Estimated reading time — 14 minutes

I have to be incredibly careful with what I say here. Not only because of the NDA I signed with one of the biggest names in gaming, but because what I’m about to share is one of the darkest secrets a billion-dollar company could possibly bury. And I fear the consequences might be worse than a pack of hungry lawyers clawing down my door.

Honestly, I never planned to speak on any of this. In my mind, it was always meant to stay buried. One of the skeletons we take to the grave, you know? Maybe it’d come out to a longtime partner or some random at a bar. But for the most part? I fully expected to keep all of this to myself.

Things have changed. Drastically.

A few months back, I was lurking on a few boards and came across a rumor that this particular gaming studio was developing a new project. By rule, I typically avoided anything related to this gaming studio, so it had been a while since I had seen any associated news. I suppose that when I did see the community buzzing, it sparked a mild curiosity.

This goes without saying, but most online rumors are entirely false, regardless of the conversation around them. However, anyone with a nerdy niche interest knows that if you’re in the right circles, there’s always someone who seems to know just a little bit more than everyone else. And confirmation from one of these types of people led me on a wild goose chase for more information.

While I didn’t find much beyond hints at what might be in development, I came across a comment that halted my research.

The comment read: “I’m surprised [the gaming company] is still around. Does anyone else recall the disturbing stunt they pulled at their offices years ago? They never addressed it and continued on like nothing happened after seriously traumatizing people. Seriously. Stop buying their games.”

It was odd at the moment. I could feel my heartbeat rapidly increasing in my chest. I kept re-reading the comment over and over because there was no way he was referring to what I thought he was referring to.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes later, I’m still looking at the comment. Trying to deny what I knew had to be true.

But why was I reacting like that? I had seen the company’s name and watched playthroughs of their game? Hell, I was doing research on them myself. Why was I reacting like this?

Only now, on reflection, do I realize it’s not about them. It’s not even about me. Not really. It’s in the understanding that the experience was a shared one. Not just my trauma but the widespread silent trauma of everyone who had been there.

We saw something collectively, and the fact that it wasn’t just me or one or two other people made it so much more real. And even more so… We were all so scared that every single person had been forced into silence.

I quickly typed out a reply for the commenter to message me. Not good enough. After deleting the comment, I messaged them directly, hoping and praying for a response.

Almost immediately after I did, they replied with a simple “F— off” and blocked me.

Great.

I spent the next few weeks looking to see if anyone else had said anything similar. My life was comprised of going to work, ordering takeout, and scouring the internet for someone else who had come forward. Nothing.

And in the midst of all of this. I got a call. One that sent me spiraling. It reignited images of that day so vivid I often feel as though they’re burned into my psyche.

The following nightmares have woken me up in cold sweats on multiple occasions.

So here I am, telling a story roughly a decade old. I apologize if anyone was looking for a grand adventure or a philosophical lesson. This isn’t that. Just a story of a terrified man who understands that telling you this may be the only way I can cope.

That’s all I’m asking for at this point. I don’t need a solution or even for those responsible to face justice. I just want to be able to sleep peacefully again.

So, there I was again, lurking on forums. This one, in particular, was dedicated to one of the most anticipated titles of the time from the aforementioned gaming studio. Exciting life, I know.

I rarely talked on forums. But whenever I did, I’d usually get replies from the same few accounts. Most of it was innocuous, and nothing I’ve committed to memory. I suppose that day was unique.

At that point, we were still far enough away from release that there wasn’t a whole lot of information out yet. So I did what any delusional person would do: I asked the board if anyone knew someone with inside info. Gameplay, mechanics, plans for the story… I didn’t care. I just wanted something to enhance the excitement I was already feeling in the fear that my curiosity would grow painfully unbearable.

Hours passed, and disappointingly, my question was lost in the sea of random conversation. It’s not the first time, but this one stung a bit extra.

I slept, thought nothing of it, and woke up to a familiar notification the next day. It was one of the accounts that had often replied to me.

When I checked the forum, he had responded to my post with a simple “Yes” and a link.

Curious but excited, I cautiously clicked on it to see what they had sent me. I was greeted by this bland-looking flyer. My eyes widened as I read the headline, “Meet & Greet with the Dev Team” along with the company logo and the title of the upcoming game.

I nearly gasped when I finished reading the words. Here was my chance. I could meet the team behind the game and get some inside information on their plans. Hell, maybe I could even bring some of the most-asked questions from the forum back and really make an impression on people. Anything to get those meaningless internet points.

And wouldn’t you know it? They were setting up shop pretty close, and tickets were relatively cheap. Back then, I assumed that dev teams only met fans at huge cons or launch parties, if they did at all. Never before a game was even released. But I wasn’t complaining.

