Previously: “Watcher.”
This week, a trip into the archives: An early creepypasta centered around a sequence of about 30 photographs that has come to be known as “I Found A Digital Camera In The Woods.” This one is a true creepypasta in the classic sense; it’s always encountered in pretty much the exact same form, with the same two paragraphs of text leading into the images that tell the real story. You need to work for it, though. The images don’t give up their story easily; solving it is sort of like the spookiest game of Where’s Waldo you’ve ever seen.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
Although it’s not clear who precisely the original author or photographer was, the story and its images seem to have been created in 2004. Numerous posts featuring the exact same text and photographs can be found on a variety of message boards and forums bearing dates from late August to early September of that year. The earliest — and most frequently encountered — date seems to be Aug. 21, as seen here, here, and here.
The two paragraphs that make up the sole text of the story do change a little bit from post to post; the last few sentences are often adjusted so that they fit their context as closely as possible. Several, for example, note something like “I don’t have enough webspace free right now, so…” or “I don’t have my own hosting, so…”; the upshot in these versions is that the photos the narrator found on the camera have been resized and compressed “so I don’t put a strain on Imageshack.” (Ah, good ol’ early 2000s internet!) Others, meanwhile, note that the camera “had some nice pictures on it,” which the narrator thought they’d include in their thread, “hence the 56k warning” or “hence the photos tag” — either instead of or in addition to a note about the image file size.
It’s occurred to me that the near-simultaneous appearance of the story in so many places could be the coordinated work of one person or a group of people attempting to go viral with the tale; alas, though, I have no one to confirm whether or not that’s the case, so it remains a theory only.
Anyway, below, you’ll find the two paragraphs of text that usually accompany the images; you’ll need to click through to see the images themselves.
It’s worth it, though.
Trust me.
Last week I drove to a nearby town. The town is surrounded by tall hills and mountains, and you can have a very pleasant hike down any of the numerous trails there. Anyway, I was climbing one trail and enjoying the good weather when I saw what looked like a silver box. When I approached, I saw it was a digital camera!
It’s a 3.3 mpixel Powershot S20! Slightly scuffed, but otherwise fine. It rained the next day, so I was really lucky to get there when I did. The battery was dead so i couldn’t see what was on it or what kind of photos were on it. When I got home, I also saw it had a 300 mb hard drive inside! This must be like a $250 value folks, I pity the fool who dropped it so carelessly. Anyway, just wanted to share. It also had some nice pictures on it, and I’m putting those up in this thread, hence the 56k warning. Not sure why some of them are blurred … but some are quite disturbing.
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[Photo via Free-Photos/Pixabay]
