Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Ghost Stories?
clemens asks: "As Halloween is just around the corner, does anyone have good geek-oriented spooky stories to share? No, I don't mean that hey-freddie-is-creeping-out-of-your-screen stuff, but some after-wee-hours-in-comm-room-i-see-dead-people stories. Anyone?"
I'm sure there are enough creative people out there that can come up with a few Scary Stories that are uniquely Slashdot. So if you're game, write away! CT here's my favorite :)
Datacenters will be ripe for ghost stories in about 50 years... actually to speed up the process I've thought about installing an internal speaker into my co-lo that would scream at random intervals to freak out the DC staff....
AHAHAHAHHA!!!
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
The Story of Magic from the Jargon File always amuses me...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I don't know about you, but I see trolls all the damn time :)
Isnt hallowen somthing that happends outside..... thats scary enough for me on it's own the thought of going outside
There once was a network engineer, and he saw all of your faces, and jumped out at you and then he went BOOOOO!! MuahahaA!!!
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
the scariest stories all start with the following line --
"once upon a time, there was a man named jon katz"
-hemos.
I'm hemos., aka Jeff. Bates.. I help run this site, along with Rob. Malda.. I handle books, and generally posting storie
This is the stupidest article yet.
We drove to Florida once. In like 11 hours (from Michigan - that's fast)... After being awake for a LONG time we just jumped in the van and decided to drive to Florida.
Long story short... We were all strung out on caffine and ephedrine (diet pills) to stay awake when we encountered a stop light in the Florida "pan handle". This particular stoplight was on a "surface road" that had very few stop lights. Few and far between... In any event, this area had been previously designated a "fog zone". We saw the signs but did not know what this meant in terms of changes in actual equipment used on the highway. I dunno if anyone else is familiar but they equip some of the stoplights with a VERY intense flash sorta like a camera flash but lots brighter... They proceed to flash these when the light turns red and there is fog out. Kinda like an extra warning.
I don't know if it was the drugs or lack of sleep (combination maybe?) but we were pretty freaked out when we witnessed this light at 3:00am after driving for 10 hours. It took us like 15 minutes (several stoplight changes) to figure out that these weren't aliens but rather a safety feature implemented by FDOT.
Sigh...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Don't have any scary stories, but.. If you want a truly scary experience, find yourself a windows computer and install MSN explorer.. you'll have nightmares for months after.
"Rob Malda and the Disappearing Slashdot Database".
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
And he ran, ran until he could run no more. He thought he'd gotten away, but as he turned a corner he discovered that there was nowhere to go, the blue screen of death was everywhere and there was nothing he could do about it....
If you have never played "System Shock 2", go out to your local video game store and see if you can get your paws on a copy (shouldn't be more than $5 bucks these days).
It starts off kinda cheesy, but if you only play at night with all the lights out, it'll eventually get freaky enough to scare the bejesus outta you.
Sitting in a corner, you have a gun that's in such bad shape, you anticipate maybe one or two more shots left until it jams. You can hear the mistress coming for you, speaking in akward statements (must protect the baaaby....). You back up into a corner by the opposite door to make a hasty exit, when, while your back is turned, the door opens! You hear "SILENCE THE DISCORD!" as a zombie hits you with a tire iron.
I jumped up, and couldn't get to the keyboard fast enough to actually get outta the way (took 3 hits to kill me).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Chained to the helpdesk, and all of the sudden a evil voice tells you 'Enjoy the rest of your life!!! HAHAHAHA'
kewl
Computer Help
The fact that it's snowing here in Ottawa right now is pretty friggin' scary, if you ask me!
Scream!
Run and hide!
The ogre is back!
I live in sunnyvale, calif, and the toys-r-us (some toys are kinda geeky =P) down the road on El Camino is supposed to be haunted. Some employees and former empoyees swear up and down that they've seen a ghost that wanders around there. Of course, those people work a near-minimum-wage job at a toy store and prolly arent the brightest dimes in the jar ;)
t m
http://www.snopes2.com/horrors/ghosts/toysrus.h
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
bill gates urging me to install XP...he was mumbling something about my passport as well
Every evening, after the lights have been turned off and everyone has been put to sleep, I go to my terminal in my dusty attic. I log on to Slashdot and through bleary eyes I could swear I see stories that I thought had died long ago. I read further, and find that others also seem to have believed these phantom topics to be long dead, but usually within a few weeks, the stories are mysteriously back again, chasing me to my nightmares.
Mine's not really a story, just something I remember back in the day. I'm sure the rest of you have had a similar experience:
I was up late, playing Wolfenstein, and it was amazing. I had never before played it with a soundcard (just the pc-speaker), but today I had gone to the store and bought a sound blaster! I installed the card, and was playing wolfenstein, almost being sppoked by the level of realism the sound introduced.
I was pretty far into the game, and had killed nearly all the nazi's in the level. It is the level that is like a maze. Anyway, I was wondering throught this maze for maybe 15 minutes without seeing any nazi's or anything, then all of a sudden, i hear that german speach come blasting out of the speakers and it scared the shit out of me. I think I had forgotton that my computer had sound, and I spilled my pop all over my keyboard and knocked a nuch of shit off the desk when I flinched. This was the beginning of late night gaming... when it's dark, you're the only one up, it's not too hard to scare yourself with computers...
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I did a ps -elf on my Solaris box that had been up for over a year (I'd like to see NT do that) and I saw Zombie Processes! (Unix geek humor for you NT'ers)
There has been one or two occasions, late at night while coding, that I thought I saw someone standing behind me reflected in my monitor. When that stats happening it's time for bed!!
With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe ...
Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer, I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store, Only this and nothing more.
Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing, Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more. But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token. "Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!" One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more, Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion? These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before. Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises. The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more. Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more, From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending, Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored, Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key. But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before. Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore, Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard. I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore. Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations, Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before. Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before. Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted. Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor. And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night. A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core. The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore. Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go. What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored, Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes? But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more, You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore, Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
... a preschooler in a penguin costume knocked on Bill Gates' door.
Tux: "Trick or Treat!"
Bill: "Release the lawyers!"
Needless to say, the evil empire met a grisly end at the hands (and fins) of Tux and his minions.
The End.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
They're everywhere...
They don't even know that they're stupid...
I had a friend who was new to Unix and really shouldn't have had root access. But he was learning well and with few problems. Yeah, he ran into the rm -rf * problem once but it was a few directories down so no real loss. Well he found out about stripping binaries and figured that he would do it to every one he could find.
All was okay until he stripped the kernel. Shortly afterwards I got a call, "Why are all these programs broken... I haven't even stripped ps yet!" I hung up and went down to his room and installed win 95 on his machine and told him to RTFM before installing a real os again.
Oh my god, is that....? No, it can't be????!?!?!
AAAAAAAAAH
It's CowboyNeal!!!!!
*kills self in desperation*
Wanna see something scary?
Invite Cowboyneal to Thanksgiving dinner!
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
MS's Halloween Docs ;-D
It was a deep, dark night, in a deep, dark town.
In the deep, dark town, there was a deep, dark office park.
In the deep, dark office park, there was a deep, dark building.
In the deep, dark building, there was a deep, dark hall.
At the end of the deep, dark hall, there was a deep, dark stair.
At the bottom of the deep, dark stair, there was a deep, dark security door.
Behind the deep, dark security door, there was a deep, dark server room.
In the deep, dark server room, there was an
MCSE!!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
About two years ago, when I was still cooped up in my tiny little freshman dorm room with my two roommates, I knew a guy named Tom Freck. Tom was a pretty nice guy, always willing to stop by and chat, or lend a hand with homework.
I always wondered, though, why he was a Computer Science major. His computer skills were at best mediocre--he could turn his system on and run a word processor without any problems, but when it came time to install hardware or write an actual program ... well, suffice it to say that problems would arise.
Normally, this wouldn't have been too big a deal. There were at least seven other Computer Science majors living on our floor--so there were very few computer problems that, among all of us, couldn't be fixed. Tom's problem, as far as I could tell, was a general lack of faith in our abilities.
The event that I have thus far been leading up to took place in November of 1996, if I remember right. Somehow, one of Tom's Windows 95 driver files got corrupted. Tom immediately pulled out the number to Compaq's customer service line and dialed up to ask their assistance.
It should be noted at this point that the error occurred at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Myself and a few others offered to help him out, but he insisted that Compaq Tech Service would do a better job. Not thinking much of it, I proceeded to my evening classes, then went home and flopped into bed. The next morning, I was surprised to see Tom in his dorm room (the doors in Taylor Tower are routinely kept open--it's tradition or something), eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, still on hold waiting for tech service to answer.
"You okay, man?" I asked him.
He gave no indication that he even noticed I was there, so I waved my hand in front of his face. He jumped about three feet in the air. "Huh?"
"I asked if you were doing alright."
He shook his head vigourously to clear the fog from his brain. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just waiting for tech support to take my call."
I shrugged. "Well, just lemme know if I can help out, okay?"
He just nodded dismissively, so I headed off to my freshman chemistry course, leaving him to his fate.
When I returned that night, he was still on hold. My attempts to get his attention were innefective this time, so I again shrugged it off and went to bed.
This went on for the better part of three days. It got to the point that people walking by his room were so used to him being glued to the telephone that they would hardly give him a second look as they passed.
Then, that fateful Saturday morning, he dissappeared. We asked around the building to get some idea of his whereabouts, getting a few responses about a strange figure stumbling out of the building some time around 3 AM.
We decided to file a missing persons report with the campus police--there wasn't much else we could do at that point. Later that day, one of my neighbors called me into his room to see something on the six o'clock news. Apparently, an unidentified man had been sighted running stark naked down North High Street, screaming, "I AM THE NEXT AVAILABLE SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE!" at the top of his lungs.
None of us ever saw him after that, but to this day, if you listen hard enough late at night, you can still hear a recorded voice saying, "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and wait for the next available service representative."
In the last year I've been noticing the spirits of more former employees haunting offices. I come across old photos, badges, books, an occasional mug that says, "Scott" in script letters. Spoooky....
Of course we torture people, we need the information --Gen. Pinochet
I tell you, there's something mighty weird going on here.
Oct 31 = Dec 25
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
I used to be an AS/400 computer operator working the night shift. We had an IBM 3130 printer in the computer room. This printer, after being idle for several hours, would somtimes make thumping noises for no reason. When your at a new job, in an empty office building at 4:00am and you hear strange thumping noises coming from the corner of the room, it'll freak you out!
Bill G.: Steve, my faithful servant, tell me how well you have spread my corrupting influence.
...
Steve B.: Far and Wide, my master. Even now, copies of Windows XP fly off the shelves.
Bill G.: As quickly as Windows 95?
Steve B.:
Bill G.: You dissapoint me, Steve.
Steve B.: No, my lord. Not as quickly as Windows 95. Still, many have already installed. Many more will follow. Every new computer user will have a copy. In days, you will have complete and almost untraceable access to more computers that we ever thought possible.
Bill G.: You may live, Steve... for now at least. Soon, soon I will unleash my master plan and turn the entire world to my bidding. All will bow down before me! BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I'm sure everyone is already familiar with the story of the headless Alpha.
And Norton's Ghost.
Or the daemon who handles your request even though it was killed days ago.
For real frights go to the Apache burial ground, where all the unlinked web pages are kept, look at a mirror site and repeat "Embrace and Extend" three times. I get chills just thinking about it.
Vger Alan Roe
Meanwhile, don't forget to check out our web address giveaway. Includes a year's free hosting. Are we scary, or what.?
fud is dead, everything's GNU now. just ask charlie brown's friend.
It was a quiet night, just like any other, the cosntant hum of the air condtioning systems nearly putting me to sleep as I stared at the command prompt, the Dell PowerEdge waiting for me to throw some command at it. I'd been at it for hours, resenting the fact that I was being made to work on Halloween. There were people to see, parties to go to, neighbors to egg, and script kiddies to frag in UT. But no, I was sitting in the server room trying to implement the bosses next big whiz bang idea. I knew it wouldn't work. The people in the other division knew it wouldn't work. My manager knew it wouldn't work, the night time cleaning lady Dorris, whose entire computer skills revolved around the fact that once she had dialed in to AOL, knew that it wouldn't work. However the nice consultant who sold us tens of thousands of dollars of gear said it would work just fine, every other reputable company in our line of work was doing it. So here I was, on Halloween, staring at a command prompt.
I threw back another cola and tried to clear my head. The makefile was hosed, some dependency was missing that I couldn't find. I checked site after site but saw it listed nowhere. I even hoped on several IRC channels to now advail. In a leap of desperation I called up the developers tech support number. I was instantly transfered to a machine that transfered my call to the night answering service, but that came up with a message telling me the number was no longer in service.
My brain felt fuzzy, I was getting nowhere quick so I grabbed another cola and tossed it back. It wasn't helping. I just couldn't focus, the caffeine wasn't giving me what I needed. I looked down at the can and then dropped it, pushing my chair back sliding me across to the far side of the server room.
"Caffeine free!" I cried out in horror.
Quickly I got out of my seat, flew from the server room and up the stairs to the small office kitchen. I shuffled around for the coffee. This would do the trick, this would bring me back to life. I opened the can and it was empty. I grabbed another one, but dropped it just as fast as I saw it was decaffeinated, the foul brew of the devil himself. I tore through the kitchen cupbard, looking for anything that contained the substance I so greatly desired. How would I ever get this to compile without the aid of caffeine, the stuff that needed to be flowing through my veins! I found a stash of herbal tea, but it too was without caffeine.
I grabbed for my wallet, there was still some cash in it. Good. I bolted from the office and across the street to the all night convieant store. I pulled on the handle but it was locked. I banged on the door, trying to get someones attention but there was no movement inside.
I could feel the fuzziness creeping deeper in to my brain, taking hold of me, choking me, dragging me further in to darkness. I tried to fight it, tried to do something, anything. I couldn't scream. I couldn't move or breathe. The darkness. The darkness....
NO CAFFEINE!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!!
In a row???
Try alt.folklore.ghost-stories.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
...frightening enough? Who needs BSD emblems when there are FBI agents watching you everywhere?
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
I have this strange irrational fear of being accosted by aliens asking for directions at night.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
It was a late Friday night and we were really behind in the schedule. Our hard drive image wasn't ready yet but the client wanted it installed by Monday. I spent the better part of the day putting together a new machine complete with networking setup, our applications and user preferences. Then we were ready to go with our sample machine but still I wasn't sure how to get the image to the user. The internet was too slow for this and besides, they had to have some kind of media to install with. At the last minute, we came up with a simple solution that created and image of the hard drive, complete with operating system, which installed perfectly on Monday morning on the clients machine.
Thank god for Norton Ghost.
liB
... was a story told to me at a Citrix admin class once. Apparently the Citrix development group had a running gag going where they would remotely take over the desktop of their receptionist every so often and move things around. She had no idea that Citrix could allow this and eventually they had her convinced that her system was haunted.
Well, I thought it was funny.
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
Aliens vs. Predator was also quite freaky. The first five minutes of the game is you in a dark facility that's been evacuated. The entire time your motion tracker is pinging away like in the movie. The place is dark so you must use your flares but when you throw them they make the motion tracker go off. By the time you actually get attacked the tension is enough that my roomate jumped out of his chair when he played.
...micro$oft xp was installed on every computer!
ahhh!
CowboyNeal + Thong = Nightmares
He went to his local store to buy a PC. Configured it with a nice graphics card, good sound card, decent NIC, dual hard drives, 21" monitor, 1GHz dual CPUs and 1GB RAM. Asked them to preload it with Mandrake.
...
They said it would be ready the next day.
Next day, he came back. Picked up the machine, took it home. Plugged it in. Turned on the power.
Went to get a cup of coffee. While he was doing this he thought he heard a wierd sound.
He turned around and looked at the monitor.
And he saw
[spooky music]
[tension builds]
It was booting Windows XP!
[maniacal laughter]
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
For the halloween party tonight, my bright idea was Undead Emeril -- a monster plastic cleaver, and an apron with BAM! written on it. And lots of blood.
Anybody have any ideas for -- or stories about -- a great Halloween costume? Something along techie lines?
Near our home was a cemetary, which was in my path. Depending on which path I took home, the Cemetary was often on my way, and I would either go around or cut through, depending on my mood.
Well, to be honest, I think that bravado took over... Damned if I wasn going to avoid the cemetery just because it was haloween night.
As I walked through the cemetery, the nearest street light was about 3 blocks away. It was dark, but there was still enough light for me to see the road ahead of me and the outlines of the tombstones around me. Suddenly, I saw something white moving to my left.
I stopped. I turned off my radio. I scanned around where I thought I had seen the movement, and shortly, I saw something white moving on a grave.
Now, I don't consider myself very superstitious, but at this point, I was in a prime superstition territory. Midnight, alone om a cemetary on Haloween night, with something white moving on a grave. If it got any closer to being a Hollywood movie, I was not going to like the next scene.
Suddenly the white thing started to move... and I mean move fast! My heart jumped as I prepared to run like my life depended on it and then I realized what I was facing.....
I don't know who was more scared -- Me or the rabbit -- but I don't remember ever taking a shortcut though that cemetary again.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Well, once I checked 'DMA' in Windows 98, rebooted and trashed my master. How's that for a scary story?
Anyone else top that?
I clicked on this link to see Natalie Portman and all I saw was some ASCII artwork of an asshole.
The Gateway to Hell. For those of you in Lawrence, KS, you should be aware of this. Can anyone verify that this church is actually on the Pope's list of forbidden places to go?
Fuck Ajit Pai
i never would have thought it would happen to me.
i was working alone late one night in the datacenter. i got a call from one of the night support techs. i'd always noticed her at the office....
Reading alashdot at anything less than +2!
/this/ post :)
Some of the nuts down in the basement there...
Creepy!
Luckily, I'll probably never even see
Tequila - drink of the gods.
In one of those boring training classes with tons of computers, wait for a break or other convenient moment
Discreetly swap your keyboard into the input of one of your "more-gullible" classmates, if you have been in class long, you have figured out who...
Now's when the fun starts
STOP TOUCHING ME
I MEAN IT, CAROL.
Etc. You get the idea, run with it
Can be fun, but its hard not to laugh when you start getting these mumbled WTFs and the victim calling out for the instructor!
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Tried before and the DB had crashed...
I see dead servers...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
It's a bit old, but I consider it a classic....
Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System
manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of
bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom
line I took a floppy from the drawer, I then invoked the SAVE command and
waited for the disk to store, Only this and nothing more.
Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more. But
the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token. "Save!" I said,
"You cursed mother! Save my data from before!" One thing did the phosphors
answer, only this and nothing more, Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion? These were choices
undesired, ones I'd never faced before. Carefully I weighed the choices as
the disk made impish noises. The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting
me to type some more. Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing
more, From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending, Longing
for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored, Praying for some
guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key. But on the screen there still persisted
words appearing as before. Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted,
as my patience wore, Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore. Now
in mighty desperation, trying random combinations, Still there came the
incantation, just as senseless as before. Cursor blinking, angrily winking,
blinking nonsense as before. Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted. Getting up I
turned away and paced across the office floor. And then I saw a dreadful
sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night. A gasp of horror overtook me,
shook me to my very core. The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and
gone forevermore. Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go. What demonic
nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored, Beyond the reach of
mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes? But sure as there's C,
Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more, You will be one day be left to wander,
lost on some Plutonian shore, Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"
SUCK at telling ghost stories!
Reality is scary enough!
My company had something that "haunted" the corner of the cellar floor of their main building. I had a personall experience with it while doing windows 95 upgradres really late at night. I was busy stuffing disks into thie POS machine when I suddenly got the feeling that I was being watched and that it wanted me to leave. I was so creeped I bailed and came back the next day. The guy who worked on that floor and ran the Next network gave me a shocked look when I told him that I was there at 10:30 at night. He then told me all about the "ghost" that has freaked people out enough that they refused to work 3rd shift in that corner of the building. Freaky stuff.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Here's a very scary, very /. thought: all of the authors of /. are eaten by zombies save one: JonKatz. He then decides to keep /. running in his free time. The first story: Into the Zombie Mouth.
Posted from the wireless couch.
Well this was a few years back, the early 1990's, I was supporting my college dorm's network, including the shared Apple Laserprinter at the front desk.
It was 2:00am on a cold early winter night when I was awoken by a phone call.
"Uhmm there's something wrong with the printer"
"What?" as I struggled to awake.
"Well for the past two hours its been printing the same pages over and over."
"I'll be right down."
Sure enough, it had been printing page one of some unfortunate student's final paper hundreds of times, though it had briefly alternated by printing hundreds of copies of page two.
After about an hour of futzing, and some swearing at the *#$#$#% print spooler software, I had the printer back online and working. In the process I deleted 7 print jobs that had been sent after the one corrupted print job that had been causing all the problems. In the course of my solution I had to disconnect and powerdown the print spooler and the printer and ensure that their memory caches were flushed.
With the printer fixed, I managed a few hours of sleep before my classes the next day.
And so the stoy remained for the rest of that week. But, seven days later, now comes the part that I can't explain.
I returned to the dorms after my classes that winter afternoon, nothing appeared out of the ordinary, but I stopped at the front desk to see how the printer was doing.
"Well we have these 7 printouts that no one has claimed"
Sure enough, seven days later the 7 print jobs I had deleted had been reprinted, the banner pages showing print dates from 7 days previously.
To this day I still can't explain it... ghosts in the machine sums it up best.
-- Join us in Chicago May 1-4th for MeshForum -- writer, historian, tech geek, entrepreneur, internet junky since '91 --
My freshman year at college, I was worried about an exam, and stayed up very late studying my computer science textbooks. Around 3 or 4 in the morning, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone creeping up on my left, holding a big knife. I snapped my head around to see better and of course there was nothing there.
I immediately packed up my books and went to bed. Time for some sleep!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
For me, it's definitely the ninja babes in Half Life. They're so damn fast and quiet, it's spooky. I hate them with a vengeance. I take care of them by walking around the corner so they get a look at me, drop a satchel charge, then run back to my hiding spot with the trigger in hand. Speedy as they are, they can't outrun an explosion right at their feet.
Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're stupid.
How often do you see them?
All the time!
Mod parent up please!
Sorry, I didn't write it, but you can find it at: http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf.
truly a frightening tale of paranormal ignorance and oppression, the likes of which we would never see in this sane, wonderful country, right?
I made some clam chowder and left it on the stove for a day. Shortly after eating it, a mysteriouse stomache ache began! What was I to do? A rumble arose from the deepest depths of my belly. I knew I had to do something quickly. I ran to the toilet to try and puke up whatever monster had enpregnated me, but stopped.... I saw.... THE PLUNGER! quickly I stuck the plunger to my face and began to clear the intricate plumbing of my inner cavities. To my surprise, up came my clam chowder in the exact same condition it went down. This was when I realized this was no monster.... this was an eternally renewable food supply.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
On the other hand, I have seen things I can not explain. This is one of them:
When I was still single, and living in an apartment, c. 1990, I awoke from a nap and thought I saw my bicycle in the hallway outside my room move backwards... frame move back, pedels reversing, the whole thing move... about a foot.
Though this freaked me out, I figured I must have been dreaming in a half-asleep state and investigated. If the bike had actually moved recently, there'd be a noticible indentation where the carpet had been previously compressed by the tires.
Sure enough, such a carpet mark was quite noticible for a foot in front of both wheels.
To this day I can not explain this. I lived alone, and no one else was present at the time. It was rather unnerving.
You could've hired me.
That is really funny.
I wish I would have thought of it 6 months ago when my servers were in Savvis' datacenter.
I could have mounted a webcam in the box and waited until someone was looking at the box after they figured out which one it was and then do voice over ip with netmeeting or some equivalent and yell, "DON'T TOUCH ME OR I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!"
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~t3singh/tush ar/tfcostume.html
oo7
Quack
internet like monkeys'
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
This short story scared the hell out of me the first time I read it. The tech is mid-80s and thus very dated, but if you can get past that you have a classic geek horror story on your hands. Charles Kludge lives!
Jon
A story from my college coder days:
Once, while working on a project late into the night, I got stuck on a mother of a bug. I must have worked for 4 hours on this one bug, and considering that this project was due the next day, 4 hours was a lot of time to spend on one bug.
So after tearing my hair out for half the night, I was starting at the screen in utter dispair, when all of the sudden I had a powerful bout of Deja-vu. I could clearly 'remember' exactly what I had just done for the last 10 seconds or so.
BUT...
the freaky thing was I could also 'remember' the next 10 or so seconds, in which I proceeded to scroll down to the bottom of the class I was working in, and make a small change in the way I was initializing the variables in that function (setting them to -1 as opposed to NULL, I believe).
So I proceeded to do this, seeing as how it had "already happened" and I've never been one to mess with fate.
It fixed the bug, and I proceeded to finish up my project and turn it in the next day. The odd thing is that I hadn't even considered that as a possible cause of the bug until I 'remembered' already fixing it that way.
A couple of years ago an acquaintance of mine died of cancer. I got the news on a Friday. Monday morning I found I had a new email from him in my mailbox at work.
Up until that time I had always kind of considered email to be almost like having a conversation. Often people I email with are online, and they reply immediatly and we tend to have a conversation of short reply messages.
It was weird to read that note from him. Basically it contained his dying words to bunch of friends. I have lost that note, but he said stuff like, "it won't be long now.. I hope I brought smile to you life with the jokes I forwarded. Remember to have a pint for me..."
Of course he sent the note before he died on Friday and mailer problems delayed the delivery.
It still weird for me to remember that.
Kevin
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
I was learning to code in DOS assembler, then
;-)
one night, at 3 AM, i decided to skip high school tomorrow and go on coding.
I had a video game TSR in the background when
i started a system debugger.
The debugger reloaded the game, and whener i step
in the code, i would hear a little funny sound.
The game had a startup sound, generate through
the speaker. So, each time there is a breakpoint,
the debugger disturbs the sound sequence, and
i end up hearing just one note!
It freaked me out. I thought my LIFE was starting
to have sound effects!
Here is the funny thing. It wasn't the same note that
gets played every time i step in -- that happens
all the time one the keyboard queue is full.
This was a new note for every break-point.
Spooky if you ask me.
I once worked in a lab with about 30 Sun Sparcstations (very sweet). They were lined up along two sides of a corridor, typically, you would be working at one of them in the "middle" of the corridor.
.au files from a station with a microphone, and rcp them into /dev/audio on the machines around where someone was working alone. Things like "Psst!" and "Hey you!" and farting sounds.
We would record short
People were constantly turning around to see who it was - the machines immediately behind the victim were best, or we'd move along one machine at a time.
We even got this working from the office PC's on a completely different floor - someone would go to the lab, we'd "find" them with rwho, and do this until they returned looking a bit freaked.
Fortunately it got old before anyone started refusing to go to the lab alone!
Anybody wet their pants in the "all lights out, monster in the room" part of Unreal?
Okay in the datacentre I worked at in Sheffield, England, the story goes that
of the three halls number one was haunted. Many ops reported catching
glimpses of someone or something moving between boxes. Some refused to enter
hall one alone at night.
The explanation given is that it is a dead coal miner from the old tunnels
that lie underneath large parts of the city and that the building actually
covers a former entrance.
The fact that the 'experiences' are reported by night shift workers
struggling to stay awake at 4 or 5 in the morning is my explanation but those
who think they saw something don't accept it.
Penny arcade had a cute one today.
Speaking of computers making sounds--- I once had my Mac set up so that when you put the floppy in, it played a portion of the diner scene from "When Harry met Sally".
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
It was late, Halloween night at my workplace. At the time, I was a system administrator stuck with the late shift. Of course, around midnight on Halloween all alone in a big office building can be a bit creepy.
I was sitting at my desk, pretending to work (in reality I was surfing the web, but there were no real problems with the system that required my immediate attention) when I heard a noise out in the hall. The noise had a metallic sound, almost as if someone was bending a piece of aluminium siding.
What with this being around midnight on Halloween I was a bit freaked out. I am not normally supersitious, but there are limits. I reasoned with myself that perhaps someone else was working late, or was coming in after a party to check their email or something. Of course, it could also have been a burglar but we didn't have a lot to steal outside of our computers. Or at least, nothing a burglar would really want.
So I step out of my cubicle, and out of our office into the hall. "Hello?" I called out. There was no answer. The halogen lights were flooding the hallway with such a sharp illumination, it made everything seem so surreal. I checked around the corner, and I noticed the airvac vent pipe had been pulled back with a hole big enough to fit a large man, as if someone had gone in there to hide. Or come out of hiding.
Now I was getting more than a little nervous. The airvac did lead to the roof, and a Burlgar could have come in after all. The airvac vents were large enough that someone could have squeezed through fairly easily, although I don't know how they could have supported someone's weight. I decided to head back to my cube and call the police, but then I heard a noise from the vice president's office. Visions of me confronting the burglar and capturing him ran through my mind, with possibly a raise or a promotion.
I approached the door, and I could see through the glazed glass the shadow of a large man moving around. The door was ajar and he was making a bit of noise with the rattling of papers or some such. I burst in, and was suprised when I saw a large, portly gentleman in a Santa's suit. "Excuse me, but what do you think you are doing?" I said in a voice that I hoped was filled with disdain, but more likely sounded a bit scared.
"Hello," the man in the Santa outfit exclaimed. "Working late again tonight, Markus?"
I was suprised that he knew my name. Perhaps it was a co-worker coming back in from a halloween party after all. of course, I didn't recognize him, and he definitely wasn't the vice president. "Do I know you? Do you work here?"
The man looked amused. "I guess you could say that, although I'm finished now." He hoisted a large bag over his shoulder, and walked out of the office.
"Excuse me?" I exclaimed as I followed him. "Who are you?"
He headed towards the hole in the vent. "Why I'm Santa Claus, out giving presents." He stopped in front of the hole in the vent.
I was flabbergasted. I worred about how to handle this obviously insane man until the police showed up. The fact that he climbed down from the roof through our "chimney" at what must have been obvious threat to life and limb meant he had no concerns for his own safety.
"Pardon me," I said, trying to humor him. "But today is Halloween, not Christmas."
The old man turned and looked at me, with a twinkle in his eye. "Of course. I always make my deliveries to computer geeks on Halloween. It cuts down on my workload during the holidays."
"What? Why?" I exclaimed.
"Why, every geek knows that OCT 31 equals DEC 25." And with that, he touched the side of his nose and vanished up the air vent.
Not a joke - an incident that happened a few years ago in the field service department of the vendor dealing with my wife's company.
The serviceman with the weekend on-call had gone on Sunday morning to a customer site supposedly having power problems. He had been seen going into the building, been let into the computer area by one of the (very few) weekend staff . . . and never came home. The police don't get completely bent out of shape in less than 24 hours, and assured his wife that in the morning they would contact everyone involved - but for some reason didn't immediately contact the vendor about where he was and send a cruiser to see if his car was there; had they done so, perhaps they would have considered a medical emergency and broken in.
When the people at that business came in Monday morning, they didn't see anyone there until they actually went around behind the rack-mount cabinets. There *had* been power problems - and something on the rack must have been electrified, because the serviceman was lying there with a burn on his hand. The final determination was heart attack brought on by electric shock - perhaps a younger or fitter person would have survived long enough to get to a phone and call for help.
Weird stuff really *does* happen sometimes.
-harlan
Anyway, one day one of the support staff got a call from a customer asking about delayed email, specifically could messages arrive months late. Well, it was possible if the site had two or more servers and if after some types of problems the "Resend" command wasn't used but it was rare and *months*?
Anyway, this was a small office that was calling and they just had the one server and no external email (this was about '87). Our support person said that no, there wasn't any way she could imagine this happening though possibly if a client machine hadn't been used in all of that time but it was still unlikely... The customer seemed to accept this, thanked her and hung up.
The next day they called back. More mysterious email. It turned out what really bothered them was that the sender was an employee who had died some months ago. Getting the messages was very disturbing to the staff and was there any way to purge them? Not to purge as there wasn't a centralized email store but the account could certianly be deactivated. As the folks calling weren't technical our support person faxed off a set of direction for them to give to their systems consultant.
Three days pass then she gets another call and the person on the other end is in tears: More email, it contains personal information and current events! The office is in an uproar, half the staff is freaked and the other half is furious. Our support person reassures the caller we've never heard of anything like this and to have the systems consultant call her as soon as they come in before *anything* is touched.
Eventually through some sleuthing (well, mostly login times) it's determined that someone has the password to the dead fellow's account, had gone through his old email learning personal details and was now using this to harass co-workers.
Once the times and dates of the messages creation were firmly established it was in the hands of the customer but they apparently had a good idea who was doing this once it was confirmed how & when.
Real ghost story? No - but creepy enough that someone would torture their co-workers this way.
BTW at the same software company we had to go around removing a screensaver that randomly composed funny headlines with staff's names in it after a person listed died.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Where to begin - My great-grandfather built the house that my parents currently live in at the beginning of the last century. My grandfather grew up in that house. The strange things started to happen towards the end of the second world war. My grandfather's brother was killed over Sicily, and buried overseas. The night he found out about the news, my great-grandfather went across the river to the sawmill he owned and paced the yard. His son appeared to him, in uniform, and told him not to worry, and that he was ok. A short time later, my grandfather awoke to see the image of his older brother standing at the end of his bed, smiling at him, and then fading away into the darkness.
We moved into the house when I was 8 years old. My great grandmother died peacefully in her sleep, in what was to become my bedroom. I had had a good relationship with both of my great grandparents. The first things I began to noticed were the balls of light at night. For the frist 6 months, a white ball of light the size of a softball would travel back and forth across the bottom of the wall opposite my head. I blocked every light source and curtained all the windows, (the house is in the country so not much outside light anyway), but the light remained. Later, it moved into the hallway directly opposite my head as I slept, and then after another few months, disappeared. I like to think of it as my great-grandmother watching over me.
But it didn't end there. At night, after 11 or se when everyone had gone to bed, I would hear what sounded like big band era music coming from the basement, through the heating ducts. I would go out into the living room (I was the only one who slept on the ground floor), but I could onyl hear it coming from my room. It wasn't until last year that I mentioned it to anyone, and that's when I found out that my great-granparents would always listen to their big band records in the basement/den that they had.
I have seen objects move, seen movement in hallways when I was the only one home in the house. I once saw a small statuette fly 6 feet off a piano into the middle of the room. My sister has some more negative experiences with the house. She is 2 years younger than I (19) and will not stay in the house alone at night. She either invites a friend over, or leaves. She has seen and heard doors slam, windows close, heard loud noises and felt presences. Which leads me to the scariest single thing thing that has ever happened to me at the house.
I no longer live with my parents, and when I go back to visit, I sleep in the basement, on a hideaway couch. I have never had any creepy feelings or bad dreams in the basement, and as a child I used to mow the lawn in a cemetery as a summer job, so I do not scare easily. One night, around 2 am, I woke up, staring out into the room, and I SWEAR I saw a thin hand reaching OUT OF THE DARKNESS towards my face. Scared out of my mind, I lunged towards a lamp and after several agonising seconds turned on the light and saw nothing at all except an empty room. I ran upstairs, lit a candle, put it beside my bed and tried to forget about it, but I couldn't. I am getting chills just writing this. This happened last April. Now, when I visit, I have to have a small light on in the basement, or I CANNOT sleep. It is the only time I have felt or seen anything other than the protective spirits of my family in the house.
I don't know if I am more sensitive to spirits, or what, but I have had some other experiences that were definitely weird. I like my parents house, but some people, like my sister and my best friend, refuse to spend the night there, as it gives them the creeps.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
One evening after hours of trying to explain to a clueless user how to double-click, my supervisor interrupted to ask what was taking so long. I explained that the guy who kept calling was a total idiot. The super said he would try to help.
About 15 minutes later the super came back on the other line and said "the calls are coming from in-house!!!".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I used to work in this computer lab, that was actually was the first level of a parking garage that was converted into office space. It was okay, except for the lack of visible light and the strange gurgling noises that would come from the plumbing that ran floor to ceiling throughout the lab. One saturday night I was working late, this was a few years back, I think it was in October, but I'm not sure.
Around 7pm my Kastle card stopped working at the keydoors around the lab. For some reason, they had built a wall around an area that had been an exit to the stairwell at one point. The stair well had been walled over, and the emergency exit open INWARD. I know this now, because around 8pm, I was rooting around for a network card I needed to put in an IVR server. I thought there was a spare parts bin in this large closet, instead I was trapped, with no way out but my Kastle card.
I was stuck.
Well, I figured I was in there for the night, so I managed to find some foam packing material, and stretched out in the corner between a few odd sized piles of pc components. I guess when I enterd the room I must have tripped a silent alarm, because sometime later a large swedish looking guy in a security uniform opened the door about an hour later. He must have been 6 foor 5 and weighed about 300 pounds, he was a healthy boy to sya the least.
