Paranormal Games & Cursed Games: A Complete Guide to Internet Rituals & Supernatural Challenges

What Are Cursed Games?

Cursed games are ritualized paranormal challenges that claim to summon spirits, open dimensional portals, or trigger supernatural encounters through specific procedures such as chanting, mirror gazing, candles, or isolation. Also called paranormal ritual games, supernatural games, creepypasta rituals, or scary games to play in the dark, these structured challenges exist at the intersection of folklore, psychology, and internet culture.

Some originated centuries ago in Japanese and European traditions. Others emerged from creepypasta communities and Reddit forums within the past decade. Whether you approach them as genuine paranormal experiences, psychological experiments, or entertainment, cursed games represent something profound about human nature—our desire to test boundaries, communicate with the unknown, and challenge what we think is possible.

Quick Summary: Paranormal games are ritual-based challenges that claim to summon entities, trigger visions, or open supernatural communication through mirrors, darkness, repetition, and strict rules. Famous examples include Bloody Mary, Red Door Yellow Door, the Elevator Game, and the Midnight Man Ritual. While many reported experiences are explainable through suggestion and group psychology, the games still carry real psychological and physical risks.

At Believing the Bizarre, we’ve spent years researching paranormal phenomena, urban legends, and the stories people tell about their experiences with the unexplained. We’ve investigated dozens of paranormal games, documented reported incidents, and examined the psychological mechanisms at work.

This guide brings together everything we’ve learned: the procedures, the reported consequences, the cultural origins, and most importantly, what happens when ordinary people decide to actually play.

Key Takeaways About Cursed Games

Most Famous Paranormal Games

Quick List:

• Bloody Mary (mirror summoning)
• Three Kings Ritual (mirror divination)
• Midnight Man Game (time-based entity summoning)
• Elevator Game (Korean interdimensional ritual)
• Red Door, Yellow Door (trance exploration)
• Hide and Seek Alone (doll possession game)
• The 11 Mile Ritual (manifestation drive)
• Charlotte’s Web (15th-century ghost summoning)
• Daruma-san/Bath Game (Japanese chasing ritual)
• The Candyman Ritual (mirror entity summoning)

Why People Play Paranormal Games

Reasons people play paranormal games include thrill-seeking, curiosity about the supernatural, group bonding experiences, testing paranormal beliefs, and internet challenge culture. For over a decade, these games have circulated through online communities, sleepover gatherings, and paranormal forums. Adolescents particularly use paranormal games as courage tests. Social pressure within friend groups drives participation even among skeptics.

But deeper motivation emerges from spiritual hunger—many players explicitly seek evidence that consciousness extends beyond the physical brain, that communication with non-material entities is possible, that hidden dimensions exist alongside our visible reality. Whether you’re a believer testing supernatural reality or a skeptic testing psychological power, curiosity is satisfied by the same act.

Common Features of Paranormal Rituals

While each paranormal ritual game has unique procedures, the most dangerous paranormal games share common structural elements that create the conditions for intense experiences:

Understanding these shared elements helps explain why paranormal games produce consistent reported experiences across different cultures and time periods. The ritual structure itself reliably triggers intense perceptual experiences, regardless of supernatural validity.

Mirror Summoning Games

Mirror-based paranormal games and mirror-summoning rituals constitute the largest category of cursed games, operating on the foundational belief that mirrors serve as paranormal portals through which spirits manifest, communicate, and potentially cross into our reality. These games share core mechanics: darkness, specific verbal invocations, intense focus on reflections, and reported consistency across cultures and time periods.

Bloody Mary: The Most Iconic Mirror Summoning Game

Bloody Mary remains the most recognizable paranormal game globally, with centuries of folklore connecting her to vengeful spirits, executed witches, and vanity punished by supernatural consequence.

Origin: Historical origins disputed—some folklore identifies her as Queen Mary I of England; others claim she was an executed witch whose curse involved appearing in mirrors. The game has been documented for centuries across European cultures.

