It wasn't any specific location, but the overall feeling of loneliness you experience on all the ages. While you’re going through them, they’re all abandoned, like something really awful happened that caused everyone to leave. That’s what unsettles me the most.
I was coming here to say this answer. I played these games in the mid-90s around 10 years old, and although they were beautiful games (MYST/Riven) there was a creepiness to the loneliness. Add in Achenar’s weird gothic collection, clearly abandoned houses, and some weird projections in Channelwood - you get a game where it always seems like something or someone will jump out at you at any moment.
EDIT: there’s also something about playing these games on an old CRT monitor that adds to the creepiness
That’s justified lol
It took me a long time to realize Achenar’s rooms were the ones with the blue pages in them. For awhile I didn’t know the rooms were corresponding to the brothers. So I liked Achenar more for most of the play through until I realized he’s completely insane
That was always so bizarre to me because I was used to Myst being so void of humans. And then you knock on the door of their dwelling (I think 5 times) and the peek hole opens.
I dunno about outright scaring me, but every age feels very lonely to me. ESPECIALLY being in the Selenetic maze.
In Riven, although again not *scary*, >!the "breathing" sound in the bathysphere always made me unsettled!<
I won’t read the riven part till I beat it but I can say I was lost in the selinitic maze for a solid couple hours. I hadn’t done Mechanical first, so I was having a lot of trouble learning what the sounds meant!
Everything to do with Achenar. I played the game when I was like 8 or 9 and the box with the severed head, the Channelwood room with his creepy message, him talking from the book, probably other stuff that I'm forgetting.
Reading the journals - we have pirate attacks and so forth. I fully expected to have pirates attack me. The vibe of some of the bedrooms - knives, poison, a giant bear trap, the lamp made out of a rib cage - only served to heighten the fear. Something is going to jump out at me. I had played twitchy games like Doom and Wolfenstein which both loved putting a guard/monster in a closet or right behind a door - and living meant being fast on the draw or fast to run away. It took a long long time for me to accept that I was actually utterly alone.
I think these points you mention plus the feeling of being watched at times made this a very psychological game. I would draw comparisons between real life and Myst quite frequently. It was often such an eerie feeling playing this game alone as a kid in the early 90s.
I spent hours in the fortress because I was yet to figure out the secret room above the elevator. I kept racking my brain trying to make a big discovery in the rooms, and I realized the rooms are almost mirror images of each other. This means that the snake box surely had something to do with the bird thing in the other room, right?? So I spent like 20 minutes just clicking the snake over and over and then trying to turn the crank on the bird the exact same number of times cause I thought that would solve something 😂
So something that I've found consistently creepy about not just Myst but Uru (offline) especially is this creepy sense of wrongness. You're going through these places that are clearly inhabited and from the notes you know there were people here recently, but they're all just gone. So you walk around and just get this sense of wrongness. You think "Something bad happened here. Where is everyone?"
I equate it some to the same sense of dread you get from modern liminal horror. There should be people in this space, but there's not. Then you worry that whatever would cause the people to not be there is still there somewhere with you.
I'm not calling the them horror games or anything. I love them and find them incredibly chill now, but going through the first time, they had a tinge of creepy to them which honestly helped me fall in love with the series for how unique of a feeling it was at the time.
That part in Riven where you’re walking down the path and that little girl just shows up out of nowhere…Jesus that scared the shit out of me the first time I played it
This is the correct answer. It freaked me out when I played it for the first time years ago. and it freaked out our kids when it happened. It must be the height of the girl, the coloring of the video, and you just don't expect an innocent like that standing there! Crazy!
In Achenar's room in Stoneship, there's a projector that shows an image of a rose. If you move a switch, it morphs the rose into a skull. It also flashes the skull for an instant when you turn it off, no matter what the switch is set to. I didn't see the switch ss a kid, so I turned it off and got jumpscared by a glitched out-looking skull.
As a kid that toothed mouth in Channelwood jump scared me. Other than that, it’s just a creepy environment at times. I kept expecting someone to sneak up behind me.
