Haunted House (also known from its NSF header information as Castle Boss) is the first (and so far, only) FamiTracker track uploaded by CM.O user 8-Bit Beast. It was posted on June 13, 2013, and the user has since abandoned the account. Since 8-Bit Beast requested constructive criticism, I can say this: the song is a mess. The lead instrument is shrill and obnoxious, the time signature seems to break frequently (likely 8-Bit Beast was copying and pasting notes without making sure the beats lined up,) and there are only two instrument patches. The main instrument, commonly referred to as the “gadunk,” plays on each channel, whereas the second instrument is a jumbled mess of notes and only appears near the end. This song is so perfectly bad, it’s beautiful.

At first listen, the song is uncomfortable to get through. It seems to go on for far too long, despite being under a minute and a half long, and it’s too inconsistent to follow along with. It may have been done unintentionally, but 8-Bit Beast created a terrible masterpiece.

In 2014 my friend Ap0c brought the song to my attention, and we couldn’t get enough of it. He made his own remix, and even incorporated Haunted House in his live sets. In 2015 Ap0c released “8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House Remastered,” a joke EP featuring the original song, a version with heavy reverb, and his remix. He commissioned me to make some album art, which is when I designed the 8-Bit Beast’s pixelated silhouette.

In 2016, Ap0c was a judge for ChipWIN: Volume 5. He and I joked around about submitting Haunted House, and I started working on “Cache Boss,” a Bit Shifter styled song using a slowed down “gadunk” as the melody, before abruptly becoming a piano midi of Haunted House. From what I’m told, the ChipWIN judges were intrigued to see a submission coming from Bit Shifter, then furious when they thought Ap0c was behind it, then entertained when they figured out it was me. The track was included as a bonus track for downloading the album, and the artist was renamed “8-Bit Shifter” to avoid misleading anyone.

A few months later, I was invited to SiIvaGunner, after submitting a handful of my own rips. One night, I tried bringing Haunted House to the group’s attention, but the response was lukewarm. I figured the best way to show the song’s potential as a meme was by example. Using the midi I wrote for Cache Boss, I submitted eight (ha) video game rips using the song, each with words like “haunted,” “castle,” and “boss,” to hint at the source material. A few team members who were awake at 3am saw “Joke: Haunted House (AKA Castle Boss) by 8-Bit Beast” pop up 8 times on Discord, and it caught their attention.

Most of my submissions were garbage, and they insisted that if I was going to force the meme on their channel, they would have to be As Quality As Possible. I reworked some of the low-effort ones, and on September 16th 2016, Haunted House was introduced on the channel, in the form of a bait and switch Castlevania rip. Unsurprisingly, the fans were confused. Some were upset and started dislike-bombing. The first Haunted House rip came just days after the “bean” fiasco, and fans were likely still upset from that. In the coming weeks however, other SiIvaGunner members began submitting Haunted House rips, and more clever Haunted House rips were submitted to the channel. Fans were referring to it as the “mystery meme.”

The team allowed me to use 8-Bit Beast in the Halloween event, and I planned on revealing the source of the meme at the end of the event. Eventually a fan traced the meme back to Cache Boss, and the community thought they had solved the mystery. I held out hope that this would throw fans off the trail until I could reveal the true source, but on September 21st, 2016, the fans had found Haunted House.

The 8-Bit Beast became one of the main characters of the Halloween event, and in what was originally intended to be the channel’s final months, Haunted House became one of the channel’s big memes. It reappeared in the Christmas event, and occasionally showed up in regular rips throughout the following year. The beast character would occasionally return for Halloween events and other promotional artwork.

In short, if 8-Bit Beast hadn’t uploaded that FamiTracker experiment, I wouldn’t have gotten a lot of the opportunities I had. I was the designated “ChipWIN bonus track” guy for about 8 (HA.) different albums, which allowed me to keep practicing making chip music, and even write a few Shyabeetus tracks for ChipWIN. SiIvaGunner made me the Quality of Control guy for Haunted House rips, and eventually made me a member of the backroom, allowing me to contribute to channel shenanigans from behind the scenes. I even got to do signatures with the team for a couple years at MAGFest, because of that.

So, thank you 8-Bit Beast, wherever you are. Gadunk gadunk gadunk, gadunk gadunk gadunk gadunk……