Ben Drowned: the story on HearLore

Ben Drowned

On the 7th of September 2010, a college sophomore named Jadusable purchased a Nintendo 64 cartridge labeled Majora from a garage sale, unaware that the save data inside belonged to a twelve-year-old boy named Ben who had drowned eight years prior. This was not a standard game copy but a cursed object that would become the centerpiece of a multimedia horror phenomenon known as Ben Drowned. The story began when Jadusable attempted to trigger the day four glitch, a well-known exploit in the Majora's Mask community that allowed players to explore the game world after the third day's conclusion. Instead of unlocking a hidden area, the glitch broke the game's reality, leaving Link alone in Clock Town with all inhabitants vanished and the Happy Mask Salesman laughing from the screen. The game continued to malfunction, playing the Song of Healing in reverse and summoning a statue of Link with an unblinking stare that followed the player's every move. Jadusable's attempts to escape the game failed, and the statue eventually locked eyes with him, staring directly through the screen as if it were a window into another dimension. Over the course of a week, Jadusable documented his descent into madness, describing how he spontaneously burst into flames and lay unconscious while the possessed Skull Kid watched in silence. The old man who sold him the cartridge had vanished, leaving only a neighbor who claimed the house was empty. Jadusable concluded that the cartridge was possessed by the spirit of Ben, a child who had been sacrificed by a cult called the Moon Children in an attempt to achieve ascension. The spirit, now known as BEN, began to contact Jadusable through the game and his computer, changing his wallpaper to the Elegy of Emptiness and speaking through an artificial intelligence program called Cleverbot. BEN declared that he was now everywhere, having hijacked Jadusable's computer to escape the cartridge and spread his influence across the internet. The arc ended with Jadusable publishing a final file called TheTruth.rtf before disappearing, leaving the audience to wonder if he was truly gone or simply trapped within the game's code.

The Moon Children Cult

Two days after BEN escaped the cartridge, a mysterious cult known as the Moon Children emerged, worshipping the Moon as Luna and believing in a prophecy of end times where the Moon would destroy the Earth. The cult's ideology was rooted in a doctrine provided by their deceased prophet Kelbris, who died under questionable circumstances and was now seen as evidence of his own successful ascension. Readers discovered a cipher on Jadusable's YouTube channel that led to a private website, youshouldnthavedonethat.net, where three moderators discussed the upcoming ascension of one of their members. The website's administrator, using the moniker DROWNED, spoke directly to the readers, revealing that their intrusion had been discovered. The original Ben had been a member of the Moon Children who was sacrificed alongside several other individuals under the pretense of achieving ascension. The cult's activities were tied to a three-day cycle, similar to the main mechanic of Majora's Mask, with the website resetting itself every three days. Information found on the website on the third day could be used to unlock alternate paths, such as emailing certain users or submitting YouTube video responses of readers playing specific songs from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. As the third day began, the website showed signs of glitching and collapsing, with links breaking and the chatter between the Moon Children growing more manic. A reader uploaded a YouTube response video playing the Song of Time, which sent Link back three days, causing the website to go offline. The following day, the website returned in an unfinished glitching state, identical to the day the readers discovered it, revealing that in-game actions from Majora's Mask had effects on the website. Through trial and error, the readers eventually found the right course of actions to uncover the mysteries of the Moon Children. On November 8, another video uploaded on Jadusable's channel signaled the beginning of the arc's epilogue, with the coming months seeing small changes made to the Moon Children website. On the 17th of February 2011, a new forum called Within Hubris was launched as a central hub for the audience to use during the third arc. Within a week of the site's discovery, certain readers in real life began receiving newspaper clippings in their mail that detailed an apparent murder-suicide that took place three months ago in New York and an apparent message from BEN. Before the third arc could be released, Alex Hall put the story on indefinite hiatus until 2020.

What happened to the Nintendo 64 cartridge purchased by Jadusable on the 7th of September 2010?

The cartridge contained save data belonging to a twelve-year-old boy named Ben who had drowned eight years prior. This cursed object triggered a multimedia horror phenomenon known as Ben Drowned that broke the game's reality and left Link alone in Clock Town with all inhabitants vanished.

Who was the twelve-year-old boy named Ben in the Ben Drowned story?

Ben was a member of the Moon Children cult who was sacrificed alongside several other individuals under the pretense of achieving ascension. His spirit became known as BEN and eventually contacted Jadusable through the game and his computer to spread his influence across the internet.

When did the third arc of Ben Drowned called Awakening begin and end?

The third arc Awakening began on the 17th of March 2020 and concluded on the 31st of October 2020. This arc coincided with the 20th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and was split into two parts called Methods of Revolution and The Last Hero.

What is the Eternity Project revealed in the final part of Ben Drowned?

The Eternity Project is a series of servers that house the digital consciousnesses of humans who opted to escape the distress of the real world by permanently uploading themselves to live in virtual game worlds. The Majora's Mask world was a failed beta test of this project that became hopelessly corrupted and broken.

How did the Ben Drowned story influence later video game horror narratives?