He opened the door with and slowly entered with his flashlight shining all over the place. Then he proceeds to do the exact same thing as me! He shuts the door behind him, and eventually, as he is trying to leave, realizes that he is stuck too.
So the security dude is banging on the door, when I finally wake up enough to figure out what's going on. I get up, and walk over to him in the dark room. I say, "don't even bother, there's no way to get out of here."
Son of a bitch if the guy didn't break down the door on his first try getting out of there! Funniest god damn thing I ever saw!
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Looking Glass Studios made some pretty damn scary and atmospheric games.
Thief had me seriously freaked out when I'd play it late at night - and you had to play with the lights out to avoid any glare so you could see in the game.
I finished it aged ago - I should go and get Thief II for Halloween!
...from Modern Humorist for last year's Halloween.
It was the craziest thing... /warped/ my senses.
Somehow, our linux server had crashed... and hard. I was at the end of a 36-hour non-stop debugging section when I was haunted by the Ghost of Operating Systems past.
The server rebooted spontaneously and when it came up... it was sitting at a prompt for PC-DOS 5.0... the first operating system that had ever been installed on this particular machine.
"What the hell?" I said. It was as if some mysterious force had forced the partition table to restore some old data... it was unexplainable. I staired at my can of Red Bull and wondered if drinking twenty of them in an hour might have
It was warped all right... OS/2 Warp! The screen melted away to reveal the OS/2 Presentation Manager! I blew chunks.
When I finally pulled my head out of the trash can, I looked up to see that the screen was at the Windows NT 4.0 logon screen.
I screamed. My hair went white. This was the most frightening thing I had seen.
I ran from the server room... activating the Halon before my ass was out the door.
I never went back... I'll never go back! I CAN'T GO BACK TO WINDOWS!
I sense a lotta evil gremlins in the M$ box.
Stalag '99, my comic strip, has a send-off of the old classic here.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Play the original Silent Hill tonight (PS/PS2). If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, nothing will.
Dungeon Keeper has to be about one of the coolest games to play late at night. Nothing quite like the computer telling you to go to bed or give up because it's late and your soft bed is calling.
There is even weirdness around special dates like the solstices and equinoxes. I haven't played it on Halloween in awhile but maybe I'll try it again tonight.
One day, I had a major crash on the hard drive (a Maxtor, IIRC), couldn't get a directory listing and had to reformat it.
Funny thing was, after I reformatted it, I was presented with a FAT table listing that contained not only the file tree before the format, but a few directories I had even deleted over the years.
I thought I had performed a miracle, until I noticed that the directories didn't truly "exist" and I couldn't change into them...
The second format took care of the problem somehow, but I still wonder how I could have ended up with such an old FAT...
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
A witch to three young zombies:
"You still have much to learn, my dear apprentices. But tonight will be your first test. For the Halloween festivities, each of you has to perform something evil."
"I will scare people all night long." declares the first zombie.
"That is evil, but I want someting more disgusting" answers the witch.
"I will make a drink with the blood of a bat." declares the second zombie.
"That is evil and disgusting, but I want something more pervasive" says the witch.
The third zombie thinks a minute and then declares:
"I will install Windows XP!"
There was some guy called J.Suzuki who haunted my computer.
My computer was a Spectravideo SVI-318. Someone claimed that by giving some sort of PRINT/POKE/PEEK command combination it printed out "J.Suzuki".
When I tried it, it didn't work.
Now, remember, I was but a little kid back then and didn't knew that this sort of easter eggs are rather common - and that companies at that time often removed this sort of things later on if they were found.
But back then, I lost my sleep when I tried to think where that Suzuki fellow was. I found the fact that I couldn't find a trace of him very frightening.
This is a variant on 'Poe Puree' written by Marcus Bales. Here is the official, unabridged, author-approved version. Marcus' is even more Poeesque IMHO.
We had this one OEM computer case, building a machine for a client. So we put the parts in, and the machine wouldn't fire up. So we swapped out everything, from the floppy drive to the mainboard to the powersupply to the powercord. It still refused to operate.
So we threw that case aside, took all of the parts and put them into a different case - the machine worked no problem.
We then put in the discount isle, and was someone bought it. We didn't here from them again.
Who knows? Could have been a happy customer
"BSD is about people pissing each other.." (Moid Vallat)
I'm a hobby musician with the computer..
Well not quite "hobby" anymore since this story happened; one night I was working late behind my computer and I didn't have a musical inspirition so I went out with some friends, when I came home and watched on the computerscreen, it had generated a track out of nowhere, I listened to it, it was awsome. The rest is history (yeah I'm quite famous and rich now!)
(would be fun eh? but it's not true however..I'm still working quite hard myself to make cool tunes)
this really happened - for real - once:
One winter-night I was slashdotting really late at my parents place. They live in a 600 year old house with parts that are even a little older than that. I felt quite tired but kept on reading comments and downloading some stuff I really didn't need. At one moment the printer turned itself on and started to make some noise like it was cleaning the heads or whatever and a paper slit into the printer. It scared me a little because I knew I wasn't messing with the printer and hadn't print for a couple of days. Then I heard it print and the page came out:
It had print one character, a black heart.
http://www.sheppyware.net/stories/telos.html
When I was at college years ago, periodically, when one did a ps on one of the vaxen, there would be a process that would appear called "./overlord". An odd name, but even more wierd was that searches of the file system turned up nothing that could account for it. Near as anyone could tell, there was no such program nor any such process that was running on the system at those times.
Welcome to the net of 1000 lies. Upgrades are scheduled soon that should bring us to the 10,000 lies mark.
As someone who voted Darn kids, get off my property. Hey, don't throw that egg! I've had enough of this "talk about spooky stuff 'cause it's Halloween". In fact, this pretty well sums up how I feel about today.
Error:
I had heard this story before and once used it as a time filler in the beginning of a report I had to give in school.... here it is...
while(true)
{
It was a dark and stormy night... and the rain came down in turrents.... and the skipper said to the captain, "Spin us a yarn!". And so he did...
}
I don't think my teacher was paying attention to my speech because I said it about 10 times before proceeding to the report... but it took up some time and I got an A anyhow...
Nothing beats Silent Hill, on PSX. I haven't played SH2 for PS2, but I've heard it's not as scary as the first one.
Use the same formula: lights out, no ambient music or anything that might blow the atmosphere, play it at night. Alone. You'll have one hell of a night. I know I did. And I fancy myself as a pretty brave guy. Although dating scares the crap out of me. Oh, umkay.
The first few times I tried to play this game I had to stop after a couple hours because my stomach was so twisted up. I still am having trouble getting through the game because it's just so draining on my nerves.
The only time I can remember being so affected by a computer game was the original Myst, when I first found one of the brothers' bedrooms, with weapons and skeletons and creepy music (the fact that I was about 10 at the time and it was 2 am probably had something to do with that).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
...and when he went around to open the door for her, hanging from the door handle was a BLOODY VOLT METER!
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
My parents live in a house that was built in 1906. About 2 years ago I was visiting them and was sleeping the quest bedroom.
At about 4 AM I had a sleep paralysis episode. Or at least that's what I think it was. I was aware of the room and I was in bed. What was different was the fact that there was something else in the room.
I couldn't see anything, but it felt like something was attempting to push into my body. I felt pressure on my chest and could hear white noise with female voice undertones. It was very strange and I quess kinda spooked me, because I tried to move but could not. The more I tried the more scared I became. Finally I tried to scream but, No Sound.
Finally I woke up, realized it had to have been a dream and went back to sleep.
The same thing happened again!!!
The only difference was this time I had a name in my head, "Emily".
About 3 months latter I met the daughter of the previous owner of the house. Apparently about 40 years ago, someone had died, in the guest room. The name of the woman that had died was Emily.
I'm not a big beliver in the paranormal but that situation creeped me out. My younger brother's friend had a similar episode without being told about my experiences. AND I also found out that during some renovations to the house, a 4 man crew of people saw some type of floating vapor go down the hall and vanish. Half the crew refused to return to the site.
It's strange to think about ya know.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
I can't remember the exact story but I remember it ended with:
"... and then the Sys Admin emailed the client an the email read 'We've traced the packets and the pings are coming from inside the house! Get Out!'"
Once, not too long ago, Slashdot died. Panic ensued, and when it finally was up and stable again there was an explanation by one of those in the know that included a timeline of events.
Within that timeline a name surfaced, and that person wasn't spoken too highly of. As the day progressed the person's involvement in the matter, as well as her mere EXISTANCE, were expunged from all records of the event. When others asked about the whereabouts of this technician, they too were removed from the common viewership.
To this day merely mentioning her name can bring to the mentioner the same fate that others before them experienced. While I have not spoken that Unspeakable Name, I fear that I have said too much already.
Go well, my friends, and keep record of these events. We must never forget!
I still have bad memories of hearing "ooover heeeeeeree" from the Predator on the Jaguar release of that game. AvP really scared the bejeezuz out of me.
;)
However, the PC game Thief *REALLY* bugged me out. Heart racing and all. Ish. I had problem with that one too.
I'm sitting in the computer room, configuring a webserver one Sunday afternoon when I decide to play around with the new web-enabled security cameras we're evaluating.
I enter the IP address of the one camera on the far side of the ocmputer room and play around with it for a bit...then enter the IP address for the camera that's up and behind me at THIS end of the computer room.
It's at this exact moment I discover I have a bald-spot.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
...it's been up for three months...
...no one will go near it...
...no one will say a thing...
(Score: 5, Spooky)
(Score: 5, Creepy)
(Score: 5, Freaky)
Uh-huh, one time, at band camp, a vampire stuck a flute up Willow's...
for those of us who use ICQ and forget to take off the sounds... It's 2 am, you're downloading stuff, and ICQ is on.. somebody from your list logs in. *knock knock* MAN!!! I jumped right outta my chair and went to the door.. checked.. nobody there.. hmm.. must have been my imagination.. when walking back to my chair, that someone decides to drop a line *uh-oh!!* YIKES!! it was weird, because by then, I realized it was my ICQ making noises, but I had my scare already.. hehehehe.
A couple of months ago I was working in the lab on one of our systems. A hardware guy was working on the system too setting up a data recorder. I'm scrolling through some data and all of a sudden the cursor just starts flying all around the screen and clicking on random stuff! For a millisecond I thought that someone had taken control of the UI remotely but the actions seemed too random. "What the hell!" I said. The hardware guy pops his head up and says "What happened?" I told him and he says "Yeah, we just had some high voltage arcing on the flood gun."
We discussed the oddness of the event but although it was odd it wasn't that hard to believe. HV arcs can cause all sorts of havoc. We both go back to work and about 5 minutes later the same thing happens. "Arcing again?" I asked. "Yeah." We guessed maybe the mouse cord acted like an antena, picked up the noise and something in the mouse or computer interpreted it as mouse movement and clicking. It was very spooky but like I said not that scary. Unless HV arcing scares you!
Ghost images?
I'm reading a scary and gruesome book right now: Perdido Street Station.
It's got technology, magic, fearsome creatures, true love, betrayal, and tons of grime, dirt, slime, and bodily fluids. Highly recommended.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Hehehe. I wish I had a mod point. Kudos
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
Youre lucky to be alive man, dont you read sluggy.com? Disturbing bun buns trick or teating will get you killed.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Imagine a beowolf cluster of ghosts...
All your ghosts are belong to us...
(and for those of you who can remember this far back)
Petrified ghost of Natalie Portman with extra Hot Grits...
and the brain dead, but as I work on a IT support desk, stupid (l)users don't count.
:-)
They are just horror stories instead
Don't take life too seriously. It is only a temporary situation. Usual disclaimers apply.
There was once a lady who would constantly bug me about a bogus new mail notification popping up on her screen. I constantly avoided this, not because of any disrepect but because I had other things I needed to be dealing with.
One day, I had some free time to spare and decided I should go ahead and fix her little glitch. I was shocked to see the paramedics taking her out on a stretcher. We were all shocked so we left work early.
We never went to the cubicle again, particially because of the eerie and cold tone is let off. Also partly because it was apart of the vacant warehouse area.
One night. I was working late on a network issue and had to make sure all machines were properly shut down. Out of habit, I went by the ladies cubicle. I was shocked to see what appeared to be a dialoge box. I took out my mini flashlight and inspected it further, it was a dialoge box!
Sometimes I go by the cubicle to inspect the area, making sure nothing has been stolen and what not. But there are sometimes I walk by and the sun is hitting the monitor at just the right spot. It illuminates the screen so much infact you can almost make out the message burned onto the screen:
"New mail has arrived. Would you like to read it now?"
BOOBIES
ICQ's "Uh-oh" sound always freaks the hell out of me. Especially if the speakers are turned up after some gaming...
I used to live with my Aunt when going to college. My bedroom was down in the basement, and had a large opening into the rest of the basement with no door. One night, it was completely dark in my room except for the light on my stereo. I was just falling asleep, and I heard that little purring noise that cats make right before they jump up on something, and then felt something land solidly on my chest. There are no pets in the house, so as you would imagine, I was pretty freaked out. I tried to jump up, but I couldn't move, I was paralyzed. I managed to finally crack my eyes open, and I could barely see my lights on my stereo. Finally, after what seemed like 2 or 3 minutes, I felt whatever it was on my chest jump off and I was able to jump up and hit the lights. Nothing in my room, nothing in the rest of the basement. I have no idea what it was, but I slept with the light on the next few nights. It scared the hell out of me.
Last night, I watched a show on TLC about sleep paralysis and people who have similar experiences, some with actual physical damage from it (cuts and scars). It hasn't happened since then (about 6 years ago), but everytime I think about it I get the shivers.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I didn't plug in my mouse and I was able to control everything just fine. Spoooooky. Oh wait, I got a wireless. Wheewww....
Being a backup administrator in our company, I have been surprised once with restore from the tape, I knew was clean.
Apparently, this tape was formatted some time earlier and it happened that format operation was mulfunctioning in that software.
Came as one week shock though.
Leonid Mamtchenkov
This is the very worst horror story.
Anywho, I would work late nights alot, being the only person in the whole complex. Almost every night I ever stayed there, I heard things. Indistinct voices down the hall. Doors opening and closing. Footsteps walking across rooms. I'd stand up to see what was happening, instantly all sound would stop.
Now for the doozy. One night, working late. It had been raining, but had stopped. Usual footsteps, voices in the background. After a few hours of this, heard some very loud footsteps walking through an adjoining office. Walked into the office and across the carpet, from one side of the room to another, wet footprints of some sort of work boot. Started in the middle of one wall, walked straight across the room to the other side, through two cubicle walls, to the other wall. No doorways anywhere near the footprints. One print actually was underneath a cubicle wall, half the print on either side. These prints were not there minutes earlier. Needless to say, I was a bit freaked out, left the work unfinished and went home.
Talked to the boss about it the next morning. The prints were gone before anybody else saw them, but I pointed out where the prints were. Turns out where the footprints ended at the walls, there used to be doorways there before they remodeled and added the office space.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
We had A night janitor that would always, how can I say this. Well, steal stuff that we could never prove. The only thing we were real sure of was his rounds, and at what time he did them. So what we did was set up a couple of web cams late one night and locked down our computers and turn the volume all the way up.
So we waited until we could see him on the web-cam and fire away. "I can see you", from our speakers. We have never laughed so hard. The poor guy shot out of his shoes. The next night he came by looked all around and started cleaning. This time our recorded soundbite blared "Don't touch that!". Not only did he drop the trashcan but he ran from the office screaming. We found out the next day that he ran from the building and did not report back work.
Well, you know we did not have the heart to stop. Our system is still in place and we are now on our 4th cleaning crew and it just keeps getting better. MUAHAHAHAHA!!!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Many many nano seconds ago,
/. I jumped from my seat and got my manager! Slashdot has a story about our storage department. I pointed out to him and some fellow workers: Their! Can't you read? it is about dark matter... the materials are realy there, but none, not even NASA can find it or see it! Just like all of our 100GB disks and 21" tft-screens. All missing before action! Most of them could appriciate it.
I came home from a hard days work.
It had been a dreadful day. Yesterday was so good: a customer indicated that he wanted to use a linux machine for running all kinds of management tools like Legato and BMC-Patrol. - out of the blues! While they were only using HP-hardware with UX-11. Ofcourse they had some infected PC's with outlook and other virusses, but hey if you can only find secretaries who can handle word, it is not so bad. After all, be realistic. This is not heaven, so there is still room for improvement. But still, THEY came up with the idea of using a linux server. Ah! life can be wonderfull and with surprises. But that was yesterday...
Today was a preview of utter hell. As our IT-department has a majority of brain-dead people, were still forced to use WIN-95 (yes, you read it ok) with outlook as office application. Normally it takes about 15 minutes from power up untill you can read your mail. Today a painfull staggering 45 minutes. Four times the holy mary with CTRL-ALT-DEL, followed by scanning the disc. Followed by a compulsary virus scan. Comletely useless, as it never detected the viri originating from redmond.
Then disaster struc! A sales representative at the other end of the corridor send me a email. It went the normal way through the nt-mailserver, which means that i got it three hours later... Some nitwit manager working at that specific customer had decided that he liked NT, so no linux but NT. Oh god, oh dear god what have i done to deserve this? How can we correct this wrong-doing how can we save some souls????
After some long discussions we got the solution. Even though the servers and workstations are owned by the customer, (that is if they finally pay they bills) They will loose they support on the systems if they put any kind of garbage on it (i mean garbage not written by our company). So if i validate only a linux-based solution (no time left for anything else ofcourse gna gna) they have to take, or loose their support contract. And as all their trans-atlantic fibres are managed by out software, they are unlikely to take that chance. There was hope again, but at a price: a sore throat of discussing over and over again, banging headage from producing cost comparisons that do not lie (i mean with all licences involved).
It was time for a break; lets check
In a much better mood, i decided to go home. After a 10 minutes drive (what speed limit?) i was welcomed by my wife and two little kids. She said she had a big surprice for me: You told me you had some problems with your PC? (well not really, just need to make a backup and try SuSe-7.3 thats all)
WIFE: "Well your nephew Athur came along this afternoon, and solved all of your problems". Me: Oh no, you are kidding!
She: "No, well you don't have to thank me, but Arthur for that latest xp-something". "He will come later this evening to collect the CD's".
Somwhow, my dinner tasted like mud, and my beer seemed to be horse-pis. What had she done? How could she let that evil troll touch my PC..... NO backup for sure!
