So I've been reading this thread about weird tech from the early 90s and it reminded me of something I haven't thought about in years.

My dad worked for a tech company in New Hampshire. Big place, they made computers. This would have been late 1993. He came home one day with this weird handheld device that he said his company was testing before release. They wanted to see how kids responded to it.

It was this educational handheld story game, looked kind of like a fancier beige Game Gear, called Imaginarium. Ran off batteries.

The thing was completely busted. My dad said it wasn't finished yet, which explained it. The story mode would glitch out constantly, cut to wrong scenes, repeat lines, play audio that didn't match what was on screen. Sometimes it would just output random sentences in this little girl's voice - stuff that wasn't part of any story.

Most of the random sentences were gibberish. "The corridor leads east." "She cannot find the door." "It is dark in the lower rooms." Like it was pulling fragments from story scripts.

But one night I was lying in bed with the headphones in, and it said, out of nowhere, completely clearly: “I will find you, child.” The voice was low and terrifying.

I know it was a glitch. I know it was a coincidence. I know the system was broken and outputting random story fragments. I know that.

But I gave the console back to my dad the next morning and told him it was too broken to test properly. I didn't tell him the real reason.

That night and for about two weeks after, I had the same dream every night: standing in a dark room, and hands coming up from the floor, reaching for my ankles.

I don't know what the company was called. Dad never talked about work much. He got laid off in early 1994 when the company went under. He passed away in 2003.