Online story spurs scares in southern Arizona town

TEMPE, Ariz. — Mammoth, Ariz. seems to have been the target of an elaborate online hoax this week, yet it was a calculated decision to choose the southern Arizona town.

Many businesses and families in the town of 1,500 were bombarded with phone calls as a story posted on Reddit depicted a mysterious outbreak in the town that resulted in thousands of deaths. The story claimed local authorities were suppressing the details to avoid panic.

However, the scare was not intended to be a prank, but part of a series of online amateur horror stories called “The Sniffles,” posted in the Reddit community NoSleep.

“The Sniffles is simply a collective of NoSleep authors handpicked to work on a project I had a little inkling of an idea of,” according to Maxwell Malone, a Reddit user and Michigan-based horror writer who responded to questions sent to the account of the post’s original author, throwfarfarawayaz.

The community, often referred to as a “subreddit,” NoSleep is one in which authors post original horror stories and users are encouraged to play along. According to the subreddit’s rules, “both nonfiction and realistic fiction are allowed,” and users are encouraged to act as if “everything is true while you’re here, even if it’s not…. we’re here for the scare, not for the plausibility.”

Tuesday’s story gained traction as being a potentially factual epidemic event happening in Mammoth, which the story claimed began more than a week ago with a mysterious illness infecting and killing an elderly daycare worker.

From there, the disease continued to spread, killing thousands, even leaving “bodies lying in the street,” according to the post. The story continued in the first person, as if the author were in the town and attempting to figure out what is going on.

Malone said the disease depicted in the story was a collaboration of several Reddit users and was inspired by several actual diseases.

“I wanted to keep a lot of parallels between the Bubonic Plague and our made-up one,” Malone wrote in a message. “We added other symptoms, most similar to the common flu and to Ebola to add confusion.”

The effort to continue to make the story seem plausible even included coordinating with as many as 10 other Reddit users to create accounts and comment on the story, corroborating the author’s story or seeming concerned and asking for more information.

Malone said “The Sniffles” has been in the works for more than a month and did not specifically say why Mammoth was chosen. However, he said the collaborators chose Mammoth because it is near a large, metropolitan area (Tucson) but is not a metropolitan area itself.

“This would add credit to our stories while also posing the very real threat of the plague potentially moving into highly populated areas nearby,” Malone wrote.

While the goal of the story was simply meant to be a fictional work of several amateur authors, Malone wrote that the attention it received was unexpected and likely arose because other users were unaware of the community’s rules that encourage role-playing and fiction.

“As for the stir it caused — that we can’t, and don’t want to take credit for,” Malone wrote. “The rules of the board are pretty clear about not taking anything as truth, but *acting* as if it is in the confines of the board.

“The result was many things being taken out of context and a number of issues arising because of it,” Malone continued. “We sincerely hope we didn’t cause any serious harm for Mammoth, AZ or anywhere else. We are just horror writers writing horror — essentially, just folks doing what we love.”