6 Seconds Video
English translation/adaptation: GoldJorge.
Original story in spanish by Readyus on The Wiki Creepypasta.
Narration with TTS also included! (May post it on YouTube someday)
Due to my social life being practically none (and inversely proportional to my morbid curiosity), I spent most of the day lurking through the deepest and most decadent depths of the Internet. The "Deep Web" ended up disappointing me: so many articles and videos talking about how dangerous it was ended up being nothing more than pure mysticism.
Except for some weird pages, there was nothing that I could have already seen on the "surface" Internet. Just like many people who are into these kind of themes and don't have anything better to do, I divided my time either on 4chan or private chat groups with friends dedicated to dark and distasteful subjects; nothing paranormal, most of the time it was things like gore videos, rapes, etc.
It was in a written Skype chat with “mttgrney” when I discovered the page. Matt was one of my best friends; his dark-eyed look on his profile picture reflected by itself an intelligence that could immediately catch your attention. He asked me if I had any idea of a site known as "Hideout Wiki." I laughed, did he seriously think that I was so dumb to not know about the Hidden Wiki?
"No, no", he corrected me. "It's not the Hidden Wiki". With very basic English he said: "I meant Hideout Wiki, not Hidden Wiki. It was created some time ago by the guys of Hideout".
"Hideout was a group of very few people, like ten or so", he kept explaining. "They had a chat where they used to send horrible videos and images until a mod closed it. I knew a guy who was there before they closed it, and now it seems they have made a wiki where they post the content".
I was immediately interested, I mean, a group of marginalized folks that have secret conversations where they pass illegal stuff? Where do I sign?
I asked him for the link for the wiki, he passed it and I clicked it.
My hopes shattered almost immediately. It was a web page made with a free service, with no personalization, three pages created and only one user registered. For the first time in a while, I managed to make my patience overcome my hyperactivity (which begged me to close the page as soon as I didn't see anything immediately) and I took the time to read the description of the site.
The phrase "Pay2Watch" made me retreat immediately. Did I have to pay actual money to see the content? When I went to ask my friend about it, I saw that he already logged off and that I've ignored his two last messages wishing me good night and telling me to watch "the video with the warning". I saw the list of created pages and entered the one with the headline "Pay2Watch Videos".
There were a total of 7 videos with a blue title, each one, apparently, leading to another site.
The title of "6 Seconds Video" immediately caught my attention, it was the only one with a warning recommending not to see it. I clicked on the title and it automatically led me to a PayPal page, asking me if I wanted to confirm a 10 dollar payment to the HIDEOUT account.
What was I supposed to do? Pay someone I don't know anything about, someone from the depths of the web, that could get me into serious trouble? Or just close the page, assume that these videos were nothing more than a scam and move on with my life?
Of course, I made the stupid choice.
I confirmed the payment, the page was loading for a while and then it redirected me to another site. There was only a black background and a small video player box in the center with a white button. I hit play and it began loading and buffering. After some time, I was beginning to believe that, effectively, I got scammed. It must have passed like 5 or 6 minutes before the content finally charged.
The video, which was of awful quality, was recorded inside of a car. It was night outside, there were several streetlights illuminated. The person recording was in the co-driver seat, arguing with the driver in what I swear was arabian. They were both shouting at each other, extremely nervous. The camera turned to the window, showing a face looking in. The screams turned into screeches of horror. An image flickered for about microseconds and the sound of the car door opening could be heard. As soon as the video finished, the screen went black again. The six seconds were over.
I saw the video for a second time. Stopping it to look closely at the details was impossible: If you paused it and played it again, it would automatically start all over again. The screencaps only showed moving scenes; The sequences were too fast to get anything of interest. The face scene was happening too fast to get something. I right-clicked on both the page and the video to see if I could save it without success. I copied the link to another browser to try the same thing, and the page sent me again to the PayPal site, this time asking me to log in (since I've never used PayPal in my secondary browser). I had to watch the video quite a few times to get the details.
During the first milliseconds, the camera was looking at the driver, but then it turned to the front. It could only be seen brown hair and a white shirt, the awful quality made any facial feature indistinguishable. The frame of that face that I watched, not appreciable in a first instance, gradually became more disturbing: It looked like a person with sickly-pink skin, with two white-ish eyes with huge bags under them. Any other feature was unrecognizable. That flickering image was nothing more than a zoom towards that face, that, through many continuous views, I kept dechipering: its skin was horrendous, burnt-looking; its nose was deformed, with a nostril bigger than the other; its eyes, tiny, like the ones of a fish; but, undoubtedly, the most dismal thing was its mouth, looking simply like a bleeding opening made with a knife. The more I saw of it, the more I doubted its humanity.
I spent all night trying to distract myself, with a lump in my throat and millions of questions. I kept reloading the page periodically to see if I could make any progress until at one point the link simply took me to the PayPal site. There was something that occasionally flashed on my screen. I wanted to believe that it wasn't that image.
I slept late and woke up late with enormous anguish. Turned on the computer and quickly entered Skype. Matt was not connected. I opened a chat with Alex, another friend. I tried to appear somewhat normal.
"Hey Alex, did Matt send you a link to a page called Hideout Wiki?".
It took him a couple of minutes to reply.
"Yeah, he passed it last night. I wanted to ask him about what it was but he hasn't been here since yesterday".
I swallowed saliva and began to write.
"Have you seen the video?".
The reply came almost immediately
"No, but a friend did. It's really fucked up, especially the webcam scene".
I raised an eyebrow in surprise. What was he talking about? I tried to respond by appearing calm.
"What webcam? In the 6 Seconds Video that I saw there was no webcam".
The reply took more time to come, almost ten minutes.
"I'm talking about the face scene. You didn't see it or what?"
My heart skipped a beat. I put my hand on my chest. I was choking.
I remembered many details of the video that I overlooked.
- The first was that during the first seconds you could see that thing running in the background until it was at the co-driver window.
- The second was the face, with those deep black eyes so familiar.
- The third one was that it wasn't a static image. That thing blinked.
- The fourth one was the box in the upper corner of the face. "Live". That's why it took so long to load.
I've barely used the Internet since then. I have disconnected the webcam. I think the image has started flickering on my monitor again.
I still haven't heard from Matt.
