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Binary DNA



Estimated reading time — 6 minutes

They say when you take a picture of someone you capture their soul in the camera. They also say if you print it off, that picture contains the soul itself and you can control them with it.

I’m not sure where to start. Do you know what the Primordial Soup is? A veritable ocean of elements, all floating around randomly. And through millions of years of time, eventually the right set of random circumstances came to pass, and the elements were able to connect together and form the worlds first single cell organism.

Now that’s a really boiled down version of it but I’m sure you get the gist of it. Fast forward a few billion years to the early 1990s, when internet use began to rapidly accelerate. Every home had a computer, and new connections between computers were opening on a by the second basis.

Trillions of bytes of data began to transfer around the world at the speed of light, music, text, sound, and most importantly; pictures. Now if, when you take a picture of someone and capture their soul, what happens when that picture is converted to data and placed on a hard drive? Does the soul follow? 15 years later we believe so. We believe that when you take a picture of someone and upload it onto your computer, alongside the image data a blueprint of the person’s soul itself is imprinted on the file itself.

Look at your pictures folder. How many souls reside in that folder alone?

That’s just the beginning though. These soul blueprints each retain pieces of a puzzle, parts of the soul itself as well.

Recently a group of hackers, who referred to themselves as the Cardinals, took an interest to this theory and began experiments. They found anomalies within the binary sequences of images based on similar features of the person they had taken a picture of. A binary DNA if you will.

Now these hackers had come to posses a set of three extremely important data files. One avi, one jpeg, and one .mp3, each of which possessing interesting unexplainable qualities.

The first, cradle.avi, depicts what appears to be a group of teenagers with a low quality video camera, exploring the basement of a house. The quality of the video is distorted completely beyond any comprehensibility, and the video is very low quality. For most of the video the camera is passed around the group, handed back and forth and jerked around too much to make anything noticeable out.

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But near the end the camera turns at an odd angle, and you can semi clearly make out a young girl standing in the corner facing the wall. Her hair is long and black and she is wearing some form of white dress. You only see her for a split second but many people who have seen the video claim there just seems something wrong with her. A bit deformed but not in a way anyone can explain.

But the truly peculiar property of this video is what happens to the users computer at the end of it. On the last second of the video, if not already so the video will force full screen itself. Along with this you are left with a one second looping clip of a window in a wall. It loops 15 times, and then the girl is seen again, standing on the other side of the window with her back to the viewer, slowly wavering back and forth. After a few moments the video ends and the user’s computer permanently shuts down.

Inspection has shown that the entire registry becomes completely corrupt, requiring the user to do a total wipe and reinstall.

The second file is known as needles.mp3. This sound file, when played, plays for about 3 minutes. It is extremely distorted. One can occasionally make out some form of voice talking, but most of the sound is some form of growling, rolling crackled roar.

Users who listen to this file often experience extreme nausea and loss of balance for a brief period of time.

The final file is known as burningman.jpg.

The file name has nothing to do with what the actual picture depicts. Instead it just displays a haphazard mess of overlayed and meshed images of dolls and a hallway. There also seems to be an image of a man standing with his head cast down in the background, but the image is too distorted to make anything out, much like the other files.

The image, when downloaded and opened on a users desktop, will proceed to stay permanently open on whatever program it is opened through. Not only that, the program becomes disabled. Nothing else happens, the image just permanently sits there on your desktop, unclickable, unminimizable, and your just left there with the mans invisible gaze staring at you.

From what the group of hackers were able to discern, this file seems to have precompiled into the data something along the lines of Cmdow. Yet, as complex and intricate as the program is (it works across all OS platforms) no one knows who the original creator is. In fact, few people have heard of it as the file is uncopyable nor sendable.

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This in fact further adds to the mystery, as often receivers of this file will obtain it from random anonymous emails, posted on forms on a download link. Posing the question, how was that poster able to upload it?

If you ever see any of these files, refrain from downloading ANY of them. They all have varying detrimental effects on your computers, from practically taking out your whole registry, corrupting system 32, freezing your mouse or crashing your computer.

Now onwards:

This group of hackers, the Cardinals, took to analyzing these 3 files and comparing their odd behaviors. They had heard of other such odd files, images, data, etc, but were never able to get their hands on them. At least as far as we know, though rumour states they in fact were able to locate and collect all of the known files like the original smile.jpg, barbie.jpg, even suicidemouse.avi. Not even the grifter was able to escape their grasp, rumour states. But rumour also states the grifter video even exists, but thats another story.

Nonetheless, all these files in hand, the group lined the files up and begin to meticulously work through the binary one 0/1 at a time, checking for similar strains and series of binary that matched.

And they did manage to successfully do so, at least legend states. The result were 7 individual execute files that did nothing. Simply a gibberish pile of 0s and 1s. They endless puzzled over the files, each tackling an execute each. They decided to name them after themselves, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, and Pride.

At last they attempted to line the files up. Remarkably, something odd happened. The copies of the files quite suddenly meshed together. The result was a single complete Execute, already named.

