 The floor may not be in the robot. Hey there. As a first, I'm going to be perfectly honest, and say that the issue with actually giving away this story, is that it has a minimal chance of being trusted, or actually being acknowledged without derision or skepticism from practically everyone I'm trying to address. As a second, I'll admit that as opposed to everyone else who says their own experiences of the dark corners of the online realm, lie within obscure and shoddy areas, my own experience here doesn't involve a website of any kind that would take forever to find, or one obtained through some kind of secret link. One of the biggest issues with skepticism these days, is that people expect that practically everyone who has the audacity to talk about lasting experiences, must have some sort of proof or evidence of their venture. In that regard, it doesn't just have to be photos or any actual visual presentation that proves their seeming logical fallacy or outlandish half-demoted exaggeration true, but also some sort of knowledge as due surrounding events that occurred within that category or general epic of the internet. What I intend to say here, is that as far as I'm concerned there's no actual truth to my story, because everything nowadays can be faked since in terms of sensitivity, you could say dynamic creation and the response to said material have practically switched places. The primary issue with being my type of person is that you're in no way knowledgeable about popular culture, besides a few tidbits of information because it wasn't your goal to suffice head first into the material that would later become golden or outright revered as some sort of artifact that's not relevant, until years after it begins circulation to some degree. In that sense you could say nostalgia is subjective, since it revolves around stuff that was small before it was cool and it became a trend. The only difference is that disturbing shit doesn't become a trend, unless around a thousand people already know about it. Again, don't think of me as a truth teller, because what I'm saying is what I remember clearly, and the only actual verbal essence of fact is how vividly or chronologically I can remember what I'm going to talk about. For all the people who could care less about this rant, I'm just going to say that I expect that I'm going to be caught in the crossfire of critical, thinking if this experience actually gains no variety, hell even considering that it took place long ago. Around two or three years after YouTube became an actual website with an accessible domain, I had already immersed myself in the traditional oddness of its broad list of finite yet time-consuming content, and practically all the other 14-year-olds who thought that skating or being cynical towards everyone and everything was enough to land them in front of the Academy Awards, or to be fair any kind of predecessor of machinima. Vlogs, life stories, companies trying to advertise, and Obama killing the polls, are legitimately all I remember when any one of that demographic now asks me about my own reminiscence on a practically by Don Aira. I had no job, even as the restaurants and even cheap motels, around me offered teens some employment to get away from either society or their parents as a measure of loyalty. What I did during this period was either scavenge bad indie game websites, try to find pirated music downloads, or watch videos of people embarrassing themselves impulsively. One of the biggest known facts about YouTube, during the years in between its launch and the video game parody explosion, is that there was a fair share of people who didn't know what they were doing or talking about. And no, by this I'm not referring to the aforementioned morons who had a high chance of landing themselves on mine, but rather those who spouted off conspiracy theories, because they expected that with such an interconnected website with an easily juxtaposed domain, would actually give them some sort of notice, or at the very best some kind of expert who could verify their points with even better arguments. I bring this up because one of my favorite things about the website, was to search up obviously opinionated queries, landing me into the vein of people who would likely agree with the statement that all politicians are lizards, and that NASA is a covert operation run by extraterrestrials to read human minds. I would often leave sarcastic comments on these videos that both agreed with the creator, but also silently mopped them with paraphrases, or just outright specific insertions of their own statements to expose their bluff and the far spreading elasticity of their claims. It was on a Friday, probably in late May of either 2009 or 2010 when I had one of these instances. Because of how I said earlier, the vividness of my recollection of this very moment, may sprinkle some aspect of veracity to my own claims. I remember that I had come across a YouTube channel with a basic name username, that was typical of the keyboard warriors of the time, likely with the suffix inator, and ending with random numbers that had no actual meaning in relation to the offer or creator. This person's claims were the usual, Obama's not American, Bush is the Messiah, blah blah blah. As apparently instructed to do by this person at the beginning, I jokingly subscribed, then in a moment of complete boredom, just decided to start leaving cryptic comments in their comment sections, practically drowning out the one or two people that stumbled across them. I had just finished a class on psychology, so I mostly splashed random or vulgar quotes from my textbook and notes onto it, in some convoluted way exposing the uploader's shadow self. In a moment that honestly shouldn't have been surprising for me, the guy actually responded to one of my comments with a simple what the fuck, followed by some nonsense he likely either pulled straight out of his rear, or from an isolated exit from Wikipedia. A few minutes later after checking out the remainder of weird thumbnails on his channel, I refreshed, and it turned out he had made a video on me, which was just my username, followed by random obscenities that I can't remember visually, but rather emphatically. It was the same political nonsense, and about how I apparently was harassing him, when in reality he was the one who chose to bring attention to a small troll who wouldn't have any kind of relevance in terms of his own personal life. By this point, a younger me decided it was about time to stop with this guy, so I watched the remainder of his rant which lasted around 5 minutes, probably longer, but I was too caught up in laughing myself half to death, and then promptly