The Hopeless Grotto

The day started off like any other day for me. I woke up, ate breakfast, and started watching some videos on YouTube. After a few minutes I was starting to get bored and decided to play a game on my 360. I was looking through my games when I found my copy of Skyrim. I thought to myself: “I’ll play this since I haven’t in a while.” I checked the disc to make sure that it was good to go before popping it the disc tray of my 360. The game began to load, but then a box popped up and said that there was an update available. It was only about 200KB so I decided to proceed with the update. While it was downloading I checked online to see what the update was, but there hadn’t been any updates recently. Maybe I had removed the updates the last time I played it so I could take advantage of a glitch.

The update finished and the game restarted. I was going to begin a new game, but I decided to check out my old saves first. There was one that was very close to the beginning of the game and I really didn’t feel like waiting through the opening sequence so I picked that save. A box popped up in game and said that this save relied on content that was no longer present and asked if I wanted to continue. I selected no because I was sure that I had all three of the DLCs installed. I went back to the dashboard and went to the storage option under system settings. Just as I thought, they were all installed.

I started the game back up and tried to load that save again. This time it loaded right up without any messages. Once it loaded I found myself in Riverwood, I walked to Whiterun since it was the beginning of the game and I didn’t have a horse yet. I was attacked by a wolf along the way, nothing out of the ordinary. Once I had arrived though is when I started noticing things. I hadn’t seen a single NPC since I had started playing. There aren’t many NPCs in Riverwood so it wouldn’t have been too strange to have not seen any when passing through there, but I was in Whiterun and there wasn’t a single person to be seen.

I had never encountered anything like this before. I left the town and returned hoping that it was just a glitch, a loading error, something like that. When I reentered I was greeted by the same silence. I went to my map so that I could fast travel back to Riverwood to see if it was the same there, but when I opened my map there was a new location marked. It was already discovered too. I moved the cursor over it to see what it was. It was a cave called ‘The Hopeless Grotto’. I had never seen or heard of this place before.

Now, I am no stranger to creepypastas and have watched many videos about them. This kind of thing was not a normal occurrence. This new cave intrigued me. I fast travelled there and to my surprise was greeted by an empty area of trees. There was nothing nearby that even resembled a cave. I was walking around looking to see if I could find anything and as I was walking the sound of footsteps on dirt and grass changed to wood. I looked down and there was a trap door. I entered the trap door and after the loading screen I was completely surrounded by darkness. I couldn’t see an inch in front of me. I pulled out a torch, but even that barely did anything. I began walking forward until I hit a wall. I looked around to see if there was anything to activate, maybe a door or a switch. After looking around for a little bit I finally found a door. I activated it and after it screeched open I could hear the sounds of someone, no, multiple people moaning.

I could see a little bit better in this room, but couldn’t make out any figures. The moans must have been coming from somewhere else. I found a pull-chain on the wall closest to the door I had just come through, I pulled it and the area I had just come from lit up. I went back to see what if I had missed anything. It was just an empty tunnel. There wasn’t even a ladder leading back up to the surface. The exit to this place must be wherever that moaning was coming from. I crept further and further into the cave with each room becoming more and more visible and the moans were getting louder and louder.

I finally found myself in front of a door that would load into a new area. This had to be where the moans were coming from. I opened the door and the loading screen came up. It seemed like it was taking ages to load. The game stuttered a little a bit before finally finishing the loading process. Right before I was put back in the game the loading screen had transitioned to a new picture, but it was only there for a second. It looked like it might have been a face, but I couldn’t tell in that short amount of time. When I was finally in control again, I thought the game had frozen. I was moving at a snail’s pace. The game was lagging horribly and I had no idea why. For some reason I was facing the door that I had just come from. It was quiet, not a single moan to be heard. I began to turn around, but seemed to keep getting slower and slower. When I was finally turned around I realized why it was lagging so badly. I had also realized why I hadn’t seen any NPCs the entire time I was playing.

All of the NPCs from the game were dead, lying in the center or this huge cavern. They were piled extremely high. Even the unkillable NPCs were dead. This sight was horrifying. There were even children in the pile. I had to get out of there as soon as I could. I began to turn around, but I was moving so slowly. As soon as I was able to activate the door I did. I was back in the cave system I had come from. I began walking back to see if it was possible to leave this cave, but as soon as I went through the first door I was greeted by the face that I had seen before on the loading screen. It was the Night Mother. Her shriveled dead face was right in front of me. It locked me into a dialogue sequence with her. She asked the question that the door asks when you try to get in the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary. “What is the music of life?” I had no dialogue option other than ‘(Remain Silent)’. She answered her own question, “Silence, my brother.” My character died instantly. The game didn’t take me back to any autosaves or a previous save; it just put me back on the main menu.

I turned off my 360 immediately. I always thought that creepypastas were fake and that they were just stories made to get attention. I guess it turns out that sometimes these things really do happen.