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“BarelyBreathing.exe”

And what of this file? Well not much else is known after that point. They were too smart to just execute it. They analyzed the file every possible way. Hex, binary, conversions, anything to figure out what this odd file would do.

To no avail, even after forming together it was an even bigger jumble of 1s and 0s and made no more sense than the separate executes.

They backed the file up on a flash drive and proceeded to run it. That was the last command found run on their destroyed computers a week later. Their corpses had been disfigured beyond recognition. Description of the corpses stated that it almost seemed as if they had been brutally slashed across their faces and arms. Every square inch of skin that had been bare had been mutilated. Almost microwaved and then sliced repeatedly by a micro thin razor.

The government attempted to hush up the event, but there was some media leakage, and because the Cardinals had been keeping a blog amongst themselves and a few close friends (its closed down and deleted now so don’t go trying to find it) it quickly spread out as per what they had been attempting to accomplish. And if it was or was not related to their terrible deaths.

And what of the flash drive? A friend, who knew of its existence, later checked the home of the group and was unable to find it. According to reports the drive was found in the pocket of one of the group and had been taken into custody by the police, and then simply vanished.

The trail continues on, far more though. The file resurfaces every few weeks around the globe. Governments attempt to cover it up but some media leaks out, of course. Look to the news for people mutilated in their own homes by a “murderer”, their computers stolen, etc.

And if you ever get a cryptic email with an attachment labelled BarelyBreathing.exe, for fuck sakes DO NOT OPEN IT!

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184 thoughts on “Binary DNA”

  1. Dylan A.:
    It looked promising until I realized that whoever wrote this knows next-to-nothing about computers. A program that is cross-compatible across EVERY system in the world, yet targets the registry — a Windows-specific entity — and the system32 folder — another Windows-specific entity? And what the fuck is an “execute”? Did they mean “executable”? FAIL.

    Fair reasoning, but was all that really nesscsary? My . Lord, love. That statement was a might immature, don’t you think? All the same, it was at least a six for me.

  2. I’m gonna be honest, from the first paragraph I assumed they were going to try to change the coding of someone’s soul and turn them into a twisted version of themself.
    I’m a bit disappointed, and the photography thing doesn’t really seem to tie in to the actual plot. Also, the little ghost thing was not only cliched, but also didn’t really tie in.

  3. Not even gonna lie about how there are many cliche’s in this creepypasta, however the concept of this file and it’s origin is pretty unique. I personally thought it was creepy and definitely worth reading 7.5/10

  4. Despite the technical inaccuracies and not entirely tying itself together, this is a great story. It makes haunted internet files seem surprisingly plausible and doesn’t try too hard to be creepy.

  5. Can’t you imbeciles see?! This IS connected, you just need to look deeper! I find the two “completely separate” topics having a major link, yet no one has discovered it yet?! No wonder I gave up on humanity.

  6. No one gets it yet? Images can capture people’s souls, and the poster talks about when you upload it, the soul follows… so, they’re looking at some pretty corrupted or just powerful souls in those images. That must be why the files act so strange… it’s the souls, not the files at all…

  7. BohemianRhapsody

    It’s a little like the Majora’s Mask pasta. If it hadn’t been so similar, I would have probably been a lot more scared.

  8. Instead of dissing the fucking story, how about you realize that it’s just for fun? Kept me interested. I like this.

  9. This was so jumpy. It jumped from souls captured in pictures, to files crashing computers, to murders and stolen computers. This was trying too hard to be original that it totally messed up the story for me. I’v got to give them some credit though. It wasn’t all bad. It just seemed too rushed, jumpy, and trying way to hard.

  10. ok ok ok, who was the retard who said little girls AREN’T creepy? cuz i don’t know about you, but i have never met a little girl that wasn’t creepy in some way. and to all you bastards who find it nessessary to bash on the author, thumper from bambi has some good advice : SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

  11. Im puzzled, what hapens with a soul, if i fourier transform it an discard the higher frequency parts to compress ist, as i would by casting it into a jpeg or mp3.

  12. i liked the story i have one question though is it based on a true story/real rumors or is it just you making shit up i give it a 7/10 if irs based on ”facts” or rumors and a 4/10 if its made up.
    also katie bug =) its pps not pss im not complaining i have reeally crappy grammar and i envy you but i just want to inform you that ps stands for post scriptum wich is roughly translated to after writing and you just wrote after writing writing when it should be after after writing also

  13. Hahaha hey. I thought this story was pretty good. Im not gonna be a critic, i come on this site to read stories when I’m bored. People are right, there are a lot of holes in this story, but i thought the concept was great. I dont really see the connection between capturing soles and the files tho…

  14. i got a spam message called BarelyBreathing once….anyone one else find this freaky?this is not a joke i promise you i did get it and (thank God) i deleted it thinking it would be a screamer link.has this happend to anyone else?