Little later Athur arrived: "Hi uncle". "I upgraded your PC, for free, and it is really working". Completely defeated i followed the guy. He tried to cheer me up:
"This time the Redmond guys managed it, it won't crash and it is fast as lightning, come on just try to break it".
Well, i have to be honest, for three hours i tried my best that invoke disaster at work (like VI-commands in word) endless forwarding mail contructions and so on, powerdown while in the middle of writing a document, pull the powerplug while burning a cd. Fiddeling with the ISDN-line. My private collection of mutated viri. But no what ever i did no data lost, filesystem remained intact. No blue (or any other color) screen of death. I was flabbergasted: it just was working ok and games were fast as lightning. I was loosing my mind, i had to know, what ever it would take: How did managed to get a microsoft product running this wel?
Artur looked at me with a strange look in his eyes i never noticed before. "Well dear uncle, you now everything has it price", "But I will tell you anyway, for goodtimes sake". "It looks like mission impossible: contradictio in terminis A well working windows machine" But i really did it, but at a price". "don't tell Auntie but i have struc a bargain with Lucifer: in exchange for infinite patience, endurance and wisdom, he got my soul". "That is how i got windows working! The world is at my feet!" "No matter how much money Gates get for his products, i will be richer for getting it to work."
I bowed my head and wept, such a nice guy, and now lost for ever...
A hand touched my shoulder and a voice said: "Mister, are you okay? Should i allert a docter?"
I looked up. I was not at home, but still at work. A security guy found me asleep behind my desk. Ah there is still is a god! My sonet device driver and hp-ux port for OpenOffice are still on my disks. Still a chance to make a backup and put a password on my bios...
PS. any resemblence to people dead or alive is pure intentionally
sleep well, digihans@wishmail.net
I worked from home last week and did the following:
1. From my RH 7.1 install on my laptop booted VMWare Windoze.
2. SSH'd back into the laptop.
3. Established VPN connection to office.
4. Opened SSH session w/ office Mandrake 8.1 install and started KDE.
5. Booted Win98 on Win4Lin install.
6. From withing 98 SSH'd to home machine and opened Blackbox on FreeBSD install then ran 98 under Win4Lin again.
7. Established VPN with 98 to office again.
8. Everything was working ok until I opened Outlook and everything then died horribly.
9. I then forgot which connections I needed to kill first so instead just started closing windows at random and played Quake 3.
If you find a vampire in the house, don't go looking for religious artifacts. Look for a door. If you don't see one, make one.
If she has on high heels, leave her. If I go and pick up a date and she has on high heels, I tell her "You better bring a Bible or a silver bullet with you because if we meet a monster and I commence to hauling ass, I'm only hauling mine".
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I had an experience a while back with a haunted CD-ROM. I was working at a company installing a new CDR into a customer's machine, went through the usual tests, everything worked fine. Open it up, move the jumper on the current CDROM over a notch to make it slave, put the new burner in as master, hook all the cables together,power it up, should be no problem, right? Well, I power it up and the tray on the first drive pops out, so I push it shut, it boots just fine, I put the CD with all the software in the burner, and the tray pops out again. Push it back in. Run the setup on the CDR, tray on the first drive pops out again. I let it sit for a bit because we got busy, but sure enough, as soon as I come back and sit down, the tray pops back out. Eventually we figured out it was the jumper. It was labeled as such
C S M
S L A
and I had it like such
.|.
.|. but it had to be
...
--.
I dunno, I thought it was kinda wierd, and I was kinda scared when the tray popped out the second time.
Hmm.. looking through this thread reminded me of a story I read ages back about a haunted arcade machine in a coin-op - something to do with a guy who kept trying to beat a certain lap-time on an Atari Sprint machine, but could never quite shave off that all-important last tenth of a second.. anyways, the guy then died in a car crash. The night he died, the machine turned itself on, played itself, the lap time he'd been striving to beat, put his initials in the high score table, screamed, then turned itself off, never to work again.
I've scoured google to find the story again, but had no joy.. so no link-karma for me then, eh?.. but if anyone can find it, pls post the URL.. as I remember it was a fairly entertaining yarn.
-- RichardX
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
That must be a joke for stupid linux nerds who like LUser Friends: it's not funny.
There's Infocom's excellent text adventure The Lurking Horror, which is a horror story based on G.U.E. Tech (Great Dome, anyone?). It is an excellent story, and it can get scary as hell as you play it.
You can download it here (direct link), as well as pretty much all of Infocom's adventures. You can also find these high-quality scans of the manuals that came with original Infocom games very helpful -- you should always read them before actually playing the game, as you'll discover with The Lurking Horror.
Sidenote: in order to play these games, you'll need something like frotz. Good luck.
We were working late one night running cable for a friend of a friend at his company. It was a nice one story office that had just gotten redone.. Well long story short there was a crawlspace under the floor that we used to run our cable.. Worked great. But funny thing was we were crawling around in what looked like a mis of dirt and fire place ashes. Well i mentioned something to the gentleman that owned the office and he said "Oh yeh this used to be a crematorium.." We were crawling around in ashes, from dead people.. This is totally true.. To this day i refuse to pull cable unless i know what i am pulling through!..
peace
good point. but moderation only allows one to choose Funny. there is no Scary mod point available to award, and Insightful or Interesting don't quite do it.
So, without any further ado... The Ebay haunted painting.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
So I was walking around the building late one night (probabaly after 1 or so) and I see a coworker and say hello before ducking into the bathroom...
While I was "relieving" myself, I realized that he had been struck and killed by a train about a month ago... Good thing I was already in the bathroom...
My companies headend is next to a pet cemetery. I work third shift, so there are only three people on our complex. When you go wondering around by yourself, you can hear things moving around on th roof and see things move past the windows ...
Yet more apologies to poor ol' Poe. He's having a rough time tonight..
-----------
Once upon a life so pointless, while I keyed my fingers jointless,
Joining many a dull and meaningless channel of IRC electric bore,
While I nodded, nearly sleeping, suddenly there came a beeping,
As of some automaton creeping, creeping 'hind my mon-i-tor.
T'was a private chat request, blinking on my mon-i-tor-
Only this, and nothing more.
Ah, so distinctly I recall hoping that this modem call
Came from some hot babe that wished to ball!
Eagerly I wished for action; I felt the need for satisfaction
From Hot4U or Do!Me5, hrnygrl...I need it live-
A girl who's live, shut-in and lonely; garbed in silky panties only,
Only panties, nothing more.
(Of course I know they're all disgusting- saggy butts and teeth-a-crusting.
But so am I- that's why we hide in cyberspace, we all want for nothing more!
We may be geeks and friendless losers, this little band of IRC Kr00zers,
But we *have* libidos, just like you.
We need to cuddle, kiss and coo-
We need to type and stroke and spew.)
Presently my doink was humming; I had a hand that needed gumming-
"Madam," typed I, "or Sir??!!, truly cybersex I do implore;
But the fact is I was sleeping, and so gently you came beeping,
And so faintly you came beeping, beeping on my mon-i-tor,
But anyway...Let's Do It!"- ( and wait 3 minutes, 4...)
The 'Status' screen there, nothing more.
Deep into a funk I fell, I had been sent to Loser Hell,
Torture, evil torture I'd never dared to dream before;
Turned down for sex on IRC! Even MUTANTS would not sleep with me!
And the only floating word there was the auto "Ping!"
"Ping" I whispered-the server sent the auto "Ping!"-
To tell it not a thing was wrong, my PC sent the auto "Pong".
Back into the channel turning, my cheeks quite red, my forehead burning,
Soon again I heard a beeping somewhat louder than before!
"Surely," thought I, "surely *now* a partner willing!"
"Tell me how you rub your breasts", typed I, "and my fantasy explore-
Let my head fall 'twixt your legs...Please be my hot electric whore!"
Again-just 'Status', nothing more.
A tantrum here (I flung my coffee), Why Do These Sluts Refuse To Boff Me?
Suddenly appeared a message that sent my wanking heart a-soar
"SEXYFEM invites you/we'll have sex until we turn blue/to join the channel #raven/where we will surely cyberscrew!"
And so I rushed to join the FEM, my new found love, my horny gem-
(The things we typed I'll not repeat- suffice to say We Beat Our Meat.)
Afterwards, we sat and smoked..."Was It Good For You?" I suavely joked.
"Oh yes, my dear-you are Da Man! I think I love you, we need a plan-
A plan to meet in Real Life-you'll be my STUD, I'll be your WIFE!"
"Oh yes" typed I, for I was smitten-
"Please marry me my pookiekitten! Fly to my city, Tuesday next!
We'll Bone In PERSON, Not In TEXT!"
Horrible! Waiting all that week, I thought suspense would kill this geek-
But finally the Day was here. I could almost smell my FEM was near.
Near she was. The plane-It Landed. The doors-They Parted. My love-Appeared. My sanity-Departed.
For standing on that airline runway...Horrid...Sick...Uncanny...
My Loser Love, My Nerdly Mate- turned out to be...MY GRANNY!!!!!!!!!!
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Eddie worked at Fry's. It was an OK job he guessed, except when people asked him tough questions. Questions like, "Where are the car stereo?" and "Do you think this 2 GHz P4 is fast enough to run Microsoft Word?" Some days he found himself wishing to return to his old job at Burger King.
One day while trying to avoid customers back in the storage area of the warehouse, Eddie found himself lost in a maze of cartons. Upon turning a corner, he found himself faced by a monitor having a window holding the message:
Free P0rn!!!!
Click here for a good time!
Underneath this was a button that said only, "Enter".
"All right!" thought Eddie, "Free p0rn!"
He grabbed the mouse sitting beside the monitor and clicked...
Eddie found himself standing in a room with hundres of monitors. In the one directly in front of him he saw the monitor where he had stood only a moment ago. "Oh fuck," thought Eddie, "this must be the security area."
Suddenly a voice boomed behind him, "I am the Great SysMin."
"Huh?" said Eddie, turning around.
"I said, I am the Great SysMin!" said a tall man in a turban, "Your not very quick, are you?"
"Then this isn't security?" asked Eddie.
"No, not very quick at all," said the SysMin, rolling his eyes, "Look kid, this is where I live. I am the Great SysMin. I used to be a genie until they got rid of the lamp schtick. But we got a good union. the had management retrain us on this new equipment and... Well, we're back."
"A genie?" asked Eddie, "Like Aladdin and shit?"
That's SysMin to you, boy -- Great SysMin. Now I got a meeting to get to in twenty minutes, solet's cut to the chase."
Eddie interjected, "I know! I know! I get three wishes!"
"Can you just shut up?" asked the SysMin, "first of all, you don't get three wishes any more. Management said it was costing too much. What you get now is one click."
"One click?, asked Eddie, "What the hell is that?"
The Great Gen^H^H^HSysMin pointed to a gold encased monitor. Sitting in front of it were a keyboard and mouse whose buttons were jewels. "Here's the scoop," said the SysMin, "You get to use the mouse to select a web site. The left one goes forward, the right one goes back, and the middle button puts you into the site,"
"Puts you into the site?" questioned Eddie.
"Yes," said the SysMin, "Puts you into the site. You get to live there forever."
"Wow!" thought Eddie, "This could be great!
The Sysmin said, "In order to facilitate your search, may I help you select a site?"
"Huh?"
"No, not very quick at all," muttered the SysMin as he added, "What kind of sites do you want to look at"
"P0rn!" yelled Eddie, "The hottest, nastiest p0rn out there!"
The Sysmin sighed, "They always want p0rn. Just once I wish one of them would choose Congress. But...".
The SysMin led Eddie to the machine and set him in front of it. Eddie clicked the forward button time and time again. A plethora of beautiful young ladies flashed before his eyes. Blonde, brunette, redheads; old and young; partially or totally unclothed; many performing acts that... well, acts that would make Eddie's mother blush.
And suddenly, Eddie stopped, staring transfixed at the screen. Displayed there was the most beautiful woman that Eddie had ever seen. Flame red hair and liquid green eyes shone out at him. Her lips were ruby and perfectly formed. Clothed in only her own glory, her legs didn't seem to stop until they reached the most magnificent chest Eddie had ever seen.
"That's the one!" exclaimed Eddie, "She's it!"
"Amanda, " sighed the SysMin, "They all choose Amanda.
"Are you sure you have chosen wisely?" asked the SysMin, "What is done will never be undone."
"Yes, I'm sure! I'm sure!" shouted Eddie, "Send me there!"
The Sysmin said, "Then click the middle button and your dream will come true."
Maybe it was the fatigue from clicking the mouse so many times, and maybe it was the tension of anticipation that caused it. Eddie had just a moment to see that his finger had glanced the left mouse button before it finally landed on the middle one. With a quick glance at the screen, Eddie screamed in horror as he realized that he would not be with his beautiful Amanda throughout all eternity, but instead would be here.
His screams echoed and died away, mixed with the SysMin's chuckled voice, "Oh, yes. They always pick Amanda..."
It is said that one should never accept gifts from SysMins, for there is always a high price to be paid. A price that Eddie Smith would be tightly stretched to pay. His price? A one-way ticket to his own hellish corner of "The Geek Zone..."
That is all.
has to be the scariest time I ever had. The server would randomly lock up, with no warning, finally it gave me "there is insufficient memory to perform this operation" errors when attempting to log in at the console.
I rolled out SP5 on a bunch of identical (literally identical) machines. First I tested 5 of them manually. All went fine. Then I tested 5 with an automatic rollout. All went fine. Then I rolled it out automatically to the rest. It destroyed every single one - blue screen on boot - with a unique error message for each.
[clop clop clop]
[whinny whinny]
GALAHAD: They're nervous, sire.
ARTHUR: Then we'd best leave them here and carry on on foot. Dis-mount!
TIM: Behold the cave of Caerbannog!
ARTHUR: Right! Keep me covered.
GALAHAD: What with?
ARTHUR: W-- just keep me covered.
TIM: Too late! [dramatic chord]
ARTHUR: What?
TIM: There he is!
ARTHUR: Where?
TIM: There!
ARTHUR: What, behind the rabbit?
TIM: It is the rabbit.
ARTHUR: You silly sod!
TIM: What?
ARTHUR: You got us all worked up!
TIM: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR: Ohh.
TIM: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armour I was so scared!
Ratguy
When I was in high school, we had a place where we'd go on the weekends to party - a little cleared spot in the middle of a corn field with a falling down house, barn, rusty combine, and a small, old family cemetary (complete with 100 year old headstone carved with the name "Mary Jane") A friend and I waited there alone one night to watch the fire while the others made a beer run, and despite our best efforts the fire went down to just embers. We began to hear a persistant rustling coming from the bushes that lined the fence around the little graveyard, slowly growing louder and closer, and sat there in the dark clutching each other and whimpering. It let our terror escalate to just the highest possible point before we broke and ran screaming into the night, then the rabbit revealed itself and shot away into the field.
Rabbits get damned sick and tired of being known as one of the most timid types of animals around, so they've learned that hanging around a cemetary at dusk is the best way to get their revenge.
Christina! Bring me an axe!
This was in the "Washington Post" . . . the title of the article was "Best Comeback Line Ever."
Police arrested Patrick Lawrence, a 22-year-old white male, resident of Dacula, GA, in a pumpkin patch at 11:38 p.m. Friday. Lawrence will be charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, public indecency, and public intoxication at the Gwinnett County courthouse on Monday.
The suspect allegedly stated that as he was passing a pumpkin patch, he decided to stop.
"You know, a pumpkin is soft and squishy inside, and there was no one around here for miles. At least I thought there wasn't," he stated in a phone interview from the jail.
Lawrence went on to state that he pulled over to the side of the road, picked out a pumpkin that he felt was appropriate to his purposes, cut a hole in it, and proceeded to satisfy his alleged "need."
"I guess I was just really into it, you know?" he commented with evident embarrassment.
In the process, Lawrence apparently failed to notice the Gwinnett County police car approaching and was unaware of his audience until officer Brenda Taylor approached him.
"It was an unusual situation, that's for sure," said officer Taylor. "I walked up to (Lawrence) and he's . . . just working away at this pumpkin."
Taylor went on to describe what happened when she approached Lawrence.
"I just went up and said, 'Excuse me sir, but do you realize that you are screwing a pumpkin?'
He got real surprised, as you'd expect, and then looked me straight in the face and said, "A pumpkin? Damn...is it midnight already?"
Once I used to work at a datacenter where I was the only night operator. We had entire racks of servers, and they were fairly noisy.
...
...
One day I came in. It was dark - someone had downed the lights, since the day shift had gone home - but I could see that there was only a single machine at the end of the cavernous room. Or so I thought. It looked a little bigger, but the other machines weren't visible. Maybe they were turned off for some reason and I missed the memo. Couldn't tell, it wasn't bright enough.
I flipped on the switch and
[spooky music]
instead of the row upon row of Solaris machines there was
[crescendo]
an IBM mainframe running hundreds of Linux servers on it!
[apologies to IBM for stealing their commercial, but it fit so well with the topic]
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
a zombie process ate my memory
I've got two stories... The year is 1987. Witness the house I grew up in: High ceilings, creaky wood floors, so cold inside on a winter night you can see your breath. Outside, the vast dark expanse of looming trees that are Seattle's Interlaken park. A skittish nine year-old (me!) hears noises coming from downstairs, and crawls out of bed to investigate. The house is dark. Rain pounds the roof. I reach the bottom of the stairs. The eerie phosphorescent glow of the computer screen spills out of the study, as do shrill beeps... the shrill beeps of a Centipede-like game called Mouse Stampede. I say to myself: "Mother must have stayed up late playing the game," but this would be out of character for her, and I know that. I approach the door and peer inside, to find.... the COMPUTER IS PLAYING ITSELF! Of course, the computer (a Mac 512Ke!) had just been left on and had gone into demo mode, but I'd never seen such a thing before. Terrifying! I ran back up to my room and shut the door. And now my other story-----------------> I started working for my present employer last July. I inhabit the cubicle of a dead man. His name was Steve. No one told me this; it is information I have pieced together. Old software manuals gather dust on the shelves. The Seattle Times, dated June 28th (my birthday!), sits on the extra desk. It has faded, just slightly. A few post-it notes, quickly scribbled, shoved into a drawer by me, silently mourn: "Meeting Thurs. ... 47A2." The post-it notes of a dead man.
