The Smile Dog | Creepypasta

The smile.jpg or smile.dog, I've been fascinated with this for over 3 years. Obsessed would be the right word. I was fully devoted to finding the reality behind this whole mayhem.

Mary was the first victim of the smile dog that I met in person. She and her husband Terence agreed upon me meeting Mary, as I wasn't a newsman but rather a young enthusiast trying to uncover the truth about the subject, plus write some fiction.

We decided to schedule the meeting when on a weekend, But Mary changed her mind the last moment. She locked herself up in her bedroom, refusing to meet me. For around an hour, Terence and I sat outside the bedroom door, while Terence was trying fruitlessly to calm his wife.

All the things that Mary said made little to no sense but from the tone of her voice, I could tell that she was crying. Much of the things she said were centered around her nightmares. After an hour of trying we had to cease the exercise, for obvious reasons. And since I wasn't a newsman or a journalist, I didn't push it too hard. Besides I thought at the time, if I put my mind to it, perhaps I could find another case like Mary.

Mary used to work at a small Chicago based Bulletin Board System in 1992 when she encountered smile.jpg, that changed her life forever. She and Terence have been married for only five months now. Mary was one of the reported 400 people who saw the picture when it was posted on the BBS as a hyperlink, though she is the only one who talked about their experience. Other who saw the picture have either killed themselves or are silent.

I was in my tenth grade when I smile.jpg was first brought to my attention. Mary was the most often cited victims of the image. What caught my interest more than obvious horror behind the story, was the sheer lack of information. Even though a lot of people have reported seeing the actual picture, it is nowhere to be found on the internet (other than fake ones of course. They can be labeled as fake, because none of the pictures that circulate on the web today have the same effect of sudden onset temporal lobe epilepsy and acute anxiety that the victims have reported.

Neither smile.jpg is mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia nor does its alternate, smile.dog. Any attempt to create a page with smile.jpg or smile.dog gets deleted by one of the many admins of the site.

Stories about the smile.jpg are a thing of the internet legend. Mary's story is not unique. There are a lot of rumors surrounding the victims of the smile dog, but all of them are unverified. There is even one persistent tale of a hacker who flooded the forums of humor and satire websites in the year 2002, rendering half the users of the forums epileptic at the time.

It is also said that in the mid-to-late 90s, smile.jpg circulated as an attachment to a chain email message with the subject line "SMILE!! GOD LOVES YOU!" Yet despite having such an exposure only a handful of people admit to having experienced it and that too with no trace of the actual file or link.

All alleged victims have the same description of the image - A dog like a creature often related to a Siberian husky, illuminated with the flash of a camera, sitting in a dim room, the only visible detail in the background is a beckoning hand of an otherwise dark being in the left side of the picture. The face of the dog or the dog-like creature has a haunting wide grin, with human-like teeth.

This description is usually given after a very long time of the actual sighting and is rather a recollection of the victim's mind. The victims usually suffer from epileptic fits that often protrude in the dreams while the victim is sleeping. Though Some of them may be treated with medication, with some being more severe than the others.

After my small visit to Mary, I began searching for other victims from newspapers, folklores, website, email lists and several urban legend forums, but all my efforts met with a dead end and with the start of my freshmen year, I finally ended my pursuits, until one day. Mary contacted me via email.

Dear Mr. L

I'm incredibly sorry for what happened during our meeting. I hope you understand that it wasn't your fault at all but in fact my own problems. Now that I think about it, I feel I could've done much better. I hope you'll forgive me. I was really afraid at the time.

The smile.jpg has been haunting me for over fifteen years and it has come to me every night in my dreams. It may sound weird and silly but its true. My nightmares are really different than the normal ones. I do not move or speak, I only look ahead and the only thing I see is the scene from the picture. I see the beckoning hand, and I see the smile.dog. It talks to me.

It is not a dog and I'm not really sure about what it is. It tells me that he will go away, that he will let me go, only if I do as he asks. All I must do, It says is, "Spread the Word". This is what it wants from me, to show it to other people.

A week after my encounter with the smile.jpg, I received a floppy disk in my mail with no return address, and I knew exactly what was on it.

For a long time, I thought about showing to someone else, maybe a coworker, a friend or even Terence, as much as that thought disgusts me. And what if I show them, what then. How can I be sure that it will go away, maybe it has something else planned for me, something far worse than this.

I sincerely hope that you'll forgive. During our last meeting, I decided to end this suffering by passing it to you. You see the smile.jpg has haunted me for fifteen years, for over fifteen years it has come to me every night haunting my dreams and reality. When you came to meet me, I was near the breaking point and thought about handing the disk over to you. You were a stranger and I thought that I wouldn't feel bad for giving it you.

Just before your arrival, I realized how wrong I was for the thinking such thing. I can't stand the thought ruining someone else's life. I sincerely hope that this warning will dissuade you from your further investigation of the matter. You will find someone in your way, who will not hesitate to follow smile.jpg's orders.

Stop, while you still can.

Sincerely,

Mary E.

Terence contacted me later that month. He told me that his wife had killed herself and while going through her email and stuff he found the above email. Terence begged me to follow his wife's advice. He also found the floppy disk. He took it and burned it until it was nothing but a stinking pile of burnt plastic. The thing that most disturbed him was while burning the disk made a hiss sound like an animal.

I was shocked and didn't know what to do. I even thought it to be a joke played by Mary and her husband but when I found the news articles about her death, I was sure that it was indeed true. I decided not to pursue the smile dog anymore, and because of my finals arriving, I didn't have to try much.

But I guess fate had another thing in place for me. Nearly a year after my visit to Mary, I received another email.

Hello

I found your email on a web forum, you said you were interested in the smile.jpg. I have seen it, it's really not that bad as everyone thinks. I have sent it to you. Just spreading the word.

: )

The last line sent chills down my spine.

On my email client was a file attached, the smile.jpg For a very long time, I thought about downloading it and besides it was far more likely to be a fake. But what if it wasn't. Mary's case had shaken me to the core, but there was a part in me that said that this whole thing can't be true, I mean how could a simple image have such a drastic effect on someone's life.

And if that was the case, then why did the legend exist at all.

And what if I download the image, what if it's true, what if Mary was correct, could I be able to resist the smile.dog. Would I trade someone else's life for mine? Or would I just take it to the grave? And if I do decide to show it, who would I burden it with, whose life would I destroy.

If I went through with my early motives for writing a short story on the matter, maybe I could attach the file as evidence. And anyone who took the interest would be affected. And even if the image attached to the email is real, would I be selfish enough to save my life in that manner.

Could I spread the word?

Yes. Yes, I could.

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