Video game culture has quickly taken over the world ever since it pervaded the mainstream way back in the 20th century. There aren’t many storytelling mediums that can immerse people quite like a video game, where you are in control of pretty much everything that can — and will — happen to a certain extent. It is more than what can be said for movies, TV shows, books, and other forms of entertainment in the form of storytelling. In fact, this degree of immersion has led to a dedicated fanbase that has constantly impressed time and time again with the stupendous level of dedication they show for their passion — whether it be in the form of mods, fully-fledged fan-made games or various theories and stories surrounding their favourite games.

One such medium of fan storytelling that has quickly gained traction and has pervaded the culture of video games to a massive extent are creepypastas — horror short stories which are either original in nature or add sick, demented twists to real-life events and products in order to instill a sense of unease in the reader. Video games are no exception to these stories, and some of the tales that have been told in the form of creepypastas are extremely well-written, horrifyingly descriptive and will surely give you nightmares for a long time. Here are 20 of the most nightmarish creepypastas that are sure to keep you up at night.

20 jvk1166z.esp, The Haunted Morrowind Mod

It was rumoured that an incompatible Morrowind mod that went by the name of jvk1166z.esp circulated around in a pretty small community somewhere around 2005. The game with this mod included had to be booted in DOSBox for it to work properly. Upon booting up the game, players would notice something off about it from the start.

You constantly lose health no matter what, and the game already has its major characters killed off (so to add to the creepy factor, their corpses wouldn’t vanish either). There’s an extra dungeon as well, and NPCs would stop responding after a while and sometimes, during the night, they’d gaze upwards and simply say, “Look at the sky.” But perhaps the spookiest part of this story is that when you die, a new “Assassin” monster would come up to your corpse and scream horrifyingly.

19 Unknown Format

A creepypasta revolving around game ripping and pirating, this story is sure to give any pirate second thoughts when they decide to illegally download a game. The story speaks of a certain Japanese program that helped in facilitating this unhealthy practice. However, the games were ripped in .4 format, which led to some pretty creepy things in some games.

Portal 2 would have a ton of disturbing imagery, Civilization would get rather bizarre research options and Serious Sam would straight up feature absolutely grotesque things such as that of human sacrifice, among other things. It’s kinda creepy to think that something so simple like piracy can lead to such insane occurrences.

18 The Terrible Story Of Animal Crossing

Literally nothing is safe when it comes to creepypastas, including an innocent kiddy-friendly game like Animal Crossing. The series has garnered its own niche fanbase that absolutely love the series and anything else related to it… but if you want your perspective on this game completely ruined, then read this bone-chilling tale.

The story takes a fresh perspective on the entire Animal Crossing saga, making a very strong argument that the game is basically propagating and reflecting grim things like debt slavery, child labour, and a pinch of the occult and the supernatural for good measure. A great read — that is, if you don’t mind that your perception of the game will be completely ruined.

17 The Tails Doll Curse

Sonic R is a racing game set in the Sonic universe, which was a pretty decent game for its time. For Sonic fans, the game was a nice distraction if nothing else, but it was the creepy curse associated with one of the characters that is the focus of this story. The character in question is a doll resembling Tails that is apparently cursed.

While this might sound stupid, various accounts have come up regarding this doll that simply cannot be ignored. One version says that after finishing the game, they’d unlock a Tails Doll Mode that would crash whenever they teamed up with Sonic. Another version of the story claimed that by playing both ‘Can You Feel The Sunshine’ and ‘Livin’ In The City’ in reverse, a red light would pop up in their bathroom mirror after 11pm.

But the award for the creepiest Sonic creepypasta has to go to…

16 Sonic.exe

Few creepypastas have ended up becoming so popular that they’ve actually inspired people to make fan-made games emulating exactly what happens in the story. This is what happened to Sonic.exe, a story that started out as a somewhat badly-written pasta that — to the writer’s credit — had a pretty scary premise.

A teenager who got his hands on heavily modified PC port of the 1991 Sonic The Hedgehog game described certain events in the game that are nothing short of horrifying. In these levels, it seems that Tails, Knuckles, and Robotnik are running away from a deranged Sonic who inevitably catches up to them, leading them to their grim fates as disturbing pictures of Sonic flash on the screen. A classic creepypasta if there ever was one.

15 Pale Luna

Pale Luna is a popular creepypasta revolving around a text-adventure game that gets increasingly difficult the further you progress in the game. This game is notorious for its numerous crashes and creepy occurrences, making it seem almost unplayable. However, one man managed to finish this game — and uncovered something truly horrifying.

