Everything you’re about to read is an accurate retelling of these events. This is not a sensationalized ghost story, so it only exists to start a discussion about the topic.
It was the summer of 2010 and I was visiting a friend of mine. As we often did in those days, we spent hours playing either Forge or Custom games on either Halo 3 or the newly-released Halo: Reach. Being that we were both pre-teens at the time, it was only by chance that my friend, Shalta, had knowledge of what the old Halo community was like.
Shalta, his sister, and myself were all messing around on Halo: Reach’s Forge World multiplayer map while constructing bases and such and discussing various topics. Eventually Shalta brought up this old video he found on YouTube about some type of glitch in Halo 2 which spawned a Spartan with abnormal traits on the multiplayer map Lockout. After briefly explaining the video to me, he eventually showed it to me and I became obsessed with encountering this supposed “Ghost of Lockout” myself.
The Ghost of Lockout video - which depicted a gamertag-less Spartan which had no walking animations, was able to throw grenades and shoot behind its back, didn’t appear on the score board, etc. - had spread like wildfire all over the internet and there were no shortage of videos etc. talking about it and claiming that it happened in other Halo games too. Being a very gullible kid, I believed them all and would spend upwards to an hour each day on Halo 2 (as well as other Halo games) trying to see a ghost for myself.
Shalta, to this very day, claims to have encountered the Ghost of Lockout himself back in 2004. Because of this, a couple of years after our initial conversation about the ghost, Shalta came over to my house and we booted up Halo 2 on my original Xbox intent on seeing the ghost.
We loaded up Slayer on Lockout with weapons etc. set to what we believed would cause the most slowdown in the game. Shalta, claiming to have read that the Ghost of Lockout was caused by Bungie failing to completely remove bots from Halo 2’s multiplayer when they realized they couldn’t complete them in time for release, believed that “breaking” the game would load the ghost in.
We blew each other up with rockets and brute shots, we pushed every power core we could into the Top-Md area of the map and blew them up all at once, and did whatever else we thought would slow the game down. Eventually, I was exiting the BR Tower when I saw what appeared to be a Spartan (which i assumed was Shalta) jumping down from the little ledge leading up to the top of the Sniper Tower down to Center-Mid. I took a few steps forward and Shalta assassinated me.
I’ve really racked my brain over what could’ve happened that day as there was nothing that could’ve pushed the power core, which I thought was a Spartan, over (which, had that’ve happened, could’ve tricked me into thinking the power core was a Spartan.) On top of that, if it was indeed Shalta who jumped down there, how could he have gotten behind me three seconds later when it takes about ten to get from Center-Mid to the middle of BR Tower? And as we were playing offline, there’s no way he lagged over to me.
If anyone has any idea what could’ve happened, I’d love to discuss this as I’ve been very confused over this for years as nowadays I understand that the Ghost of lockout was a lagging player. However, if I did indeed see a ghost myself, then how did it happen long after the Halo 2 servers had been shut down?