I'm grateful I read Pale Luna years ago, it is a great creepypasta

I remember when Snarled did a something scary episode on this game. damn that had to have been what 4, 5 years ago at this point? thanks sacrow for giving me nostalgia in the weirdest way possible

@pundertalefan4391

Жыл бұрын

That's how I'll always see Michael Nevins. Thanks, Snarled. :-)

Pale Luna and Kill Switch are some of the best underrated gaming creepypastas

@GlitchedVision

Жыл бұрын

I wouldn't say killswitch is underrated, lost to time, maybe but definitely not underrated.

@_Xenocidal

Жыл бұрын

@@GlitchedVision Lost to time.

@GlitchedVision

Жыл бұрын

@@_Xenocidal what I mean by that is at the time when creepypastas were heavily talked about, these stories were on everyone's mind but as time passed only the most popular were remembered.

@_Xenocidal

Жыл бұрын

@@GlitchedVision Yes I know, I was just emphasizing that Killswitch was indeed lost at time.

@Icyangel10

Жыл бұрын

Kill Switch was really interesting, I forgot some stuff but there was a video I saw a while back talking about it & how the author was found

Now this is my kind of horror story. Something so accessible that lots of people have been using it. Any and everyone could fall into the unseen horror and yet, most of them are blissfully unaware of what they have.

@Sacrow

Жыл бұрын

Pale Luna is a great horror story.

Okay, since you suggested, I couldn't resist, and I guess that's the original spirit of Creepypasta (creepy copypasta), here's the full pasta: Pale Luna ________________ 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 applications on Sharpie-labeled five-and-a-quarter inch floppies. Of course, most of the time the meets were a way for frugal, community-minded individuals to trade popular games like King's Quest and Maniac Mansion 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, if fun and well-designed enough, an independently-developed game had its 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, all computers that have ever run the game now detritus buried under layers of filth and polystyrene. 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, on this occasion, 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, with the difference being only the directions available. 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, there is one thing about the world of computers that remains true, no matter the era: some people who use them have way too much time on their hands. A 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 thirty-three 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 Nevins 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 -- 40.24248 -- -- -121.4434 -- Upon which the game ceased to accept commands, requiring the user to reboot one last time. After some deliberation, Nevins came to the conclusion that the numbers referred to lines of latitude and longitude - the coordinates lead to a point in the sprawling forest that dominated the nearby Lassen Volcanic Park. As he possessed much more free time than sense, Nevins vowed to see Pale Luna through to its ending. The next day, armed with a map, a compass, and a shovel, he navigated the park's trails, noting with amusement how each turn he made corresponded roughly to those that 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 after a tricky struggle to the coordinates, 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. Nevins promptly reported the situation to the authorities. The girl was identified as 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 area in which the software swapping community operated inescapably led to many dead ends. Collectors have been known to offer upwards of six figures for an authentic copy of the game. The rest of Karen's body was never found. _________________________________ *Credited to Mikhail Honoridez *

The best creepypastas are the ones that are actually grounded in reality where it could actually happen. Pale Luna is one of the perfect examples of this.

Text-based adventures were an absolute staple of my childhood, so seeing it used for horror is such an interesting concept that I would love to see used more. Personally, a lot of gaming creepypastas just miss the mark due to a wide variety of shortcomings, but Pale Luna and alike aren't just character sees scary thing that's not supposed to be there, reacts, and repeat. It plays off its setting and uses text the limitations of the framing device to tell a story that feeds off our most base fears.

@Sacrow

Жыл бұрын

I feel the same way. I love text adventure and they can be perfect for horror content.

@_Xenocidal

Жыл бұрын

I just watched the vid and really was catched by the story. What's cool about Pale Luna is that it captures a cultural moment and use it as an element for it's storytelling. The nearly anonymous gray-area of the hardware trading community of the 80s and the classic text adventure games that were at fashion. And if you look closer, you can see the realism of that story. It's a contrast to the most of the other creepypastas, who relies on esoteric entities or spiritual existences of some kind. It haves a feel of urban horror or a campfire story. I also love how it knows to make great use of anticipation and mystery. How the killer knew to program a game? How did they make copies of the game, how did they manage to sell it for money on the stores without getting caught? Why they killed Karen? The story leaves the rest open to your imagination, and it's such a grim mystery that carries so much so to ponder about.

