8 Spooky Gaming Urban Legends That Will Give You Nightmares

1. 'Ben Drowned' AKA The Haunted Majora's Mask Cartridge AKA Urban Legend Of Zelda

You've Met With A Terrible Fate, Haven't You? Ask any seasoned gamer will tell you the best game they will have ever played, in terms of storyline, gameplay and pure atmosphere. Nine times out of ten, that answer is going to be The Legend Of Zelda: Occarina of Time on the Nintendo 64. Naturally, a game so successful surely warranted a follow-up and in 2000 the sadly over looked Majora's Mask was released. This saw the franchise take an unexpected dark turn. The main plot was the world of Termina would come to an end in three days (gulp), meaning the moon would get closer while glaring at you with his manic red eyes and characters would ask you existential questions like 'What are friends, really?' The game itself is spookier than a lot of the urban legends on this list but got a whole lot scarier when the story of 'Ben' appeared. This tale begins with an American student 's blog (under the name 'jadusable'). He is given an N64 console to play in his college dorm, and getting bored with playing on his one game (Smash Bros). The storyteller tells us he went to local yard sales and acquired Goldeneye and F-Zero X, which were essential for any N64 player. The story gets sinister with his next bargain purchase. The last stall sold him a plain grey game cartridge with 'Majora' etched on it in black marker, for free. The narrator pops the cartridge in his console, and he sees the previous' owner's save file is still on the game named 'Ben.'Tthis player had made a lot of progress in the game, so the new gamer created a new save file called 'Link' (naturally).The game worked but there were a few texture glitches like backgrounds missing, plus all the characters called him 'Ben' and sometimes 'Link'. He thought this was a glitch so he decided to delete the other game. He starts again, but there are even more glitches this time including the music playing backwards, the game skipping to the final boss battles and Link repeatedly dying by catching on fire and €“ of course €“ drowning. The most disturbing part is the NPCs talking about the mysterious 'BEN' and the fact 'BEN drowned'. The game was creepier as the game kept spawning a weird statue of Link that would appear by playing 'The Song Of Elergy' and the message 'You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?' The game became more and more unsettling as he played through, posting his progress via YouTube videos which are still viewable to this day. His blog posts stated he started seeing 'BEN' in his sleep, and couldn't get the game out of his head. This got even more creepy as cleverbot.com (a pre progrmmed 'bot' website) will still say 'Ben drowned' when you ask what happened to 'BEN' . The next 30 or so blogs from the player are insane ramblings, cursing 'BEN' who he blames for his lack of sleep and mental issues. Eventually this leads to jaudusable burning the mysterious game cartridge as well as his laptop, to avoid any more hauntings from 'BEN'.
Contributor
Contributor

24, MA Journalism student and writer. I have had previous experience with FHM, ZOO Magazine, NE:MM, Elite Online and various websites as well as having articles printed in the Sunderland Echo. My main interests are film, TV, music and gaming.