I bought a used copy of Majora's Mask from an old man at a garage sale. He was clearly reluctant to sell it. He didn't want to talk about where it had come from or why he was getting rid of it. He just took my money and turned away.
There was already a save file on the cartridge. Named BEN. I deleted it without thinking about it.
The game started normally. But something was off from the start — NPCs that should have spoken dialogue stood silent. Music looped at wrong intervals. Characters referenced me by name. Not Link. My name. My actual name, which I had not entered anywhere.
I dismissed it as a corrupted save. I kept playing.
By the third in-game day, the game had stopped following any scripted logic I recognized. Cutscenes played out of sequence. The Elegy of Emptiness statue — which should only appear when summoned — followed me through areas where it had no function. It didn't animate. It stood and watched.
On the night of September 12th, the game showed me the "Dawn of a New Day" screen with a blank counter beneath it. Then it loaded into Ikana Canyon with none of the correct geometry. Just the canyon, empty, and the statue standing in the center.
Link's body moved without my input. He walked to the edge of the canyon.
I dropped the controller and pulled the cartridge.
I know how this sounds. I'm not a superstitious person. But the events of the following week — the files that appeared on my computer, the video footage I didn't record, the things I heard through my headphones when I loaded an emulated copy of the ROM — have no explanation I find satisfying.
I've since made contact with others who've had copies of this cartridge. Not the same copy. Different copies, purchased in different states, at different times. All of them with a file named BEN. All of them reporting the same sequence of events.
The old man I bought it from is not findable. That name, that address, returns nothing.
I'm leaving this account here because I think someone else needs to know: if you find a copy with a file named BEN on it, don't delete it. Don't play it. Don't load the ROM.
And if you hear the Song of Healing playing from somewhere in your house and you haven't turned anything on —
Don't look at the mirror.