“Things We Found” is a collection of stories inspired by found footage horror. These are dark stories that reveal what people found when they looked too long into the darkness. Below is a story that didn’t make it into the collection, but which was written for it. This is a nasty tale that is a taste of what you’ll find in the collection. “Things We Found” has one of my very favorite stories I have written in it.
I think you’ll agree.
The Domino
It began with me.
It started innocently enough.
It started as a gag.
I was putting together clips from movies.
Comedies.
Action movies.
Romances.
Even horror movies.
I had been a fan of mixtapes and music mixes, and wondered what it’d be like to do that with movies.
Matching tones, or playing one scene against another to change how you view things.
I was doing it to put my editing skills to the test.
I had always dreamt of making movies when I was a kid.
Not really directing, but being behind the scenes, putting things together. I loved movies, but was fascinated by how you could manipulate people just by the way you cut scenes together. A comedy can become a horror movie by simply changing the music or the way things are cut. Or a mopey drama can become a comedy if you rearrange things the right way.
That’s power.
That’s what I wanted.
I had gotten a laptop for my birthday, a really nice one, and with it some editing software, and so I put it to the test.
It was when I was putting these compilations together that I got the idea.
I loved playing with movies, but I found myself returning to scary movies to make scenes that put different monsters together, or at least seemed to. I found myself turning every scene I cut into something that would fit nicely into a horror film, and from there, it was a short walk to where I really found my joy.
I started cutting death scenes from movies together and thought, “Wow, taken out of context, it was really disturbing.” I could imagine that it’d be freaky as hell to just find this on the internet, without knowing what you were going to see.
Like one of the old death movies they peddled in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
It needed something else, though.
It needed the gag.
It needed the ‘in’.
It was just before April Fool’s Day, and I thought: what a silly joke it would be to create something that’d push the boundaries a little and trick people into seeing it.
Make them watch something they had no idea was as nasty as I was creating.
Force them to watch and see how long they stay.
Once the real fun starts, the longer they watch, the more complicit they are.
It was a gag, sure, but it was also a dare: how long can you watch it?
What will be your cost for watching?
It was just a joke.
A way to test my editing.
And honestly, a way to fuck with people.
The forums were boring.
They had banned so much of what you could say and post that it was like being at the adult table and then being dropped at the kiddie table again.
Fuck that.
The forums needed my video.
They needed a little something special.
Something nasty.
Why not?
And so I got to work.
I cruised forums.
I searched some nasty websites.
I looked at overseas news sites.
I even dipped my dick into the Dark Web to find a few clips.
The things I found were repugnant.
I watched them through squinted eyes, not liking what I had found, but laughing as I started picking out the clips I was going to use.
As sick as it made me feel to see the unedited footage, the murders, suicides, wars, and victims, victims, victims, it was different when I was editing things together.
Then it was just clips.
Just footage.
Nothing more.
I didn’t see the violence, or the people, or the blood.
No.
I just saw clips to tighten up and move around.
I moved them around; I shortened them.
I was making a movie out of what I had found, and I needed to make sure it had pace, drama, and most of all, a fabulous ending.
And oh, what an ending.
I found the clip buried on a years-old forum.
It was a video called “Raw Footage” and had a date.
I looked up the date and nodded to myself.
I knew immediately what I was looking at.
It’d been all over the television when I was still in elementary school.
This was footage that security cameras had caught of an infamous assault.
It was perfect.
Almost.
I grabbed one more clip of cute kittens and puppies playing together, and paired it with some classical music. I let that footage play for a minute and eight seconds, then immediately jump-cut into the image of a child on fire, set to my soundtrack.
Once it was all put together, I should have been happy, but wasn’t.
I was mad.
It wasn’t right.
It needed something.
It needed…
I smiled.
I searched online and found a sound file of a crying baby, another of a screaming woman, and one of glass breaking. I put all the sounds through an audio program, layered everything, raised the highs on one, lowered the lows on another, then paired it with my video and watched it.
I threw up afterward.
It wasn’t just the images, which were awful, but the sound as well, and together they created something that I never wanted to experience again.
It was perfect.
I posted it late that night on an online forum for cat people.
“Cutie Kitties.”
People posted photos and videos of their cats and kittens.
It was perfect.
I uploaded the video under a dummy account I made for this purpose.
It hit on April Fool’s Day.
I posted the video…and disappeared.
After I posted the video, I stayed away from the forum and the website it resided on and went back to my life. I did it as a gag.
An experiment. I was happy with what I had made, and once I was done, I deleted the footage. I deleted the soundtrack I had made. And I deleted the video itself. I didn’t think anything would come of it, other than upsetting people and getting that account banned, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Hell, for all I knew, a kid would see it and have nightmares and someone would wanna sue.
Better to delete that shit and move on.
