TRILL

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Before I begin I suppose I should give some context behind the story. I'm an internet dweller, and my life is mostly revolved around everything to do with the internet. This being said, you can imagine that spending that amount of time on something so vast would bring up a few good stories; which is true. I have lots of tales which range from funny to just downright creepy from my time on the internet. This one, however, is the one that has changed my life.

When I was 15, I owned a Minecraft server. This Minecraft server was for me and my 5 other friends. I'll list them below with their associated usernames:

HeroSmall: Harry

JasmineLongson97: Jas
Edninreed98: Enid

Asphalt: Alfie

Janson23: Jason

About 4 weeks before the events of this story, Jason had had to leave our small group of online friends because of his strict parents restricting his time on the internet. We had all laughed about it and gave him our numbers to keep in contact. I had never met any of these people, I must mention, but we had all seen each other on webcams and such to keep safe. We had all been online friends for about 2 years. I had created the Skype group chat with my friends mainly to update them on news about the Minecraft server, but also because it was nice to be able to talk to all of my friends in one place without having to lose track of each conversation. Most nights, it was lively and there was messages constantly coming through, usually about 4 different conversations going on at once; and I liked it like that.

One day, Harry had mentioned Jason and the others had carried on this conversation about him.

HeroSmall: We need a new boy in this group chat, Alfie and I are outnumbered now that Jason has gone. :(

Asphalt: I agree! All these females, nerds like me can't handle it.

JasmineLongson97: Kim is hardly a female!

At this point I had chipped in, hearing my name being mentioned.

Kimgdom: Hey now. No need to start picking on me. ;)

Edninreed98: Why don't you post on one those skype forums to find a new person who would be willing to help us out on the Minecraft server? :)

HeroSmall: Yes! Listen to Enid, she knows what she's talking about.

Kimgdom: We do actually need another person to keep the Minecraft Server running... I'll post a forum now.

And I did. I posted the forum on a random Skype group chat recruiting site that I had found on google. It did actually look a bit sketchy now I think about it, it didn't have much on it really apart from the skype logo and a white background with small icons to guide you to which forum to post in. I posted in the “Group recruiting” forum and only wrote a small post, listing the price it would cost the new person for their share of the server and the fact that we were only a small group of 15 year olds. I didn't have much hope for it, the forums all seemed quite dead and I didn't really want to post on a bigger recruiting site since I didn't want hundreds of people wanting to join the server. I sent my friends a quick message to say I had posted it then put my laptop away and went to bed.

The next day after school, I got home and booted up my laptop. I usually did this whilst getting changed out of my school clothes so that by the time I was ready to play, the laptop had booted up. As I was wandering around my room trying to find my pyjama top, I heard my Skype tone tell me that I had a message. It wasn't out of the ordinary but I had muted the group conversation so I no longer got notifications from them, and most of my real life friends talked to me on Facebook, not Skype. I paused my search for the top and leaned over my desk, clicking on the notification. I had a message from a username I hadn't seen before - “JuggerNaut08”. I frowned and opened the message, a contact request and an IM saying that they had found me on the Skype recruiting forum and were willing to join the server.

I accepted the request and typed a quick greeting to him, carrying on getting changed whilst waiting for a reply.

Kimgdom: I found someone guys, I'll just make sure he's actually good at Minecraft before adding him to the group though, lmao.

HeroSmall: Yipee!

Asphalt: Make sure he's not 50.

JasmineLongson97: Oh shut up Alfie

Asphalt: Lmao.

I got a notification from my chat with JuggerNaut and opened it up.

“Hi! Nice to meet you. I'm a 16 year old male from Florida and I love Minecraft. I don't tell my real name to people online right now but you can just call me Jugger. Here's some of my builds on Minecraft:”

Below the message he had attached some pictures of epic buildings that he had created on Minecraft. I smiled and added him to the group chat almost right away, knowing he'd be perfect for the server.

Kimgdom: Guys, this is Jugger, he's joining the server!

Asphalt: Welcome.

JasmineLongson97: Hiya!

HeroSmall: Hi there.

Edninreed98: Hey :)

JuggerNaut08: Hello everybody. Names?

After that we spent the evening introducing each other, making small jokes about our server and exchanging small talk with our new friend. He seemed nice enough, cracking jokes which actually made me laugh and getting along really well with the two boys. Over the next week, Jugger was added to our server list and shown the ropes of how we operated. We all took it very seriously, and so did he. We were all happy with our new addition and he made his first payment to the server donations without any trouble, so I was satisfied.

