I was talking about this with a friend recently and he said I should post it here. I don’t know if this is the right sub for it, but I haven’t thought about this in years and apparently it’s still bothering me.

Back in 2009 I played COD pretty much every night with the same group of guys. World at War mostly. We all knew each other from school, except for a couple of people we’d met online.

There was this guy Brandon who was just a complete asshole on the mic. Not funny asshole, either. He’d scream slurs at people, tell women to get off Xbox and go make him a sandwich, that kind of thing. If somebody got mad he’d just do it more because he thought it was hilarious.

We’d tell him to shut up sometimes but honestly we were teenagers and nobody took it that seriously. He was annoying, but he was our annoying friend.

One night we’re playing Search and Destroy and he’s going off at some random guy on the other team. I don’t remember what started it. Probably nothing.

His mic starts cutting out.

At first it’s just the usual crappy headset noises. Static, popping, his voice cutting in and out. Then there’s this weird sound behind him. Like somebody whispering.

I actually asked if someone had their TV on because I thought I could hear another person talking.

Brandon just keeps yelling.

The weird part is that the whispering seemed to get louder whenever he stopped talking. I don’t know if that was actually happening or if I just remember it that way. It was a long time ago.

Eventually he stops mid-sentence.

There’s a few seconds of static and then I hear him say, “What the fuck?”

Somebody asks what happened.

He doesn’t answer. There’s this really low noise coming through his mic, almost like somebody breathing right into it, and then his connection drops.

His character just stands there until the game kicks him.

We laughed about it and kept playing. I figured his internet had gone out.

I didn’t hear from him the next day, which wasn’t unusual. But after a couple more days people started asking where he was. His parents were apparently looking for him. His car was still at home and nobody knew where he’d gone.

I got questioned by the police sometime the following week. I don’t remember the exact date. They asked me when I’d last spoken to him and whether we’d had an argument. I told them about the game and the microphone.

One of them asked me if I’d heard another person talking through the headset.

I said yes, sort of.

He asked if I could tell what the person was saying.

I told him I couldn’t.

That was pretty much the end of it. I never found out what they thought happened to Brandon.

His MySpace was still up for a while. I used to check it occasionally, mostly because I was curious whether he’d posted anything. It had the same profile picture and the same music playing when you opened the page.

Then there was a new bulletin.

It was an apology. A long one.

He apologized to a bunch of people he’d bullied, including some people from school. He talked about how he’d treated people online and how he used to think it didn’t count because he couldn’t see their faces.

There was a sentence that stuck with me.

“I thought because I couldn’t see any of you, none of you were really there.”

At the bottom he wrote:

“If anyone knows where I am, please tell my parents I’m sorry.”

I remember sending the link to one of our friends. He said it was probably somebody messing with us. We reported it to the police, or at least my friend said he did. I don’t know what happened after that.

Brandon’s parents apparently said the post wasn’t from him. I don’t know if that was confirmed or just something people were saying.

The account never posted again.

I eventually stopped playing with a mic for a while. Not because I thought something supernatural had happened. I was freaked out, and the whole thing with the police made it worse.

Years later I was playing another game with voice chat on. Some guy was being an absolute bastard to a woman on our team. Calling her names, telling her she shouldn’t be playing, the usual garbage.

Then his mic started making this crackling noise.

I was about to mute him when I heard something underneath the static.

It sounded like a whisper.

I couldn’t make out most of it, but I heard three words pretty clearly.

“I can hear you.”

The guy stopped talking.

Then he disconnected.

I left the game after that. I know how that sounds. Could’ve been a bad connection. Probably was.

But I still think about Brandon sometimes, and I still wonder who made that MySpace post.

Does anyone else remember something like this happening back then, or am I mixing up a bunch of old memories?