What It Is: A mirror-based summoning ritual where participants invoke an entity to appear through reflection and interaction.

Baby Blue: The Ghost Infant Mirror Summoning

Baby Blue operates as a mirror variation but with distinct horror—summoning an invisible ghost baby into your arms, creating uncanny sensations while a desperate woman demands “Give me back my baby!” from the mirror.

Origin: Modern internet folklore; likely derived from Bloody Mary variations and child-harm mythology.

What It Is: A mirror-based summoning specifically invoking a ghost infant and a grieving mother entity.

Charlotte’s Web: The Tragic 15th-Century Girl Mirror Ritual

Charlotte’s Web stands out because it provides an extensive backstory—transforming the ritual from generic spirit summoning into historical commemoration with emotional weight and cultural depth.

Origin: Modern internet folklore with a specific 15th-century girl backstory; emphasizes respect and proper closure.

What It Is: A two-player mirror-based summoning invoking a specific historical spirit with elaborate ritual respect requirements.

Three Kings: The Mirror Divination Ritual

Three Kings operates differently than other mirror games—allegedly inviting aspects of yourself from alternate realities or parallel dimensions into dialogue.

Origin: Modern internet folklore; emphasizes 3:30 AM timing and mirror-based divination.

What It Is: A time-based mirror divination game using reflected images to communicate with alternate versions of self.

Witch’s Window: The Mirror Portal Ritual with Salt Protection

Witch’s Window approaches mirror work differently—creating a controlled spirit communication channel through a protected portal maintained by salt barriers and deliberate ritual closure.

Origin: Modern internet occult practice; emphasizes protective elements and proper closure.

What It Is: A protective mirror-based communication game using salt barriers to control spiritual interaction.

The Candyman Ritual & Additional Mirror Games

The Candyman Ritual follows a similar mirror-summoning structure as Bloody Mary, invoking a different entity through five chants while staring into a mirror. The Picture Game combines mirrors with spirit photography. The White Kimono Game is a Japanese mirror variation with reportedly more violent outcomes than Western mirror games.

Trance Paranormal Games

Trance and mental state paranormal games induce hypnotic or meditative states where the unconscious mind becomes accessible, allowing exploration of inner psychological landscapes or direct communication with spiritual guides and entities. The boundary between internal and external experience dissolves completely for many players.

Red Door, Yellow Door: The Mind’s Hallway Trance Ritual

Red Door, Yellow Door is perhaps the most psychologically sophisticated paranormal game—a guided meditation ritual where the subject explores rooms and doorways in a trance state while others ask probing questions.

Origin: Modern internet folklore; emphasizes guided trance and visualization.

What It Is: A group-facilitated trance game where one person visualizes internal spaces while others guide exploration through chanting and questioning.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board: The Levitation Game

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board is a classic sleepover paranormal game where a subject’s body becomes lighter and eventually rises several inches off the ground despite insufficient applied pressure.

Origin: Historical folklore; documented in various cultures as group levitation practice.

What It Is: A group-facilitated levitation game using collective focus and chanting to allegedly lift a subject.

The Answer Man & The Shadowside: 3 AM Trance Divination

The Answer Man ritual involves inducing a trance state at 3 AM to contact an entity willing to answer any question posed truthfully. The Shadowside operates similarly but emphasizes danger—some players report encounters with entities that seem profoundly dangerous, implying unclear boundaries between guide and threat.

Closet & Dark Space Games

Closet and dark space paranormal games function as summoning rituals, emphasizing extreme sensory deprivation and confinement as mechanisms for attracting attention from unwanted entities. The darkness, isolation, and proximity to danger create psychological conditions where normal protective boundaries dissolve.

The Closet Game: Summoning the Darkness Entity

The Closet Game is stark in its simplicity and severity—reportedly capable of permanently altering a closet space and creating a hostile entity attachment that haunts the player long after the game concludes.

