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Midnight Man


Drayven

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It is believed that the Midnight Game was once an old pagan ritual used as a punishment for those who dared to disobey the gods. While this claim is unsubstantiated, the game has still become a popular activity for thrill seekers. As with all of Most Dangerous Games, proceed at your own risk – if you must proceed at all. It is recommended that you do not, under any circumstances, play this game.

Rules and details here.

Has anyone ever tried this game? It seems pretty intimidating...

Edited by Saru
Trimmed text - please avoid copy and pasting entire articles.
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From 12:00–3:33 seems like an insane amount of time to be had walking in circles and making sure a candle doesn't go out. Give me a producer, a camera person and some advertisement bucks and I'm down.

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I'd do it for a pizza. No rules against eating, but be careful--you don't want to get wax on your food.

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Wow. Too much effort. Saying bloody mary 3 times in front of a mirror seems a faster way to summon an evil entity to kill you ;)

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I've come across this before, I think it was posted on these forums before. The whole things just oozes urban legend.

It also seems to be deliberately concocting a ridiculously overly complicated set of rules such that the vast majority of people who read it will never bother and those who do and obviously find it to do nothing will simply be told they must have performed one of the meticulous rules wrong. Their clock might have been slight slow or fast. They might have left a light on in a closet or attic. They miscounted number of knocks. Etc.

All in all, it sounds very silly indeed.

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I'm over 12 years, so too old to be interested.

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I'm over 12 years, so too old to be interested.

And so I am I... If you're over twelve years old, doesn't mean you can't be interested. I think I'm too old to be making comments like that.

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Come on, the most dangerous games? If you want a dangerous game play Russian roulette.

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I once heard a farmer describe a suspicious neighbour as the "midnight cowboy", after stock in the district kept disappearing. A non-urban legend.

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This is not an old pagan ritual. Why do people always have to use that? Like somehow it lends legitimacy.

You can certainly see "midnight men," and scare yourself silly doing it. And you don't need this particular ritual to do so. You also don't really need to invite them.

They can come before midnight and stay past 3:33 am. They can even appear during daylight hours, if it's a dark enough place. They can mess with you in various ways if you allow it, but we still have all our organs, so that bit isn't accurate.

You can rid yourself of them, but it's an ongoing process, and moving won't help. As within, so without, ya know.

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This is not an old pagan ritual. Why do people always have to use that? Like somehow it lends legitimacy.

Thinking about that, I'm fairly sure most ancient pagans couldn't tell the difference between 3:33 am and 2:50 am or 4:02 am.

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Hamlet 3-2

Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,

And do such bitter business as the day

Would quake to look on.

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This is not an old pagan ritual. Why do people always have to use that? Like somehow it lends legitimacy.

Standard procedure these days, make up a story then say, it's an old pagan ritual or it's done in some far off country.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/3/2016 at 3:53 PM, LostSouls7 said:

I've heard of this game. Has anyone tried it ?

I'm sure some people have tried it and nothing happened.  And some people haven't tried it and told tall tales about the fantastical things that happened when they supposedly tried it.  Most people who would be willing to test out urban legends like this wouldn't be bothered to take part in such an elaborate set of rituals destined to failure.

When I was at school there was a story that if you walked round a church at midnight anti-clockwise while reciting the Hail Mary, then Satan would appear and offer you anything in exchange for your soul.  Clearly nonsense so I put it to the test in front of friends, one of whom believed any urban legend or ghost story he was told and was a bit freaked out by my even attempting it.  When nothing happened, people started getting back that they'd heard from friends or family members that it had to be a specific church in the town.  Or that it had to be on Halloween night.  And you had to have a lit candle with you.  Etc.  The story just got more elaborate until we bored of testing it.  It was clearly just a daft urban legend people enjoy telling to each other as ghost stories and when it failed, there was always an excuse for why it failed.

Same thing here.  It's a ludicrously complex ritual that the vast majority of people won't try and if you try it, it will be easy to invent excuses for why it failed.

Where does the story come from?  Has anyone documented its history?  Is it from a particular religion or culture?  Has anyone documented and recorded successfully doing it?  Of course not.  All we have are anonymous stories on Reddit, creepypasta websites and forums like this.  This has all the signs of being a silly creepypasta urban legend.  Is there any reason to actually think there's any truth behind it?

Edited by JesseCuster
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On 7/12/2016 at 6:14 AM, JesseCuster said:

I'm sure some people have tried it and nothing happened.  And some people haven't tried it and told tall tales about the fantastical things that happened when they supposedly tried it.  Most people who would be willing to test out urban legends like this wouldn't be bothered to take part in such an elaborate set of rituals destined to failure.

When I was at school there was a story that if you walked round a church at midnight anti-clockwise while reciting the Hail Mary, then Satan would appear and offer you anything in exchange for your soul.  Clearly nonsense so I put it to the test in front of friends, one of whom believed any urban legend or ghost story he was told and was a bit freaked out by my even attempting it.  When nothing happened, people started getting back that they'd heard from friends or family members that it had to be a specific church in the town.  Or that it had to be on Halloween night.  And you had to have a lit candle with you.  Etc.  The story just got more elaborate until we bored of testing it.  It was clearly just a daft urban legend people enjoy telling to each other as ghost stories and when it failed, there was always an excuse for why it failed.

Same thing here.  It's a ludicrously complex ritual that the vast majority of people won't try and if you try it, it will be easy to invent excuses for why it failed.

Where does the story come from?  Has anyone documented its history?  Is it from a particular religion or culture?  Has anyone documented and recorded successfully doing it?  Of course not.  All we have are anonymous stories on Reddit, creepypasta websites and forums like this.  This has all the signs of being a silly creepypasta urban legend.  Is there any reason to actually think there's any truth behind it?

You make a very good point. Kind of like Bloody Mary in the mirror. Of course I have been told by people I know

and heard people got scatched by her. A friend of mine had some nasty looking scratches after playing Bloody Mary.

The mid night man does sound way to complex. But I want to try it.

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On 7/12/2016 at 9:14 AM, JesseCuster said:

Where does the story come from?  Has anyone documented its history?  Is it from a particular religion or culture?  Has anyone documented and recorded successfully doing it?  Of course not.  All we have are anonymous stories on Reddit, creepypasta websites and forums like this.  This has all the signs of being a silly creepypasta urban legend.  Is there any reason to actually think there's any truth behind it?

Just some random "historical" tidbits for folks that honestly might not already know...

One of the earliest mentions of the Midnight game comes from Creepy Pasta, in August of 2010: http://inuscreepystuff.blogspot.com/2010/08/midnight-game-instructions.html

An interesting tie back it from September of 2008 is something called "The One Man Hide and Seek". It's rather similar to the Midnight Game, and this gets mentioned in December 2010: http://sayainunderworld.blogspot.com/2008/09/one-man-hide-and-seek.html

I haven't found anything that dates back further than that yet.

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  • 1 year later...

I’ve heard of it. It’s played by “popular you tubers” who like to screw with ouija boards and break the rules. Certainly NOT an ancient pagan ritual. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 4/16/2018 at 12:28 AM, Kota said:

I’ve heard of it. It’s played by “popular you tubers” who like to screw with ouija boards and break the rules. Certainly NOT an ancient pagan ritual. 

Notice he said “it’s believed to be.” I’ve seen some websites say it is an ancient pagan ritual, and some don’t. 

Edited by Nightsoul
Fixed something
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