A couple of months ago, my friend's cousin (a single mother) bought a new cell phone. After a long day of work, she came home, placed her phone on the counter, and went watch to TV; her son came to her and asked if he could play with her new phone. She told him not to call anyone or mess with text messages, and he agreed.
At around 11:20, she was drowsy, so she decided to tuck her son in and go to bed. She walked to his room and saw that he wasn't there. She then ran over to her room to find him sleeping on her bed with the phone in his hand.
Relieved, she picked her phone back up from his hand to inspect it. Browsing through it, she noticed only minor changes such as a new background, banner, etc., but then she opened up her saved pictures. She began deleting the pictures he had taken, until only one new picture remained.
When she first saw it, she was in disbelief. It was her son sleeping on her bed, but the picture was taken by someone else above him... and it showed the left half of an elderly woman's face.

It was all confirmed to not be a dream as the rocking horse was still in the middle of my room when I woke up. Furthermore, I got a stern reprimand from my parents for being up out of bed playing with my toys well past my bedtime. Their bedroom was directly below the storage closet/play area and had heard the creaking of the rocking horse shuffling across the room.

I lived with her once for about 3 months, and so much weird stuff happened in that time. All my sister would say to me when I mentioned it was that her ghost "didn't like me being there."

Things like going to bed with everything locked up and switched off and waking up in the morning with the back door open, lights on and the kettle switched on. One night my sister and I were getting ready to go out and I'd asked to borrow her liquid foundation. I used it and put it back where she kept her makeup. Ten minutes later she's asking me for it and it was nowhere to be seen. She accused me of taking it and made me buy her a new one and refused to listen to my side of the story. About a year or so later when she was packing to move to a new house, she found the makeup in a shoebox with some old letters. The shoebox was in a zipped up suitcase that was underneath her bed.

But probably the most scared I ever felt was one afternoon when I was the only one in the house (which never happened as four other people lived there). I'd arrived home from work and headed straight to the bathroom. All the doors/windows etc were closed. I was standing in the bathroom and started squeezing a pimple on my chin when a female voice in the hall said "stop picking your zits!" It was loud enough and sounded real enough and at the time I thought it was my sister. So I laughed, told her to "fuck off" and asked what she was doing for dinner. No answer. I stuck my head out into the hall. No one there. I searched the house top to bottom and there was no one home. I sat out on the front porch until someone else got home because I didn't want to be in there alone

When I was a child, I was scared of the dark. I swore to my mother I heard voices in it. They were not evil, but they were not familiar and so they scared me. It was not uncommon in the middle of the night for me to wake up and hear "whispers" as I would call them when asking my mom. She figured they were just "bumps in the night" and typical kids nightmare material. I tried often to explain to her that it was more than that; that they sounded different from one another the way people's voices do. On some nights I would get so scared from these "whispers" that I would sleep in my mom's bed with her. It was an added bonus that the bathroom was directly outside of her bedroom door for my late-night tinkles.

I should add at this point that when walking out into the hall to go to the bathroom, you looked directly down the stairs that would lead you into my living room on the first floor (as my mom's bedroom was on the second floor). On one such night, around Christmas, I awoke and felt the need to relieve myself. I walked out from the door and distinctly heard the phrase "Look!" and to my astonishment, a red light, almost like a spotlight, was cast upon the wall at the very bottom of the stairs. The light had no other source, it was by itself, and I was transfixed by it.

Being a little kid, and it only being a few days from Christmas, I KNEW what this light was. IT WAS SANTA!!! How else could he get into my house to know I was being a good boy? I was so excited I began walking down the stairs to greet him, picking up my pace after the second step as it began to creep off the wall and fade into the darkness in my living room.

That's when I heard him. A very strong, masculine voice. Different from the first. Not at all like my father's (not to say he isn't masculine, it was just distinctly different). It said, "Stop! Right now. Go back up those stairs." I listened, turned around, and what happened next I am not sure I would believe if someone had told me this same story. After reaching the top of the stairs, I heard a very loud CRASH that sent me running back to my mother's bed where I jumped straight under the covers and stayed there the whole night.

