Author's note: Hello everyone! This is my first creepypasta post on the SOG Wiki. This was originally on my FanFiction.net page, but I thought I'd share it here too.
As always, this creepypasta is fake, just like most creepypastas.
The Pasta[]
First of all, I wish to start by saying that this isn't one of those crappy horror stories you may find on the creepypasta wiki. This isn't a story that contains a description of 'hyper-realistic blood'. This isn't a story about some satanic hidden message on a Team Fortress 2 map. This isn't a story that ended with me emailing Valve and getting a reply that denied everything I emailed them about.
In fact, I'm not sure exactly WHAT I can call this story. I don't even know what happened that night. Did I experience a glitch? A design fault made by Valve themselves? Maybe even, a ghost? I don't know.
Let me start from the beginning.
It's a little cliche, but I'm a huge fan of Team Fortress 2. Whenever I didn't have any projects to do for college, you'd often find me on a busy TF2 server. My favourite game mod? Capture The Flag? I always love to waste hours running from my team's base to the other, grabbing the intelligence and rushing back to my base. It always gives me a rush of energy. The sort of excitement you get when you wonder if you'll make it back to your base or die at the hands of the other team trying.
I loved Turbine's quick indoor pace of gameplay. I always get a rush when I dart over train tracks as the train begins to speed towards me on the map Well. I could write whole essays about why I love playing CTF (Capture The Flag).
But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because I had a very strange experience on the popular CTF map 2Fort. If you don't know what that map is, it's simply two buildings belonging to the Red team and the Blu team. The Blu base looks like part of a prison whilst the Red base looks like a barn, especially on the ground floor level. At the back of these bases are a flight of stairs that lead down to the intelligence (your objective) in what looks like a war room. Between these two bases is a body of water with a bridge going across the two sides. On either end, underneath the bridge are two pipe networks that provide a more stealthy way into the base they belong to. This area is especially useful if you're playing as a Spy or if you just wish to avoid the heat of combat.
Anyway, what happened on this map during my time on it is something that I'll never forget. To this day, I have no idea what it was I experienced that night.
It was 10pm and I was playing some servers of CTF, like I do most of the time I'm on TF2. After playing for a while, I managed to join a game on 2Fort. There were 24 players on the server, 12 on each team. I was placed on the Blu team. I saw at the bottom about who was with me. The Blu team had 6 Scouts, 2 Pyros, a Sniper, a Soldier and a Medic. I was gonna choose to join the game as Spy so that I would find it easier to steal the Intel whilst my team mates were fighting the enemies. But then, I felt something come over me. Before I knew it, I had chosen to play as an Engineer.
I sighed at this in annoyance. I didn't really like playing as a Engineer. I didn't find it exciting to be building teleporters, dispensers and sentries. I also never found it exciting to constantly repair them everytime somebody on the enemy team damaged them. Whenever I played on CTF, I would often play as either a Scout (to get from Point A to Point B quickly), a Pyro (if my team mates are struggling against an enemy team that have a lot of Spies on it), a Heavy (again, to give assistance to my team mates), a Sniper (so I can annoy people with constant headshots) or a Spy (again, so I can annoy people with backstabs and sapping the Engineer's equipment). Since I'd rather get right into the action, I always felt the Engineer slowed down the pace to a crawl.
But that night, I decided to give it a try. Once respawned, I noticed that my team had already earned 2 points and only needed one more to win the match. Acting quickly, I put up a sentry in the Intel room and ran down into the Blu pipe network. Once there, I followed it until I got out the other side. I then swam across to the Red pipe network and followed it. Once it reached the end, I went up some steps that ended up with me in a corridor inside the Red team's base. Immediately I went to the intel room and grabbed the intelligence.
"Success! We have secured the enemy intelligence."
Those words always gave me a rush. Quickly, I ran back to the pipe network. I managed to run into an enemy Sniper who tried to shoot me with his rifle, but I managed to hit him with the Engineer's wrench. He was killed instantly, so I assumed he was already low on health and was running back to spawn to heal up. Almost immediately after I ran back into the pipe network, I heard my character say "Spy's sappin' my sentry!" and I saw that my sentry was rapidly losing it's health. A few seconds later, I heard the announcer say "Alert! The enemy has taken our intelligence!"
It was at that point I knew I HAD to get back to my base before the Red Spy succeeded in capturing my team's intel. The sentry was completely destroyed by the time I had exited the pipe. I once again swam across to my pipe network and ran through it. Upon exiting, I saw a Red Spy leaving the base with the intelligence on his back. I wanted to run after him and kill him, but I had to capture the enemy intelligence before he did. So, I continued moving and I made back to the intel room and my team won the match. Feeling proud of myself, I made the Engineer pull out his wrench and taunted. His laughter made my face flooded with a smile at my victory.
But what happened afterwards, was made the experience so weird.
A few seconds later, I spawned back in the Blue base. The timer wasn't showing the length of the match however. It was counting down from 15 seconds and the words 'Waiting for Players' was visible beneath it. I looked around and realised that I was the only player in the spawn.
Where were the Scouts, the Pyros, the Soldier, the Sniper and the Medic? Did they all disconnect at some point between now and when the previous match ended?
"Hee hee! Yee-haw!"
The Engineer's battle cry startled me out of my confusion. I figured that more players would join, so instead of setting up, I waited for more players to spawn or join. But when the countdown ended, the map reloaded again like it normally does to signal the start of the round.
Regardless though, not a single player was on my team aside from myself. I thought they must've disconnected because I did have incidents like this in the past. After a few seconds, I made the Engineer walk forward. He then said "Cowboy up!" as his battle cry. I went down the steps into the Intel room and brought up the build screen. I placed a sentry down next to the desk that held the intelligence. After a few seconds of building my sentry up to a level 3, I then realised I hadn't seen any Red players come in, at all. Between running back and fourth building my sentry and collecting metal from the spawn, I hadn't seen one Red character enter the base. I didn't hear any gun shots either, but then again, what would there be to shoot at if there was no enemy team? I pressed the tab key and was shocked to find that there was no one on the Red team either!
I was completely alone on this map.
But how was that possible? My team (or just me more like) would've got an automatic victory if the other team had quit! So, why is it still going? I decided to see what would happen if I ran for the intelligence. I ran up the ramp, past the spawn and jumped down from the first floor of the base. Upon landing, I thought I heard a faint whisper. But I didn't see any gamer tag pop up. It was just me, alone in this abandoned server. Disregarding it, I jumped into the water and charged into the Red pipe network. I turned the first two corners okay, but when I turned down the third corner, I saw something that has both startled me and has been stuck in my memory ever since.
On the other end of the red pipe, I saw a Red Pyro. Just standing there, holding his fire axe. He had the Voodoo-Cursed Pyro Soul cosmetic item on him, giving off the rancid zombie appearence which comes with it. This was what I found to be strange because that night wasn't Halloween nor a full moon. Not to mention, Halloween mode wasn't enabled on this server as far as I know. He also had a red glow that's usually shown when a character is Ubercharged. Usually, this wouldn't scare me in a game of Team Fortress 2, but there was something odd about this lone Pyro. But I didn't know what. What was even scarier was that I didn't see a Medic with him. How was that Pyro being Ubercharged if there's no Medic nearby? Also, the dim lighting with the Red pipe tunnel wasn't helping either. It made the whole situation seem rather tense.
After a few seconds of silence, this mysterious Pyro let out his muffled "Come on!" battle cry and ran at me. Although this was different. How you may ask? Well, instead of running like the Pyro usually would, it ran at me with nearly the same speed as a Scout has. Startled, I backed away from him and shot him with my Engineer's shotgun, but it didn't slow him down. In fact, I don't think it did any kind of damage to him at all! Scared out of my mind, I covered my eyes, bracing for this hellish Pyro to swing his fire axe and kill me.