It was almost the end of the school semester, finals were coming up, and there were plans to make for the summer.
It was a hell of a summer.
I worked a part-time job, dated someone for a couple of months, and partied with my best buddy on the weekends.
I hadn’t thought of the video or any of that shit since I had posted it.
Life went on.
My girlfriend and I broke up after a pregnancy scare in July.
I slept with a friend’s ex, and he and I got in a fight and then ended up getting drunk together talking about what a bad lay she was.
I got backstage for my favorite band.
I edited a couple of music videos and a friend’s wedding, and was really falling in love with the idea that this was going to be my future.
I moved out into a shitty apartment
Work sucked.
The class I took in the summer sucked.
But life was pretty good.
It was late August, and I was on the lake with some friends and a new girl I was seeing when someone brought up a gross video they’d heard about. It was floating around on some forum sites and was freaking people out.
My friends started asking questions about the video, what was in it, and where it was, and I just stared off into the setting sun as a cold feeling overcame me.
It couldn’t be mine…could it?
When I finally went back to the forum site, I found that my dummy account had been banned not just from the forum but from the whole site.
Well then.
I guess folks didn’t like my video.
I logged in to the site with my normal account, went to the cat page, and found that the whole forum was gone.
POOF.
Gone.
I searched for the page, found CuteKitties2, and clicked on it.
This was a new page that had replaced the old one, but was otherwise the same.
New Page. Same Kitties.
INAPPROPRIATE VIDEOS WILL BE BANNED WITH POSTER.
I admit that made me laugh a little.
As I dove into the page, I found I was the main topic.
Or rather, my video was.
People were complaining that the old page was gone.
Were talking about a weird video they heard had been posted to the page, which had prompted not just the new page, but some new page moderators and new rules.
One thread mentioned that they had found the video on other pages, reposted by other profiles.
I settled in and went through every post, and even ones that had nothing to do with my video seemed to mention it, as if it was a boogeyman haunting the forum. There was a lot of lamenting about how people had tried posting other gross things on the old page, which prompted the strict rules. It sounded like it had become quite the talk of the town after it was posted, even making it to the front page of the website where the forums were hosted.
I looked through all of the posts, and had to stifle my laughter.
Perfect.
This was fucking perfect.
I had made the video as a gag, as a test of my skills, but seeing the reaction it got meant I really struck a nerve.
I almost regretted I couldn’t take credit.
After two hours, I made it through all the posts and got to the bottom, and the very first post-“Rest In Peace Amber”-was the title, so I opened it and dove in.
The post was full of condolences to the page’s moderators and a discussion of someone named Amber, who it seems had also been a mod. From what I could gather, she had died suddenly. I kept reading and saw something that made me pause.
That fucking video. She was the first one to see it. She clicked on it after it was posted and saw it. She messaged me after and told me what it was. What sick fucker would post that? She wasn’t OK after she watched it. She messaged me a couple days later and told me she was having nightmares. She didn’t feel right. I hadn’t heard from her for another few days, and saw she hadn’t been online, which was unusual for her, so I reached out to other mods for pages she was a part of, and one knew her IRL and told me they’d check on her. That’s when I found out she was dead. She’d killed herself. Jumped off a fucking bridge.
I can’t believe this.
This was…this was crazy.
I dug deeper.
I hate the asshole that posted that shit. I saw a few seconds past the basket kittens, and shut it off immediately. I heard Amber watched the whole thing.
Fuck.
The comments went on like that until a mod popped up and posted that they were closing comments.
I rubbed my face.
This was fucking insane.
I had never imagined.
I…
I smiled for a moment, and then the smile dropped.
Why was I fucking smiling?
Someone had died.
It had been there, though.
It had.
A smile.
And I didn’t know why.
Over the coming days, I started lurking on other forums that Amber had been a mod on and saw people referencing what they called the “Kitty Basket” video. I saw that the video had been reposted and mirrored on other forums after the initial one was taken down. Every time a posting of it was taken down, it turned up on another forum, or another site. I went to a site that covered news and drama from popular forums, and saw my video had made it.
Gore Video Blamed for Rash of Suicides.
WHAT?
I read the article, and according to it, several forum members were claiming that people had killed themselves after seeing the video. Profiles had gone silent on the forums and other social media, and there were stories of suicides that were hitting local newspapers that people were claiming were for the missing mods and posters. There was even a claim on a paranormal forum that these supposed dead people were turning up in the gore videos that were being posted.
The forums were known for drama and for creating controversy over any slight inconvenience, but this was a lot. It could all be gaslighting, some fucks having a laugh as they riled everyone up with urban legends. It wouldn’t be the first time. There was a story some kid posted about a cabin in the woods being moved mysteriously, and the kid claimed it was done by some woods monster. People did that shit all the time. Tried starting a small fire to see if the online woods might catch.