At the end of the game, the screen reveals the coordinates of a location in real life. The gamer who finished the game (having enough time on his hands anyway since he managed to beat the freaking game) ended up digging at the specified location… and uncovered a decomposing body of a young girl. The only part that remained somewhat noticeable was a fresh head, covered with blonde hair.

14 The Gray Man From LSD: Dream Emulator

LSD: Dream Emulator is probably one of the weirdest games of all time — and to top it all off, it actually exists. Featuring a procedural-generated world that was based off of a dream journal of one of the developers, one must wonder exactly how messed up this person’s dream could be if he thought of such inexplicable things.

Everything from the environments to the characters in these dreams (if one can even call it that) were absolutely random, having no semblance of anything logical. Perhaps the worst thing about this was the Gray Man who would end your game if you came too close. The interpretation of this entity’s existence in the game has been hotly contested, with people saying that he represents various hostile entities one might encounter in their dreams from time to time.

13 Luna Game (Based On My Little Pony)

The My Little Pony fanbase is unexpectedly big, and it’s hard to gauge the exact reason for their rather unhealthy obsession with the kids’ show. This has provided people with tons of opportunities to mess with these devoted fans, and one of the most effective ways to do this has to be the Luna Game series that was released.

These games mask themselves as straightforward platformers, where you control one of the ponies as you progress in the game before getting assaulted by vivid and disturbing images that will surely make you shiver at the very least, if not elicit a genuine scream. This can be quite jarring, especially when one considers the fact the first game in the series was released quite inconspicuously to the general MLP public.

12 The Buried Alive Model From Pokémon

Lavender Town is infamous for its creepy music and the story attached to it that has pretty much been told to death. This time, instead of talking about the same old tale, we’ll mention a different story set in Lavender Town that is just as creepy, if not scarier. The original Pokémon games were rumoured to have a hidden code regarding the Pokémon Tower boss. Originally, it was meant to be a decaying corpse with quite powerful Pokémon.

If you managed to defeat this character, the game would freeze since there was no script set in place if victory was achieved. However, losing to this boss is a whole another story — a Game Over screen would appear (which is not supposed to happen in Pokémon, in case you weren’t aware), and a sprite of the player-character being dragged into the ground by the Buried Alive model could be seen. Spooky.

11 The Theater

The Theater is perhaps one of the most well-told creepypastas on the internet, and for good reason. The story is about an underground game along the veins of Killswitch, that was released to a limited audience. The game was released around the same time as DOOM, and while the gameplay might seem rather simplistic, there are certain odd things that could happen, which has deeply disturbed players over time.

Sometimes, the Ticket-Taker that’s standing at the entrance would disappear, forcing you to walk endlessly on a red pathway until you encounter a swirly-head version of the Ticket-Taker, which has reportedly caused players to feel nauseous when they gazed upon this grotesque sprite. Apparently, the Ticket-Taker also says the words, “don’t reach the other levels,” although this has been a subject of much debate.

10 Misfortune.gb

Misfortune.gb refers to a very rare Game Boy Color cartridge that — you guessed it — saw a very limited release. The game has been the subject of a ton of discussion and debate due to the nature of the game, its music and the apparent side effects that many people experienced.

You control a boy in a strange building, where he appears to have been accosted by a being that can only be described as an interpretation of the devil. After saying yes to his challenge, you are teleported to a very hard puzzle that you must solve. If you fail to do so, the devil will appear in more detail and declare himself as the god of this realm. This game has apparently led to a number of serious side-effects like nausea, depression, and even the tendency to commit suicide.

9 NES Godzilla

This story revolves around another bootleg copy, this time for a Godzilla game. The person who received this bootleg had played Godzilla before on the NES before with a normal copy, and wanted to stoke his nostalgic heartstrings by reliving the experience all over again. However, he got way more that what he bargained for.

Instead of a regular experience, the gamer’s bootleg copy featured various instances and glimpses of images and events he was unfamiliar with — some of it being extremely creepy. The whole story is pretty long and chock-full of these disturbing images, so if your need to sleep is not that strong, you can read the entire tale. Don’t say we didn’t warn you though.

8 The Town Of Tumbleweed In Red Dead Redemption Is Haunted

Red Dead Redemption is one of the finest console games to have been released during the seventh generation of video gaming. The western setting is not exactly a hotbed for video games, but somehow Rockstar has managed to develop a game that has all the recognizable traits of the esteemed developer in this unusual setting.

Rockstar is also famous for adding elements of a paranormal nature in their game. The most blatant one to date has been the Mysterious Stranger in Red Dead Redemption, but another odd thing in this game are the supposedly haunted town of Tumbleweed. The entire list is quite long and mostly rumours, but knowing Rockstar it wouldn’t be surprising if they included such an element in the game.

