By 7th Grade Charlie B.

It was a bright, Monday morning at my house. My brother and I had a day off from school, so we were just relaxing in our living room, watching TV. It was almost 11:00, because on those days off from school, I usually sleep in late. My brother Michael is almost always up before me, because I usually fall asleep later than him, and therefore don’t have the willpower to get up.

Even though he is taller than me, he is still younger than me (by one minute). We barely get along, but on days when we are home alone watching TV, we get along just fine. We have a lot of differing opinions, and those differing opinions spark a lot of petty arguments. All it takes is one little argument, then our temporary peace all falls apart.

On that Morning morning, the house was quiet, except for the sound of the TV. I was sitting on the sofa next to my brother. It was very cozy in the house at the time, with the sunlight shining through the windows into the living room. As the smell of fresh Pop Tarts wafted through the warm air, an idea popped into my head. There is this thing on Youtube, that I love, but also hate at the same time. It’s called analog horror.

Analog horror is basically a genre of horror videos on youtube and other websites. It consists of found footage, distorted images, and a visual style reminiscent of late 20th century television and analog recordings. My favorite things about it have to be the actual footage or the distorted audio and images. This stuff scares me half to death, but that’s why I love it.

It’s something that I love to watch, but it scares me so much that I love it, even though that’s also the reason why I hate it. It gives me very mixed emotions. I absolutely adore scary stuff. Seeing scary monsters, or looking at an image of an eerily empty room. Most of the creatures that catch my interest are giant ones, or ones that have a lot of sharp features. Like maybe a tall, skinny monster with long fingers and an exposed spine, or a woman with a face inside her face. The images I like have the monsters in a dark space where they are hard to see, so it gives the viewer a sense of dread. Not only do I like spooky creatures, I also like the environments they are placed in. It could be a snowy playground, or a gloomy road. I just love it so much. My brother loves it too. I don’t know if it scares him as much, but we both love it still. Analog horror, and just creepy stuff in general, have made my life so much better. They give me drawing inspiration, writing inspiration, and just a lot of inspiration.

            But anyway, back to the story. So, Michael and I decided to watch a new analog horror series on Youtube that one fateful, or pleasant morning, depending on how you see it. This new series was called Doctor Nowhere.

Doctor Nowhere isn’t really a series with a plot. It’s more like just random videos of different events or creatures. The creator’s Instagram page has a full library of sketches and videos, all with different plots, though some of them are connected. An example could be a fallen angel landing in a backyard, or two friends trapped in a room with something else they never knew was there. I have gotten so many ideas for writing and drawing from this one series. When it comes to this stuff, it is hard to run out of ideas, because there is a massive variety of creatures this one person has made. 

             So anyway, Michael and I watched it all the way through. At the time, it was the scariest thing ever. I regretted watching it then, but now, all I want to do is watch it more, to see anything I might have missed. There was this one distorted face out of many that stuck to me. It was one specific video in the series, which was the longest one. It was about a TV hijacking, where a program was playing, but it was interrupted by a red, boiled face on the screen. The plot as I understood it was that everybody who watched the hijacking went to sleep, then woke up paralyzed. The only thing they could move was their eyes, and they could blink. This affected 509 people. That face was pretty much engraved into my memory. The face itself was supposed to be what paralyzed the victims. Scientists made the victims blink morse code, so they could understand more about what was happening. One person among the victims was an old war veteran, who was fluent in morse code. He said there was something eating away at his spine. I think the face itself placed something on the people’s spines, just by looking at them.

             The face spoke in a very distorted, chilling voice, but the audio was backwards. This face was not real, so it obviously could not hurt me, but it still scared me. Eventually, I got curious, and decided to look at a clip where the backwards audio was reversed, and could be made out into words. This is what was said: “On the manifestation of my being in the future, you will be asleep in bed. I will be there to watch over you. When you wake, you will not be able to move any part of you. When the doctors eventually find you, they will not see me, but you will, and I’ll see you too. Forever. I’ll see you.”

Chills. I got the worst chills listening to that, and I still do. It did scare me, but now, I just watch it for the sake of getting chills. I just love that feeling for some reason. It just tickles my brain. 

  Watching this was when my imagination sparked. This little spark hit the trail of gasoline, leading up to an explosion of ideas. I thought of ideas for stuff to draw, stuff to write, and more. Now, all I have is appreciation for scary things. For example, this made me get a camera and want to go out at night and take pictures of dark emptiness and creepy streetlights. This made me want to draw more than I ever have before. This made me want to write stories on my own time. Now, I am the most creative I have ever been. I feel like new scary ideas for drawings, stories, and pictures are flowing like a river in my mind. All I need to do is go inside my mind, and fish out the first idea that comes up, and I go with it. The realization that this stuff can’t hurt me has just made me want to do more. I also realized that the people who make these scary things are just like me. People who have ideas in their mind, flowing like a river, and they catch the first thing that comes up. I love the people who do those things, and all I want is for them to keep doing what they are doing, because what they do makes them happy, and what I do makes me happy. 

From the days following that big rush of ideas , I have felt the most happiness I have had in a while. At some parts of the day, I couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face, even if I wanted to. I think it could be the realization that people are out there doing exactly what I like to do. People who love horror, and the emotions that come with it. It still makes me scared, of course. Now, when I see something on my feed, a scary image perhaps, I not only feel fear, but appreciation and happiness. I appreciate the people that take time out of their lives to be creative, and that makes me so, so happy.

          I really don’t know how my brother, Michael, really feels about this stuff. I think he just likes it, and that’s it. I don’t know if he likes it as much as I do, or sees what I see. I feel like he knows how much horror matters to me, but does not see it himself. Horror also matters to him though. He always wants to watch horror movies, and different videos on Youtube. 

We both aren’t as affected by horror as we once were though. We don’t get as scared anymore. I know we both share the same fascination with horror, and have adapted, knowing that those things are not real. Scary things should be making us scared, and they do, but that fear is almost overwhelmed by happiness and appreciation instead. Well, at least for me, but whatever makes me happy, I’ll take it.