Recording and live streaming the torture and murder for the entertainment of others, otherwise dubbed as “red rooms”, is a popular urban legend on both the surface web and the dark web. As the story goes, customers will pay a host thousands of dollars using a service like Bitcoin to watch a snuff film live.
Terrifying stories will be found all over the internet on the existence of red rooms, from reddit threads and YouTube videos to encrypted emails and private forums. For some, the desire is simple curiosity.
Do they exist?
There’s ample information online. People share their suspicions and their supposed experiences. The thing that’s almost impossible to find is actual proof of their existence. The biggest hysteria with hardcore evidence surrounding the subject is the capture of pedophile, Peter Scully.
Whispers of Scully’s crimes spread across the internet from his exposure in 2011 to his sentencing in 2016. The biggest hype was around an alleged video filmed by Scully, depicting the sexual abuse and torture of a young girl. This video was dubbed “Daisy’s Destruction”.
Scully reportedly streamed this video, along with dozens of others, on a dark net site called Hurt 2 The Core. Home to thousands of similar unsettling videos, Hurt 2 The Core claimed their videos received up to 15,000 downloads on a regular basis. The twisted hype surrounding the videos was Scully’s success. Customers of Scully’s video producing company, No Limits Fun, paid up to $10,000 dollars for his live streams and videos.
Since the arrest of Scully, the existence of red rooms has become even harder to pinpoint. Several private forums on the dark net mention recent (but currently inactive) red rooms associated with ISIS. Recently published articles also review the existence of cyber dens on the dark net. Although red rooms might be an urban legend, there is definitely some truth in the “myth”.