Players report hearing C’Thun growl, “You will die” in abandoned house.

Welcome back to our Gamebusters series, the feature in which we track down various gaming myths and attempt to disprove them. This week we’ll be examining the supposedly abandoned, creepy areas of World of Warcraft, as well as the myth of possessed children in the popular MMORPG.

For those unaware, the myth goes that the virtual world is much like the real world. Of course instead of creepy abandoned hospitals and prisons, MMORPGs have areas that were abandoned by the developers, though still accessible if you know how to sneak into them.

One such area is an unused dungeon just outside an area in World of Warcraft called Karazhan. This area, which is sometimes referred to as “Lower Karazhan” by the game’s players, is a dungeon that was scrapped partway through development. It has an impassable gate blocking the entrance, ensuring that nobody can get in. Or so the developers intended. It turns out that, utilizing a variety of glitches, you could indeed gain access to this abandoned dungeon, revealing quite a shocking image:

The above room is found amongst the typical dungeon maze of tunnels, and is called “The Upside-Down Sinners”. As you can see, it is exactly as it sounds; An underwater room that is filled with handless, eyeless people that have been chained upside-down and left to drown (thanks to worldofwarcraft.livejournal.com for the images).

If that’s not creepy enough for you, what about the myth of Goldshire, the first town that you encounter in the game after the human starting area? For those unaware, the myth goes that on the edge of Crystal Lake, an area just east of the town, lies a house. This house is typically empty, but once the game’s server time hits 7 AM, you can catch six kids standing in a weird formation:

If that wasn’t creepy enough, rumor goes that these kids used to stand in a pentagram. In addition, players claim to have heard strange noises, including banshee screams and even the voice of C’Thun, a former high-end boss that had been ripped out of the Cthulhu Mythos. This voice supposedly stated, “You will die.”

In addition, if you opt to follow the children from the human capital of Stormwind to the house, you will see that they never break their pentagram formation:

In addition to the creepy kids, custom music plays in the room. What makes this strange is the fact that Blizzard uses the same music quite often (just check out the inns in the game to see what we mean), so they obviously had to get their music department to create the sound for the area, ensuring that it wasn’t just a single programmer trying to creep people out.

Myth or fact? Believe it or not, these areas are fact. The area of “Lower Karazhan” is indeed an abandoned area in the game, and many have speculated that the reason for abandonment is that Blizzard feared that it would push World of Warcraft up to an M rating. But what of the children? Surely they can’t be real, can they?

It turns out they are, as evidenced by the below video:

But don’t take our (or even the video’s) word for it, feel free to check out the house at the aforementioned time a few days and see if you can find the children yourself.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s Gamebusters myth. If there are any you want me to research, post in the comments and I promise to make them a priority. Until next time, happy gaming!