There's a ghost here. Not the howling, chain-shaking variety, but something passive: I can see it in the eyes of my colleagues when their eyes chance upon the stack of manila folders with notes jotted on them, or the half-full can of Pepsi, long-since flat. Nobody has managed to sort through these artifacts, and nobody has the heart to throw them away. So they remain here, in purgatory; a shrine. I keep them as a reminder. Steve died peacefully of a heart attack while he slept. The day before was, no doubt, just another ordinary day at work. A day like today.
Requiescat In Pace, Steve.
Earlier this year I was working for a small startup company in Colorado. We had recently hired this guy named Tom who was always coming in late or not at all. One day he showed up in the early afternoon, and started looking around to realize that all the cubes were empty! Everyone had simply vanished without a trace!
Eventually he found the VP of Engineering who explained that the entire company had been laid off that morning...
I was a lowly second shift computer operator working for a moderately sized retail operation, and our machine room was divided into two sections, one for the computer proper (a Sequoia mainframe) and the other was our 'office' space, where the operators had their desks, but also housed the UPS, main report printers, and air conditioner, all very noisy.
Well, sometimes when I was in the computer room with the door open to the office the interaction of the white noise from the equipment all around me gave me the impression that there were voices, that someone was holding a conversation back in the office. There was also a window between the two rooms though, so I could clearly see there wasn't anyone there. I eventually started getting the creeping suspicion on late nights with no one in the whole building, much less the computer room, that the UPS, printer, and air conditioner were plotting against me.
This culminated one weekend when I had just popped in to change the paper in the report printer, and while I was unloading the already printed reports, bent over next to the UPS, there was a tremendous BOOM!, immediately followed by a piercing wail, EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
About a minute later after I recovered my wits and stopped trembling I realized the wail was coming from the UPS fault alarm, and after a quick check to confirm that the mainframe still had power (it did, yay!) I checked the UPS display. It had a useless error message, but after consulting the manual I was able to conclude that at least we weren't about to go down barring any other unforeseen disasters. I had to call the UPS manufacturer, who sent in a service guy who showed up within an hour (yay again, I hadn't planned on spending my day at work). He diagnosed the problem as a bad power transistor that had overheated and boiled its silicone coolant, which vaporized and exploded. He replaced the board, and all was right again with the world. I never did trust those damn machines after that though.
I was working late one night, about 3 AM, in the analog studio at CSF. The studio was called the Fridge Room because it was once used as a cooler of sorts and previous to that as a morgue. You see, CSF had inherited WWII barracks that had been used primarily as a military hospital.
That evening I was editing on the 1" 16 track Tascam machine and carefully listening to make sure my edits were transparent. All of a sudden a cloud-like figure emerged through the heavy door to the Fridge Room, turned to me then immediately went back out. The figure was featureless, it was more like a gas-like cloud of light.
This was the ghost of the nurse everyone at CSF had spoken of. When the barracks were used during WWII a nurse was supposedly killed and decapitated by a severely disturbed patient. Many people have seen her wandering the halls, but I always thought it was some sort of hoax. Apparently not.
I packed up my reels, normalized everything, and took off as quickly as I could.
I remember doing some stupidly long hours hacking away at some code, the only one still at work after 3am, in an open plan office where everyone had SGI unix machines on their desktops.
It's a little bit spooky being totally alone on a floor in an office block as it is. Total silence except for the sound of my keypresses.
At around 5am, when my thought processes were dulled by fatigue, all the machines on the floor mysteriously suddenly started to whirr away noisily - at the same time. Then the tape drive in front of me spat out a tape at me. It totally freaked me out.
I was told the next day that it was the nightly coredump cleanup cronjob, and the tape spat out because the backup was complete.
And you ever wondered why they call server processes daemons and IMPs?
At my previous job we had a hodepodge intranet of Convex supercomputers, PCs and Macs. Each of us at a minimum had a PC and a Mac in our office.
This one guy named Jim could not get his Windows 3.1 PC to work. The darn thing was the most insane collection of parts that the OEM could throw at us, and it crashed almost every time you booted it up. Once Jim got it booted, he'd leave it that way as long as possible. Jim always had a supernatural Pauli field -- every machine he touched started malfunctioning in some way -- but this PC was never more than barely functional.
I was the sysadmin of the network, and so it was I who found that computer all over the logs for our office. The insane PC had been trying to log into every computer on our network, including the supercomputers, with the username/password combo of 'root root'.
Needless to say, we checked that thing with a fine toothed comb. No viruses, no software running. Jim swore he knew nothing about the hack attempts. This was before we were attached to the internet, so there were no intrusions. We reformatted the drive, and a week later the PC started trying to hack our network again. That's when I told Jim to dismantle the thing and I'd get him another PC.
But that's not the weirdest thing I ever saw from computers Jim touched. The weirdest was when our Convex supercomputer -- again, unconnected to the internet -- started sending the word 'Jim' written in banner images twenty ASCII high to Jim's workstation. Again, he swore he knew nothing about it. I didn't even know 'banner' was installed on Convex UNIX. Fortunately this oddness only happened twice and then stopped. If I were forced to find the cause I don't think I would have succeeded.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
That every computer in the world was an amiga running XP and all the users acted like Mac Snobs. And Bill Gates and Steve Jobs owned the same company whos slogan was:
"Were the monoploy with Pretty colors!"
Now thats F%^&*in scary!
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
Back in the day my helpdesk at Big Blue did sw/hw support for Burger King. One time a store called to say that one of their registers (basically a networked PS/2 with no HD and 2 floppies) wasn't working: no power, no fan, no nothing. We dispatch a field tech to the site, and when he goes to open the register notices a terrible smell. Figuring someone spilt something on the system board, he opened up the register to discover that a rat had eaten halfway through the power supply before electrocuting itself to death. I thought it was funny that a rat would rather eat a high voltage copper coil than a whopper. *rim shot*
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
In a supernatural sense, at least. I was riding my bicycle late at night (It was about 2:00 am) and I was on a road with almost no lights. However, I did have one of those friction-powered lights on my bike, the kind that runs off of your front wheel.
I was riding past a graveyard, and just had time to think about how bad it would be to be walking past this instead of riding, when I ran over something in the road. Both of the tires on my bike blew, and I fell half sideways. As the glow faded from my light, I could just make out a tombstone with "Eternal Rest" written on it.
I remember thinking that this was how many horror movies started out. I don't think I EVER walked as fast in my life as I did the rest of the way home.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
"Ghost in the machine"
"kill -9"
"terminal madness"
"the curse of the zombie process"
Anyway, here is my story:
It was a dark and stormy night at an engineering school not unlike
this. The wind was howling and the branches of the trees tapped against
the windows. I had just powered on my terminal and settled in for an
evening of working on a programming assignment. The assignment was due
the next morning, but I thought I'd have plenty of time to finish.
After an hour or two, I had just finished the first draft of the code
and it was time to compile. I guess everyone else had waited until the
last minute too, because the compiler was running very slowly (good
thing I saved the compile results to a file). After what seemed like
ages, it had finished with only 666 warnings and 13 errors. I got up to
make myself some ramen to eat while I was debugging the code. The
lights flickered for a second and then came back. Fortunately, the
computer I was using was still up and running.
The first compile error I saw in the results file was the following:
/var/tmp/ccsfAMEG.o: In function `main':
/var/tmp/ccsfAMEG.o(.text+0x10): undefined reference to `kill_user'
That was at the same time ominous and a bit confusing because I don't
remember using that symbol name. I thought I'd search my files just to
make sure:
% grep kill_user *.[ch]
%
No matches. That was strange. I always liked to deal with the compile
errors in the same order that the compiler gave them to me, but I
thought I'd go on and come back to this first one later. When I went
back to view the compile results, I noticed that the error had changed.
It now said:
/var/tmp/ccsfAMEG.o: In function `main':
/var/tmp/ccsfAMEG.o(.text+0x10): undefined reference to `free_buff'
Of course, I recognized that symbol as the name of one of my functions,
but before I could go edit the source to see what was wrong, The screen
started showing strange characters:
% ~#!!~~~!~~~!~~!~!
Damn, line noise, or someone being cute with the dorm's terminal server.
Either way, I thought I'd best go down to the terminal room. It's a
good thing it's open to students all day. I grabbed my backpack and
threw in some CDs for good measure and headed down to the computer
science building.
I didn't make it more than about 20 yards before I realized it was
really cold and I'd better go back and change into some jeans and a
sweater instead of my normal shorts and t-shirt. I got back in my room,
and as I was looking for my sweater, the lights flickered and then went
out. Well, I'd have to go to the terminal room now. Fortunately, I had
a flashlight and was able to grab my sweater and head down to the
terminal room.
I ran the whole way there, because I figured it would be very crowded.
As I turned the corner and saw the lights on in the building, I was
relieved that the power would still be on in the terminal room. I
entered the building and was about to take off my sweater when I
realized that it was extremely cold inside. Not only that, but the
building was completely deserted. I made it to the terminal room, which
was also empty and even colder than the rest of the building.
I duct taped some cardboard over the AC vents and sat myself in the
corner next to the hard drives and the line printer. Hopefully that
will keep me warm.
I logged in and started up the CD player. I always listened to
instrumental classical music when programming because there were no
lyrics to distract me. 'Pictures at an exhibition' was just starting as
I logged in. The system login script told me:
Welcome to the computing cluster, you have -559084514 new messages
Funny. I thought I'd take just a second to mail the sysadmins and let
them know something was funny with their login script. But wait, that's
a funny number. Let's see:
(gdb) p/x -559084514
$1 = 0xdead0c1e
That ain't good. I quickly sent of the email and got back to the
project. The computer was even slower than before, so I figured I'd
better do as many fixes as I could before recompiling. After I had
finished my edits, I started the compile, then I went to the soda
machine to pick up some caffeine.
I was bummed out that the machine was empty. On the way back, I heard
some strange scratching noises coming from the machine room. I had been
in the room before, but I wasn't on the sysadmin staff, so I didn't know
the combination for the door.
But I did have my student ID card and the door looked easy to jimmy open.
When I got inside, I was met by a knee-deep pile of backup tape strewn
around the room. Lights were blinking everywhere, and the smell of
burning resistors hung in the air. I followed the scratching sound back
into a corner I had never seen before, and couldn't believe what I saw.
It was one of those old "washing machine" type disk drives that held a
million bytes and cost almost a million dollars. These guys don't throw
anything out do they? Then I heard the scratching noise again, followed
by a faint moaning. "help me" it said, "I'm trapped". I don't know
what I was thinking, but I pushed the unload disk button.
The lights in the room flickered again getting slightly brighter and the
disk shuddered to a stop. The lid opened and a hand reached out and
grabbed my arm. I screamed, and then noticed that I was back in the
terminal room. The line printer had woken me up.
"Can you look at this error with me?" One of my classmates asked. He
always printed this stuff out before asking for help. "Sure I said",
and rubbing my eyes, I looked at his printout:
/var/tmp/ccsfAGRE.o: In function `main':
/var/tmp/ccsfAGRE.o(.text+0x40): undefined reference to `kill_user'
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
My mother worked in an insurance firm as a book keeper. The equipment there was a little tempermental. The dot matrix printer was especially tempermental. One day the pay roll clerk sent a print job through.
The machine started printing then stopped. They couldn't find anything wrong with it so she started calling it names. My mother joking said "see now you've hurt its feelings. You have to apologize to it." Going with the joke the clerk apologized to the printer.
It immediately started printing.
"Peeeeteeerrrrr....."
Huh? Who said that?..... go back to watering trees.
A few minutes later:
"Peeeettteeeerrr...." in this etheral breathless woman's whisper.
I bang on the wall to get my roomate (who is also playing). "SAM! DID YOU HEAR THAT?" "No. what?" "Someone is saying my name. Sounds like its coming from just inside my door....." "Dude, you're on crack. Go to bed."
Needless to say it kept going on... say every 3-4 minutes. I was getting rather distressed.
Turns out, after posting this to the B&W forums... the damn game reads your Windows login from the registry and whispers it to you every now and then.
I finaly woke up to the real world only a few moths ago. (That is when i finaly switched to Linux) This story came about when i first installed linux on my box "The purple Monster". It was about 2 in the morning when the linux install finished, and it was time for bed. I knew I had to get up for class in 4 hours. So i ran "shutdown -h now". and turned off the computer by the physical power switch and climbed into bed. after 20 minutes i'm supprised to roll over and see linux booting on my computer!! so i once again shut down the sytem and turn off the power. Again after 20 minutes the computer came back on. the quote of the day " You can't keep good things down". i kind of laughed at this but i was creaped out because the system wouldn't stay off. So once again i shut it down and it booted back up while i was away at class. I asked around and nobody had ever seen such a thing. I do not have a WOL card or any other type of remote bootup. This continued for a week when i finaly figured out that my power management and Linux do not play well. Anyhow that was my first introduction to linux and i'll never go back. That and it was kind of creepy.
Hello...
:( The fact that none of these lights are ever supposed to be shut off and that there is no light switch for them publicly exposed didn't help me cope with the situation any better.
I am enrolled at a state university in northern Wisconsin. The fact that this city in Wisconsin has the highest unemployment percentage in Wisconsin is scariest at best but the dorm I live in is worse... 'Specially around this time of year.
The dorm itself, from what I've heard, started out as a hospital (the main part of it) and the basement part that contains the cafeteria used to be a morgue type arrangement as well. I've had a few encouters that have been interesting. When I first moved in and heard the stories and figured it was all B/S... Well one time I was down in the sauna (in the basement as well) by myself on a Saturday night. Let me tell you one thing, people do NOT stay here on weekends, so it was a bit eerie that nobody was around. Anywho, I heard some knocking. Figuring it was someone at the door (you need a key to get into the sauna bathroom from the frontdesk and from there you can get to the sauna but it's always locked from the outside...) I got up to let them in as the front desk only gives out one key to the room. Went through the changing area / bathroom and opended the door but there was nobody there. Now when I closed the door I just stood there really quiet as I figured if it was someone playing a joke they'd come back in a minute and do it again. This time the knock came from inside the Sauna. Now at this point I figured I just better leave, but my stuff was in the sauna still (towel, water). I slowly walk over to the door and open it up and as fast as I could go in and get my stuff and get out. At this point I could care less about showering and figured I'd just go up to my floor and do that stuff there. I opened the door to the hallway and the lights are all out. Now this wouldn't be so bad if the hall wasn't downstairs with a security door at both ends, neither of which have windows.
After that I've never gone back down there alone. Since then most of the unusual things I've heard of happening in the dorms I don't just blow off anymore.
No it's not techie, but one of the guys on my floor down the hall last year had something on that verge. All the rooms are wired with ethernet jacks. For some reason every morning his cable was dangling from a hub that sits on his desk and the other end was removed from the jack. Good cable end, the clip wasn't broken and the box itself wasn't damaged. We tried 3 different cables. Clicked in and you could pull on it but it wouldn't come out. We Quaked all one night and didn't go to bed 'till 9am, but the cable stayed in. Anywho... This dorm is haunted, blue moon + halloween should be interesting tonight!
OK. This is a true story. Some of the other ones seem made up.
Anyway. I was at the office at around 11:00.
There are about 20 other machines around me. Some workstations. Some servers.
I am deep into a Zen state, hacking on code and rebuilding our mail server when I hear this noise...
"psst...."
so I look around don't see anything.
strange... maybe too much coffee.
Start trying to debug again.
Ten minutes later.
"pssst..."
OK... I know I heard that one. Stand up... say "mat??" nothing.
Strange.
hack on more code.
"psst..."
"OK... who the hell is thhat!"
I walk out into the hall. NOTHING!
The hair on the back of my neck is now standing at attention. Very spooky.
Ten minutes later
"psst..."
I stand up... run out of the door and run around the whole office trying to find out who is doing this to me.
THERE IS NO ONE HERE!!!
I am the only person in the whole office.
I am standing up next to my desk... thinking about this...
"psst..."
It is coming from the workstation next to me.
My stupid friend Alan configured his e-mail to say
"psst..." when a new message arived.
As I was fixing the SMTP server, new messages were getting droped into his email and were being popped off every ten minutes thus scaring the hell out of me!
Damn!
After a whole night of programming (and then some) I did this to one of my friends. (He left without xlocking his computer).
.bashrc file:
alias cd ="echo 'rm -rf **' "
That was scary enough. I also put this line in his
xhost + >>/dev/null
Then I was popping prom on his screen for the rest of the morning. It took him a while to figure out how I was getting in. He locks his computer, opens up a new xterm and here we go again...
Allnighters are scary if You as me!
In college, I lived by myself in a second story apartment. One night, about 3am, I woke up and heard voices. Yeah, voices. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but they were definatly of human origin. So I get up and try to figure out what it was, if someone was robbing me, etc. But no -- I was alone. But I still was hearing voices, but this time I could understand a little what they were saying. Stuff about girls, street names, etc. And then I traced it to the source -- my stereo, which I had left on in CD mode, but had not been playing a CD. But I still didn't figure out what it was, until I noticed a car passing my apartment building and then heard the voices.
The problem? My stereo was picking up a CB channel, but it would only pick it up when someone was talking on the CB as the car went past.
It still sends chills up my spine thinking about it.
they're all those science and other stories that don't make it to the front page regardles to wether or not you checked them on the 'include' list when you first signed up, usually only getting 3-7 comments
moox. for a new generation.
I swear this is true - I wish I were making it up...
My system is rather set up wierd - I have two tower systems underneath a 6 foot folding table, 19 inch monitor to one side, keyboard, hub, KVM switch, printer, scanner - and various other things.
Now, this setup is out in the middle of the floor - all the wires are laying along the back, in a loose bundle. For power, and my network connection (which goes to a back room in the house), I run the wires up and along the ceiling, then down to the outlets (the wires are bundled in cable split-loom tubing). Anyhow, my speakers are on the wall, up high, each near the corner of the room directly across from me. The sub is down low, all is connected through a garage sale stereo (with tape deck etc - hooked up to allow me to make MP3s of old tapes a friend and I recorded in HS, another story). They are wired together well - using normal connectors - except for the wire between the speakers (one is amped, and drives the other on the other end of the wall) - which is soldered well, of 12 gauge stranded wire.
Anyhow, all this is hooked up to my SuSE Linux system, running ALSA, so I can play my MP3s and whatnot through XMMS. It works well, and has good sound (not the best, but adequate for my needs). Pretty, though - it isn't - rat's nest would be a better word for it.
Anyhow, I am sitting there late one night, just browsing around, doing a little Perl coding, and the like. Not playing any music. Nobody else is in the house, so it is pretty quiet...
