Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. Stories and content in weird darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only.

Parental discretion is strongly advised. It's 1981, and in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, a phenomenon has begun.

It's 1981. And in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, a phenomenon has begun.

Dozens of gamers are in line waiting to play the newest arcade sensation, Polybius, a game so

exciting that people have come to physical blows just to be next in line to play.

Perhaps addictive is a better word, as some players begin to suffer from a series of strange side effects such as seizures, amnesia, insomnia, night terrors,

and hallucinations.

The machines are rumored to be a government experiment to test the game's psychoactive properties,

and official-looking men in black have even been seen tending to the machines, extracting

data from the consoles.

Then suddenly, after only a month, Polybius disappears without a trace, with no explanation

as to why.

The story is so strange that it has been deemed an urban legend, but could there be some

truth behind the Polybius happening? I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.

Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre,

crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained.

Coming up in this episode.

It's rumored that an arcade game from 1980 might lead to the real death of its players. We'll look at the death

curse of Berzerk. But first, another arcade game in the early 80s was

surrounded by controversy because the game never existed,

despite so many saying that it did.

Or did it exist?

...