Creepypasta: Nightmare Fuel

79: A Warning To Those Thinking of Accessing The Shadow Web

A Warning To Those Thinking of Accessing The Shadow Web by the-deep_web-explorer

How well do you know the Internet? Until two weeks ago, I thought I knew it pretty well. After all, I spend a good chunk of my day browsing Reddit and 4chan, and I'm always up-to-date with the latest memes and circle jerks. I've been a denizen of the internet since the early days of Fortune City pages and IRC channels, and a regular ever since.

Then, about a year ago, somebody introduced me to the "Shadow Web"—a sort of secret layer of the Internet that you will never find by Googling or looking up message boards. There are no "in links" from the surface web to the shadow web. And no, this isn't the "deepnet", in case you were thinking about that. Not some website with gore videos of freak accidents, I've seen those. I assure you this is something far more twisted.

I never asked what his name was. He was a regular who came to the gas station where I worked as an attendant last year. Every time he came in, he would buy $20 to $50 of UKASH vouchers, which I assumed were for porn subscriptions. I think it was a combination of his beige polo shirts and receding hairline that gave off the creepy vibe of a pervert.

One day, he asked for $300 of UKASH vouchers, and I made the mistake of raising the question: what for?

"Have you ever heard of the shadow web?" I remember him asking me casually as he counted $300 from a wad of twenty-dollar bills. I hadn't, so I shook my head. Then he looked through his wallet and withdrew a little slip, one about the size of a credit card. "If you want to find out," he whispered. He leaned towards me and slid the piece of paper into my chest pocket. I gave him his vouchers, he left, and I never saw him again.

Not long after, I left the job to return to school. It wasn't until a couple of weeks ago that I came across the old, yellowy uniform with the piece of paper still in the front pocket. When I opened it up and read its content, I immediately recalled my encounter with the creepy customer.

The piece of paper had instructions on how to get to the "gateway" of the shadow web. There were a lot of steps, some more sophisticated than others. Unfortunately, I was both tech-savvy and curious enough to follow them.

The first thing you'll want to know about this "shadow web" is that you do not want to go there. I've seen plenty of fucked up things on the web, but nothing comes remotely close to the things I saw on the SW. Thinking back, I should have noped the fuck out the instant I saw the front page. I don't know why I hadn't. Maybe something is wrong with me.

When I got to the "gateway page", which resembles one of those welcome pages that pops up when you use the free Wi-fi at the airport or at the mall, the first thing I noticed was the word "Corpsefucking". It was underneath a search field among thirty or so other words which I assumed were the most commonly looked-up things on the SW, things like skinning and mutilation. That should have been my cue to X out.

There were a lot of other things, too, other than sexual content and graphic gore footage. Things like instructions on how to make DIY roadside bombs. Things like a craigslist for cannibals and people who wanted to be eaten by cannibals. Things like a marketplace to buy and sell stolen identities, either individually or in bulk.

I spent almost an hour reading up on leaked war documents and diplomatic cables on a site called avenge.shweb. The website looked very retro, if you know what I mean. The layout had frames and each frame had its own scroll bar. When I found myself clicking on links without thinking twice, I realized I had become comfortable on the shadow web.