#spookygene

[borderlinevoodoo]

Sacramental Reality Done & Undone

Sacramental Reality Done & Undone

This image inspires fear of the unknown even while the unknown is spinning in a GIF right in front of your face so that you may study it for as long as you like. (You might have to give it a moment to load.) That’s not easy to pull off. Not merely because “there are too many eyes,” but because the natural order sends a cogent message and that message has been rearranged. The effect isn’t mere…

View On WordPress

[borderlinevoodoo]

SpookyGene Play-It-At-Home Game

http://www.spookygene.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Penetrators-Drive-Invasion-2014.mp4 Turn the opening of Atlanta’s 2014 Drive-Invasion into a fun game for the whole family! As each movie clip appears in this frantic montage, see if you can name the film it’s from. If you get the movie right, you get to: Take a swig from Mom’s Bloody Mary! Punch your big brother in the arm! (Hard.) Get a…

View On WordPress

[borderlinevoodoo]

Roku: A Horror Fan's Paradise

Roku: A Horror Fan’s Paradise

If you are a horror film fan whose tastes range beyond the last five years – into Seventies and Eighties American horror films, Italian giallo, obscure German krimli, Asian terrors, and just plain hard to find cult favorites like Spider Baby or Blood on Satan’s Claw – then dump your $80 a month cable bill and buy a Roku. Because what is taking place on the Roku is comparable to the video boom of the Eighties…

View On WordPress

[borderlinevoodoo]

My 10 Year Old's Favorite Horror Lore

from Lint Hatcher

THE NEW HORROR LORE: My kids are fascinated by the lore behind the game, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S – just as much the kid version of me was intensely focused on how best to kill vampires and werewolves.

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S has two things in common with most great modern horror films: (1) it was independently produced and (2) the "plot" is terribly simple. You're a nightwatchman at a Chucky Cheese style pizza place complete with animatronic characters. But the robots are haunted. They roam the place at night. If they catch you, they have a perverse desire to cram you inside their robotic framework. This terrible fate isn't shown. All you see is the face of the animatronic bear, bunny, chicken, or fox as it leaps at you. Your imagination fills in the blood, gears, and wiring. Your only defense is an electric door and a screen which shows you various security camera views of the restaurant – the latter perhaps providing a warning if you catch the hazy outline of one of the animatronics on the loose.

The mechanics of the game are extremely simple, but very challenging. Your power resources are limited. You just have to make it till 6 am, constantly checking between the cameras and the light that reveals if something is at the door of your backroom office.

Designed by Scott Coffin, who once worked for a Christian gaming company, the game became a smash hit thanks to various Youtube reviewers' rave reviews. Coffin went on to release a prequel in game #2, which developed the traumatizing history of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and then carried the premise to new horrific heights in game #3. My son, Nicholas, tells me the game has been optioned for development as a movie.

Katy (age 6) and Holly (age 10) won't dare play the game, but they are fascinated by the lore that has developed quite independently of any sort of media campaign from Scott Coffin. Rather, the Youtube community has produced one video after another – either following a gamer as he plays the game or revealing the secrets proposed by fans regarding why the animatronics are haunted. One of the best of these Youtubers is "Smike," particularly his episode on the "TOP 10 EASTER EGGS Five Night's at Freddy's" (see below). Note that much of this lore depends upon genuine details which Coffin ingeniously layered into the game.

This horror branch of net lore might first have reached your ears via the name "Slender Man" (or "Slenderman"), an extremely creepy character (can you spot him in the photos above?) which Wikipedia describes as: 

"...a fictional supernatural character that originated as an Internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (a.k.a. "Victor Surge") in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and usually featureless face, wearing a black suit. Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature him stalking, abducting or traumatizing people, particularly children. The Slender Man is not confined to a single narrative, but appears in many disparate works of fiction, mostly composed online." 

Metafolklore, in other words. Slender Man's popularity grew rapidly among gamers and Youtubers, especially when an iteration named "Enderman" found its way into the game, Minecraft.

Slender Man made the mainstream news when two young girls attacked and stabbed a friend at the behest, they claimed, of Slender Man. Again, according to Wikipedia:

"On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin allegedly held down and stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times; when questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming proxies of the Slender Man, having Stabbingread about it online. The victim was able to crawl out of the woods, where she had been left, to get to a roadside. Due to the intervention of a passing cyclist, the victim survived the attack. The attackers were charged as adults and are each facing up to 65 years in prison. One of the girls said Slender Man watches her, can read minds and teleport."

Significantly, Wikipedia adds, "Experts testified in court that she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."