Origin: Modern internet folklore; emphasizes permanent location contamination.

What It Is: A solitary dark-space summoning game using complete sensory deprivation to allegedly attract an entity.

The Man in the Field & Hide and Seek Alone: Outdoor Summoning Rituals

The Man in the Field involves summoning a presence in dark outdoor spaces, creating isolation and vulnerability in natural settings designed to amplify fear response. Hide and Seek Alone is a doll-possession variant where players summon a spirit into a doll stuffed with rice and fingernails, then play a deadly hide-and-seek game where the possessed doll hunts with purpose.

Time-Based Paranormal Games

Time-based paranormal games operate on the belief that specific hours—particularly midnight and 3:33 AM—create thin boundaries between worlds, making summoning and communication exponentially more potent. Internet ritual games from creepypasta communities have spread globally through TikTok and YouTube, yet produce remarkably consistent reported experiences across different locations and time periods.

The Midnight Man Ritual: Summoning at Midnight

The Midnight Man Ritual represents the most widespread time-based paranormal game—a complex summoning requiring precise timing, constant movement, and evasion of a malevolent entity that hunts you from midnight until 3:33 AM.

Origin: Modern internet folklore; emphasizes precise midnight timing and entity evasion.

What It Is: A time-based summoning game creating a hunting scenario with a specific temporal window.

Slenderman Ritual & The One-Man Hide and Seek

The Slenderman Ritual originated from Slenderman creepypasta mythos—an internet legend about a tall, faceless entity that stalks and captures people—involving specific summoning procedures in forests or dark spaces.

The One-Man Hide and Seek is a doll-possession game where players summon a spirit into a doll, then play supernatural hide-and-seek where the possessed doll hunts with malevolent intent.

The Elevator Game: Korean Interdimensional Ritual

The Elevator Game originates from Korean internet culture and describes a specific sequence of button presses that supposedly transports you to an alternate dimension, using a familiar building mechanism as the vehicle for interdimensional travel.

Origin: Korean internet folklore; emphasizes the specific button sequence and the floor 5 woman encounter.

What It Is: A location-based interdimensional transit game using elevator mechanics as a ritualistic framework.

Daruma-san (The Bath Game): Japanese Chasing Ritual

Daruma-san originates from Japanese folklore about a woman who died in a bathtub when her face hit a rusty faucet, losing an eye—a death so traumatic it trapped her spirit seeking revenge.

Origin: Japanese folklore documented in modern internet culture; emphasizes daily pursuit mechanic.

What It Is: A Japanese-language time-based game involving daily pursuit by a summoned entity with specific closure ritual.

The 100 Candles Game (Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai): Centuries-Old Samurai Tradition

The 100 Candles Game is genuinely historical, documented as early as 1660 in Japanese literature, making it one of the few paranormal games with verifiable cultural roots rather than internet origins. Originally a samurai test of courage, warriors gathered to tell ghost stories (kaidan) while candles burned down one by one. As darkness increased, it was believed that after the final candle extinguished, spirits would physically appear.

Origin: Documented samurai tradition from 1660s Japan; continues today as a legitimate cultural practice.

What It Is: A historical group storytelling ritual using progressive darkness to allegedly attract spirits.

Divination & Communication Games

Divination and communication paranormal games position the player as an inquirer seeking knowledge from spiritual sources, treating the supernatural as an information system accessible through proper ritual procedures and respectful inquiry. These games function similarly to historical divination tools like tarot, but with specific procedural safeguards suggesting genuine danger from what might respond.

The Red Book: Mexican Spirit Divination Ritual

The Red Book (El Juego del Libro Rojo) originates from Mexico and operates on principles similar to the Ouija board but using random book passages as answers—a divination system where spirits respond through literature rather than direct channeling.

Origin: Mexican folklore; emphasizes book-based spirit communication.

What It Is: A group divination game using random book passages as spirit responses.

