Worse Contest Ever

Long Trip

So this is what it felt like? To finally win something? To finally feel like you had something right happened to you?

Maya's excitement was out of this world, she just finished a called she didn't expect to ever get and right now she felt like she was living a dream.

"So? You got it?" Asked her boyfriend, Frank. Maya put her phone down on her bed and stared at her boyfriend with a huge smile on her face.

"CONGRATULATIONS!" Her boyfriend exclaimed, as he jumped from their bed, picked his girlfriend up and started swinging her around in circles. He was a giant, 6'4 and very well built, he could easily her small fragile 5'1 frame like she was some sort of rag-doll, at least he was a very gentle giant.

"Wait! Put me down! I gotta start packing!" Maya exclaimed. Her boyfriend stopped swinging her around and put her back on their bed.

"Packing? When are you leaving?"

Well they had a delay while picking a winner... I leave in 2 days. For what seems to be 3 to 4 weeks, depending how long it takes to film. They want me there for the full see the full process" She explained.

A month ago she entered a contest, it was to have the opportunity to join the hosts of her favorite show in one of their little adventures. A 'ghost hunting' show called Buzzfeed Unsolved, hosted by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej. Before she even watched the show, Maya never had any interest in ghost or even ghost hunting shows, she always felt they were very staged. One day while scrolling down YouTube she stumble upon a video on her recommendations: Buzzfeed Unsolved: The Demonic Goatman's Bridge. She watched it out of curiosity and ever since she was hooked on the show. She loved their dynamic, a believer and a skeptic, their humor and constant banter. She also loved the cases, even though she never considered herself a believer or a skeptic, she always felt she was somewhere in the middle, struggling between believing or just not. As time went by she met many amazing people from the fandom, many great artist, writers etc. They had a very welcoming and respectful fandom, something that Maya loved due to the fact that at the beginning she considered herself "one of the old ones", at 26 years old. Obviously she wasn't the oldest fan at all, but their fandom was mostly people who were way younger than her, not that she or anyone minded.

When Maya entered the contest, she fully believed she wasn't going to get it, it was a simple entry; a quick story of how they discovered the show and why they wanted to join the boys for an investigation. Very simple and straight to the point. Maya's entry was pretty much her explaining how she wasn't a believer or skeptic, how she also was a film student and hoped to even gain some experience in the process. Sadly once she entered she didn't heard from them for a long time, many fans speculated that they were "retracting" the idea of bringing a fan to an investigations, too risky, too much paperwork. They went silent for an entire month, without any social media updates or anything. Then one night they posted "We found the one!" and everyone went crazy. Who did they picked? Who was the lucky winner? Maya strongly believed it wasn't her.

"I can't wait to see you all scared!" Her boyfriend said while he helped make her bags for her trip. She couldn't wait either, everything was still so surreal, she was going to be one her favorite show.

The person that had called her was one of Buzzfeed's producers, it felt like a relief that it wasn't the "ghoul boys" calling, she wasn't ready yet for them. The producer explained to her that it took them so long to pick a winner because the boys were busy picking the winner themselves, carefully reading each submission and making a short list of possible choices. The producer told her they had thousands of submissions and they really believed it was going to take them even longer to decide. Maya felt incredibly lucky, she was so used to always losing or just never being considered for anything, this felt like a miracle.