Pale Luna, Killswitch, the theater, Mario, and NES Godzilla were the grandfather's of videogame creepypastas

I’m still surprised this channel barely has 50K subscribers with this type of output and view count per video. This should be around 200K-500K minimum but the algorithm is acting malicious.

Pale Luna was super underrated that i completely forgot about it.Its very creepy when a game has some creepy or missing files that is hacked with a sick twist

this is the story that did it for me. like, most video game creepypastas are shitty and just want to capture on nostalgia, but pale luna is just so ambiguous that your mind can run with it. it's hard to describe, but i know for sure this one was really the only one that painted such a...real...picture in my mind of the corpse that the protag found that i just couldn't forget it. to end my ramble, i love the horror content and icebergs, please keep it up! so many icebergs are so insincere nowadays but yours keeps the spooky element and i'm happy you keep true to horror.

@e1iteyoshi998

Жыл бұрын

Well tbf most gaming pastas has no standard back then so stories like Sonic.exe, Herobrine, Luna Game, SM64 Damned, etc. so they had their time in the spotlight as being seen as good stories. It's just most of them had aged like sour milk.

new sacrow video = day greatly improved

This is probablu my favourite gaming creepypasta, just something about it is so damn creepy and cool

Pale Luna is one of my favorite creepy pastas.Thanks for the nostalgia trip :3

It's interesting to hear about this again after so long. I kinda forgot about My friend Sandman especially the part were he felt terrible for accidentally getting involved. Then again I heard Pale Luna more than Sandman. Also there's info about Sad Satan that implies the channel that first talked about it made the game before adding shocking images & a virus. I don't remember much(so take with a grain of salt) just happened to come across some videos going into it. The videos also mention that the supposed dark web link is fake cause people that go on there noticed the link has numbers/letters or something that wouldn't be in a link for the dark web.

Pale Luna is easily my favroite creepypasta by a long shot just because of how believable it is.

For a little extra contextual information about secrets in video games. It took 24 years for Doom 2 to be 100% because Level 15 had, what was considered at the time, an impossible to access secret. 24 years later someone found out you needed to be hit into the teleporter by an enemy instead of walking in to access the secret. Hiding a murder in an old, hard to complete game is actually a pretty reasonable plot.

i hope you cover the princess creepypasta that infiltrates random games

@ImmaLittlePip

Жыл бұрын

Same its such an interesting saga

@luvnucz

Жыл бұрын

I love that one! It's not entirely well-written but it's got genuine frights and makes for a pretty effective creepypasta. I was scared of the princess when I first read it even though I knew she wasn't real. Definitely an underrated gem

There's no way you only have 50k subs with your quality man god damn! Been subbed for a while and you're absolutely one of the greats my dude ❤

A channel called snarled did a video on this and ffs that shit was creepy as hell cause they even animated it. I advice anyone to give that a view coz it was so insanely awesome. Great video btw.

Pale Luna gives me an unsettling feeling no matter how many times I hear it. Good Creepypasta. Never heard of Sandman, though.

Sacrow I’ve been watching your channel for awhile and I can say that you are one of the greatest KZreadrs I’ve ever watched, every time you upload I get excited to click and listen to it, it helps me out while I’m at work or eating or just bored. Keep up the good work brother, this upload did not disappoint! I can’t wait for the next one

I remember when sapphire did an episode on this creepypasta. I had never read it before, and was absolutely shocked at the ending

Ahhhh let's go! I totally forgot about this pasta until now, thanks for reminding me of it

Banger video from sacrow

you saying pale luna smiles wide freaked me the hell out dude its 3 am

Who else thinks that this guy is good at telling stories?

I swear to god this mans voice sounds identical to another youtuber and I cant quite put my finger on it

@Eggyo

Жыл бұрын

blameitonjorge?

@PixelRoserade

Жыл бұрын

@@Eggyo god help you pointed it out and now I can't unhear it

Love your content keep up the great work

*SMILES WIDE.*

As far as i know the earliest instance of a game that had real world prizes attached to it was on the Atari 2600 and the game was called Swordquest. It had four versions of the game based on the four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. There was a prize with each game and whoever solved the puzzle needed to claim the prizes first would stuff like a Holy Grail, a sword, and a few other things. But the contest that Atari had held for each of these games never got finished cause the video game crash of 1983 caused Atari to discontinue the contest and the fourth game never finished production.

