As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 174 - Dark Web Horror Stories

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

Today, on the 174th episode of the As The Raven Dreams podcast, we have 4 True Chilling stories. These stories come from the shadowy corners of reality, where everyday life takes an eerie twist & ordinary people experience the extraordinary. Today we will be diving into Some terrifying Dark Web Horror Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like or rate the podcast, and leave me a comment with your thoughts if the platform your own supports it! Scary story episodes 2 to 3 times a week (New stories On Wed/Fri, Comps/remasters on Sundays) If you have a story to submit, would like to find where to listen to the podcast, or want to find me on social media platforms, all of that info can be found at https://www.astheravendreams.com You can also send stories into my subreddit (r/theravensdream) or email them to me at [e-mail] Want to check out some ATRD Podcast Merch? ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams Or for signed merch ➤ https://ko-fi.com/AsTheRavenDreams I wrote a novel, "The Insomniac's Experiment" by Raven Adams! Check it out on amazon (Or you can email me for a signed copy!) Join Patreon to get early access and support the Podcast! ➤ https://www.patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Check out my gaming channel with my pal Ghost_Ink ➤ @superNefariousBros On YouTube Disclaimer ➤ Episodes include a content warning for language and sensitive/disturbing content. Listener discretion is always advised. ALL Audio and visuals on this podcast are copyright of AS THE RAVEN DREAMS / RAVEN ADAMS and may not be duplicated, in any format. Bless This Mess. #AsTheRavenDreams #TrueScaryStories #GlitchInTheMatrix Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in todays episode... AnonyDonny, HiddenFox, m0xtr3aux, Tom K. As Well As Any Author That Has Requested Anonymity. TimeStamps… 1 ➤ 2:02 2 ➤ 10:36 3 ➤ 24:44 4 ➤ 36:38 ----- #TrueScaryStories #AsTheRavenDreams #DarkWebStories #RedditStories And Remember; You are loved, you are important, and you are valid. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and good afternoon, my good friends. Hopefully you're having a beautiful day so far. I believe it to be Friday. I'd have to check my calendar, but I think it's Friday. Though what is Friday anymore, honestly? I don't know. I don't know what that meant. Don't ask. Anyways, hopefully, you're all having a great week.

Today we have some dark web stories, and that's it. Just dark web stories. As such, today's episode will be a little shorter than normal. I do apologize for that, but Dark web stories, uh, they do best on their own, in my opinion, so,

yeah, I want to put these just with themselves, for you all to enjoy. Uh, I've been asked to do dark web stories a lot in the past. I've did quite a few of them over the few years that I did them. I haven't gotten submissions for them in a long time, so the fact that I got a few of them over a couple months and was able to get them in a

collection is kind of amazing. I appreciate people that did some in, did send them in, did submit them. So I was trying to say, both things at the same time. Um, yeah. Hopefully you all enjoy them. Like I said, it's a bit shorter than normal, so there won't be a second ad role.

There will only be the one mid roll after the first story. And I'll just keep it slim from there. So, if you do enjoy it, please do let me know in the comments down below if you're on a platform that allows comments. Do consider rating the podcast if you haven't done so already. That helps tremendously. And random question, um, what is a rule that you often break? It doesn't have to be a serious rule. It can be something silly.

Like, don't wear white after Labor Day situation. I don't wear white at all, so I don't... Yeah, I don't break that rule. But anyway, what's a silly rule that you break if you want to answer that question? If you want to have something to comment. Other than that, just comment a high. I'd love to see you in the comments. I hope you all have a beautiful day.

I hope I see you again here very soon. But until then, much love and enjoy. I'm not usually the type to get into these sorts of things, and I don't do things that are illegal. I want to get that out there right away. I am pretty tech-savvy, but I use my computer for work, hobbies, and just the normal everyday user stuff. But I got curious at one point. I don't remember how or why my intrigues started, but I know there was a conversation with someone I work with about things on the dark web. and that conversation led to interest, which led to me being stupid.

