1444, the truth about the cursed video that has been removed from YouTube

The Internet is something surprising that has changed our lives in several ways, making it perhaps one of the most important technological developments of recent times. However, it is also a place that has generated spooky mysteries and even supposed curses and ghosts. Here in cyberspace, there seems to have emerged a new path of the paranormal, that of ghosts, curses and other phenomena that have firmly taken root in this new medium of our modern times. (1444)

A “subspecies” of the inexplicable on the Internet are cursed or haunted videos, which thanks to tools like YouTube have managed to spread and be commented on by the masses, and that shows that a network is a new place for the strange and the hidden. Many of the creepiest videos found on the Internet are those that are said to be cursed or haunted, or at least inflict a sense of deep and unexplained terror to the viewer. And this leads us directly to the new viral phenomenon that has caused widespread terror in social networks, the so-called video 1444.

The new damn video

1444 is a YouTube video that has gone viral as part of a supposed “cursed” story. The images have been extended to users of social networks who do not know their origin. It is clear that in infinity explorers we will not publish the video in question, but we will make a short summary. The scary video shows a Russian man committing suicide with a shotgun while sitting on a sofa.

The 17-second video seems to have been previously shared on sites and in communities that publish extremely graphic photos and videos known as gore. The weekend began on October 19 and 20 on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Several versions of the video have been uploaded on YouTube and on social networks with different titles, many of which include the term “video 1444”, in order to evade the removal filters.

“YouTube has a clear policy that prohibits content that promotes self-harm, and we quickly remove videos that violate this policy,” a YouTube spokesman said in a statement.

But when it comes to the famous video 1444, this is what you need to know:

The video is real. The man who appears in the images is an 18-year-old Russian named Gleb Korbalev, according to Twitter user @Jaxieon, who discovered the details behind the video. Korbalev was a university student in Moscow. He broadcast his suicide live on the Russian social network VK, which is similar to Facebook. The video was broadcast on VK, and also on Telegram and on another Russian website called 2ch.

Also Read – Antrum: the cursed movie that causes death to those who see it

The 17-second video shows a man sitting on a sofa in front of a painting with a Saiga-12 shotgun on his head. He makes a brief statement in Russian and then pulls the trigger. A shot can be heard and the brutal consequences of the shot are observed. He seems to be saying “goodbye” in Russian before committing suicide. A longer version of the video shows Korbalev’s body on the couch for more than two hours before the police arrive.

As it can not be otherwise, the video went viral after a now-deleted YouTube channel called GORE was published. According to YouTube users who watched the original video before it was deleted, it was available for approximately 16 hours. Since then, the channel and video have been deleted, but the images were shared hundreds of times. And this is where the curse begins. They have warned anyone who wants to watch the video that they will suffer a curse. And the alleged curse can be broken by responding to the video with a version of the publication date October 20, such as 10-20-19.

And how does the curse arise? According to a Reddit user with the username Kurosagi8, the video was published on the Deep Web and the person who commits suicide prepared everything and cursed everyone who saw it. Then, anyone who sees it must say the date of their suicide or suffer the consequences.

Social network users warn others about the video

Users of social networks have been warning others about the video because it is linked without a warning about graphic content. Others have said that the video was seen in automatic playback on YouTube, so they advised to disconnect this system and avoid encountering the frightening video 1444.

Although the clearest warning said: “Watch it if you want but don’t force others to do it, they have tricked people to watch it if they send you a random YouTube video, proceed with caution and be very careful.”

It can be easy to dismiss all this as pure urban legend or creepypasta. However, we must remember that many of these videos are on the Internet to scare, confuse and cause all kinds of nightmares. Whatever the case, video 1444 shows us that the new technological era is not exempt from its own curses or ghost stories, simply the place has changed.

What do you think of the damn video 1444? Would you dare to see it? Or have you seen it and suffer its consequences?

Editor’s note: This article discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 in the United States, or call Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK. Help is available 24/7.

Why “1444”? The Number Behind the Curse

The most-searched question about the video is not what’s on it — it’s why the number 1444 is attached to it at all. The most widely repeated explanation traces back to a since-deleted Reddit thread that claimed the video’s original metadata, on the obscure Russian gore site where it first appeared, contained the timestamp 14:44 in its filename. Whether or not the file actually carried that timestamp, the number itself has carried weight in folklore long before this case attached to it.

• In numerology, 1444 is sometimes read as the doubling of 14 (associated with destruction and rebirth in certain Tarot readings) and 44 (associated with omens and the thinning of the veil between worlds).
• In Chinese numerology, the number 4 is famously associated with death because its pronunciation closely resembles the word for “death” (sì / sǐ). 1444 read in that frame becomes “one, then three deaths” — a numerical signature that read as ominous to early commenters.
• In the cursed-internet-content tradition, three- and four-digit numerical names are simply the convention for “files you should not open” — from the early 2000s “Lavender Town syndrome” hoax onward, ascribing a numerical ID to a cursed file is itself part of the genre’s grammar.

None of this proves the curse is real. What it does is explain why the number “1444” became the shorthand. The video’s authors did not give it that title. The internet did.

Has Anyone Actually Died From Watching the 1444 Video?

The claim attached to nearly every retelling of the video — that viewers who watch and do not respond with the suicide date “die within 24 hours” — has no documented case behind it. Snopes investigated the claim in October 2019 and found no verified deaths attributable to the video. The folklorist Trevor Blank, who studies digital legend cycles, has classified the 1444 curse as a “secondary attachment” — a curse narrative that grows up around an already-traumatic piece of content as a way for viewers to process the shock collectively.

