Chapter 1

Recently, I was cleaning out my grandparents' garage. I used to live there years ago, so my grandpa told me I could keep whatever I found. Typical of him, he added, "I most likely won't need it anyway." He’s always had that dry, passive-aggressive sense of humor.

My grandparents' garage holds about forty years of junk from different family members. After four or five hours of heavy lifting, I spotted a flat, dusty, black box buried inside a plastic container. It was stacked way up high on a shelf, so I had to climb up a shaky ladder to grab it. I pulled it right out of the bin without even trying, and all these old chargers and cords just slid off it like dead snakes.

It turned out to be an old launch-model PlayStation 4.

Holding that heavy, dusty brick immediately flooded me with nostalgia. It made me think back to the even earlier days, the absolute peak of my childhood. When I used to sit on the living room floor playing video games on an Xbox 360 with my dad and brother.

I brought the PS4 home, wiped the thick layer of dust off with a damp paper towel (dangerous, I know, but I like living on the edge), and plugged it in. To my absolute awe, it actually came to life. It had been factory reset at some point, so it was completely blank, but it worked.

That brings me to the game: Lego Jurassic World.

Other kids had Minecraft or Resident Evil, but I played Lego games religiously. When they slapped my favorite dinosaur movie series onto a Lego game back in 2015, little me was glued to the console. I had 100% completed that game at least five times.

Since the PS4 was the only working console I had right now, I hopped online and found a copy for $30. It was a bit pricey for an old game, but I’d just started a good job and decided to splurge. It arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. The disc looked totally fine, no deep scratches or weird markings. I opened the tray, slid the disc in, and waited for something to happen. That was my first mistake.

One thing I noticed upon booting up the game was the absence of the TT Games animation, even though I swore there was always that fun little cutscene in the dino lab, with the TT Games logo emerging from some dinosaur eggs. Instead, it just jumped me right into the title screen. It had the usual "press any button" prompt and the classic Jurassic Park gate redesigned into a Jurassic World-themed gate, complete with the monorail running through it. But besides that, the classic music played normally, so I pressed X.

It took a few seconds to register my press, but I assumed it just needed time to load the next cutscene.

Then, the intro burst to life. The loud, triumphant fanfare of the original movie's soundtrack blared as the monorail rushed past the screen while the camera revealed the cleanly modeled Jurassic World Main Street, with the big old innovation center right in the middle. Memories of split-screen play sessions with my brother and my dad rushed in. My mom wasn't that fond of video games, so it was always our thing.

But something was wrong with this short scene.

The camera was zoomed way too far out. It was so far back that the out-of-bounds, unmodeled empty space was showing, exposing distant assets placed by developers for completely different parts of the map floating in the void. The camera was also moving left instead of forward, passing straight through solid building meshes before the game abruptly cut to the next scene on the island with all the minifigs doing their funny little quirks.

A little creepy, but I brushed it off. I figured it was just the old hardware acting up.

Nevertheless, the main menu popped up. Out of pure force of habit from my past playthroughs, I instinctively hit the "Load Game" option instead of starting a new game. To my surprise, there was already a save file on this disc.

87.77%

Whoever owned this game before me was decently close to beating it. Too bad I swooped in. I ignored it, scrolled down to start my own new game, bypassed the autosave reminder prompt, and the story started.

Prologue: Velociraptor Transfer

For anyone who hasn't played the game, the first level recreates the opening scene of the 1993 movie, where it's nighttime and the workers are trying to load a Velociraptor into its enclosure. The first cutscene played, showing the characters bringing the raptor in while it bounced around inside its cage, complete with a few funny, Lego game changes to the original scene.

The actual gameplay started, and I moved the left thumbstick to take my first few steps. I walked up to a Lego plant and smashed it to get my first few studs. The sound effects were still as satisfying as ever.

But that's the thing-the sound effects.

I broke a couple more Lego objects for more studs, and I used Robert Muldoon, one of the two characters you play as during this first section, to shoot at everything I could see. I ended up walking up to a Lego NPC, a random worker eating a popsicle on the side of the map. Usually, they would drop a funny line, or do something silly. Instead, the NPC was dead silent. A little speech bubble appeared above his head, and his tiny black mouth shifted on his mostly emotionless face, indicating he was supposed to be talking. He was just glitched into total silence. Then I realized that the usual, tense background music that should have been playing was completely absent. The raptor in the cage, which usually roared or screamed, hadn't made a single sound. The only audible things in my room were the hollow pitter-patter of my characters' footsteps, the dark forest ambience, the breaking of bricks, and the metallic clinks of picking up studs.

"Man, this disc has been through a lot," I muttered to myself, trying to reassure my growing unease and sweaty hands that it was just a buggy game.

A few minutes later, I reached the level's final cutscene. This is the part where they lift the cage gate, a worker gets dragged down, and Jophery gets his taser snatched by the raptor.

Except… nope. The entire cutscene was completely devoid of audio.

The background workers froze entirely, standing stiffly in their default developer poses. My playable characters disappeared from the scene entirely. Then, the moment the camera cut to a tight shot of the raptor's face, something happened that still scars me to this day. The screen completely froze. I was already on edge from the broken NPCs and the dead silence, but out of absolutely nowhere, every SINGLE piece that had been absent all collaged into one giant monstrosity of sound. The roaring, the screaming, the music, the overlapping breaking noises, all stacked into a single, deafening wall of sound.

I RIPPED off my headphones and threw them across the room. Even though they landed all the way under my desk, the noise was still loud as hell. Then, a sharp, sudden crackle echoed through the room before cutting to total silence. The game had literally blown out my headphone speakers.

In the dead quiet of my room, the frozen TV screen started moving again. But the video was glitching, reversing back and forth erratically. Worst of all, the green brick raptor's head was now completely snapped toward the camera. Its plastic neck distorted and twisted like a broken GMod physics model, spinning horizontally with every violent shake of the camera.

I didn't even bother pressing the power button. I lunged forward and violently pulled the plug straight out of the wall.

I hadn't realized how dark it had gotten outside. I sat there on my bed, in pitch black, deafing silence. I notice the sticky oil and sweat mix on my hands, and my forehead down soaked from sweat. I did not sleep sleep that night

Hell. No.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why the whole thing didn't just end right there. Why didn't I just drop a bowling ball on the console, smash the disc, light it all on fire, and forget about it forever? I mean, this disc is almost 100% haunted, so why would I want anything to do with it? Well, that's exactly the reason. That was by far the craziest, most horrifying, scarring, and absolutely amazing thing to ever happen to me. A haunted disc on an old console? That is batshit insane. As corny as it sounds, count me in.

I'm finishing this game.

After about a week of pondering, I realized it was now or never. Was I really gonna take this game head-on, or pussy out because I was scared of some digital Legos? Looking back, I should have just taken the second option.

I bought some new headphones and turned on the PS4. The air in my room felt oddly tense. The atmosphere of everything just felt… heavy? Like the console itself was holding its breath. I swiped over to Lego Jurassic World and pressed play. Still no TT Games animation. It jumped me right back into the "press any button" title screen, but things were even worse now. The leaf textures on the trees had been completely replaced with solid, pitch-black coloring. The dinosaurs that usually hang around the background or fly over the monorail were completely absent. Even the title music sounded choppy, jumping erratically between notes like the audio file was being ripped apart in real time.

I pressed X, expecting the big, triumphant fanfare to kick in, but the game got stuck repeating the first two notes over and over again in a broken loop. The camera glitch from before was still happening, and it was just as creepy as ever. Then, something genuinely unnerving occurred. When the screen cut to the Main Street cutscene where the characters usually do their funny actions, I noticed something in the distance. In every single shot, standing far in the background, was a lone NPC. It was completely gray, devoid of any animation, and lacked any hair or accessories. Just a default, untextured minifigure model staring back at the camera. For a split second, a blank white speech bubble appeared above its head.

Dawg.

Nevertheless, the menu popped up. I went to "Load Game," with that same 87.77% save file mocking me from the menu. I selected my own new save, and unlike a normal playthrough, the game completely skipped the autosave reminder. There wasn't even a loading screen. It dropped me straight into the Montana Dig Site level, the second half of the level, with uncanny swiftness, like when the framerate on a game speeds up randomly so it catches you off guard.

"Someone's happy to see me," I jokingly muttered to myself about it, trying to ignore the sudden drop of sweat running down my temple.

That same feeling of heavy tightness came back. It didn't just appear; it felt like it crawled over me. The sound effects were working again, and the background music was playing, yet the NPC dialogue remained completely absent. I ran around breaking structures, collecting studs, and grabbing every minikit possible. I made it to the part where John Hammond's helicopter arrives at the site, and surprisingly, nothing out of the ordinary happened. It was almost creepy in its normalcy.

I finished clearing the entire area of studs and was finally about to finish this god-forsaken prologue. But right as I was about to walk into the trailer to trigger the end-level cutscene, somebody decided to come out of hiding.

A generic male dig site volunteer NPC completely stopped his digging animation. With unnerving precision, he began to follow my character's movements. He wasn't walking; his legs were completely stiff, sliding smoothly across the dirt incredibly slowly. It took me a few seconds to notice it because it was so sudden. Instead of running into the trailer to escape, I bit the bullet and turned my character around, running straight for the NPC. I was about a stud away from making contact when the screen abruptly froze. Instinctively, I ripped my headphones off my ears, terrified of a repeat of the audio explosion that had blown out my speakers. The in-game camera violently zoomed in on the volunteer's face until it was dead center on my screen. The minifigure's printed face quickly contorted into a panicked look. Its little black mouth shifted rapidly up and down, and a few pixels of a white speech bubble appeared above its head. It didn't look like an attack. It looked like the NPC, or whatever was operating inside the code was actually scared. Of me? Of something else? I couldn't tell. Then, without any sudden jump scares or deafening audio, the game snapped back to normal. The camera pulled back, and the NPC went right back to his digging animation, perfectly returning to his intended programming.

