The Hause von TraumenTur

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

Any adult will tell you that is a lie.

There is a danger in words and many do not realize how severe they can be.

As a child I was often bedridden with seasonal colds caused by severe allergies to just about anything. I didn't have many friends and those I could name were Ray Bradbury, Captain Kirk and Sonic the Hedgehog. The last was the largest concern of my parents and often they would end up confiscating my game system for my own good.

Like any child of the new era I had a backup, the internet. Unfortunately my bedroom computer was a second hand laptop whose ancient technology and even older screen would turn into a blur of grey at any high speed motion. This did not deter me and I found many old dos games whose turn based nature often bypassed this flaw. War games, chess and text adventures often filled my hard drive and it was the latter that introduced me to a new form of forgotten games; Game books.

The old site known as "Abandoned Games" had uploaded an entirely new section containing nothing but scans of those old "Choose your own adventure" type books. Most of the ones it featured were of the advanced type which introduced dice rolling rules and character sheets which was fine by me. Anything to keep my bedridden brain from dying of boredom. They featured cliché titles like "The Forgotten Forest" or "The Mansion of Misery" that led me to believe they were mainly kid stuff but some of them had nice covers that made them seem interesting. So I hoped onto the forum to read the many reviews that users and players had posted.

One particular line by "Lancashire Books Ltd." was strictly aimed at young adults and featured mature themes. Dealing with terminal diseases, corrupt royalty, and of course horror. It was the last one that was the focus of a large portion of the game book forums.

"The Hause Von Traumentur" was a haunted house book and the last of the companies publications. It's writing, artwork, and even the scan itself seemed to be of an unusually low quality. It was as if the book itself was a contracted production that was rushed out the door so fast that proof readers skimmed over it just to fulfill some legal requirement. Regardless of the cause of its low writing quality whomever designed the game play aspects of it was hailed as a genius. It's vague and sloppy writing hinted at a variety of abominations suitable as having escaped from hell but its game play was tight, refined, and extremely difficult. Many on the forums deemed its hard game play as another sign of its sloppy production but hard core gamers recognized a refined work when they saw it.

So I downloaded it and joined the dozens of players who attempted to breech the walls of Traumentur only fail repeatedly. It was difficult. My player character died 7 times and those horrible scripted death sequences kept on giving me haunting nightmares. It had only been a few days and already I was feeling run down. At school my best friend Vinze notice the signs and knew I was playing some game way too much. We were close chums and often challenged each other and traded video games freely. He loved all things having to do with horror. He had watched "Night of the living dead" dozens of times and I believed that if there was anyone who could finish the game book it would be him. I gave him a copy and waited a few days to ask him what he thought of it.

After a few days I could see the tell tale signs of sleep depravation and chided him for not being able to finish the game. He hated me for picking on him like that. He always played all the way through every game he ever owned and this was the equivalent of me throwing down the gauntlet on his ability to do so. We made a five dollar wager that he would give up within a week and the game was on. The next few days he looked worse and worse. He came down with a severe cold and soon stopped coming to school. I knew that the cold was a ruse. Earlier in the year he had boasted how he had faked having a cold for an entire week just so he could finish his new video game before I could even buy it.

Soon afterwards my parents took me to the hospital for a barrage of test. I was confused embarrassed and even appalled by the type and variety of test they performed. Only when I was given a clean bill of health they decided to explain why. It seems that my friend had died of a "extreme parasite infestation of the intestinal track". The news made me feel sick and nauseous. The similarities of Vinze's death and one of the game book's horrific endings was too close for comfort. The horrific ending within the book resulted in the player character exploding like a firecracker, releasing a cloud of glowing green gnats. This parasite infestation , though more realistic than the game book's nightmare one , was too much. I stopped playing video games or game books for around 3 years. Afterwards I only wasted my time with puzzle and strategy games, nothing as in depth as an adventure..

A few years ago I was given a game system as a gift by my mother. It included re releases of classic games that I was fond of in my childhood. It reminded me of my lost friend and I decided to dispel my fear and disgust of the old game book we had played. After all it was the last game that we ever shared. I had no illusions of its contents and I expected to find it's horror little more than an county fair's haunted house amusement ride. Unfortunately my search was met with futility. The url and even the site itself of "Abandoned Games" had been shut down years ago and its net address owned by a mail order company. Web sites that were copied tributes to "Abandoned Games" had complete sections that were empty. It seems that since my childhood that commercial companies that still owned the copyrights to these old abandoned games discovered that they could now charge a dollar a download. Those that did not sell them often simply forbade their distribution thus resulting in many of those old games, or books, simply disappearing from online. It took a while but I decided to seek out Lancashire Books Ltd. and their E-book line only to discover that the company had changed. Now its primary purpose was the production and sales of children's books. Even the owner knew nothing of the old game books produced by a "similar named" company.

I had to register and enter the forums of a dozen game-book fan sites before anyone ever responded about "The Hause von Traumentur". It seemed that I was not the only one who had nightmares when playing the book. Anyone who played it more than once was beset by its strange imagery and haunting scenes while they slumbered. Even those who adored the macabre stopped playing it because they were bored of their characters dying. Like a book collector or one who collects movies of their past these individuals stored their copy away instead of erasing it. Unfortunately time marches on and with the changing of operating systems, hardware, and just plain moving on with life the file was simply erased, thrown away or lost. There were a few disconnected pages floating on the net but they were from deep within the game where most players never ventured. At least not the honest players who abided by the rules.

The forums were aflame about the book. Even at this late stage in life people were amazed that such a badly written book could inspire such gut wrenching nightmares in their younger selves. It intrigued many and inspired the foolish who were simply looking for a new means of "tripping" without drugs. Everyone had nightmares playing the book until they finally abandoned the disgusting thing. Everyone that is except the cheaters. Those who were most active in the forums back in the day remembered the complaints of this notorious cast of players. It seems that after 'winning' the game that these cheaters would complain about infrequent headaches and then nightmares. Soon afterward they would stop posting to the forums altogether. Those who had real life counterparts to their forum 'friends' soon followed suit and stopped posting. Whatever the reason a myth grew up that there was a hidden code within the game book. That it's bad spelling and grammar were intentional and that these 'cheaters' had discovered something that they coveted and did not share.

Browsing through all these reports about game cheaters trigged an old forgotten memory that I had buried about my lost childhood friend. I believed all these years that he was some kind of video game genius. He always seemed to defeat me, at least in my memory, but these reports brought out the truth. He was abysmal at video games. I had beaten him so many times that it was laughable but he was my best friend and I did my best to play fair. At home he was a different kind of player, he cheated on video games like a drug addict. The entire school knew him as the 'cheat code king' and this was a title he wore proudly. He was never seen without his notebook filled with the codes for the most recent and popular games available. It was the awakening of this memory that made me realize the horrible truth.

My friend had cheated while playing that stupid old game book and somehow the book ate him from the inside out.

The forums do not stop talking about that damned game. It seems that a "digital archeologist" found an archive of the forums from the old "Abandoned Games" site. He's collected and compiled all those complaints, the descriptions, and most of all the enormous volume of contributions courtesy of game cheaters. He plans to rebuild "The Hause Von Tramentur".

I doubt he will get far in accomplishing his goals but I fear. I fear he will succeed

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