A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I were at Game Stop reserving our copy of a certain video game.
There was a new girl there who seemed nervous yet incredibly knowledgeable. We got into a conversation about Portal because I was wearing my companion cube shirt and ended up talking for an hour while my boyfriend perused the used games.
We got to chatting and had numerous things in common. It just so happened she was studying animation at the same school I was (I am a culinary major). She took down my name on Facebook and that evening we were friends. We were going to have lunch the next day.
So by looking at her Facebook I realized she was incredibly obsessed with Spongebob. Her heading picture was Spongebob and Patrick, it was the only thing listed under shows, everything she liked had to do with Spongebob, and she had pictures up with costume characters and one with Stephen Hillenburg at Comicon or something.
The next day at school, I had an hour until my next class, I finished all my homework and I was on my laptop talking to her on Facebook. She said she couldn't make it because she had to meet some guy off craigslist who was selling her some rare spongebob memorabilia. Some guy who's recently deceased father knew Hillenburg. She told me he probably needed the money for rent or meth.
Unwilling to let her meet some random tweaker off of craigslist alone I insisted that I join her. She told me to meet them in 15 minutes at a nearby Burger King.
She was the first one there, and was sitting inside eating. I ordered a milk shake and sat with her. We chatted a little bit before the guy met us. He was disappointingly normal seeming.
He looked about 23, was dressed professionally and carrying a baby carrier. He apologized for being late but told us he had to pick up his daughter. He handed us a shopping bag full of signed posters, DVDs, and framed drawings.
She handed him six dollars and looked through her treasures to verify their validity. Everything looked good except for a burnt DVD in a clear case saying “New Spongebob”
He said he didn't know what it was, but it was probably from the editing room. “A first draft or something” he said. She rolled her eyes and we left.
I asked why he was letting all this go. He told me it reminded him of his father too much.
That Friday, she invited me to come over and watch her new DVDs. I had nothing to do so I went over.
Of course, her one bedroom apartment was wall to wall Spongebob. She seemed to have every Spongebob product on the planet from her rugs to her ceiling fans to her soap and shower curtains. She told me it was her dream to live in bikini bottom, and if she couldn't live there she wanted to help create it. We finally poured some wine and sat down to watch the five new retail copies of “director's cut” Spongebob DVDs she bought. She pointed out every slight difference there was. Some of the colors were different and some scenes went on longer. Nothing that noticeable, but it fascinated her.
When we were finished with them it was already one in the morning but I noticed the burnt DVD on the coffee table. I asked if she wanted to just see what it was really quick then call it a night.
We put the DVD in. Before the episode it played a movie countdown. It played “Best Day Ever,” the one where all Spongebob's plans are ruined. The audio and video were quality.
The only thing was there would be a pop once in a while. Like someone edited in a picture for a single frame. It took a while to sync the pause button with the pictures but what I found was truly disturbing.
There were pictures of different children, they all looked about 6 or 7 and had been badly beaten. We thought maybe someone paid the neighborhood kids to wear bruise makeup for this sick gag. The pictures stopped popping out and the episode continued as usual. She told me to take it out, that it was a fake and therefore so was everything else she had purchased. However, what we found next was a little more serious.
The next episode on the disc was “The Gift of Gum.” This time I noticed the audio sounded like it was being slightly distorted. There were more frames that I paused and looked at. This time the kids were in their underwear, badly beaten and crying. I skipped the episode and went to the last episode on the DVD which was just bizarre.
It was almost like popular creepypasta that I had later found described. It looked like badly drawn fan art with red smudges all over it. It started out with no audio.
Squidward played his clarinet apparently very badly, Spongebob and Patrick played down below, and Squidward yelled at them to stop making so much noise from what I could gather without sound. Spongebob then talks with Patrick and they proceed to walk away.
The scene then cut to Squidward playing a concert to a bunch of ghoulish looking Bikini Bottom residents with glowing bloody eyes. The animation was by this time a little better but there still was no sound until the audience started to boo. It sounded like one guy stacked his voice fifty times. It made me jump. Spongebob stood at the the front of the stage pointing and booing with glowing hyper realistic red eyes.
The scene cut to Squidward on his bed looking very depressed and realistic. The background of his room looked like a photograph. Then, very faintly in the background I heard a small wail, like a child crying. It synced with Squiward's crying. The sound got louder and louder until we had to mute the TV. The pops came back.
This time they were incredibly disturbing. I don't really want to go into that much detail about them, but let's just say that they were a good deal grizzlier than what had been previously posted, and there were more than two. Needless to say, the children I saw in the earlier episodes were dead, gutless, and limbless.
I wanted to take it out and destroy it but I had to see what this was, I had to know that this was a sick joke and those children were alright. I continued watching it.
It was just more of badly drawn Squidward crying. I unmuted her TV and there was this horrible noise that sounded like a combination of static, a hurricane, screaming children, and laughing. I put it on mute again. Squidward stared straight ahead for a while with his creepy bleeding eyes. I wondered what horrific noise they put behind this. I took it off mute again but it was silent. Then a booming voice said “DO IT.”
Squidward took a shotgun and blew his head off. Then the usual credits began to roll.
The color had gone out of my friend's face and she was shaking. I told her it was all some demented hoax. The guy who sold it to her probably has something against Spongebob for some reason and was messing with fans.
Then she tried to call the guy who sold it to her. Apparently his phone was disconnected. She told me to just go home and that she's see me Monday at school. I asked her if maybe she would want me to stay because she seemed pretty shaken up. She said she would deal with it in the morning.
I stayed up all night watching silly you tube videos, British sitcoms, ANYTHING that wasn't animation; I even watched some porn which is something I never do. I had to get my mind off of it but I just couldn't. I didn't have the attention span for a book and I had eaten the contents of the refrigerator.
The sun came up and I darted out of the house to her apartment. I banged on the door. No answer. A neighbor poked his head out of the window beside me. He happened to be the manager.
He told me she left. She took one suitcase and paid him the months rent and hopped on a bus to the airport.
We still haven't heard from her. But a few days ago I read a cracked article about creepy pasta which led me to read about the Squidward's Suicide episode.
After reading the others I was afraid of sounding cliché but I just had to say something about it. I've done a lot of research and there was nothing else on the subject but the creepypasta.