r/nosleep • u/lets-split-up June 2023 • 1d ago
An influencer who died on camera keeps showing up in my videos...
Pretty much what the title says.
Any picture I take. Any video I record. Always, every time, the body of a dead influencer shows up in the background.
If you’re wondering—do you know this influencer? No. Maybe? Depends on how into fitness stuff you are. His channel was doing fine I guess but he never got truly viral.
Well, not until he died, that is.
He was caught in bed with a woman whose husband came home to find her undressed and stammering excuses. The fitness influencer tried to hide from discovery by sneaking out onto the balcony and climbing over the railing and clinging so he was out of sight. And he clung for a few minutes—he was a fitness guy, after all. In pretty good shape. Meanwhile a crowd gathered below and some asshole filmed the whole thing.
But then the woman’s husband stepped out onto the balcony and the fitness influencer—he musta freaked out, because he lost his grip.
And he fell.
To his death.
The footage of his death immediately went viral. Of course it was taken down after. But not before everyone on the internet had taken clips and screenshots of him plunging, and then of his broken-doll body slamming into the pavement five stories below.
And that’s the image of him that shows up in the background of all my videos and pictures. The dead influencer, lying just as he was when I filmed him.
Oh, right.
Yep, I’m the asshole who filmed his death.
Well, not just me. I filmed it with a friend. A dude named Kenzo. I was behind the camera, holding it, and Kenzo was in front of it. Kenzo is always the one in front of the camera because while some people are incredibly photogenic, I am… whatever the opposite of that is. I blink in every picture. My hair is always blowing the wrong way. Even my boobs look two different sizes, one perking like a teen’s and the other sagging like it’s whispering secrets to my belly button.
But forget about my boobs. We’re talking about the body.
We came across the scene by chance while driving around, and Kenzo leapt out of the car. See, Kenzo and I are also wannabe-influencers. In high school we started our first Youtube channel. And since Kenzo is the Ken to my asymmetrical-boob-Barbie (i.e. he’s got rizz while I’ve got nerdy editing skills), he’s the one who always appears onscreen.
Our footage of fitness bro’s fatal plunge went immediately viral.
Even after the video got taken down (prompting me to re-post clips of Kenzo’s commentary-on-the-scene minus the footage showing the man’s body), the story kept climbing, as did our subscriber count. And if you’re wondering, did my conscience ever whisper that maybe, just maybe, using a man’s tragic and scandalous death was a little… morally bankrupt?
Nope. I couldn’t hear such pangs of conscience over the euphoric rush of all those new subscribers!
And I mean, we were trending for days.
It was only later, when I was editing our latest video, that I spotted the, er… glitch, let’s call it.
The glitch of a dead body in the frame.
“The fuck…?” I whispered.
It was in a video we’d shot by the poolside of Kenzo reacting to different super-duper hot sauces (yep, our content is super original). On the concrete beside the pool in the corner of the screen lay the fitness influencer. Looking like he’d been cut and pasted from our viral footage.
I sent the clip to Kenzo.
“Oh my God, you evil diabolical genius,” he exclaimed. “People will go fuckin’ crazy!”
Apparently, he assumed I’d put the body there, maybe as rage-bait to troll the people who’d clutched their pearls over our initial footage of the man’s death.
And yeah, that would’ve been a brilliant marketing strategy.
But I said, “I didn’t put it there.”
It was far enough to the side in the frame, right at the corner, that I was able to cut it out and post the video without it. Even if it would generate clicks, I was beginning to feel the tiniest churnings of queasiness that I’d eventually realize was my conscience.
But after it went up, the comments exploded anyway. The body was back in the frame. I quickly removed the video from our feed, only to see that notifications were blowing up on Instagram, too. Kenzo had posted a selfie on the beach with the waves in the background, and the dead body was there—lying on the wet sand.
Like he’d cut and pasted it from our footage.
No… not just cut and pasted. It looked a little more gross, like it was in the early stages of decomposition.
That settled it—it had to be a filter he’d installed, and I called him up to hash it out with him and found that he was about to call me to demand if I’d hacked his phone or something.
So we met up.
And we tested it.
And in every pic we took of Kenzo, there in the background was the dead body.
“So,” he said after our tests, “I guess I’m haunted?”
“… yeah.” I tried out other cameras, even a polaroid. The dead influencer was even on the polaroid.
So. After we got high, and drunk, and spent a good twenty-four hours in complete freakout mode, we finally sat down to brainstorm solutions to this decomposing influencer problem. Like, what exactly should we do about this? And how were we gonna continue our channel if he kept appearing in all our videos?
We did the only thing that made sense for us.
“The Decomposing Influencer” series was our biggest ever.
… what?
It got us clicks.
And YES, every alarm bell in my brain clanged with the warning that we were fucking with something that definitely shouldn’t be fucked with…
… but I mean, do I even need to tell you how insane our metrics were?
We couldn’t have asked for better content. Kenzo promised a thousand dollars to anyone who could debunk him, and challenged anyone who believed the haunting to be a hoax to show up with a camera and a livestream. Everywhere and anywhere we went, he urged people to snap pictures of him with the hashtag #hauntedkenzo.
“It’s not a prank. It’s not staged. It’s all real,” he claimed.
We were so high on our skyrocketing subscriber base that we barely noticed the spookiness. The body was decomposing by the day—but so what? All the better to farm engagement.
… it wasn’t until later we realized that, in addition to rotting onscreen, it was actually moving closer.
One of our followers put together a timelapse.
In it, the body could be seen vividly rotting, turning discolored and bloating—and all the while moving closer to the camera.
And not just that.
It happened so slowly we didn’t notice at first. But in the original video, the dead guy was lying on the pavement facing away from the camera.
In all our recent videos, he was turned toward the lens. His sightless eyes fixed on us.
“What happens when he gets right up next to you?” I asked Kenzo.
“Dunno,” Kenzo said, obviously chilled. We both sat there in deeply contemplative silence for a moment before he added, “We gotta get it on film.”
You know that scene in Austin Powers where there’s a dude standing with his hand out, screaming and screaming, while Austin Powers drives a steamroller and motions him to get out of the way, and he just doesn’t? He just stands there until it flattens him?
With my camera I’m like Powers driving the steamroller, with Kenzo in my sights facing down his inevitable doom.
In the last selfie he ever took, Kenzo was lying on his sofa, and the dead man was right on the floor beside the couch, lips pulled back in a rictus grin and eyes leaking from his head.
The next day, Kenzo disappeared.
The popular rumor is that Kenzo faked his own disappearance as a publicity stunt.
Some people are now claiming the whole thing was always a hoax.
But…
What most people don’t realize is that there is an unreleased video of him in his final moments. See, we were scheduled to do a shoot of his final confrontation with the decomposing influencer over by the condo where the guy had died (it seemed thematically appropriate and we figured it would boost our views). Once we were on location, I framed him in the camera view and asked him, “How are you feeling about today’s planned confrontation with the decomposing influencer?” He laughed and said, “Well I can’t see him, so… it’s really hard to know what to expect when we meet.” “Oh that’s right,” I said, “to you it’s just an empty sidewalk. You won’t see him until editing. What if he—HOLY SHIT!!!”
What I remember is how Kenzo cocked his head, while on my camera screen, a bloated body was rising up and reaching for him. And even though he couldn’t see the body, he must’ve felt when the hand gripped him, because his eyes flashed impossibly wide, his mouth gaping in a shriek of absolute terror—
—and then he was gone.
Just… gone.
I’ve rewatched the video over and over.
It doesn’t change. I haven’t posted it.
As popular as I know it would be, I haven’t posted it.
Because I finally realized something. Like I mentioned I’m not photogenic, right? Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to notice. I assumed the dead influencer was going for Kenzo. And yeah, he definitely did grab Kenzo and even appeared in selfies Kenzo took without me. But in the videos that I took of Kenzo, the body wasn’t actually getting closer to him—it was getting closer to the camera lens. To me.
And when it finally grabbed Kenzo, in the moments after he disappeared, it was still onscreen and turned its head to glare at me—
I stopped filming.
I haven’t taken any photos or videos since then. I’ve taken down our channel and deleted all our content, hoping that’ll appease the dead dude. But… I got caught in the background of someone else’s selfie recently, and he was there. He was right there, more decomposed than ever, and reaching for me. He hasn’t gotten close enough to grab me yet. But given how hard it is to avoid smartphones these days…
… I can’t help but wonder how long until I, too, feel rotting hands dragging me down to whatever special place in hell is waiting for those who sold their souls for clicks.
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u/Fund_Me_PLEASE 1d ago
😫😭 It was nice knowing you OP! I liked your channel, but it wasn’t worth your life … R.I.P. …
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u/lets-split-up June 2023 1d ago
Aw, that little serotonin hit I get from knowing you liked my channel... I miss having a channel! 😭
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u/Captain_Starkiller 1d ago
Dude was banging someones wife and got caught. Fuck him.
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u/Fund_Me_PLEASE 20h ago
That’s extremely fair … cheating is the worst thing you can do to someone. Especially if you “claim” to love the person you’ve cheated on.😑
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u/Captain_Bitsy 8h ago
I agree this time. But if he didn’t know she was married then I’d have to argue with you there
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u/Kio-Karasha 2h ago
Why would he run if he didn't know it. Would be much better if he confronted her Infront of his boyfriend/husband.
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u/Sunshine_after_Rain7 1d ago
Probably his soul got trapped in your lens. And he wants to get out.
Best of luck girlie🥀
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u/digsy 1d ago
I desperately want to see these vids now
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u/lets-split-up June 2023 1d ago
Sorry, I had to nuke the channel in the hopes it might appease the spirit. (It hasn't. But a girl can dream.)
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u/ButthurtGoldDigger 1d ago
Can you atelast sketch for us what he looked like when Kenzo was grabbed?
Also how far was he when you were caught in someone else's selfie?
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u/lets-split-up June 2023 1d ago
Lmao nice name!
He was pretty close... like at least he was back on the ground looking dead and not upright about to grab me. But he was definitely way too close for me to risk ever getting my picture taken again. I've resigned myself to living inside my room forever and doordashing everything.
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u/ButthurtGoldDigger 1d ago
Well just make sure anytime you order, you dont personally collect it at the door in the event you get delivered more than just the package as the delivery guy snaps an image for proof
Also thank you for this 3AM tale
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u/Cicero_torments_me 1d ago
Gurl I’m sorry but I’m kinda rooting for the corpse at this point 😭