A Video Game with a Deadly Secret - Pale Luna Creepypasta Story Time // Something Scary | Snarled
Summary
TLDRIn the chilling tale of 'Pale Luna,' a mysterious text adventure game from the 80s, players navigate a cryptic journey that leads one persistent explorer, Michael Nevins, to a shocking real-world discovery. The game's obscure commands and frustrating bugs were dismissed as programming flaws until Michael's dedication unveiled a hidden message. Following in-game coordinates, he unearthed the remains of a missing girl, Karen Paulsen, in Lassen Volcanic Park. The game's programmer remains elusive, leaving the story a chilling blend of digital and reality.
Takeaways
- 🌌 The story is about a video game called 'Pale Luna' that has a deadly secret.
- 🎮 'Pale Luna' was a text adventure game from the late 80s, similar to 'Zork' and 'The Lurking Horror'.
- 🚫 The game was notoriously difficult and buggy, with limited commands and frequent system freezes.
- 🏙️ It was never circulated outside the San Francisco Bay area and all known copies have been disposed of.
- 👨💻 Michael Nevins, a persistent player, managed to progress past the initial screens after extensive trial and error.
- 🗺️ The game led Michael to coordinates in Lassen Volcanic Park, suggesting a real-world treasure hunt.
- ⛏️ Following the game's clues, Michael discovered a decomposing body, which turned out to be a missing girl.
- 👮♂️ The girl was identified as Karen Paulsen, who had been missing for over a year.
- 🔍 Attempts to find the game's programmer were unsuccessful due to the anonymous nature of the software swapping community.
- 📖 The story serves as a chilling narrative about the dark side of gaming and the internet's ability to hide secrets.
Q & A
What is the title of the video game mentioned in the script?
-The title of the video game mentioned in the script is 'Pale Luna'.
Why was Pale Luna never circulated outside of the San Francisco Bay area?
-Pale Luna was never circulated outside of the San Francisco Bay area due to the abstruse design choices made by its programmer, which made the game difficult to play and share.
What genre of video game is Pale Luna classified as?
-Pale Luna is classified as a text adventure game, similar to games like Zork and The Lurking Horror.
What was unique about the gameplay of Pale Luna?
-The gameplay of Pale Luna was unique because it was confusing and buggy, with only specific commands accepted and incorrect choices leading to system freezes.
What was the reaction of most players who tried Pale Luna?
-Most players who tried Pale Luna became frustrated with its unplayable nature and threw the disk away, considering it a poorly programmed game.
Who was the one person mentioned in the script that managed to progress further in the game?
-Michael Nevins was the one person mentioned who managed to progress further in the game after hours of trial and error.
What did Michael Nevins discover after following the game's instructions in real life?
-After following the game's instructions in real life, Michael Nevins discovered the badly-decomposing head of a blonde-haired little girl.
What was the identity of the girl whose remains Michael Nevins found?
-The girl was identified as Karen Paulsen, who was 11 years old and had been reported missing to the San Diego Police Department a year and a half prior.
Why was it difficult to track down the programmer of Pale Luna?
-It was difficult to track down the programmer of Pale Luna because the software swapping community operated in a legal gray area, leading to many dead ends.
What was the outcome of Michael's discovery for the rest of Karen Paulsen's body?
-The rest of Karen Paulsen's body was never found despite the efforts made to locate it.
What is the significance of the phrase 'Reap your reward' in the context of the game?
-In the context of the game, the phrase 'Reap your reward' is a morbidly ironic instruction that leads to the discovery of Karen Paulsen's remains, which was the 'reward' the game was hinting at.
Outlines
🕹️ The Mysterious Game of Pale Luna
The video introduces 'Pale Luna,' a vintage text-based adventure game created by Ed, which was never widely circulated and only known within the San Francisco Bay area. The game is notorious for its cryptic and frustrating gameplay, featuring a blank screen with minimal text and limited commands. Players navigate through a dark room and a forest, facing technical issues like system freezes and unresponsive commands. The game's obscurity is attributed to its designer's peculiar choices, making it a niche curiosity among vintage game enthusiasts.
🔍 The Grim Discovery Linked to Pale Luna
The narrative shifts to Michael Nevins, a player who persevered through 'Pale Luna's' challenges and discovered a hidden message within the game. Following the game's cryptic clues, he decoded coordinates that led him to Lassen Volcanic Park, where he unearthed a tragic and shocking surprise: the decomposing head of a missing 11-year-old girl, Karen Paulsen. The video concludes with the chilling aftermath, including the failed attempts to find the game's programmer and the unresolved mystery of Karen's body. The story serves as a chilling blend of gaming and real-life horror, inviting viewers to engage with the channel and its chilling content.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Snarled's Slaytrix
💡Pale Luna
💡Software Swap Parties
💡Text Adventure
💡Latitude and Longitude
💡Michael Nevins
💡Karen Paulsen
💡San Francisco Bay Area
💡Lassen Volcanic Park
💡Eccentric's Buried Treasure
💡Deadly Secret
Highlights
Introduction of 'Pale Luna', a mysterious video game with a deadly secret.
The internet has simplified obtaining information and software, contrasting with past software swap parties.
Pale Luna was a text adventure game, never circulated outside the San Francisco Bay area.
Game's programmer made abstruse design choices, making it 'enigmatic' and 'nonsensical'.
The game's initial screen presents a dark room with minimal interactive options.
Further screens in the game are confusing, often leading to system freezes.
Standard text adventure commands are mostly useless in Pale Luna.
Michael Nevins, a player, perseveres to uncover more about the game after others give up.
