By Logan Treboutat & Alex Villanueva
Warning: Not for the faint of heart!
The internet is a wonderful place. At least, that’s how Bo Burnham makes it sound. But where light travels, darkness follows. In his song “Welcome to the Internet,” Burnham sings about how amazing the internet is, before diving into its darker, twisted nature. And he isn’t wrong. For every cute cat video and jolly cartoon character, there is something a bit more unsettling to be found. Internet horror doesn’t need to be blood and guts; all it takes is something familiar or unsettling to make everything feel wrong. So here are some creepy crawlies on the worldwide web.
The Blank White Face
One of the most well-known entities out there, the extremely tall creature lurks in dark, foggy forests, searching for its main target: children to stalk and traumatize. With unnaturally long, flexible arms, he goes through the forest, placing various pages with drawings of himself in his black tuxedo and completely white, featureless face throughout his eerie habitat. If someone dares to collect a page, he notices and becomes more aggressive and faster at finding his victim. Slenderman’s abilities to navigate through the tall trees and heavy fog include teleporting over long distances to catch someone, using his tentacles that come out from his back to trap someone, causing static distortion to any device near his presence, and giving whoever looks at his face paranoia, nightmares, confusion, and lost memories, as his face is the most powerful aspect of him; one slight look and you are beyond cooked, vanishing without a trace or your life consumed by the endless delusions that eventually lead to your breaking point.
An Animal With a Savage Smile
Smile Dog is a distorted, ominous Siberian husky with a 
concerningly wide, human-like smile, with teeth as sharp as needles; no one would survive a bite from this horrific dog. The story goes as follows: a cursed digital image called “smile.jpg” surfaced in an email, which a woman viewed for the first time. This woman started with uncomfortable feelings that eventually led to traumatizing distress and nightmares of the vicious Smile Dog taunting her. For someone to escape the haunting, suffering, vivid, inescapable, and anxious dreams of this demonic dog, an individual must send the image file to somebody else for them to view; if not done, the dog will corrupt your mind with endless nightmares that lead to absolute madness.
The Void Named Jack
An urban legend that’s pretty niche: Eyeless Jack, the demon teenager who eats humans at night. Eyeless Jack wears a dark blue mask with no nose or mouth holes; only his dark, empty eye sockets are seen, which leak a thick, black ink substance. Whenever seen, he appears to be crying dark tears, and if someone gets hit by one of these, they get blinded by this pure black, inky fluid, allowing Jack to use his sharp claws to attack his victim. He usually roams around houses at night, stalking for somebody’s organs, using his claw-like hands to grab into people’s chests and pull out their guts quietly, leaving without a trace except for his leftover ink and well-made stitches. If someone notices him, he quickly dashes into them, knocking them out and blinding them, leaving that person with no memory of seeing him; hence why Eyeless Jack never gets caught.
Paranormal Protection
The secret foundation tasked with protecting humanity from the unknown, SCP (Special 
Containment Procedures), is always there, ready to capture their prey: anything paranormal. But sometimes the SCP workers become the prey. The SCP Foundation makes sure to capture any supernatural entities; they can be objects, creatures, or locations. A few notable entities include “The Shy Guy,” “The Infinite IKEA,” and “The Tickle Monster.” “The Shy Guy” is a thin, pale humanoid figure that will become hostile and relentlessly pursue any who catch a glimpse of his face, like that of an Enderman from Minecraft. The Infinite IKEA is simply what it sounds like, a shifting pocket dimension that runs on endlessly, but the faceless staff there become violent after closing hours. “The Tickle Monster” is a small, orange, friendly lump of goo that spreads happiness and joy to anyone it touches. Beneficial or malevolent, all entities are confined, but sometimes they aren’t confined well enough. The “Hard-to-Destroy Reptile” escaped his prison once, seeking the destruction of all organic life in his intense disgust for it, and annihilating many of the SCP workers. And the SCP foundation isn’t benevolent and helpful for everyone either. SCP sacrifices much of their personnel and even describes the lowest-level workers as “test subjects”. The SCP Foundation really exemplifies people’s ability to come together as a community and collaborate across the internet, creating goofy or horrifying anomalies.