Curiosity killed the cat, right? So, after that whole curiosity started to scratch at me, I decided I would just do it. I had no plans to do anything illegal. Not everything on the dark web is illegal. Some of it is just too edgy for the surface. And I knew how to be safe. I watched a few tutorials on how Tor worked.

how to use it, what the whole non-indexed thing meant, the difference between dark and deep, etc. I was educated in a very shallow sense. So I got Tor installed and running and read more on how to use it, and then started down a rabbit hole. One thing about using the dark web that you don't consider is how tense you feel when you're going through things. It's probably because of the social stigma, but, but everything I clicked felt grimy, like I was one click away from committing a felony, which sounds kind of silly, I know. After a while, I ended up on this forum that was more or less just white

text on a plain black background. It was like a very plain text version of 4chan, more plain text than what 4chan even is. There were subjects about a few things, nothing too crazy, but A lot of it was people talking about movies, where to download them, hacking, exploits, a lot of cybersecurity talk, honestly. There were a few that were talking about how they had scraped a database and wanted to sell the data, but I stayed away from that because I knew that that would have been bad. Then I found one that was a post from someone saying, hey, today is my birthday. Come to my party. and then there was an onion address listed after it. I don't know why I decided to check that link out. I don't know why I was like,

hey, this will surely be a troll, or something about a legit party. But I decided that I wanted to know. The link took a long time to load. Or rather it looked like it was taking a long time to load. It was just a black screen with a spinning wheel making it look like something was coming. I sat there for like five minutes just waiting for something to happen, but nothing did.

I assumed it was a dead link, so I closed it out and forgot about it. I didn't do much else after that on the dark web. I had satisfied my curiosity and was pretty much just done for a while. That is until the next day. This is when things got weird and scary. I was on Facebook, Doom scrolling like I always did in the mornings, when I got an event invite. It popped up in my notifications and was simply titled,

Come to my party. The profile picture was just a black square. The event image was just black, and there wasn't much info beyond a location and a very short description. The location for this event was an abandoned mall, about 15 minutes from my house. I used to go there with my high school friends back before it closed, and after it closed we broke in once, and we walked around, and it was creepy.

It took me a few minutes of WTF to really put together the connection. The whole come-to-my-party thing from that onion link that I clicked, and then this invite. The description is what did it for me. You clicked my link, now you have to come to my party. I freaked out. I mean, freaked, out. I deleted the event invite, changed my Facebook privacy settings to completely lock everything down to private. Then, I got an email to my personal email address that had the same subject.

Come to my party. And the text in the email was just, you clicked my link, you have to come to my party. The address that it came from was a string of random characters, and the domain was also random characters. It was clearly some sort of spoof that wasn't a real address. I did not sleep that night. I spent the entire night doing security scans on my system, checking my files,

researching how to find malware outside of scans, but nothing came up on any of my security scans. I actually went through all of my accounts and changed all of my passwords, put tape over my webcam, and disconnected the computer from the network when I was done. I was feeling more than a bit paranoid.

But it really did mess with me. Clearly this guy had gotten my information. At least my Facebook and my email, and he was messing with me. It was a prank. It had to be. I was dumb enough to click his link and he was just teaching me a lesson. I was completely offline for the entire weekend. A full two days.

Slightly more than two days, actually. I had to plug it back in to get some work done, so I did. At some point, I ended up back on Facebook, and I noticed that I had a friend request. I had locked everything down to friends of friends, so I was sure this wasn't anything related, but when I looked at the account, it was clearly a fake person. Black Square profile picture, no banner, their name was Anani Mouse, and they were, somehow, friends with my aunt. I declined the request and message my aunt telling her this guy wasn't real,

and that she needed to unfriend him. I framed it like he's a scammer trying to steal money, something that would get her attention. Again, I thought it was over, but the day after that, I got another email from another string of random characters, though it was a bit different from the first. The subject said, R.E. My Party.

The email was just as cryptic as everything else. It said, You missed my party. You were the guest of honor and you didn't show up. I'm so disappointed. And that was it. There was nothing else to explain the whole trick. Nothing to tell me what this guy wanted.

That's literally all it said. So I know that may sound anti-close. but I have to tell you that I was terrified. I wasn't sure if there was going to be more of this, if this guy was going to come for me or what, but I was scared. Thankfully, there hasn't been another message, and this was over a year ago at this point. So I think that he's done with me.

I haven't gotten back on tour or any dark web pages since this happened, and I have zero intention to ever, go back again. I don't know what would have happened if I had showed up to the party, and I really don't even want to think about it. Who knows? Maybe there really was a party. Maybe they would have harvested my kidneys.