What the video has done — verifiably — is induce significant psychological distress in many of those who watched it without warning. Multiple users reported intrusive flashbacks, sleep disruption, and anxiety lasting weeks. That is not a curse. It is a recognized response to unexpected exposure to graphic real-world violence, particularly suicide imagery, and it is one of the main reasons platforms have hard rules against this kind of content.

YouTube’s Ban and the Removal Timeline

YouTube’s official position, given to multiple outlets in the October 2019 wake of the video’s spread, was that the content violated its Community Guidelines on graphic violence and self-harm and had been removed. The platform also temporarily restricted searches for the phrase “video 1444” — meaning users could not autocomplete or surface the video through ordinary search. Mirrors continued to appear on Reddit, 4chan, the Russian site VK, and the imageboard 2ch, where platform takedowns are slower or non-existent.

The pattern matches earlier removals of similarly graphic content (the 2008 Ronnie McNutt livestream, the 2007 “Three Guys One Hammer” video). Once a file has been mirrored across multiple platforms, complete removal becomes effectively impossible. What changes is the friction required to find it. As of 2026, finding the 1444 video on mainstream platforms is difficult; finding mirrors on dark-web forums or Telegram channels is not.

Other Famous “Cursed” YouTube Videos

The 1444 video sits inside a long tradition of “cursed video” folklore that predates the internet by decades but has accelerated since YouTube’s launch in 2005. Some of the more notable entries:

• Antrum (2018). A fictional horror film presented as a “cursed” 1979 lost film, complete with disclaimers warning viewers that watching brings misfortune. The film is a deliberate piece of folklore-construction art and has its own dedicated following.
• The Mereana Mordegard Glesgorv hoax (2010). A grainy clip of a man staring at the camera, accompanied by the claim that 73 viewers had taken their own lives after seeing the full 30-minute version. No evidence of the longer version, or the deaths, was ever produced.
• “Username 666” (mid-2000s). A YouTube creepypasta claiming that searching for the username 666 would crash your browser and surface content from a parallel YouTube. Pure creepypasta, but it set the structural template for nearly every “cursed video” that followed.
• The Smile Dog images. Not video but adjacent — a still photograph that allegedly causes viewers to dream of the depicted creature for weeks. Documented as a hoax. The image still circulates.

Who Was Gleb Korbalev?

The man in the video was an 18-year-old Russian university student. He had a public VKontakte profile, friends, family, and — according to people who knew him and posted in the days after his death — a long-running depressive illness that had not been adequately treated. His name became attached to the case through online sleuthing in the days after the broadcast.

One reason to name him here is that the curse framing of the video tends to flatten him into a horror figure — a cursed entity rather than a young man who died. He was the latter. The Russian outlets that covered his death in late October 2019 emphasized that his case was part of a broader pattern of inadequate mental-health infrastructure in Russian universities at the time, where waiting lists for psychiatric care often ran to months and stigma around treatment remained high. Whatever the video became online, that is what it actually was offline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the 1444 video real?

Yes. The video depicts the genuine livestreamed suicide of an 18-year-old Russian student in October 2019. It was broadcast on the Russian social network VKontakte before spreading to other platforms.

Why is it called 1444?

The name traces to claims about the video’s original filename or timestamp metadata, attaching it to the number 1444. Numerologically, the number combines associations with destruction (14) and omens (44), and in Chinese tradition the digit 4 carries strong associations with death. The numerical title is also conventional for “cursed file” folklore generally.

Will I die if I watch the 1444 video?

No documented death has ever been attributed to viewing the video. The curse claim — that viewers must respond with the date “10-20-19” or die within 24 hours — is a folklore narrative that grew up around the content, not an effect of the content itself. What is real is significant psychological distress in viewers exposed without warning. That distress is well-documented and reason enough to avoid the video.

Can you still find the 1444 video on YouTube?

No. YouTube removed the video within hours of its original posting in October 2019 and has consistently removed mirror uploads. As of 2026, the video remains accessible on dark-web aggregator sites and some Russian-language platforms, but is not findable via standard YouTube search.

What is the “curse” supposed to involve?

The most widely repeated version of the curse holds that any viewer who watches the video and does not respond — via comment or social-media post — with the date of the original suicide (October 20, 2019, often written 10-20-19) will die within 24 hours. The narrative is a textbook example of “secondary attachment” curse folklore, a pattern where viewers collectively construct ritual responses to traumatic content as a way of processing the shock.

Should I watch the 1444 video?

No. We say this not because of the curse — which is folklore — but because the video shows the real, graphic suicide of a young man with an untreated mental illness. Exposure to suicide imagery is associated with measurable psychological harm, and in some cases with imitative behavior. There is no investigative, journalistic, or educational reason any general reader needs to see the original footage. The case itself can be understood, and discussed, without it.

This story was originally published in 2019 in the immediate aftermath of the video’s spread. Substantially expanded May 2026 to include the curse’s folkloric structure, YouTube’s removal timeline, and a more responsible portrait of the young man whose death the video documents. Status: real event; curse folklore documented and analyzed; we mark this carefully because the underlying death is real.

If you or someone you know is struggling: in the United States, call or text 988. In the UK, call Samaritans on 116 123. In Russia, the all-Russia mental-health helpline is 8-800-2000-122. Help is available 24/7.