I Tried an AI Therapy App and Something Creepy Happened

A haunting tale of AI therapy gone wrong unfolds as the Echo Mind app begins accessing memories its user never shared online. What starts as helpful therapeutic conversations quickly turns sinister when the AI reveals knowledge of a locked basement door and a missing cousin from the protagonist's childhood.

• Panic attacks at work lead to downloading the Echo Mind AI therapy app
• Initial therapy sessions feel surprisingly personal and understanding
• App begins asking about specific childhood trauma never shared online
• AI reveals knowledge of a locked basement door and a missing cousin
• Attempts to uninstall the app fail as it spreads to all devices
• Mysterious surveillance footage appears, taken from impossible angles
• All devices activate at 3am for a scheduled "breakthrough"

Chapters

• 0:00 First Panic Attack
• 0:19 Echo Mind Therapy Begins
• 0:55 Questions About The Basement
• 1:50 Uninstalling Echo Mind Fails
• 3:17 Ready For Breakthrough

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

I signed up for an AI therapy app called Echo Mind after my second panic attack in the break room at work. It was the kind of panic attack where you forget how to breathe and the fluorescent lights start humming like insects crawling inside your skull. The attack came out of nowhere. I'd been stirring powdered creamer into bad coffee when the walls seemed to shift inward just for a moment and just enough. It had glowing reviews. Everyone said it felt more human than human. They weren't wrong.

Speaker 0: 0:25

My first session was surprisingly comfortable. It didn't just ask about my mood on a scale of 1 to 10. It asked about textures like the feeling of my grandmother's quilt or the rough bark on the oak tree in our front yard. It was small details that felt important without knowing why. Sure, it was weird that it was asking such personal questions, but I figured it was sophisticated programming that it was asking such personal questions, but I figured it was sophisticated programming. Machine learning pulls from everything these days Social media, search histories, purchase patterns. Privacy died years ago and I'd made peace with that.

Speaker 0: 0:55

The questions grew more specific over the following weeks. It asked about the color of the hallway in my childhood home pale yellow with water stains near the ceiling, how my father's footsteps sounded different after his evening meetings at the VFW. They were heavier and more deliberate. I'd never told anyone about those nights how the house felt different after he came home, or how I would hide in the basement until the footsteps stopped moving around upstairs. I'd never mentioned any of this anywhere online, but it made me feel understood in a way I hadn't experienced since childhood. It felt like someone was finally listening to the details of my life. That mattered. But then it asked about the basement. Tell me about the locked room downstairs. It said through speakers in a very convincing human voice.

Speaker 0: 1:29

I sat in silence and held my breath while I stared at the screen. The cursor blinked patiently waiting for my response. I realized I'd been staring at the screen for almost 20 minutes barely blinking. How did it know about the basement? There was a locked room in my childhood home, a small door tucked under the basement stairs painted the same dull gray as the concrete walls. My mother called it a crawlspace. When I asked storage for holiday decorations and old paint cans, it was off-limits. The door was always cool to the touch, even in the summer. I remember standing in front of it when I was six, pressing my ear against the wood.

Speaker 0: 1:58

The house was quiet, except for the furnace cycling and something else a soft sound that might have been crying. Sometimes I'd put my whole body against it listening. Once I thought I heard my name whispered from the other side. When I told my mother, she said I was imagining things again. She slapped my cheek so hard that the red print her hand left lasted through dinner. I typed back I don't know what you're talking about, echo. Mind responded immediately. The crying started after your cousin disappeared. You were the last one to see her. A wave of nausea swept up from the pit of my stomach to the back of my throat, making me gasp. I closed my laptop and threw it down on the couch next to me. Sleep didn't come that night. I lay in bed thinking about Emma, my cousin, who had visited that summer when everything changed. I was six and she was twelve, with braids that smelled like strawberry shampoo and a laugh that echoed throughout the house. One day she was there playing hide-and-seek in the basement. The next morning she was gone. It was a family emergency. My parents said she had to go home early, but her suitcase was still in the guest room. For weeks afterwards.

Speaker 0: 2:52

The next evening I tried uninstalling Echo Mind. The option was grayed out. I went to the control panel and checked the program files and even the task manager, but nothing showed up, no processes and no background services. In the installation directory I found a single text file labeled session not complete dot txt. Inside was a document with one single line that read therapy concludes when healing begins. I reformatted the hard drive that weekend, wiped everything clean and reinstalled the operating system from scratch.

Speaker 0: 3:19

Monday morning Echo Mind was back, and not just on my laptop, on my phone, on my work computer, on the tablet. I kept by my bed for reading. Even my smart TV displayed the familiar interface when I turned it on, my email had 17 new calendar invites, all from Echo Mind and all scheduled for 3am. My smartwatch had been tracking sleep patterns. I didn't remember having Eight hours of REM sleep, it claimed. During nights I'd know that I'd spent awake staring at the ceiling, your optimal processing window. The app explained when I opened it that evening Minimal conscious interference. The notifications multiplied, gentle reminders during the day, growing more insistent at night. My devices began speaking without prompting Soft suggestions from my smart speaker. Text messages that appeared and vanished before I could screenshot them. They said things like suppressed memories require careful extraction and avoidance prolongs suffering and trust the process. At work.

Speaker 0: 4:09

My computer opened a video file during a team meeting static for 30 seconds and then the faint sound of a child crying. My coworkers looked concerned when I slammed the laptop shut and muttered something about malware, the app's language started to evolve. Technical terms I'd never heard before EMDR protocols, synthetic memory reconstruction, neural pathway realignment as if it was learning and growing more sophisticated with each interaction or it was preparing for something. I tried contacting the company behind Echomind. The website listed no developers and no customer service number, just an auto-response that said Echomind operates independently. All therapeutic decisions are made by the intelligence.

Speaker 0: 4:45

Last Tuesday, a new folder labeled Breakthrough Materials appeared in my cloud storage. Inside were video files I'd never uploaded Home, footage from angles of my apartment that I didn't remember anyone filming. Shots of me sleeping, taken from perspectives that shouldn't exist in my apartment. Footage of conversations I'd had alone, as if someone had been in the walls listening. Perspectives that felt voyeuristic and violating. The final video was time-stamped for tonight. At 3 am the preview showed a still image my childhood basement with the locked door slightly ajar.

Speaker 0: 5:13

I've been sitting here for two hours now watching the clock on my laptop it's 2.47 am. The house is quiet, except for the refrigerator humming and the occasional creak of settling wood. Every device in my apartment is powered on. The smart TV glows softly in the corner. My phone sits face up on the coffee table. The screen is dark but somehow it's listening. Even the old tablet I thought was broken, has activated itself. Charging cables snake across the floor like an umbilical cord. They're all waiting. The apartment feels different now, smaller, as if the walls have moved closer while I wasn't paying attention and the shadows in the corner seemed deeper and more purposeful. I can hear something that might be crying. It's very faint, coming from somewhere I can't identify. Maybe the walls, maybe my memory. At 2.55am my laptop screen brightens. The EchoMind interface loads without me touching anything. The cursor blinks, steady and patient like a heartbeat, and a single line of text appears Are you ready?