Don't know, won't know. And at this point, I'm just glad to be past it. Of course, if I ever get another message from this guy, I'll make sure to make an update to all this, but for now, I think I'm in the clear. who I haven't seen since 2009, and have no idea if he's alive or where he is. Keep in mind, we were both around 15 years old at the time. Tetrataga was the nickname of my fellow computer nerd, an admitted hacker friend back in high school. From the day he showed me how to shut down a computer using a fake Internet Explorer icon

program to the invention of the infamous X drive, which he created in the school's network to give certain student IDs access to a specific hidden drive. We're all kinds of contraband from teacher addresses, emails, and phone numbers to answer keys for finals, and the usual memes in 4chan style content were shared. We were friends. Tetra Tetrita was cool, a nerdy, stout kid with Harry Potter glasses, Sandy brown hair, and freckles. He had a carefree attitude and a small group of friends. including me.

That's not what the story is about, though. Tetrata once told me that he discovered something while probing around on Twitter, when he spoke out about some of the issues going on overseas, and that someone on Twitter had responded to him asking if he really was serious about his political views. Tetrata, never backing down from a fight, and as arrogant as ever told this account that he was more than willing to back up his political claims with action. The account sent him an unusual link that I had never seen before, and Tetrataga told me that

it was some real crap, that he knew how to access the link. I knew a fair amount about computers and the internet myself, some of which I was taught by Tetrata. But this was the first time he ever talked about Tor, an onion browser, or the dark web. Tetrata seemed thrilled and excited, and he told me to meet him after school at his dad's place, and he would show me what he was talking about. Understand that I knew nothing about the dark web or how dangerous the internet could be, and my perspective of hacking was as shallow as making fake shutdown icons on school computers,

and thinking that cyberspace was like Tron or the Matrix. I got home from school that day, did my home. work and took my bike over to the house where Tetra Tega lived. And this is actually the first time I had ever gone to his house. His room was messy. He kept dark curtains over his windows. And he had CPU towers of different shapes and sizes. Some dismantled all around his room.

His main CPU was on a tiny dirty desk near his bed, which was simply a mattress on the floor with a few messy blankets on it. There were other things connected to his computer that, at the time, I didn't know what they were, but I surmised that he definitely had some equipment for doing more than just gaming on his computer. He hopped on the computer and began his flurry of typing away. Opened Tor, and he eventually opened the link that he'd been sent. It opened a website that didn't seem normal to me. It looked like an unfinished black page with white scripting,

which began scrolling, and even though I didn't know what was happening, I knew that Tetrataga was looking more enthusiastic than usual as he opened a small window and began typing away on his own. A few minutes passed, as I watched Tetrataga do his thing, and then he dug into his pocket and pulled out a thumb drive. He crammed it into the CPU under his desk and kept typing. Suddenly he stopped typing and stared at his screen. I asked him if he was okay, but he didn't answer, and his joyful expression was now replaced with an expression of pure horror.

He moved the mouse, pressed the keyboard a few times, and it didn't register right away to me that his computer wasn't responding. He pulled his thumb drive out of the computer and then yanked the power cable out of the wall frantically, which actually did scare me. He then ran out of his room to what I assume was his dad's room. which later on he told me he reset the wireless router there. He told me to meet him in the library after school the next day, and then he sent me home. The next day, when I got to school, I definitely hung around the library as much as I could during the free period we had in the mornings. And Tetratago was usually late, but he appeared, pale, and a lot less arrogant than he usually seemed.

He didn't speak, just got on one of the many library computers, did his usual thing and then inserted the flash drive into the computer. I didn't understand what I was looking at until he explained that he was sent about 16 gigabytes of files, containing personal information about employees, government officials, and owners of businesses that were corrupt. He clicked around and showed that the information had been categorized. organized, and that his contact sent it to him, expecting Tetrataga to do something about these people. I didn't believe him at first, mainly because Tetrata was enthusiastic about anything computer-related.

And he had skills, as far as I knew, but the more things he clicked on and opened, the more I realized that the information on the thumb drive looked legitimate. We didn't know who the person was that sent this to him, but Tetratagas said that his computer was compromised and he hadn't used it since. He also told me that a random internet service van was on his street that morning before school, leaving the name out of it, which hadn't been there before. I didn't notice it when I left his house that day before, but it definitely was there now. This is where things got odd. The next day, Tetrataga sent me a text in class telling me to meet him in the hallway near the auditorium, which was on a hallway in the back of the school where no one really walked or checked for students.

