Microsoft Office 95 -- Hall of Tortured Souls

f you've been on the Internet for longer than five minutes, you're probably aware of the thousands of email forwards and poorly designed Web pages accusing Bill Gates of being the devil, literally. Apparently, the Prince of Darkness has clumsily dropped evidence of his dark secret all over his products: One popular urban legend claims that names like "Bill Gates," "Windows 95" and "MS-DOS 6.21" somehow add up to 666, which is silly, because everyone knows you can't add letters.

Another one says there's something called "The Hall of Tortured Souls" or "The Hall of Lost Souls" hidden inside Word 95; supposedly, it's a creepy first-person game with Doom-like graphics, and if you make it to the end of a narrow path, it will show you "something really, really eerie" or "reveal something about Microsoft." Or both.

That is completely false. There is no creepy game hidden inside Word 95.

It's on Excel 95.

Wait ... what? They put that inside a program used to create spreadsheets?

Yup: If you open a new Excel file, go to Row 95 and follow a few other steps, a new window will pop up on your screen and possibly take 10 years away from your life with the resulting shock. Turns out that "Hall of Tortured Souls" isn't a dramatic nickname people on the Internet invented: It's what the window actually says.

The "game" appears to have only two rooms, separated by some stairs: The one with the blue pillars and the green pools, and another with red names raining down a window. That's it. The place is completely deserted except for you, which somehow makes it even creepier. However ... if you type "EXCELKFA" while facing a certain direction, one of the walls will disappear while you're not looking, and behind it you'll see a narrow, very hard-to-cross bridge with something weird at the other end.

  If you make it to the other side, you'll find what looks like a bizarre other-dimensional re-enactment of the Last Supper: 

Now, before you curl up under the bed and start crying -- those are actually the guys who developed Excel 95. Apparently, Microsoft programmers used to do this all the time: There's also a 3D flight simulator in Excel 97 and a racing game in Excel 2000. It's simply a fun way for them to credit their work, because seriously, when was the last time you read the "About" page for a program?

Of course, some people still see this as definite proof that Bill Gates is, in fact, the Antichrist, accusing him of personally putting the game there to ... you know, be all Antichristy and stuff.

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