#20. Nobody Knows Where It Comes From
The mysterious origin story is part of the deep web horror experience. No one knows who made it or what it's about, but everyone has their own theories. Some people think it's a cyber Satanic curse. Others think it's the confession of a deranged serial killer. There are a few who believe it's just some poor software design student's failed final project.
The game seems to be loaded with encrypted messages. And what might be enough to scare most people away, might also attract some special individuals. Thanks to those obsessed with macabre enigmas and the uncertainty of the deep web, the public has been able to unravel a little more about the horrifying mystery of Sad Satan.
#19. Sad Satan Makes A Point Of Highlighting Atrocities
The game includes images of JFK moments before his assassination, distorted and reversed audios of Charles Manson and Hitler, and one of the most unsettling aspects of the game is the frequent use of images of Jimmy Savile, referred to by the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) as “one of the most prolific sex offenders” of all time.
Sad Satan uses these photos to illustrate the irony in Jimmy Savile's involvement with the NSPCC. During his life, Savile was very well regarded by the NSPCC and used his charitable reputation with the organization to get close to his victims.
#18. The Name Comes From A Led Zeppeling Song
Back in the day, playing albums backwards was the precursor of modern-day creepy pasta. Allegedly, when you play Led Zeppelin's “Stairway to Heaven” in reverse, you can hear the words: “Oh here’s to my sweet Satan. The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan. He’ll give those with him 666, there was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”
It turns out that the line “Sad Satan” has been around much longer than most people think. Even before the deep web, people were looking for the existence of satanic backmasking. It's likely that the game was named in reference to the song's alleged satanic undertones, and there's no relation between those two.
#17. Everyone Is Trying To Decipher It
People have spent hours trying to figure out what every picture, sound file and character that appears in the mysterious and horrifying game means. Sadly, most of the game's content remains a mystery.
But it was later revealed that the encrypted messages that begin appearing around part three of the videos series that first popularized the game were written using a substitution cipher.
#16. But One Reddit User Found Something Creepy
A Reddit user decrypted the messages and they were threatening. Lines like “I can track you,” and “kill kill and kill again” were scattered all across the game.
And when you take into consideration that the game originated from the deep web and could come with all kinds of malware, the threats might not be as empty as one would hope.
#15. Sad Satan First Appeared In A YouTube Video
Obscure Horror Corner's channel was the beginning of Sad Satan's public life. But the version that appeared on YouTube might not have come from the original game.
Obscure Horror Corner posted a deep web TOR link to the game and many believed it was fake. After that, an anonymous poster in 4chan's / x / board game came forward and claimed to be the discoverer of the game, and that OHC had not posted the real Sad Satan.
#14. The Game Was Edited
The footage belonged to an edited copy that lacked many of the darker aspects of the original game.
The 4chan user explained that the original Sad Satan included sexually explicit images of children and gore, as well as damaging malware that would destroy the player's computer.
#13. The Original Game Is Dangerous
As a result, a malware-free version of the game was created by those in the Sad Satan subreddit. The gruesome pictures were replaced with more innocuous imagery, and the user-friendly version was dubbed clean.exe.
This version might be a more censored experience than the original copy of the game, but it remains the only version that can be played safely, legally and ethically.
#12. Obscure Horror Corner Posted A Link That Didn't Work
Like many deep web legends, the original Sad Satan is almost impossible to track down. The version of the game that Obscure Horror Corner posted has never been played by anyone else.
The owner of the YouTube channel claims that this is because the original game came packaged with illicit materials that they didn't want to share with their audience.
#11. There's Malware In Some Copies of Sad Satan
This has led to people releasing more and more fake versions that may be dangerous. there are all kinds of rumors about where the game came from or if it even existed at all.
Since the original file containing Sad Satan was posted in a deep web forum, it allegedly came packaged with dangerous, illicit material and malware.
#10. Why OHC Lied
The owner of Obscure Horror Corner explained that the link they posted to the game didn't work because the game was bundled with pictures of gore and child abuse, and they didn't want to distribute that material.
They also claimed that their computer started behaving oddly after they played the game. Malware is any kind of software designed to damage a computer. It's a kind of virus that causes extensive damage to data and systems.
#9. The Risks Of Playing Sad Satan
Many Redditors also claim that many of the game's first players also noticed their computers would shut off, became sluggish, or refused to boot up altogether after playing the game.
The malware and the threats to track the players really play into the risk associated with the game.
#8. But Where Does Sad Satan Come From?
The original Sad Satan was allegedly posted by a mysterious deep web user. They signed the deep web forum posts with the letters ZK. When Obscure Horror Corner posted the game on YouTube, they did it to learn more about ZK. The anonymous Redditor who found the game and showed it to Obscure Horror Corner said they knew nothing about ZK.
The only information they had on ZK was that they would occasionally post “Dark views, satanic mumbo jumbo” on the deep web forum they both frequented. Given the faceless nature of the deep web, it's impossible to find the original ZK, if they ever existed.
#7. Conspiracies
Sad Satan is a sort of conspiracy theory in itself. Since nobody knows where it came from and there are all sort of rumors about its nefarious aims.
So it comes as no surprise that the game features a lot of real-life conspiracy theories, such as the Swedish Rhapsody numbers station.
#6. Swedish Rhapsody
Swedish Rhapsody was a number station used by the Stasi to deliver messages to covert operatives in the 1970s. The messages were typed out using a “Sprach machine” which could produce tones and garbled speech.
Many believed that the person speaking on the station was a mysterious girl, which spawned all the ghoslty theories. Audio clips from the Swedish Rhapsody station can be heard played backwards in one section of Sad Satan.
#5. There Are Horrible References
As cryptic as the game is, there are some common threads throughout most of the journey. There are numerous references to child abuse, hidden among garbled messages and low-res graphics. Patricia Hernandez at Kotaku claims that this could be the thematic through-line of the entire game.
The game does lend itself to subjective interpretation, and this one is especially poignant, considering the distorted childlike figures that appear near the ending of the game. At the very end, one of these children kill the player by locking him in a purgatory-like room.
#4. The Unstraceable Deep Web
The true origin of Sad Satan has repeatedly been questioned and the anonymous deep web forum origin has never been proven. There are speculations that Obscure Horror Corner fabricated the footage for views. This does make sense, since there haven't been any verified reports of others being able to play OHC's version of the game.
But given the nature of Sad Satan's origin story, it could be real although unverifiable. The only way of knowing would be to locate the alleged deep web forum post. But this seems highly unlikely, considering the lack of information about the forum.
#3. People Started Doing Serious Research
A student of game design and development at London Bank University based his dissertation on Sad Satan. The academic paper he spent six months on analyses the non-traditional elements of the game's horror to explain what makes it different from other horror games.
He came to the conclusion that the game blurs the line between fiction and reality, making the oppressive atmosphere feel almost immediate.
#2. The Future Of Video Games
According to the research, the videogame horror genre will shift towards the “maybe real” in the future. This is evidenced by movies like paranormal Activity.
Games like Sad Satan are unlikely to go mainstream in the near future, but the atmospheric terror will stay trendy.
#1. Sad Satan Remains An Enigma
The deep web is an enigma for most people. The fact that is a part of the internet that isn't visible to search engines and requires the use of anonymizing programs conjures up images of clandestine hackers, illicit black market sites like The Silk Road, and even secret red rooms where people can watch murders in real time.
The reality may be much less exiting, but it is true that the world of unindexed web pages contains an element of danger.