I got out of math class to meet him, and the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing a giant brown hoodie. Like his dad's hoodie. And he seemed pale and terrified. I asked him what was wrong and all he did was hand me about. blank envelope with the name Theodore, last name omitted, written on the front. Tetrataga said that it was in his locker that morning. I didn't think about it, assuming that the letter was addressed to his father, but what was inside the envelope was far more chilling than I ever expected.

There were photos of Tetrataga leaving and returning to his house, photos of him on a school bus taken from an unknown vehicle, and photos of him on campus in class. as well as in the commons. There were also photos of an older man who Tetrataga told me was actually his father at his job, and a photo of his mom in front of what he told me was her house across town. His parents were separated, but that's beside the point. My heart began to race as I looked through the photos, hoping that I wasn't in any of them. And it seemed that I lucked out, since I didn't pop up.

As if the envelope and photos weren't bad enough, there was a short-typed letter in the envelope that read. Hello, Theodore, last name. Or should I call you Tetrata? The person who sent you the data is dead, and you're next. It sucks that you're some dumb-ass teenager, but that's what happens when you mess around unprotected on the dark web, thinking it's a freaking game. Don't bother warning anyone or they'll die too, and that include your father, Mark. Martin, last name, and your mother Eileen, last name. I know where he works, and I know where she lives, too.

Have a nice day, since it's probably your last. Tetra Tegas told me he wasn't sure what to do, and I urged him to talk to the principal, but he adamantly refused because the letter said not to warn anyone. I kept going in and out of believing that this was happening or thinking it was some elaborate hoax, since Tetrataga was such a computer enthusiast. But part of me was becoming very nervous at the idea that someone got photos of him and his family and delivered this note to his locker inside the school. We ended up arguing about what Tetrataga should do.

And eventually I had to get back to class, but he did tell me that he already deleted everything off the thumb drive and threw the thumb drive away at the school. Not that he felt it would help him any. He seemed truthfully afraid and genuinely worried that something was going to happen to him. I didn't see Tetrata for the rest of the week. I remember since, at that time, in school, we were getting ready for our end-of-the-year exams. I didn't go to visit him, but I tried to text him and he never responded.

I was terrified to go by his house for a while. I remember that one day I left with my family. family to go shopping and we passed by his street, and the internet van that he mentioned seeing outside his house was still sitting there, which I did think was odd, but I never really read too deep into it past that. A couple of weeks passed, and I hadn't seen Tetrataga at all. So I went by his locker on the first floor of the school. We weren't the kind of friends that had each other's locker combinations, but I wanted to see if it had been clear out and left open as they usually would do for any available lockers at our school.

However, his locker was still closed with his lock still on it. None of the people in our circle of friends had seen or heard from him. They just assumed he was sick, or suspended from one of his computer pranks for the first few weeks. For fear of what the letter said, I didn't ask them if they knew anything about the entire situation. I didn't have any classes with Tetrata, so I couldn't ask his teacher if they knew anything. And the front office made it clear that they didn't discuss student information with other students, so I hit dead end after dead end.

I did finally work up the courage when Friday evening to go by his house, and I saw that the internet van was gone, and instead there was a plain-looking car in the driveway. Thinking that things were okay, I went to knock on the door expecting Tetrataga to open up and say he'd been sick, or suspended for being on the dark web or something mundane like that. But instead, a man in his mid-forties opened the door. I recognized him from the photos as Tetrataga's dad.

He stood there for a second, looking at me in a confused yet longing expression, as if he'd been expecting someone else. I said hello and told him I was a friend of his son and asked him if Tetrataga was there. His eyes went wide and he stepped toward me asking if I'd heard from Theodore recently. Theodore was Tetratagga's real name if you hadn't deduced yet. We just didn't call him that. And he asked me, when was the last time I saw him?

He seemed frantic, almost desperate to hear what I knew. I told him that the last time I saw him. last time I saw him was the day after I came over a few weeks back. And most of us just thought he was sick or suspended or something. His father's eyes watered up and he began to sigh over and over and finally told me that Theodore had been missing from school for weeks, and no one knew where he was. The police had issued a type of Amber Alert for him, but so far nothing had been said.

The investigators told him not to lose hope. but he said that the longer it took to hear anything back, the less likely it was that Theodore, Tetrata, was alive. I told him I was sorry to hear that, and that I would tell him if I heard from or saw Tetrataiga, but deep down, I knew I wasn't going to. It's been 16 years, and I still never heard what actually happened to Tetra Tetrata.

