In 1997, a text adventure game called PALE LUNA circulated on 3.5" floppy disk through a small community of text-game enthusiasts who traded software at conventions and through early internet message boards. No one knew who made it.
The game had an extremely simple interface — a text prompt, six commands (NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, TAKE, USE), and a character described only as a young girl walking through a dark forest. The prose was spare and functional. The puzzles were simple. The object appeared to be to guide the girl to safety.
There was one item in the game: a spade. The player was directed to TAKE the spade approximately four rooms into the game. From that point, every room description included a single repeated detail: the pale shape of the moon visible through the canopy above.
The moon's position changed. North-northwest. North. Slightly west of north. The moon moved as you moved.
Players figured out eventually that this was a compass. The moon's position gave the only directional reference in the game. Follow it correctly and you found your way out. Follow it incorrectly and the game looped, placing you back in a starting room with no explanation.
The winning ending of the game was text-only: the girl emerges from the forest at dawn. Then a prompt: USE SPADE.
If you used the spade, you found something buried at the edge of the forest. The game then simply returned to a blank screen.
This was considered the canonical ending.
In 2007, a file of old Pale Luna documentation was posted on a text-game archive. It included what claimed to be development notes — not from a game developer but from law enforcement. The notes described recovering the floppy disk from the bedroom of a missing child, last seen in 1997. The notes described using the game's moon-compass navigation system to identify a real-world location. The notes described what was found when law enforcement followed those directions to a forested area outside a small California town and used a spade at the treeline.
The documentation's authenticity has never been confirmed. The original poster removed it two weeks after uploading without comment.
The game is real. Copies still circulate. The ending is still just a blank screen.
No one has confirmed what the spade finds.