Dead Bart Is Real

A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I were at Game Stop reserving our copy of a certain video game.

There was a new girl there who seemed nervous yet incredibly knowledgeable. We got into a conversation about Splatoon because I was wearing my inkling shirt and ended up talking for an hour while my boyfriend perused the used games.

We got to chatting and had numerous things in common. It just so happened she was studying animation at the same school I was (I am a culinary major). She took down my name on Facebook and that evening we were friends. We were going to have lunch the next day.

So by looking at her Facebook I realized she was incredibly obsessed with The Simpsons. Her heading picture was The Simpson family, it was the only thing listed under shows, everything she liked had to do with The Simpsons, and she had pictures up with costume characters and one with Matt Groening at some event.

The next day at school, I had an hour until my next class, I finished all my homework and I was on my laptop talking to her on Twitter. She said she couldn't make it because she had to meet some guy off Etsy who was selling her some rare Simpsons memorabilia. Some guy who's recently deceased father knew Groening. She told me he probably needed the money for rent or meth.

Unwilling to let her meet some random tweaker off of craigslist alone I insisted that I join her. She told me to meet them in 30 minutes at a nearby Five Guys.

She was the first one there, and was sitting inside eating. I ordered a double bacon cheeseburger and sat with her. We chatted a little bit before the guy met us. He was disappointingly normal seeming.

He looked about 25, was dressed professionally and carrying a baby carrier. He apologized for being late but told us he had to pick up his son. He handed us a shopping bag full of signed posters, DVDs, and framed drawings.

She handed him six dollars and looked through her treasures to verify their validity. Everything looked good except for a burnt DVD in a clear case saying “7G06”

He said he didn't know what it was, but it was probably from the editing room. “A first draft or something” he said. She rolled her eyes and we left.

I asked why he was letting all this go. He told me it reminded him of his father too much.

That Friday, she invited me to come over and watch her new DVDs. I had nothing to do so I went over.

Of course, her one bedroom apartment was wall to wall Simpsons. She seemed to have every Simpson related product on the planet from her rugs to her ceiling fans to her soap and shower curtains. She told me it was her dream to live in Springfield, and if she couldn't live there she wanted to help create it. We finally poured some wine and sat down to watch the five new retail copies of “director's cut” Simpsons DVDs she bought. She pointed out every slight difference there was. Some of the colors were different and some scenes went on shorter. Nothing that noticeable, but it fascinated her.

When we were finished with them it was already one in the morning but I noticed the burnt DVD on the coffee table. I asked if she wanted to just see what it was really quick then call it a night.

We put the DVD in. Before the episode it played a movie countdown. It played the Monorail song the one where Lyle Lanley promotes the idea of a monorail in Springfield via a song. The audio and video were of bad quality.

The only thing was there would be a pop once in a while. Like someone edited in a picture for a single frame. It took a while to sync the pause button with the pictures but what I found was truly strange.

There were pictures of photo realistic drawings of Simpsons characters. The pictures stopped popping out and the episode continued as usual. She told me to take it out, that it was a fake and therefore so was everything else she had purchased. However, what we found next was a little more serious.

The next episode on the disc was “Moaning Lisa.” This time I noticed the audio sounded like it was being slightly distorted. There were more frames that I paused and looked at. This time the characters appeared to have been badly injured.

It was almost like popular Creepypasta that I had later found described. It looked like badly drawn fan art with red smudges all over it. It started out with no audio.

The Simpson parents were telling Bart and Lisa to come downstairs, as they were going on a plane trip. What was odd about this scene was that the characters behaved more differently than usual, but we pressed on.

The scene then cut to the plane taking off from the Springfield airport. The animation was by this time a little better but there still was no sound until it showed Bart breaking a plane window. It sounded like the sound of glass breaking stacked up fifty times. It made me jump. It showed Bart being sucked out of the plane, where he fell to his death.

The scene cut to a photo realistic image of Bart's body on the ground. The scene then cut to the remaining Simpsons at the table, crying hysterically. This was pretty understandable as they had just lost one a member of their family and well, who wouldn't be upset at losing a family member. As the crying went on however, it slowly started to sound more realistic and very much in pain. I can certainly say that it was very good acting if it wasn't real. As the crying got more realistic, the quality of the scene slowly decayed to the point where all that could be made out were just certain color blobs. Some frames included random characters staring into the window, but they were unidentifiable. If you listened closely, you could also hear murmuring, but it was impossible to make out any coherent language.

A title cared appeared on the screen stating a year had passed since Bart's death. It showed the remaining Simpsons family members sitting at the table. What was disturbing about this scene was that all the characters were dangerously thin and Maggie was absent. What happened to here, I will never know.

I wanted to take it out and destroy it but I had to see what this was, I had to know that this was a sick joke. I continued watching it.

The family decided to visit Bart's grave. As they walked to the cemetery, it appeared that Springfield had been abandoned, with the following buildings only showing further signs of decay and neglect as they got closer to the cemetery. When they arrived at Bart's grave, he wasn't buried, his casket lying out in the open, in front of a tombstone. The tombstone had a label that read "Bart Simpson April 1st, 1980-February 11, 1990."

The last few seconds of the episode show a bunch of graves with the names of Simpsons guest stars from later seasons. Then the usual credits began to roll, with a photo realistic image of the Simpsons family appearing for a few seconds after the credits.

The color had gone out of my friend's face and she was shaking. I told her it was all some demented hoax. The guy who sold it to her probably has something against The Simpsons for some reason and was messing with fans.

Then she tried to call the guy who sold it to her. Apparently his phone was disconnected. She told me to just go home and that she's see me Monday at school. I asked her if maybe she would want me to stay because she seemed pretty shaken up. She said she would deal with it in the morning.

I stayed up all night watching silly Youtube videos, British sitcoms, ANYTHING that wasn't animation; I even watched some porn which is something I never do. I had to get my mind off of it but I just couldn't. I didn't have the attention span for a book and I had eaten the contents of the refrigerator.

The sun came up and I darted out of the house to her apartment. I banged on the door. No answer. A neighbor poked his head out of the window beside me. He happened to be the manager.

He told me she left. She took one suitcase and paid him the months rent and hopped on a bus to the airport.

We still haven't heard from her. But a few days ago I read a cracked article about Creepy pasta which led me to read about the Dead Bart episode.

After reading the others I was afraid of sounding cliché but I just had to say something about it. I've done a lot of research and there was nothing else on the subject but the Creepypasta.