When we awoke the next morning, the poinsettia lights (little Christmas flower lights that glowed red) my mother had put on the railing down the stairs were pulled straight down to the bottom of the stairs, some broken from what seemed like a forceful tear, laying in a single pile. The dry sink in my living room had fallen from the wall. My mother could not explain it! My father was worried we had been the victims of a home invasion. My sister was crying. There was nothing missing, nobody had broken in, there did not seem to be any reason this had happened. And then I saw it, and I kept quiet about it because I was so afraid that I could not force words out of my mouth.

There, on the edge of the wooden dry sink which had been facing up, were three indentations where the finish on the wood had been worn, almost as if in a forceful grip. Something down there had GRABBED IT AND THREW IT DOWN. That was what the bang was.

I was mortified. After that day I never heard a single voice again. I do not like to imagine what was waiting downstairs for me that night, if it was anything at all, but I can tell you that the reality was that something had physically acted upon two things in my house near the bottom of that stairwell.

After this, I had never heard another whisper again. Which is sad, because in some ways I would have liked to thank the man (masculine energy?) that had stopped me from going down those stairs. This happened when I was 7. I am 20 years old now, and because of this incident I am still afraid of the dark. ESPECIALLY shadowy stairwells.

As I was busy with the school year and being poor at the time, I wasn't able to buy SoulSilver on its launch date. After my school year ended, I ordered SoulSilver on Amazon. However, it would take a week for it to arrive. I decided that during that time, I would replay my Crystal version on my Gameboy Color.
However, I realized that long ago, my mom threw it away because I told her the save went dead, and I was very upset about it then. She also threw away my Silver version, so all I have is my Gameboy Color. As such, I set out to Gamestop and bought a used Silver version, as it's the only Pokémon game left that they have for the GBC. Ten dollars – fairly cheap.

I went home and started it up for a nostalgia trip. However, that's where things started getting bizarre, and most likely the reason why you read this.
The Gamefreak logo started up as normal, but it just froze there. I thought the cart was just errored or something, so I turned it off and on. The same thing happened. I tried pressing A and Start over and over, and all of the buttons. Eventually, the logo vanished and there was a black screen for about five seconds.

Suddenly, rather than going to the usual menu screen, I was already in the game in a previous saved file, which was odd as I was expecting all of these carts to have been wiped by the poor battery.

Either way, I wasn't complaining, as I would have chosen the "Continue" option to see what the previous guy did anyways.

First off, I checked his trainer information. His name was just "…" – He didn't have much originality.

I checked his profile and apparently he had 999:99 hours put into the game, with all 16 badges, 99999.9 Pokédollars, and all 251 Pokémon on the Pokédex.

Seeing as he apparently had Mew and Celebi logged also, I am guessing he either used a Game Genie or was a really hardcore Pokémon player back then.

I checked his Pokémon to see what a badass team he has. To my surprise, I saw 5 Unowns and a sixth Pokémon named "HURRY". I'm thinking that this must be some cruel joke by the person who last played this game, but I decided to check the profiles of those Pokémon anyways.
As expected, they were different letters of Unown, all Level 5. I was a bit shaky with my Unown alphabet at the time, but I identified the word spelled out to be "LEAVE".

As for the sixth Pokémon, it turned out to be a Cyndaquil (mind you, this is before there were individualized Pokémon icons). The Cyndaquil looked normal, but it was Level 5 with only 1 HP left with only two attacks: "Leer" and "Flash".
I don't know why they named him "HURRY", but at the time, I just disregarded it. The most eerie thing was that, despite my volume being at max, none of the Pokémon he had said their usual cries. Just pure silence.
Having enough of the team, I closed it. I was parked at what appears to be a room inside Bellsprout Tower. However, for some reason, there were no NPCs around. Even more eerie was that the "pillar" in the middle didn't move at all, as if just leaning on its side. There was no music at all, and there was no exit or ladder, or least I thought there wasn't.
I walked around for a few minutes but can't seem to find a way out. This was certainly not a room I've seen in the Bellsprout Tower before. I tried checking my items for an Escape Rope, but the bag was completely empty. There wasn't any Wild Pokémon either.

