"Sometimes I wonder if the battle was real. Other times, I wonder how many monsters they needed before they were done with me. Either way, I never watched Ultraman the same again."
I received the following account:
"It happened in the summer of 2003. I was 7 years old, living that classic kid life in Pittsburgh, PA—chicken nuggets, Saturday cartoons, and a Game Boy Advance under my pillow. One night, I wake up and everything’s… wrong.
My body won’t move. My room is glowing this soft, syrupy green, like antifreeze with a heartbeat. I try to scream but it comes out like a modem dial-up noise. Then suddenly—I’m gone. No warning. Just sucked into blackness like a PowerPoint transition.
Next thing I knew, I was somewhere else. Not on Earth. I was lying on this soft chrome slab (kind of had a doctor’s examination table feel to it) in a room that was nothing but chrome. Everything was chrome. The walls. The ceiling.
Every surface reflected a thousand distorted versions of me, blinking and terrified like a glitchy security feed. There was no light source—but the whole place glowed, as if chrome were the light.
The floor wasn’t smooth—it was made of interlocking chrome tiles, shifting and reshaping themselves like magnetic puzzle pieces, constantly forming new patterns under me.
The ceiling stretched impossibly high, a dome of reflective chrome arching above me like a funhouse mirror cathedral. Lights would ripple across it in waves; it looked kind of like the lines on a hospital heart rate monitor.
Standing around me were tall, featureless figures. Even they were chrome. Smooth, vaguely humanoid, but completely featureless—like mannequins dipped in liquid mirror. Floating above the spot where a head would be were what I can only describe as big ice cubes. You know those old cartoons where they pull out the big ice cubes? It looked exactly like that, but you couldn’t see through it like a normal ice cube.
I was scared out of my mind. Like, full-on kid meltdown. I started freaking out—crying, shaking, doing that thing where you call for your mom even though you know she can’t hear you. But instead of calming me down like normal people would, one of them tilted its head, like it was listening to a podcast in my brain. The next second, he and another of these chrome aliens just glided into the center of the room.
The chrome started rippling off their bodies, shifting like liquid mercury. In seconds, one of them became Ultraman, in full towering form, glowing lights and all. The other became Alien Baltan, pincers and beady eyes included.
Without a word, they began doing a full-on tokusatsu throwdown. Slow-motion roundhouse kicks, building-smashing gestures (despite no buildings), and goofy “kshhhhhh!” battle sounds piped in from somewhere.
Every punch echoed with a deep “CRASH!” noise. Sparks flew, somehow. The floor tiles shaped into a cityscape like a low-res hologram. It’s not real, but my terrified 7-year-old brain is locked in. I watched, wide-eyed, forgetting the weird cold stuff touching my skin. I felt things.
A pinch in my arm.
A soft scrape behind my ear.
A cold pressure spreading across my neck.
Something is happening to my body—and I started to panic again, trying to look away.
But then—RAWWWRRRRGHHHHH!
Another kaiju appeared.
A third chrome alien shifted into King Joe, dropping in from above with a blaring electronic screech. He slammed into the fight, and I was pulled right back in. I couldn’t help it—it was too cool, too loud, too big.
Then I felt it again, something sliding between my spine bones, like a credit card made of static. My brain screamed—but then—the floor shifted. Another chrome monster this time as Gomora stomped in and headbutted Baltan. My nerves screamed, but my eyes were glued to the chaos.
I felt warm fluid trickle from my nose.
My jaw buzzed like a phone on silent.
Something sharp slipped into my calf and stayed there.
I heard my pulse in my ears like I was underwater.
And right as I started to register it—a chrome monster pretending to be Eleking joined the battle. It kept happening. Every time I got too close to noticing what they were doing to me, a new chrome kaiju dropped from the ceiling with perfect tokusatsu drama. The battle got louder, flashier, bigger.
The final straw? At one point, Ultraman gave me a thumbs-up mid-fight. I swear Baltan winked. Then I felt something being pulled from the base of my skull—like the world’s softest wire being yanked out through molasses—and for a second, I screamed inside my head. And then I just blacked out.
I woke up in my bed the next morning, sweaty, sore, and thankfully no scars or marks on me. Sometimes I wonder if the battle was real. Other times, I wonder how many monsters they needed before they were done with me. Either way, I never watched Ultraman the same again." K
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PHANTOMS & MONSTERS VIDEO LIBRARY
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