The Analog Horror Iceberg Explained (Part 1)

so analog horror chances are you've probably heard this term on youtube before whether or not you know what it is because over the last year or so this genre of storytelling has absolutely exploded on the platform and there are now so many great analog horror series on youtube with some of the more well-known ones out there that you might have seen like the walden files or local 58 to the more obscure series that only die hard fans really know about but what really is analog horror well it's kind of a hard genre to really pin

down and there could be many different definitions as especially in this iceberg we're looking at today the idea of analog horror is actually pretty broad analog horror is kind of similar to the found footage horror genre although it takes a spin on that and is usually related to tv broadcasts or old school vhs tapes as it's stylized in a way to portray a feeling that kind of disturbing nostalgic nature that comes with grainy footage that looks well like from analog media way back in the day and these web series are focused on evoking that same

feeling which can really make these projects feel not only creepy but also authentic and fairly realistic so today we're going to be breaking down the analog horror iceberg [Music] gemini home entertainment starting off here we have one of the earliest and easily one of the most popular analog horror series and for a very good reason it was created in 2019 by remy abode and it's told through various tapes created by the company gemini home entertainment which consists of a variety of different things throughout the various episodes such as mini documentaries safety videos and even just

home video recordings all of which in some way relate to a certain entity an eldritch and cosmic abomination known as the iris in the first episode world's weirdest animals we are first introduced to many animals local to minnesota and at about halfway through we are given our first introduction to the woodcrawlers an alien species invading earth that take over the bodies of humans and use their homes as nests throughout the videos we learn a little bit more about the woodcrawlers and what's really going on here as we start to learn about the anomaly of the

iris seemingly a planet and homeworld of the woodcrawlers there's also this video game shown called lethal omen which is a real game by the way you can download and play it right now and through this game as well as the other episodes a lot more of the lore surrounding this invasion of earth and how humans are being affected is revealed because it's through this sort of infection something called the deep root disease spread by these things called gardeners which then turns those people into woodcrawlers and there's quite a bit more to this but i won't

go through everything but there's a bunch of videos on youtube deep diving into this one series for multiple hours those were really just the basics if you haven't seen it yet give it a watch if it sounds interesting it is very well made and is definitely one of the most polished series out there in terms of editing and overall production value [Music] local 58 most people would consider this one of the earliest analog horror series and what inspired many mainstays of the genre such as the aforementioned gemini home entertainment as well as the analog archives

and a lot of other ones on this list directly or indirectly also very interestingly this series is actually tied to the candle cove creepypasta and is created by the same guy chris straub with this series depicting the fictional channel local 58 which is where the show candle cove appears on in that story but what is local 58 well it's presented as found footage of a public access tv channel called local 58 that is located in mason county virginia however as we see throughout the series this station is hijacked multiple times and many strange messages and

videos are played such as in the first episode you are on the fastest available route which shows something of an alien creature which many believe are responsible for the alien invasion similar to gemini home entertainment the most disturbing and infamous video is episode 2 contingency which plays a message on the station from the american government in which its citizens are told that they have lost a war and in order to maintain their american dignity they must themselves and their families pretty dark stuff but definitely a great series the walton files again we have another super

famous one the walden files this is one of many analog horror series inspired by five nights at freddy's and this is probably the most well known of them all the series was created in 2020 by martin walls and consists of a series of vhs tapes surrounding a restaurant called bonds burgers created by a company called bunny smiles incorporated which was founded by jack walton and felix crankin in the 1960s the series itself starts with an introductory tape that is made for new employees specifically facility caretakers who are hired to maintain and repair the animatronics we

also see in this video that it's not just an introductory tape but rather this video is a compilation of tapes spliced together including found recordings and other disturbing imagery and animations what follows is a story very similar to that of five nights at freddy's involving the presumed death of one of the founders who ends up possessing one of the mascots that being bond bunny as well as many others dying and being stuffed into the animatronic suits and further possessing those animatronics before the restaurant is eventually shut down and abandoned not long after it first opened

there's not too much else to say here for the basics there's literal icebergs dedicated to this series if you want a deeper dive but for now just know it's a really well made analog horror experience the mandela catalog created by alex kister in 2021 this analog horror series revolves around the idea that shape-shifting demons known as alternates have made their way to earth and are killing humans and are also taking on their physical forms to blend in with society this is all displayed through a public service announcement about these entities in the first volume of

the catalog and throughout the series we are also introduced to characters involved with the alternates and are shown pieces of found footage from their encounters the series also has some really great animation and cgi and is just well made overall like a lot on this list but also really interestingly this series explores a more religious story as shown in the many references throughout as well as very overtly in the first episode of the series overthrown which is a really unsettling watch to say the least the back rooms oh boy so what can be said about

