James Ridley Woke up From a 67-Day Coma Screaming About the "Mouth in the Void" — or Did He?

The internet has always been a terrifying place, and we aren't just referring to hot political takes and all of the bigotry. The early days of being online very much had "stranger in a strange land" vibes. There were odd things lurking around every corner. Whether it was a chat room designed for teenagers but occupied by adults or the Space Jam website that is still live, people were just virtually wandering around.

It didn't take long for dark things to emerge, like a zombie slowly crawling out of its own grave. One of the most morbid spots a person could find themselves after suffering through a dial-up mode was Rotten.com. It ran from 1996 until 2012 and featured things like photos of celebrity autopsies and videos of actual surgeries. It's easy to see how we got from that to stories like James Ridley's. In 1983, he apparently woke up from a 67-day coma and had nothing but horrific things to report.

It's possible the story of James Ridley and his 67-day nightmare coma is nothing but a creepypasta. We certainly haven't found any credible sources to back it up. Regardless, it bears repeating because it feels just real enough to make people question reality. It was originally uploaded by the @creepytoktruestories account but has made its way to Medium and YouTube by way of the same person.

On April 12, 1983, Ridley allegedly awoke from his coma at St. Mary's Hospital in Detroit, Mich. That hospital opened in 1850 and closed in 1987. It was demolished three years later. Obviously, no doctor would release medical records of a previous patient, but it helps that the person who posted the story chose a hospital that no longer exists. We can't fact-check that!

The 34-year-old was working at an automotive plant when an accident occurred. It resulted in a severe head injury. This is another great detail as once upon a time, Detroit was the city in terms of car production. The automotive plants began moving out of the city in the early 1990s. As he was coming to, Ridley was screaming about "the mouth in the void" and started babbling about something he called the "true reality."

"We're cattle," he apparently muttered to Dr. Sarah Klein, who was evaluating Ridley. "This, everything. It's just a feeding pen." He went on to say that there is "something out there, bigger than galaxies, keeping us distracted while it feeds." Ridley claims this ancient entity keeps us all complacent so it can "maintain our perceived" reality using what he referred to as "cosmic anesthesia." This is starting to sound like the plot of The Matrix.

Speaking of The Matrix, Ridley claimed he begged the ancient entity to allow him to return to the simulation. Maybe he was tired of living on a weird spacecraft while eating some of the worst food imaginable. Who wouldn't want to return to the simulation? That's where all the fun lives, but we digress. Evidently, his electroencephalogram (EEG) readings suggested Ridley was still in a deep sleep, despite being awake. Doctors were baffled by this.

James Ridley is a fairly innocuous name, which means a Google search yields a ton of results. If the James Ridley in this story exists, we have no idea where he is. According to the story, three weeks after waking up, he disappeared. Security footage from the hospital showed Ridley wandering out into the parking lot then taking a moment to look up at the sky, before vanishing forever.

People in the comments are as skeptical as we are. No one can find any proof that this actually happened. For now we'll just have to hope the simulation brings James Ridley back to us.