In the end, I figured it was perhaps something to stir up some hype. It’s not unusual for PR teams to devise innovative ways to connect with the public. And hey, maybe the team leaked a rumor or two to one of the participants, who then spread it around, and now there’s a newfound interest in your game.

It’s wrong as hell now, but that’s how I rationalized it in my mind.

The day of the meet-and-greet arrives, and I’m headed over. My expectation is to pull into a GameStop or some other cleared-out lot with tons of fanfare. Maybe there would be signing booths, different stations, mascots, you know? The whole thing.

Instead, I pull into a relatively mundane set of office buildings. At first, I wasn’t sure if I was very early or being pranked because there was no way an official event wouldn’t have hundreds of people there. Especially given that I live near a very populous city.

Looking out my window, I finally spot a decent-sized line of people coming out of one of the buildings and several unremarkable signs lazily pointing toward where the meet-and-greet is taking place.

Side note. If you’re looking to crush the spirit of anyone attending your event, just don’t try. Seriously. No effort is almost always worse than a bad effort. At least the latter shows you care.

Anyway, remarkably less enthused, I made my way over to the line and waited. And waited. The most interesting part was the small talk with the organizers and some of the other waiting people. Not only that, but the line moved so slowly… If I hadn’t been really committed to meeting the devs, I likely would have just walked away.

I mostly stayed on my phone during my wait, but the few times I glanced up, something caught my eye.

Every person who left seemed out of place. I don’t know how to describe my feelings at the time. I think at first, I thought they were all depressed.

At first, I assumed it was just general disappointment. But the more I observed, the more they seemed genuinely sad. A good portion of those who left were crying. Total strangers would exchange silent hugs. There was just this heaviness that I couldn’t perceive.

Little did I know that was a sneak peek at what was to come. My attention was immediately caught as I shifted my focus to the front door.

At first, I thought I was being deluded. I had to be. But the more I watched, the more I noticed that not everyone who went inside came back out. You wouldn’t see it at a glance. The frequency was irregular. Masterfully so. Just a few people vanishing here and there, never enough to trigger alarm. Maybe they stayed for an extra autograph? Maybe there was a back door? Rational questions.

What’s harder to rationalize is why they never returned to the only available parking lot. How many confused office workers glanced at them and quietly wondered? How many people were tasked with removing them and brushed off the creeping question: Where did the owners go? The thought of the empty cars sitting there, waiting for someone who would never return… It bugs me. I still get the ick when I see a car that’s been sitting empty in one spot for too long.

After what felt like forever, I finally made it to the front of the line. A guy in oversized sunglasses gave me a lazy nod toward the office entrance.

The moment I stepped inside, I got hit with a blast of cold air. One of their hit game soundtracks was playing through some cheap, blown-out speakers, filling the space with tinny noise. Behind a desk sat a balding clerk, half-buried in a sea of paperwork with a few suspicious cans lying about.

Off to the side stood a single orange door. Taped to the frame was a scrap of paper with the poorly written words “Dev Team.”

I glanced around, expecting more before mentally chastising myself, given how the rest of the event had gone. Couldn’t exactly expect much more than what I was seeing. Aside from a dusty life-size cutout of one of their big-name characters, the room was depressingly bare. No merch. No excited fans. No energy. Just recycled air, bad music, and the sense that maybe this wasn’t worth the $40.

We exchanged a few awkward hellos, and he slid a thick stack of paperwork my way. By then, I had already begun to feel that I no longer wanted to do this. But I’d come all this way. Spent the gas. Took the day off. At that point, it made more sense to just get it over with.

I signed the forms and returned them. He took them, looked down, and hesitated. Then he let out a deep sigh and rubbed his temples.

“Long day, man?” I asked him, trying to keep it light.

He stared at me longer than necessary, then let out a short, tired laugh. “Yeah. Long day,” he said before rattling off a canned spiel about NDAs and basic rules. Then he pointed toward the orange door, plastered a half-hearted smile on his face, and said, “Good luck.”

Ready to get my answers and promptly leave, I walk toward the door and give the man behind the desk, who had now moved to silently playing on his phone, one final half-smile.

Touching the doorknob was like plunging my hand into dry ice. An instant, burning cold made me yank back with a gasp while instinctively shooting a look at the guy behind the desk. My shocked and angry expression spoke for me.

He glanced up, gave me a lazy shrug, and went right back to scrolling on his phone.

I wrapped my sleeve around my hand and tried again, gripping the cold metal through the fabric. This time, the door creaked open.