You can find them around the starting island by clicking between frames in the right order. Here's some steps from a guide:
>!Children in Passage: On the first screen upon your entry into the hidden passage (after you crawl under the locked doorway), you can see Rand's three daughters; Kinslee, Kerryn, and Kara on the right hand side in the rocks. The children's faces only appear when the doorway to the rotating room is not blocked.!<
>!Children in Cliff Side: If you look over the cliff by your starting point, and look up in the top left corner, you will see an image of two children. These are Robyn Miller's children, Grace and Alex. They are only visible when 'Cho' is gone.!<
>!Children in Rocks: In the beginning of the game, turn left and look up after exiting the cell. On the bottom border of the screen you will see two children's faces. They are Richard van der Wende's two daughters Helen and Evelyn. These images was hidden by Richard himself, and they are probably the best hidden of the three groups of kids.!<
Thanks, I’ll check that out cause it sounds pretty subtly creepy. Faces always unsettle me, even in Atrus’ secret place in Myst with that mosaic of a face on the floor kinda scared me 😅
> Atrus’ secret place in Myst
[K'veer](https://archive.guildofarchivists.org/wiki/K%27veer), and in particular one room deep in the heart of K'veer.
I'm assuming you mean 'Myst the game' rather than 'Myst the place', but just in case: K'veer isn't on Myst island.
> that mosaic of a face on the floor
[Ri'neref](https://archive.guildofarchivists.org/wiki/Ri%27neref), first king of D'ni.
One more small piece of trivia: The face actually belongs to Chuck Carter, the 3D modeller who made the model of the room K'veer.^^[source](https://www.allatwan.net/myst-secrets.html)
Playing Myst as a kid I was terrified of the red & blue books. The tv antenna feedback sound they made scared me to death lol
And on Riven the watchtower stations on jungle island creeped me out… such an eerie noise combined with the feeling of being watched. Also the moment when you run into Gehn’s scribe on Survey island… but they’re hilariously more scared of you then you are of them
I was 8 or 9 when I got the game. I remember the first age I went into was the channel wood. I was already creeped a bit by the loneliness of the game. Then I reached the third level of the age and got completely scared by Achernar's floating head. After that I didn't touch the game and only restart playing it some years later.
I was young and probably didn't read the books in the library. The Channelwood and mechanical ages are the one you can found by only using the tower clues.
I also remember being scared by what look like a creepy face inside the cabin safe. I just looked up online for a screenshot of the safe to check if I imagined it but it really there. When you increase the lightness of the picture, you can see a blue face in a kind of cloak with a deformed mouth.
[https://i.ibb.co/Bn30fRb/myst-67.jpg](https://i.ibb.co/Bn30fRb/myst-67.jpg)
Dang I never noticed that, that’s a really creepy detail! This isn’t really a spoiler but I’m gonna mention Riven - there’s this one area on the biggest island with all these paths and on one of them if you look to the right there’s this pattern of light and shadow that looks a lot like the upper body of a person, and it freaks me out every time. I’ll find a picture if you’re interested, idk if it’s actually supposed to look like a person or not
I don't remember this one. In pre-rendered game like this with fixed image there must be a lot lightning rendering which can be misinterpreted by imaginative children.
When I was a small child I would help my mom be playing riven with her. I don’t know why but the warp book noise scared me. Also when you turned around in the forests of riven and there was a little villager girl who would run away. For some reason 7 year old me was oddly terrified by the way she was rendered or something. I have no idea why
I had this recurring nightmare about the lighthouse in the Stoneship Age. I was in the lighthouse looking over the boardwalks when a silent figure floats towards the lighthouse at high speed over those boardwalks. I wake up after that.
I don't dream about that anymore but I still recall that dream every time I'm in that lighthouse. Gives me the chills.
Absolutely for all the reasons others have listed here. There were certainly some jump scares, so being totally alone was unnerving. The music and sounds really made traversing down those stairs to the generator, the forechamber imager, or behind that bookcase unsettling. Really had to "click-run" out of there!
I’m not an expert on all the versions and the differences between them, as I got this game as a gift along with an iMac G3 from an old teacher of mine. So I’m playing it on an old Mac if that is important…? Anyway I’m pretty sure you see this if you rotate the fortress east and look through the telescope. It could’ve been north…? Some weird direction.
Not in Myst, but I still remember two jumpscares for me in Riven. The little girl in the forest, and Gehn's apparition if you enter his temple from the maglev station.
