Looming in the background is the thought that Jadusable and his blog entries are unreliable. At one point, Jadusable’s roommate takes over posting entries, saying Jadusable has fled. The final part of the first Ben Drowned arc closes with TheTruth.rtf, a manifesto littered with hidden messages and retcons, claiming Ben had been altering the text entries and videos, sometimes even playing the game himself. Jadusable—and by proxy, Hall—hid hints to this in earlier entries, in three uses of the word believe (beLieve, belIeve, beliEve) and using certain items like the Lens of Truth in his inventory only when he was actually playing. Hall wanted players to question Jadusable’s reliability, making minor errors to build the sense of unease, a growing dread about which story was the real one.

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“You feel like you are not in control,” says Hall. “Even when you kind of understood the rules this entity was operating at, you have this distrust. You’re wondering how much of this is actually true, there’s inconsistencies that are getting bigger and bigger as the story goes on. And then when you finally get that last text document called [TheTruth.rtf] and start reading it, my goal for that was to have this huge, stomach-dropping feeling as you’re reading through it and think, ‘Jesus, none of this matches up with what was being written.’”

The trouble was keeping all these moving parts coherent, because as Hall established the story, he was just another forum dweller. He was in-character in the forums as Jadusable seeking help, and real internet users offered advice.

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In the /x/ board and other forums, readers encouraged Jadusable to explore certain areas, talk to certain characters, or investigate different elements of the game. Hall’s economics textbook came in handy for keeping everything straight.

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“Essentially what it was is that while this was happening, I was asking in-character for advice on where to go,” says Hall. “So I was like, ‘if [the readers want to] go to the ocean level in Majora’s Mask, that’s what will trigger the progression to the next big plot point.’ So it could take them one or two chapters to get there. Eventually, if they didn’t get there, if they didn’t suggest the ocean place, I would eventually subtly steer the story that way, but I didn’t have to do that much.”


In one video, a text screen appears that reads “BEN is getting lonely.” Jadusable finds himself at the end of the game, at the tree on the moon’s surface. It’s the same as the normal game, except there are no children dancing and playing. It’s quiet. Jadusable investigates the base of the tree for any clues before turning and seeing the Elegy of Emptiness statue silently watching him. Then, in a blink, it moves. There’s a pause, then it moves again. The screen cuts to the Happy Mask Salesman, his face locked in a demented smile, then to black. A text screen pops up.

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“You will be given one last chance…”

“Back to where it all began…”

“Come play with us.” A pause, then the Dawn of the Final Day screen appears.


As Ben Drowned developed, it grew in popularity. Kotaku published an article on the story in 2010, and many other sites covered it as well. Within the first few days of starting the story, Hall was at 100,000 and climbing. “Ben.wmv,” one of the more memorable video entries, sits at 3.7 million views on YouTube at the time of writing. Hall became obsessed with the story, mentally mapping out new developments during classes. He tells me he remembers thinking, “I’ve really caught onto something here, I need to keep writing this.”

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TheTruth.rtf ended Ben Drowned’s first arc, leaving Jadusable’s whereabouts unknown after he ran off to dispose of the cart forever. Hall would soon develop a new story in the same universe called Moon Children. Moon Children was based around a fake cult website and was more of an ARG than a creepypasta. But Ben Drowned was regarded among the best stories told in the medium, and still is to this day.

But stories don’t end when the author types the last word.


In December 2016, Hall was lying in bed with his girlfriend. She was reading on her phone about a 12-year-old girl named Katelyn Davis. Davis had streamed her own suicide on Live.me, and the video was spreading like wildfire across social media.

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Hall recalls not thinking much of it at the time. He said it was awful and left it at that, going to sleep.

Several days later, Hall saw Davis on his news feed again thanks to a fan. Davis had a history of self-harm and, a tough home life according to her blog, including allegations of abuse, assault, and attempted rape. She was also a fan of Ben Drowned. According to a blog post, Davis was in love with someone claiming to be the real Ben Drowned. In that blog post, accompanied by fan art, Davis wrote:

I NEED his love. I NEED his warmth. It has been several months since I last spoke with him. And one of those months I actually tried to kill myself by overdose because I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I just NEED to find my love.