However, you know when people say things, only little things, that they might not mean at the time or might not think get noticed but you do notice them? There were a few times like that. For instance, we were talking about housing at one point and Jugger asked where I lived in the UK, he kept pressing for more and more information until eventually I just gave him my local village and told him that was all I was saying. He acted nice about it, saying he was sorry for making me feel uncomfortable and that he knew people who lived in the same area.

About 30 minutes later though, he said I lived in a nice neighbourhood, stating the name of my exact road. I was confused, I hadn't told him that much information, only my local town. I asked him where he got my road name from and he said he had just searched the village on google maps and guessed a road nearby. I found it weird but the rest of my friends shrugged it off so I did as well.

Another example, we were talking about sports. This happened rarely as none of us were interested in anything to do with sport or outside at all, but Jasmine had been telling us about her new netball team at school and Jugger had said he was interested in running. I said I had also done some running in the past, and had actually started it up again in a bid to get fit. Harry laughed at me and so did Alfie, but Jugger said; and I quote: “You look good running.” No one else noticed the weird message because everyone was typing so fast and the messages kept on coming, but I noticed it, without a doubt.

The last one is the weirdest though, and it may not seem like it to you, but at this point I was seriously doubting the new guy. I hadn't said anything to my friends yet about the last example because I didn't want to freak them out, maybe he had meant it in reply to someone else, maybe it was a joke? I didn't know, and I didn't want to assume. This last one though, this made me rethink everything.

I was showering as normal, washing my hair and taking my time as any girl would, when I heard my Skype ringing. I figured it was the group chat calling each other to talk whilst they played on the server so I didn't hurry out of the shower. Once I was out, I saw that the call wasn't running in the group chat but they had been talking whilst I was gone. I typed to tell them I had been showering and I was back now, and the messages flooded in welcoming me back and telling me random things about the server. One message that caught my eye though, was from Jugger. It just said: “I know.”

Now this might not sound creepy at all to you, but I have context that will make it creepier. None of the messages before that message had anything in them which he could have replied to with “I know”. I saved the messages:

Kimgdom: Hi, I'm back, sorry I was showering and missed your call.

JasmineLongson97: Welcome back Kim :)

Asphalt: Hope you had a nice shower.

HeroSmall: Oh I bet she did.

JuggerNaut08: I know.

Edninreed98: Kim, can you change the weather on the server? It's bugging me.

Asphalt: Oh yeah please change it. :)

As you can see, his message just sticks out like a sore thumb. I got seriously creeped out by this and messaged Jasmine on our private chat about it.

JasmineLongson97: You okay? You seem blunt tonight.

Kimgdom: Jasmine, somethings not right about that Jugger guy. Did you see that message 5 mins ago? “I know”?

JasmineLongson97: Omg yeah I did see that! I didn't want to say anything in case it caused a conflict though... Creepy, right?

Kimgdom: It's so creepy, right?! I'm so glad I'm not the only one. Do you find it weird that we've had him as a friend for 3 weeks and he hasn't even called us yet?

JasmineLongson97: Yeah..it is.. do you think we should group call and make him join?

Kimgdom: Yeah lets do that, you call the group.

Two minutes later a call was started by Jasmine, everyone picked up apart from Jugger.

“Where's Jugger?” Jasmine asked in her smooth voice. I had always been jealous of her voice.

“Not sure.” Harry replied, obviously too concentrated on his Minecraft sword battle with Alfie. Suddenly, a new window popped up and it showed us that Jugger had joined our call.

“Oh here he is. Hi Jugger!” Jasmine greeted in a cheery voice, but there was no answer. A slight crackling came from his microphone which told us that he was trying to speak; we just couldn't hear him. Jasmine told him to try rejoining the call and he did, but not even the crackling could be heard this time, just silence. I frowned and I could hear the suspense in Jasmines voice as she tried to instruct Jugger on what to do. The boys were silent and Enid had left her call running whilst she went to eat dinner.

Everything was silent whilst Jasmine figured out why Jugger couldn't be heard, until about 10 seconds later when there was a loud screeching sound which sounded to me like interference from a electronic device near a microphone, then... whistling. Not lots of whistling, just a few notes. Like if you were trying to call a dog back to you after it ran away. Guess where the whistling came from?

JuggerNaut08.

Straight after the creepy whistling, he dropped his call. The rest of us were silent, in fear. The Minecraft characters had stopped moving and all I could hear was Enid telling us she was back from dinner.

“Guys?” Enid questioned the silence. “Guys?” She could be heard clicking around to see if her microphone was working.

“Ye...Yeah.” Jasmine croaked.

“What the f**k was that?” Harry almost yelled.