Ouija Board & Charlie Charlie: Classic Spirit Communication Tools

The Ouija board remains the most infamous communication tool—a lettered board with yes/no indicators where a planchette supposedly moves under spiritual control, spelling out messages from entities willing to communicate. Charlie Charlie is a modern, DIY variation using two crossing pencils on paper. Both require group participation, permission-asking rituals, and proper closing procedures to prevent unwanted attachments.

Tsuji-ura: Japanese Crossroads Divination

Tsuji-ura is a Japanese fortune-telling ritual where players go to dark crossroads at night with a comb and veil, chant an invocation, and ask strangers (spirits in disguise) their fortune—positioning the crossroads as a liminal space where the living and dead interact naturally. The ritual supposedly grants accurate fortune-telling through this threshold where worlds collide.

Sleepover & Party Games

Sleepover and party paranormal games operate within controlled social settings, where group psychology, collective belief, and shared fear amplify the reported experiences and effects far beyond what individual players would experience alone. These games often target younger participants, creating formative paranormal experiences that sometimes lead to lifelong belief in supernatural possibilities.

Cat Scratch: The Scratching Story Game

Cat Scratch requires one storyteller and one subject, with optional witnesses sitting in silent circles—creating an environment where psychological suggestion amplifies through focused group attention and storyteller intensity. After the story, the subject lifts their shirt and scratch marks reportedly appear on their back.

Origin: Modern sleepover folklore; emphasizes psychosomatic mark manifestation.

What It Is: A group storytelling game where expectation allegedly creates physical marks on the subject.

The Binoculars Game (Eye Spy): The Window Watcher

The Binoculars Game is unsettling because of its design—one player is tied to a chair with a rope while another is bound outside, unable to move, forced to search through windows with binoculars looking for a specific approaching figure. The ritual supposedly summons a figure that may not be fully human, responding to incantations in ways that defy normal understanding.

Origin: Modern internet folklore; emphasizes isolation and vulnerability.

What It Is: A two-player outdoor summoning game using sensory deprivation and window observation.

Driving & Outdoor Paranormal Games

Driving and outdoor paranormal games remove players from safe home environments, creating isolation and vulnerability while traveling through dark spaces designed to trigger primal fear responses. The danger potential escalates because these rituals require sustained focus while operating a vehicle or remaining in vulnerable natural settings.

The 11 Mile Ritual: Manifesting Desires Through Supernatural Roads

The 11 Mile Ritual is a creepypasta-originated game where players drive a specific hidden road at night while focusing intensely on a deep personal desire—supposedly manifesting that desire through an 11-mile drive through progressively supernatural phenomena.

Origin: Creepypasta internet folklore; emphasizes mile-by-mile progression and manifestation.

What It Is: A solo driving ritual designed to manifest specific desires through a supernatural journey.

The Hooded Man Cab Ritual: Summoning Transport to Elsewhere

The Hooded Man Cab Ritual involves calling a specific phone number from a rotary phone during specific hours, speaking cryptic words, and a black taxi arriving to collect you. The game specifies precise rules about where you can be driven, when you can exit, and what happens if you break the rules—reportedly including being driven permanently into darkness. The ritual is Internet-originated and impossible to verify, but the mythology persists, speaking to human desire to test reality’s boundaries through transportation.

Cursed Video Games & Paranormal Gaming Urban Legends

Cursed video games exist at the intersection of internet folklore and gaming culture, representing a related but distinct category from ritual games. Unlike ritual games that require chanting, mirrors, or timed procedures, cursed video game legends center on haunted cartridges, disturbing arcade cabinets, and digital media believed to carry paranormal influence.

Polybius: The Government Arcade Machine Urban Legend

Polybius is the most famous cursed video game urban legend—allegedly a government-run arcade machine from 1981 that caused seizures, nightmares, and psychological disturbance in players. The legend claims that the Men in Black seized the machine from arcades after several incidents, suppressing evidence of its existence.