Tower of Lost Dreams
The internet can twist nostalgic, familiar things, and rip that recognizable image into shreds, leaving an eerie tale. Pokemon Lost Silver tells the story of a boy who wanted to play Pokemon SoulSilver when it was released—but he couldn’t. So he did the only thing he could: play the normal Pokemon Silver. He realized he didn’t have it so he went to GameStop and bought a copy for a really cheap price of 10 bucks. He loaded up the game on his Game Boy Color, but the loading logo froze. Turning it on, turning it off, nothing worked. Eventually, the screen turned black, before loading into the game on a previous save file—no menu screen. When checking the save file’s stats, everything seemed impossible. A maxed-out account with all the badges, 999:99 hours, infinite currency, and all Pokemon in the PokeDex (a technological bestiary of sorts). The current Pokemon team line-up was as follows: 5 Unowns (hieroglyphic-looking creatures) that spelled out “Leave” and a 6th pokemon named “Hurry”. Pure silence rang out, and the boy noticed his character (who was named “…” and nicknamed “Gold”) was trapped in a tower. He entered a dark room, and upon lighting it up, revealed a chilling blood-red path. A sign appeared that read “TURN BACK NOW”, but the boy obliviously 
ignored it. Suddenly, he saw a message saying “Hurry has fainted.” His pokemon lost all its health, albeit there was no way for that to happen. The boy checked his Pokemon team again, this time it magically was replaced with 6 Unowns that read, “HE DIED”. He went back to the game, only to see a terrifying sight. One of Gold’s arms just tore off, slowly, slowly, flesh and bone ripped apart. Thud. Gold’s other arm just fell off, just like that. Gold, with a sudden start, spun around and around, as if sinking, and then the screen went black, before returning again. Gold lost all color, fully monochromatic. Grey clothes, empty eyes, and white, sickly skin. His legs had disappeared, replaced with bloody stumps, and black blood flowed out of Gold’s eye sockets. New Unown spelled “DYING” and a single other pokemon lay in the boy’s Pokemon team: a fairy named Celebi, full of life and color on one half and stripped of skin on the other. Eventually, the boy stumbled upon another character who initiated a battle. This new character, “Red”, had a Pikachu that was sad and full of tears. The battle led to this message: “Celebi has died!” The message “Pikachu has died!” appeared next, before Red was beheaded. Gold’s body vanished right after, leaving only an empty, soulless skull with a skin bag on top. New Unown spelled out “NOMORE”. The Unown become parasites, manipulating Gold’s flesh. Then Gold died.
That’s Not Spongebob
It’s not just stories that twist the cute, friendly nature of common things, but also animations. MeatCanyon is a YouTube channel that masterfully reanimates eerie, creepy kids shows. One of his most popular pieces is “Secret Formula”: a video that can make almost anyone uncomfortable. Spongebob? He’s turned into a grotesque, slimy, stretchy blob that’s used for the cheese in the Krabby patty burgers – uncanny enough to give anyone with trypophobia a heart attack. Mr. Krabs? His eye sockets are expanded, eyelashes growing off the eyeballs, with a wide, crooked smile. And what about Squidward? His eyes are deformed and his head turned to mush. The audio also plays a big role, as there is a calm-toned narrator, alongside calm music, but it just adds to the unsettling 
vibe. Then the character’s voices come in, and they are low and demonic, but audibly similar to the original character they were. Then Squidward and Mr. Krabs start eating SpongeBob, and it’s so unnerving that it’ll make you want to puke. Squidward and Mr. Krabs don’t stop, they only speed up, addicted to SpongeBob’s… well, essence. While this is one disturbing example of not-so-innocent media, MeatCanyon has plenty more.