Finally, I managed to find a ladder, which turned out to be behind the "pillar". The screen turned black and the music finally started playing. I had a sudden chill, as I recognize that melody I heard to be the theme you hear when you listened to the radio at the Alph Ruins where the Unown are at.
I immediately realize that it wasn't a loading transition, but rather I was in a dark room and would need Flash. Before I took care of that though, I immediately checked my Pokégear to change the radio to something more pleasant, but it turns out that there was no Radio card, or even a Phone nor Time cards. There was only a Map card in which Gold ("…" from earlier, and I will call him Gold from now on) was just walking in a midst of black.

I recall that Cyndaquil has Flash, so I turned off my Pokégear and made Cyndaquil use Flash. I didn't see any message saying "HURRY has used Flash!" or anything like that. The room just became lit just like that, and I soon regretted it. The room was a chilling blood-red with a linear gray path heading south. The ladder I used to go up/down was not there at all.

I had no choice but to head south. The screen got darker every 20 steps I made, until I finally made it to the end, which appears to be a sign. I read the sign, which said "TURN BACK NOW".

Suddenly, I was asked to answer YES/NO, but there was no question asked. I chose YES as I do not know what it was asking, and the screen went black again, making a "ladder climbed" sound. The Unown Radio music stopped, and in a few seconds was replaced with the not-as-creepy Poké Flute radio music.

I was in another dark room, but I held my breath and used Flash again. Suddenly, it said that "HURRY has fainted!" which was odd since I recall that there was no status conditions like Poison on him, and I clearly wasn't in a battle. I checked my Pokémon quickly and suddenly he's no longer in my party. In fact, after a bit of investigating, none of my Pokémon are there, but instead all replaced with Level 10 Unown. I did the same thing as before and spelled out the Unown. My then team of Unown spelled "HEDIED".

Either way, after that creepy change, the room was lit to reveal myself in a very small room that appears to be only four squares big. The walls of that room were gray bricks, as if I was inside something that was hollowed out. Outside that room appears to be a bunch of graves similar to the ones in Pokémon Red/Blue. I've walked around that small room and pressed A but nothing happened.

I've already concluded that this was clearly a hacked game and some sadistic fuck sold it to GameStop. However, my curiosity kept me going. I checked the trainer profile of "…" again only to find out that the sprite of Gold was missing his arms. He also seems to appear less smug, but rather seems more sad and empty in a way that I do not know how to describe. For some reason, it also now said that he has 24 badges, which was clearly impossible.

After a few minutes of aimless wondering, my character suddenly spun and did the Escape Rope spinning animation. Instead of flying up though, my character spun downwards slowly, as if sinking.

After that screen, the music stopped. After finally landing, the overworld sprite of Gold is coloured differently now. Instead of the usual red colour he dons, he appears completely white now, including his skin. It's as if he came straight from the colorless Game Boy games placed into a colored background of the Gameboy Color.

I checked his profile, and now, while now is as white as his overworld sprite, he lost his legs and has what appears to be bloody tears from his eyes. It also says he now has 32 badges, which now starts to disturb me as this change of number seems to represent something important.

I also checked my Pokémon, which this time contains 5 Unowns and a Level 100 Celebi without a nickname. The Unown are this time Leveled 15 and spelled out "DYING". I checked the Celebi's profile. It was a shiny Celebi, except there's only half of the sprite. One leg, one arm, one eye. It only has one attack: "Perish Song".

The area I was in itself was the Sprout Tower with the immobile pillar as before, except everything is apparently red now. I walked north for what felt like forever. Eventually, I finally encountered some generic men and women NPC. They were all lined up to the side just facing the long slantish pillar in the middle.