[...]He went by Ben Drowned. He claimed that he was the real Ben Drowned. Right now, I don’t care.

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Hall’s story was just a tale of a haunted Nintendo 64 cartridge meant to keep readers up at night, not something that might have a real world impact. He even tells me he went out of his way to avoid too much mention of human-on-human violence in Ben Drowned, keeping the story limited to a program-slash-spirit toying with a human.

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This wasn’t the first time creepypasta has come up in the national dialogue. After two Wisconsin girls stabbed a friend 19 times in 2014, inspired by the internet myth of the Slender Man, Hall says he wondered that since it happened to Slender Man, “it’s probably not too far off of happening for me and my story.” But up until Davis’ suicide, Hall had mostly heard positive things from fans: many had told him they’d been encouraged by his work to pursue their own goals, to write and create. Hall tells me about how artists and writers have crafted new works and fan fiction around his characters, taking the wheel of his dorm room pet project. Some have made Ben, the ghost and titular character, a sympathetic figure, something he never intended. But, he tells me, the fandom having a darker side seemed inevitable.

“It’s always kind of a hard thing to suss out,” Hall tells me, pausing for a moment. “Because I’ve been asked this question before, like, do I feel responsible for it? I don’t, now. I don’t feel responsible. I feel like if it wasn’t my story, it would’ve been something else. Someone would have impersonated someone else or whatever, from another story, to lead her down that path or whatnot.

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“But I think that the sad truth of it is, and you kind of have to just sort of look at it in a black-and-white perspective. At some point when you put something out there of your own to a wide enough audience, if you threw a big enough net out there, eventually there’s going to be some negative connotations associated with it. I’ve had people tell me how much Ben Drowned has made a difference in their lives, or inspired them to write or inspired them to create. So naturally, I guess, it’s an inevitable law of the world, the universe, where if it’s reached a big enough fanbase, there would be some sort of negative connotations with that... It’s an inevitability, I guess. It doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t make it better, it’s just sort of a law of nature. It’s a difficult subject.”


The future of Ben Drowned is now, largely, in the hands of its fandom. When asked about his real, physical ownership in a dollars-and-cents manner, Hall says he’s thought about monetizing the story before but has always decided against it. He says he’s talked to movie studios about adaptations, but in terms of the original story, he sees it as no more one person’s property than any other campfire ghost story.

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Nowadays, Hall is working on several freelance production projects while also trying to put together an independent film of his own. This one isn’t a creepypasta, but rather a story about growing up and chasing dreams. He tells me he’s typically an all-in kind of person, and so adapting his workflow to a team-oriented project has been a little difficult.

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“I liked Ben Drowned because I could do everything myself. But with film, making that sort of stuff, I have a sense as a director. I don’t know anything about lighting. I don’t know how to set up any kind of lighting. I have a general idea of camerawork and that sort of stuff, but there are people who have dedicated their scholastic career to being professionals with that, that I just don’t have. And when you get people together for that sort of thing, you’re talking about working with a team of 20, 30-plus people, and there are so many other real-life factors that get in the way.”

Even though Hall has moved to other projects, Ben Drowned persists. The Elegy statue has become permanently linked to the story of Jadusable and his haunted cartridge, a copy of Majora’s Mask that inspired nightmares of masks being sewn to faces and terrible, terrible fates. Ben Drowned lives by the virtual firelight, as each new whisper, tweet, or forum post sends chills down a new reader’s spine. Creepypastas are the ghost stories of the digital age, changing with each retelling and reimagining from its fandom. Though Ben Drowned owes its legacy to Hall, its future lies in the hands of anyone who might take to their keyboard to add a new page.

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Look forward to tales of ghosts and glitches all week during Kotaku’s Spooky Week.