BEN drowned is arguably the most famous Legend of Zelda creepy pasta to date. It’s been
kicking around for a long, long time, allegedly created by an author the name of Alex Hall,
aka Jadusable. It’s a story about a Majora’s Mask cartridge that’s haunted by a boy named
Ben. So for those of you unfamiliar with is, here’s the story, made up of a bunch of
posts starting on September 7th, 2010. Post One
Alex starts by writing that this is the creepiest sh*t he’s ever encountered. He recently
moved into his dorm as a sophomore in college, and as a present, a pal of his gave him his
old N64. He hadn’t touched a Nintendo 64 since he was a kid, so needless to say, he
was excited. His friend had only given him Super smash Bros, so the following weekend,
he and a few of his friends from the dorm went off campus to check out some local garage
sales. He was drawn to one of them; a house with a bunch of junk on a table. He got out
of the car and approached the man behind the table; an elderly guy, with something slightly
off putting about his appearance, although, Alex couldn’t put his finger on it.
He man asked what he was looking for, and Alex said old video games. To his surprise,
the man said he had some in an old box inside the garage. Feeling slightly weirded out by
the awkward situation, Alex waited politely. But, to his surprise, the man came back with
an N64 cartiridge. On it, written in marker, was the word Majora. The old man smiled and
said he could have it for free; it belonged to a kid around his age that didn’t live
there anymore. Alex said thanks, despite something still putting him off about the man, and went
back into the card. He examined the cartridge; it was pretty shady, but hey, it was free,
so why not test it out to see if it’ll work? As he left, the old man called out something
to him that sounded like “goodbye then!” Back at his dorm, he booted up the game, and
to his surprise, it actually worked! Jack pot! There was one saved file on the cartridge,
titled ‘BEN’. That’s when Alex felt bad; the old man, probably a little senile,
was calling out goodbye ben when he left. He sighed, supposing that he reminded him
of his grandson Ben. Alex turned his attention back to the game.
He decided, out of curiosity, to check out this saved file. From a glance, he could tell
that Ben was pretty far in the game, having almost all of the masks and ¾ remains of
the bosses. He was on day 3 and by the Stone Tower Temple with barely an hour left before
the moon would crash. What a shame that he’d come so close to finishing the game. Alex
exited and started his own save file, calling it Link, out of tradition, of course.
As he played the game, he noticed that everything was really smooth. No textures were ever out
of place, no minor hiccups; it seemed really polished. But there was one odd occurrence
that kept happening. Some NPCs would refer to him as Link, while others would refer to
him as Ben. After a while, Alex was slightly creeped out, so he went back into the menu
of the game and deleted the Ben file, hoping that would solve the problem. It didn’t,
and at times, NPCs wouldn’t call him anything; only a blank space would appear where his
name should be. Irritated, he shut off the game and went off to do some homework.
The next time he picked up the game, he was working his was through Snowhead Temple. Running
out of time, he decided to try the 4th Day Glitch; it’s an infamous glitch that if
timed correctly, makes your counter disappear and essentially gives you another day in the
game to finish whatever it is that you were doing. As he triggered the glitch and was
exiting the astronomer’s telescope, he was surprised to find himself teleported to the
Majora boss fight room with Skull Kid hovering in the air above him. Right before he was
about to shut off the game, a text box appeared that read, “You’re not sure why, but you
apparently had a reservation…” That text wasn;t supposed to appear there, only when
you get the Room Key from Anju at the Stock Pot Inn.
He eventually managed to get out of that room and away from Skull Kid’s omnious stares.
He ported to some kind of weird twilight zone version of Clock Town. Something was off.
He felt overwhelmed by a feeling best described as a wave of depression. There were no NPCs
in the town. The music playing was the Song of Healing, played in reverse, and it got
louder and louder, looping over and over. Every time he tried to leave Clock town, the
screen would fade to black and he’d find himself in a different part of Clock Town.
His Ocarina didn’t work. Weirder and weirder things kept happening until finally, Skull
Kid appeared and attacked him. This was not in the game he played years ago as a kid.
Link’s body horrifically exploded into flames and he died. The camera tilted to reveal Skull
Kid and the screen faded to a message that read “You’ve met with a terrible fate,
haven’t you?” He was kicked out to the title screen.
His save was no longer there. Link was replaced with Your Turn. Alex selected it. It brought
him back to where he had died, on the Clock Tower Rooftop, with Skull Kid hovering over
him. Freaked out, he reset the N64 and booted the game back up. When he got to the title
screen, there were two saved files now. Your turn, and Ben. He selected Ben, and it returned
to where Ben had left off, by the Stone Tower Temple with the moon almost crashing. He turned
the game off. POST TWO
Post Two is the second longest entry after the first. The more entries go on, the more
sporadic and short they get. This one, dated September 8th 2010, saw Alex returning to
the game. But this time, when the title screen loaded up, while both Your Turn and Ben were
listed, Ben’s stats were different. With hesitation, he selected that save file. He
returned to the Stone Tower Temple, except things were different. Link’s body was distorted.
Weird high pitched noises played within the game. The laughter of the Happy Mask Salesman
could be heard in the background. Link transformed into a Deku Scrub, and he came face to face
with the Happy Mask Salesman who said to him “you’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t
you?” before the screen whited out. The game then returned to normal. It had looped
him back to Day four, with the Song of Healing playing overtop. He found himself at Great
Temple Bay. He was a Zora, and when he went into the water, he started to drown; which
made no sense since zoras can swim. The game kept anticipating that he was trying to escape
the Day 4 Clock Town loop, but it kept resulting in his character drowning. He was prompted
to press start after drowning. He did, and the save files there revealed Ben’s fate.
One read Ben, the other Drowned. The next several entries are scattered. Alex
continued to play, and witness weird events. At one point, a Cleverbot began to chat with
him, and based off of the things he said, Alex gauged that the Cleverbot was the ghost
of Ben. Alex began to fear that Ben wasn’t just contained to this cartridge of Majora’s
Mask, but may be out in the world. He begins to upload some of the strange occurrences
he witnesses in the game to YouTube, and to try to copy files from the game onto his computer,
ripping them. His next few entries contained bits of writing that read “He isn’t responding
to me on Cleverbot, its just giving the generic response it usually does, I think I’m just
talking to a bot.” Another one read, “I think Ben is mad at me”. Alex recounts his
dreams, where events and NPCs in the game have started to seep into his sleep. He sees
the Happy Mask Saleman’s smile turn into the most horrific smile he has ever seen.
Alex claims Ben won’t let him access YouTube, and that the air in his dorm is becoming constrictive,
and that he doesn’t think he’s alone. The last note says to not download any of
the videos he posted on YouTube about the incident, or any of the files he ripped from
the cartridge. His final entry makes it clear that he plans on burning the cartridge and
destroying his laptop. And that the nightmare ends here.
Some versions of this creepy pasta end with Alex’s dorm roommate finding that Alex has
completely disappeared, along with his computer and the cartridge, with all that remains being
the journal entries. He publishes the journal entries online.
So there we have it friends. This pretty much summarizes a lot of the creepy pasta, but
for the full pasta, you should definitely give it a google and read it in its entirety,
especially those of you who really love Majora’s Mask. If you dug this video, spread the love,
hit that like button, and be sure to check out the playlist currently flashing on your
screen for more creepy pasta videos just like this one. In the meantime though, thanks for
watching! I’ll catch you all in the next video.