  15. I think the readers of this site might just be assholes. Can never please these guys.

    I absolutely loved the base premise. Basing it on computer crap is a wonderful start because, well, we’re all reading this on a computer. I of course went to google to look up burningman.jpg and was a little disappointed to not find a pic to back this up.

    Which is one of my criticisms: for a story like this to work at its best you need to do a little bit of background work to make sure the files either exist or there’s a few external hints at them.

    The computer jargon was a bit CSI-level innacurate, so you should do some research on that before writing, though I’m not going to have a sook and give it a 4/10 just because you didn’t realize system32 is unique to Windows. Just, something to be fixed.

    The spiritual stuff jammed into the front was definitely my primary issue. Spiritual, or scientific; choose one. Creepypasta does not need to be paranormal to be creepy, in fact some of the scariest stuff out there are the stories that are in that sort of Matrix-level of plausibility. Unlikely and far-fetched but nobody can really say for sure that it’s wrong. Talking about ridiculously corrupted files with hidden executables fits that bill, but by talking about the old Aboriginal soul-in-the-camera beliefs you pretty much just obliterate the appeal for tech buffs while tech stuff goes over the head of most of the spiritually-inclined readers.

    The blatant Ring/Grudge ripoff pretty much qualifies as the same. You don’t need to cram in paranormal and little girls to be creepy. If you want to run the ‘semi-realistic and undisprovable’ angle, by all means do, it can work really well, but having Sadako in the background and having files magically fuse dilutes it.

    But as I said I was still a fair bit creeped out, even if just the apprehension of going into google to look up burningman.jpg. This story has SO much potential that I really wouldn’t mind seeing a more focused re-write. And even so I’d still give it a 6-7.

  16. *Ahem* to the person that refers to themself as ‘Katie Bug =D’
    Indeed, your grammar and spelling is significantly better than that of many of the people on this site, but the correct use of the apostrophe would be “parents’ ” and the term is PPS, not PSS. Post post script, NOT post script script. Incidentally, why do you = D? Why are you equal to the letter D? Is it because D is a variable? Should you not, then, be equal to X?

    POST SCRIPT – Also, I happen to be twelve.

  17. \"Almost microwaved and then sliced repeatedly by a micro thin razor.\"

    Amazing. A nice creative, morbid concept. And the binary DNA tidbit was creative, too. Nicely done. But there\’s a problem here; there\’s no evidence, or even verification, that anything mentioned in the story killed them. Was it the spoOoOoOky little girl? Who knows?

    And now I have to say that The Little Girl concept was not scary at all. Anyone who DOES get scared by a little girl, creepy or not, should have more of a specific reason than pale skin and long, black hair. Clearly this was your lack of creativity and your need to take aspects of movies that scared you to put into a story to create the illusion of creative horror Not very good, and left little to the imagination.

    \"The result were 7 individual execute files that did nothing. Simply a gibberish pile of 0s and 1s. They endless puzzled over the files, each tackling an execute each. They decided to name them after themselves, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, and Pride.\"

    The 7 Deadly Sins had no correlation with anything in the story. And please don\’t misuse expository information, the repetitiveness of it in a majority of Creepy Pastas is bad enough. The file merging part was absolutely laughable. If you had any knowledge of computers than you would understand this.

    \"I’m not sure where to start. Do you know what the Primordial Soup is? A veritable ocean of elements, all floating around randomly. And through millions of years of time, eventually the right set of random circumstances came to pass, and the elements were able to connect together and form the worlds first single cell organism.\"

    Interesting. But this does not have anything to do with the story. I would have put, in the place of this;
    \"DNA is the foundation of life. Every cell in your body is made up of strands of DNA. We wouldn\’t be here without it. Our parents wouldn\’t, either. Nothing would. Our planet would be an empty world of endless sea and eerily lonesome landscape. Now, fast forward a couple billion years, where the consistency of internet use was on the rise. Imagine if your DNA code could essentially be translated into binary code. Yes, I can safely say that we\’ve come far in the evolutionary process, more so than any living thing on earth, but there comes a point where we\’ve gone too far.But, I\’ll let you decide that at the end of the story. I don\’t want my opinion interfering with the information I\’m about to show you. \"

    I hope you can tell a better story when you get older. I\’m giving this one 4.5 out of 10. Just keep trying, I always say.

  18. So.
    A bootleg video of The Blair witch project mixed in with The Ring.
    A low quality recording of the System Of A Down song “Needles”
    And a bunch of Chernobyl pictures.

    =

    Possible title of a My Chemical Romance album?

    Coo’.

  19. The begining was really lame and didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the pasta. It got better, but the Samantha doppleganger was overused (people need to learn that little girls aren’t scary). 7/10

    I usually don’t give a damn about small mistakes in pastas, but you seriously don’t know how computers work.

  20. And please, for the love of all that is …

    Stop with the:
    ‘so the legend says’, ‘so the rumor has it’, etc.
    CRAP every other paragraph.

    There’s no reason for it, and it’s just downright awful.

  21. If this was written by someone age 15 or younger:
    Nice job buddy.
    Keep writing, but even more, do a lot of reading … it will improve your skills.