Inside, shadows swallowed everything. The only light came from the sickly blue glow of scattered computer monitors.

As I stepped in, the door clicked shut behind me. The awful music from the lobby vanished, smothered by thick silence broken only by a low electrical hum and a slight burning smell.

“…H-Hello?” I called out, my words eaten by the dark.

I like to consider myself a rational person. I knew from the jump that this whole experience was off, and whatever this was, it set my danger signals to one hundred.

I spun back toward the door and reached for the knob—only to recoil again. It was colder now. Not just cold—biting. My fingers stung on contact like I’d touched dry steel in a snowstorm. I forced myself to try again. It didn’t budge.

I swore under my breath and pounded on the door. “Hey! Hey!”

Nothing.

I hit it again, harder this time—desperate now—but no answer came. I tried again. Nothing. Like a caged animal, I pulled and twisted, hoping I could tear down the only thing keeping me from safety. But with each failed attempt, the cold reality sank in that I was alone. The hum and the dark were my only company.

I let out a frustrated scream into the nothing before turning to face the dark room again. My eyes strained, hunting for some other way out—anything that wasn’t a dead end. I crept toward the soft glow of one of the computer screens, moving slowly when my shin knocked into something solid.

I froze.

Reaching out, my fingers brushed against the back of something hard. Cautiously, I felt around the object until my mind pieced together what it was from the little light in the room. It was a chair.

Figuring maybe I could use it to reach a vent or something, I swirled the object toward me and before I even had time to process why, I was already falling back hard onto the floor.

Someone was sitting in it. Slumped, still, almost posed.

The dim monitor light cast a sickly blue glow over his face, but it wasn’t the screen that drew my eye.

It was his mouth.

It hung unnaturally wide—distended, broken-looking—and from within, a striped red-and-blue light spun like a siren buried in his throat. The flickering cast shadows across his gaunt face, dancing over skin pulled tight to the bone. Whatever fat or muscle he’d once had was long gone. He looked… consumed. Like he’d been starved from the inside out.

His hands gripped the arms of the chair so tightly they seemed fused to it—flesh sunken, knuckles bone-white, fingernails blackened.

His clothes hung off him in tatters, dusted in long strands of white hair that looked like they’d once belonged to a full head of shoulder-length hair.

But it was his eyes… Or… The absence of them—that made my breath catch.

His eye sockets gaped impossibly wide, empty but surgically clean. Not a drop of blood, not a shred of tissue. Just polished hollows where his eyes should’ve been.

And yet, somehow, they weren’t empty.

Because inside each socket, suspended in the void, spun another light—identical to the one in his mouth. Red and blue. Rotating. Silent. Hypnotic.

I found myself staring. Trapped in those pits. Caught in the endless cycle of color and motion. I don’t know how long I was lost there, only that I snapped out of it with a sharp slap to my own face. Then I kicked the corpse away from me, hard.

My breathing turned erratic. My thoughts were a storm of confusion and panic.

I had to find a way out. Now.

I shot to my feet, fumbling for my phone, and flicked on the flashlight, desperately looking for another way out, but nearly dropped it when something on the man’s monitor caught my attention.

Lines of code were appearing on the screen. Then vanishing. Then reappearing. As if someone were typing and deleting in real time.

I moved to the next workstation. Another body. Same position. Same spinning lights.

Code was being written there as well. I moved to the next. And the next.

Every screen. Every corpse. Every one of them still writing.

I’m no game developer, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking closer. Even with my limited understanding, it was clear—this was game code.

Someone had to see this. I hit record and made a second round, capturing all of the bodies and their workstations, hoping that as soon as I got out, I’d take it to everyone I could think of. The police, friends, and family. Hell, I would drive to the state capital and show it to the governor if I had to. Whatever was happening here couldn’t be kept a secret.

And then, the silence broke.

It was subtle—barely there. In any other setting, I might’ve missed it entirely.

The faintest sound of an inhale.

I turned toward the sound, my heart hammering against my ribs. One of them—the one nearest to me—its jaw twitched. A tiny, grotesque motion, like it was struggling to open wider, to pull in more air.

I stepped closer.

The mouth opened further, joints clicking. The breath came again—deeper this time.

They were breathing.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight, desperately looking around the room for a way out.

And the lights… God, the lights…

The lights in their eyes started spinning faster. The speed increasing in sync with the breaths. It was like they were waking up.

I turned my phone’s flashlight back on and swept it across the room, panic now in full bloom. There had to be another way out—there had to be.

But the walls were bare. No windows. No vents. I was alone with the glowing screens and breathing corpses.

I turned and bolted back to the door.

