This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/torremotumbo on 2024-10-17 02:14:20+00:00.
The university’s archives were a chaotic, neglected treasure trove. Decades of research papers, recorded lectures, and historical artifacts were scattered across ancient hard drives and outdated computers. No one had bothered to organize it, let alone back it up, until recently. It wasn’t just academic work stored down there; some of it was irreplaceable—rare interviews, field recordings, and data from long-gone professors that could never be replicated. The panic didn’t set in until a few of the older drives failed, and they realized that years of irreplaceable knowledge could disappear with a single corrupted file.
I had worked at the university for a while, mostly on routine tasks, but when the urgency of saving the archives became clear, my supervisor handed me the task. They needed someone to go down into the basement storage and catalog every computer, every hard drive, and transfer all the data to a secure online server. It seemed straightforward, though overwhelming in scale. But the moment I stepped into the basement—an odd, windowless labyrinth with flickering fluorescent lights—I knew something was off. The space felt strangely disconnected from the campus above, like it belonged to another time, another world.
Each room was crammed with old equipment: reel-to-reel tape machines, dusty computers, forgotten research equipment—all piled haphazardly over the years. I set up a small workstation in the first room, using an old desk covered in obsolete electronics, and began methodically searching through the clutter. As I moved from room to room over the course of several days, I felt an unsettling shift in the air. The deeper I went into the basement, the darker and more claustrophobic it became. And then I started working on the last computer, and it just would not open.
I tried everything, and I mean everything, until frustration came rushing in and I just hit the unit really bad.
And it cracked. At first, I panicked. Then, I noticed something… grey sticking out.
An USB drive, jammed inside a unit? How could that even work? Why would someone put it there? Were they… hiding it?
I connected it to a random computer, expecting nothing, but there it was—a folder on the desktop labeled Restart. Inside, a single audio file. I hit play: white noise. I connected external speakers; still nothing but a cold hiss. I copied the folder to my main computer.
When I opened it again, there were two files. And both played songs.
Each time I transferred the folder to a different computer, more songs appeared. The music was strange, unsettling, and the more I listened, the more it twisted something deep inside. The songs felt wrong—like they shouldn’t exist. I tried not to think about it, tried to ignore the creeping sense of dread, but the songs wouldn’t let me. They multiplied, shifting and warping.
The files from the unaccounted-for USB drive have parasitically attached themselves to my life over the last few days and have taken up most of my time and attention. With the way things have been going, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared.
I haven’t listened to much else, despite being a prolific music listener and audiophile all of my life. I’ve developed a kind of obsession with these songs. I’ve come to know them like the back of my hand. Well…more or less. I came to know the lyrics, structure, instrumentation, arrangement, etc. of each song, and that’s given way to a series of dizzying problems.
Going back to my previous post, I mentioned how on first listen while in the basement, I had a strong feeling that there was something wrong with the songs. I don’t just mean with the strange behavior of the files but with the music itself - it really came off as ominous and threatening. Naturally, I assumed that becoming familiar with them, I would gradually outgrow those feelings.
The opposite has happened. I mean, I did eventually overcome my fear of the music itself - in fact I find it to be quite profound and interesting. But something else is wrong.
I honestly don’t know how to write about this in a way that comes off as reasonable, so I’ll just write it as it has happened and let it stagger you the same way it did to me. The songs are changing.
In multiple ways.
It all started with trivial lyric changes that I chalked up to memory distortion. At first, I would notice how one word would change for another that sounded very similar to it, etc. I obviously thought that I clearly had not listened to the lyrics carefully enough - that perhaps I was mistaking the song structure. But then, it started to become clear that something really wrong was happening.
Entire lines would change - at first the lyrics of one verse would swap with another, but eventually I was listening to completely new words that I knew for sure were not initially there. I tried to convince myself that it was just me, and that the mysterious origin of the files was feeding into my perception of them. I needed to gain some clarity. I made a few notes regarding simple empirical things that could be known about the songs - I wrote down the lyrics for each song, as well as their root key and length. I first started to notice variating lengths in the files when I went for a run that always takes me forty minutes to complete. By then, I knew without question that the full length of the project ran thirty-eight minutes in total. When I reached the end of my run, the project was still running - it went on for a full seven minutes longer than possible, clocking in at forty-five minutes. I checked the time to confirm the phenomenon and it was 100% due to variations of time in the songs.
Then, bigger changes began to happen. Entire structural changes were occurring within the songs. Verses and choruses were being switched around and arrangements played by specific instruments were being replaced with others along with general differences in tonality - sometimes by as little as a quarter tone to as drastic as a couple of whole tones. Recently, I clocked a song running for a full thirteen minutes when I had recorded its length at just under five minutes. How can it be possible that the musical content of these files is changing?
I haven’t even mentioned what is the most unnatural and terrifying thing about this whole affair. The content of the lyrics seems to be aware of who I am, what I am doing and what I am thinking. I don’t want to include too many details about my personal life but I’ll say that throughout my life I have had a very difficult relationship with a particular member of my family, and that two days ago I had a falling out with this person that was way more destructive and toxic than any previous one (there have been many but this may truly be the last). In as few words as possible, I went through something unspeakable for many years during my childhood and this family member revealed that they knew exactly what was going on and did nothing to help. After this confrontation I came home in a daze. I felt like my mind and body were going to give out - I’ve been sober for over 14 years and I’d never truly considered drinking or consuming drugs again for over 10. I was so tempted to make a quick stop before getting home to make the pain go away. But I did what I’ve done for the past 14 years that has never failed me - losing myself in a room filled with music.
As soon as I arrived home, I quickly went up to my studio and put on a special playlist that I’ve curated over the years for when things get rough. I slowly started to come around and feel a little better. I remember I was listening to a J.J. Cale song when suddenly the song was cut off and a song that I immediately recognized as part of the Infinite Error folder started playing. Strange, I thought, but didn’t hesitate in just re-playing the song I was previously listening to. But it happened again. Too in the moment, I said fuck it and just kept listening - I had bigger problems to attend to than worrying about some computer glitch. I wasn’t exactly in the mood for that kind of music but there was something exhilarating about the song that I found distracting in a way that I really needed.
Then it started happening again - the song was changing.
But this time, the lyrics were unmistakably about me. About my past.
I will not go into detail about what it said but the lyrics were a perverse and cruel poem about my childhood, describing things that are so specific to my memories that I was left with no doubt in my mind that something evil and demonic was happening with these songs.
It’s impossible to explain how crushed I felt in that moment - I struggled to turn off the music and my computer because my hands were shaking horribly. I felt as if the entirety of creation and its spiritual underside had spat on my face.
I am lost. I am at my weakest. And I have no explanation for what is going on. I don’t know how to make it stop. I’ve copied the files, deleted them, and yet they spread like a virus, infecting every corner of my life. Now, I can’t tell where the music ends and I begin.
I'm afraid this is no mere glitch—something evil is attached to these songs, and it's pulling me under.
Oh, and there’s something else.
It started small, just a creeping sensation at the back of my neck, the kind that makes you glance over your shoulder for no rea...
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