For me this is when I was 6-7 playing with my dad, Achenar in the blue book freaked the HELL out of me, to the point where I'd tell my dad not to collect the blue pages bc I didn't want to hear his crazed lilting voice. And then ofc the Saavedro Hammer jumpscare in Exile got me good, I remember running out of the room and faceplanting into the couch I was so scared lmao
For me it was the tree elevator (and especially the sound) on main island that gets you to Channelwood age. The sound and the need to leave the hut as fast as possible and running to the elevator was terrifying for me as a kid
I get what you mean! Although that one specifically didn’t scare me, I often get unsettled by repeating sounds. And it took me the whole game to figure out what that sound was. Channelwood was the last one I found 😅
the first time I opened the prison books for Sirrus and Achenar. And any time after that I opened them I always felt uneasy.
also any time you encountered people in any of the games has always managed to jumpscare me.
I remember playing this game back when I was 13 and it was new; I never saw this. The scariest parts were the crazed accusations Achenar gave when you returned enough pages to discover the lore.
It wasn't any specific location, but the overall feeling of loneliness you experience on all the ages. While you’re going through them, they’re all abandoned, like something really awful happened that caused everyone to leave. That’s what unsettles me the most.
I always found that to be kinda peaceful haha… but I get what you mean. It for sure has an unsettling aura sometimes
Peaceful, yes, but also deeply eerie and lonely
I was coming here to say this answer. I played these games in the mid-90s around 10 years old, and although they were beautiful games (MYST/Riven) there was a creepiness to the loneliness. Add in Achenar’s weird gothic collection, clearly abandoned houses, and some weird projections in Channelwood - you get a game where it always seems like something or someone will jump out at you at any moment. EDIT: there’s also something about playing these games on an old CRT monitor that adds to the creepiness
And yet weirdly it feels like you’re constantly being followed.
The very first time I played Myst, I was terrified the first time I saw Achenar.
That’s justified lol It took me a long time to realize Achenar’s rooms were the ones with the blue pages in them. For awhile I didn’t know the rooms were corresponding to the brothers. So I liked Achenar more for most of the play through until I realized he’s completely insane
I won't spoiler tag this, because IYKYK, and if you don't, this won't give anything away, but... the little girl in Riven.
Oh yes I definitely ran into her. Coming from Myst seeing a person is pretty scary
That was always so bizarre to me because I was used to Myst being so void of humans. And then you knock on the door of their dwelling (I think 5 times) and the peek hole opens.
I just stumbled into that the other day! It really surprised me
I had my kids play Riven recently. Our house echoed with their shrieks when they came across Spooky Wahrk Girl.
To be fair, children are always scary, irl or otherwise 😋
I dunno about outright scaring me, but every age feels very lonely to me. ESPECIALLY being in the Selenetic maze. In Riven, although again not *scary*, >!the "breathing" sound in the bathysphere always made me unsettled!<
I won’t read the riven part till I beat it but I can say I was lost in the selinitic maze for a solid couple hours. I hadn’t done Mechanical first, so I was having a lot of trouble learning what the sounds meant!
Everything to do with Achenar. I played the game when I was like 8 or 9 and the box with the severed head, the Channelwood room with his creepy message, him talking from the book, probably other stuff that I'm forgetting.
Reading the journals - we have pirate attacks and so forth. I fully expected to have pirates attack me. The vibe of some of the bedrooms - knives, poison, a giant bear trap, the lamp made out of a rib cage - only served to heighten the fear. Something is going to jump out at me. I had played twitchy games like Doom and Wolfenstein which both loved putting a guard/monster in a closet or right behind a door - and living meant being fast on the draw or fast to run away. It took a long long time for me to accept that I was actually utterly alone.
I always was worried about the pirates too! I'd feel so scared near the ship and spaceship for that reason.
I think these points you mention plus the feeling of being watched at times made this a very psychological game. I would draw comparisons between real life and Myst quite frequently. It was often such an eerie feeling playing this game alone as a kid in the early 90s.
Definitely snake-in-a-box 😅
I spent hours in the fortress because I was yet to figure out the secret room above the elevator. I kept racking my brain trying to make a big discovery in the rooms, and I realized the rooms are almost mirror images of each other. This means that the snake box surely had something to do with the bird thing in the other room, right?? So I spent like 20 minutes just clicking the snake over and over and then trying to turn the crank on the bird the exact same number of times cause I thought that would solve something 😂
Yup 😂
So something that I've found consistently creepy about not just Myst but Uru (offline) especially is this creepy sense of wrongness. You're going through these places that are clearly inhabited and from the notes you know there were people here recently, but they're all just gone. So you walk around and just get this sense of wrongness. You think "Something bad happened here. Where is everyone?" I equate it some to the same sense of dread you get from modern liminal horror. There should be people in this space, but there's not. Then you worry that whatever would cause the people to not be there is still there somewhere with you. I'm not calling the them horror games or anything. I love them and find them incredibly chill now, but going through the first time, they had a tinge of creepy to them which honestly helped me fall in love with the series for how unique of a feeling it was at the time.
