I am not sure if I should or shouldn't tell this story, chances are nobody will believe me as I no longer have any proof. But I feel for the safety of others, I have to talk about the Spy, and why you should be as afraid of him as I am. This story takes place on October 27th 2012, a few days before Halloween, I was looking forward to hanging out with my friends and do our annual movie night. On this night tho, I chose to stay home and play Team Fortress 2. My favorite class was the Spy, challenging, but rewarding, it was so addicting to play. I even had the outfit for a cosplay at my local game and anime conventions, as well as Butterfly Knife so I could learn how to flips and tricks. As you can tell, I am a freaking nerd, but proud of it, gaming is a passion for me, and Team Fortress 2 was easily one of my favorite games.
During this time the Halloween event for the game was going on, and I was trying to get the achievements and special items that were available that year. So I was playing Sniper with the Huntsman, primarily so I could kill Merasmus when he showed up. Everything seemed fine until I was killed by a Spy, the killcam came up and it was someone named "Spy", with no hats or unlocks of any kind. "Well that's embarrassing", I thought to myself, and here I thought I was so good at the class, and I ended up being killed by a new player. At least I figured he was a new player considering his loadout.
Oh well, I went about my business and continued to play, I was in the middle of fighting Merasmus and was killed by "Spy" again. And it was odd because I thought I was doing well to prevent him from backstabbing him me, clearly he wasn't a new player, he was smart about avoiding till I was completely distracted. So I figured why not play Spy as well? It could be fun to play against someone who obviously knew what he was doing, so I went Spy and played as normal.
I went about stabbing and shooting people, trying to find him so I could go toe to toe with him in a Spy duel, but I never could find him, so I went about going after his team instead. Just before killing an enemy Medic, I was killed yet again, same player. "This guy is good" I thought, his timing was perfect.
I decided to check the scoreboard to see how many points he had, but there wasn't anyone named "Spy". I was a little disappointed, I figured he left the server and decided to go ahead and go back to trying to get the achievements again, when I was backstabbed, by who else, "Spy". And to add insult to injury, the was a message in the server chat that said.
Spy: You are an amateur and a fool.
I was getting a little bit agitated, I could never seem to find this guy before he killed me, and I would keep seeing the same thing every time when the camera zoomed in. A Spy with the stock loadout and a smile on his face. Yea, a smile, like he was grinning at the fact that he killed me.
I decided to just quit and come back later, but I was still a little agitated, not at the fact that he kept killing me, but the fact that I tried to look for him, even check the scoreboard for his name, and there was nothing. Who the heck just leaves for a brief moment, then comes back to kill someone? I admit it worked, but how would they know I was looking at that particular point in time? It just didn't make sense.
I joined a non Halloween server, deciding to play Badwater, one of my favorite maps for Spy. I was having fun up until I was killed by a Spy, and it was him, again, same look and name. Only...he seemed different somehow, the texture was changed a bit, his suit looked darkened due to aging, and his face looked pale. The same thing kept happening, I would try to look for him, and would still end up being killed, and like the other server, I didn't see him on the scoreboard.
He ended up dominating me, and I saw a message in the chat again.
Spy: I'm going to cut you like a Cornish game hen
A little disturbed, I asked my team mates if they saw this guy, or if he was killing anyone. They all said these Spies aren't that good, and weren't having any problems. I asked them "what about Spy?", they said they weren't being killed by anyone with that a name like that. While I was typing another message, I was killed by "Spy" yet again, and asked if anyone saw that. I saw this reply "do you have a bind or something?It keeps saying you killed yourself".
I stopped, I must be losing my mind, so there's a player that I only I can see, who I know is killing me, but nobody else is seeing him in game, or his messages in chat, and to everyone else, it looks like I am suiciding. "This is crazy, how does any of this make any sense." I said to myself, then I saw another message in chat.
Spy: May I make a suggestion? Run
Then my game froze briefly, and it said I was disconnected from the server. A little creeped out, I decided to join another server. The map was Upward, we were still at the first point, I picked Soldier and started moving out of spawn, I checked around the spawn door, nothing, so I started heading to the front line, checked my back once, nothing, moved a little further, checked it again, still nothing. I decided to Rocket Jump the rest of the way and looked back behind me as I was jumping. I saw him standing still as I flying in mid air, only for a brief moment, then cloaked and disappeared.