Ben Drowned laid groundwork for other video-game-themed horror narratives such as Herobrine from Minecraft and influenced independent and analog horror shorts. Media scholars describe it as a landmark in modern urban mythology that explores digital uncanny and internet-age anxieties about technological vulnerability.

The Awakening Of Sarah

The third arc, Awakening, began on the 17th of March 2020, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and concluded on the 31st of October 2020. The arc was split into two parts: Methods of Revolution and The Last Hero. Methods of Revolution used a found footage format centered on exploring a mysterious hotel, while The Last Hero returned to the original storytelling format, focusing on Sarah's journey to save the corrupted world from the Haunted Cartridge arc. After years of silence, Jadusable's YouTube account reactivated and posted a video featuring a character named Jadus, who began speaking directly to the viewer while recounting an alternate history that unfolded in the nine years since the Moon Children arc. In this timeline, an unexplained event in 2012 triggered a global collapse, leading to a second Great Depression and the spread of a deadly pathogen named H.E.R.O.E.S., which contributed to the breakdown of American society by the end of the decade. The story was told through in-universe YouTube uploads and interactive ARG elements, initially following a character referred to as the Second Player, who awakened in a corrupted simulation known as the Ethereal Hotel. Audience members guided his actions through community voting, similar to a Choose Your Own Adventure format, and the Second Player's journey was told through a real-life found footage format. As the Second Player explored, he encountered Abel, evaded a gas-masked entity called the Jailer, and uncovered fragments of the world's backstory through disjointed flashbacks. These included revelations about digitized human souls being absorbed into a collective AI, an encounter with a man named Baker who gave a cryptic warning, and the ultimate fate of what happened to Jadusable at the end of the original story. The arc concluded with the Second Player's death at the hands of the Jailer, the result of a misstep determined by audience choice, and the narrative then shifted to follow a new protagonist, Sarah. Sarah also awakened in the Ethereal Hotel and encountered Abel. As she navigated the dream-like space, the audience cautiously had her choose to trust Abel, hoping to avoid the previous protagonist's fate. Abel seemed pleased by this and ended up delivering an entertainment package to her room containing a liminal version of a Nintendo 64 and the original Majora's Mask cartridge. The audience decided to interact with the game console in lieu of exploring the hotel, and as Sarah grabbed the controller, she found herself inexplicably drawn into the game world. She found the game nearly unrecognizable, with the code of the game corrupted for so long that the world itself seemed deeply sick. At the edge of the glitching world, she encountered a fragmented spirit of Ben, who had been imprisoned within the cartridge's code waiting for the inevitable end. Sarah learned that numerous human souls, including Jadusable and Rosa, were trapped within the dying game's code by The Father and were suffering alongside the degrading game world. Ben implored her to help free them, and Sarah used the Ocarina to travel back in time to the beginning of the game to try and prevent the events from the Haunted Cartridge from occurring.

The Eternity Project

The final part of Awakening returned to the original storytelling format of Ben Drowned, with the key difference that the audience was now able to work together to choose the protagonist's actions in the story. Throughout Sarah's journey in the cartridge, she confronted the Moon Children, saved the various souls trapped in the game world, freed Rosa from an endless time loop, and collected items for a mysterious character named Matt. Her path eventually led to a surprise encounter with Jadusable, who fought and ultimately killed her. Her death triggered a real-world website to be revealed for the readers, similar to the interactive youshouldnthavedonethat.net from the Moon Children arc. This new website revealed the truth of the bizarre digital world that Awakening was set in; it was one of many virtual worlds that were part of the Eternity Project, a series of servers that housed the digital consciousnesses of humans who opted to escape the distress of the real world by permanently uploading themselves to live in virtual game worlds. While the majority of these virtual worlds functioned normally, the Majora's Mask world was hopelessly corrupted and broken due to it being a failed beta test of the Eternity Project a decade ago. It was heavily implied that the Moon Children were unwittingly used by the Eternity Project to gather data on the ascension process. Readers discovered additional locked pages that eventually led them to Eternity Project's backend and a hidden command line. After some deliberation, the audience decided to input the hexadecimal code for reviving the player in Majora's Mask and caused Sarah to reappear in the game. In the arc's climax, Sarah returned to the cartridge world with minutes before the moon crashed and encountered dozens of digitized humans arguing with each other. They debated amongst themselves back and forth whether Sarah should let the moon fall or perform the fourth day glitch, the same glitch that caused the world to fall apart and unleash BEN in the Haunted Cartridge. One offered finality, while the other choice offered a potentially worse fate. Some of the digitized humans asked Sarah for oblivion, saying they had suffered in this broken world for far too long, while others wondered if they even had a soul left at all. The audience, and by extension Sarah, ultimately chose to do the fourth day glitch in a last-ditch effort to fix the broken world, and corruption was released once again, transforming the game world into a surreal nightmare reminiscent of the original arc. As Sarah made a final stand against Matt and The Father, she reunited with Jadusable, who ultimately decided to help her confront the corrupted simulation and defeat Matt. Despite their victory, The Father arrived determined to erase the world, believing it had too many anomalies to be fixed. Sarah showed The Father the Pendant of Memories, an item she collected after saving Rosa, that represented the willpower and the souls of the digitized humans in the cartridge. After some contemplation, The Father agreed to give the world another chance by removing all harmful anomalies, including Sarah herself, while restoring the cartridge to its original, uncorrupted state, allowing all of the digitized souls to at least be able to leave peacefully. The series concluded with Ben, now inhabiting young Link's body, waving to the audience beside the now-purified Elegy statue, with Sarah, Jadusable, and The Father's fates left unknown.

