Most of the stories you read about haunted video games involve someone getting it from a yard sale, or off of eBay. No, this is something I brought upon myself

I love and collect N64 games. I usually get them in boxes with other games I got online, and then I take the ones I want to keep and put them in my collection. The ones I don’t put in, I mod. I've gotten kind of good at it, so I sold a few to some friends of mine.

About a month ago, one friend wanted me to hack a copy of Ocarina of Time for him. He told me he wanted it for this creepy pasta he was writing. Personally, I like some of those stories, but I didn't understand why he wanted the game for it. I asked him why he couldn't just do the story without a game. He said he wanted to do a video of him playing it to make the story more “real”. I just kind of laughed at the idea. At least I was going to get paid for it.

The story he sent me was nothing special. He get a copy of Ocarina of Time from eBay. He plays it and odd things happen. Palate swaps, strange sounds, backwards music, bleeding eyes, jumbled text, and other clichés found in these stories.

As you know, moding can take a while. I finally finished two days ago and sat down to play it. I had everything set up to record my play through. Why? Because I wanted to see how it looked after I finished testing it. I turned it on and everything was working fine. The game started with some static, but it was supposed to do that. Like I wanted it to, the game started up a file instantly. Link was standing in the middle of Hyrule field at night.

Link’s tunic was black and so were his eyes. There was some low moaning and some thunder sound effects. The game played just like I wanted it to, it made me feel proud in my work. That’s when things started to get weird. I was walking through Kakariko when there was a high pitched scream followed by a strange animation from Link. He quickly looked from side to side, like he was in some kind of panic, then he drew his sword. This freaked me out, because I didn't program that animation and that wasn't one of the sound effects I put in.

I sat down the controller and went over to my computer. I didn't remember programming any new animations and I wanted to see what the problem was. I looked through my programs for a specific one. Not that long ago, I got a program named Lace. It allows me to make custom animations for Link. According to the information on it, it was last used a few days earlier. Maybe I did use it, but forgot about it. But what about that scream? I didn't have anything like it in any of my sound files.

Suddenly there were noises coming from the game. I went back, and what I had seen freaked me out. Link was surrounded by ten Coccus in a circle. They were just sitting there, looking at link. I had made their eyes red to make them look creepy. It worked. As soon as I moved the joystick, they all swarmed on him, and he was dead in an instant. If that wasn't enough, the running man, that guy you give the bunny hood, ran up. Than he spoke: “YOU POOR THING. IF ONLY YOU HAD MINDED YOUR OWN BUSINESS. YOU WILL LEARN. THEY ALL LEARN.” That’s when the game froze. I didn't Program any of that stuff. In a panic, I turned off the game and went over to my computer.

I looked at the video to confirm what just happened. None of what I had seen was on the video. The scream, panicked Link, the Cuccos, the running guy, none of it was there. It was Link just standing there for a while, than the game freeze. I went through the games program and I played it a few times again. I could never get it to happen again. I told my friend about what had happened, but he thought I was just messing with him. I’m glad I no longer have that cursed thing.

I even got paid for it.