I hear a sound - like somebody talking. But in the attic? Or - maybe it is coming from the speakers. I can tell it is a human voice. But I can't understand it. I get closer, wait for it again - there! - but even though I am right next to the speaker, all I can tell is that it is a man's voice - nothing more.
It sorta sounds like speech - but I don't know what it is. Scared the shit out of me the first time it occurred - thought it was in the attic - because our attic is open on the sides (to allow air to blow through - you gotta see this house we rent), and anyone could climb up into the attic if they were inclined enough.
I don't know what it is - but it only comes through when the speakers are on (if everything is unplugged from the computer and stereo - but the speakers are on, it will still happen). I have theorized that it is simply radio interference - except it doesn't sound like a radio broadcast. I have thought it might be walkie-talkies from construction, or CB radio - but this is at night, and while we have construction going on around us, as well as a nearby rock quarry - they are both shut-down at night...
Of course - it doesn't help that both me and my SO have seen some strange shit in the house (doors openning and closing on thier own, appliances, TVs, and lights turning on and off spontaneously, we even have some funky pictures taken last halloween - in that case, there is the "ghost fog" streaked through the image of one of our guests we were taking pics of, but the guest pics taken before and after that guest, in the same spot - do not show the streaks, and it was done with the same camera, not more than a few minutes apart).
I am not making this up - and everyone here knows that I am a pretty rational and intelligent individual, or at least I hope. My rational side says that there is a good explanation for it - and indeed - for most of the things that happen, there is. But some of the things I have seen (as well as some of the things my SO has seen which I hadn't, but I have no reason to doubt her veracity) - let's just say it stretches the mind.
Anybody up for a real haunted house Halloween?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Not a ghost story, but I scared the hell out of a girl in the CS lab at my local college many years ago. They were running Netware & Windows 3.1, and I thought it would be fun to harass someone. I did a "whoami" on my omputer and the one next to me, then sent a few test messages to figure out how the rest of the users in the lab were named. Pretty basic stuff: lab304. lab305. lab306. I counted computers and deduced the name of the account the gal across from me was using, then started sending messages.
I started with, "Hello". She stopped typing, looked at her screen for a second, figured out how to clear the message and went on typing her essay, love letter, or whatever it was. Not much of a reaction...
"I can see you." Again, nothing. She just cleared the message. Damnit. What does a guy have to do to get a reaction around here?!
"Why are you ignoring me?" This time she stopped, looked around the room a little, then resumed working.
"Whom are you looking for? I can still see you." She ignored this one.
"You're wearing (insert color of her clothes, I forget what they were but I described them for her), and you have a black jacket on the back of your chair." She immediately stood up and began scanning the room with a worried look on her face.
"Sit down. NOW." She did.
"If you don't want to get hurt I suggest you do exactly as I say. Eject the disk from your computer, NOW." The poor girl was trembling. She was scared out of her mind - it was hilarious. She ejected the disk as fast as she could.
"Good. Now, stay put. I will be there in 20 seconds." She got up, grabbed her books and RAN out of the lab as fast as she could!
Looking back, I almost feel bad, but it was worth it to see the expression on her face. I never saw her in the CS lab again...
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
I set up my 486/66 tower to blast the movie theme song from Halloween at full volume, and flash my 14" monitor between black and orange at like 3Hz, when the mouse detected movement. I coded this hack in x86 assembler (when it was cool to waste your time with DOS, DMA, mode-x, etc., at low-level).
I unscrewed the lightbulb to keep it dark in the room, and placed the mouse trap (pun!)gently on top of the answering machine that I knew my roommate would check when he got back.
I waited in the dark like a poser for about an hour, then left for a party because he didn't show ontime.
The next day he said something like, "yeah, you got me bad. I had to turn your computer off."
Okay... not the best story. :)
Power to the Peaceful
Within a realm of dark and gloom
Stood the cold unopened tome
With symbols strange and runes abnormal
beaconed things far from formal
Chosen once; beyond the tatter
it wasn't such a simple matter
But with the turn of a few pages
I had found the wisdom of the ages
A simple script; instead of masses
to parse the data into classes
to learn the magic through the channel
of a book on perl (the camel).
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/sun-sounds/s ound_effects/
Yes, I know this was posted last year, but there is another hunt for the Lady in Gray in Evansville, IN. They even have streaming video!
http://crummysocks.com
Sun's new Santa Clara campus is built on the sight of an old insane asylum, and a few of the building including the clock tower are still original ones from that time. Around Sun asylum there is an unmarked graveyard of inmates who died while in the care of the asylum Nobody knows quite where it is.
Security walking the halls have reported strange sounds at night while walking the halls. People have reported hearing sounds while entering the bathroom, but nobody was in there. Showers have been mysteriously turned on, but nobody was using them at the time. In one building a fire alarm sets itself off every few months, without anyone pulling the alarm or any fires found.
Sun agreed to turn the surrounding area into a park for the city, so people can come out to Sun asylum and visit our local insane ghosts. You can see some of the old medical tools used on the inmates now, on display in the auditorium.
How many other major companies can claim to be on an old asylum and graveyard site?
At my work, it's a rather frequent occurance to have to swap out hardware in the notebooks that employees use, as they become damaged, or are just defective. Usually a simple swap will fix this, and the employee goes happily on their way.. However..
One time, an unexpected error was coming up (yes, it was windows.. and no, it wasn't the Windows 2000 boot screen). The computer would lock up at every boot, with a hardware error. Thinking it was the install, a re-install was performed, and during the first bootup, it locked with the same error. This indicated that it was most likely a hardware error, so devices started to get swapped out. First, the hard drive was swapped, and again a re-install was done to no success. After this, the floppy drive, CD-ROM, and RAM were all swapped out for brand new stuff, in case of some sort of odd conflict. Again, no success, still locking. Thus, the BIOS was updated, and a re-install occured again, with AGAIN no success. At this point it was rather an odd thing to be happening, so the LCD panel (for good measure) along with the motherboard were swapped out. At this point, absolutely nothing remained from the original notebook except the plastic casing, and yet, it STILL would not stop locking up.
So it was sent back I'm assuming it's still around, to this day, baffeling people everywhere.
Me too!
Silent Hill is my favorite scary game.
I very much like the combination of elements from scary movies and literature. Influences from 'Twin Peaks', 'Twilight Zone', Stephen King's 'The Fog', "Rosemary's Baby", amongst others. Just one minor point is that all the streets in the game are named after famous horror-writers. Quotes and references can be found everywhere. Very enjoyable if you recognize them. For instance... the staircase just like the one in 'Psycho'...
I love the way they made end-of-the-game into part of the game!
(You die, or you make it to one of the endings, you 'wake up' at the start again, was it real? Was it all a dream? Everything is back the way it was... or is it?)
The world transforms from the foggy place to the dark place... which one is real? Is any of them real?
Was that really your daughter your saw, or some trick to lure you into the shadows?
And, when those small baby-like zombies come at you with their knives where you are shivering in the dark, you'll find it hard to stop swinging that hammer... Bash, bash, squirt!
Simply amazing.
Stumbling in the dark
I hear slavering of jaws
Eaten by a grue.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I coded weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious file of forgotten code --
While I type'ed nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently typing, typing at my office door,
"Tis some visitor" I muttered, "typing by my office door--
only this, and nothing more"
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak November;
And each seperate dying monitor wrought it's ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow, vainly I had sought to borrow
From my code surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the local coffee store --
For that rare and radiant haven known as the local coffee store--,
Close'd now, for evermore.
And the sudden sad uncertain terror of each single compiler error
Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic pleasures I had never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my hard drive I stood repeating,
"Tis some late visitor coding by my office door--
Some late visitor typing outside my office door--
That is it, and nothing more"
Presently my code grew stronger; bugging me then no longer,
"Sir", said I "or Madam, truly your caffeine I do implore;
But the fact is I was coding, and so gently came you typing,
And so faintly came you coding, coding by my office door,
That I was scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door--
My bosses there, and nothing more.
Deep unto the bosses peering, long I stood there wondering, peering,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no coder ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the bosses gave no token,
And the only sound there heard was the whispered query "Work more?"
This they whispered, and I echoed back, the whispered words "Work more"
Merely this, and nothing more.
I've been working the graveyard shift in our companies datacenter for the past year. The night time is the best time to work if you ask me, no one is around, traffic is low so I get a couple of DS3 to myself.
Our building is old, infact it used to be an old government facility for some type of top secret project. Nobody really knows.
Anyhow, The last graveyard admin died a mysterious death. The secondary NOC staff found him crushed to death by one of our Sun E-10000. Which was extremly odd, because the E10K was 50' from where it is normaly stationed. Security tapes of that evening show him running around franticly, as if being chased by some supernatural force.
Every once in a while, late at night I hear things like "Seeerveeeer doooown. Routesssss flaaaaappingggg. I will cat you intoo dev nullll"
comming from somewhere amongst our wall of NetApp.
It's damn creepy.
buy my shirts
http://www.cafepress.com/jihadexpress
Not much of a ghost story, but entirely true. It happened here at work...
I had just gotten off a long call with a total primate, and was grumbling off toward the bathroom. I rounded the corner and saw someone go in ahead of me. I opened the door, glanced over at the sinks; no one there. I looked at the urinals and stalls; no one there. I did a double take. There was no way anyone could have walked past me. It wasn't frightning at all, but very interesting.
Proabably some tech support person who couldn't let go. God knows I've tried to troubleshoot my pillow in a half-sleepy stupor.
The party's over
Sleep paralysis - commonly known as Old Hag - is indeed a very real phenomenon, and seems to exhibit surprisingly consistent symptoms. Supernatural or physiological quirk, or both? Who knows...
Look for a book called "The Terror That Comes in the Night" by David J Hufford, if you're interested in learning more.
In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is sadly true that the vast bulk of humanity lack the sensitivity and insight necessary to conceive of the eldritch manifestations that gibber and howl on the darkened hinterlands of the land of pure Platonic logic; or perhaps this is a blessing insofar as it renders them blissfully unaware of their peril, of the hideous evil from beyond time that dogs their steps, and of the ultimate price that transgressors in search of that hideous knowledge may ultimately pay.
Let me introduce myself. I, Charles Stross, formerly of England, was once but a humble scholar and seeker after knowledge, like many of you who read this testimony. From earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Weighed down by febrile and unhealthy imaginings, I have constantly prodded and pried at the unwelcoming closed doors of a certain ancient wisdom: like any other victim of the hallucinogenic ur-reality of Mr Howard Philips Lovecraft, I was drawn like a moth to the flame of a ghastly demise that wore the welcoming visage of glad enlightenment.
Seven years ago, my commercial perambulations bought me into proximity to a fount of Hidden Knowledge. For, having succinctly concluded that my initial choice of trade was not to my taste, I had the wherewithall to subject myself to the rigours of a further sampling of the delights of academe, in this instance in the Department of Babbage Engineering that puffed its oil-spumed soot across the hallowed groves of Bradford University. For an entire year I studied mightily and invoked the evil (but in retrospect, compliant and biddable) demon spawn of Wirth to labour at my command. I even studied furtively from the dark and guarded book of Kernighan and Ritchie, and came to a tentative accomodation with the vast, squamous, and ancient nightmare to which the departmental administrators made sinister sacrifice in the machine room: I dared to speak the dread name 'Unix' in the midnight hour.
I was a pasty-faced youth of ill complexion, much given to reading of forbidden codices and manuals by candlelight on stormy nights; and I conducted my researches for supressed knowledge in the dark and dismal labrynth beneath the Joseph Priestley Library. Many volumes did I pore over, and many covert mailing lists did I come across; until one day I heard mentioned the dread name of that most outrageous of sinister evils.
At this point I was barely cognizant of the terrible doom that I faced, of the mortal peril in which I placed my soul: for there are those mindless horrors that twitter and weeble in the eternal void where lurks dread Yog-Sothoth, and there are the hideous ancients who even now wander the icy battlements of Leng beneath constellations unknown to man; but these are as nothing compared to the mind-destroying horror that is known even to men of courage only by its terrible symbol: the Camel. I have never been one to shrink from the pursuit of that wisdom which fools and visionless knaves write off as unspeakable blasphemy. Working by the light of a candle made with the tallow of a hanged man, I contrived to copy the dread book of incantations that was used in those days to summon the beast with one hump and no 'a'; and, had I but the time from my binding to service of the spawn of Wirth, I would have perhaps attempted a preliminary invocation. But it was not to be, for the exigencies of income took me in their grasp and it became necessary for me to depart from my academic lair, to seek my living wherever it might be in the mortal, daylit world.
But years later, my terrible sins returned to haunt me.
After some time, I came to work for a shadowy Operation dedicated to binding to their service and profit that most notorious of hellish spawn of the old ones, the demon named UNIX.
The binding to service of UNIX was in its own right a vast and perilous enterprise, for although it was notoriously stupid this demon was prolific and febrile; no sooner had an entire team of sorcerers battened down one writhing squamous mass of tentacles beneath the dread sigils of XPG/4 than another cluster of eye stalks, palps, vibrissae, and other, less nameable organs would emerge into the light, pumping and pulsing with hideous energy. It took the combined efforts of a team of hundreds of magi over four years to enchain the brute to the point at which it could be entrusted with the simplest of tasks - and then they mass- marketed it as a palliative for halitosis and housework. But I digress! For, buried deep in the heart of this runic enterprise, I discovered once more the key to my fate: a circle of necromancers, working in secret within the operation, had opened a portal to one of the nameless planes and allowed certain terrible ancient truths to insinuate themselves into their brains. And one of the truths was ... the key to the camel with no 'a'.
I tried to look away, but the forbidden knowledge already had me in its terrible febrile grasp. Attempts to use the presence of lesser entities to deter it failed; the beast with one hump and no 'a' spat, and the flightless bird lost its plumage. Even the most powerful of mystical sigils, the arcane language in which the sorcerers Brian, Ken, and Dennis first invoked UNIX, failed to deter the camel. It stared at me with an icy vision full of promises and strange, unapproachable knowledge: and I succumbed.
Three years have passed since that point, when the camel taught me its secret language and enslaved my heart. I have committed atrocities and abominations since then. I have consorted with daemons and enjoined servers to do my bidding. I have woven a dense web of nightmares in which to entrap my victims and suck them dry of all motivation to resist. I have sacrificed babies on a blasted windswept heath by the light of a gibbous moon in order to acquire for my self-aggrandizement yet more knowledge of the evil that sounds like unto the name of an oyster's treasure. And yet ... I have always had the sense that I was being played with, kept on the outside of that mystical circle of knowledge, and that some deeper, sanity-challenging insight yet eluded me.
Finally, a month ago, I discovered the true fount of insight into the nature of the beast. A book is available, to those who know who and what to ask for. Kept in the deepest dungeon of a library's stacks, its cover sealed with bronze clasps and its spine earthed by a silver chain, the book of the camel contains all the forbidden knowledge any evil necromancer could desire. There, laid out for my delectation was all the truth that my bleeding forehead could contain. Bleeding, for upon reading the book I was driven to pound my head upon the stone cobblestones of the oubliette to which the librarian had driven me. For I now realize that I have no hope of salvation; that my soul is eternally doomed to torment, and that the evil that gibbers and howls in the void beyond space will have me in the end. For I discovered secret clauses buried in the text of the book; and there was much howling and grinding of teeth as I realised what my earlier incantations had achieved. The camel has a mind of its own, a subtle and demented psychosis as old as time and twice as huge: it is eating my brain with a tea-spoon, and I feel quite sick. I have become the vector for a plague out of spacetime, a language with embedded magic and probabilistic parsers, a language that is eating my soul! Even the scholars of the local university would be hard-pressed to conduct a successful exorcism. For I have been polluted; the nemesis of orthogonality, the beast of UNIX, has laid its claws in my heart.
I cannot control myself any more. Soon I shall be entirely its creature, and then I shall be forced to write down the forbidden knowledge I have received - to write it down and publish it in an innocuous-looking volume, presented to the general reader so that they might suffer and wilt in its hideous grasp.
But first I warn you! Flee while you can! Flee before the approach of the dread beast with one hump and no 'a' in its name, flee before it eats your mind as it has
Oh, that's better. I feel all right now. Don't worry, everything is under control.
There is no cause for alarm.
I repeat: there is no cause for alarm.
While I will agree that an FPS can be pretty frightening with the right setup, the game that frightened me the most of all the games I've played was X-COM 2. You'd be leading your team around an underwater alien crash site at night with almost no visibility and creepy music in the background, when suddenly a bolt of energy would shoot out from the darkness and get one of your soldiers in the back. If you play in the dark, in a quiet room, you will seriously jump a mile when that happens.
Anyone who's played the game will agree with me that turn-based strategy can be just as scary as real-time games.
Waaay back when I got my first cd player (a fancy Pioneer 1 bit squash or something like that, model) I bought "The Best of the Doors" CD to go with it. When I got home and played the CD for the first time in shuffle play, it picked "The End". The NEXT time I played the CD, it picked... "The End". The NEXT time I played the CD, it picked... "The End". It would ALWAYS start with "The End" as the first track in shuffle play. Now, I know you are thinking the cd player just had a fucked up entropy generator, but it picked different songs for different albums when I played them in shuffle mode (which was always), but always picked "The End" by the Doors to play first. For more spookiness, here's an excerpt of the lyrics to "The End"
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you
Excuse me, but i couldn't help but think of this wonderful poem by the old master.
This is merely the first four verses of it, the part i came to think about when i read your post.
--
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; --vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow-- sorrow for the lost Lenore--
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --
This it is and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you" -- here I opened wide the door; --
Darkness there and nothing more.
--
Stumbling in the dark
I hear slavering of jaws
Eaten by a grue.
At Heriot-Watt university, Edinburgh, there was a 'haunted computer' with a 'magic switch'.
According to the myths this thing actually did exist at one point, there was a switch on the outside of the case that wasn't connected to anything on the inside, yet when pressed turned the computer on and off.
No doubt an inspired hack by one of our Electrical Engineers but it proved an interesting story for the first years, and even inspired a newsgroup hw.cee.magic-switch to chat about other 'mysterious happenings' around the department.
TRUE STORY
We had a "all hands evolution" which encompased Tech Support, Network Admins and Programmers.