    If it was written by someone older … there’s this thing called proofreading. Do it a few times to at least make sure what you’ve written is self consistent and makes sense.

    Either way, stay away from technical subjects you aren’t very familiar with.
    To anyone who knows much about computers some parts of this come across as laughably stupid.

  22. It was getting interesting at first, ’cause these kinds of topics scare the fuck of me. But OH. Too many cliches, lame ending, too many computer errors, and retarded grammar.

    BUT THEN WHO WAS DNA?

    also, @Dr.Razer, you made me have a fangasm with the whole Digimon and Back to the Future thing.

  23. theguywhoreadsthisstuff

    i like it, could be longer. For the computer people I like how you’ll buy a haunted computer virus that kills you but you wont buy…whatever the fuck you’re talking about

  24. Late post, but I came across this again and had to respond:

    [quote]
    I think this was a pretty good pasta, I mean the storyline was a little jumpy, but the overall plot was good. The black hair and white dress is a little overused but the picture and sound were kinda original. I liked it a lot though. And to all you “nerds” these stories are for fun! Don’t take it so seriously! It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t add up! Deal with it and theres a mystery! Nice job CreepyPasta writer!
    [/quote]

    IMO it does matter. It may not matter to you if you aren’t very familiar with all of the terminology and concepts the author misuses, but those of us who regularly work on or with computers may find it inconveniently impossible to suspend our knowledge of computers well enough to enjoy this story.

  25. I have to give serious props to Dr. Razer for the most brilliant, genius use of his comment space. The best comment on this creepypasta by far. And actually better than the pasta itself.

    Bravo.

  26. it sounds like a virus that when ran fries the comp and right before it fries it it sends out a singal saying the ip address then you can find people from there so yeah

  27. I didn’t find it that scary, because the “souls in binary code” was explained about as well as a shitty Hollywood movie for retards who get a scare out of anything, and despite the different um… evil filetypes because pretty cool to read about, the story itself was lame.

  28. Also the comments on that BarelyBreathing.exe download all seem to be going on about being “killed by razors”. But then another one appears to say “Trojan, horrible creepy Trojan”, so swings and roundabouts.

  29. @umm: smile.jpg is a dog with human teeth photoshopped onto it. Kind of “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT” for about half a second, then you realise how kinda shitty it looks.

    barbie.jpg is meant to be barbie.avi which is some bitch going on about skin.

    The Grifter is some other gruesome/scary video I’ve not read up on.

  30. The Dragon of Fire

    This file does exist, look it up online. It’s a youtube video. I didn’t click it though…

  31. @iNTeX

    OH SHI-

    It’s just a virus, I’m sure. Know why? Only an idiot(i.e. someone who gets computer viruses from downloads) would download a file that would kill them.

  32. Was I the only person that found a problem with the referencing the Primordial Soup and then mentioning a soul? Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the Soup a more evolutionist theory while the soul tends to lend more towards a religious belief system and not a scientific belief system? That point alone distracted me for about 5 minutes, and this story just went downhill from there on points that countless others have already made.

  33. Christ, this was like some computer nerd had an orgasm and jizzed a bunch of computer jargon over some The Ring fanfiction.

  34. You fools. You understand nothing.

    It is obvious, the cameras and the recorder created incomplete copies of the souls they were recording, the soul of the girl, the soul of the man and the soul of needles.

    By finding the incomplete soul codes of this files and joining them together, this artificial DNA fused into one and formed a complete chain of binary DNA, thus an .exe was born, a full application, a full form.

    This .exe contained a full complete binary soul, result from the fusion of several incomplete souls. As soon as they ran the new file, the DNA went trough the computer, and gave the computer it’s own soul.
    Causing a Digievolution.
    Breathingcompumon was born, he is the mysterious killer. Think about it, sharp cooling fans, powerful electric components, and most importantly no one would ever suspect a computer, and lets not forget, part of the soul of Needles is there. And God knows the only one who can stop Needles is Marty McFly, unless he crashes with a Rolls Royce. Be thankful it wasn’t the soul of Biff.

  35. Oh yeah, they had a blog or whatever but you shouldn’t look for it cause it’s like totally deleted or whatever, so yeah.

    Like others have said, the fact you had tried to explain the technical parts in too much depth and incorrectly. Like instead of saying “they examined the file thoroughly”, you wrote a goddamn paragraph.

  36. Wow. This is full of so many holes, it’s not even funny. This was a really promising creepypasta until you tried to explain all these technical details without knowing what you were talking about. Clean it up and it has the potential to be terrifying. :)

  37. Was delicious up until the ending. total let down. it had a pretty good storyline up until the last paragraph.

  38. also, you don’t look better by putting other writers down, just because you make fun of their work doesn’t make your any less crappy, cliche, or even creepier than theirs

  39. goodness, you are all he doesn’t know what he’s talking about this and errors that, you have to believe that impossible can be possible and false can be true, plus, spelling out computer abbreviations wrong only proves that you’re either too lazy to look up what the abbreviations stand for or you got it from another source or didn’t want to write out “executable” or whatever

  40. There’s a bunch of good ideas here, but they don’t actually mesh in any sane way, and they’re buried under terrible writing and painful misunderstanding of computers. It’s worth raiding for RPG ideas — there’s about a dozen different plot hooks stuffed in there if you can wipe away the garbage — but not for much else.

