Ghost in the machine? Legend of the 'haunted' N64 video game cartridge

Ghost in the machine? How a 'haunted' N64 video game cartridge terrified children around the world 2 days ago Share Save Chris Baraniuk Share Save Alamy/ BBC (Credit: Alamy/ BBC) A second-hand Zelda cartridge. A cryptic forum thread. A generation of frightened children. This is the story of Ben Drowned – the internet's most infamous video game ghost. It was Christmas Eve and 10-year-old Saarthak Johri couldn't sleep – but not because of excitement. He was shot through with fear. It was roughly a decade ago and Johri was a kid growing up in Saginaw, Michigan, in the US. He had spent the day slumped in an easy chair, staring at his phone, totally absorbed in an online urban myth. Johri knew it wasn't real, it couldn't be. And yet, he was powerless to get it out of his mind. He had found a trail of old forum posts supposedly written by a college student. The student, who used the online pseudonym Jadusable, had bought a strange copy of a Nintendo 64 video game at a yard sale. It was ... Read full article.