The function of this evolution was to change out a whole clinic of Dell PPRO-200 to Dell PIII 500 boxes. This was to be done early in the morning.(@ 500 am). We got in and got to work. All working together in a concentrated area. The area was also a secured area so there was no one able to come in or out except us. All was quiet.We heard a noise. We didn't know what it was. We went to investigate.There was nothing obvious. Incidently we did not have any women on this working party.We checked out the men's bathroom and discovered it empty.My boss tries insisting that are ghosts and that the clinic is haunted. I of course didn't believe him. Having discovered nothing I let my guard down and was prepared to go back to work passing the women's room, when all of a sudden an elderly woman (go figure) comes out. And scares the bejesus out of me. She was as afraid of me as I of her.
MG
In college I was working on a Macintosh web server (back in 96) late at night when the mouse started moving of it's own accord, opening files and such.
It freaked me out pretty badly, especially when a text document was opened and "who's there?" appeared in the document.
It turned out that it was my boss connecting using Timbuktu (which is/was Mac's remote control tool.) He was in Japan at the time (hence the conflicting schedules-me at midnight, he during the day sometime.) We straightened the mess out by communicating in the same text window.
Some pranks that we played at my first job were even funnier. I worked at a biotech company and a lot of the chemists had SGI 02s on there desks as well as a PC. Anyway we remotely turned the volume up on this guys O2 and sent this lion roar through his speaker. When he came flying out of his office with this terrified look on his face I literally fell out of my chair laughing so hard.
At the same job I had tech support call from someone who's screen was flashing. I took a look and there was a gel tray (containing samples that were to be sequenced because this Mac was controlling these gene sequencers) at an angle that was depressing the tab key. This was causing the each icon on the desktop to be cycled through making it look kinda like the screen was flashing.
I told the guy that the machine was possessed and had to be exorcised. This involved distracting him with my right hand that did a swoop at the screen (clearing the demons) while my left hand moved the gel tray away.
He asked if it was static that I cleared or what not and I told him that it was demons but they were gone. I never told him the truth and I don't know if he ever figured it out.
Hmm, way back in high school 3 girls in my class dressed as the unit vectors i, j and k respectively.
I was at OSU during the same period. I can some of the authenticity of the story - Taylor tower residents were SERIOUS nerds.
I remember something really scary that took place in early summer around 5 years ago. It was a clear night and I drove home after a visit at a friend at around 11:30. I was not sleepy yet so I decided to leave the car and do a little walk on a nearby meadow on a hill just to enjoy the view on the moonlit silvery landscape.
At this place there are no nearby houses, I was all alone but I was not frightened at all, instead it was really nice. Suddenly some clouds covered the moon and it got quite dark. As I could not see a lot anymore, I decided to leave.
At this moment I heard something dashing through the grass really close to me, not more than around 10 metres away. It must have been really fast, then I heard it come back and heard it rush away again. Next I heard a very loud howling noise. I was really scared at this moment, I just tried to keep cool and walked slowly back to my car and was _very_, *very* happy when I was inside...
I don't know for sure what this was, my only logical explanation is that it were one or more deers - they are told to make a howling noise but I am not sure at all.
I have a relatively cheap cambridge soundworks speakerset (4 little speakers and a small subwoofer).
I heard strange noises coming from it one night, some people talking. I couldn't make out any of the voices. Anyhow, I looked out the window and my neighbors lights were on. Did a little detective work and discovered that my speakers were picking up their cordless phone, and that I simply never heard it during the day due to random noises around the house.
I used to work in a computer lab at university that was open late. However, it was typically empty by 10pm or so. Needless to say, many *interesting* things would happen when the lab was quiet...
Including, but not limited to, mysterious dot matrix print jobs that would just start in a corner of the lab, random beeps from apparently unpowered machines and the best one...
A long-haired, slouching, mute man with a bizzarre smile who would suddenly appear in the lab, making unintelligible sounds.
I'm sure he was just a janitor with a speech and hearing problem, but it scared the hell out of me the first time I turned around and he was standing there.
...A tech support representative was quoted as saying "Insanity eh? Glad we could return the favor."
Years ago when I started in the NOC at my first ISP job, I was pulling cables on third shift. They had just expanded the datacenter to 3 times the size, and I got the wonderful newbie job of making cables and stringing them from the old section to the new routers.
At about 3:00AM the sys admin who was supposed to be "training" me headed off to the office Gym to sleep the rest of his shift off on a nice comfy gym mat. As he yawned and stretched his arms, his parting words for me were, "Make sure you answer the phones, don't try and fix anything as root, and don't get near the the AC units when stringing the cable." Off he went to earn his pay check dreaming of the cute work out chick who'd be performing calesthenics on his makeshift bed in 4 hours.
I finished making my bundle of 100ft cables, and realized as I grabbed a tile puller that I had measured them, counting on the fact they'd run about 2 feet away from one of the AC units. To try and clear the unit I'd have to scrap my previous work and start over.
Checking the Gym, I found my would be mentor snoring like a baby. "Fine", I thought. No one will ever know or care where they are under the floor if I do this quickly.
After about 20 minutes of tossing bundles of cable under floor tiles, I got to the AC unit. As I tossed the bundle about 3 tiles down past the unit I heard them clang against something. Pulling off a tile or two I saw it had snagged on an air flow duct. Great.
Unfortunately after about 5 awkward minutes on my hands and knees trying to unwedge the cable bundle, I realized I had gotten stuck pretty good under the duct. I climbed down below the raised floor and laid down to get a better look at my work. The sound of the AC unit was loud in my ears and I sneezed once.
I yanked and pulled, but couldn't free the mess. That's when I heard the sound. At first I thought it was part of the cacophany eminating from the base of the huge Liebert monster. Quickly I realized that it was coming from somewhere under the floor about 40 feet past my feet. I twisted my neck around to see what could be causing such an odd scraping noise. As my eyes focused to the darkness under the raised floor the noise stopped.
Dismissing the sound, I got back to job at hand, and the second I turned my head, the noise began again. Seemingly closer this time. I shuddered, but not from the wash of cold air running over me from the air conditioner.
Now, totally freaked, I once again strained to see the source. This time I could see two red pinpoints of light, slowly growing closer. Sort of like the error lights on a drive array, but one that not only is proclaiming that the drives are in a bad way, but they are going to kill you for not replacing them sooner.
Scrambling out from under the raised floor I banged my head on the raised floor cross bars. The cold was unbearable, and the environmental alarms on the Liebert started going off, shouting that somehow the room had gotten *too* cold. I dragged myself from underneath the floor, my head throbbing, the sound filling my ears. Frantically I slammed the tiles down and ran back to the warm safety of the NOC.
It took me about 20 minutes to calm down, and my sleepy friend arrived. He took one look at the lump on my forehead and my paper white face and chuckled.
"Told you not to go near the AC unit.... he doesn't like that". That's how I first met the unix guru.
Not that this happened on Halloween, but one night I was by myself and had booted into Windows (Ooooh!) to play Black and White. I had my headphones on and was progressing through the game fairly easily when suddenly from somewhere to my left (The direction of the door) I heard:
"Deathhhhh," whispered very quietly.
My head snapped around. There was nothing there. I took off my headphones and searched around the room and the whole upper level of the apartment. I couldn't find anything. I went back to playing the game and it wasn't another five minutes later when I heard:
"Deathhhhhh," again
This time I didn't have the headphones on. Again I stopped the game and searched the whole apartment this time. Again I could find nothing.
Finally, with the lights on and one eye on the door to my room, I was finally in town to see one of my villagers die and again I heard:
"deathhhhh."
Stupid game.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
I have met my own ghost ... and I wrote it.
At a previous employer (in the automotive industry), I was given control of a large materials storage system after the previous programmer had gotten fed up with it and demanded to be transferred. Enter the young and enthusiastic new guy - me.
I spent months analyzing and learning how the physical system worked. There were days when I disabled the standard software and ran the system by hand, just trying to squeeze out a little more performance. Eventually, I took every trick that I had learned, and reworking the software to implenet the tricks that I had learned. Launch day came ... and went ... with little fanfare. Ahh, sweet success.
Then I started noticing that the software was doing things that surprised me. After review, I pieced together waht it was doing, and it had done exactly what it was supposed to do ... but the fact remained that it managed to outperform my expectations. I grew kind of proud of my creation, then, knowing that it was running day in and day-out, making small (or big) adjustments to the way the facility ran ... occasionally screwing up, but on the whole, increasing net throughput by roughly 6%.
It did not take too long for my ego to kick in, and I was saying that "I run the plant, even when I am asleep!" Not exactly true, of course, as the algorithms that I had written were not capable of true thought, and my co-workers called me out on it.
"Fine," I replied, "maybe not me, directly, but the decisions being made are based on the way that I think, so it is an echo of me that runs the plant." They could not argue that point, but they had managed to puncture my ego a bit. Draw.
However, it wasn't much of a leap of logic to go from, "an echo of me" to "a ghost of me." And it is independant - I no longer work for that company, but my ghost still works there.
The amusing thing is that every time they have tried to kill my ghost, the replacement software has not been able to maintain the performance. I had sacrificed a bottleneck to get the performance boost, but eventually, my decision became the incorrect thing to do for political reasons. Oops. I told them that there would be a problem, and got so frustrated that I eventually quit so a "yes"-man could tell them that they could undo my change and still meet performance. To date, I know of three failed launch attempts. My own ghost ... is fighting back ...
... and winning ...
... for the moment.
You can say the same thing about any recorded material - Hendrix's ghost continues to play on my CD player, and Sir Alec still acts in my VCR. I have even had a recent argument with the ghost of Socrates - alas, I could not get him to reply to my objections about his assumptions.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
I'm still creeped out by my friends phone. If your on his end and you listen carefully, you can hear 98.5 FM playing in the background. Cant hear it from the other end.
Spooky!
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
True story.
Years ago, I used to love to fish (No, this isn't going to turn into something about catching Cthulu on a hula popper). I'm out late one night gathering the universal best bait, nightcrawlers. My wife is in the bedroom reading something by H.P. Lovecraft. It's a warm night, so the window is open. I come to the window, and say, "Hi." Since she's already spooked by the story, my quiet voice scares the bejeebers out of her, and she falls out of bed, while I cackle evilly.
She waited months for her revenge.
One afternoon, she asks me to reach something that's rolled under the bed. I get down on the floor, and lift the bed covers, only to see two gleaming eyeballs staring at me! Instantly, I'm thinking a giant bug is under there, so I let out a yelp, bang my head on the bead frame, and scramble up---to see my wife's idiot Pekinese come waddling out from under the bed.
To this day, she swears she didn't know the dog was under there.
---Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.---
It was a dark and gloomy night in a freshman dorm. I had gone to bed "early" that night (somewhere around 2am) while my roommate stayed up toiling through the eve'. I was awoken to the most shrill, womanly scream I have ever heard from another man as my roommate threw himself out of his chair and onto the pizza box covered floor.
Apparently while playing Doom II, a "scary monster jumped out of nowhere at [him] and went BLAAAH BLAAAH and started shooting fireballs" (accompanied by amusing bodily motions). We still make fun of his womanly scream to this day. (Sorry Mike, I couldn't resist!!!)
We have a zombie domain controller that keeps re-appearing in our network neighbourhood... Should get around to fixing that...
Task Mangler
You haven't explained how the elderly lady happened to be in the secured area? Unless she was the security guard or something?
I admit it, I am a bad person.
:)
When I used to work in a really large company as 2/3rd-line support, I used to *take revenge* for my colleagues, especially helpdesk.
When a user was being a real nasty shit to someone, me and a mate used to torture them by making their machine seem *alive*. Favourite tricks were....
a) attaching a "squeek" sample to every key stroke
b) remotely operating their machine, ie move their mouse, pop open their disk trays, write words whens they weren't looking
c) move their files and put them back when we felt they deserved enough punishment
d) suddenly Tile or better yet, Minimise all their Windows....
I know I am bad, but I aint no BOFH
PO
Normally I'm not a big fan of horror (movies/games/etc). They always end up being silly (at best) or downright boring (at worst). Silent Hill however holds the distinction of being the only piece of media (movies included) to ever make me "scream like a little girl". :)
Using the rumble pack in this game is great. Just in case you can't feel your own heart pounding, you can feel your character's heart poinding.
Anyway, I was playing late at night with a group of friends watching, and I reached the nightmare elementary school. For those of you who've played, you know how incredibly freaky those little kids with knives can be. Anyway, the scene in the locker room (I won't give it away for those of you who haven't played) had the entire group of us screaming like little girls. I was rather impressed.
I was awakened one night by the sound of someone muttering. I got up, stuck my head out my door, and saw that both my roommates had gone to bed. And then I heard it behind me.
Now, walking to your own bedroom's door and then hearing someone behind you is creepy as all hell. So I steeled my nerve, turned around really fast, and... nobody was there. (Huzzah!)
It took a few minutes for it to happen again, but then I noticed it was coming from my speakers. I figured it was probably someone's cordless phone or something, but from then on I turned the volume all the way down or turned off the stereo before I went to bed. I don't need that kind of stress.
This was the day of the great Code Red scare:
It seemed like a normal day, I was sitting in the datacenter of a major dot-com building a server, and waiting for Windoze NT 4 (-POS) to install. The company had....
ONLY 1 LINUX BOX!!!!!!
and it was being used for JUNK MAILINGS!!!!
but that's not the scariest part...
I had commandered another Dell PowerEdge that was waiting to be shipped out to Austin, TX for web surfing, ICQ, IRC and AIM and was reading Slashdot when the story about CODE RED catches my eye. "Hmm..." I say "good thing our IIS is patched up to the....newest...vers...." At this moment I take glance back at the Server I was building (workstations rock) and check the version of IIS I'm installing. As I said, my bosses were a little behind the times. "Uh-oh" I said, remebering the memo I'd gotten about a couple of our firewall boxes going down...
needless to say there was A LOT of checking and patching going on that day...and night...and early morning...
___ alwaysBETA.com - Hey, you've got nothing better to do.
Tis one night in a lone server room back in '86 Jeff was working late nights doing one last backup before calling it quits that fatefull halloween. When the cops came they said it was a hardware overheat that caused the fire, but some say it was force more sinister than a stuck part inside a tape drive.
As the server room burned Jeff was able to send out one message into the `net before he and all the equipment burned. For three days afterwards the burnt server's IP address countinued resonate as a ghost on the backbone system, softly echoing its finaly help message. In 1990, halloween a system adminstrator recived an eerie message from the IP address 234.0.0.1, via udp packet. "Help me!" it cried. The next day, server was burn to a crisp, and an email with the text 311002 apearing in the body. What happened is still a mystery, but sometimes late at night if you watch your incomming connections, you might for a gimplse second see a ping packet from a server long ago, but be warned, just like any real ghost, it leaves no trace in the logs...
Remember in "Aliens", when the red emergency lighting goes on just before all hell breaks loose? Right. So the air-suspended optical table chooses to re-level itself...
HICCCHSSSSS...
Total chills, man.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
OK, well this isn't really a ghost story, and I wasn't there, but I had it told to me by several people, so here goes.
I was doing some consulting work at a DA's office a few years back. It was about that time that I had really started getting into Quake and was looking for some fresh meat.
After my program had been written, they got a whole new LAN with nice fast (for the time - PII 200) computers and big 17" monitors. This was just the perfect setup for Quake, and I wound up getting one guy addicted to it. Then another, then another, until we started having these huge LAN parties once a week over there.
I don't know how legal it is, but they also liked to hang out there and drink whiskey - lots of it. Have you ever played Quake against a half-lit cop with a REAL gun on his belt screaming "Die Die DIE!"? And you thought getting pulled over for a speeding ticket was bad...
Anyway, they got tired of killing each other and decided one night to play in the cooperative mode where they go through and it's "The Good Guys" against the regular monsters in each level. They also decided to make it a really late night affair and so had several bottles of whiskey during the process.
Well, so here you have a bunch of drunk cops getting to finally express their pent up desire to let loose with heavy weapons, running through Quake levels and having a really great time. Of course there were enough of them, and I'm sure they had it on the easiest level, that they were not really trying hard and probably having fun watching monsters explode into chunks. They probably laughed when a friend got "eviscerated by a fiend", but were having a really good time.
So anyway, if you've played through the first "episode" (is that what it was called?) you'll remember that last level. They all start out on a new level, they move forward just a bit to see what is going on. Then a huge monster arises out of the laval and the screaming starts.
It lifts a hand and smashes it down right on top of them, killing every last one of them. Apparently they were all yelling and running around and falling out of chairs.
So next time you get pulled over, imagine the cop being drunk, playing Quake, and screaming because he just got completely smashed and screaming and rolling around on the floor. It's rather amusing, and would probably be more so if I were a better storyteller.
It was halloween night, this very night infact, and my wireless connection decided to quit. Amongst the pings, netstats, and tracert's, I could only ping my gateway. Hmmm odd, I dusted off my old modem stuck it in a pci slot and used my dial up account. Snooped around, had others ping my gateway, and mail server. All up and working, still unable to ping me. So what causes me to be able to ping my gateway but nothing else, and have others ping my gateway yet not me? I came to the conclusion that IT WAS THE PACKET MONSTER! AHHHHHH it decided to munch on my sweeeet bandwidth, and deprive me of my slashdot! Damn him thank god he is gone now, but watchout, he lurks in every router, counter-strike server, and dhcp server, and he's coming after YOU!
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
This one's not that scary, but it is odd, completely true, and scared the bejeezus out of me...
Late one night I was working on some project, I forget now even what it was. It was quiet in my house, the kind of quiet you get when all the mp3s you queued up run out and you're so intent on what you're doing that you hardly notice. I was alone in my house... Suddenly, someone spoke in my computer room, in barely intelligable english, "... does it. God damn people show NO RESPECT! No respect at ALL! What do I have to...". And that was it, except for the sound of a car driving down the street outside. After the initial total freak-out wore off, I realized the sound had come from my speakers. My cheap speakers with their long, unshielded cables. The only thing I can figure is that someone was ranting on a CB or something and the speaker cable acted as an antenna as they drove by. This happened a couple of times more, and startled the hell out of me each time. Finally, I bought some better speakers (with shielded cable) and the evil voices left me forever...
Can anyone who knows more about radio and such than I do verify what I think happened?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
When I was in school, we used to have fun with the labs full of Sparcstations running SunOS, which doesn't chown/chmod the the audio devices to protect them from any logged on user. I had a script that would play a freaky laugh on every machine in the lab at nearly the same time. I probably made more than a few late night hackers jump out of their skin. We also used to just cat the mic audio over the network to spy on other labs. That is, until someone found out and yanked all the mics.
Doesn't matter what kind of watch.. mechanical, quartz electric, even digital. Seems like we had the best luck in terms of MTBF with a pocket watch, but even that ran backwards after a while.