It was oddly… sad.

I walked Alan Grant's ass right into the trailer to trigger the final cutscene. The screen faded to pitch black. Thankfully, it was bright morning out in the real world, because what happened next would have curled me into the fetal position at 12:30 PM.

Bright, white text written in the official, blocky but skinny Lego game font typed itself out in an oddly human way. Dead center on the black screen:

"What are you, scared or something?"

I could feel the blood flowing through my veins.

The cutscene was completely skipped. There was no level wrap-up, no true survivor status, and zero reward screens. The blackness dissolved, and I was dropped directly onto the open Jurassic Park island hub map, standing next to the tour jeeps, devoid of any side characters. The skybox was gray and the game completely gave up on rendering anything within 10 studs of me when I walked forward, so it was quite empty. No gold bricks, no breakable structures, just an empty mesh with solid ground. I try hopping onto the Jurassic World monorail to teleport me to that map. No prompt shows up. In fact, I can't even drive the jeeps. Grey matte studs guide me in a specific direction, going down the trail. This game wants to take me somewhere. Only one direction to go.

I continued down the hill. Zero ambience was playing. There were only the empty pitter-patters of my Lego feet. Barely ten studs in front of and behind me were visible. As I continued down the trail, I realized how truly empty this map was. There were zero collectibles, zero studs, and zero actual Legos but me. No dinosaurs, no sounds, and no kiosks. It was completely gutted. I looked outside my real-world window and noticed how dark it had gotten. It hadn't even been an hour since I started playing.

Coming up onto the visitor center, a single Lego jeep stood ahead. I ran up to it. When I came into contact with the jeep, it simply just came apart. No sound effects, sparkles, or hopping animations indicated building. They were just dead physics objects that wouldn't despawn. I continued onward.

Grey studs led me inside of the visitor center. Walking up the stairs, something was off about my character's reflection on the windows. I ignored it and walked into the location. Inside, the glass panes along the walls that were supposed to be reflecting my character weren't doing that at all. Instead, my model was replaced by that same grey default minifigure model from the menu screen. In the reflection, it stayed locked into facing north, which was the same way the studs were leading. It had no animations, but it was following exactly where I was walking. I continued onward.

The studs led me to a wall at the end of the hall. Confused, I looked around for some sort of door or teleporter, but the studs went straight through the solid wall. What was behind a solid wall? I walked up to it expecting it to be a dead end. Instead, I walked right through the wall, and I fell down into a dark grey, out-of-bounds void. I looked up to see the whole map finally load and shrink into a single green pixel.

I didn't respawn, break into pieces, or have my game crash on my way down. Instead, I landed. I landed on absolutely nothing. It was just a dark grey skybox for all 360 degrees. I walked forward for ten minutes straight, wondering if there was anything actually here. Then, in the far distance, one tiny pixel of a slightly lighter color than everything else appeared.

A foreboding drone started to play in the game, but it felt like it was actively digging around inside my skull. As I inched closer to the pixel, the drone became more and more intense. It wasn't getting louder, just more intense, like someone getting more and more aggravated. I started to approach the object. As it came more and more into view, its features became prominent.

I walked all the way up to it. It was a 2D, highly compressed, and low-quality photo. Despite it being violently compressed, I knew exactly what it was. It was a photo of a mangled car crashed into a tree on the side of a highway.

Text appeared at the bottom of my screen in a standard Arial font, stating: "You were behind the wheel."

It all finally clicked.

It was rainy that night, and the road ahead was barely visible. I wanted to prove I was finally able to drive myself places. For years they had doubted me, babying me like I couldn't do anything myself. They were in the back seat, yelling at me to slow down. I didn't. The heavy rain poured on the asphalt with the car rushing down the highway. It all happened within a single second. I lost control at 90 miles per hour, spinning the car off the road. We crashed into a tree and wrapped around it, instantly imploding the back half of the car.

With blurry vision and ringing ears, surrounded by red and blue flashing lights, I woke up. I couldn't move. My hearing slowly came back, and the hollow pitter-patters of the rain tapping over the roof of the car came into fruition. My eyes adjusted, revealing the radio display reading "8:07 July 7" right on the dashboard. With the little amount of feeling left in my neck, I turned my head to check on my parents. They were unrecognizable.

I killed them.

I looked at the television. I looked at the console. I removed my headphones, and the sound of the fan whirring from the console was the only noise left in my silent house. I pressed the small power button on the front of the PS4, and the muted beep stung my ears. The fan slowed down, and the screen went completely black, with only the "No connection" prompt in the center illuminating my face. My throat felt like it had a rock stuck in it. My mouth vibrated, and my eyes started to become red and moist. I crawled into my bed and broke down into tears, my sobs being the only sound in the warm, suffocating silence of the room.

The date and time my life ended. 8:07 on 7/7