Friend Request

© Michael L. Emery

Have you ever logged onto your favorite online social network site, and recieved a friend request from someone you have never seen nor heard of in your life?

If you have, did you accept their request?

Be warned, there is a very dangerous spirit haunting the internet, looking for people to unknowingly let them into the mortal world.

It is uncertain if the spirit was a man in life, or a woman...you see, it likes to pretend to be either, and no one knows why it picks the gender that is does at different times.

The first report of this spirit dates back to the late 1990's, and at that time it used email to snare victims. A person would get an email with a subject heading that got them curious enough to open it. Once opened, this somehow allowed the spirit to have access to the computer...and then somehow enter into the person. Once inside the person, it began to cause all manner of chaos...making the person behave in ways that resulted in severed friendships, fistfights with strangers, and getting the person fired from their job....among other things.
As the years went on, people became wise to spam email and filters became more proficient at stopping unsolicited email, so the spirit was forced to find a new way to trap victims.

With the rise in popularity of social networking sites, the spirit quickly realized that sending a friend request seemed to be as effective as emails used to be. And with many people on these sites trying to establish status by having several hundred or even thousands of friends, the spirit was having great success once again.

In a possible related story, there seems to be a strange increase in recent months, in the number of suicides by people with a high number of friends on their social network page. This may be the result of this same spirit, or an as yet unknown other internet entity....or simply just a coincidence.

Little is known about the entity...or entities. In addition to the unknown gender, it is also unknown how it became trapped in the internet to begin with. Since not all of it's victims have perished, it's unknown how or why it seems forced back into the internet and requiring a new body to inhabit.

The next time you get a friend request from an unknown person...be cautious....very...very...cautious!