The title is a bit misleading. It would be more accurate to say I didn’t realize the full potential these tales had at the time of writing my Analog Horror vs Video Game Creepypastas article. One of the questions I asked was “Which is scarier?” My answer pretty much boiled down to both, but I also mentioned that I enjoy analog horror more, as it offers more variety. While I stand by this, I’ll admit my view on internet horror about video games has expanded since then.
What made me reconsider was my discovery of ARGs. Well, not exactly discovery, more like further exploration. Do you remember how, in my AH vs. VGC (it’s easier to abbreviate it), I discussed the analog horror series Local 58 and the Creepypasta ‘Ben Drowned’? At the time, I wasn’t super familiar with ARGs. I mean, I’m sure I came across the term in passing, but I didn’t understand the meaning.
From what I’ve read, it’s a form of storytelling where stories expand beyond where they were originally posted. By this definition, Local 58 and Ben Drowned are ARGs because the former isn’t restricted to YouTube, and the latter isn’t restricted to the Creepypasta site. Local 58 has a fake Wayback Machine and websites where people have discovered hidden messages. Ben Drowned had a website about the Moon Children, a doomsday cult that worships a moon deity (yeah, it’s a long story), and a playthrough of the haunted game. It’s not the only Creepypasta that can be considered an ARG. Correspondence on r/NoSleep (which is in at least my personal top ten on that subreddit) has a fake newspaper article, and it’s told via email exchange.
On top of that, it gets the community involved, and I don’t mean the whole “All posts must be treated as real” rule that NoSleep has. No, the author goes further, creating alternate accounts, including ones pretending to be people who read the posts and got cursed. There are even links in the posts to pictures of the entity mentioned in them. I’d been on NoSleep for years at this point, and reading this series brought me back to the early days when I wasn’t aware of everything in the subreddit being pretend. It was effective enough to almost make me forget that and leave me spooked in a way that I hadn’t been in a while.
That’s the key with these kinds of stories: immersion. Even if viewers know they are fiction, the stories play out like they are or were being experienced in real time, which brings me to what gave me the idea to write this article. That would be Minecraft ARGs. I only got into them last December, and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting much. I thought it was just going to be a horror mod pack or something like that. What I got was way more in-depth, and it’s thanks to a YouTube channel called WIfies.
I think the owner mentioned it’s pronounced we-fees, but anyway, his videos cover a wide variety of topics relating to Minecraft, mainly escape room, lore, and number videos. Among them, and what I binged was his ARG videos. Notice I said his ARG videos. This is because he was the one who created them. Initially, I didn’t know that. I thought the ARGs were created by other channels, and he was just trying to piece together the answers to their mysteries, but no, he made them, which is extremely impressive. Since talking about all of the ones by him would take a while, I will only be talking about the first and most popular one I watched, ‘Searching For A World That Doesn’t Exist’.
Holy shit, is this good. Spoiler warning (though I will try to minimize them), because if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you do. With that out of the way, here’s the basic outline of the plot. A Minecraft player named AveryTheMayo finds a laptop in a storage locker. Basically, he steals it, which isn’t the most ethical thing to do.
However, there are more pressing matters overshadowing this action. Upon getting the laptop, he finds that not only is Minecraft already installed on it, but there’s also a save. I should mention that “Avery” has his own YouTube channel showing his playthrough, and he explains this in the description. Where things begin getting weird is that he mentions, through the in-game chat, that he found an area four hundred blocks from his base. This area is what appears to be a strip mine cave system with three doors and a chest in the center.
He assumes that the original owner of the laptop must have made it. Next, we see more gameplay, except there are two things that are unusual among others that will come up later. The first is that Avery’s player skin appears different from the humanoid slime texture he had before. The second is when he types into the chat and hits enter; for some reason, his username is censored out. Things only get stranger from here.
Avery finds a random tree in the cave system, and then an entire open water area, complete with a forest, which again is all underground. We need to back up for a moment because, as it turns out, Avery isn’t who we think he is. During one part of the video where Avery types in chat, the censor over his user name delays for a second, and instead of his name popping up, we see another called Dr3lord3 (Pronounced Drey Lord, who I will be referring to as Drey), so Drey is exploring this cave system, putting torches down as he goes, until he gets to a crossroads and turns…Right. No, he goes left, and that’s when he mentions something unusual. He gets to a hall of torches and says something along the lines of,
“I know you’re there” or “I know you’re following me”, something like that, and he also says, “I heard you in the cave”. Who is he talking to? Well, if you listened closely earlier, as he was placing torches down, the noise of someone removing them can be heard off-screen. Drey gives no reaction to this other than briefly pausing whenever it happens, and instead, he carries on as if everything is normal. It’s only when he gets to the hall of torches that he finally acknowledges that he was being followed.
I’m going to skip over what happens next, because it’s one of the most tense parts of the video, and I think you need to see it for yourself. Long story short, Drey makes it to the forest lake area, making sure to seal up the area he came through. At this point, two things should be apparent. One, whatever is in the game with Drey isn’t normally part of Minecraft, and two, whatever it is, it does not have good intent. You are also probably wondering at this point,
“Why the hell doesn’t Drey turn off the game?”
The answer given is that he’s compelled by curiosity. When I watched the video, this felt cheap to me since it always ends up being the excuse for why people choose to play haunted video games that are actively putting them in danger. I know there are stories with better explanations, such as Godzilla NES, where the protagonist is trying to figure out its connection to his deceased friend. Other than that, this reason for the plot to move along ends up coming across as lazy writing. The good news is that this isn’t the entire explanation for Drey’s actions.