They were also white, and nothing happens when I try to speak to them. I kept on going north until eventually the pillar finally appears chopped off, with a transparent Red in that spot. I went up to Red and without even pressing A, I was suddenly engaged and finally in a battle.

The music starts again, which it sounds like the Unown Radio music again, but played backwards. Gold's battle backsprite matches his front one with the bloody eyes, white skin, and lack of arms, while Red's sprite was the same as before in GSC, except transparent. The text simply said "wants to battle!" as if he has no name, and both of us only have one Pokémon each, which is weird as I swore I had six with the Unowns.

My shiny Celebi came out, conveniently with half-a-sprite for the back sprite also. The "Shiny" noise and animation was different, as the sounds it made sound like multiple "Screech" attacks used consecutively. Red sent out a seemingly normal male Pikachu, except he is Level 255 and his sprite seems sad and has tears in his eyes.

Rather than the usual "FIGHT/ITEM/PKMN/RUN" menu, I was only given the option to use the Attacks. Since Celebi only has one, I chose it. Naturally, since Pikachu was Level 255, he went first.

"PIKACHU used CURSE!", lowering his Speed and increasing his other Stats. I'm not even sure if Pikachu could use Curse.

"CELEBI used PERISH SONG!" In three turns, both Pokémon get KO'd – not like I have a choice.

At this point, it didn't even go back to the Fight menu, as the battle just continued without me. Also note that there were no animations at all for some reason.

"PIKACHU used FLAIL!", which didn't do much damage despite his Level and boost as his health was maxed.

"CELEBI used Perish Song!" Nothing happens as it was already used.

"PIKACHU used FRUSTRATION!", which did a shit-ton of damage, knocking Celebi down to less than 10 HP.

"CELEBI used Pain Split!", which surprised me as Celebi didn't even have that attack in the first place. Now Celebi and Pikachu have about 150 HP.

"PIKACHU used MEAN LOOK!" Not like that did anything.

As expected, due to the effects of Perish Song, my Celebi fainted. Except in the text, it said "CELEBI has died!" and instead of the ordinary drop off the screen animation, the CELEBI backsprite just vanished. For some reason, the Pikachu was still up even with Perish Song and it didn't count as my loss.

Pikachu used one more different attack beyond the 5 attack limit:

"PIKACHU used DESTINY BOND!"

Afterwards, it said "PIKACHU has died!", with a slow fade-out animation. Apparently, I was the winner, as the transparent Red Sprite showed up and said ".........."

At that point, I just freaked out, as that transparent Red sprite was suddenly beheaded, leaving nothing but his transparent body. The battle then ended at that point and faded out along with the music.

I'm back in the overworld, with another change to the Gold sprite – he's now as transparent as Red's overworld sprite. I quickly checked Gold's profile, where this time the only thing remains of him is his head, with a transparent skin. The head was zoomed in a bit, showing a black void in his eyes. It now stated that he now has 40 badges. I then backed out and checked my Pokémon. They were all Level 20 Shiny Unown, which when spelled out, read "NOMORE".

I was at what I now know is next to the end. There was apparently no music playing, but for some reason I still felt like something was there that could be heard. I was back in my room in New Bark Town. Maybe finally I get to play this game properly, but who am I kidding.

I knew that sadistic fuck must have done something. I "walked" around my room to interact with things, as I'm a bit afraid to go down the stairs to see what was awaiting down there. Note I said "walked", as while the background was moving, Gold was not moving his transparent limbs at all while doing so, just floating like those ghosts you see in Diamond/Pearl.

As expected, the radio, computer, and TV did not work, so I had no choice but to go down the stairs. I ended up in the same lower level room of my house. Everything appears normal, except mom isn't home. After failing to interact with anything in this room, I decided to go outside. To my surprise, that door leading outside at the south didn't work, and instead I just walk straight through it to a void. 