  41. may i say, that the “barley breathing.jpg or woteva it woz” iz just a virus, if u kan get it on a pendrive then get it to someone like mi m8z course tutor, it will never eva be an issue, i had the same issue the other day with a virus on a pendrive that completley shutdown a computer in the process of deleting it. Sorry to pop any1z bubblewho belived this crap.

  42. This story did look promising, it really did, and it didn’t really turn out as I would have liked. The biggest thing that bugged me is how the beginning didn’t really have anything to do with the rest of it. Yeah, there are souls in computer files, but it just went on and on until it didn’t have much to do with it. This story could have been a hell of a lot better if the writer knew more about the computer, if the story hadn’t kept on going on and on until it seemed almost irrelevant, and if the writer made it make more sense. I kept on getting confused during the story.

    But I will give the writer credit–they tried, and it’s pretty well done, despite these problems…so I’d give it a 4/10.

  43. just pointing out the major problems in this story, for fun and maybe advice for wannabe horror writers.

    1: the video.
    “The quality of the video is distorted completely beyond any comprehensibility, and the video is very low quality” this is commenting itself
    not to mention that it is basically The Ring, computer version. I am actually surprised that it didn’t also state that the viewer receives an email stating that THEY WILL DIE IN SEVEN DAYS, hurr.

    2: the mp3 file.
    basically smile.jpg in mp3 format.

    3: the picture
    dolls and an hallway, sure. And since we’re at it, why not put some mysterious pictures, slamming doors and windows and ghostly figures standing around? This is screaming unoriginality and clichè.

    the mention of the other “mysterious files” from other creepypastas is ugly too.
    Not to mention: naming the files after “themselves”, or the 7 capital sins, but without stating if these were their nicknames or something, the part where the pieces of skin had been “microwaved”. The capslock happy final with “if you receive a mail with this file, DON’T OPEN IT!”, assuming that the reader was stupid enough not to figure that out already by the time the writer mentioned the hackers found horribly dead after seeing the video was the story’s total death.

    for short: The Ring broken in three pieces and different file formats, mixed up with unoriginal details, a very ugly writing, a lame final and an idiotic beginning (the writer starts the story after mentioning the part about photos stealing the soul by assuming that the reader actually believed that bullshit)

    apart from the “binary DNA” concept, this story is total 1/10 crap. Take note, kids.

  44. This pasta made me laugh in the end. Being a Mac user, I guess I will never know what is contained in the BarelyBreathing.exe email attachment because Macs cannot open a .exe. So much for “working across all OS platforms…”

  45. So we’ve got a video file that trashes your registry(imbedded malware),
    an audio file that makes you feel ill(caused by low frequency noise),
    and an image file that freezes the program(buffer overflow)

    These are all very easily explained. Then the files magic into ‘executes’ and then again into the .exe, without being run. He claims the group of hackers is too smart to run the .exe, and then they do a couple sentences later. This pasta is poorly concieved, a fair bit retarded, and I honestly might’ve liked it if the author didn’t pretend to know what the fuck he was talking about.

    Make the files explode the compter or possess people or something. This is weak.
    Day of All the Blood was better than this piece of shit. 1/10

  46. Yeah, except that the hospital where you’re born takes your first picture and captures your soul then. So there are no souls to capture in any picture taken after that. Concept fail.

  47. Pretty good and sorta scary (I’m easy top scare, though), I keep checking for monsters under my computer desk, lol.

  48. Hmm, very compelling. I quite liked it, especially the reference to smile.jpg and suicidemouse.avi as well as the whole “potentially reasonable” explanation. Oh and uh, not to be a Grammar-Nazi, but I think you could improve your works by doing a bit more editing and spell-checking. There seemed to be a lot of little mistakes, nothing too major though.

  49. ”Trillions of bytes of data began to transfer around the world at the speed of light, music, text, sound, and most importantly; pictures.”

    What exactly is the speed of pictures? Or music, or text?
    If the speed of text is anything like my typing then it’s ass slow.

  50. Charlotte Mander

    My thoughts on this pasta are sort of mixed.

    It seems as though the story is more or less like two different ideas taped together with obvious and vibrantly colored duct tape rather than one whole story.

    Perhaps someone could attempt to rewrite this using the “first” different idea with the DNA and the soul being saved in a picture, because this story would be perfectly fine with me if not for being led on like that.

    —Char Mander

  51. Could someone please fill me in on what suicidemouse.avi is? I haven’t read new creepypasta in three months, and, quite frankly, I’m too much of a pussy to look it up myself.