Majora’s Mask (Ben Drowned): The Haunted Zelda Cartridge Creepypasta

Majora’s Mask—specifically the “Ben Drowned” creepypasta—is a well-known internet horror story about a haunted Legend of Zelda cartridge that caused psychological disturbance and supernatural phenomena in the player. The Ben Drowned story became one of creepypasta’s most influential works, spawning fan art, animations, and real-world attempts by players to replicate the haunted game experience.

Modern Cursed Video Games & Gaming Urban Legends

Modern “cursed” indie and horror games like Cursed Companions (Steam), Cursed Department (Itch.io), Iblis 3, and numerous surreal Itch.io titles tagged “cursed” continue the tradition of paranormal gaming lore. Many small, surreal, or purposely broken titles blur the line between intentional game design and paranormal experience, creating a sense of dread through unconventional design and psychological impact.

Why Paranormal Games Work: Psychology & Explanation

Understanding why people engage with paranormal games despite obvious risks reveals fundamental human drives—the need for transcendence, community, controlled danger, and evidence that reality extends beyond material explanation. The ritual structure reliably triggers intense perceptual experiences through predictable psychological mechanisms. Thrill-seeking, social pressure, and deeper spiritual hunger all contribute to participation.

Safety Considerations: When NOT to Play Paranormal Games

Paranormal games can create real psychological distress, dissociation, fear responses, and physical danger through candles, knives, or distracted driving. Even when the reported experiences are explainable through suggestion rather than the supernatural, the risks are still serious enough that vulnerable players should avoid them.

Believing the Bizarre’s recommendation: approach paranormal games with substantial caution, particularly for adolescents, people with mental health vulnerabilities, and anyone playing alone. We do not recommend driving games or games involving weapons under any circumstances.

The Skeptical Perspective: How Paranormal Games Actually Work

Paranormal games work through a combination of sensory deprivation, psychological suggestion, expectation, and group dynamics—mechanisms that explain reported experiences without requiring supernatural explanations while acknowledging that the experiences are genuinely real and powerful. Darkness heightens all other senses. Repeated chanting induces light hypnotic states. When you expect to see something frightening, your brain interprets visual noise as threatening shapes through pareidolia.

The most interesting paranormal games are those with historical roots—the 100 Candles Game with documentation to 1660s, Tsuji-ura with Japanese cultural context, Bloody Mary with folklore connection. These games persist not because the internet keeps them alive but because something about the ritual structure works. The consistency across cultures and time periods deserves explanation beyond simple coincidence.

FAQ: Common Questions About Paranormal Games

What are the differences between cursed games and paranormal games?

These terms are often used interchangeably, but paranormal games is the broader category. Paranormal games encompass any ritual challenge claiming supernatural interaction. Cursed games typically emphasize the dangerous or malevolent aspect—games where consequences are severe. So all cursed games are paranormal games, but not all paranormal games are cursed games.

Are cursed games real?

The reality of cursed games depends on your framework for what counts as “real.” If “real” means supernatural entities physically manifest, the evidence is circumstantial. If “real” means people have genuine experiences that profoundly affect them, the answer is unambiguously yes—thousands report authentic psychological and sometimes physical effects from paranormal games.

What is the most dangerous paranormal game?

The most dangerous paranormal games are trance-based ones like Red Door, Yellow Door, which can trigger dissociation and lasting psychological effects, combined with driving games like the 11 Mile Ritual, which pose immediate physical danger through vehicle operation under stress. Danger varies by individual vulnerability—the safest approach is avoiding all paranormal games if you have any underlying mental health vulnerability.

What are the most famous cursed games?

The most famous cursed games include Bloody Mary (centuries-old folklore), The Midnight Man Game (widespread internet ritual), Red Door, Yellow Door (trance exploration), Three Kings Ritual (mirror divination), Daruma-san/The Bath Game (Japanese folklore), The Elevator Game (Korean internet legend), Charlotte’s Web (tragic backstory), and the 100 Candles Game (samurai tradition). These games span from centuries of folklore to modern internet creation, yet produce remarkably consistent reported experiences.