But I didn't hear the Engineer scream or anything. When I removed my hands from my eyes, I saw that the Pyro was gone. I turned the Engineer around and saw nobody. "What the hell was that?" I asked myself. I went back through the pipe network in case he ran past me. I didn't see an Ubercharged Pyro anywhere. Ignoring it, I decided to continue my quest for the intelligence, but I felt I had to stay on my guard in case another enemy like that appeared. I exited the pipe network and ran out to the courtyard of the Red base. Upon arriving there, I stopped.
Standing in the middle of that area, I thought I heard the sound of someone breathing, which is strange because there is never any breathing sound for any of the classes, at least none that I've heard. I looked around the courtyard and found nobody. I still was on my guard though. It's possible that somebody HAD joined the game whilst I was busy and is now stalking me as a cloaked Spy. Creeped out, I went up the ramp that lead to the stairs down to the intelligence room, finger lying on the left mouse button, ready to click and fire the Engineer's shotgun if I needed to.
Upon climbing down the steps to the intelligence room, I noticed a Red Medic outside the spawn point. He was wearing a Colonel's Coat and had 3 hats on. He was wearing the Nunhood, the Blighted Beak and the Second Opinion. The latter was strange because, like I said before, it wasn't a full moon that night nor was it a Halloween event, but I could see the grey discoloured skin on the left side of his face behind the Plague Doctor-like mask we has wearing. This Medic wasn't taunting, moving or anything. He was just staring at me. His eyes following where ever I went.
I had a very uneasy feeling around this Medic, so I walked up to him and hit him with my Wrench. He was knocked back, but rather than grunt with pain, he laughed, the same laugh you'd hear if you attacked somebody while wearing Pyrovision Goggles, without the high pitch though. I hit him ten times with the Wrench, but he wouldn't die. Normally, you have to hit an enemy class 3 or 4 times with the Wrench for them to drop dead. But it didn't work with this Medic. I then pressed the Tab key once again.
"Still nobody on the Red team or Blue team?! Then how come I have an indestructable enemy Medic standing right in front of me if I'm the only one on this fucking server?!" I ranted to myself, careful that I didn't wake up my parents in the next room.
After that confusion and anger subsided, I decided to ignore the Medic and continued to the intelligence. Once I entered the intelligence room, that was when I realised something was REALLY wrong with this server.
I saw a Red Sniper wearing a Dread Hiding Hood, Triggerman's Tacticals and a Golden Garment shooting a Blue Soldier wearing a Founding Father, a Shoestring Budget and an Infernal Impaler helmet in the head with a Machina. Normally, this wouldn't be a shock in an actual game of TF2, the Sniper defending the intelligence from the Soldier, but here, the situation was different. I could see the sniper rifle had risen slightly, indicating it had just been fired. I could also see some blood that would have been flying out of the Soldier's head as he began to fall back. But what made this scarier I didn't see any animation or any movement from the two classes. Literally no movement whatsoever, as if time had completely frozen on the map and I was the only one unaffected by it. I then took the intelligence from the desk it usually sat at. But I didn't heard the announcer say anything like it normally would. Just silence.
After waiting a few seconds for the announcer, which never came, I turned around and was greeted by that same Sniper facing me, Machina pointed at my character's chest. I would normally be startled at the sudden change in position if this was a normal game, like if a player went idle and came back when I wasn't looking, but what startled me more was that I couldn't see a face behind that hood he was wearing. It was like a ghost wearing the Sniper's cosmetics. Reacting out of fear, I pull out my shotgun and shot him square in the head.
