and their customer services is total crap!!!
Source: http://www.paypalwarning.com/paypal-receive-item/
"After I ordered my coffee, he immediately asked if I'd watch a quick video on his laptop while I waited. It was a 12 minute-long video about his MLM [multi-level marketing] vacation club that was 'totally not a pyramid scheme.'" - Reddit user czechica
I used to be the ASM of a Gamestop but nothing really out of the ordinary happened there. Just a lot of lingerers. When I was the manager of a local game store though, there was definitely a lot of wild stories. The one that sticks out the most is this old dude we called “Psycho Sexy” who would come in ever Monday morning, try to sell me or whoever was working bootleg porn dvds. He would tell us they were good for “busting fat ass nuts to” and that he’d sell’em to us super cheap.
Every Monday he’d come in, open up his dufflebag of bootleg porn, get refused then leave and come back the following Monday. This went on for almost 3 years.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/bicr5z/gamestop_employees_of_reddit_what_are_some_of/em033kr/
Ok, at the time this happened, I was a curious college student who wanted to experience and browse the dark web. As a dumb teenager, obviously I didn’t know what I was really getting into.
At the start of downloading TOR and getting access to the dark web, it was just fairly innocent sites such as passport fake identities exc... I’d visited a fake college degree site and was met with a link at the bottom of the page. Out of curiosity, I clicked the link at the bottom of the page and I got redirected to a site which took at least 5-6 mins to load. Then I got redirected to a second site which took even longer to load.
Finally, when this mysterious site had loaded, I had never seen more horror in my entire life. It showed a man, tied up in ropes and screaming in pain. This looked to be a live video with a chat room on the side. On the sadistic chat room, people were typing sickening things, things that no one should ever hear. I heard stuff like “slice his throat open and eat his Adam’s apple raw.” “Slowly mutilate and chop off his limbs one by one.” You had to pay a certain number of bitcoins to make the people on the livestream obey your demands.
I tried to exit the page, I pressed everything but nothing was turning off. I tried to boot my computer off, there was no exit button on the page. I didn’t know what to do... Suddenly, I read a message in the chat room which made my stomach churn. It was along the lines of “chop off his genitalia and shove it down your own throat.” This honestly made me wanna puke. The man obliged and proceeded to do what the user asked. The reaction the the chat room was disgusting aswell. People were like “oh yes I can’t wait!” It was fucked up. The man proceeded to chop off the victims genatalia shove it down his throat. I was on the verge of puking but my eyes kept wanting me to look. The victim let out a horrifying scream of pain... There was no doubt I was in one of the dark webs infamous ‘Red Rooms’.
Then I did something stupid, I took to the chat and wrote “you all are sick! Why the fuck would you torture and innocent man like that you sadistic fucks!” That was one of the worst mistakes I have ever made in my whole life. I received messages of abuse from many users like “pussy” “bitch...” Then I received something that made my heart drop.
My message in the chat room was apparently replied by the owner of the site who said. “How come Mr Jared Williams.” That got me shook, he knew my first and last names. Like a fool again, I replied, “I’m calling the cops.” This was an even worse mistake. The owner replied, he leaked my home address, the name of my mum and dad, the name of my younger brother and started sending videos of me through my webcam onto the chat. I felt like passing out, I quickly covered up my webcam with some post it notes. Lastly, the owner of the site said “call the cops and we’ll find you and do the same to you.” I had heard enough, I unplugged everything that was attached to that computer. My palms were sweating and I felt really light headed.
Nothing happened for a whole 6 months, I never told my parents and never called the police, still fearing that the threat was real. I couldn’t sleep for weeks after the incident. However, the creepiest thing of all happened just very recently. I had received mail from an unknown posting address. I opened it up and in large words it said “Don’t worry, we’re gonna find you and make you suffer.” I literally ripped the note up and reported the website to the police.
I will notify and keep you updated if anything happens.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/flwcso/this_one_moment_is_the_reason_i_will_never_go/