Regarding him, this dude is no slouch. I’ve seen people refer to him as the smartest horror protagonist they’ve ever seen, and that’s no exaggeration. Throughout the gameplay, Drey manages to stay one step ahead of the entity following him. Nothing emphasizes this aspect of his character more than the trap he sets out for the entity. Again, I won’t spoil it. Just know, it blew my mind when I watched it.
Unless you’re an extremely perceptive person, you probably won’t notice how he deceives the entity until it’s pointed out later in the video. Other examples of his mental strength include mentally mapping out where a bunch of signs are pointing and solving some ciphers. Also, he gets through one of the puzzles in a pretty funny way, given the atmosphere of the video. Okay, I already gave a spoiler warning, and I’ve tried not to reveal too much. However, I can’t continue without severely spoiling the story, so if you don’t want the surprise ruined, check out the video here.
Now then, Drey eventually comes to what appears to be an abandoned village. For some reason, the color yellow can be seen throughout it, and in one house, he finds a journal mentioning something about a summoning the villagers were trying to perform. Whoever the writer is, he did not think highly of them. His most damning entry is to call them “Fools who think they will be spared,” and we soon learn who this refers to. Drey digs through somewhere in the village and goes through a pitch-dark area until he comes to a pair of huge golden doors.
What does he see behind them? I would give you a definitive answer were it not for the fact that this part is censored out. Whatever it is scares him so bad that he immediately begins running for his life, digging his way through the wall, and back to the three-door area he started in. This isn’t random. If you’re at all familiar with an author by the name of Robert W. Chambers, then you likely know of his most famous book, The King In Yellow.
That’s right. This is who the antagonist of this ARG is, and the one who was stalking Drey until he gets to the yellow village, which is either Carcosa (the city the king rules) or an approximation of it. This answers why Drey, despite being undeniably intelligent, would continue to play on this save at the risk of his own safety. As a quick rundown, The King In Yellow is a compilation of ten stories. The first four have to do with a play by the same title. Not much other than bits and pieces is revealed about it, except that the more someone reads of it, the more their sanity slips because through it they gain infinite knowledge, and their mind can’t handle it.
In fact, it’s mentioned that the author (not Robert W. Chambers, the author within the context of the story) went mad and lost his life shortly after writing it. Here’s what makes the king so dangerous. He doesn’t just have supreme knowledge. He can influence. Once someone starts reading his play, he has them in his clutches.
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone even thinking about reading it was enough for them to fall under his control. I believe something similar happened to Drey. It may have started as simple curiosity, but once he bit that metaphorical hook, the king began reeling. There is some dispute on whether or not Drey saw him behind those golden doors. While that seems to be the conventional interpretation, I did see one Reddit post (linked here) theorizing that what Drey saw wasn’t actually him.
Rather, it was the play and the ciphers that Drey solved that translate to acts of it. The last one is what he saw behind the doors. The theory also argues that there’s nothing that says that seeing the king makes someone go insane, just his play. Here’s my issue with this, and it has to do with how long Drey stood there. It was only a minute. Even if it’s just a single act, how could anyone, even someone as smart as him, possibly read it in such a short amount of time?
Secondly, I don’t buy the idea that someone would be mentally sound after encountering what’s behind the mask of The King In Yellow. I mean, he’s an eldritch abomination. Inducing insanity is an understood ability among them. It shouldn’t need to be stated. It’s like saying fire is hot or ice is cold.
Third of all, we know something follows Drey. We hear it interact with stuff, and he has to hide at one point in the video. That means it must have a physical presence. This is where I get into why the theory may have some validity. If the king (or Hastur, if you think they are the same person) is so powerful, why bother with this cat-and-mouse game with Drey?
Why not appear in front of him, make him insane, and then go back to whatever it is he does to pass the time? Either he’s a really dedicated troll, or there’s something more going on. Remember Drey’s encounter in the hall of torches? Well, he doesn’t actually see what’s following him. All he sees is what it does. In conjunction with what I mentioned, wouldn’t this be a great opportunity for Hastur to reveal himself to Drey?
He doesn’t, so here is what I think happened. I believe the Reddit theory was on the right track. I think the events that transpired played out like this. All the ciphers Drey solved were parts of a spell, one that would allow the king to become perceivable by humanity. The last one is what was behind those golden doors, and once Drey laid eyes on it, he stared into the face of the king, bestowing him with all the knowledge of the universe. What happened to him afterward isn’t revealed.
All we can deduce is that whatever fate befell him after his supposed encounter with the king is not good. By the way, someone already pointed out that Drey has or had insane mental fortitude because he had to go back and censor out Hastur in the playthrough video, meaning he endured seeing his face twice. He clearly had time prior to whatever happened to him after he played the game. Since this is the case, why didn’t he destroy his laptop?
This would have prevented Avery from getting it later. Speaking of whom, I think there’s something special about him, and Drey knows this. While Hastur may have strung Drey along, he made a critical error. Another thing I theorize about the king is that even though he has all knowledge, past, present, and future, what he knows is limited to what’s been proven and already established paths. In other words, by essentially giving Drey the exact same hand, he also gave him a chance to alter this outcome.
It looks like Drey has bet all his chips on Avery. This is why he wanted him to find the laptop. It’s why he left him that message, the one thing that probably wasn’t in the events he was forced to experience.
“Whatever you do at the crossroads, don’t turn left.”
Will Avery be the one to slay the king? Time will tell. Until then, I’m glad this method of storytelling has emerged, and I hope that creativity keeps growing. I will say, though, if some weird supernatural shit ever happens to me because of some video game, I am shutting that shit right the fuck off, but that would not make for an engaging story. Now, would it?