What happens if you don’t properly close a paranormal game?

Failing to properly close a paranormal game—by not saying the right words, breaking the ritual sequence, or ignoring closing procedures—supposedly results in persistent supernatural activity that continues haunting you or your location for days or weeks afterward. With games like Witch’s Window or Red Book, improper closure is explicitly warned against, suggesting that closing procedures function as spiritual safeguards. Players report continued scratching, nightmares, apparitions, or a sense of being followed.

Do skeptics and believers experience different things when playing paranormal games?

Expectation shapes experience significantly—skeptics often experience nothing or mild effects, while believers experience dramatic, intense experiences with apparent entities. This demonstrates how powerful suggestion and expectation are in shaping perception. Both experiences are genuinely real; both are shaped by what the person believes is possible.

Where did paranormal games originate, and why do they appear in so many different cultures?

Paranormal games have multiple origins—some trace back centuries to authentic cultural traditions, while others emerged from internet communities within the past decade. The 100 Candles Game dates back to the 1660s in Japan; Tsuji-ura has roots in traditional Japanese divination; and Bloody Mary connects to centuries of mirror folklore. Newer games originated from creepypasta and Reddit forums but spread rapidly through TikTok and YouTube. The reason paranormal games appear across cultures is that humans everywhere share common psychological vulnerabilities to suggestion, fear, group pressure, and the desire for transcendence.

What should you do if a paranormal game goes wrong or you can’t stop experiencing effects afterward?

If a paranormal game produces overwhelming fear, you become unable to wake from a trance, or you experience persistent supernatural-seeming activity afterward, several evidence-based steps can help: ground yourself physically by splashing cold water or engaging in physical movement; talk to trusted people about your experience to gain perspective; perform practical cleansing rituals like salt barriers or opening windows for light; seek professional support from a therapist if psychological effects persist; and most importantly, stop playing paranormal games entirely while you process the experience.

Why do people report such consistent experiences across different paranormal games?

The consistency of reported paranormal experiences across different games and cultures suggests that the ritual structure itself is powerful enough to reliably trigger intense perceptual experiences. Shared elements—darkness, repetition, names/invocations, liminal spaces, isolation, specific timing—create the conditions for heightened suggestibility. When multiple people in different locations report similar reported experiences (shadows, cold spots, scratches, weight sensations), it indicates that the games activate similar psychological mechanisms.

Are there differences between scary games to play in the dark and paranormal games?

Scary games to play in the dark are a broader category that includes paranormal games but also extends to other frightening activities. Paranormal games specifically claim supernatural interaction—summoning, communication, and dimensional travel. So paranormal games are a specialized subset of scary games to play in the dark, distinguished by explicit supernatural rules and procedures.

Believing the Bizarre’s Approach to Paranormal Games

Believing the Bizarre treats paranormal games as legitimate cultural artifacts worthy of serious examination while maintaining skepticism about supernatural explanations and prioritizing player safety, we’ve covered dozens of paranormal games across years of podcasts. We’ve interviewed people who’ve played them, examined the historical roots, and explored the psychological mechanisms at work.

You can learn about these games, understand what might happen if you played them, and explore your own beliefs about reality without needing to conduct personal experiments. For a deeper exploration of specific paranormal games, listen to our podcast episodes dedicated to individual rituals. We’ve interviewed players, examined historical contexts, and explored both paranormal and psychological frameworks for understanding these phenomena.

If you do decide to play a paranormal game, do it carefully. Play with trusted people. Set boundaries beforehand. Have an exit plan. Debrief afterward. Most importantly, remember that whatever you experience, however real it feels, emerges from your own mind’s incredible power—a power worth understanding, respecting, and protecting.