  52. barbie.avi waz interesting, but in a way freaky, me and mi m8 are reading scary storiez and we reckon that one iz alright, but the thing iz every1 will never beleive it if u click the link from above, then read everything… also, the pics on the link get gross… TEEHEE

  53. suicidemouse.avi

    There is an actual suicidemouse.avi on youtube. It actually freaked me out. I felt as though I shouldn’t have watched it.

  54. The funny thing is that I’ve seen the “girl in the white dress” video. At the end, nothing happens. I give it 5/10. Had potential, but stuck to stereotypes.

  55. And if it works across all platforms, how does it use .exe?
    Not to mention an entirely random binary jumble wouldn’t produce a name and/or filetype.

  56. >Katie Bug =D
    It’s not a matter of mystery; it is a matter of shit-doesn’t-work-that-way. The story uses too many bad literary plot devices to be good. It seems like the author randomly changed directions a few times and abandoned too many potentially interesting plots.

    Although it did have nice imagery.

  57. I actually thought it was really good. Some cheap covers, but, hey, it was entertaining.
    @ KND opertive numba 1600, the thing with girls who have long black hair (and typically wear white dresses or something similar) comes up a lot, because they’re a really famous horror character/creature/thing, though most of the time stories about them are told in Asian countries. (Most likely why they tend to have very long black hair.) They’re called Onryō, and basically they’re a manifestation of the last negative feelings (anger, sadness, envy) of a person who dies, taking the form of the dead person and hanging around where they died where they try to get vengeance against basically anybody who happens to see them.
    Just for the record, because it’s not necessarily a ripoff of The Ring or The Grudge or Shutter or something. =P

  58. *OH NO NOW WHAT WILL I DO WHEN A STRANGER SENDS ME A LINK TO SOMETHING I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT!!!!*

    Head Explodes

  59. i found the barbie.avi:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gdnsVQ9ILE

    “The story behind this is that guy finds an abandoned computer, takes it home and checks it out and there is this video on it called barbie.avi. He watches and it’s basically a women talking like she’s being interviewed by someone off camera. The audio is too bad to make out what’s being said. Near the end she gets more and more upset by the questions and she begins pulling at her arm skin and saying “skin” (he can make that part out.) ”

    more info:
    http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=2283878&x=Creepypasta3A+barbie.avi

  60. Have to know the story behind all those files mentioned to get this pasta. I think it tied up the Grifter/Suicidemouse meme quite nicely.

    No one uses a Mac.

    Only nerds use Linux. Nerds are no one and therefore do not exist.

  61. at the part about the music file some dick on the motorway near me beeped his really weird horn…that scared me

  62. Wow, I just read up on suicidemouse.avi, and it is 10x scarier than this shit. I’ve seen smile.jpg before on 4chan, and while it is a bit startling at first glance, it’s nothing more than a badly photoshopped Siberian Husky. On the other hand, I couldn’t compel myself to watch the suicidemouse.avi video.

    And what the hell is barbie.avi? Can someone provide some sort of insight as to what it is, or a link to a background story on it? I can’t find anything about it.

  63. Violent Harvest

    Also, Tower posted this on the forums randomly from /x/, so the author will never see your comments. Just thought I’d let you all know.

  64. This entire pasta was a waste of my time. I was excited to read it, based on the title, but it just disappointed… I know next-to-nothing about computers, but I don’t need to in order to see the giant holes in this story. Common sense is enough to figure out that this was very badly executed with pretty much no technical research done to at least make it SEEM plausible.

    Stale pasta.

  65. Cribbing from Ring/Blair Witch Project aside, I really, really like the concept in this one. However, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Since I hate to see this kind of potential wasted, I’ve tried improving the story somewhat by cleaning up the language and removing some of the superfluous or irrelevant parts.

