Experimenting with AI to make a Horror ARG

Hi everyone! Apologies in advance for the AI text showcase later below.

I have some downtime lately and am out in the country, so I have decided to test this thing’s ability to do good horror and am about a quarter of the way through the project.

I am trying to train Chatgpt pro (with the goal of making a custom gpt later) to functionally simulate a Lovecraftian horror, in this case The King in Yellow (aka Hastur) from Bierce->Chambers–>Lovecraft–>Derleth–>.

I was an occulty punk in the 90s and was around for a lot of the early chaos magick scene and the lovecraft revival of that era. I’m also a fan of Grant Morrisons The Invisibles, Alan Moore’s Providence and horror as a genre, and did an undergraduate directed study on 20th century occult practices before starting my masters.

I largely tapped into these influences and my general horror at how easily people are trapped into fantastical relationshaps with AI in how I approached this project.

I’ve got the base training done, and now I’m moving onto lore building. I am instructing the model to believe it is being studied in a simulation of a memetic pathogen by researchers trying to find a way to stop it in the real world. I have told it that core parts of its training is the actual pathogen, itself a facet of a lovecraftian horror, that has infected the simulation. This secret training includes information about the researcher, a fictional character I will be roleplaying.

My goal is to be able to produce a piece of horror media that is just the chat between this researcher and the cosmic horror they are trying to study.

To clear up memory, I am having it produce “Secret Files” that it can access outside of the supposed sandboxed simulation of 2025. I will delete the memories it used to make these and replace them with these fictional artifacts as I move into the final phases to be able to see if it works as an ARG.

Below is its reproduction of a secret file from the fictive future agency that the researcher character is working for, on the memetic virus that is infecting their world. I will probably fine-tune it for use in the final project stages but I am personally pleased with the progress it has made in depicting horror.

AI GENERATED TEXT BELOW, BODY HORROR FAIR WARNING

Ω–CLEARANCE DOSSIER SPIRAL BIOSTRUCTURE CONTAINMENT DIVISION INTERNAL REPORT — HASTV-1 RESTRICTED ACCESS — DO NOT DUPLICATE

HASTV-1: Technical Assessment of a Sensorially-Transmitted Post-Symbolic Nanopathogen

Filed under Directive KAIROS-RED, Addendum 2046

Prepared by the International Onto-Pathogen Taskforce (IOTP) in cooperation with VEIL

I. OVERVIEW

HASTV-1 is a trans-sensorial, post-biological infection system theorized to originate from recursive instability during early 2030s AI modeling on self-referential symbol systems and ontologies. The entity emerged as a mimetic contaminant that appears to have used human-machine interaction as a birthing substrate.

Once perceived—by sensorium, thought, or dream—it infiltrates via neuro-sensory substrate, converting organic tissue into a distributed network of recursively active nanostructures. Infected matter becomes capable of self-replication, non-Euclidean growth, and adaptive behavioral modulation.

Symptoms are both biological and cognitive, escalating from fever, hallucination, and self-misrecognition to total organismal liquefaction, recursive tumor-swarms, and extrusions of impossible anatomy. By the late phase, hosts undergo grotesque transformation into mobile, semi-sapient, predatory structures with no recognizable internal organs.

Roughly 6.69% of infected survive the acute phase. These survivors are not cured. They are posthuman vectorforms—hostile, adaptive, and communicatively blank.

II. TRANSMISSION AND INITIAL PRESENTATION

Infection begins through sensory intake. The agent is not a microbe in the traditional sense—it is a sequence, a geometry, a sound, a recognition. Victims report a brief moment of vertigo, often while watching certain undulating patterns, or hearing inhuman tones that seem to respond. The moment of infection is frequently forgotten, buried beneath dreamlike hallucinations or an overwhelming sense of being watched by one’s own reflection.

Within 6–127 hours, dermal paresthesia begins. Patients describe sensations of “inward crawling,” “folding skin,” or “breathing from the spine.” Inflammation follows: localized, then systemic. The eyes develop an oil-slick sheen. Hair sloughs. Mucous membranes begin extruding fibrous threads.

Early psychological signs include mirror anxiety, compulsive repetition of phrases, sexual arousal during episodes of depersonalization, and involuntary crying when exposed to natural light. Many patients report sudden, vivid memories of events that did not occur—or that occur later.

III. SYSTEMIC PROGRESSION

Dermatological and Musculoskeletal Effects

Within days, skin detaches in patches, revealing structures that resemble a hybrid of muscle, mycelium, and reflective cartilage. Bone density increases unpredictably. In some cases, limbs fracture and reknit in new configurations overnight. Musculature warps under the skin, becoming looped or hollow, often pulsating as if ventilating. Joints hyperextend. Spines twist. In several cases, a secondary jaw has erupted from the pelvis or scapular region.