“I don't know... It was creepy though.” Alfie confirmed and I asked if I should kick Jugger from the group.

“No..wait it out. See if he says anything.” Harry told me. Enid was questioning what happened so he updated her and her audible gasp could be heard.

“That's creepy as f**k.” She whispered.

The evening when by without any more incidents, we all played Minecraft to distract ourselves from what had happened and we waited out JuggerNaut's excuses for the weird whistling. The next day after school, Jugger had sent the group a message.

JuggerNaut08: Guys, I'm sorry about anything that happened last night. My account was hacked, did they ruin anything?

Asphalt: No...

HeroSmall: There was whistling though.

JuggerNaut08: That's so weird.

He further denied any part of the strange sounds on the Skype call, and also denied any further Skype calls until he was 'sure that no one would hack him again'. We all brushed it off as we were quite a chilled bunch of people, but Jasmine and I were still sceptical about it. I think most of us just chose an easy life over one filled with drama or conflict with people, which is why I didn't bring any of my concerns up to the group.

About 3 days later I was on a private call with Jasmine. Jasmine had become one of my best friends and we were due to meet in real life in the next month or so. We were chatting about school and how hard exams were when suddenly she went silent. I frowned and made sure my volume was all the way up.

“Jas?” I asked.

“Yeah...sorry...I'm here...” She seemed like she had seen a ghost so I asked her what was wrong. She told me she would share her screen. Her screen popped up onto the call and it was an email, from a blocked email address. She showed me the title which was just a bunch of random numbers, then she scrolled down. There was an audio file attached to the email and she saved it, to send to me.

“I don't know if I want to listen to this Jasmine.” I confessed, defeated by the idea that more creepy stuff was happening.

“Just listen.” She snapped, obviously scared out of her mind. I clicked play on the file. 5 seconds of silence...followed by whistling. Louder than it had been on the Skype call and a lot more prolonged...it was creepier as well. It didn't sound like a dog call anymore, it sounded like what a murderer would whistle right before killing you, just to creep you out. It was a high pitched whistle, then a low pitched whistle, both elongated and repeated several times before the audio file ended.

I could hardly breathe, my mouth was dry and my heart was pumping at a million beats per minute. Who sent this to Jasmine? Was it a prank by one of our friends to freak us out?
Kimgdom: Guys... has anyone sent a prank email to Jasmine? We're pretty freaked out and we'd appreciate it if you owned up.

Asphalt: Nope...wish I had though, you two get scared so easily.

Edninreed98: I don't have time to send prank emails...try Harry.

HeroSmall: Nah not me either, sorry girls.

There was no following message from JuggerNaut. He actually never replied to the group chat again. The day after Jasmine received the email, his account went black, his Minecraft account was deleted and his Kik account just got the “This person has been inactive for a long time” automated message when we tried to contact it.

Jasmine and I kept our worries to ourselves, knowing that it was 1. Too complex to explain to the others and 2. Sounded ridiculous.

We knew though, f**k did we know, that he was behind it. There was no doubt in my mind that Jugger had not been who we thought, and that unsettled me right to my core. I had nightmares about him, and I checked on my friends more than I had ever done. For a week after the incident we kept him in the group, just in case he came back and had a really good explanation for everything, but of course, he didn't.

Exactly a week after the events unfolded, I removed JuggerNaut as a contact and from our group conversation. It felt as if I had wiped him clean from my life, as creepy as he was, I felt as though it had just been a creepy fluke. When I went to delete the forum post on the recruitment site, the website came up with a 404 error page. This unsettled me even more, so I decided to call the group for comfort and to play some Minecraft, since it was a Sunday evening.

The call ran fine for about an hour until we started getting problems, it would randomly kick people or we just wouldn't be able to understand what people were saying due to connectivity problems or static. It was a nuisance but I didn't think anything of it as Skype is unreliable sometimes. Eventually the problems reached their worst and whenever we tried to recall the group it would just crash, instantly. Alfie decided to make light of the situation as everyone was getting angry.

Asphalt: Guys....maybe it's JuggerNaut! Back from the dead! Oooo :O

Edninreed98: Shut up Alfie, lmao

HeroSmall: He's BACK to take his revenge!!! Lol

JasmineLongson97: Guys don't, it's not funny.

-Call dropped-

HeroSmall: Ugh, it crashed again.

JuggerNaut08: Let me fix it for you guys.

My mouth dropped open. Silence in the group chat. I froze in my seat and I felt like crying. I swallowed and couldn't believe what I was seeing with my own two eyes. Then suddenly, in amidst the deafening quiet in my small bedroom...

Whistling.