7 Evil Otto From Berzerk, An Arcade Game

Berzerk was a fairly popular arcade game during its heyday that attracted a sizeable fanbase due to its simplistic yet challenging gameplay. One of the more disturbing creatures that the player needs to avoid in this game is Evil Otto, a bouncing ball that changed colours and had a rather creepy smile on his face, who’d pursue the player at any given moment and kill him in one shot.

Apparently, the concept of Evil Otto came from one of the heads of the project. According to stories and supposed accounts from the developers themselves, this head, in particular, liked to pressure and berate various members of the developer team — sporting a forced smile on his face as he did so.

6 Super Mario 128

After the release of the GameCube, players were hoping fervently that Nintendo would release a fully-fledged Mario game capable of taking full advantage of the current hardware. Unfortunately, only one game — Super Mario Sunshine — saw the light of day. The other title, named Super Mario 128, was released as a tech demo but never developed into a proper Mario title.

However, according to some rumours one person actually managed to get their hands on a copy of Super Mario 128, detailing the creepy events of the game. As always, Bowser has kidnapped Peach, and Mario is tasked with rescuing her. However, as the story progresses it seems that the residents of the Mario universe have given up on the eponymous character, and soon Mario crashed down into a real-life city. He is subsequently stabbed and decapitated by a realistic-looking Bowser, which is obviously the stuff of nightmares.

5 The Number Stations From Fallout 3

Fallout 3 was Bethesda’s first foray into a world ravaged by the nuclear apocalypse. The game was pretty great, and gamers have picked apart at every nook and cranny of the series in order to figure out all the secrets of this brilliant game.

One such secret that has been rumoured to be in the game revolves around a particular radio station that says gibberish before providing a series of numbers that is apparently meant to represent the time and date for various real-life events. This gets rather creepy when you realise that one of these numbers happened to be the exact time of death of Gary Coleman (a death that occurred after the game was released), while another set of numbers predicted the BP oil spill.

4 Sonny The Clown From The Original Sims

This creepypasta revolves around a clown in the original Sims (also in The Sims 4) who comes to your lot randomly and generally does annoying things that reduce your Sims’ mood. One player hated this clown so much that he ended up burning him in the game along with the rest of the family.

Unfortunately, things did not go well for him. The clown ended up invading his game and made him experience something astoundingly creepy. The whole story is a pretty long read, but it’s certainly not bad. Plus, clowns, in general, are quite spooky so this story already has that particular scare factor in place. Suffice to say, don’t take any chances with spooky clowns.

3 Super Mario 64 Damned

Bootleg copies have been the source of a ton of creepypastas, and it’s pretty obvious that a recognizable character in the form of Mario will attract a ton of creepypastas. This one, in particular, is quite chilling, and it starts with a couple getting a bootleg Super Mario 64 copy that provided an absolutely horrifying experience, which is totally not what Mario games are all about.

From audio distortions and jump scares, to full-blown videos and images of Mario suffering torture and death of the most painful order (including one where he gets his face and eyes shut as he gets repeatedly stabbed), this creepypasta is certainly not for the faint of heart.

2 Pokémon Creepy Black

Like most creepypasta stories, this tale revolves around a bootleg copy of Pokémon Red that a player managed to get their hands on. This bootleg added another starter Pokémon called Ghost, who has the sprite of the Lavender Town ghosts. In battle, Ghost only has one move called Curse, and enemy Pokémon are too scared to attack Ghost at all.

The implication of the Curse move is pretty dismal, since it’s clearly hinted that using this move kills the opposing Pokémon (it can also be used to kill the Trainer as well). Then, there’s the rather creepy ending, where you control an aged version of yourself as you battle against Ghost. The only move you can use is labelled ‘Struggle,’ and after a while Ghost uses Curse on you, implying that he kills you at the end of the game.

1 MARIO, The Infamous Super Mario World ROM Hack

One of the most intricate creepypastas on this list, the MARIO hack for Super Mario World is probably one of the most well-known stories ever. The person who used this hack found a text file which mostly contained gibberish and the phrase ‘find me’ repeated throughout the document. The game itself was rather odd, with no enemies, text boxes with either cryptic or insulting messages and the color of each successive level draining out.

Many people have deduced that this hack is actually detailing the fact that Mario is sinking into depression the longer the game progresses, making it a precursor to his attempt at suicide that occurs when Mario goes down a regular pipe… and never returns. To add to the scare factor, the text file was actually an accidental format change, and converting it back to .jpg revealed the horrible image you can see right above. Good night!