One Born Every Click

Today I took a stroll through a handful of the ghost videos at a certain popular video destination. Only got caught by one of the “evil” ones. I saw it listed more than once. I didn't hear it, I'm smarter than to leave the audio on while running these things just in case it is one of the evil ones. What do I mean by evil ones? You'll be sitting there, you lean in trying to see the ghost, you're waiting for it to appear, wondering what it'll be like when and someone or something pops up on the screen, suddenly, usually screaming to beat the band.

The first one I ever saw, was supposed to be a picture and you were to find out what was “wrong” in the picture. Of course instead of a .gif or a .jpg it was a Flash file. I was looking at it just after having watched a DVD on the computer and the stereo was cranked. Out of nowhere--in green negative--comes the tabloid Bat-boy and a single scream. The second one that caught me was a supposed car commercial with a ghost caught on film. Something was funky with my computer that same time, so I got this weird blur, and I was trying to find out if the blur was the ghost or video lag. It was lag. I tried to flip from full-screen back to the smaller window when this hag jumps up out of nowhere in extreme close up. I half missed it, and this time the sound was wisely off, still it gave me a huge jump.

Today, I saw one with two security video feeds, started off by a note to look closely, you know, since it was small. I wasn't having none of it. I was sitting back, stereo off, steeled for it to come. When it did it was some guy in braids and the green night-sight look, bunches of his teeth blacked out, screaming and mouthing something I couldn't make out. Not much of a start that way, but still a bit of a heart jump.

Now, I did see two interesting videos that were “real” as in not joke videos meant to scare the ever living crap out of people. The first of these was someone in a room jumping up and down, don't know why. Up in the corner of a black (night outside) window a hard to see shape formed. They zoom in on a replay and it's a white face, more like black and white, though the rest of the video was colour. Nice, if too normal looking, lack of colourisation not withstanding. The second video was in Japan from the look of it, people getting on a subway train. A shape appeared in the gap between the train and the platform. Zoom in on replay and a much creepier humanish face.

Saw some fakes videos too. One was a desk chair that moved on its own, after the camera was set down on a bed, and no doubt the camera man crawled under the bed to swivel the chair. Heh heh. Lots of thought and effort put into that one. Another one was a shot of a room and a foggy pink figure walks into the room. Nice, editing suite trick. Not so impressive ghost footage. The last of these was one that's pretty funny. A guy is in a cemetery, camera pointed at himself, talking about the place. He goes wandering and sees something, creeps up on it and starts screaming when it turns around. It's a girl kneeling at a gravestone and just like an animal in the headlights, her eyes reflect light from wherever (you see it all the time with tonnes of people on those night vision videos) and that's it. Oooo! Booo!

I saw one that I might begin to consider real given the way some encoding flaws the picture. A car travels down the road in the rain. A nearly transparent figure crosses the road moving furtively ahead of them. Between the scale of the video, whatever zoom was involved and the artefacting... for part of the walk it almost appears like the figure is inside the windshield. Most likely a flaw in the hoax, but it's the most impressive video I've seen yet. Sweet dreams everyone!

Mood: fidgety.
Music: Heat of the Night by Aqua and Something I Can Never Have by Nine Inch Nails.

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