I grabbed the knob again, but this time, the cold was even deeper. It burned my skin, but I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. All the while, I’m banging and screaming at the top of my lungs.

“Please, for the love of God, HELP me!”

Bang. Bang. Bang.

The breaths were growing deeper, heavier. I knew I was running out of time.

I slammed my fists against the door, harder, faster. From behind me, I heard it—the soft creak of old chairs turning in unison.

Bang. Bang.

“Help!” I screamed. Desperate. Raw.

A wet cough echoed from the room. One of the corpses was waking up.

They were coming.

“Goddammit!” I yelled.

And then—

Daylight.

I flew out the tiny crack, turning for a final glance just in time to see one of the corpses illuminated by the light, its neck cracking as it fully rotated toward me. Its jaw popped as it attempted to communicate. And then, in a loud whisper that didn’t match the movement of its mouth, it spoke.

Standing above me was the man from the front desk, arms crossed, face twisted with barely concealed annoyance, like I’d spilled coffee on his favorite keyboard.

“Alright. That’s enough,” he said flatly. “You need to leave.”

I scrambled upright, gasping, trying to piece together a coherent sentence—anything to make him understand. I babbled about the bodies, the lights, the breathing, the code.

He held up a finger to his lips and then pointed at the door. All while giving me a look that clearly stated, “You’re crazy.”

I stared back, confused. How could he not get it? I wasn’t crazy. I had seen what I saw. The man himself was mere feet from the door. And if others were experiencing the same thing within minutes of each other, I’d imagine all of them would be as disturbed as I am. So… What the hell?

At first, I didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t leave. There were people in there who clearly needed help. And I’d already seen others go in and never come out. I begged the man to listen.

That’s when two large guys materialized out of nowhere and physically removed me from the building. No discussion.

Later, I got a text. No pleasantries—just a reminder that everything I saw and heard that day was protected under the NDA I signed. And a warning that this company had no qualms about launching life-ruining lawsuits to protect its secrets.

At first, I didn’t care. What I had recorded clearly crossed a line—this wasn’t just a breach of contract but a serious criminal offense.

Then, I tried to check the footage.

Corrupted. Every file.

Of course.

The only thing left was to call the police. I lied. Said there were sick people inside, possibly in danger. But I didn’t stick around. I couldn’t bring myself to be there when they showed up.

To this day, as far as I know, there’s never been a news story. No investigation. No PR nightmare for the company. Only silence.

I wish I could take anything from any of this. As far as I know, I don’t have clinical depression. But I felt like I was right there for a couple of months.

The game eventually came out to great reviews, and of course, I couldn’t bring myself to play it. Or any of their other games, for that matter.

It’s weird. You’d think any mention of that studio or their IPs would send me into a full-blown panic, but it’s not like that. Not at all. I do have this lingering dread that follows. But it’s almost like my abject fear is stuck in that place. Or rather, with that place.

I mean, hell, I don’t even know if whatever I experienced has anything to do with the studio in question. To that point, I conducted research on who was involved with the actual game, and none of the names of the development team that I allegedly met were listed.

But still. They were coding something, right? I mean, I saw them building a game.

I think of all this. The thing I think back on most was when the last corpse turned to me. He said something that was undeniably the most true thing I know about this situation.

He said, “I’m in hell.”

Whoever you are or were, I’m sorry.

Last thing. And I almost forgot this one. For a while, I was getting these weird calls. At first, I thought they were just promotional robocalls telling me to buy their games because I had been placed on a list somewhere.

One day, I grew tired of the spam and said something less than pleasant on the phone. Immediately, the guy on the other end pauses and tells me, “Remember to keep your fucking mouth shut.” He proceeded to list off my home address and where I worked at the time. Then, he hung up and for years, he never called back.

It wasn’t until after I tried communicating with that random commentor that I finally received another call. The call that set me on the path here today.

He didn’t speak for long. He didn’t need to. I’ll remember his words forever. He said, “You almost broke your silence. It’s too bad. We know you have great eyes for gaming. Next time, we’ll use them.”

To this day, I don’t know what to do with that.

Before anyone asks, no, I’m not saying the location of the offices or releasing any information about anything. I just… Can’t. Even if I could, I don’t believe anyone should be digging into this.

Honestly, I wish I could end this off with something… I don’t know. Important? Meaningful? However, I don’t have anything to offer. Like I said earlier, I’m just a scared guy who needed to vent. However, I appreciate anyone who took the time to read this.

At the very least, I can offer you this parting piece of advice. Be really careful which doors you step through. You never know what you’ll find on the other side.

Credit: Bryan A Young

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