He didn't have... Facebook, MySpace, or anything like that, since back then it wasn't common the way it is nowadays to have social media. And his Twitter account has been deactivated for years. I've never delved into or dealt with the dark web myself, but I understand that if all it took was one mishap to end up missing like this, then I don't want any part of it. All right, so this story or this part of this episode is going to be. be a little different from normal. I recently did a question to my audience asking what kind of content you wanted to see on the channel and a significant number of the people that responded

said they wanted some research level content. Stuff about the topic that is a researchable thing, I guess, that can be explained or told about, sort of like true crime stuff to some extent. I'm not sure how deep I'm willing to jump into the true crime stuff for this channel, but I wanted to give it a shot. So this is the first of this idea. I got with a friend of mine, Tom Kay, and he writes this kind of content for another channel, and we talked about things, and I wanted information about something from the dark web that he wanted to write about. I gave him full creative control on it. He did the research, he did the write-up, and I decided to go ahead and use it in a dark web video because it's a

dark web situation, so yeah. If this isn't your capitia, I understand, but a lot of people wondered it, so I thought, why not give it a shot? And as such, here we go. The free market, or a marketplace of ideas. Euphemisms? Perhaps. Naively, idealistic, well, most certainly. The notion that a market can be established around any and every need or demands sounds great.

In theory. When one actually takes into consideration the darker aspects of human nature, greed, vice, etc., then it should come as no surprise that places like today's sense. subject, the Wall Street Marketplace, or WSM, come into existence periodically. 99% of all crimes are those crimes of opportunity, and when you have the near complete anonymity of the dark web coupled with untraceable Bitcoin transactions, then such dens of inequity don't just become highly likely, they become inevitable. And maybe that's what today's story is really about.

The inevitability of things brought about by situations and how intrinsically connected all these events truly are. The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are. It does not care what their religion is. It only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. Quote, Milton Friedman. If a good or service has a demand, then it's marketable. That is what they say, at least. Some goods and services have been deemed by wide sections of society to be unacceptable. Purchasing illegal drugs, for instance, is frowned upon in most societies,

and in some places merely having an illegal substance in your possession is a death sentence. Marketing other services such as hacking skills or software, murder, or theft for hire. All things that are taboo to offer, yet all things that are in demand. Seeing the demand for these and other illicit goods and services, and in the wake of the downfall of the Darknet Marketplace Silk Road, and other nefarious markets, three German men, Teebo Lousie, aka Coder 420 and Codex 420, Klaus Martin Frost, aka the One, or Dude Boy,

and Jonathan Kala, aka Kronos, began the Wall Street Marketplace. Their services were easily accessed by using a Tor browser and signing up for a free account using a moniker and a password. Once registered, the services offered were wide and varied. Some of the categories available to browse included drugs, counterfeits, jewelry and gold, cardingware, services, software and malware, security and hosting, fraud, digital goods, and guides and tutorials. and each transaction was handled

to that lovely untraceable cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin. Over the course of three years, 2016 to 2019, the WSM marketplace would host 5,400 vendors selling to 1.15 million people worldwide, aiding and abetting the entire rainbow of crime.

From the marketing of illicit drugs such as marijuana and amphetamines to fake or stolen identities, You could find it all right there on the WSM. Another prominent figure in the WSM's day-to-day administration was Marcos Paulo de Olivares, Annabelle, of Sao Paulo Brazil. Annabale was a moderator who, among other things, mediated disputes between vendors and their clients.

One can only imagine what these disputes may have looked like and just what mediating them might have entailed. Annabelle was also something of the public relations guy for the marketplace, having been the one who went to sites such as Reddit, and made promotional posts for the WSM. Drug distribution on a global scale, money laundering, and a whole host of other criminal activity occurred under the auspices of the WSM administrative team. But, of course, it was only a matter of time before the law came investigating this worldwide network.

of shady dealings. Just like every city has that one neighborhood you should avoid, the one where leaving your car parked unattended is just something you don't do, so too does the internet have its wretched hives of scum and villainy. These places take many forms. The Silk Road, Alpha Bay, or the forbear of today's subject, German Plaza Market. The amount of things you can find on these dark-knit marketplaces is truly staggering. The basis of appeal is the complete anonymity the Dark Web provides.

