This article is more than 1 year old
New Yorker punts haunted Nintendo NES
Paranormal eBay madness
A New York eBayer is offering gaming enthusiasts the chance to acquire a vintage Nintendo NES with an unusual mod - it's possessed by the spirits of the undead who who use it as a portal with which to communicate with the other side.
Or so the vendor claims. Rest assured, though, it's not a malevolent possession which will end with peoples' heads swivelling around, screaming priests jumping out of first-floor windows and your house and all its contents being sucked down into Hell - rather a low-key sort of visitation which manifests itself through voices and the occassional interruption of a game. Read on:
There is a local thrift store here in Brooklyn, NYC, that I've been doing business with for some years now.
About a month and a half ago I made one of my visits to the shop and found this '80s Nintendo System.
When I purchased this Unit I asked the owner of the shop about who brought the System in, and what he actually told me was that a gentleman had donated it that same morning and said "It was just sitting in his attic", and according to him, it supposedly belonged to his son who passed away years ago.
I brought this System home, and on the first night of playing, about 10 minutes into the game, I began hearing sounds similar to human voices, mumbling to the background music of the television.
Naturally I thought it may have been static or something to that effect, or maybe it somehow interfered with a truck driver's CB Radio System, so I didn't pay much attention to it.
But it continued through-out the entire time I was playing, stop for a minute or two, then start again. It got to the point where I went really close to the TV, I paused the game to try to hear it a little better, but then it would get silent. When I would unpause it, there it would go again.
I know it sounded like there was a conversation going on but I couldn't make out any of the words.
To my knowledge, there is no technical problem with any vintage Nintendo Gaming System that causes any of these 'symptoms'.
Since owning this System, I've experienced hearing sounds of mumbling and laughing in the background music of different games (all sounding Exactly the same and all on numerous occasions).
On 3 separate occasions I've had the game 'Pause' by itself, without having my finger anywhere near the 'Start' button of the controller, and the really suspicious thing about it was the fact the timing of the Pause always happened to be during an intense moment of a game, as if the intentions were made for me to lose.
I even tried different controllers, which I've sold on eBay, thinking it may have been some type of controller glitch with the originals... and yet still have the same exact things happen.
Every time I power this unit on is like getting ready for something new to happen.
And not only with me. I've invited close friends and family members over, and some but not all have witnessed something strange happen, like the one time the 'Arrow icon' on the Main Options screen of a game actually moved down to 2 Player Mode, all while the controller was out of my hand.
Yup, gone are the days when contact with the spirit world involved a glass, a Ouija board and a candlelit Victorian drawing room. Now when your dear departed wants to touch base they simply notify you by switching to two-player mode and away you go.
The haunted NES is currently standing at $72 with a couple of days left to run on the auction. ®
Bootnote
Ta very much to Ghostbuster NMH for contacting the spirit world, and then us.
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