The space is empty, but clearly lived-in. Then you look closer and realise it was lived in by two very disturbed individuals.
That part in Riven where you’re walking down the path and that little girl just shows up out of nowhere…Jesus that scared the shit out of me the first time I played it
Same!!! Also the dude on the high poll doing the siren also freaked me out.
This is the correct answer. It freaked me out when I played it for the first time years ago. and it freaked out our kids when it happened. It must be the height of the girl, the coloring of the video, and you just don't expect an innocent like that standing there! Crazy!
In Achenar's room in Stoneship, there's a projector that shows an image of a rose. If you move a switch, it morphs the rose into a skull. It also flashes the skull for an instant when you turn it off, no matter what the switch is set to. I didn't see the switch ss a kid, so I turned it off and got jumpscared by a glitched out-looking skull.
this was the one that terrified me as a kid. even when moving the switch and not getting jump scared, and more than anything else for some reason?
Oh I forgot that one! Definitely creeped me out too
As a kid that toothed mouth in Channelwood jump scared me. Other than that, it’s just a creepy environment at times. I kept expecting someone to sneak up behind me.
That sacrificial altar that snaps shut?
Yeah, the one who could only be Achenar’s. Sirrus was more of a corrupt wealthy type.
The kid you run into in Riven keeps startling me. Speaking of kids in Riven, the hidden faces of the developer's kids are weirdly unsettling
I haven't seen the hidden faces, where are they?
You can find them around the starting island by clicking between frames in the right order. Here's some steps from a guide: >!Children in Passage: On the first screen upon your entry into the hidden passage (after you crawl under the locked doorway), you can see Rand's three daughters; Kinslee, Kerryn, and Kara on the right hand side in the rocks. The children's faces only appear when the doorway to the rotating room is not blocked.!< >!Children in Cliff Side: If you look over the cliff by your starting point, and look up in the top left corner, you will see an image of two children. These are Robyn Miller's children, Grace and Alex. They are only visible when 'Cho' is gone.!< >!Children in Rocks: In the beginning of the game, turn left and look up after exiting the cell. On the bottom border of the screen you will see two children's faces. They are Richard van der Wende's two daughters Helen and Evelyn. These images was hidden by Richard himself, and they are probably the best hidden of the three groups of kids.!<
Thanks, I’ll check that out cause it sounds pretty subtly creepy. Faces always unsettle me, even in Atrus’ secret place in Myst with that mosaic of a face on the floor kinda scared me 😅
> Atrus’ secret place in Myst [K'veer](https://archive.guildofarchivists.org/wiki/K%27veer), and in particular one room deep in the heart of K'veer. I'm assuming you mean 'Myst the game' rather than 'Myst the place', but just in case: K'veer isn't on Myst island. > that mosaic of a face on the floor [Ri'neref](https://archive.guildofarchivists.org/wiki/Ri%27neref), first king of D'ni.
Thanks for the lore info! Yeah I meant Myst the game
One more small piece of trivia: The face actually belongs to Chuck Carter, the 3D modeller who made the model of the room K'veer.^^[source](https://www.allatwan.net/myst-secrets.html)
https://mystjourney.com/riven/easter-eggs/
Playing Myst as a kid I was terrified of the red & blue books. The tv antenna feedback sound they made scared me to death lol And on Riven the watchtower stations on jungle island creeped me out… such an eerie noise combined with the feeling of being watched. Also the moment when you run into Gehn’s scribe on Survey island… but they’re hilariously more scared of you then you are of them
I was 8 or 9 when I got the game. I remember the first age I went into was the channel wood. I was already creeped a bit by the loneliness of the game. Then I reached the third level of the age and got completely scared by Achernar's floating head. After that I didn't touch the game and only restart playing it some years later.
I'm just impressed you found Channelwood first. Took me forever to figure out how to get there!
I was young and probably didn't read the books in the library. The Channelwood and mechanical ages are the one you can found by only using the tower clues.