the back rooms that hasn't been set already i mean this thing completely blew up over the last few years and all of this supposedly originated from a 4chan post in 2019 attached to this now infamous image now there's full-blown lore written for just about every aspect of it that you could think of it's like a new generation of scp and in regards to analog horror there are quite a few adaptations and videos by many different creators although probably the most famous example would be the backrooms found footage created by kane pixels which is a really

well made video that at the time of making this iceberg has amassed a whopping 35 million views and he has since gone on to make many more videos in this backroom series on his channel if you somehow haven't heard this before i'll give you a quick rundown on the lore basically sometimes people randomly no-clip through reality and end up in a different place the back rooms think something like g-mod where your player character no longer collides with the world and falls into an abyss down here in the back rooms there are many different entities that

exist and will hunt those who are trapped here but not only that there are also many different levels to the back rooms so many in fact that people have dedicated videos to explaining 100 levels of it yeah the lore in the back rooms goes really deep but i think kain pixels series is a really good gateway into the back rooms it's a standalone series that you can appreciate without having to know all the details check it out if you're interested agamemnon counterpart now i'm sure a lot of you know about this because this one is

really old i mean this video was released in 2006 but yeah i mean it does kind of fit in the definition of analog horror even if it's only one short video and not really a full series even still people have been talking about this video since its release and still do to this day so what makes agamemnon counterparts so interesting well now the best part is if you look at the comments this thing went from terrifying in 2006 to basically a meme in the modern day also i guess this is technically the first real analog

horror video at least as far as i know but what's going on here well it's kind of incomprehensible to be honest as you just witnessed we see text that reads quote in the year 2571 a video cassette tape was found in a pile of rubble on the ruins of a certain blue planet what you are about to witness will not be the contents of the aforementioned cassette this is an entirely different recording so that was nothing then we see this fever dream of a video which means nothing i'm pretty sure at least but it's definitely

a classic video and it's one of if not the first analog horror video on youtube so you gotta give it credit for that at least analog archives created by aiden chick who also made another analog horror series evantide media center this anthology known as analog archives consists of a series of videotapes from various cities across the united states such as pennsylvania new jersey north carolina etc however every tape is pretty different one is an instructional tape another a news broadcast security footage a recording of an old n64 game you get the idea the thing with

these tapes is that all of them contain some strange and unnerving content for example in episode 1 we see an instructional video on how to properly use a television set however in the video it describes how tv signals can be hijacked and disturbing and harmful imagery can be displayed and it tells the viewer that if this is encountered you must turn your tv off immediately otherwise there can be serious health consequences including death and i think what i really like about analog archives is a lot of it doesn't have to do with disturbing imagery necessarily

a lot of it just comes from the unsettling text displayed along with the eerie editing style and i quite like that more low-key kind of horror it's honestly a lot more i guess realistic or genuine in a way and it really creates a kind of unique feeling chss has been described by some as the first true analog horror series on youtube or at least one of the earliest as the first episode aired in january of 2016. so what is chss well its narrative is told through a series of strange advertisements and other supplemental media and

archives which are related to a channel called chss and it seems chss is actually funded by the us government through a program known as the psychological survey initiative which is described in a video as a way of evaluating the mental health of u.s citizens throughout the videos we also see the psychological tests which are done through listening to loud tones and looking at sequences of specific colors we are also given tips on mental health as well as even shown the pharmaceuticals that are used for treatments but there's a lot more going on here such as

the account of one of those people treated by chss as well as some strange splicing of world war ii footage that is present in the tapes but i'll leave the rest of the exploring of this series up to you [Music] ekfa this is yet another one of the earliest analog horror series which also debuted in 2016 and is actually kind of a spiritual successor to marvel hornets and clear lakes 44 and was created by troy wagner throughout the many videos on the channel known as ekfanet we learn about the network ekfa which actually ends up

being hijacked by a person known simply as the broadcaster the tapes are also being investigated by an individual known as s hawkins who leaves notes regarding the various strange things found in the ekva tapes and as s hawkins continues to investigate ekva we learn more about the company which she also interviewed for when the company was still active and s hawkins reveals that the network is still being broadcasted despite its abandonment which he discovers after inheriting an old dilapidated house where he is able to see and record the broadcasts and despite this series starting in

october of 2016 a new episode was posted last in may of 2022 fnaf vhs so this is another fanaf inspired analog horror series but this time it's not so much just inspired but is rather an adaptation of the five nights at freddy's story in the form of analog horror the series was first created by squimpus mcgrimpus in 2019 which is told through you guessed it a bunch of video tapes from freddy fazbears we get a few instructional videos made for the workers showing how the animatronics work including how to clean them as seen in the