A cold feeling came over me.
I was one of those.
One of those internet arsonists, trying to set the world afire.
Christ.
I started searching online and found two notes on news sites in different parts of the county where two people, a middle-aged woman and a 20-something man, had recently killed themselves very publicly. The story with both is that they were perpetually online, and the families believed this affected their mental states.
The man had been a shut-in.
The woman disabled and unable to leave her home without her assistant.
Both had found ways to get outside of where they lived and had killed themselves in awful ways in front of people.
Even if this was all bullshit started after I posted the video, having inspired some sick trolls, it wasn’t so funny anymore.
I went offline after that and focused on getting ready for the fall semester and working.
With the fall came more classes, and college started in earnest for me. I had a film studies class, a filmmaking class, and some general ed ones. When I entered school, a nearby community college, I thought I’d be big shit, having edited several projects and made movies as a kid. As it turns out, I was nothing. The other students had won awards, entered festivals, gotten grants, or were just doing the things I wanted to do, and doing it well.
What had I ever done?
What?
I made a video that lots of people saw.
One video.
And I could never take credit for it.
One day, the professor brought up my video and the power of viral spread. The rest of that class was just talking about viral videos, specifically mine.
I got online again and looked up news on my video. I found a video someone made about it and its history. Over the summer, it had been shared and re-mixed. It seemed like there were dozens of versions of it out there now, making their way across the internet. Details were sketchy, as while it was getting everywhere, few people seemed to have seen it. The claim was now that if you watched it, you’d die. A typical ghost story of the internet age. All the person who made the video said was that “Kitty Basket,” as it was now called, started the same, and then got into the death footage. It seemed that there were repeated mentions of “Kitty Basket”. I had never dreamed it’d have the legs it did. Someone in the comments on that post claimed to have seen it and mentioned some of the scenes I had spliced in, but also started listing things I hadn’t put in there, which must have been added. One of the scenes he mentioned was of a woman named Amber stepping off of the roof of her apartment building. That had served as the end of the video, they claimed.
But I hadn’t put that on there.
I wasn’t sure who had.
People were disgusted.
They were outraged.
They were horrified.
They wanted the video banned.
They wanted me prosecuted.
It was fucking surreal.
I even saw it mentioned on the website of a regional news broadcast as ‘the cursed viral video’.
This wasn’t even the strange part.
The video finally disappeared, at least from the forums I cruised, though I had seen mentions that it was on other sites that trafficked in darker goods. I had always arrived on pages and forums just after it had been posted and deleted.
I was just a step behind, it seemed.
Whatever.
I didn’t care.
I had moved on.
I barely even thought about it now.
Fall gave way to winter, and life was good.
Mostly.
The girl I had been seeing broke up with me after finding out I had been slipping into the messages of a friend of hers.
Whatever.
I had lost my job, but had some money in the bank, so that was fine.
Mostly.
School was OK, but I wasn’t really enjoying the film class anymore.
Not since that discussion.
I HAD made a friend in there, though, and I was editing their short film, and didn’t really think a whole lot about “Kitty Basket” any longer.
I felt bad, for sure.
Bad that people had been affected by it.
That it had disturbed them.
That maybe it inspired some people to do awful things.
It was terrible.
It was supposed to be a joke.
A gross joke.
Hell, I had even thrown in a few moments that, I dunno, they made me laugh.
Moments where it was footage of a person smiling and then next it cut to another person who had been decapitated, or whatever.
It was gross, but it was funny.
Maybe I’m sick.
Maybe it was the scenes meant to make people laugh that disturbed viewers the most.
A kid mowing the lawn and dancing around, not paying attention, and their foot gets caught in the blades.
There was another one with an old woman who was a hoarder and had a house full of cats. She had died, and the cats ate her. The footage was of the cops finding her body. Body cam footage. It was gnarly. There was even a cat that had fallen asleep in the hollowed-out stomach of the rotting old woman.
But, in a way, it was funny too.
I saw on a rumor site that a new version of the video, called “Free Puppies,” was making the rounds. This was another edit of my video, with a bunch of puppies playing in a field on a sunny day to lead things off. The footage lasted for about a minute, and then cut into footage of dogs being killed by some teenagers out in the country in front of a barn with an American flag painted on the side of it. From there it went into my video and then the rest of the stuff that had been added of all the people taking themselves out. I started seeing mentions that the footage of the people who had seen the video and killed themselves had been inserted into it now. Their death videos were now added to the collection.
The turning point was the breakdown video.
An online streamer had someone track down one of the versions of the video, and then they filmed themselves telling viewers about every scene in the video.
