The Ghost In My Machine

Stories of the Strange and Unusual

The Most Dangerous Games: The Candles Game

by

Previously: The Hosting Game.

There are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t play The Candles Game; the least spooky one is “good gravy, fire hazard, much?” The others, though… well, let’s just say that whatever you might hear behind darkened closed doors is best left alone.

[Like what you read? Consider supporting The Ghost In My Machine on Patreon!]

Like a couple of the other games we’ve covered here, this one arose from the NoSleep subreddit. Although it wasn’t submitted by FableForge, it hit reddit shortly after The Three Kings did; oddly, though, its creator, shortyrulz21, has been inactive ever since. There’s undoubtedly a logical explanation for his or her silence… but I can’t help but think it should be taken as sign that this game should only be — as always — played at your own risk.

Players:

  • 1 principal.
  • 1 partner.

Requirements:

  • 1 candle for every room in your home.
  • 1 candle for every hallway in your home.
    • NOTE: All candles should be capable of standing up on their own. Pillar candles are a good choice; if you must use tapers, make sure each has a candle holder.
  • Matches or a lighter.
  • A timekeeping device with an alarm. A digital wristwatch is ideal.

Instructions:

The Prelude:

  1. Begin during daylight.
  2. Close all the windows, curtains, and/or blinds in your home.
  3. Turn off any and all electronic devices — if it can make noise or light up, it should be off and, ideally, unplugged. Portable electronics such as phones, tablets, MP3 players etc. should be placed in a box after they have been turned off; the box should then be placed out of sight in a closet or cabinet. The only electronic that should remain turned on and outside the box is your timekeeping device.
  4. Place one unlit candle at the end of each hallway in your home.
  5. Have your partner place one unlit candle on the floor of each room in your home except for your own room. Do NOT let your partner tell you where the candles are. Do NOT ask your partner where the candles are. Once your partner has hidden the candles, he or she should leave your home and not return until 6:00am.
  6. Place one unlit candle inside your room directly in front of the door. Do NOT have your partner place this candle; you as the principal must place it yourself.
  7. Close the doors to all of the rooms in your home.
  8. Set the alarm on your timekeeping device for precisely 11:10pm.
  9. At sunset, enter your room, close the door, and go to sleep. Keep your matches or lighter nearby.

The Main Event:

  1. When your alarm wakes you up, confirm that it is precisely 11:10pm.
    • Note: Do NOT proceed if your alarm did not go off at the correct time. If the alarm did not go off at the correct time AND it is still dark out when you wake up, remain in your bed. Remain facing the ceiling. Do NOT look around your room or under your bed. Do NOT fall asleep. Do not move until 6:00am.
  2. If your alarm rings precisely at 11:10pm, you may proceed. Once it goes off, you have one minute and one minute only to light the candle in front of your door using your matches or lighter. Do NOT look around your room after the candle is lit. Do NOT proceed if you do not light your candle in time.
  3. If you manage to light your candle by 11:11pm, you may proceed. Knock on the door to your room three times. There should be a three-second interval between each knock. Do NOT proceed if you hear any noise from beyond the door after the third knock.
  4. If you do not hear any additional noises, you may proceed. Speak out loud the words, “I am ready to play.” Open your door and place the lit candle from your room outside it. Close the door behind you.
  5. Begin moving through your home, matches or lighter in hand and timekeeping device nearby, obeying the following conditions:
    • Whenever you reach a candle in a hallway, light it.
    • Whenever you reach a door to a room, knock on it three times with a three-second interval between each knock. If you hear any noises from inside the room after knocking, do not open the door; skip the room, but do not forget about it. Come back to it later.

    NOTE: All the doors should be closed when you reach them. If any of them are open, do NOT proceed. If you see a light from under any of them and you have not yet found and lit the candle within, do NOT proceed. Leave your home immediately. Do not return until after 6:00am.

  6. If you do not hear any noises from inside the room after knocking, open the door. You have three minutes to find and light the candle your partner previously hid within it. NOTE: If you do not manage to find and light the candle within three minutes, do NOT proceed. Enter the room, close and lock the door, and lie down facing the ceiling. Do not look around the room. Do not fall asleep. Remain there until 6:00am.
  7. If you do find and light the candle within three minutes, set the lit candle back down, leave the room, and close the door. Do NOT reopen any of these doors after you have successfully found and lit the candles.
  8. After you have found and lit all the candles in your home, making sure to return to any rooms you previously skipped, return to your room. Knock on the door three times with a three-second interval between each knock. If you do not hear any noise from behind it, enter the room, close the door behind you, lie down on your bed, and face the ceiling. Do NOT look under your bed or around your room. Do NOT fall asleep.

