Considering I work for a highly popular PC news provider, I was appointed to a job which could lead to a big promotion. We were going to get a beta version of Internet Explorer 11! And I was the guy they chose to review it. I was completely ecstatic when I heard the news.
The letter they sent me about the review of the beta was a bit mysterious sort of ominous. Here is what was written in it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear (I removed my name for personal reasons)
Congratulations!
You have been selected to review the latest new addition to the next article. Internet Explorer 11!!! I know you must be bursting with excitement now since you will probably already know that reviewing this software correctly could get you a promotion or a bonus!
However there are a few things you have to know before you can review this:
This version of the beta was developed by only one of Microsoft's developers and unfortunately he recently died of a terminal cancer. So if you believe in Ghosts or stuff like that, I just thought you should know that.
This beta hasn't been seen by anyone from Microsoft or our company—the only person who has seen it yet is the guy who was creating it and soon you will see it.
Also, everything was designed by the same guy who developed it. Basically Microsoft gave him permission to design and develop a beta because he was doing a course on program engineering.
You must, we repeat MUST never tell or show anyone this beta. Our company could get in big trouble with Microsoft and you are extremely lucky you get to review it!
You should receive an email soon from someone with a secured download link to the beta—best of luck to your reporting and thanks again!
Yours Sincerely
Mr.Glen Johnson
CEO of PCGamer
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Everyday I would keep reading that email with anticipation and getting sort of inpatient. It was on a Tuesday night when I saw I had finally received an email. The email address that the email was sent from was pretty weird, it was "eric-4344245++@1.com". Here is what was in the email.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear (I removed my name for personal reasons)
b3 g00d t0 thIs b3ta 0r u wIll g3t It
-Download Here-
Yours Sincerley
Eric
Developer of Internet Explorer 11 Beta
____________________________________________________________________________________________
It was strange when I found out that Eric, the developer of the beta was the one who emailed me the download. Didn't my boss mention in that email that he died?? I concluded this as a prank since we sometimes prank eachother. I had a quick chuckle and clicked the button "Download Here".
My computer immediately shut off, my heart started beating really loud as i was worrying for the worst. My $1200 Computer being broken by a virus??. Fortunately the computer worked again.
When my computer started everything was fine, nothing was deleted, CMD and the taskbar still worked. So i rethought if I actually got a virus or not... That's when I saw it... It was a file named iexplorer11.exe on my desktop. The atmosphere of this situation was very ominous because
1. It was a very pitch black night
2. How could of the thing got there?? I mean, I only clicked "Download Here" and then my computer shut of how could of it installed and copied to my desktop while my computer was off??
I then started to get really freaked out, what if Eric is haunting the application??? I mean, it sounds kinda silly but what if that was the case?? I began to shrug my shoulders and ended the ominous moment with 2 clicks on the mouse...
The application started and I was repeating out loud "So far, so good". It had opened and I just stared at it for a while. It was, I guess, Internet Explorer. There was the home button, favorites, search bar and many more of those small features that were in the old versions. However it was a bit strange... like it looked like what the first version of Internet Explorer looked like. It had a very bland color scheme and it looked like I was back in the reign of Windows 95. Out of an urge I clicked the favorites, and for some reason there were already some pages bookmarked. The one that made me interested the most was "How to use Internet Explorer 11". The rest were pages like Google, YouTube, etc.
As soon as I clicked the "How to use Internet Explorer 11" bookmark, I heard some scratching noises at the window. Since the sound was very sudden it almost scared me to death. I checked the window and nothing could have scratched on it, I mean normal people would say a tree or a branch would be the cause but nothing like that was in sight, and who would wake up at 1AM to play spooky games on me?
I arrived back to my computer and saw the website in front of me. It was a very old and basic site, asking me to enter my birth date for some weird reason. So without hesitating I did so, I then clicked the provided and poorly drawn "Continue" button. It just came to a black screen with nothing else on it, and suddenly the program started closing on me. I would turn it back on then it would turn back off. After about 2 minutes of opening and closing I got really pissed off and kicked my computer. I guess by the force of the kick it knocked out the power plug, now I was on my own in my house with no lights on considering my computer was the thing providing the only light. I just sat there thinking about that email from Eric and what I had done. I remember it was written in a weird fashion but if you think about it you can get the sentence out of it. It said "Be good to this beta or you will get it." I started feeling paranoid. I mean, what if Eric was going to get me for what i did?
Through the whole time I was thinking, I did not notice the sound of someone walking around doing something upstairs in my house, and I guess now I finally noticed it. I was extremely scared, I was more scared than in my entire life. Lets put it this way.
1. My entire house is pitch-black and so are the streets.
2. The only sound I can here is a mysterious person, or... thing walking around upstairs and of course my heart beating like crazy.
I guess I was fucked, it was either now or never that I see what that sound is. I slowly and very carefully crept up the stairs looking all around. While I was doing that and since I was a creepypasta lover I kept thinking about several of the pastas I had read. Smile Dog... Jeff the Killer... Russian Sleep Experiment, etc. They were my nightmares of the dark. I had reached the upstairs and was pretty proud of myself for making it up to there, but unfortunately, I knew that I still had some more to go. I switched on the lights in a flash checking everywhere. I could not see anything or anyone. I guess it was an hallucination since I'm getting pretty old, well not really I'm only 36.
After an hour of thinking about what just happened, I put it all behind, turned off the light and went back downstairs to watch some TV. Right now I was like WTF, the worst had happened...
My computer was on again and the worst thing was that it was on Internet Explorer 11. I moved closer to my computer and stared at the screen remembering an old creepypasta I read ages ago. The site was at www.blindmaiden.com and if you dont know what that is, then i suggest you search it because I started to check why the site was working. Well the creepypasta contained somethings on how the site can be active.
1. Full moon at night
2. All the lights turned off
3. Home alone
4. 12PM at night
I sat there staring at the message, and I could not believe anything now. The message said "Do you want to experience the scariest thing in your life?"
Well, all I can say now is damn you Eric, damn you!