I spent much of today reading about, and following along with most of, the most excellent Marble Hornets interactive fiction. It not only manages to be exquisitely creepy, it’s creepy in the ways that push all my buttons the hardest.

As I caught up with the end of the first “season”, the bright sunshiny day outside was overtaken by stormclouds. Since the appearance of the Big Bad in Marble Hornets is signaled by a reduction in daylight…yeah.

And then I saw that there was a side “game”, Just Another Fool. I started reading through that and saw that it apparently concerns a guy named Matt who went insane after (I’m guessing) he got involved with the mysterious goings-on.

I’m guessing that’s what caused his insanity because, as soon as I got that establishing information from the wiki, my internet connection dropped out.[1] And the wind really kicked up. And–I kid you not–I started hearing a heavy door groaning open from the back of my apartment, where there are doors but none that or heavy or that groan.

So, having learned nothing from horror movies, I went back to investigate.[2]

And, sure enough, I found something that made my heart skip.

The only air conditioner in this apartment is a window unit in my bedroom. It does nothing at all to cool any other rooms, so of course I always turn it off when I’m through preparing for or being in bed. I distinctly remember going back to check on it before lunch, noticing that the control dial was in its middle position, and turning it off.

When I got back there during the spookiness, though, it was on at full blast. I’m guessing the creaky door sound was the groaning of the ancient air conditioner as heard through my apartment’s unusual acoustics and the roar of my living-room fans.

I’m also guessing that when I meant to flip the switch from middle to off this morning, I had a brainfade and switched it all the way in the wrong direction.

But, wow, for a moment there I was truly chilled, and not just by the cold air.

[1] This has started happening whenever I use a bittorrent program. It’s apparently a problem with the number of simultaneous connection attempts overwhelming older routers, and I thought I had it licked after fiddling around with my settings. At least it didn’t collapse this time until after my download had completed.

[2] Funnily enough, one of the questions I asked myself while watching the videos was, “If this kind of crazy shit started happening in real life, would anybody really decide to investigate or would they whistle a tune and run away?” Guess I got my answer.