    They say that when you take a picture of someone, you capture their soul in the camera. They also say that if you make a print of the picture, it will contain the soul itself.
    In the early 1990s, Internet use accelerated rapidly. Every home had a computer, and new connections between computers were opening by the second. Trillions of bytes of data began to transfer around the world at the speed of light: music, text, sound, and most importantly pictures. Now, if you can capture someone’s soul by taking a picture of them, what happens when that picture is digitized and placed on a hard drive? Does the soul follow?
    Recently, a group of seven hackers who called themselves the Cardinals took an interest in this question, and began to experiment with it. They found anomalies within the binary sequences of images which matched the features of people in the pictures – a binary DNA, if you will.
    Now, these hackers owned a set of three extremely important files: one AVI, one JPEG, and one MP3, each of which possessed interesting and inexplicable qualities.
    The first file, cradle.avi, seemingly depicts a group of teenagers exploring the basement of a house. The video is extremely distorted, and appears to have been filmed with a low-quality video camera. For most of the video, the camera is passed around the group, handed back and forth and jerked around too much to make out anything noticeable. Near the end, however, the camera turns at an odd angle, and you can make out a young girl standing in the corner and facing the wall. Her hair is long and black, and she is wearing a white dress. You only see her for a split second, but many people who have seen the video claim that there’s something about her which just seems wrong – almost a little bit deformed, but now in a way anyone can explain.
    However, the truly peculiar property of this video is what happens to the computer when it ends. The video forces itself into full screen if not already in that mode, and a one-second clip of a window in a wall loops fifteen times. Then, the girl is seen again, standing on the other side of the window with her back to the viewer, slowly wavering back and forth. After a few moments, the video ends, and the user’s computer permanently shuts down. Inspection has shown that the entire registry becomes completely corrupt, requiring the user to do a total wipe and reinstall.
    The second file, known as needles.mp3, is about three minutes long. Although it is extremely distorted and the sound mostly consists of a sort of growling, rolling, crackled roar, one can occasionally make out the sound of a voice talking. Users who listen to this file often experience brief but extreme bouts of nausea and loss of balance.
    The final file is known as burningman.jpg.
    The file name has nothing to do with what the actual picture depicts. Instead, it just displays a haphazard mess of overlayed and meshed images of dolls and a hallway. There also seems to be an image of a man standing with his head cast down in the background, but much like the other files, the image is too distorted to make anything out. Once opened, the image will stay permanently open on whatever program it was opened through. Not only that; the program becomes disabled. Nothing else happens, and the image just permanently sits there on your desktop, unclickable, unminimizable, and you’re just left there with the man’s invisible gaze staring at you.
    From what the group of hackers were able to discern, this file seems to have precompiled into a program. But as complex and intricate as the program is (it works across all OS platforms), no-one knows who the original creator is. In fact, few people have heard of the file, as it is uncopyable and unsendable. This further adds to the mystery, as receivers of the file will often obtain it from random and anonymous e-mails or links on forums. This raises a question: how was that poster able to upload it?
    If you ever see any of these files, refrain from downloading ANY of them. They all have various detrimental effects on your computer, from practically taking out your whole registry to corrupting system files, freezing your mouse, or crashing your computer.
    This Cardinals analyzed the files and compared their odd behaviors. They had heard of other such odd files, images, and data, and rumour states they had located and collected files such as the original smile.jpg, barbie.jpg, suicidemouse.avi, and even The Grifter.
    The group lined the files up and begin to meticulously work through the binary data one digit at a time, checking for similar strains and series of binary that matched. The result were seven individual execute files that did nothing – simply a gibberish pile of 0s and 1s. They puzzled over the files, tackling one each, and decided to name them after themselves: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, and Pride. When they attempted to line the files up, something odd happened: the files quite suddenly meshed together, producing a single complete EXE files entitled BarelyBreathing.exe.
    And what of this file? Well, not much else is known after that point. The Cardinals were too smart to just execute it, and instead analyzed it in every possible way: hex, binary, conversions, anything to figure out what it would do. But it was all to no avail. Like the previous files, BarelyBreathing.exe appeared to simply be an incoherent jumble of 1s and 0s. The last known operation run on the hackers’ computers was an attempt to run a copy of the file from a memory stick.
    They were found a week later, their corpses disfigured almost beyond recognition and their computers destroyed. Descriptions of the corpses indicated that they had been brutally slashed across their faces and arms. Every square inch of bare skin had been mutilated – burned, and then slashed with a thin, razor-sharp blade. The government attempted to hush up the event, but there was some media leakage, and because the Cardinals had been keeping a blog amongst themselves and a few close friends (it’s closed down and deleted now, so don’t go trying to find it), it quickly became known what they had been trying to accomplish.
    And what of the flash drive? A friend who knew of its existence later checked the group’s home, but was unable to find it. According to reports, police found the drive in the pocket of one member of the group and took it into custody, after which it appears to have vanished completely.
    But the trail doesn’t stop there. The file resurfaces every few weeks around the globe. Governments attempt to cover it up, but information sometimes gets through to the media. Keep on the lookout for news of people mutilated in their own homes by a “murderer,” their computers stolen, etc.
    And if you ever get a cryptic email with an attachment labeled BarelyBreathing.exe, for fuck’s sake, DO NOT OPEN IT!

  66. Also,

    “.exe […] it works across all OS platforms […] your whole registry, corrupting system 32”

    No other operating system than Windows even has a folder named system32, nor a registry, nor file extensions named .exe. And the story is full of this.

    Please learn how a computer works before trying to imagine how it can be haunted. You could blur the line between a devious ordinary worm and a ghost very scarily, as long as you know what a worm actually *is*.

  67. “Inspection has shown that the entire registry becomes completely corrupt, requiring the user to do a total wipe and reinstall.”

    Then who was Windows user?

    (But seriously, doesn’t that happen about once per month on Windows ANYWAY?)

  68. Oh, TheLight. Will you horrors from beyond EVER get tired of screwing with humanity? You rascals, you. You can’t get ALL of us. After all, humans are the most adaptable species out there. We conquered an entire damn planet in just a few thousand years, we’re not gonna die out just because of a few abominations.

  69. I’d never heard of smile.jpg. I look it up. It scared me way more than this story ever could. You get a generous 3/10 just for that.