He fell back from the blast, but froze mid fall. The scream he was making was also cut off once the Sniper had froze. Terrified, I hauled it out of there, running up the ramp out the base. Once I got to the second floor, I looked back and was startled by a group of wooden target practice planks with Medics painted on them (Or if you're familiar with the many memes associated with TF2, a group of MeeMs). I continued towwards the battlements (where Snipers usually are), when I noticed another Engineer.
This guy was different though just like the others. He was wearing a Dogfighter jacket and had the Master Mind hat on. What was even more scary was the colour of his clothing. It wasn't Red, nor was it Blue. It was a cold grey colour, the kind of grey you'd usually find on a statue in the middle of a town. This 'neutral' (I guess) engineer was armed with a Lugermorph and I noticed he was staring at me, just like the Red Medic I encountered earlier. He then growled at me as the Engineer character grit his teeth. An Engineer would normally grit their teeth when he was working on building or repairing something. He also grits his teeth when firing one of his weapons too. To see him grit his teeth when he was out of those situations sent a chill down my spine.
I continued back to my base. But on the way back, I saw more members from the 'Grey' team. I went into the enterance to the Blue base, I saw a grey Scout. I ran to the courtyard, I saw a grey Pyro. I ran down the steps, I saw a grey Demoman. Finally, I got to the intelligence room and saw a grey Spy with a grey Heavy and Soldier standing next to him. I also noticed that my sentry gun was gone too, as if I never built one in the first place.
Cautiously, I went towards the desk that held the Blue team's intelligence, not once subverting my view from the Grey team members standing beside it. I didn't feel safe being around this mysterious team. After I captured the Intelligence, I heard whispers. I couldn't make out any words, but they sounded concerned about something. A few seconds later, the game crashed and before I knew it, I was back at the main menu.
I sat there thinking to myself "What the fuck just happened? I captured the intelligence and the game crashes?" I decided to give it another shot, in case what I discovered was a glitch. I went onto another Capture The Flag server and again, I was on 2Fort. I chose to spawn on the Red team as a Spy. The Red spawn looked no different from the normal spawn on 2Fort, expect there was no time limit. I could possibly play this game forever if I wanted to. Again, I was the only one present in the game. However, it was when I left the spawn that I realised this was NOT the 2Fort I knew.
The first thing I noticed upon leaving spawn was that the map was set at night, where as 2Fort is usually set in the middle of the day. I would've never guess the map was set around midnight If I hadn't noticed the moon above the spawn. How was I able to see the moon you may ask? Well, when I looked up, the roof of the Red base was almost completely destroyed. The wooden support beams were still standing, but the rest of the roof was gone. I looked around the Red base and the whole base looked almost completely destroyed, almost like I had missed a large attack from the Blue team.
There was blood sprayed all over the ground, there were black marks on the walls where explosions were, the lights that hung around the base were flickering, it seemed that some bulbs inside the lights had blown as well. But the most creepy thing about this map, was that there were bodies of different classes from both teams all over the battle field.
Some of the bodies were gibbed, nothing more than a severed limbs on the ground. Others were just lying there with their eyes closed, possibly the result of being killed by a melee weapon. I even saw several with their heads missing, the result from a Sniper's headshot. Various cosmetic items were found all over the place. Up in the battlements, I saw a dead Blue Scout missing his head, slumped against the back wall, a set of earbuds lying next to the cadaver, music notes still appearing out of them.
Jumping down, I saw the bridge. Some of the tiles in the roof were missing and the light towards the Blue base was flickering. Just like the Red base, there were corpses of all 9 playable classes, both Red and Blue. On the bridge, I saw the corpses of a Red Demoman, a Red Medic, a Blue Pyro and a Blue Soldier. In the water below, I saw the floating carcasses of a Blue Engineer and a Red Spy. The Medic was the same one I saw only a few minutes earlier in my previous game of CTF.
I entered the Blue base (which looked no better than the Red base, almost completely destroyed also with bodies littering the ground everywhere) through the left entrance and was greeted by a message on the wall. It looked like it was done with a white spray can. It read:
'Don't you think you've done enough tonight?'
