Video games are wonderful mediums for storytelling that are unlike any other medium out there right now. Not only does the video game format mix both visual and audio elements while allowing for players to input directions for the character, but there is also a certain kind of safety in playing a video game. A developer only has so many intended options for a player to access, only so many places to go, NPCs to talk to, enemies to fight, etc. Even games like The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask have a finite amount of options — glitches aside — for a player to interact with. What happens, though, when the game begins to break these rules? What if the game suddenly broke that precious fourth wall between the player interacting with a story and started playing back?
Warning: The remainder of this article contains graphic descriptions and images/video that some readers may find disturbing. Also, if ghost stories aren’t your thing or you are sensitive to language, do not read the original Creepypasta. It can get pretty creepy.
Ben Drowned is one of the most successful and celebrated internet ghost stories, or Creepypastas, of all time. While the narrative itself is chilling and frightful all on its own, the accompanying videos helped cement the spooky factor and give just that much more authenticity to the tale. Many times as a skeptic about ghosts, hauntings, or the like, I always scramble to see evidence or a glimpse of video clips of these strange occurrences that are supposed to be happening. Needless to say, with Ben Drowned, the videos do the story justice and help bring out that fight-or-flight response that makes us love a good horror scare.
Originally released in 2010, the story is recounted by an internet user named Jadusable who writes down his experiences and shares them and the video evidence via a 4chan thread. He starts off the whole experience the way most unsuspecting victims of hauntings do — by going off to college and not owning anything. His friend gifts him an old Nintendo 64 and a copy of Super Smash Brothers to play. You can only play so much of the original Smash solo, so Jadusable goes out looking for other games to add to his humble collection and while secretly wanting to score a copy of Majora, he does exactly that, from a suspicious old man who is having a garage sale that no one, except the narrator, happens to go to. The cartridge simply has the word “Majora” handwritten on it with no label. The older gentleman gives the game to our narrator for free and he rushes home to play the game.
After booting the game up and discovering the previous save belonged to a subject named “BEN”, our narrator starts his own new game using the name “Link” (out of tradition, of course). His playthrough of the game goes normal at first, but NPCs would still refer to him as “BEN” and then revert back to “Link” although each time the file still shows a listing of “Link.” In an effort to fix the problem, Jadusable deletes the previous saved game, resulting in characters not calling him anything at all, not even “Link.” As he progresses through the title, the narrator performs the “fourth day glitch” in order to lighten his burden with the day cycle of the game and this is when the story itself begins to take a turn for the worse.
Majora’s Mask is a very different game when compared to Ocarina of Time. The game is darker, grittier, and overall much more somber and depressing. It’s not hard to imagine the game already being a bit of a mental and emotional trudge session but it becomes immediately more so when the player makes it to Clock Town and notices that there isn’t a single NPC to be found.
In a game world such as Majora’s Mask, this is indeed strange. I can see where the narrator would feel alone, walking around the entire town and not being able to find a single NPC. It’s a different feeling when you are used to seeing the hustle and bustle of an entire town ignoring their impending doom to hold a festival that will ring in their demise.
However, when Jadusable makes it to West Clock Town, the eerie music of the “Song of Healing” playing in reverse intensifies the dreadful feeling of being alone. The once wonderful “Song of Healing” that brings so many of Termina’s citizens peace now drastically threatens the sanity of both the viewer and the player. The missing textures of the walkway reveals an unnoticed crimson skyline and it truly makes the viewer feel like someone or something is watching and waiting to do something to Link.
Shortly after, the “Elegy of Emptiness” statue begins to follow behind Link and stalk him throughout the town. It follows him inside the Swordmaster’s Dojo and then further into the underground tunnels of the town. Eventually, Link finds himself face to face with the Skull Kid on the roof, in the scene where he would normally get his ocarina back. Jadusable fires off a few shots with his bow before Link is suddenly levitated in the air, screams out in a low, bellowing tone, and is both electrocuted and caught on fire before falling face down in a defeated husk.
I can honestly say, this was never a way I imagined I could ever see the Hero of Time bested and it seems much more brutal than all of his other death animations. As he moves around to try and figure out what he can do to get out of the sequence, upon reboot, Link is struck down again and again, almost as if the game is sabotaging his efforts intentionally. After dying in this manner three separate times, Jadusable discovers the name of the file has now been changed to “YOURTURN” and Link is now laying defeated upon boot up after the title screen. The second file listing pops up once again, revealing that “BEN” is now back in the file system despite being deleted previously.
As a player, this is where I would have physically gotten rid of the game. Burned it, buried it, drove it over with my car, or even took it to a wood chipper. Not only does the game try to reach out and want to make contact by following what would be my in-game avatar around, but it literally says “YOURTURN” in the file system after brutally murdering the Hero of Time. The name “BEN” showing up is not too much of a stretch of the imagination as the game already seems to be at least suffering from some memory problems, but blatantly changing the text to something so specific that wasn’t in previous memory is such a good move to strike terror into any gamer’s mind and heart.
Since this covers the first posting of Jadusable, I leave you with a proverbial fork in the road. If you haven’t read and watched the subsequent story and videos, go do that now and come back. You can find a link for each posting here. If you are all caught up or already know the story, let’s continue.
Without retelling the entirety of the story, I can tell you now that I was instantly hooked to this tale. Majora’s Mask has been examined and picked apart numerous times by so many different people. So much so that it seems like it couldn’t possibly hold any more secrets I wasn’t aware of already. I wasn’t the only one who felt like this either. Jadusable, who would later be revealed to be Alex Hall, would write the notes down for his ghost story and took notice just how much people were getting involved with the story as it progressed. He would make a post and users would leave suggestions for him to try and solve the mystery of Ben.
Where once the land of Termina lay, an unfamiliar and jarring place now laid sprawled open for all to see. By using a world that people knew, respected, and researched so hard, it allowed the ghost story to become much larger and gain so much more traction. It was so much more than just a flash in the pan.
I was terrified to explore further into the story, remembering things about my own playthrough of the games that made me question if these videos were real or not when I first found this Creepypasta. That was the key to the narrative for me though, there was footage of these events, not just written word. Here, on the internet, I was watching a Creepypasta that had been well established unfold and discovering both the tragedy and subsequent terror of Ben and his haunted Majora’s Mask cartridge.
In Majora’s Mask, we all meet with a terrible fate if we don’t take up the mantle of the hero and stop Majora before the moon crashes down into Termina. It would be a shame if you didn’t take up the mantle of being a conversationalist and tell us what your thoughts on Ben Drowned and Zelda-related Creeypasta are in general. Just make sure this Halloween you take a second to peer over your shoulder, check for any “Elegy of Emptiness” statues, and last but certainly not least, keep your ears open for the “Song of Healing” in reverse…
