About a few months ago, I went to my local mall with my seven year old son David to see if there was anything that he wanted for Christmas and put on his list. Now David was your average kid who likes things like super heroes, action figures, Lego, and video games. We went into some stores like Walmart, Brookstone, and even a Lego store. Before we left the mall, we came across a store called "The Revolution" and went inside. For those of you who don't know, The Revolution is a locally owned game store ran by a few guys. They sell everything from new games, to old games from when I was a child such as "Super Mario Bros." on the NES. David looked around and then saw something that caught his eye. The thing he saw was a Sony PSP 1000 System. He told me "Dad. This is something I want for Christmas. Do you think Santa could get me one?" I told him "Well maybe if you’re lucky and put it on your Christmas list, Santa might hook you up." He smiled as we continued to look around (well technically I was the only one looking because he was looking at that PSP box). Soon after, we left and went back home.
After writing a letter to Santa Claus and mailing it, waiting a couple of weeks, and having a Christmas Eve party at his grandparents house, Christmas day finally arrived. Just like any other child, David woke me up saying "Santa came! Santa came!" I walked with him down the stairs while he was practically screaming with joy. There under the tree were gifts for him. He asked "Can I open the gifts? Can I? Can I?" I said to him "Yes." And with that, he started to unwrap his gifts. He got things like a Power Rangers action figure, a Lego Star Wars set, a Disney Pixar Cars Lightning McQueen car, and clothes. But the gift that he opened was to him the best. When unwrapping the second to last gift, he had what has got to be one of the happiest faces ever. It was the Sony PSP 1000 system, bundled with some superhero games I got him. Those games were "Justices League Heroes" and "Spider-Man 3".
After a nice big breakfast, David open the PSP box, plugged in the AC adapter, plugged the other side into the PSP, and let it charge. I got to admit that for his young age, he was pretty smart considering the fact that he didn't even need to read the "Getting Started" manual. After letting it charge for a few hours, he gave it to me to fill in the "Getting Started" information (birthday, time, and date). I gave it back to him and he said "Thank you Dad!" and ran off with the device in his hands. I read the manual to see what the system could do and to my surprise, it had a lot of features like listening to music, playing videos, playing and downloading games from the PlayStation Network, and viewing pictures, and more. It came with a memory card so these features were available unlike some systems. And as I suspected, David showed me all these features that he thought was "pretty sweet". I thought everything would go well, I mean he's got games, and all those features. What could go wrong? Well... An incident happened.
After three months of owning it, one day when letting it charge, David tripped on the AC cord causing the PSP to fall off the counter and onto the floor. When I heard the crash, I ran upstairs to his room only to find him staring at the PSP faced flat on the ground with the UMD cover opened with the game also on the ground. He then without noticing me picked everything fast still with wide eyes. After putting the UMD disc back into the system and turning it on, the system came on, but with an error message saying "The disc could not be read." When taking the disc out and putting the disc back in, the same error message popped up. He started to panic and then he saw me standing there which made him jump. Immediately he says that the PSP won't read the games and he told me "Can you fix it?" Not knowing what to say and without thinking, I just said "I'll do my best." He hugged me and said "Thanks!" while in my head I'm thinking "How am I going to fix this thing?"
Later that day, I open up the system and saw that the part that plays the UMDs was cracked. After doing some research, the part that was broken was disc reader, or in other words the "Sony PSP 1001 UMD Drive and Laser". I found the part for a fairly good price of $14.95 on eBay plus free shipping I ordered it and about a week later, the part came. I googled how to take apart the drive and how to put it back in, and within about 45 minutes I got the drives switched out. I called in David and he was down the stairs within seconds. I told him to test a game and sure enough, it worked. He was happy and ran right back up the stairs to play the device. I guess I would be happy too if I was his age, but like most of the time, happiness doesn't always last.
Around 7:00 at night when I was watching some television in the living room, he came in with the PSP in his hand and had a rather strange expression his face. He looked confused, but also a little frightened. I asked him what was wrong, but all he did was show me what was on the screen. On the PSP screen was a white screen with a black text on it. The text read "hey buddy" only it was spelled like "heY budDY". I told him "How did this get on the screen?” He just said that his PSP froze and shut off, and when he turned it back on, this text appeared. I held down the power switch, and turn it back on, only to see the normal logo, and home menu. I just told David that it was a glitch and said not to worry. He said "OK" and left the room. I thought that was a bit strange since that has never happen before. Could that UMD drive somehow be affecting the unit? I tried to stop thinking about it. After about a few minutes I did, and went back to my show.
About a half-hour later of the whole incident, he came in again with the PSP in his hand again but this time looking pale and was on what looked like the verge of crying. He that started to cry and said "Spider-Man died, and now he's talking to me!". He gave me the PSP which now had another piece of black text in front on a white background on it. This time however it read "why..." with a sad face above it. I told him to go to his room and leave his PSP down here. When he left to go to his room, I shut off the system, and then looked up gameplay of his Spider-Man 3 game on YouTube. When watching the videos, I realized that Spider-Man never really dies in the game, and that you just restart the mission. In fact, if you jumped off a high building like the empire state building, he just lands like he always does when jumping from a building. In other words, he doesn't die. So thinking back when David said that Spider-Man died, I just thought "How?". And that lead me to do one thing, and that was to Play the game myself. I booted up the system (everything looking normal) and started the game. After loading one of his save files, and waiting for one of the levels to started, it finally did. I spawned in as the black-suited Spider-Man on one of the many buildings of New York. Nothing seemed out of place or anything like that. So I decided to start.
After getting used of the controls and web swinging around for a while, I finally found the empire state building. I will say that it took a REALLY long time to climb the building (I didn't know at the time that there was a way to web zip up the building), but when finally reaching the top, I jumped off. When Spider-Man was falling, I thought I heard a small whisper coming from the PSP speakers that said "Not again!". Spider-Man finally reached the ground, but when he did, it wasn't what I expected. When he landed, the screen cut to black as I heard what sounded like bones breaking and shattering. Then I heard a scream that I thought was Spider-Man. But the thing that was odd was that it didn't sound like Tobey Maguire whatsoever (ya know, the guy that played him in both the movie and game), but instead sounded like a slightly low pitch generic scream. Then, the system shut off. When I turned it back on, another text appeared but this time it was just an uppercase letter "D". I started to press random buttons. I eventually got to the "select" button. When pressing that button, another letter appeared on screen next to the "D", only this time the letter was an uppercase "E". I kept pressing the "select" button, each time it gave me a new letter. When it would no longer give me new letters it spelled out the following:
D-E-A-T-H T-O D-A-V-I-D
"Death to David!?!". How did this device know David's name? It never asked for it when setting the system up. Could this UMD drive really affect the game? Is it... haunted? That thought just kept looping in my mind. But then my thoughts got interrupted when I heard a scream coming from David's room. That scream startled me with another thought. "Whatever could be happening up there?" Without thinking, my legs just ran around the house and up the stairs as the screaming continued. When I reach his bedroom door, I pushed it open just to find David sleeping peacefully. "What???" Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black figure leaving the room out the window. I quickly screamed "HEY!!!" just as the figure's head turned around to reveal its face. A wide open mouth, sharp teeth and big white eyes. The face looked familiar. Hey look, its Spider... wait what?