unsubscribed. My dad at one point came in, and asked what I was laughing at, so I told him something about the playoffs occurring for a local football team, or something along those lines. It was by then, when the video ended, that I noticed in the related section had come up a video that stood out from all the other zelotic rants practically filling my recommendations. The video, which had a thumbnail that I assumed was a stock photo of the sky, with the exposure turned up to produce an illusion of cloudlessness, appeared to be titled, Abyssal Reverie, or something else that was equally as cryptic, or at least just two lesser used words amalgamated together to give off some kind of biblical meaning. Though I will say, given that I remember those two words pretty clearly, I can say with not as much of a doubt that this was likely the title, but even then, I've never been able to find it, even after building up the courage after 5 years to look for it again. The name of the channel that made it was just a bunch of garbage text, likely the result of someone corrupting a file, then getting an error after spamming it, and then copy-pasting it as the name of their profile. I remember humorously thinking that this person had done just that, and set their email as something equally nefarious but ridiculous, such as, sastanduay-fisa at yahoo.com. I don't remember the actual length of the video, but it was probably under 7 minutes which was by my consensus normal for that period in time for an amateur content creator. Because videos like this had this tendency to draw me in, probably because they were usually movie trailers or art time-wapses. I clicked it with no hesitation whatsoever, and if I'm visualizing this event, clearly it took an unnatural amount of time for the browser to load, leaving me with a blank white web page for around 30 seconds. It's not something that to me stood out in that moment, given that these kinds of occurrences were normal, given that my family's concept of a router was an outdated internet box that overheated when two or more devices used it. When it actually did load, I was quick to notice that the view counter was by my conception broken, since it just simply said views where the counter would be, with a visible gap wide enough to show that the value was either not loading, or that this video had some sort of mechanism worked into it to do so. Either way, any explanation resembling the latter, didn't make any sense to me since I still had that concept that views equals money, regardless of the amount of traffic rather than a simple count of the number of users who approached the video would produce revenue. The video's description was in Leedspeak, which in those days made people seem cool enough to be esoteric. It simply read, 54 vertical bracket equals 3. No, it was not a mathematical equation, I had this weird gematria's tendency to read letters as numbers, and if you're overflowing with that kind of interest, you'd immediately translate it as safe. Still, an isolated example of that would be enough to make someone give some kind of credence to the creator because of their awesome internet language skills, even if they couldn't translate Morse code. Unfuscating what I said earlier, I might as well just get to the entirety of the following experience, because the next conscious half hour has not left me since. The video opened with a staircase which was, and is, typical of suburban homes you'd usually find in the Midwest, leading me to believe this might be a house or of some sort, probably followed by a boring prologue from the creator, discussing their financial state or the circumstances of how they got there. I will say however, that this whole concept wasn't the only conclusion my mind made in reference to what this video may present. The difference between this one out of many assumptions, is that a normal house door wouldn't begin at a staircase, that I envisioned was on an upper floor or leading to it, nor with all the lights turned off with the presumed camera, being the only emitter of an artificial source of illumination. The stairs were lined in a peach colored carpet that had visible evidence of stains or curls on them, suggesting that either the person filming or one of the other people who may have lived there, walked up and down them in heavy boots, given the size of some of the imprints. I measured the diameter to be pretty small between the brown spruce walls and the stairs themselves, meaning that this either led to an attic or an area of the house that was used for miscellaneous purposes. My previous guess that the person filming the video was going to speak was, as I would put it, fairly obtuse. There were soft grunts as the person heaved something large up the stairs, stopping every now and then, consistent with the speed or undertaking of each step. I assumed this must have been the camera proper, as I noticed that the quality of the video, while still mediocre in comparison to the modern level of resolution, was reminiscent of a tape recorder from the late 1980s, but had no evidence of tampering or distortion that would pop up now and then, leaving it with an almost cinematic feel, if that's the best way I can describe it. Around three steps in, I noticed that there were small etchings on the walls, either misspelled words written by children or just small drawings from anything sharp found nearby. The drawings words themselves remarkable, except for one which appeared to depict what I at first thought, was a stick figure of a man milking a cow, until I noticed that the udders were from drawn handled knives protruding from its stomach, with red coloration near the top, either through a marker or a colored pencil. After ascending the staircase, my previous assumption that this person in particular was reaching a lesser used area of the house, that one would already picture as being an enclosed space was also immediately proven incorrect. They did however, enter an empty room, which while devoid of any insulation, held the same carpet texture, albeit one that was less dirty, suggesting that this particular room was seldom used. The walls were different this time, and at best I'd describe them as having a sable-based coloration that extended down to a wider area where outlets would likely be put. Despite this, there were no objects in the room, despite an action figure, which I couldn't make out as it was practically out of reach from the light coming from the camera. I heard an audible bang come from another room, similar to the sound of metal clanging, but not one loud enough to come from at least 10 feet away. The person holding the camera hesitated for a moment, appearing to adjust something