Ben Drowned

It follows college sophomore Jadusable, who, after acquiring a haunted Nintendo 64 video game cartridge of Majora's Mask, is plagued over the course of a single week by the presence of a seemingly omniscient artificial intelligence entity called BEN.

The original story ends on a cliffhanger, with the readers themselves inadvertently helping unleash BEN onto the internet at large through sharing of the files that were given to them, supposedly by Jadusable.

[7] However, by decoding a secret hidden cipher in Hall's YouTube account, investigative readers gained access to a website that led to the story's second arc, known as Moon Children.

[8] The story followed a strict publication schedule,[9][2] with new content released over the course of two weeks, including videos posted on Hall's YouTube channel, themselves made using Project64 and cheat codes taken from GameShark.

Upon its launch, the series garnered over 100,000 views in its first two days of publication; and as of 2020, it maintains a very high level of viewership, with over 2 million unique visitors in March,[9] nearly eight years after completion of the first two arcs.

In October 2017, Hall expressed interest in developing a third arc, also revealing he had anonymously created a second "popular" creepypasta series unrelated to Ben Drowned.

Coerced by them to join their group under the promise of having friends and being like his childhood hero, Link, Ben was soon unwillingly drowned in an attempted Moon Children ritual called ascension where the sacrifice becomes a prisoner of their own making, a catalyst for the cult to continue their plans.

The resulting creation, named 'BEN', the original 'Ben' no longer having any physical control as the dominant mindset, is sealed inside a copy of Majora's Mask and merged with the programs within, before being subsequently watched over by an old man.

The old man, in time, entrusts the cartridge to a random college sophomore student who bought it not knowing that it was a cursed object while several of the cult's members begin to continue their plan within the Internet, including a mysterious being, known as "Kelbris, The Father", who online takes the form of the Happy Mask Salesman.

Over the course of several sessions over a series of days, Jadusable writes in painstaking detail about each bizarre scenario he finds himself in, including spontaneously bursting into flames and lying unconscious (or dead) as the Majora-possessed Skull Kid looks on in silence.

Jadusable, after hearing from the neighbor as to what happened in the house that the old man lived in, concludes that the cartridge is possessed by the spirit of its previous owner, a 12-year-old boy named Ben who had drowned almost eight years prior.

Subsequently, a figure calling themselves "BEN" seemingly begins contacting him in and beyond the game itself, including changing his computer screen wallpaper to depict the Elegy of Emptiness and speaking through the online artificial intelligence Cleverbot.

Eventually, BEN is revealed to have been hijacking Jadusable's computer and providing a false account of the story's narrative and resolution to 4chan and YouTube, using it to escape the cartridge onto the Internet, declaring "Now I am everywhere."

An unnamed follower of Jadusable's story discovers a cipher on his YouTube channel that eventually leads them to the cult's official website, youshouldnthavedonethat.net, in which three moderators discuss the upcoming "ascension" of one of their members.

A post by a fourth user and the website's administrator, named DROWNED (supposedly Mr. D), appears to speak directly to the follower through the avatar of a man wearing a gas mask.

By exploring the various links, the follower discovers various details about the cult, including that the original Ben was apparently a member who had been sacrificed alongside several other individuals under the pretense of achieving ascension, that another member named Alex had recently betrayed them, and that they have their own prophecy of end times revolving around the Moon destroying the Earth (à la Majora's Mask), provided to them by their deceased prophet Kelbris in 1998.

On November 8, another video uploaded on Jadusable's channel by BEN signals the beginning of the arc's epilogue, with the coming months seeing small changes made to the Moon Children website.

An as-of-yet unexplained event that occurred in 2012 apparently had global repercussions, leading to a modern-day Great Depression resulting in a total breakdown of American society by 2018.

Addressing the follower, dubbed "The Second Player" (alternatively "The Main Character", or simply "The MC"), Jadus claims a partial cause of this collapse as being a mysterious virus known as "HEROES", of which they are a survivor, alongside their occupational partner Denton.

The player is a prisoner in the mysterious Ethereal Hotel, through which he is guided by radio by another survivor, Abel, avoiding a gas mask-wearing entity known as "The Jailer", as they roam the halls.

The uploaded code would successfully revive Sarah in Clock Town, albeit without the Ocarina of Time or the Adult form she previously had, with only 12 in-game hours remaining before the Moon would crash into Termina and start the entire game over again.

They argue over whether to let the Moon fall and just reset everything, which Rosa believes will not result in what the rest expects it to, or to allow Sarah to perform the day four glitch, at the risk of unleashing the already looming Father all over again.

Ifrit suddenly reappears and explains that by doing the glitch, she has killed the game's inhabitants and that with the Father freed once more, he intends to use his power to transform the world into a "nightmare".

Above all, The Father assures Sarah and Circle that World Alpha will continue and that Ben will be given a real host body, commenting that his imprisonment within the Elegy statue was an "oversight" made by dated A.I.

[12][13] It received substantial attention following a favorable review by Kotaku writer Owen Good roughly two months into publication, who praised the story's themes and originality.

[14][15] Readership quadrupled following this article, and again by its followup 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.

[18] 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.

"[12] 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.

", 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's] highly likely BEN Drowned will remain the best of its kind.

"[4][19] Blogger Robbie Blair discussed Ben Drowned within the context of the increasing popularity of web serials and alternate reality games such as Worm.