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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.
I don't know about you, but I see trolls all the damn time :)
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.
"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?"
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.
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?"
Oct 31 = Dec 25
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
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???
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?
Meddle not in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are quick to violence, and have no need for subtlety.
apologies to Prof. Tolkien
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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.
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?'"---
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
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
I don't get it. What does MCSE (Minesweeper Consultant and Solitair Expert) have to do with sysadminning?
<duck>
karma capped
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!'"
I agree totally. I actually couldn't finish System Shock 2... I just got too freaked out. Well, that, and I was out of ammunition, the robots were coming for me, and there was no place to hide...
Something very similar to your experience happened to me while playing that game... I was walking on a glass walkway, looking down on some sort of nest of alien eggs, and thinking, "Wow, I sure hope none of this glass breaks --" Just as it broke, of course, and I fell down into the pit, and I heard the rustle as the alien mothers started moving in on me...
"The babies must be protected!"
"Lady, you can have them, just get me the %&*$ out of here!"
That, and I had a zombie sneak up and clock me while I was examining something on one of the walls. Jumped a mile. I can count the number of times I've ever had my adrenaline kick in from playing a video game... the first time a fiend jumped at me in Quake, hearing Sinistar bellow "BEWARE, I LIVE!", and that.
Funny, I couldn't finish Thief II either. I believe it was when I realized I was trapped in an unlit basement with one of those undead Hammers. I basically said "the hell with this." I must be getting game-wimpy in my old age. Although maybe if I didn't play with all the lights off and the earphones on, and a cruel girlfriend who likes to sneak up and grab me and shriek in my ear while I'm playing, things might go better.
Wouldn't YOU be frightened to find an MCSE in YOUR server room?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
This is the very worst horror story.
Hey, you think you could mail me my mug?
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.
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!
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
Reminds me of something I did back at school. I was sitting in my apartment, logged in on my own linux machine as well as remotely to one of our lab machines, and I wanted to start up XMMS to play some music.
:)
Of course, I seriously abuse screen, and it's very easy to mix up what terminal is what. So I start up XMMS, and get no sound. After some poking my equipment for a few seconds, and realizing what I had done, I kill XMMS and start it up again locally. All is well.
When I get into work the next day, my officemate says something to the effect of, "Dude, it was really weird. Your computer is possesed or something. Yesterday I was just sitting here working, and your computer started BLASTING music for like 10 seconds, and then stopped." I almost died laughing. Wish I remembered what song it was.
Not on Halloween, but funny. Maybe a subtle friend was playing audio from your machine remotely?
-Puk
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?
.
.
.
.
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