The Ending:

  1. At 6:00am, the game is complete. Your house should now be safe.

Additional Notes:

  • Avoid looking into any mirrors until the conclusion of the game. If possible, turn all the mirrors in your home around or cover them up during the Prelude.
  • Once sunset arrives, you should be the only person within your home. It’s also best not to have any pets around, as they may disrupt the game.
  • While moving about your home, look only in front of you. Do not turn to look at any movements you may or may not see in you peripheral vision.
  • Should you hear any voices during the game, do not speak to them.
  • The following are all grounds for a losing condition:
    • Disobeying any of the rules.
    • Performing any actions other than those specified by the rules once the game has begun.
    • Running.

Concerning Losing Conditions:

Do not lose.

The Candles Game: FAQ.

***

Support The Ghost In My Machine on Patreon for behind-the-scenes access and other bonus content. You can also follow on Twitter @GhostMachine13 and on Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine.

[Photo via]

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I hope an enemy of mine does this and picks me as their partner. Then I hide all the candles in crazy places and places they’re too dumb to look, heck, hide the candle behind a fridge!

    Reply

  2. Urm, I have some rooms which don’t have doors, just an arch. Is it still possible to perform this, and just assume it is a hallway? Imagine doing this in an apartment or condo though

    Reply

    • If you lose, you may or may not have your life flash before your eyes and doubt every thing you’ve ever done, and depending upon how far you got, your kitchen, or your entire house, may or may not go up in a ball of flames before you get to your second chance—the door—with you inside it, and then… You may or may not wake up in a room that looks and feels like your bedroom only to be awoken again to find your partner screaming for help. You may or may not reach them in time to see them smile maliciously before murdering you brutally and with it your trust and faith in anything you ever thought was real until you wake up in hospital to find that it was all a dream. The doctor will assure you that everything is okay and that you’re on the psych ward because some unbelievable things happened, and then when your family come to see you, you’ll be brought back to every argument and fight you ever had with them, and they’ll cry, and you’ll laugh, and then when they ask you how you’re doing, you’ll tell them you want to go home at which point they’ll tell you you are home and you’ll go berserk. When you wake up from the sedation, you’ll probably wake up on your lawn or in the vicinity of the house you played the game in and tentatively make your way back inside, before checking the time and realising that it’s gone backwards and nothing is as it seems. For example, a little detail regarding the decoration of your house is off, and then the lights that you’ve only just realised are on will flicker off, and your personal hell will cook up a new scenario for you to try and claw your way out of. This may or may not continue until 6am at which point you may or may not be monumentally traumatised by the sickening and hellish things you saw and experienced in the psychotic not quite ground hog day cycle of your fate if you lose when playing this game.

      A word of advice: Do not play. This is not a game.

      Reply

    • Remember that thing about the voices n stuff? That means something is in your home while you are playing this. And if you lose, my guess is that the thing in you home will murder you.

      Reply

  5. … So I can’t have someone with me for emotional support? Also, why the ceiling? What would happen if I faced the floor or somewhere else with my eyes closed?

    Reply

  6. Can’t the creatures just lean over you while you’re staring at the ceiling and say boo? Not exactly boo, but if I were a creature of the night that had to follow rules, I’d find myself a loophole.

    Reply

    • Demons are different from devils. Demons tell the truth while devils are the tricksters. Its not the demons fault if we play their deadly games.

      Reply

  8. What if I finish the game and knock on the door to my bedroom but I hear noises? What do I do about rooms within other rooms?

    Reply

  9. What happens if someone goes into a room that is lit (but they haven’t gotten to the candle yet)?

    Reply

  11. My only question: there anything you get for winning? Normally a winning condition will mean a reward, but I don’t see any here.

    Reply

  12. What is the point of this? The thrill factor? Adrenaline rush? The only reason I’m thinking about even doing this is for YouTube. I did The dark mirror ritual last night. It was cool. I would recommend it for people who don’t sleep.

    Reply

  14. I know I can’t ask my partner to tell me where the candles are, but can I ask them to place them in extremely easy hiding places (i.e just leave them in the middle of the floor?