I decided to hell with this, and went back to find him, I searched above, in the tunnels, by the edge of the cliff, nowhere to be found. So I started moving toward the front line again, trying to check my back every so often. He wasn't stabbing me this time, I would check my back every so often, and see him just standing there, looking at me, before cloaking and running away. I would chase him, but I figured it was pointless, I'd never find him. It was like chasing a ghost, no matter what I did, I would never catch him before he killed me. He was toying with me, he knew I couldn't do anything to stop him.
Eventually I gave up looking for him, and tried to have some fun, blasting people with my rocket launcher and blowing up. I was having a good time for a while, then as I was pushing the cart, I was backstabbed again, and this time I was legitimately freaked out.
I saw him again, but this time he was zombified, his suit was torn and raggedy, with dried blood on it, his right arm and leg had it's bones showing at the knee and elbow, and the balaclava was now over a skull, the flesh was gone. It shouldn't have scared me this much since it was part of the Halloween event, but after everything that has been happening up until this point, I was scared at the sight of this dead Spy.
I left the server, and decided to check my recent players list, surely there was something there, every player has a steam profile right? I look at the list and there he was, the name was just "Spy", and the avatar was the Spy himself, a closeup of the face with a twisted and evil grin that went from ear to ear. And his eyes, they had a tint of red in the pupils, almost demonic.
I checked the player profile page, and the image was still there, that evil smile, looking at right at me. He had no location, headline, or player introduction, the page was almost entirely blank. I looked at his Team Fortress 2 stats, and he had a total of 44,204 hours logged in game. "No...ing...way", I looked at his player stats, all of his hours were with Spy, and he had over a million points, and his longest life matched his playtime. Meaning that this player, whoever, or whatever it was never died. I did the math, and he had been playing since October 10th 2007, the day the game was released. I went back to his profile page, and the headline had changed.
"I seeeeee you"
I was freaking out, I know that wasn't there a few moments ago, all of the sudden I heard this loud noise coming from my speakers, like a siren. Then a blue screen came up, realizing that my computer just crashed. I rebooted it back up and got to the login, typed in my password and was greeted with nothing on my desktop. Nothing, no shortcuts, no background, nothing at all, explorer was still working and I could still navigate the taskbar, but a small amount of static could be heard from my speakers. I figured then I must have gone to some kind of fake Steam Site and downloaded a virus, and decided to do a quick scan of my computer. I for whatever reason lost my connection, so decided to reconnect. I updated my Anti Virus and Malware software, and began scanning. I also started up Steam and was getting ready to send a ticket to Steam Support. Whoever this bastard was I was going to report him, this was more than just some typical hacker or something, it was like I was being stalked. I checked my recent players list again, his name was still there, I clicked on his name, and got a 404 error, saying the page did not exist. I refreshed it as many times as I could, but the result was the same. I closed Google Chrome and decided to check the scan.
Suddenly every program I had open crashed, my taskbar disappeared and the static increased in volume. Then the black background changed into a horrific image I will never be able to forget.
The image of the Spy grinning from ear to ear appeared again, but worse, the Spy was now a decayed corpse. You could clearly see where bits of flesh used to be and his smile was showing, with some teeth missing. The right side of his face was blown out, like he took a shotgun blast to the face, but he still had bits of his eyeball where it used to be, while the left eye stared directly at me. It was yellow with some small red cracks in it, similar to how yours would look if you went a long period of time without sleeping. And while this image is stuck on my screen, I hear one the Spy's voice lines booming from my speakers.
"I'M COMING FOR YOU"
Then I hear him laughing, normally at first, then increasing in volume, and slowly becoming more and more distorted and twisted. Looping over and over, creating an echo in my room. My ears were ringing as it kept getting louder and louder. I covered my ears, but still it was cutting through, piercing my ear drums, I reached for the power cable and pulled it out. Shutting my computer off instantly.
I've reformatted my computer since then, I had no choice, after that incident my computer wouldn't get past the Windows startup screen. I had to reset my computer to factory settings to get it working again. Since then my computer has been running fine and I've been able to play other games. I told my friends and family that my computer crashed and I had to reset it, but I never told them about what I saw that night. Team Fortress 2 is obviously on my steam account, but until now I haven't installed it, I'm downloading as I type this, and I hope that by sharing this with you I'll be able to play it again without shaking. I miss the game, but I can't get rid of this fear I have of the Spy hunting me in my real life. I have been having nightmares since then, and they always play out the same way.
I come home at night, and as I am trying to unlock my door, I feel a knife being plunged deep into my back, and it being pushed down, ripping through my spine. The Spy's decaying hand over my mouth, and his eye looking directly into mine, laughing as I bleed to death. And every time I wake up sweating, with my butterfly knife in my bed.