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 :)
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!
The fact that it's snowing here in Ottawa right now is pretty friggin' scary, if you ask me!
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."
Sounds like you had a vivid dream in between the waking and sleeping states. The paralysis as I'm sure you learned on TLC may be due to the motor control part of the brain being switched off during dreams. Its also possible that you experienced a type of lucid dream. I've had a lot of lucid dreams myself and I've had experiences very similar to yours. Thinking that I've awoken, feeling paralyzed or moving very slowly and then snapping out of it (read waking up.) One thing I've learned is that there are more than just the 2 states of waking and dreaming. There are also various shades of grey in between them and I believe you have experienced one of them. There is a book called "Lucid Dreaming" by Stephen LaBerge (sp) of Stanford. The book can be a little tedious but it does contain some very good information and helped me a great deal in learning to recognize and control my lucid dreams.