Creepy Myths and Fairytales

The Red Room Myth

This is another urban legend hailing from Japan, so you can assume all the quoted text was originally in Japanese. It concerns a Japanese popup ad and a teenage boy. He hears about an internet ad that supposedly leads to death, and being a fan of horror fan, when he gets home he starts actively looking for this supposedly deadly popup, but he's unable to find anything on the subject. As he's about to give up, a small red window pops up in the corner of the screen. The ad is very plain – it has red background and plain black text, and only contains the following question: "Do you like?"

Apparently, when the teenage boy closed the popup ad, it reappears. Being tech savvy, he tried running his anti-virus software, but his computer was clean. He tried closing the ad again, but it reappeared in the same way as before.

He tries everything – turning off the computer, unplugging it – everything. But all this is to no avail – the popup just won't go away. Frustrated, he decides to just close the ad as many times as it takes for it to go away. After doing this a few times, he begins to realize that the ad isn't the same – it seems to be slowly revealing more letters as he closes it each successive time.

"Do you like th"

"Do you like the r"

"Do you like the red r"

"Do you like the red roo"

"Do you like the red room?"

Apparently, this teenager was found to have committed suicide the next, and the police found his walls covered with blood.

red room 2

OK, I admit – this story isn't super scary, particularly because it's a bit dated. It actually originates from a flash animation( which you can still find here). Here's the scary part.

A horrible tragedy occurred on June 1st, 2004, in Sasebo, Japan. A young girl, nicknamed 'Nevada-tan' by the Japanese online community, brutally murdered an older classmate, named Satomi Mitarai. Satomi was only 12, and Nevada-tan was even younger – only 11.

Nevada-tan apparently committed this heinous act because the Satomi had posted an online comment about her, saying she was a 'goody-goody. The murder itself was barbarous – the two girls were in an empty classroom, and Nevada-tan used a knife to slashed her classmate's arms and throatafter which she apparently returned to her own classroom, drenched in the victim's blood.

Japan was shocked by this incident, and in particular the community of Sasebo was questioning how an 11-year old could commit such a terrible crime, particularly since the girl who committed the crime was considered thoroughly normal. After some police investigation, one potential reason was discovered.

In Nevada-tan's internet browser, the very first bookmark was the flash video of The Red Room.