This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/BlairDaniels on 2024-09-22 16:58:42+00:00.

There is a video on YouTube simply titled “White Noise, Black Screen.” It is a 10-hour-long video, designed for playing while you’re asleep.

It stands out among the other white noise videos though, because at around the 6-hour mark, there is a huge spike in the “most replayed” section.

In case you don’t know—”most replayed” is a feature on YouTube that shows what part of the video other people played over and over again. For most videos, it makes sense—on a creepy urban explorers video, the “most replayed” might be where the person encounters a ghost or creepy person, etc. Or a funny skit video might be most replayed at the punchline.

But for a video that’s playing white noise and a black screen for 10 hours, why would there be a most replayed section?

But there it was. A 30-second portion of the video at the timestamp 6 hours, 18 minutes.

Out of curiosity, I jumped to that part of the video and played it. But it looked and sounded the same as the rest of the video: black screen, white noise. No blips in the audio or change to the visuals, as far as I could tell.

Maybe that’s when most people get up. I mean, that was six hours of sleep, right? Maybe a lot of people woke up about 6 hours into the video and shut it off.

That wouldn’t really be replaying it, though.

And also, 30-seconds in a 10 hour video was too accurate. Some people would wake up six hours in, six hours five minutes in… etc. The “most replayed” feature showed a spike at exactly 6:18:14. A huge, narrow spike—specifically at that time—not a broader hump that would imply a range of wakeup times.

Maybe someone linked the video at that time by accident, and shared it to a lot of people?

Comments were turned off, so I couldn’t check if people were saying anything else about it.

Despite the weirdness, that night, I decided to play the video while I slept. That’s how I found the video in the first place—I really did need white noise. My neighbor’s dog kept barking at 6 AM and I needed sleep.

I pressed PLAY on the video and went to bed.

And woke up with a start in the middle of the night.

I didn’t know what woke me up. My phone said it was 3:37 AM. My room was pitch black, except for the dark-gray glow of the “White Noise, Black Screen” video playing. I rolled over, pulled the blanket over me, and tried to fall back asleep.

But my body was pumping with adrenaline. It was like I’d woken up from a nightmare or something, even though I didn’t remember having one. I tried to relax, slowly counting in my head.

That’s when I heard something else.

It’s hard to describe, but I’ll try. Some white noises are computer-generated, so that they truly make a uniform rushing sound the entire time. Others, however, especially in older “sound machines” are actually a clip of white noise repeating over and over again. Listening to it long enough, your brain starts to pick out a pattern of the subtly changing tone, and it gets really annoying.

That’s what this felt like. My brain was suddenly picking out a pattern, a sort of rhythm, to the white noise.

Even though I hadn’t heard it when I fell asleep.

The longer I lay there, tossing and turning, the more my brain picked up on the pattern. A series of whooshes and clicks. It was really annoying—I’m one of those people who can’t sleep in the same room with a ticking clock, and that’s what this felt like. Whooosh. Wup. Click.

Whooosh. Wup. Click.

My nerves grew ragged.

Whooosh. Wup. Click.

Just when I couldn’t stand it anymore—just when I was about to get out of bed and turn it off, because anything, even barking dogs at 6 AM, was better than this—I heard it.

A growling sound.

“Who’s there?” I shouted.

Nothing.

I sat up—and my heart dropped.

A pair of white eyes floated in the darkness.

On my computer screen.

I watched, frozen, as the eyes shifted—off the computer screen. They hung in the darkness a full foot away, staring me down.

Then it moved.

The eyes blazed white as the thing leapt for me, shadowy hands reaching across the bed—a shock of pain as something tightened around my wrist—

I scrambled away, kicking. Grabbed my phone off the nightstand, turned on the flashlight.

Nothing was there.

I ran to the door and turned on the lights. The bedroom was empty. I grabbed the laptop—and saw that I was just past the 6:18 mark in the video. The most replayed part.

I rewound it, replayed it.

Nothing was there.

No growl.

No shadowy figure.

No blazing white eyes.

I ran to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, trying to calm myself, to break myself out of the panic. It was just a dream. You were half asleep. That’s all it was.

But when I looked down at my arm—

I saw a purple bruise just above my wrist.

In the shape of a slender, skeletal hand.