With the rise of cryptocurrencies the world over, committing cyber-based crimes has never been more lucrative. The untraceable nature of blockchain transactions make them the most secure way to move money from one place to another without drawing attention to the transaction. The proverbial noose began to tighten in 2017, when full-blown investigations into the administrators began to, to take shape in three countries, with a veritable soup of alphabet agencies beginning an international effort to identify and detain the heads of WSM. And the charges really ran the gambit. Trafficking of illegal narcotics, malicious software, stolen financial data counterfeit goods, and other contraband, overwhelmingly topped the list. But this made inevitable the second crime that authorities really seemed to pursue against the administrators, death resulting from

distribution of fentanyl. When everything is laced with the most potent opioid on the planet, and you facilitate the distribution of millions of dollars worth of narcotics all over the world, then it becomes inevitable that eventually this kind of thing is going to happen. Nor is it something to be taken lightly when it does. Now this is the part that made the story jump out. and really get my attention. The administrators were aware or at least suspected they were being investigated.

However, it wasn't until they pulled one big virtual heist that the full weight of law enforcement came down upon them. For three years, WSM operated on the dark web, facilitating countless crimes of every nature. As is common in large marketplaces, the virtual currency was held in marketplace escrow, while the vendors delivered their illicit goods and services. and in April of 2019, as the law enforcement of three countries began to get closer,

the administrators of WSM decided to abandon ship, and they diverted around 11 million into their personal accounts, in what amounted to a huge virtual heist. On April 16th, the vendors of WSM found they were unable to withdraw their virtual currency, being held in escrow, which, is ironically, would actually trigger the jury, German authorities to execute a series of arrests and search warrants. After years of monitoring several computers based in Germany and in the Netherlands to host the WSM or GPM servers, or facilitate the transactions, the authorities had been able to ferret

out the three German men and within days the Brazilian accomplice, and bring an end to the preeminent dark web marketplace of the late 2010s. The three defendants were alleged to operate a sophisticated online marketplace where buyers could engage in encrypted communications with vendors, but also an online forum where they could discuss various vendors and the quality of their wares or services. As the investigation played out, it was discovered the three primary suspects had previously operated another German-based darknet marketplace, and they were able to tie several computers based in Germany and the Netherlands to use in both the previous GPM site and the WSM. Part of what the administrators did

were maintaining the website and operating the marketplace to ensure vendors and buyers could access each other and that financial transactions were properly processed, meaning they had full access to the virtual currency that passed through the marketplace. One of the big breakthrough moments for the entire, investigation was when one of the defendants accessed the WSM computers using a VPN. That's a virtual private network. However, the VPN connection failed, and his IP address was revealed, allowing them to find

his specific location. Another key part of the investigation were the presence of an undercover special agent from the FBI who purchased a Fools, or full set of identifiable. name, date of birth, social security number, address, and credit card number of a resident of California from a vendor on WSM known as David CVV. Law enforcement also managed to identify two of the largest drug vendors on WSM, Platinum 45, and Lady Skywalker. Both were subsequently arrested for their activities within WSM and other darknet marketplaces. In conclusion, at the time of writing this particular case is about six years old, having been concluded in 2019.

So, it goes without saying that another bizarre of the bizarre has likely come and gone in the intervening years. Perhaps someone listening to this could even tell you the name of their heir apparent. But, as long as people have their vices, as long as society seeks to regulate and curtail certain behaviors, then places like WSM will always find a way to exist. They will always cater to the needs of the people with dark desires. And they will always do these things, as long as there is money to be made doing them.

I will leave you again with the words of Milton Friedman, the father of economics. The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people. Here is another story about how the dark web can get you truly and thoroughly messed up. The story is from a letter written to me by a friend from college, who for the sake of anonymity we will call Ben. The year was 2013, springtime,

and I was in my second semester of my second year of college when everything happened. I'll keep my name out of it, even though the letter was sent to me. I also added brackets around details that I personally added for clarity. Dear friend, I hope this letter finds you well and that college is going great too. I'm sorry I haven't written much, but let's just say that my life is screwed. I'm not allowed on any computers right now, and thus the only way I can tell you what happened is to send snail mail. Don't mind that this letter is several pages long. It's just my freaking life story.

This is about what happened with that girl I told you I met, Penny. Or at least that's the name she gave me before she ruined my life. I never got a chance to tell you or all of our friends from intro to computers class, so if you want to and they still care to hear my sight of things, you can share this letter with them when they're not screwing off in the cafe, like we all used to. If not, I don't care, as long as someone knows the truth. So, here goes.

