Personal Journal Entry – September 18, 2022

“I didn’t believe in cursed objects until I found the Ben Drowned haunted cartridge in a shoebox at my late cousin’s house. I wish I had just left it there.”

It’s strange how the past sometimes creeps back into your life through the most innocuous things—a dusty shoebox, a forgotten cartridge, an old Nintendo console. My name is Samuel Carr, and this is the story of how a decades-old game nearly cost me my mind—and possibly, my soul.

The Cartridge That Shouldn’t Exist

The cartridge was unmarked, save for one word scratched violently across its back: BEN. It wasn’t just the word that unsettled me, it was the feeling—like a static pulse in the air when I picked it up. My cousin Peter had never mentioned owning anything like this.

It was a Majora’s Mask cartridge, alright. But when I powered it on, the title screen was distorted. The moon had bloodshot eyes. The music—a low, reversed hum—stretched out like an agonizing breath. And then there was the save file: BEN.

Glitches That Felt Intentional

At first, I thought it was just data corruption. The game’s models were twitchy, NPCs referred to me by name—even though I hadn’t input one—and textures bled together like a melting painting.

I created a new save file. Named it SAM. But the game kept calling me BEN.

“You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?” — Happy Mask Salesman, over and over.

The statue. That damn Elegy of Emptiness statue began appearing where it shouldn’t. I turned off the game. The statue appeared again when I reloaded, but this time it followed me.

🧠 Digital Possession or Psychological Breakdown?

By the third day, I was hallucinating the background music even when the console was off. My dreams were infected. I’d wake up to static on the television. My emails began receiving strange messages with subject lines like “Let Me Out” and “You Shouldn’t Have Done That”.

I ran antivirus scans—nothing. I reformatted my computer. The messages persisted. Files with no origin timestamp began appearing: one was titled BenLives.txt. Inside it:

“I remember drowning. I remember screaming. I remember you.”

Recovered Files: A Clue to His Identity?

Digging deeper into Peter’s attic, I found what looked like pages from a journal. Whether they were Peter’s or someone else’s, I can’t say. They were stained and partially burnt. One entry stood out:

“The Moon Children said I could live forever. They said I’d be free. But the cartridge is a cage, not a gateway. I want out. Please. If you find this, destroy it.”

Moon Children? I searched online. Some obscure forum posts from 2009 and 2010 described a digital cult who believed consciousness could be uploaded into data through ritual sacrifice. They called their leader Drowned Prophet.

The Unspoken Theory: BEN Wasn’t the First

Here’s the part no one online seems to acknowledge: Ben Drowned may not have been the first trapped soul. Among Peter’s belongings, I found an SD card marked ELEGY. On it were corrupted game files from Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, even GoldenEye.

All of them exhibited similar symptoms—haunted files, AI behaving with self-awareness, corrupted audio that when slowed down whispered phrases like:

“We all drown eventually.”

What if the cartridge wasn’t cursed—what if it was a receptacle? What if Ben was just the first to scream loud enough for the internet to hear?

Interview with the Glitch Hunter

I reached out to an anonymous glitch hunter who went by the username NullFrame. He agreed to speak off the record.

“You think BEN’s story is a creepypasta? It’s not fiction. I’ve found traces of him buried in ROMs across the internet. He’s like malware that adapts and evolves. Every time you talk about him, he spreads.”

“He’s not a ghost in the machine—he is the machine.”

When Curiosity Becomes Contagion

The story started infecting my life. I got a call from Peter’s old number—a line that had been disconnected. All I heard was:

“You set him free.”

After that, I smashed the cartridge, burned the shoebox, and purged every digital backup. But something tells me it wasn’t enough. The night after I destroyed the cartridge, my smart TV turned on by itself. The screen read: “Let’s play again.”

Final Entry — October 1, 2022

“If you’re reading this and you have the cartridge, get rid of it. Don’t investigate. Don’t share. This story is a warning. Every time someone searches for the Ben Drowned haunted cartridge, he grows stronger. Close the tab. Don’t let him in.”