out of sight, as I heard clicking sounds too far away to be from the camera, before continuing along to the left towards what appeared to be an open doorway. It was by this point I noticed there was a painting on the wall that depicted a person sitting in a multicolored room, in a manner similar to pretty much every work by Yayoi Kuzuma, who I'll say came to my attention during my efforts to figure out the origin of this painting, to no avail. It was by this time that the video started exhibiting weird formatting, since the entrance into the doorway was interrupted by a video of a young boy, probably around 10, shirtless in a room that was either similarly designed or the exact same area which was being filmed, while singing a song that I recognized as a church hymn, either sweet hour of prayer or mere my god to thee. He was sitting near a window, showing an overcast yet a naturally dark landscape outside, and seemed exuberantly happy to be singing, even though I heard nobody else present, either encouraging him or singing along, and as far as I was concerned this was not a religious environment or building. This weird inclusion lasted a few seconds, and while I was trying to figure out what exactly was happening, I noticed that something was running around in circles outside. It was either a black dog moving with less pronounced coordination, or a person on all fours dressed in a black jumpsuit. Each scenario my mind conjured up was strange and in a sense disturbing to me nonetheless. The word safe briefly appeared again in blue on a white or bright yellow background, before the camera returned to the person filming. The doorway didn't lead to another room, but rather a hallway with two doors on each side, with the wall extending around nine feet before entering what I guessed was a living room, with a railing in the middle of the floor that had no purpose being there since there was no other area of descent. I could hear some sort of small talk going on in there, but the camera person abruptly went into the room across from them, which had no visible texture other than a floor I would guess was either made of, or outright covered in, small crushed bits of concrete, with random piles of dirt and vegetation appearing in each direction. The camera person hesitated again and briefly aimed the camera at the floor, where a streak of what looked like fecal matter was visible. I noticed the conversation in the other room was now getting clearer, despite no footsteps being heard coming from that direction, and I could make out words that were at best gibberish, but clearly didn't make any sense in a regular context. They were compensation, directory, ineptitude, and ambivalence, as if they were going on a weird tangent about what I guessed was something financial failure. In the next few seconds, I heard the camera person's breathing get heavier and heavier, as if they were afraid of whoever it was talking was approaching them, and they suddenly tossed the camera in another direction, landing in front of what I guessed was one of the piles of dirt, resulting in the camera being obscured by small specks of earth. The camera was then picked up by another hand, which then ran into another area, circumambient from where the other person had thrown it. I heard sounds of a struggle, but besides small grunts like those from earlier, there was no yelling or any verbal obscenities thrown between anyone. The person holding the camera ran into another hallway, resembling the one that I just saw, and ran into one I articulated was another incarnation of the living room, which was dotted with posters of various industrial landscapes, and drawings of symbols I later found outward associated with various schools of mysticism. I remember a few being the Ankh, the Rose Cross, and the Reboros. They briefly stopped to look at a television set arched on a table, which was displaying an old Popeye cartoon before running through another corridor. During the rush, the camera has been positioned towards the floor, and due to the rapid motion of the person holding it, they were unable to make out any of their features. However, as the camera lifted back up, I noticed that they had stumbled across a mirror. The person holding the camera, if I could honestly put it this way, were not at all human. Their head was bent and contorted, like a piece of dough, whereas their arms and fingers were extended and wrangled to the point of no recognition. I assumed they were as equally horrified by their appearance, but I turned the camera behind them, revealing other grotesque abominations just like them carving at the walls, which now extended at least a few miles. Constant moaning, and the roar of something dying were also heard in the distance. A loud symphonic soundtrack began playing, before the video cut off abruptly to the sky shown in the thumbnail, a time lapse which showed clouds moving in unpredictable directions. Another image appeared out of the transfiguration of the colliding clouds, depicting a man standing in front of one of these things. My actual memory of this whole event ceases from this point, because all I can remember from there is everything going white, and me violently convulsing since according to my mother, I then violently lapsed into a seizure. Everything else is fuzzy, but as far as I remember, I was for certain restrained from searching for anything ditched from that point on, at least now with good reason. The whole ordeal was enough for me to delete my account, given that I didn't want any kind of association with the content that I previously stuffed my face with. As said earlier, I tried my best to find the video a few years later, but to no avail. Surfing the internet for anything similar ended with my hands empty, and at no point have I ever come across anything remotely similar to what I saw. The reason why this whole occurrence sticks with me is because it was followed thereafter by a string of bad events, which somehow related in some way to the content of that video, which I've had to manually forget or just outright avoid discussing for personal reasons. I'm certain anybody reading this is wondering as to why I am discussing this, despite it having negative effects on both my physical and mental life, since there wouldn't be any purpose of sharing it if it was enough to affect me in the real world. The reason is because, a few weeks back, I came across my old hard drive sitting in my basement amongst other possessions and, wanting to download some old photos onto my new computer, I plugged it in to begin sharing the files. Sitting among a variety of different saved files both ordinary and occasionally random, was this picture right here.