I remember this one used to get it confused with Luna game due to both having the same name (though one was a mlp creepypasta)

Pale Luna is and always will be my all-time favorite creepypasta, no doubt about it- I remember that I wasn't even scared of it back then, it was just the use of a game to tell a murder mystery story that absolutely blew me away and changed what a creepypasta even was to me. I just miss the days when creepypasta narration channels were all the rage, you know? Back when stuff like Herobrine, Lavender Town and Suicide Mouse were the peak of internet horror. Now, don't get me wrong: we definitely have better creepypastas now, but I still have fond memories of these ones in particular, and it's kind of sad that it's a phase of the internet that we likely won't ever see again.

I love this story

you could totally make your own pasta and it would be awesome

It kind of reminds me of the arg attached to 2021's Inscryption.

@Sacrow

Жыл бұрын

I have been meaning to play that.

A great creepypasta, it is very well written and horrifyingly believable. While I enjoyed your analysis, I felt the writing on this video felt a tad disorganized, as you jump from topic to topic very frequently and repeat yourself at times. For example, you mentioned at the possibility of the narrator imagining a reward before the story introduced the coordinates, which broke the pace and could've been incorporated more seamlessly on the part when he went looking for the location instead. I think revising the script could've made this video more concise and pleasant. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this and liked that you were so thorough, looking at things like the movie adaptations. I've been really enjoying your retrospectives on classic pastas and patiently look forward to the next!

Nice

It's been very long since I last heard about Pale Luna, I don't even think I heard the whole story

This Creepypasta reminds me of a game called Don't Escape. I'm not sure why exactly.

I am so fucking happy horror games exist

I remember listening to a reading of this and not being able to sleep because i was scared that whoever made this game would kidnap me to make a sequel despite the fact that i didnt live in america lol

Pale Luna is the darksouls of creepypasta

Pale Luna's my favorite creepypasta. I think what really made it for me was the shareware meetup part since I remember going to shareware parties where there were plenty of..um..interesting types showing up and the wide variety of programs/games you could end up with. Most fun I got was a trivia game show game, and the one that weirded me out ended up being a credit card number generator. I was too afraid to use it because I know with my luck, I'd have law enforcement at my door.

I remember this one from SNARLED

Commenting for the algorithm.

i did a red of this on my channel. the thumbnail was with MS Paint, don't judge me.

Anyone remember the name of the ritual pasta where the twist is that it was just a ritual to trap you or monster use you or something and the narrator tricked you I've been looking but KZread's history search function is very bad

Where did you find the short film? I can’t find Village Media, Daryl or anything close to the fan film.

When I got the idea of doing a yearly Halloween creepypasta reading on my channel (a tradition I need to remember to uphold this year lmfao), Pale Luna was the first one I ever thought of doing because of how great it is. It’s on my channel if you’re interested

Randomnautica is strange but wonderful app

This video has more padding than a pair of bike shorts

i wonder if that sandman story is the origin of the "i was playing a seemingly normal game and then suddenly there were photos of dead bodies!" cliche you used to see all over the creepypasta wiki it was basically the video game equivalent to squidward's sewer slide clones it's too bad the pale luna story was so short and had such a pointless ending, the atmosphere was really strong until the kind of random ending

3rd

I gotta know -- does pale luna refer to a person, or the moon?

@luvnucz

Жыл бұрын

Interestingly, Pale Luna has the letters of Paulsen, the last name of the girl in the story. It would be an anagram but it doesn't have the S

@chocomelo454

Жыл бұрын

@@luvnucz I think it could only be an anagram if it directly used every letter once? it only has one L but obviously there's two L's used, same with the A. if it was correct it'd probably have to be like, Pale uns or something

@luvnucz

Жыл бұрын

​@@chocomelo454 I do believe that the author chose Pale Luna and Paulsen because they have similar letters, even if they are not exact.

One less karen 🤷‍♂️

This story seems interesting, but the serial killer plot twist ruined it. Why not have the game be the actual horror?

I really don't care if you get demonetize or not I use adblocker so I don't have to support you.

Your video was all good until you said "demonetization". Why you trying to say is the video disturbing imagery & child abuse. Try to get your shekels now!

@cheesemanthe2nd

Жыл бұрын

Cope

@cheesemanthe2nd

Жыл бұрын

KZreadr spends hours on a video only to get demonetized, truly how greedy can you be to complain

@azaleawinchester

Жыл бұрын

🤡

@voult127

Жыл бұрын

@@cheesemanthe2nd hours he could have spent getting a real job instead of shitting up the platform by trying to force a terrible KZread channel