I got his private message early yesterday morning. He saw my comment on his post and came to me for some guidance. He seemed troubled by how his "warning" had somehow turned into an advertisement for the shadow web.

At first I thought him delusional. There are dozens of message boards out there dedicated to the deep web, even a couple of subreddits right here on reddit, and still this fellow is acting like he is solely responsible for leaking the deep web. I assured him that people were just playing along like they always do, and he need not worry about it.

Then he tried to correct me. He insisted that the shadow web is not the deep web. Nor is it the dark web. It's something far more sinister. "Way more fucked up" was what he said.

Later in the evening he gave me his phone number. He told me to send him a text if I wanted to be proven wrong, and with that our volley of private messages ended.

A quick reverse look-up showed that the area code was from a place called Valleyfield, Quebec. That's in Canada. It looked perfectly harmless, so I sent him a text. He replied in a couple of minutes.

What he sent back was a MMS with a picture of a piece of paper--the one that the "creepy customer" had supposedly given him.

The first thing I noticed about the slip was the font type. It looked as though it was printed directly from notepad. I'm guessing that this person who gave him the slip had been carrying it around so that he could access the shadow web from public computers or cyber cafes. He probably had the steps memorized at one point and no longer needed it.

The second thing I noticed was that the steps were, in fact, not for accessing the dark web. At least not the dark web I was familiar with.

It took me about forty five minutes to locate the specific build of Netscape Navigator curiously required for getting onto the sh.web gateway. I found a torrent for it on one of the deepweb forums where I frequently lurked. It came with a trojan horse, unsurprisingly, but I installed it anyway. Whoever tries to backdoor my machine would regret ever trying.

At last I was connected to the fabled "gateway", and to my surprise: I was wrong. This wasn't just the deep web/dark web after all, and he had every reason to be worrying.

Let me try to explain in layman's term. If the "deep web" was the bad neighborhood in your town, the "dark web" would be its haunted house--that abandoned mansion at the end of that one-way road with no street lamps.

The "shadow web", then, would be the windowless cellar at the end of a passage behind a hidden door in that very haunted house.

Before I go on, I wanted to clear something up. When I left the comment on the original post I mentioned that I frequently visited the dark web, and somebody left a comment calling me a monster. I'm not. I don't go there to look for scam victims or to distribute kiddy porn. I go there to find the people who do. My line of work prohibits me from elaborating, so I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

After stopping by a few of the sites (actually, spending the whole day) on the shadow web, I finally began to appreciate the gravity of this revelation. I'll spare you the details, but suffice to say I have never been more convinced that crypto-currencies should be outlawed.

I came across one particular site called rumcake.sh.web, and from first glance it resembled the one described in keniluck's post. Then I saw that the site was merely one of dozens in a network of these torture-room broadcasts.

I called him back on the number he had messaged me on. I just wanted to tell him he was right about the shadow web. And that he did the right thing. And that the information which he had provided may end up saving lots of lives. But he didn't pick up. It's pretty late in Quebec, I suppose he could be sleeping.

The more I looked into it, the more I realized that this wasn't something I could tackle on my own. I needed to tell my superior about this. Since it was almost 3am, I hesitated to call her. Yet, I was too excited to let this wait until the morning, so I sent her an IM, telling her about the "big fish" that I needed her help with reeling up. She immediately responded:

"Call."

The conversation that ensued was rather shocking. In short, our agency did know about the existence of a shadow web, but no leads have ever turned up on how to actually get in. Until now, that is.

Keniluck's post here on nosleep had violated the shadow web's code of silence. On top of that, he was careless enough to use his regular reddit account. There are some people who are probably very upset by his exposé of the sh.web. From what I was told, his life is in danger.

Being somewhat of a rookie at the organization, I've been advised to stay out of this investigation. My boss warned I too might end up with a crosshair on my head if I didn't take proper measures to conceal myself.

It's 5am now and I still haven't heard back from him. I hope he's okay.

One last thing before I log off: For those of you who tried going to the dark web or shadow web after seeing yesterday's post, I strongly recommend that you disconnect your microphones and cover up your web cams. Don't even charge your cellphones with the USB port.m

Most importantly, don't ever try connecting again.

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