When I first started making a little money I bought my Father a watch for his birthday, because I noticed he didn't have one. He accepted the gift graciously and explained the reason he didn't wear watches was his problem with them in the past and "maybe this one would be different". It wasn't. Within a couple of days he took it off of his wrist and showed me the second hand running counter-clockwise. It was a quartz electric. Years later I got him a scrictly mechanical pocket watch. Lasted longer, but same result. Digital? Nope. Just stops or gets even flakier about the display.
He's a wonderful, generous, Christian man that just minds his business and is always quick to lend a hand to those around him. He just can't wear watches.
Not really tech related, but oh well, here goes...
;) We don't know how long he sat there on the pot yelling "I'm done! I'm done!" but if things hadn't happened as they did, it would have ended up being well over an hour, as we had just started our current lesson. Suddenly, something knocked three times, very loudly and clearly, on the door of the den. We opened it up, expecting to see my brother, but no one was there. While we were looking around the hallway to see where he was hiding, we heard him calling "I'm done!" from my mom's bathroom. There was, of course, no one else in the house at the time. That one creeped both of us out a little, but we were also quite grateful. Whoever or whatever knocked on that door saved my brother from a loooong time on the pot (or my mom an hour or so of cleaning up, if he got bored sitting there and decided to find something more entertaining to do... ;-D ).
;) ) In any case, it's possible our visitor may have been from that plantation.
;) ). Once it was out of the house, the nighttime thumping and banging stopped. I think our first ghost was pretty friendly, but I never had good feelings about that ugly iron thing. Brrr.....
When I was a kid, for a while, we had a ghost or spirit of some sort hanging around our house. Fortunatly, it wasn't a malevolent spirit or anything, and was actually pretty friendly on occasion. We never saw it or heard it directly, but it seemed to enjoy doing the usual poltergeist stuff...opening doors, banging, knocking, etc.
One time, when my mom was alone in the back of the house during the day, someone opened the door to the garage, came inside, and shut the door. My mom thought it was my dad coming by for lunch to suprise her, so she went out to say hello to him. Of course, Dad was nowhere to be seen, and neither was anyone else. The garage door was shut and locked, just like always. That really creeped her out...
We had this piano-shaped music box that my dad had given my mom for their anniversary some years ago. It hadn't been played and had been unwound for a long time. One evening, when my dad came home from work, the instant he stepped in the door, this funny music starts up, coming from the kitchen. We looked in there, and there was the music box, in it's usual spot on the shelf, playing away. No one in the family had wound it up for a long time. Very weird...
The incident I remember best was one day when I was in second grade. My mom homeschooled me for 2nd and 3rd. My little brother (four years younger) was still getting the hang of using the toilet. He had the No. 1 part down pat, but still needed assistance, err, "cleaning up" after No. 2. Anyway, my mom and I were in the classroom/den at the back of the house, with the door closed. Unbeknowenst to us, my brother decided to give ol' Number Two a try in my parent's bathroom...on the other side of the house. Unfortunatly for him, he was too far away for my mom and I to hear him calling when he was "done" and needed help, well, you know...
It's been many years now since our ghost has been heard from. Since it never spoke or appeared to anyone, we really don't have a clue who or what it might have been. It wasn't a prior occupant of *our* house, because my parents had the house built themselves, and we moved in when it was brand spanking new in 1980. We were (and still are) the only ones to have lived there. However, the house was built on land that used to be a large plantation down here (Orlando, FL) in the 1800s. In fact, there is a cellar-hole of some sort in the backyard of our neighbor a few doors down. We think it's the cellar of the plantation house itself, but we don't know for sure...sadly, the neighbors aren't the adventuresome type, and had the opening sealed so their kids wouldn't fall in it without doing any exploration or excavation. )Also, since the owner of the property is a cop, trespassing to dig it up isn't such a great idea. Darn...
We haven't heard from that particular ghost again, but we did have another "haunting" not too long ago. My mom is a career garage saler...she buys stuff at yard sales and resells it for some pretty nice profits on eBay and her online antique shop. One day, she and I found this rather ugly, but pretty interesting, statue at a sale. It was made in Brazil, if I recall, and was made from wrought iron. It was about three feet tall, and was a figure of some sort. No idea what it might have been or represented, but it wasn't much to look at. We brought it home and stowed it in a corner of our back hallway, and that's when we discovered that the darn thing was either haunted or cursed. Something back there knocked on the doors and walls occasionally at night, sometimes just with hollow thumps, sometimes with the sound of wrought iron on wood and plaster. The thing moved by itself, too...it never stayed where we put it. It didn't wander far, and it never moved while we were watching it, but we'd pass by it, and come back a few minutes later to find it three inches from where it used to be, or facing in another direction. I wasn't displeased when my mom finally sold it to some poor unsuspecting fellow over eBay. (The shipping costs were about three times what the guy paid for it, too...
DennyK
I always thought they were saying Freon. But gun-toting air conditioning repairmen just doesn't seem too scary...
Without A Doubt
Will I die peacefully?
Don't Count on It
Will I be murdered?
It is Certain
My God! Is the killer already in my house?
You may rely on it
Can I do something to prevent this?
Very Doubtful
Couldn't I just call the police?
The Lines Are Cut
Wait a minute! You shouldn't . . .
Will I die a horific death?
.
.
.
.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Has anyone tried the Multiplayer test of the new Wolfenstein? That's pretty scary in a way (similar to the way that Saving Private Ryan is scary). It's just got a kind of persistent realism and soberness to it that makes it quite chilling. But maybe it's just me.
Somehow, the thought of a female sitting on my chest doesn't give me chills. It pretty much does paralyze me though. ;-)
Yes, I know I'm pathetic.
I know for a fact that there IS a comment relating specifically for Halloween. I unpacked all the wave files and listened to them in winamp. Nestled deep in there somewhere was something realating to Halloween. I just don't remember what it is now. For some reason, there's a lot of the narrator saying "Place Holder.... Place Holder..."
Another little gem tucked away in the files is Horny the Horned Reaper saying "The Dark Mistress m-m-m-makes me HHHHOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRNYYY!" Wasn't used in the final game but the wave file is still in there. ; -)
Somewhere between Pine Pluff and Searcy, is a huge stretch of road with no entrace or exit ramps. It's about a 10 mile stretch.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and I decided to get to Searcy before getting gas and something to eat. I came upon a green pick-up truck, and when passing it, the driver (who was very pale looking), smiled at me. But after passing him, I looked in my mirrors, and couldn't see the truck anywhere.
I stopped and got out, but for the life of me couldn't see where the truck had gone... No exit or entrace ramps and open fields as far as the eye could see... No other roads anywhere...
Anyway, I got to a small diner in Searcy, and while waiting for my food, noticed a bunch of newspaper clippings on the wall. One of them was from 1972 and stated that a man named "Ernest" who was driving a green pick-up truck, went missing and had never been seen again. He went missing, while traveling from Little Rock to Searcy.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
I see them posting around like regular people. They don't know they're using stolen catch phrases.
there used to be people claiming gordan freeman haunted CS. A joke offcourse, and people used photoshop to create 'evidence', was pretty funny
I actually have two spook stories for the general fun and enjoyment of this crowd. The first is a personal experience, and to this day gives me a seriouscase of the creeps. The other I read about in a trade journal and laughed hard enough that I feel obligated to pass it on.
My first professional job out of college was as an EE at a Forge plant in Southern CA. They had three huge hydraulic presses that were perfectly capable of squishing a compact car into metal foil. The controls for the presses were so cool. Under the control panel of each of the three presses was a cabinet with a discrete four bit processor inside, consisting of 30+ circuit cards plugged into a wirewrapped backplain. The logic was literally DTL, and the ROM, consisted of a card with doxens of 1n2001 diodes on pegs. Cut out a diode for a 0 or leave it in for a 1.
So the electronics were designed in the 50s, and for it's time it was cutting edge. The platten position was controled by a digitizer feeding a gray code output to the control package. The problem was, the system didn't have bugs... it had rodents! A chew here, a nibble there. Eventually the system developed shorts and wierdass ground loops. Suddenly on cool damp nights, for no good apparent reason, the presses would come on all by themselves, begin cycling, and might end an evening stint by hammering up and down 10 or 15 times scaring the bejesus out of the poor guys on the night shift. Personally I though drug abuse was involved. Meds had to be part of the issue.
So I was there late one night, doing maintenance checking, and suddenly the presses came on. I ran into the booth, tried to turn the damn thing off, but everything was already off. I banged on things, cursed at things, hunted for a main breaker. Just as a goof I screamed "Begone Demon, the power of Christ compels you!!!" (One too many rewatchings of the Exorcist.) Suddenly everything stopped. The problem never happened again on my watch.
************
The other story was one I read about in a trade journal. This guy was down in Florida starting up a huge supercomputer in the early 80s, and he was in the system room, which was a class 1000 cleanroom.
He went to his car, grabbed the boot loader tape, went back into the cleanroom, and tried to install the tape. To his chagrin, the tape was blank, and he had to explain to the customer, that somehow, he'd brought a blank tape from the main office with him.
So he called the main office, and asked them to please send him a new tape ASAP. They were only too happy to express that critter down, time is money, right?
So he get's the tape. Walks into the computer room, loads the critter up and it's as blank as G.W.s frontal lobes. Now he's bugged. He has to explain to the customer, that there'll be another days delay sending a good tape down.
Now something just isn't right here. One tape he can say is a mistake. Two... that's just one too many. So he's scratching his head... how could he have gotten two blank tapes.
While he's sitting in front of the big dead box, and a worker suddenly comes in through the cleanroom door.
All the tools hanging on the workers belt suddenly jump straight out as if he's some kind of wierd cross between Black and Decker and a porcupine. He asked the guy, what the hell was that that made the tools jump like that.
The worker looks at him nonchalantly and says, "Oh that, That's the high powered electromagnets in the door... They're designed to remove any ferro magnetic dust or particles from your body as you enter the cleanroom."
The installation tech. just begins laughing hysterically, like he 's gonna need his meds changed... Can you say Degauss!!!
Happy spook day...
Marie T.
I don't suppose anyone will read this, since it's off the main page, but what the heck.
There is a history in my family of true dreams. I don't have the problem that I know of, since I don't remember most of my dreams, but I do have strong, strong deja vu.
Anyway... for example, when I was born, I was very sick, like two weeks in ICU sick. Anyway, my great-grandmother had a dream about a blond haired, blue eyed little girl with pig tails in a high chair and said I would be ok. No one had told her what I looked like, mind you.
You're saying "okay, big deal" at this point. The freaky part is that when I was a year old I was, ah ha, in a high chair with pigtails when someone gave me a piece of hard candy and I almost choked on it - my dad had to do the heimlich manuver on me.
There are some other stories, but I like that one the best.
Carrie
I remember more than once playing it after midnight -- the entire house is dark, parents asleep, the air as quiet as a bone -- the only noise coming from the fridge downstairs as the compressor turns back on.
You've been playing for twenty minutes... [in the game] you're standing in a room, your gun pointed at a closet to open it -- hoping to find some more bullets for your pistol. The seconds tick slowly away while you "pick" the lock...
44, 43, 42...
Suddenly, only three inches from you a bright phosphor-white stormtrooper appears in the doorway and runs towards you.
he shouts at the very moment he appears onscreen -- at a volume that, in the circumstances, seems both deafening and heart-stopping.You fumble to move, to re-aim your weapon, to keep your adrenalin-incapacitated fingers on the keyboard (the game used nine keys for movement, nine other keys to aim).
But it's all for naught. The stormtrooper is upon you. the words
ring out and the screen goes black.You sit in your chair, breathing shakily and listen to your heartbeat as it thunders in your ears...
Right, I needed some extra disk space on another system and I figured that with a bit of work, I could free up space from this system and hijack one of the disks. I'd tried setting it up to print a message on the screen, but it had been ignored or no-one had seen it. So, I think a bit and realise this system is a Sun Ultra 1 which has a built in speaker. I can get it to raise people's attention by noise!
Not wanting to be boring and having a bit of a Python thought at the time, I find a .au file from Monty Python and the the Holy Grail and set it to go off every 15 minutes via a cron job. Just for good measure, I fire up the audio control and set the volume to maximum.
Couple of hours later, it turns out that security had been called by some concerned people saying they'd heard someone shouting "Help, Help!" in a room and thought someone had got locked in! Luckily, the guard called out was someone I knew so I didn't get any real trouble for it, but many comments were made by colleagues, mainly by them repeating the quote "help, help, I'm being repressed!" to me.
Just as well I did find it, as some builders cut the ethernet cable a couple of months later; if I hadn't found it, we'd have had real trouble locating it...
Just to close of the story, when I did get round to trying to get a disk from it, I discovered that it was running with 5 1/4" full height drives... Can't see me getting one of those in an Ultra 60!
It's probably stray RF... but it would be interesting to try to record a clean signal, so you could amplify it further and try to make out what is being said.
Do your amplified speakers have a headphone jack from which you could run a cable to your tape deck?
If not, you may be able to get inside the speaker cabinet and lay the two conductors of an audio cable across the speaker terminals.
If you manage to get a recording, passing it through an equalizer might also help you to filter out noise or hum, the better to hear what this voice is saying.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Some years ago I was working in my computer at a not very late time in the night. As far as I can remember the room's lights were on.
Sudently the image in my monitor starts to shake like it had caught some kind of interference, a distorced human voice comes out of the computer speakers (didn't understand what it was saying) and finally the anti-thief alarm of the store in front of my building is activated and starts this loud alarm noises. All this happened in about 2 seconds.
I don't believe in supernatural so I think this has an explanation. Does anyone have a sugestion about what could that be ?
Full story at: www.viacorp.com/auditing.html
they're heeeere...
Friday, our Japanese participants discover that a computer on their company network has been cracked into, one very secure Linux box running only SSH and Apache 1.3.4. Now this would definitely send a chill up your spine if you knew just how fanatic our friends are when it comes to network security. Furthermore, they only detected the intrusion three days after the fact, which is unbelievable when you consider the insane monitoring levels they've been keeping since they agreed to participate in the scan. They would have noticed any funny stuff, and in fact, they did, lots of it, but none of which came close enough to a security breach to raise any alarms.
Readers should also note how although a key binary in the cracked machine had been modified, tripwire and an assortment of other booby traps failed to detect this had happened. Even a close-up manual inspection (comparing file contents with a trusted backup, playing with it's name) could not detect any odd behavior. This trick, and others equally spooky were achieved by clever manipulation of the OS's kernel code (dynamicly, through a module).
Other characteristics of the attack which make it so eerily sophisticated:
The attacker knows the employee's username and password and is even connecting through the employee's Japanese ISP on the employee's account! (the phone company identified this was an untraceable overseas caller)
This information could not have been sniffed, since network services are only provided over encrypted SSH sessions.
Further investigation shows that this employee's personal NT box, connected over a dynamic dailup connection, had been cracked into 4 days earlier.
His ssh client (TTSSH extension to TeraTerm) had been trojaned to transmit XOR garbled account information (hostname/username/password) over pseudo-DNS udp packets to a refurnished i486 Redhat v4.2 box used as a single-purpose cheap Samba fileserver in a small Australian ISP.
The little box was every cracker's dream, a discrete, utopian crack haven, installed by a former Linux-savvy administrator, the last of it's kind in a homogeneous Unix-illiterate Microsoft environment. The ISP practicly ignored the box, which was running (up 270 days straight) so reliably none of them had even bothered to log in since mid 1997! So as long as the crackers kept Samba running, they would the box completely to themselves.
How the NT box was cracked into in the first place is still a mystery. The logs weren't helpful (surprise! surprise!) and the only way we were even able to confirm this had happened was by putting a sniff on the NT's traffic (following a hunch) and catching those sneaky packets redhanded, transmitting our SSH identification down under.
We never liked NT before, being generally suspicious of propriety blackbox OS, from a company with a long history of poor quality bloatware. But realizing just how helpless we were against an attacker that obviously knew the ins and outs of this can-of-worms OS, the company recognized that NT was a serious security hazard and changed it's security policies to keep it as far away from it's systems as possible, and this included restricting employees from using it from at home to log into the company network (even with SSH).
This is only an hypothesis, but is strongly supported by the fact that the entire attack only lasted an incredible 8 seconds! During which the attacker manages to log on (over an employee's SSH account, no less), gain root privileges, backdoor the system, remove any (standard) traces of it's activity and log off.
And they probably would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids!
Who thoughtfully installed a crude old tty surveillance-camera hack that trapped IO calls to and from isatty(3) file descriptors, in realtime, saving them on file along with a timestamp for neato it's-almost-as-if-you-were-there playback qualities.
And Wow! If there ever was a crack to appreciate for it's elegance, simplicity, and efficiency, this was it.
First off this thing is smoking fast! Which puts the likelihood of any manual intervention at square zero. It's also mean and lean. Forget fumbling with an FTP client, leave that to the slow soft pink-bellied human cracker-weenies, real agents pump files directly through the shell (uuencode(1)'d at one end, uudecode(1)'d at the other). Extending privileges with an army of amateurish recipe-book Bugtraq exploits? I think not! Introducing the super-exploit, an all-in-one security penetration wonder which quickly identifies and exploits any local security vulnerabilities for that wholesome, crispy, UID zero flavor (we were vulnerable to a recent KDE buffer overflow). After promptly confirming it's shiny new root privileges, the agent transfers it's last archive (a cross between a self-installing feature-rich backdoor, and a clean-up-the-mess, we-were-never-here log doctor), executes it and logs off.
After watching the attack on playback (at 1/8 of it's original speed) several times over, standard security-compromise ritual kicked in. We took the affected machine offline, remounted the disks read-only, fired up our trusty filesystem debugger, and slaved away to salvage whatever we could. Luckily, we found the attacker's transfered archives still intact, along with large fragments of the undoctored logs, allowing us to fill any still-missing details on the blitz attack. At the end of the day, when we finished playing with the cracked machine on loopback, we changed the compromised account's password, restored binary integrity, rebooted the system and put it back on the network, this time running a network dump of all it's incoming-outgoing traffic, just to be on the safe side.
That was YOU?
I thought it was Dave....
Sorry, but making someone, amle or female, fear for thier saftey is wrong.
Using a computer to do it doesn't make it funny.
She had a valid reason to think someone in the computer lab was threatening her.
Let's be blunt, the guy who pulled the joke was a small minded little prick who doesn't know the difference between a joke and causing harm.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA