This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Objective_Skin_1291 on 2024-11-04 12:09:23+00:00.

A little backstory: I was fresh out of college, broke, and desperate for work. I had bills, student loans, and no one was hiring in my field. Then, this job popped up on a tech job board: Social Media Content Moderator. The description was pretty vague—“Review and filter flagged content to ensure a safe online experience”—but it was remote, paid decently, and had benefits. So, I applied, got it, and started right away.

At first, it was just as I expected. Spam posts, bots, fake profiles. Nothing major. But then they started putting me on “sensitive content.” This was where things got dark. I’d go through videos of animal abuse, disturbing accidents, graphic violence—you name it. You get a tolerance for it after a while, or at least I thought I did.

Then they started assigning me to “special cases.”

For those, I had to log into this separate portal, super secure, with layers of encryption. I was told it was for “government partners” who needed specific types of content flagged for “national security reasons.” They didn’t explain much beyond that. I figured, okay, maybe terrorism or something. But no.

The content in there was… different.

The first time I opened a video from this portal, it was security footage of a convenience store robbery that ended in a murder. Except, it wasn’t on the news anywhere. I know because I checked. And I checked every day after that, thinking the story would come out eventually. It never did. And that wasn’t the worst of it.

The more I reviewed, the stranger it got. Videos from what looked like interrogation rooms, people being questioned while bound to chairs, others in dark rooms with these empty, lifeless looks in their eyes. I’d see people breaking down in front of the camera, confessing to things I don’t even want to repeat. And every time, I’d check for a news story or a police report. There was nothing. These videos were ghosts.

Then one day, I saw a video of a man sitting in what looked like an abandoned warehouse. He was crying, begging, but I couldn’t hear anything—just muffled audio. There was a timer in the corner of the screen, counting down. When it hit zero, the man’s chair dropped through a trapdoor. I didn’t see where he went, but I heard his scream. The video cut to black. The message on the screen read, “Content reviewed and flagged for internal record.”

After that, I had nightmares, couldn’t sleep. I told my supervisor I needed a break, but she brushed me off, said they needed all hands on deck for a “high-priority contract.” They even offered me a pay raise to keep going. I thought about quitting, but the money was too good, and I was too hooked on finding out what the hell was going on.

Then, about two weeks later, I found her. My sister. Sitting in one of those videos, strapped to a chair, looking terrified out of her mind. She’d gone missing six months before, and no one had found a single trace of her. The police told me it was likely a runaway situation, that she’d come back on her own eventually. But there she was, on my screen, in this hellhole, begging for her life, as a faceless figure stepped into frame, holding a knife.

I started screaming, crying, trying to message someone, anyone, but my chat feature was disabled, and all I could do was watch. They did things to her I can’t even bring myself to describe. When the video ended, the screen went black and showed the same message: “Content reviewed and flagged for internal record.”

I lost it. I threw my laptop across the room and quit on the spot. I contacted the police, told them everything, showed them what little evidence I had saved. They started an investigation but, weeks later, they claimed they “couldn’t find any proof” of the videos. They looked at me like I was crazy, like I’d imagined the whole thing. After that, things only got worse. My email was hacked, my bank account frozen, and I started getting anonymous messages, warning me to “stay quiet” or “face consequences.”

I don’t know who those people were or why my sister was there. But I know this: whoever is behind these videos has eyes and ears everywhere. I keep my head down now, avoid social media, never talk about it. Because if you’re seeing this, just know—there’s a price to looking too deep. And some things, once you see them, never let you go.