I continued moving south to see what the fuck was going on. My house vanishes as I head south into the void. It was creepy as when I entered the void, the outline on Gold's transparent sprite turned white to contrast with the pitch black. Eventually, I reached a white area and Gold's sprite turned black and transparent again. I continued south without thinking of stopping at all. 
After a long trek south, I finally encountered something. It was GOLD's regular sprite. I talked to it. He said "Good bye forever ...." (notably with a space inbetween the forever and ....), and vanished. As that happened, it said "??? used NIGHTMARE" which at that point, I would not deny that being possible. Gold did another Escape Rope animation spinning slowly downwards like before.

I'm now back into that small hollowed-out room surrounded by graves earlier. Or at least I say I was back there, as there's no sprite anymore. I tried to walk around but nothing moved – not even wall bumping noise. I checked my trainer profile with absolutely no Gold sprite left. It said I have 0 badges and all the pictures of the Johto Gym Leaders at the bottom were replaced with skulls.

I checked my Pokémon, which were all Level 25 Unown. As expected, it spelled out a phrase that I dared to read: "IMDEAD".

As soon as I went back to the overworld, the room I supposedly was in was then covered with the same blocks as the walls. I then figured out what exactly that room was when the final text was said: "R.I.P. ..."

That room was a big grave, surrounded by other graves. Gold has already been dead. He died presumably a few years after he defeated Red.

He was a young trainer who, despite his efforts in collecting so many badges and attempts at becoming a Pokémon master, was still unable to avoid the inevitable fate of death, and his efforts were eventually forgotten by the next generation.

I was unable to escape from that text no matter what I pressed. I tried resetting the game, and the same thing happened, at which I then finally decided to give up on that horrible nightmare.

After that experience, I will never look at the "gimmick" Unown the same way again. They say that only the first generation have folk tales and legends, but the second generation have shown me how unpleasant the truth can be. I eventually enjoyed SoulSilver immensely, but I still can't unthink what that rigged game has told me.

When the surgery ended the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while struggling. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the surgeon had a pen and pad fetched so the patient could write his message. It was simple. “Keep cutting.”

The other two test subjects were given the same surgery, both without anesthetic as well. Although they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralyzed the subjects could only follow the attending researchers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they were soon trying to escape their bonds. The moment they could speak they were again asking for the stimulant gas. The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts and why they wanted to be given the gas again.

Only one response was given: “I must remain awake.”

All three subject’s restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination as to what should be done with them. The researchers, facing the wrath of their military ‘benefactors’ for having failed the stated goals of their project considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The commanding officer, a former KGB agent, instead saw potential, and wanted to see what would happen if they were put back on the gas. The researchers strongly objected, but were overruled.

In preparation for being sealed in the chamber again, the subjects were connected to an EEG monitor and had their restraints padded for long term confinement. To everyone’s surprise, all three stopped struggling the moment it was let slip that they were going back on the gas. It was obvious that at this point all three were putting up a great struggle to stay awake. One of the subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs against the leather bonds with all his might, first left, then right, then left again for something to focus on. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to be wired for EEG most of the researchers were monitoring his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes flat lined inexplicably. It looked as if he were repeatedly suffering from brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on paper scrolling out of the brainwave monitor only one nurse saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brainwaves immediately changed to that of a deep sleep, then flatlined for the last time as his heart simultaneously stopped.

The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brainwaves showed the same flatlines as one who had just died from falling asleep. The commander gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside, as well as 3 researchers. One of the named three immediately drew his gun and shot the commander point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute subject and blew his brains out as well.

He pointed his gun at the remaining subject, still restrained to a bed as the remaining members of the medical and research team fled the room. “I won’t be locked in here with these things! Not with you!” he screamed at the man strapped to the table. “WHAT ARE YOU?” he demanded. “I must know!”

The subject smiled.

“Have you forgotten so easily?” The subject asked. “We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread.”

The researcher paused. Then aimed at the subject’s heart and fired. The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out, “So… nearly… free…”