I watched the video and thought for a moment he was watching my video because he was describing everything I had put into it, everything that is, until he started talking about the additions. A man stepping in front of a train. A woman setting herself on fire. A man and woman shooting themselves together. On and on. None of it was mine. As the video went on and on, the streamer became visibly, honestly upset. He started crying at one point, whispering – those are kids, those are only kids – before he stood up and walked out of view.
A minute later, there was a loud sound and a tipped-over chair appeared on screen.
The video cut out after ten more minutes, when a roommate came home and found the person.
Now it was this video that was spreading like fire, and it was then that things made national news.
People were outraged.
And I understood why.
How the fuck did anyone get footage of that other shit?
How did they find footage those people, like Amber, had filmed?
How was that possible?
Amber had been the first, it seemed, but far from the last.
In the comments of an upload of the streamer’s vid someone wondered if his video would be added next to “Kitty Basket” or “Free Puppies.”
I hadn’t thought about people modifying the video.
I mean, it makes sense, it’s all a remix culture now.
People putting their spin on things.
Giving their take.
Building on what came before.
I hadn’t taken it into consideration.
I was just being stupid and putting it online as a joke.
It wasn’t funny any longer.
How many were dead now?
Did anyone know?
Was it 11, 14, 20, or had more people than that killed themselves because of the video? Supposedly, there was a group of teenagers in New Mexico who had watched it at a birthday party, and five of the six kids had killed themselves.
It was a virus.
I had created a fucking virus.
And I had no idea how to stop it.
I was consumed with the video.
It kept changing, evolving.
It was a living thing that wouldn’t die.
When forums cleaned it out, it’d just evolve and pop up again, with a new name and bumper.
I dove into the darker forums and parts of the web, and even the people who cheered these sorts of videos and wildness were unnerved.
“I can’t believe these fuckers are getting off showing these kids killing themselves. This is fucked up,” one moderator posted on a forum called “Watch the World Die.”
I think I fully understood the monster I had loosed into the world when I read that all of the footage I had put into the film had been replaced by suicides. It was called the “Hangman’s Video” because the first death was an old man who hanged himself. From what people were saying, he was the one who made the introduction to the video. He literally welcomed people to the video, to his death, and thanked them for coming. He bowed, and then climbed a stool, and hanged himself from a rope in his garage.
The bumper now, to this new tape, was of a beautiful sunset, and as the sun finally disappeared, it cut to the hangman.
I wasn’t sure how, but it was real.
And people were now getting it sent to them.
It was appearing in their emails, in their text messages, or on private messages under innocuous names, and from people they knew. Joe would send it to Mary, and Mary would think nothing of it, open it, and see the video, not knowing that Joe was now in it.
Was part of it.
And soon she would be too.
The infection was spreading, further and further.
It made the national news almost a year after I first posted it.
Killer Video Shows Dangers of Social Media.
The video was used as an example of how lax social networks had become, and how dangerous it all was. What made it so insane was that it wasn’t just kids that were susceptible. It was adults who were watching the film and hurting themselves, or, occasionally, others.
There was a story of a woman who watched it three times in a row, and then took a knife to her family members, killing her husband and seriously injuring her four kids.
A new call arose to find the creator of the video.
It was only a matter of time now.
I wasn’t responsible for what was happening, but I had started the brushfire which had run wild across not just my country but across the world as well, with a new name – “Das Rote Video.”
I had nothing to do with the new video.
With the additions.
I wasn’t sure who had done that.
It was hard to believe that all these people had been filming themselves, but by now it seemed to be part of the whole phenomenon.
It was a trend.
I saw on a video-sharing platform that kids were taking the Hangman’s Challenge, making videos of themselves hurting themselves, and adding them to the video.
By now, there were so many versions of the goddamned thing out there that it was a hydra with too many heads to cut them all off.
And now, people wanted to be a part of it.
Wanted to part of the fun.
There was even an actress who had livestreamed herself watching an iteration of the video as she cut her fingers off with a knife, one by one. Her boyfriend managed to get to her before she could do any more damage, but she’d already cut off the fingers of one hand, and all of her toes.
I think of the video now as a living thing.
A beast whose hunger can never be sated, so it is always demanding more.
Always hunting.
And in the end, it was only a matter of time until this circle was completed.
I should have known that.
I got an email today from my friend Ryan. The subject said he wanted me to see his newest project.
He is my filmmaking friend.
I knew what was in the attachment before I even opened it.
It’s my turn.
And it doesn’t really matter, because the news is already outing me as the video’s originator, and I expect the police any time now. Some online sleuths tracked me down through a comment I made on a forum before making the video, and as they did a deep dive into me, the pieces started to come together, I guess.
So, as I wait, I don’t see any reason not to watch.
I figure it’s only fair.
It’s my baby.
My gift to the world, and it finally made its way back to me.
I just wonder what my big scene will be when I am finally added to the next viral release.
…c…