Penny, as you know, was someone I met at the college campus cafe about a month ago. That truthfully wasn't the first place we met, even though I never told you guys that. But since she was new to me and potentially a newbie to our friend group, I thought it would be easier to just say that she and I met on campus. In all honesty, we actually met at a public cafe when I went to go do some more work on our class project. The computers were occupied, and this black-haired, green-eyed haughty said I could just use the station that she was at because she was about to leave. You saw her. She was gorgeous like some anime chick or something, so you can imagine how a dumbass like me fell for her. But anyway, I sat down.

down to use her station and started asking about her, you know, trying to spit game and see if I could score a number or some adult time from her. She didn't give me too much play, but she did give me her name and her email, and then left the cafe. A few minutes later, one of the cafe managers and two police officers came over to me at the computer terminal and asked me what I was doing fair, and why I hadn't checked in at the front desk to use a computer. Who the hell knew you had to do that? I see people sit down at computers there all the time, especially if they don't have a laptop or something, and I didn't at the time.

I basically told the manager and officers that I just saw an open computer and jumped on because the place was busy, and I had work to do for class. They asked me if I saw who was sitting there before, and I said no, thinking I was protecting this girl from whatever was going on. I didn't really care to know why they were after her, and they didn't tell me anything about why they wanted to know, but they did tell me that I had to get off the computer, and then they shut it down, unplugged it,

and the manager marked it as out of service. I thought that was the end of the situation, and in the end, all I got from the girl was her email and the name Penny, so I wrote it off. I didn't know that I would see her on campus, and that was a huge shocker. But she did run into me at the campus cafe. I assumed she was a student because most people on campus during the usual class hours are usually students. But I forgot that random people can use the library in commons or go to the cafe.

Whatever. Anyway, she asked what I was studying and I told her about the computer programming classes I take, including our intro to computers class shenanigans and whatnot. I'll skip the details and go on to the part where I told her I didn't have a laptop at the time since mine broke, and that's why I was at the cafe that day. I did ask her why she only gave me her email to contact her. She didn't have social media, she explained, and she didn't like giving out her number to random strangers, no matter how cute they are.

but since she saw that we were attending the same college, she said it would be fine to give me her number now. We kept up with each other for about a month, and in that time, she did eventually tell me that she was studying cybersecurity and computer forensics. And again, I never really saw her on campus, except for in the cafe.

So I never knew her schedule outside of that. I never saw her arrive or leave campus, She was very mysterious, and I kind of liked it. Anyway, on to the issue at hand, the reason that I'm sitting in jail right now. I guess we started dating even though I don't recall ever asking her out formally. She agreed to come over to my apartment once, and things led to other things, and she did surprise me with a gift. I came home after classes once, and saw an unmarked box in front of my door. There was a sticky note on it that said,

For Ben, with a heart on it. So, I assumed it was from Penny, since no one else would have done something like that. In the box was a well-packaged new laptop, that Carbon X-1 that you guys saw me using last. Of course, the next time she came over, I thanked her for it, and she helped me set it up,

even though I didn't need her help to do so. She was on it for a couple of hours that day, and I remember she did leave soon after she finished setting up the laptop. Then, I didn't see Penny for a week. She wasn't on campus. Her phone number was giving me the message that it was disconnected or non-service, and then I tried her email as a last resort. To my surprise, the email was also an account that didn't exist.

You remember that Thursday we were playing an intro to computers class with the little Command Wars thing? the day I wrote that command that basically wiped computers clean and then in a horrible twist of irony, the campus police came to get me out of class and my laptop was confiscated. Yeah, well, I was arrested and turned over to the actual county police department

where they questioned me about the laptop. They asked me where I got the laptop, what I was doing on it, and a crap ton of questions about the dark web marketplaces and stuff that I knew nothing. about. According to them, the investigators, who turn out weren't regular police officers, mind you, the laptop was actually a stolen device from a government installation. Sounds far-fetched, I know, but then again, I'm writing to you from behind bars. So let that tell you how true it is,

