Steel Penny

Steel Penny

It was an average Saturday night, and I was bored as hell. My parents were gone on their anniversary dinner, and my sister was out with her boyfriend. I was surfing the internet for random sites and wasn’t impressed with what I found. So I than went on my old reliable; YouTube. I did my typical practice of going on a `favorites’ vid, and finding some related videos on the side, just to kill the time. I just happen to be a connoisseur of weird vids. I watch `Salad Fingers’ and the like by the hour, so as you expect, I have a bunch of rather odd vids on my Faves list. So anyhow, I clicked on one of them, and in the related, I find a video called Penny.avi. This intrigued me, as most videos are not left in their primitive form, and are renamed before uploading. So I clicked on it, noting the add date was just today.

I was immediately greeted by an extremely loud metal-on-metal sound. As I had my headphones on, and the volume was about 70, this scared me pretty bad. I quickly muted the vid, and turned my volume down. Turning the volume on again, I was quickly greeted by the whispers of a little girl. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but she sounded angry and sad at the same time. In the visual part of the video, I saw the girl, sitting in the corner of a dark room; she looked about 12. She was barely visible, as the room she was in was extremely dark.The video was a fairly grainy, almost like an old cassette camcorder was used to film it. I checked for an HD option, but 360p was the highest. Thinking this was a home video, and maybe meant to be private; I almost paused and went back to vid surfing…when the girl clearly said my name. Now, I know; it could have been a coincidence, but no. When I looked back at the video (I was eating at the time), the girl was looking at me. She had hair in front of her face though, so I can’t really say she was LOOKING at me, but I can say she was facing me. Then she stood up.

At this time, I was getting pretty weirded out, and started a nervous tic of mine; I started to hum. The little girl was…just standing there, facing the camera. She just stood there for a good 30 seconds, not moving. Than the camera started zooming. It was zooming in on the little girl’s midsection, and then zooming in on her right hand. I her hand was a single coin; it looked like a penny. It wasn’t your standard copper penny, but it looked like a different variety. I paused the vid to get a better look. It looked like a silver penny.

The girl sat down again, and started scraping the penny on the metal wall, causing that ear-wrecking sound again, and causing me to mute the vid again. She than got up again and started walking towards the camera…really fast. When she came into the light, I noticed she was in a plain, pale yellow sundress and very worn brown shoes, similar to what would be worn in a ‘50s rural area. She was also extremely thin, borderline anorexic. She than began scratching the wall rapidly, again raping my ears with that horrible sound. I almost mute the vid again, but she says my name again, and something I can’t quite make out. Than the next frame, she’s on the floor, in a crouched position, with her hands and knees on the ground, and her toes pressed against the floor, looking ready to pounce. The video just went black. But it still had 30 seconds left. It was quiet for about 25 seconds, then I suddenly heard the scraping sound again, and the girl’s voice said “Coming.” The video than went over.

At this point, I’m having a WTF moment. What did I just watch? How did it know my name? What did it mean by “coming”?

I considered the coin she was holding, so I Googled “silver penny” and it came up with its normal 100,000 results. Clicking on a link, I learned that that penny was likely a steel penny. Steel was used steel during World War II to produce pennies, as copper was used for bullet casings and other supplies.

At this point, I was beginning to think of all the creepy-pastas I’d read on these weird videos. I was really starting to freak out. I stood up, got a glass of water, and started telling myself, aloud, that this was nothing. I heard something like scraping, but convinced not to get scared, I The moment I returned to my computer and sat down, my browser than refreshed the page, despite me not telling it to. What came up was a webpage that had photo-scans of old newspapers, and it had a sub-section open in the 1940’s. Convinced it was a virus, I quickly went to open my anti-virus, but was interrupted with a notepad document opening with 2 words popping up on my screen; “Please? first” Totally freaked out, I felt compulsed to oblige this request. I read the article of the first newspaper in the list; and it was just a typical war newspaper, reporting on the battles, troop losses, etc. But there was an article that caught my eye. It was an article about the murder of a young girl and, intrigued, I read it. According to the paper, a young girl, named Eldred Dolores Louison was murdered on this date, but years ago; August 5th, 1945. Before I could read any more, my browser made that clicking sound again, meaning it was changing pages. What came up was YouTube again, and the video’s title was Penny.avi. This time, it was a totally different video. The girl was just standing in front of the camera, just staring into it, humming. Then suddenly I heard that fucking scratching again. The only thing is, I realized I didn’t have my headphones on…. I looked again at the notepad document, and only 1 word popped up: “Revenge.”