You ever seen slither.io? It’s a nightmare. A hallucinatory silent mess, an industrial metal arena, full of snakes all trying to survive and grow, reduced to attacking each other in order to stay alive. You’ve gotta be careful in there.

My plan was simple: mill around the edges for a bit, occasionally sneaking in towards the middle to pounce on one of the big dead carcasses. But it all got a lot more complicated. In this arena of hatred, you have to pick off the vunerable to survive. Some, trapped by others explode, letting you slither in and take their remains. Others fight back, leaving you behind.

I was near the centre, minding my own business, when I saw him. A big red one, dead eyes, ploughing straight ahead, ignoring everything in his path. I thought he might be an escapee - he’s got his reward and now he’s fleeing towards the outer edges, to try and settle down. But this snake showed no signs of stopping. Onwards he went, through the outer rim and towards the edge. I tried to keep up, using my map to guide me in his general direction, but no such luck. He went beyond my line of sight.

That was the last I saw of him.

He was by the edge. The colour of blood, moving ahead, ignoring everything. Then nothing. No sign on the map of him. No remains. No one around but me and him. Now it’s just me, miles away from any other sign of life.

I spend the next few minutes searching for proof that I’m not going mad. That this spectre hasn’t simply appeared to me. He must be somewhere? Anywhere? Alas, nothing. I slink off back towards the middle, inevitably gobbled up by more angry snakes.

Artist’s Impression of a “Ghost Snake” (courtesy of Poppy Lomax)

Others like him are a rarity. Never have I seen such a big ghost, but I have seen a couple small ones. Many are stripey, but have the same dead eyes. Ploughing ahead, unaffected by the killings going on around him, others seemingly ignoring him as he slithers by, his body just on the edge of my sight, until he slides straight into a behemoth. Gone. Almost suicidal in a way. And in his death, I grew bigger, eating his remains.

As I grew in experience, I tend to stay away from the middle, instead seeking out more ghosts, more spectres. A rare sight, but rewarding when they come. I am blissfully ignored, instead of a victim simply an observer as they hurl head first into the edge over and over and over again. Maybe they fell victim to a particularly bad coiling? Maybe he was turned into a particularly nasty snakeskin bag? Either way, there are ghosts haunting these servers.