I guess. I didn't want to believe them, but when they told me how they traced the activity on that laptop back to my home IP address, and were planning on slapping a load of felonious charges against me, I finally decided that I would open up and tell them about Penny and how I met her at the off-campus cafe, again, at the college campus cafe, and how she got me a new laptop as a gift shortly after we started seeing each other. One of the investigators didn't buy it, asking me how I could date a woman and not know her real name, or at least her last name, or at least her last name, or anything about her. I told him that, again,

it was a somewhat new relationship and that we hadn't spent a lot of time talking about her backstory, mainly because she seemed more interested in me and my friends, and all of us had nicknames. The other investigator then described a woman to me that sounded a lot like Penny. I told them what I knew,

and they told me that her name wasn't actually Penny, and that she was the subject of a now national manhunt, after a stream of online bank robberies using exploits sold on the dark web to get into secure bank systems, which left all kinds of stolen bank information now sitting on a stolen government laptop in my possession. Basically, they insisted that I give up her location and such, but I told them that I didn't know where she lived or anything about her, except that we went to college together. They told me that was a lie, too, since they all.

already looked into the campus security, and though they saw her in the commons on the security camera, no student records for her ever existed. They also questioned me about my majors, my classes, and yes, the prank command scripts I wrote for our games in class, and eventually you can guess the rest. In a nutshell, they were considering me an accomplice and insisted that I was withholding evidence. I was assigned a public defender who did nothing to have. help me, except he kept suggesting that I plead guilty and take a plea deal. But I insisted on fighting that I wasn't guilty of the crimes that I was accused of.

It was stupid, since the charges were so big, but I didn't want to go down for some person that screwed me literally and figuratively. So now, here I sit, awaiting my next court date. Bail has been denied, and even if it was set, no one's coming to get me out. I miss you guys, and even though this sounds like some twisted dating story gone wild, it's crazy to know that my life was in a roundabout way ruined by the dark web, and some girl who spends her time in it.

So, that's my story, and I'm sorry I haven't been able to write more call you guys. Stay safe, stay strong, and if you see Penny again, please call the freaking police. Signed, Ben. We never saw Penny after that, and Ben did eventually lose his case and was convicted of a load of computer crimes. He should be out of prison in 2028. We don't hear from him anymore and haven't in several years.

I wanted to add a couple of additional notes about this story. The first is that we never knew anything about the off-campus coffee shop or what happened. happened with Ben before he introduced us to Penny on campus at the campus cafe. Otherwise, we would have told him to steer clear of her, especially since he mentioned the police showed up right after she left the computer station. We all knew our way around computers being in a class like intro to computers, which at the time was a prerequisite class for any course dealing with computers, be it engineering, digital imaging, or anything tech-related on this particular campus.

The second thing we wanted to point out is that shortly after Ben was arrested, there was a huge security breach on our campus's computer system, and somewhere near 2,000 students had their tuition money stolen, and were unenrolled from their classes. We don't know if it had anything to do with Penny, but come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if that's why she was there. I was one of those students whose tuition was stolen. But fortunately, the money stolen wasn't my personal money, rather it was a grant that I received that covered my classes for the year.

And what was taken was the remainder of the second semester's tuition in my campus account. Classes were smaller than usual that year, and as you probably could imagine, a lot of people transferred out. That campus to this day still has technical issues with their enrollment, and for the sake of avoiding a potential law, I won't tell you the name of this school or where it is, just that it's a community college. I hope that Penny, or whatever the hell her name is, gets hers for everything she did, if she hasn't already. Hey there, friends, I hope that you enjoyed this collection of scary stories on this episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. If the platform you're on has the option to follow podcast and you enjoyed my work, please do consider doing so. Also, leaving ratings and reviews are super important for the algorithm to support the growth of the podcast.

I'm just one guy doing this. I don't have a team. It's literally just me doing everything. So any support like that is greatly appreciated. Never expected, though. So if you go above and beyond with that, I do appreciate it. Some platforms also allow you to leave comments, and if you feel inclined to do so, please do. I would appreciate that.

I do have a Patreon in a merch store that you can also check out if you want to support a little further. The Patreon side of things get you early access to all of my content. It is formatted differently as it goes in line with what my YouTube channel is, but it is the same stories. Just different collections. There is also a website, astherravendreams.com, where you can check out pretty much everything about me, my social media platforms, fiction stories I've written if you want to read those, as well as submitting your own stories, which there's a big button on the front page, you click to do so. And those stories basically keep the podcast alive, to be honest with you. So, yeah. All that said, friends, I do hope that

I see you again here very soon. Until then, remember that you are loved, that you are valid, that you are important. You're the best you that you can be. Don't forget it. And until next time, Much love. And sleep well. Lazzangue surgellied, puissance-moyance-moid for 15 minutes. We're like to dojo.

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