I never believed in digital ghosts until the night my own webcam stared back at me—while it was unplugged.
It started with a Reddit thread. Someone posted a link to an old GeoCities page titled "welcome_to_abyss.html," claiming it refreshed itself every 3 A.M. Eastern. The thread died in twenty minutes, but the screenshot stayed in my mind: a black background, white Courier text, and a single blinking cursor. I copied the URL, pasted it into an incognito tab, and forgot about it until my clock hit 2:59 A.M.
The page loaded. No banner, no background MIDI, just that cursor. Then the cursor moved on its own.
HELLO, JASON.
My name isn't Jason. It's Elliot. My finger froze on the trackpad. The cursor kept typing.
JASON IS BEHIND YOU.
I spun around. Nothing but the glow of my monitor. I laughed—until my webcam light blinked. Once. Twice. I yanked the USB cable. The light stayed on.
The cursor wrote faster.
DON'T TURN AROUND AGAIN.
I didn't. I reached for the power button instead. The screen froze. A new window opened: a live feed from my webcam. I saw myself—back turned—except my reflection wasn't moving. It stood still, smiling.
I smashed the power button. Black screen. Silence. The webcam light died.
I thought it was over. It wasn't.
The next morning my inbox held one message: an MP4 file, no sender, 3:00 A.M. timestamp. I opened it on my work laptop (air-gapped, no camera). The video showed my bedroom from ceiling height—an angle my webcam can't reach. In the frame I slept peacefully while a figure in a white mask stood at the foot of the bed, head tilted, watching. The mask lifted halfway through the clip. Beneath it was my own face—eyes rolled back, mouth whispering one word on loop: "Jason."
I deleted the file. Emptied trash. Ran bleach-bit. At 2:59 A.M. the next night my phone buzzed. A push notification from Reddit:
u/jason_is_behind_you commented on your post.
The comment contained only a link. I clicked. My screen went black. White text appeared:
WELCOME BACK, ELLIOT.
The cursor blinked. Then it typed:
JASON IS INSIDE NOW.
My webcam light blinked once more—this time, from inside the black screen.
I haven't opened my laptop since. I'm typing this on a library computer. If you're reading this, check your webcam at 2:59 A.M.—but don't turn around.
Jason is already looking at you.