This was odd. There's never usually a message on the wall in the original 2Fort. I decided to ignore it and continue, but it still hovered in my mind. 'I've done enough'? What does it mean? After a few seconds, I entered the Blue Team's courtyard. On the wall was another message, graffitied in white. If this was the case on the normal 2Fort map, this would probably be very hard to read, because the writing would become camouflaged on the white wall against the sunlight. But the dull blue glow of the moonlight on this twisted form of the map made it noticeable. This time, the message was:
'You have only one life ahead of you. And a lot of opportunities to make some money for yourself.'
Well, that was weird. I proceeded to climb up the steps towards the intelligence, when I noticed yet ANOTHER message. This one was longer and in more depth than the other two:
'Why do you keep wasting theirs? What makes you think they're so different? You constantly parade them with useless cosmetics, or 'hats' as you call them, that don't affect the way they work in any way what so ever. You and countless others needlessly make them run and fire all kinds of projectiles and other horrible things at each other, hoping that they drop dead before you do. They're people too, not puppets like you make them out to be. You need to stop the parading. You're wasting your time and money on things that don't affect your reality whatsoever.'
What? Who's 'they'? It only took me until I looked down at my feet at the bodies for me to realise it.
The word 'They', was refering to the dead classes. Every day, Team Fortress 2 players like me log onto a game and run towards whatever objective that's set up for us, killing anyone who dares stand in their way. This message was telling me that these classes are no different from humans in real life. They have emotions, fears, strengths, weaknesses, ecetera. Even if we as players don't notice them. Not really a surprise when you think about it. We're so focused on completing our objectives on these maps, that we don't stop and think about things like this. And the destruction of both the Red and Blue bases are a result of years of nothing but violence on them.
And 'parading them in useless cosmetics'? Simple. It's refering to the cosmetic items that the TF2 community buy with their money. Think about it. The weapons are understandable. You can buy a weapon that can potentially help you with the game. But the cosmetics? When you really think about it, they're only there to make the classes look nice. Say what you want about the hats, but at the end of the day, they're a waste of money. Sure, you can argue that the money spent on hats and other cosmetic items can help support Valve in the creation of new games and such, but besides that, it's almost like a scam to get people to give Valve their (arguably) hard earned money.
This map really gave the player some thought. I mean, if it's a modification by somebody in the community, it's a very good mod! Those messages and the dead bodies (if in a bit of an unnerving manner) sort of broke the fourth wall, showing and telling the player of the impact they have on these classes when they do something as seemingly innocent as playing Team Fortress 2! This was creepy, but interesting too. I'd especially be surprised if somebody at Valve made this map. Then again, if it WAS indeed from Valve, why would they suggest the player stop buying hats? I mean, hats help the company make money, right?
Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Back to the game.
I then proceeded down into the intelligence room, walking over carcasses and discarded hats, observing the remains of what's left of the intel room. The glass to the war room was cracked and broken, as well as the desk that the intelligence would sit on. The floor and walls were stained with blood and gibbed limbs. The lights were also flickering, just like in the Red base. Again, when I picked up the intelligence, no announcer.
Confused, I went down the corridor, up the steps, out into the Courtyard. I then stopped, because I heard whispering. I then had a strange feeling that I was being followed. I turned back towards the enterance to the intelligence room and saw a Grey Soldier walking out.
"More Grey team members?! Who are these characters?!" I thought to myself. But total panic set in once I saw his face.
It was a sickly white colour and there were light red rings around his eyes, as if he had been crying. I felt very uneasy the first time I saw these Grey team members, but now I felt like my character was in danger! It was like one of the Death Run maps with those 'chasers' (Yeah, that's my personal nickname for those things). Vsh_dr_office has a Blue ÜberCharged yellow eyed Painis Cupcake, dr_wintervalley has a blizzard and dr_aconian_final has that freaky armless creature thing that looks like a rejected proxy from a Slenderman story!