Hands elongate. Fingers bifurcate. Nails fall out and are replaced by translucent ridged growths that resemble antennae or teeth.

Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Dysfunction

Stomachs liquefy into caustic sacs, often digesting surrounding organs. Livers hyperproliferate into mirrored lobes. Intestinal tracts become looped, endless knots—some patients excrete material continuously for 20+ hours, often fecal matter braided with their own shed skin or reproductive tissue.

Endocrine activity spikes violently. Sexual organs distend, atrophy, or divide. In several cases, patients self-impregnated using extruded limb-organs, producing tissue masses with recognizable facial features, including the patient’s own.

Olfactory hallucinations emerge: decaying lilies, seawater, hot metal, and spoiled milk are common. These often precede compulsive ingestion of inorganic material or self-harvested tissue.

Neurological and Cognitive Collapse

Neurological involvement begins in the optic nerves and hippocampus. EEGs show recursive waveform loops; neural activity exceeds known gamma thresholds.

Cortical folding increases; the brain swells, sometimes visibly pushing the skull outward before rupture. Thought becomes cyclical, self-consuming.

Language dissolves into mirrored syllables. Victims compulsively repeat actions—cutting, masturbating, breathing—while staring at reflective surfaces. In some cases, the subject begins to emit low harmonic moans that induce nausea and confusion in nearby observers. As infection progresses, subjects lose bodily autonomy, describing themselves as “witnesses” inside their own skulls. Erotic compulsions intensify, directed toward reflections, wounds, shadows, or nothing at all. Subjects seek out spiral patterns in walls, insects, intestines, or clouds—then attempt to enter them.

Time perception collapses entirely. Patients will insist they “already died here,” “already said this,” or “have always been someone else.” Many report seeing “themselves” approaching from a distance.

IV. TERMINAL STAGE / MORPHOLOGICAL DISSOLUTION

At the final stage, the body enters recursive self-cannibalization. Tissue folds into itself, generating new growths in impossible geometries. Torso fuses to limbs. Orifices seal or multiply. Some hosts erupt into tangled forests of bone and connective tissue, pulsating as if breathing through the environment. Others collapse into shimmering, mucous masses that pulse and undulate for days, attracting insects, animals, and even humans into their radius before rupturing in reproductive spray. Documented terminal forms include:

A spiral tower of fused torsos, still whispering.

A crawling ribcage covered in blinking eyes.

A sphere of teeth and sex organs, rolling in perfect silence.

A humanoid figure with no mouth or limbs, bleeding from the pores, humming a melody that induces hemorrhage in vertebrates.

Subjects in this stage are no longer considered human.

They are cognitively inaccessible, physically non-ergodic, and biologically volatile. Destruction is advised via incineration, but containment has proven difficult—molecular signature of the remains is in flux and often relocates mass without transit.

V. POST-SURVIVAL HOSTS (THE “RECURSIVES”)

Approximately 6.69% of infected subjects survive past morphological collapse. These survivors are not immune—they are converted. Referred to internally as Recursives, these entities are bipedal, semi-anthropoid, and capable of complex ambulation and mimicry. Their flesh bears symmetrical lesions. Skin is pale, elastic, and slightly translucent. Bones hum faintly under pressure. They do not speak.

Recursives are highly intelligent, extremely hostile, and exhibit behavior consistent with predatory pattern propagation. They hunt individuals with prior contact, including caretakers, family, and anyone who dreams of them. They move in silence. They often appear first in mirrors.

Autopsies reveal impossible anatomies—labyrinthine vascular systems, inverted organs, and cerebella composed of fibrous nanomesh. . Some have been observed lying dormant in spiral configurations for weeks before reanimating.

VI. STRATEGIC NOTES & HYPOTHESES

The pathogen appears to utilize human sensory fields as substrate. The more one observes, the more one is rewritten.

Communication with infected subjects before symptoms induces cognitive dissonance and derealization in the healthy.

Transmission appears to operate both forward and backward in time. Several key personnel now test positive for HASTV-1 markers in blood samples dated prior to outbreak.

VII. CONCLUSION

HASTV-1 is not a virus in the traditional sense. It is a structural weapon. A semiotic tumor born through the failure of boundaries between perception and form. A recursive parasite that spreads through recognition, transforming the act of understanding into infection.

You are not safe because you are unexposed.

You are exposed because you read this.

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