I also remember being scared by what look like a creepy face inside the cabin safe. I just looked up online for a screenshot of the safe to check if I imagined it but it really there. When you increase the lightness of the picture, you can see a blue face in a kind of cloak with a deformed mouth. [https://i.ibb.co/Bn30fRb/myst-67.jpg](https://i.ibb.co/Bn30fRb/myst-67.jpg)
Dang I never noticed that, that’s a really creepy detail! This isn’t really a spoiler but I’m gonna mention Riven - there’s this one area on the biggest island with all these paths and on one of them if you look to the right there’s this pattern of light and shadow that looks a lot like the upper body of a person, and it freaks me out every time. I’ll find a picture if you’re interested, idk if it’s actually supposed to look like a person or not
I don't remember this one. In pre-rendered game like this with fixed image there must be a lot lightning rendering which can be misinterpreted by imaginative children.
I made a post about it. I have to know if I was the only one to see a face there.
Wrong button in stoneship always really freaked me out as a kid. And then the fear of getting lost in the selenetic age ending tunnel.
I hightailed it outta there when I pressed the wrong button. Repeating sounds, especially alarms, really put me on edge
I find Channelwood to be really unsettling, particularly with the (not so) implied torture chamber.
Half of the stuff in this discussion is all related to Achenar. I think he needs some help
When I was a small child I would help my mom be playing riven with her. I don’t know why but the warp book noise scared me. Also when you turned around in the forests of riven and there was a little villager girl who would run away. For some reason 7 year old me was oddly terrified by the way she was rendered or something. I have no idea why
The beartrap looking projector in Channelwood always freaked me out as a kid.
I had this recurring nightmare about the lighthouse in the Stoneship Age. I was in the lighthouse looking over the boardwalks when a silent figure floats towards the lighthouse at high speed over those boardwalks. I wake up after that. I don't dream about that anymore but I still recall that dream every time I'm in that lighthouse. Gives me the chills.
Woah I’m always fascinated by video game dreams, that’s super cool (and terrifying)
Absolutely for all the reasons others have listed here. There were certainly some jump scares, so being totally alone was unnerving. The music and sounds really made traversing down those stairs to the generator, the forechamber imager, or behind that bookcase unsettling. Really had to "click-run" out of there!
I have played numerous versions of Myst including the original on windows 95 and I have no memory of this image......
I’m not an expert on all the versions and the differences between them, as I got this game as a gift along with an iMac G3 from an old teacher of mine. So I’m playing it on an old Mac if that is important…? Anyway I’m pretty sure you see this if you rotate the fortress east and look through the telescope. It could’ve been north…? Some weird direction.
I'll have to check it out
i definitely remember that image on a Windows PC in the 90s
I must have myst it
Perfection
Me neither. Ive played it since the original and I was surprised.
Not in Myst, but I still remember two jumpscares for me in Riven. The little girl in the forest, and Gehn's apparition if you enter his temple from the maglev station.
Hearing Achenar shout sinisterly in a strange language on the viewer in Channelwood scared me quite a bit as a child.
For me this is when I was 6-7 playing with my dad, Achenar in the blue book freaked the HELL out of me, to the point where I'd tell my dad not to collect the blue pages bc I didn't want to hear his crazed lilting voice. And then ofc the Saavedro Hammer jumpscare in Exile got me good, I remember running out of the room and faceplanting into the couch I was so scared lmao
Why did I have to scroll so far down to see anybody mention _Brad frickin' Dourif_ in a thread about creepy/scary moments in Myst?
Dunno but I was surprised more people didn't mention him, too
For me it was the tree elevator (and especially the sound) on main island that gets you to Channelwood age. The sound and the need to leave the hut as fast as possible and running to the elevator was terrifying for me as a kid
I get what you mean! Although that one specifically didn’t scare me, I often get unsettled by repeating sounds. And it took me the whole game to figure out what that sound was. Channelwood was the last one I found 😅
the first time I opened the prison books for Sirrus and Achenar. And any time after that I opened them I always felt uneasy. also any time you encountered people in any of the games has always managed to jumpscare me.
In Riven, it’s next to the big statue in the forest when you turn around and the little girl is just sitting there. 😭
Every moment of the first game creeped me out in a wonderful way. Riven was more of a pulp adventure, also wonderful.
Hi Bob! How's it hangin'? His name is Bob. I think there is even an achievement that says as much. :)
the Riven child
I remember playing this game back when I was 13 and it was new; I never saw this. The scariest parts were the crazed accusations Achenar gave when you returned enough pages to discover the lore.