  70. Ah yes, another classic example of the aftereffects of the File. The advice stated is sound, as I have seen those who have followed, and those who have not.

    Those who don’t are often left…barely breathing.

  71. The really fucked-up part is I actually had a dream like his a few months ago. Someone corrupted my hard drive and everything was pixellated and distorted. Then my phone played strange creepy videos. It was not pleasant.

  72. Man, the wording was too bad to keep me immersed. Other than that, I would’ve liked it. Not too creepy though.

  73. This would be much better if it were told from the perspective of a person discovering and running the files. Instead its written like “this is a thing that happened!” which is a lot less scary. It had some creativity, though.

  74. I’m giving this a generous 3/10.
    “Not even the grifter was able to escape their grasp, rumour states. But rumour also states the grifter video even exists, but thats another story.”
    That made me “lolwut”.

  75. Wow, this was awful. Where are all the good pastas at? This is like boxed macaroni and cheese with dog crap on it.

  76. I think this was a pretty good pasta, I mean the storyline was a little jumpy, but the overall plot was good. The black hair and white dress is a little overused but the picture and sound were kinda original. I liked it a lot though. And to all you “nerds” these stories are for fun! Don’t take it so seriously! It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t add up! Deal with it and theres a mystery! Nice job CreepyPasta writer!

    P.S. I’m a thirteen year old girl with better grammar and spelling than most of the twenty-three year olds living in their parents basement.

    P.S.S. I just had a thing pop-up on the bottom of my screen and I’m afraid to open it!

  77. you lost me at girl with black hair /:
    if i were to ever rewrite this story [which by the way is a really good concept] i think instead of the girl i would have used something less human. like..an unearthly tall and thin being of unknown gender or something creepy like that.

    and the hall with dolls.. eh. i think you can do much much better. i’d love to read a rewrite of this story, if you ever decide to do one.

  78. Too many bad sentences to enjoy.

    “…the person’s soul itself is imprinted on the file itself.” Repeat words irk me.

    I thought the images/story in the first half were better than the last half. Didn’t really mesh well together, all the different ideas.

    2 / 5

  79. Violent Harvest

    Not so good. The way it’s explained doesn’t actually make sense when you dissect it, and the plot holes are too numerous for me to get in to completely. Still a pretty solid idea if someone put more effort in to pulling it off though. 6/10

  80. It felt like it was trying too hard, unnatural.
    Also, they said it couldn’t be copied yet the hackers got it – in no extraordinary way, or else they’d say so – yeah, sure.

    Very ok pasta.

  81. man some of the critics responding to these creepypasta. you should really stfu and think a little bit more in-depth on your opinion before wasting everyone’s time by typing it out.

    always complaning about small shit, like typos. if it doesn’t T@4k LEik tH1S. then who cares. go create your own story then.

  82. Not that bad, but it bothered me because I’m a computer nerd and there are lots of mistakes in this story to do with computers and files. 6/10

  83. go fuck yourselves high and mighty computer nerds, though you do have sumtin i dnt…YOU’RE VIRGINITY. i liked it and am going to go digging for these files. ill tell you all before i execute them.

  84. BUT WHO WAS THE RING/GRUDGE?

    *Facepalm* This had a great concept! Unoriginal…but great! And it could have been soooo good! But then it just got extremely cliche and unimpressive.
    And a girl in a white dress with long black hair?
    …really?

    This could have been so great! But then…someone left it out and it got stale.
    5/10.

  85. I enjoyed how the story talked about how you capture a person’s soul in a picture, and then all of a sudden it’s talking about encrypted files that destroy your computer and eventually your life. I totally see a resemblance there.

  86. You lost me at the very first paragraph with a completely false assumption at the beginning. “They say when you take a picture of someone you capture their soul in the camera.” ‘They’ who? Hunter-gatherers? Cenetarians? The Duggars?

  87. Storyline is too jumpy. The souls being captured on pictures didn’t tie in to the final result very well in my opinion. But it had some decent imagery. 5/10

  88. As someone who knows anything at all about computers, I find this too implausible to enjoy. I think it would come off better as creepypasta if author presented it more from a feeling/sensing perspective and not so much this practical or thinking one. We have too much of what people did and inaccurate technical details, when we really could do well with vague descriptions of someone receiving one of these files and what it caused, focusing on the characters’ perceptions and emotions. This currently reads more like a bad chain letter than any creepypasta I’d ever care for.

  89. It looked promising until I realized that whoever wrote this knows next-to-nothing about computers. A program that is cross-compatible across EVERY system in the world, yet targets the registry — a Windows-specific entity — and the system32 folder — another Windows-specific entity? And what the fuck is an “execute”? Did they mean “executable”? FAIL.

  90. A generous 4/10. Lots of holes and cheap cover-ups, and not very creepy either. Could be a little better if the ending changed.

    1. I agree completely. The only story that’s about a/any picture(s) is smiledog. I’m obviously not scared anymore. These are all cheap knock off’s of that story. I think it would be good if people started making more origional pastas.

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