After extensive trial and error, Michael discovers new text: 'Pale Luna smiles wide.'
Michael deciphers the game's cryptic commands to progress, involving digging a hole and using items.
The game's coordinates lead to a real-life location in Lassen Volcanic Park.
Michael's real-world exploration based on the game's directions uncovers a grim discovery.
The discovery is the decomposing head of a missing 11-year-old girl, Karen Paulsen.
Attempts to find the game's programmer are thwarted by the anonymous nature of software swapping.
The rest of Karen's body is never found, leaving the game's connection to her death a mystery.
The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, subscribe, and follow for more chilling stories.
Transcripts
- [Female Voice] Pale Luna Smiles Wide.
- Hey, I'm Sapphire.
Wanna hear something scary?
(suspenseful music)
What better way to celebrate Snarled's
new gaming channel, Slaytrix, than with a
story about a video game with a deadly secret.
This is the story of Pale Luna by Ed.
In the last decade and a half, it's become infinitely easier
to obtain exactly what you're looking for by way of
a couple of keystrokes.
The internet has made it all too simple to
use a computer to change reality.
An abundance of information is merely a search engine away,
to the point where it's hard to imagine life
as any different.
Yet, a generation ago, when the words "streaming" and
"torrent" were meaningless, save for
conversations about water.
People met face-to-face to conduct software swap parties,
trading games and application on Sharpie-labeled
five and 1/4 inch floppies.
Most of the time, the meets were a way for frugal,
community-minded individuals to trade popular games
amongst themselves.
However, a few early programming talents designed
their own computer games to share amongst their
circle of acquaintances who, in turn, would pass it on
until it had it's place in the collection of aficionados
across the country.
Think of it as the 80's equivalent of a viral video.
Pale Luna, on the other hand, was never circulated outside
of the San Francisco Bay area.
All known copies have been long disposed of.
This fact is attributed to a number of rather abstruse
design choices made by its programmer.
Pale Luna was a text adventure
in the vein of Zork and The Lurking Horror,
at a time when said genre was swiftly going out of fashion.
Upon booting the program, the player was presented
with a screen almost completely blank, except for the text:
You are in a dark room.
Moonlight shines through the window.
There is gold in the corner, along with a shovel and a rope.
There is a door to the east.
Command?
So began the game that one writer for a long
out of print fanzine decried as "enigmatic,"
"nonsensical," and "completely unplayable,"
as the only commands that the game would accept were
"pick up gold," "pick up shovel," "pick up rope,"
"open door," and "go east.
The player was soon presented with the following:
Reap your reward.
Pale Luna smiles at you.
You are in a forest.
There are paths to the north, west, and east.
Command?
What quickly infuriated the few who've played the game was
the confusing and buggy nature of the second screen onward.
Only one of the directional decisions
would be the correct one.
For example, a command to go in a direction
other than north would lead to the system freezing,
requiring the operator to hard reboot the entire computer.
Further, any subsequent screens seemed
to merely repeat the above text.
Worse still, the standard text adventure
commands appeared to be useless.
The only accepted non-movement related prompts were
"use gold," which caused the game to display the message:
Not here.
"Use shovel," which brought up:
Not now.
and "use rope," which prompted the text:
You've already used this.
Most who played the game progressed a couple of screens
into it before becoming fed up by having to constantly
reboot and tossing the disk in disgust,
writing off the experience as a shoddily programmed farce.
However, one young man by the name of Michael Nevins
decided to see if there was more to
Pale Luna than what met the eye.
Five hours and 33 screens worth of trial and error
and unplugged computer cords later,
he finally managed to make the game display different text.
The text in this new area read:
Pale Luna smiles wide.
There are no paths.
Pale Luna smiles wide.
The ground is soft.
Pale Luna smiles wide.
Here.
Command?
It was another hour still before Michael stumbled upon
the proper combination of phrases to
make the game progress any further.
"Dig hole", "drop gold", then "fill hole."
This caused the screen to display:
Congratulations!
After some deliberation, Michael came to the conclusion
that the numbers referred to lines
of latitude and longitude.
The coordinates led to a point in the sprawling forests
that dominated the nearby Lassen Volcanic Park.
As he possessed much more free time than sense,
Michael vowed to see Pale Luna through to its ending.
The next day, armed with a map, a compass, and a shovel,
he navigated the parks trails, noting with amusement
how each turn he made corresponded roughly to those
he took in-game.
Though he initially regretted bringing the cumbersome
digging tool on a mere hunch, the path's similarity
all but confirmed his suspicions that the journey
would end with him face-to-face with
an eccentric's buried treasure.
Out of breath, he was pleasantly surprised by a literal
stumble upon a patch of uneven dirt.
Shoveling as excitedly as he was, it would be an
understatement to say that he was taken aback
when his heavy strokes unearthed the
badly-decomposing head of a blonde-haired little girl.
Pick up gold.
Pick up rope.
Use rope.
You've already used this.
Use gold.
Reap your reward.
Dig hole.
Drop gold then fill hole.
Pale Luna smiles at you.
Michael promptly reported the situation to the authorities.
The girl was identified at Karen Paulsen, 11,
reported as missing to the San Diego Police department
a year and a half prior.
Efforts were made to track down the programmer of Pale Luna,
but the nearly-anonymous legal gray in which the software
swapping community operated inescapably led
to many dead ends.
The rest of Karen's body was never found.
Like this video if it gave you the chills
and don't forget to subscribe to Snarled
and our new gaming channel, Slaytrix,
and, if you dare to follow me,
my links are in the description below.
Until next time, sweet dreams.
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