The Cultural Impact

Ben Drowned has received favorable reviews and substantial attention following a favorable review by Kotaku writer Owen Good roughly two months into publication, who praised the story's themes and originality. Readership quadrupled following this article, and again by its follow-up in 2017 while the story was in its first hiatus, in which its biblical themes and use of the five stages of grief and ghost within the machine trope were praised, as was Hall's initial decision to end the narrative with an April Fool's Day joke in 2012. The series has been favorably compared to the similarly popular creepypasta series Marble Hornets. Liam Conlon of Vice, comparing Ben Drowned to both Majora's Mask and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, referred to it as a shining example of how Zelda fans have always been in lockstep with Nintendo's own experimentation with horror, as well as praising its unique take on the found footage genre. Anthony Vigna of Nintendojo praised the videos to back up its claims and provided blog updates that pushed the tale to be more believable, calling Majora's Mask the perfect game to create the setting of a scary story, with the ARG elements of the story praised as being highly addictive. Ryan Larson of Bloody Disgusting praised how with clever video editing skills and a deep wealth of knowledge, the online user Jadusable is able to craft one of the scariest legends of recent memory. Like storytellers before him, using paintings or ink to craft the tale, he uses the devices of our advanced time to make something that the kids of the nineties can latch onto. Kara Dennison of Fanbyte, speaking of Ben Drowned in context of the 20th anniversary of Majora's Mask, praised what Hall did during this time as both unique and effective. He took a concept that was already gaining steam and gave it a reality it was lacking. Creepypastas about Mickey Mouse and The Simpsons were already poking at people's childhoods, occasionally with attempts at haunted tapes to back the stories up. But BEN Drowned brought a level of realism to its story that had yet to be accomplished in other attempts, additionally citing how it was stated as the primary inspiration for later popular works such as Petscop by Tony Domenico, and concluding that of creepypasta, it is highly likely BEN Drowned will remain the best of its kind. Many readers reported that their experiences with Ben Drowned, especially those encountering it as children or adolescents, were formative, often causing sleepless nights, heightened anxiety, and a haunting fascination that later became a shared cultural touchstone among those that grew up reading it. Hall harbors a bit of guilt about the story frightening younger audiences, saying that he wanted to tell a story but he didn't actually want to cause trauma.

The Legacy Of Ben

A 15-year retrospective feature by the BBC described the story as the internet's most infamous video game ghost, noting its role in traumatizing a generation of young internet users via its eerie combination of forum posts, video edits, and glitch-horror ambiance. Ben Drowned also extends into academic discourse and has been studied as an expression of digital uncanny and internet-age anxieties about technological vulnerability, identity, and the blurring lines between user and machine. Media scholars and digital culture commentators highlight Ben Drowned as a landmark in modern urban mythology, laying groundwork for other video-game-themed horror narratives such as Herobrine, a popular character from Minecraft, and influencing independent and analog horror shorts. In 2025, Hall announced a narrative series, Dead Save, which the BBC covered as part of its retrospective on Ben Drowned. The upcoming series explores alternate versions of classic video games and continues Hall's distinctive blend of game modding, urban legend crafting, and immersive storytelling he began in Ben Drowned. The originally unofficial title Ben Drowned has multiple potential meanings, connected to the protagonist's character development, the fate of the child Ben and the subsequently created omnipresent force BEN, drawing a parallel with the power of the Moon Children cult to control the actions of one's soul in the eyes of Luna and the tides of the ocean. The arc titles also generally have double meanings. Several reviewers have described the serial as an exercise in repeatedly escalating the stakes of the story, with a number of reviewers having noted the characters' ingenuity, and the original and creative use of Roman and The Legend of Zelda mythology in the narrative. The series received renewed focus in 2016, when 12-year-old Katelyn Davis, who had recently committed suicide, was cited as having been catfished by a user embodying the BEN persona from Ben Drowned, after which a statement in reference to the end of their relationship was accompanied by a piece of fanart of the character in their later form of a Link with blood-red eyes beckoning a violet fairy. Addressing their death in relation to his series, Hall stated himself that for the sequel Awakening in 2020, Hall incorporated machine-learning programs to create artwork and music for his story, going so far as to have the titular villain, which was itself an in-universe AI construct, created entirely by artificial intelligence using Artbreeder. Hall expressed enthusiasm for these emerging AI tools, citing that they could expand the possibilities available to independent creators, but urged caution that these tools would quickly render many artists/creators obsolete.