    Reply

    • I’d assume that seeing light under a door you didn’t light a candle in is part of that, as in you’re not the only one trying to find them.

      Reply

    • My guess is that either it just alerts anything/everything in your house and gives away where a you are, or it simply just goes against the rules (you’re moving too fast for it to be fair, maybe?) and would just anger who/whatever is in the house with you.
      Either way, it’s always best to listen to the rules with this sort of thing.

      Reply

  16. I have a built-in bathroom in my bedroom. Does that bathroom need a candle, or does it count as a part of my bedroom? Can I just not do this one at all?

    Reply

  17. If, between the time when my partner places the candles and I begin the game, my partner tells me where they are, I ask my partner where they are, I just get cold feet and don’t want to continue or I encounter any other red flags, can I just not play the game and clean all the candles up?

    Reply

  18. If I have a glass door in my house, should I cover up the glass part with a dark sheet? Also, if I fail to light the candle in time, can I just sprint out my front door and leave my house until 6, if the door is close enough?

    Reply

    • Yes, cover any windows, glass on doors or windows. When invoking rituals like this they act as doorways to let things in you don’t want to be let in. Also, do not run during this game. Doing so will allow the demons in your house at the time to find you and attack you since running during this game is a losing condition.

      Reply

    • The bathroom in your room is called an ensuite, it isn’t a room so no candles necessary for it. The forum doesn’t specify anything about not ending the game so you should be alright if you wanna back down. Glass doors should most likely be covered due to the fact that this is an unfair advantage. Decorative candles should probably be removed.

      Reply

  21. I have a question. Since all spaces with 4 walls, a ceiling and a floor are considered rooms, there’s a problem. Because my toilet, and some other “rooms” are way too small to lie into if I don’t find the candle. And are closets considered rooms? Because that would be dangerous to light a candle there.

    Reply

    • If the closet has a light, 4 sides and a door then yes, it is a room. To lay down in a small room, I would suggest sort of curling up. Except instead of keeping your head to the side like normal, face it towards the ceiling. I just wouldn’t play this game altogether. Best wishes if you do…

      Reply

  22. Sooo, I’m assuming you just do this for fun? Well… I don’t think it’s very fun. And do stairs count as a hallway? Cause… I has stairs

    Reply

  23. Many people actually say that this is only a thrillseeking activity or an adrenaline rush game.. But those people are wrong..

    A kind of this game is actually can open a doorway or portal to other dimensions.. Also mirrors should be covered up because it is another way to hell, covers in mirrors is like a barrier between two worlds, the world of the living and the world of the dead…

    Whatever you see.. Is not like what it seems to be… Like your room, there’s a 50 percent chance that is safe also 50 percent dangerous….

    We never know what are we summoning… And games like this is also can trap your soul… And you are alone in your home, no one will save you..

    Best thing to do after the game is to purify your rooms and the main house, ask for protection and surround your whole house with salt and water mixture to create a protective barrier to protect your family against whatever creature lurking and crawling towards your house… In that way the break all the mirror in this way the connection between our world and the world of the dead will have no connection
    Purify the broken mirrors to ensure that the doorway is now sealed and no more bad spirits can come out

    But remember…. The barrier that protecting your home can break… To ensure it’s strength every twice or once month do the purification process that you have done previously

    Reply

  24. I did this but when I got back to my room at the end I knocked three times as it said to. I waited three seconds between each knock.
    When I finished I heard the sound of something breathing on the other side of the door.
    I had lit all of the candles. I had no other room or hallway to go to next instead.
    I was trapped.

    I just kept knocking and waiting.

    Knock knock knock… breathing.

    Knock knock knock….
    Breathing.

    The candle I had lit in the hall outside my room was the first to die.

    I stood there in the dark hoping that this time the breathing would stop.

    But it didn’t.
    Knock knock knock….
    Breathing

    Knock knock knock……
    BREATHING

    all the candles had died and I was in total darkness;
    knock,
    Knock
    KNOCK.

    breathing…

    Knock knock knock

    Breathing.

    ……..

    My partner came back at 6am and found me standing there by my door. Tears rolling down my face and with bloody knuckles. There was a bloody stain on my bedroom door where I’d been knocking, harder and harder waiting for the breathing to stop.

    They told me I could stop now and I had completed the game. I knocked again and the breathing was silent.

    Is my house now safe?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

From the Vault

View All >

Letters from the Beyond

Enter your email to receive blog posts and updates by email

%d bloggers like this: