The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings - Lot 040 : Can You Hide? // I Asked An AI Image Generator To Show Me How I Was Going To Die

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

A small assortment of techno-horrors.Don’t Play The “Can You Hide?” Game If It Appears On Your PhoneWritten by Dominic EagleStarring Trevor Shand as LeeConan Freeman as CoreyDee Quintero as TanyaMelanie Rose as The AppAdditional voices by Scarlett Shand, Derek U, Catarina Sveta, Shadow, Hannah Raquel, Lauren ShandFollow Dominic’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BlackVolumeshttps://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/10qkqnk/dont_play_the_can_you_hide_game_if_it_appears_on/I Asked An AI Image Generator To Show Me How I Was Going To DieWritten by Sir Ulrich Von LichtenNarrated by Conan Freemanhttps://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/v9vraf/i_asked_an_ai_image_generator_to_show_me_how_i/Look at the image here: https://imgur.com/bC7SEqNFeaturing Stephen Knowles as The Antique DealerTheme music by The Newton BrothersAdditional music byCO.AG. ([e-mail]) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is that who I think it is? And here I thought you were trying to run off from me now. You know, you wouldn't get too far. Some might wonder if you in the shop are indeed one and the same. Hmm. Well, that's neither here nor there, now, is it? What I am sure of is that I've got something really special set aside for you. A smartphone. And it looks like you are getting your first call. Ah, ah, ah. I'da. Let that go to

voicemail if I were you. Too many swindlers nowadays. You will notice that this phone comes with this app right here. And with that app comes a warning. With that warning comes a story. Don't play the Can You Hide game if it appears on your phone. Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass

on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk. These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium. We go by the Obsidian Covenant. Recent initiates include Andrew Taylor

Penguin Jennifer Cara Esme Cicely Smith Benjamin Membrano Mr. James Caziah Delaney

and Badger We are ever appreciative of your devotion to The Order Go to The Obsidiancovenant.com to receive the sacrament Now, where were we?

Yes. Welcome to the antiquarium of sinister happenings and odd goings on. You won't find it on Google Play or the App Store. There's nothing about the game on any public websites other than this cautionary post. It doesn't matter whether you're a good or bad person. It indiscriminately chooses.

The point is that you can't avoid the game. He might hear a reverberating ding from your phone. Eps of hell. An incongruous window might pop up. Can you hide? Yes? Window first appeared on my phone screen. I was stunned.

I always presumed smartphones to be safer from the threat of viruses than computers, especially a brand-new iPhone. Isn't Apple supposed to be superior to Microsoft when it comes to security? Nice try. I said. But before I made a rash decision and ended up infecting my phone, phone was something nasty, I decided to do some research. I'm not exactly computer savvy, but I didn't trust either the yes or no option. I didn't want to mess with the window in any way.

There was nothing about the Can You Hide pop-up online. I didn't even realize it was a game until a Reddit user, who, I won't name, pointed me in the direction of a Discord server for discussing unearthly matters. There was an entire category dedicated to the bizarre new game that had been appearing on people's phones. Clicking, yes, commences a hide-and-seek game, scroll to the many Discord messages. Can anyone help me?

Nobody seems to know anything about this game. My friend played it non-stop for a weekend, and then he went missing. That was two weeks ago. There are daily search parties, but I don't think they're going to find him. You have to select no. I destroyed my phone after reading these messages. I haven't seen or heard anything unusual. I selected no, but I keep hearing creaks, and I don't think it's in my head.

Just leave the pop-up window open, guys. You don't have to select anything. What? For the rest of my life? What if something accidentally knocks it? Destroy your phone. Like I said, worked for me. Until it pops up on your next phone. What if I just turn off my phone?

That seems a little less dramatic than destroying it. Your funeral. Reanxious, I felt. I had expected the pop-up window to be a virus. But everybody was telling ghost stories. Stop being a superstitious baby, I told myself. That guy's disappearance had nothing to do with the game he was playing. Eventually, after a weekend of horrified contemplation,

I opted for User 5's idea to turn. off my phone. In fact, I took it a step further and reset my phone to its factory settings. I met my friends, Corey and Tanya, in a local park on Monday afternoon. I'd planned to tell them about my experience, but they beat me to the punch.

Why didn't you pick up your phone all weekend, Lee? Corey asked me. We were worried about you, man. We wanted to hang out on Sunday. You want to know the truth? I didn't fancy third wheeling. Some of us have to go to work on Mondays. Hey, I work. From a bathrobe in your bedroom.

You're both just envious that I can scroll through Reddit and play games away from the watchful eye of my employer. Speaking of games, Lee, have you played? Can you hide? My heart plummeted, and I felt as if Corey's words were cinder blocks dragging my body through the floorboards. He's obsessed. He's been playing it every day since Tuesday. I popped up on my phone, so I thought, why the fuck not? Tiny thought it must be a virus, but it's just a cool augmented reality game. Corey thrust his phone down on the wooden picnic table. It was already open on a game window.

A map of our surrounding area. A small green marker indicated Corey's location in the park, and there was a small red marker moving along nearby roads. Once a day, from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, the game takes place. I have to hide. It tracks my location. in the real world, so I have to keep moving. I want it to delay coming to the park,

but I don't think the red seeker will find me here. Besides, it's 10 to 4. Nearly made it. What's the red marker that's searching for you? You know that kind of talk makes Lee freak out. Corey shrugged, and the pair of them became absorbed in a different topic of conversation. They were tucking into their sandwiches,

talking between mouthfuls, but I couldn't take my eyes off Corey's phone on the table. The red marker was circling the park Looking for him I couldn't stop thinking about those people In the Discord server who had spoken so solemnly Of the supposedly deadly game Suddenly where he was wrong

They had found him I prepared for something dread I prepared for my friend To be caught And that's a wrap Corey said scooping up his phone Four o'clock Yet again I bested the game

It got closest time though Damn Just 100 yards away. On the game map, the park was a featureless green patch. I could see Corey's green marker, scarcely standing out from the grass. And I could see the red marker northeast of our location. The Victory Box Red. You avoided the creaker by 121 yards.

You can hide. Tanya groaned and mumbled about Corey's game addiction, and the two of them resumed their conversation. I don't really want to talk about any more to be honest with you. I'm tired of hearing about this game. I was about to dive back into reality, putting the silly game out of my head for good. But a sudden noise terrified me. Creek. My eyes shot up from the table.

Neither Tanya nor Corey seemed to notice the eerie sound. And I can't explain it. As nearby as the sound seemed, my eyes were drawn to a solitary tree, a little over a hundred yards away. Perhaps not exactly where the red marker had appeared on Corey's screen, but close enough. Peering around the bark was a fright. It was as short as a toddler. Its head was wearing a peach-colored rubber mask, almost the tone of human flesh, but in its sickly sweet smile seared through my eyes into my very soul.

With a second resounding creek, the nightmarish face snapped behind the bar. Earth to Lee. Hello, you look like you've seen a ghost. I whispered, pointing a shaky finger at the tree. Your phasmophobia really kills my buzz sometimes, Lee. There's no boogeyman following me. I have a proclivity for trembling at everyday sights and sounds. In my mind, there's always a ghost or a ghoul around the corner.

Ever since my parents died, I've been that way. But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I hadn't imagined what I saw behind the tree. Unfortunately, my phasmophobia, fear of ghosts, and the supernatural, makes it very difficult for anybody to believe me when I've been startled by something. Corey and Tanya told me to take it easy, get home, and get lots of rest. The following day, the two of them pinged me incessantly on WhatsApp. I was still reeling from the terrifying thing I'd seen behind that tree.

transfixed by terrible thoughts. The workday flew by. I was starting to believe that maybe I'd become unwell. Perhaps I'd suffered some sort of psychotic break. Not so. Around half six in the evening, on my drive home from work, Tanya called me. I answered via my car's dashboard.

Hey, I'm driving right now, Tanya. What's going? It's in. The game started playing. It's later than usual. Slow down. What's... What's happening?

The game started at six. I think you were rightly actually seeking us. We saw a horrible face at the window, and then there were, there were creaking sounds in the house. We're hiding in the attic. Corr's pulled up the door, so we don't think. Tony, you gotta listen. We call the fucking police.

They're on their way. Fifteen minutes, if we can... No, I feel safer with someone on the other end of the... Okay. Corey? Corey wants me to hang up. He wants us to be quiet. I understand. Just, just make sure that... I didn't need to ask what it'd frightened her. I heard it too. A creek in the attic. It sounded so clear. And once again, so, so...

So, nightmarishly near that I snapped my neck around to make sure the rubber-faced demon wasn't in the back seat of my car. I decided not to go home. I diverted to Corey's house. an eight-minute journey, barely any quicker than the police. I'm not a need. He's just a child, and he needs to leave our... Pleased. Please! Screams of my two friends were deafening. I was so fixated on reaching the house that I didn't hang up the call.

It was only as I tore on the Corey's driveway, mere minutes before the police that I realized I'd been listening to sounds of squelching and most hauntingly of all. Creaking. I expected to find him. a sickening scene of mutilation, but the, but the space was empty. Corey and Tanya were, police had questions for me, of course, but my alibi was airtight. The 911 call was made before I even left the office, and traffic camera footage corroborated

the fact that I was on the road whilst the intruder terrorized, Corey and Tanya. Missing persons. Where the missing people go? All I know is that resetting my phone was not enough. A long night of tears and police questioning, I could swear I caught a glimpse of a peach-colored mask peaking around a postbox. And then, as if to confirm that menacing thought, there was a notification on my phone. Unmistakable ding of hell. Can you hide?

Yes or no. The message displayed on my car dashboard. I moaned in horror. and that was what damned me. See, my car uses voice recognition, and it somehow registered my terrified vocal reaction as a fucking answer. You selected no. Perhaps I've chosen the safer of the two options.

I know many of the Discord users suggested no, but I can't stop thinking about what I read on that server. I selected no, but I keep hearing creaks. I haven't heard anything yet, and the game hasn't started playing. but Corey didn't seem to hear the creek when he was playing the game maybe like him I've just been missing it terrified of the creaker I'm terrified of where he might take me appears that hell has raised its long distance charges

what do you say I put you on hold for a moment and I'll be right back with one more consignment don't worry an operator is standing by leave a message and it was a wrong number. Something tells me they won't be making that mistake again. Here, come a little closer. Put this on. You look incredible. This yellow hat is a portal of darkness. What I do find rather odd is how it really brings out your eyes. Speaking of eyes, you sure can't count all those with all the A.I. Malarkey. They can make anyone do or say anything. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example. How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge. And how much happier that man is who

believes his native town to be his world than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, at a very wise 19 years old. I do believe, my good friend, that Frankenstein's monster has entered our village. Gather round the torches for, I asked an AI image generator to show me how I was going to die. I asked an AI generator to show me how I was going to die. The trouble started a week ago when I started playing around with one of those AI image generators that's been floating around on the internet. Normally I would stay away from such things because I have a deep resentment towards anything to do with AI or deep fakes and the like.

I find it all repulsive. Once, while scrolling through Instagram, I saw Tom Cruise Impressionist who had put a deep fake of the actor's face onto his own. It was startling and disturbing. wasn't how much he looked like the real Tom Cruise that bothered me. It was how much he didn't look like the real thing. He looked like some thing wearing another man's face. But people in the comment sections were eating it up, and some even believed he was Tom Cruise.

A lot of them believed it. Couldn't they see how fake it all was? And how wrong it was for that impressionist to put another person's face over his own? I can't help but think something bad is going to come of all this one day for our society. Not that it matters much for me. I'm probably going to be dead soon. Not probably, I'm sure of it. I can hear him outside. The AI image generator hooked me. It was simple. You give it a prompt, and it will produce an image of that prompt. I had seen similar AI generators in the past,

but what astounded me about this one is how specific the prompt could be, how the AI could produce almost anything you thought of in great detail. The images I saw floating around online made me laugh, so I decided to bite the bullet. Sure, the Tom Cruise thing was creepy, as was the potential for that kind of technology in the wrong hand. but this was harmless fun, right?

Not even remotely the same sort of thing. A stupid generator making stupid images for you. When I brought up the site, I sat long and hard thinking about the first prompt I wanted to give the generator. And I remembered a story. My father told me once about how when he was in college, he visited Karachi Pakistan with his world-class studies.

He told me that one night when he and his classmates were walking around the city, they came across a man who was playing chess with a dog, not pretending to play, but really playing with him. And my father told me that when they walked past the man again an hour later, that the man was shaking his head, that he looked beyond frustrated, defeated, but that the dog looked happy, grinning even. The dog had apparently won. I typed dog playing chess into the generator and hit enter. It started loading, and after a few minutes, the generator produced an image. It was an image of a dog playing chess.

It even had a stupid smile on its face. I laughed, a stupid generator making stupid images. I told myself I would only spend a few more minutes playing, but those minutes quickly turned into an hour. And when I next looked at the clock, I realized I had spent almost two, and a half hours playing around with the generator. I won't waste your time by showing you all the images I created. They're as banal and dumb as you'd expect.

I was about to close the tab when another prompt came into my head. If I told you this prompt came out of nowhere, that would be a lie. I know exactly where it came from. came from the fact that about three months ago, one of my coworkers had died. His name was Jeremy. He was a good guy and had even managed to get promoted in my office despite only working there for a couple of months at that point. Jeremy was what you would call a real go-getter, the kind of guy who gave it 110% at all phases in his life. He had big aspirations to go along with the big cup of coffee he drank every morning. A cup that had a cup that had.

that world's best Jeremy written on it. And all that was wiped out when he forgot to look both ways while crossing the road. You got taken out by a semi-truck. Jeremy's death struck me hard, not because it was the death of a fellow co-worker, but because it made me realize how fragile life is. If a guy like Jeremy could get taken out,

What did that mean for someone like me? How much borrowed time was a schmuck like me really on? If Jeremy had only looked both ways. Or if he had somehow known what was going to happen before it happened, I typed, How am I going to die into the generator and hit enter? The generator started loading and kept loading, and loading,

and was taking a very, Long time, much longer than all the other prompts. I began to feel foolish, thinking I had finally managed to give it a broken prompt. I mean, of course I did. It had been a profoundly stupid prompt. There was no way the generator could know how it produced an image. It was an image of an old man in a yellow hat. I laughed when I saw it,

though it wasn't the same kind of laughter that the other generated images had gotten out of me. It was nervous laughter, scared laughter. Maybe you laughed too when you looked at the image, right? Be honest, it's okay. Just a stupid generator producing stupid images after all, right? The image did bother me. The old man's frown, those sunken eyes, and that pale complexion. In the back of my head, I thought of that creepy Tom Cruise deep fake. how the comments were convinced of its legitimacy. I decided I had had enough and closed the tab. My prompt had simply confused the generator

and it had produced a random, incoherent image. That's all. Stupid for me to even ask the damn question in the first place. What did I expect? An actual answer? Obviously an AI generator had no idea how I was going to die. I saw. The old man, the very next day.

This was six days ago. I had been running errands downtown and had quickly forgotten about the image from the night before. It had faded away from my memory like a bad dream. It was an overcast day and it looked like a really big storm was coming. I could see huge purple clouds in the distance. As I was walking in my car, I got this uncomfortable feeling that

someone was watching me. When I looked back, I saw the old man in the yellow hat. It was unmistakably him. He had the same bright yellow hat, the same deep frown, the pale skin. And those horrible sunken eyes. He was across the street, and he was staring at me. No, that's not it. He was glaring, really glaring at me.

And his hands were opening and closing in a slow, violent motion. He began to walk towards me. He walked in a strange manner, like someone who had never walked before and was only just learning how. Like something that was only pretending to be human, old man's face. And I spotted a funny thing.

One else seemed to notice him. People walked past him without giving him a second glance. As he crossed the road, I thought for sure he was going to get hit by a car, but he weaved through traffic like some grotesque version of Frogger, and no driver paid him any mind. Not even a single honk. Morbidly, I thought of Jeremy getting hit by that semi. There was one other person that noticed him,

right at the old man and then began crying. Mom looked up to see if she could start. spot what had caused her daughter to become so distraught, but not once did her eyes land on the old man. He walked past her like a ghost, and as he got closer to me, that deep frown began to turn upwards into a horrible grin. I dropped my groceries, got my car, and drove straight home. On the way, I told myself I had only been seeing things. had to have been seeing things. When I got home, I immediately locked all the doors and bolted for my room.

I brought up the AI generator and again asked it, how am I going to die? I needed the generator to produce a new image. I needed it to show me that the image of the old man had just been a random image it had conjured, and that now it would do that again. It would create something, completely random because it didn't understand my question. Couldn't have possibly understood my question. Couldn't have possibly shown me anything real. And certainly couldn't have shown me how I was

going to die. It produced the same image of the old man. I asked it again. Same image. I asked it about 50 times more. And every time it was the same image. The old man, in the yellow hat. Stupid generator making stupid images, right? Only that thing that I've been walking towards me hadn't been stupid. Very real. Terrifying.

My house since that day. Two nights ago, I saw the old man outside my bedroom window glaring at me. Last night, I heard him try the front door. Brought up the generator and typed How do I stop the old man in the yellow hat? It started loading too much traffic.

Try again later. You know if I try again, I'll just get the same response. It's not going to tell me. Relized by fear, paralyzed by those sunken eyes and ghostly complexion. Outside, right now, as I type and hear the entire time, He's walking around the back of the house. Thank you for your patronage. Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history.

It does come with our usual warning, however. Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession. If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances. Maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers.

Please reach out to antiquarium shop at gmail.com. A member of our team will be in touch. Till next time, we'll be waiting for you. Whenever you close your eyes in the space between sleep and dream. During regular business hours, of course, or by appointment, only for you, our best customer. The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings, Lot 040. I asked an AI image generator to show me how I was going to die. Written by Sir Rulrick von Lichten, narrated by Conan Freeman.

Don't play the Can You Hide game if it appears on your phone, written by Dominic Eagle, starring Trevor Shand as Lee, Conan Freeman as Corey, DeCuntero as Tanya, Melanie Rose as the app. Additional voices by Scarlett Shand, Derek Yu, Katerina Sveta, Shadow, Hannah Raquel, and Lauren Shand. Follow Dominic's YouTube channel at Black Volumes, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer. Engineering production and sound design by Trevor Shand. Theme music by the Newton Brothers. Additional music by Coag. The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Antiquarium Pod.

Call the Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.