In a panic, I ran back to the Red base. I also noticed that the corpses that littered the battlefield were disappearing. Once I crossed the bridge, I turned back to see a Grey Medic, Pyro & Scout had joined the Soldier in the (rather slow) chase after me. I quickly darted through the base back to my intelligence room.
The intelligence room was the same as the Blue base, cracked window, broken desk, bloody floors and walls and flickering lights. I ran to the desk and captured the intelligence. But the Red intelligence just disappeared. I turned back around to start again, but saw Grey team members, this time, all 9 classes in Grey colours were in the room with me.
"Who were these guys? Could they be the spirits of all those dead team members? No! Get it together man! There's no such thing as ghosts!" I thought to myself, trying to work out who these guys were. Having enough of this, I decided to attack one. With my knife in hand, I charged at a nearby Pyro and hit him. Upon hitting him however, the server began to crash once again. During the auto-disconnect countdown, I saw 3 images flicker on the screen like an image on an overlay in Ulead Video Studio. These images never lasted longer than a second on screen through the still game and they're just one of the many things about this event that creeped me out the most, aside from the dead bodies and the destroyed map.
The first image I saw was of a man wearing a silver skull mask. This particular image scared me because I remember when I was 7 (I'm 18 now), one of the older kids in my neighbourhood jumped out from behind a bush near where I lived wearing one of those masks. I managed to get over my fear, but seeing silver skull masks in Halloween shops make me feel a little unnerved because of it.
The second image was of a baby doll lying inside a crib with a hand wearing a black glove holding a mobile that hung over it. I don't know why, but this image more creeped me out than scared me like the first image did. Maybe it's because of the baby doll lying in the crib with no emotion on its face, looking like it was alive, but asleep. Or maybe it's because of the gloved hand over it. I don't even know.
The third and final image was probably the most unusual of the three images. It showed what looked like a photograph of some kind, almost like something out of the booklet for 'Liebe Ist Für Alle Da' by Rammstein. It appeared to have been shot in a dark room, the flash being the only source of light. There were 2 people in the photograph, 1 male and 1 female. One of the men (who looked like he was 18, maybe a couple years older) was wearing a white hoodie and black trousers. He had long obsidian (black) hair and a black smeer of something on his face, mostly on his mouth. He was sitting on a chair with the woman lying on his knee, who appeared to be the same age as the man whose knee she was lying on. Like the male, she had long black hair too. Her skin was pale and she wore black lipstick. This girl was also naked too, her breasts, stomach, arms, legs, neck and cheeks covered in what looked like kiss marks. Her clothes, a black shirt, grey jeans, black shoes, a white bra and a pair of white panties, discarded on the chair's left (right from where I saw it). At a guess, I'd say that the man in the chair and the naked woman must've had some intense make out session (maybe even had sex?) before this photograph was taken.
In the background, there was a boarded up window with black curtains drawn, a messy bed with a pair of handcuffs on it, several posters on the wall, some appearing to have been ripped down and a set of dirty clothes lying all over the floor. Thank god my parents weren't around to see it. It was nearly 11:30pm and my parents were asleep. Once the timer ran out, I was taken back to the main menu.
Once more, I tried to log back onto the server, but it wouldn't let me. It was at that point I realised I had forgotten to take screenshots! Angry with myself for forgetting and thinking I had enough TF2 for tonight, I switched the game off. I then sat there, wondering what the hell I just experienced for the past hour or so. After a while, I decided to sleep on it, thinking it would go away in the morning.
Boy, was I wrong.
I've had that message stuck in my head ever since and those things I saw on that game haunt me whenever they get the chance. I still play Team Fortress 2, but I always keep the message I learned from that one game in mind. I'm currently writing this in hopes someone can help me with this.
If there's anybody that's had the same experience I had or something familiar, please contact me.