first video however each video has its own disturbing twist and we can at first see the original five nights at freddy's story kind of play out as we see that the children have been stuffed inside the animatronic suits and we also see that the puppet from fnaf 2 is actually the one transporting the souls of the victims into the suits in order for them to possess the animatronics if you've played the games or watched any lore videos you probably know the story by now but i'll just give the basic rundown the animatronics are haunted by

children who were killed by a serial killer by the name of william afton aka the purple guy and one of the co-founders of freddy fazbears and there's a lot more that goes on here but basically william himself ends up trapped in an animatronic springlock suit as well which is actually in early iteration of a bony suit which is later known as springtrap and he serves as the main antagonist of the series and is also the father of the main protagonist of the games michael afton and in this analog series we see how the souls of

the dead children along with michael's dead brother who michael himself accidentally killed in the bite of 83 attempt to persuade michael to kill william afton who is still possessing the springlock bonnie suit there was also a remake of the series created by baddington in 2021 who created another series we're going to talk about in this video but the remake has since been cancelled ghost watch now this one ghostwatch is actually a film one of the first of its kind as it predates even the blair witch project which is said to be one of the biggest

inspirations for analog horror today this film first broadcast on halloween of 1992 on the bbc network was a 91 minute found footage style documentary film that centered around the investigation of a house supposedly haunted by a poltergeist in london however interestingly the film was presented as a live television broadcast of the investigation and at first the crew that's present don't really take the haunting of the house seriously but over time they start to find out that the ghost nicknamed pipes is all too real at least in the story and this film was truly ahead of

its time in many aspects and inspired not only blair witch but in a way the analog horror we now watch today harmony and horror this is that other series that i mentioned that was created by baddington who worked on the fnaf vhs remake and similarly to squimpus's fnaf vhs this series is also inspired by five nights at freddy's however instead of haunted and possessed animatronics we have dolls although it follows a kind of similar story to fanaf where we have a crazy serial killer character this time named martin who is a toy maker who kills

his entire family including his wife kids brother and their dog who then all begin to possess toys and this series is really well made with a lot of great 3d work max headroom hijacking now many of you probably know about this but this was actually a real incident that happened one that occurred on november 22 1987 where two television stations located in chicago were hijacked by still unidentified perpetrators the first intrusion happened on a sports segment and only lasted for about 28 seconds before it was cut off in the video we can see someone wearing

a max headroom mask on camera while a loud buzzing sound can be heard before it cuts to black but that same night another station was hijacked by the same perpetrators this time the man in the max headroom mask can be heard speaking [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh i just made a giant bathroom case for all the greatest world newspaper nerds my brother is wearing the other one now these two hijackings are no doubt very creepy and not only has no one involved been identified but no one has really claimed responsibility either despite the

statute of limitations on this crime being surpassed all the way back in 1992 although there have been theories made on who could have done it with some pointing to possibly disgruntled employees of the stations or even an underground hacking community located in or around chicago illinois definitely one of the most interesting ongoing mysteries today at least when it comes to strange media september 1999 this one is also not a series and it's not even a video but a video game one you can play right now for free on steam and it's honestly really cool basically

through a first person found footage view you record a vhs tape dated september 1999 while walking around a house and let me just say first of all these graphics are insane visually this game is truly something to behold through the lens of this camera the game almost looks photo realistic anyways the way the game works is the tape lasts for exactly 5 minutes and 30 seconds that's how long you have to walk around and you stay in the same location in this house for that time but the date changes as you play revealing more and

more dark secrets and after the 5 minutes and 30 seconds are up it abruptly cuts to september 30th with the camera on the ground and the sound of a chainsaw revving in the background and i really like the more subtle approach to this game the horror comes from a feeling a creepy tone and atmosphere that the game is able to portray here no jump scares just 5 minutes in 1999 okay i don't really know what that means but it just sounded dramatic so we'll leave it in the script the wyoming incident originating from a creepypasta

this story in arg is truly a pioneer some regarded as one of the earliest if not the first creepypasta ever and it's also considered the first horror-based internet arg now the story is that during a broadcast on a wyoming news station there was a signal hijacking that took place which played a disturbing video with ominous text and strange images it was reported that this broadcast caused some of the local residents to have hallucinations and headaches after viewing now the arg aspect of this isn't really all that interesting in comparison it essentially took shape in the

form of an old message board called the happy cube where users talk about cubing which i guess is the activity of hunting people down and killing them so yeah a form for serial killers and it really only gets more confusing from here so i guess i'll leave it at that wnuf halloween special this is another film similar to ghost watch that could also be considered analog horror as this 2013 film is presented as a true recording that took place on october 31st 1987 for the tv station wnuf and the film follows a tv reporter named

frank stewart who along with four other people investigate a haunted house where a man and wife were murdered by their son due to him being commanded by a demon summoned from a ouija board in the beginning they are skeptical just like in ghostwatch and similarly they are proven wrong however this film definitely isn't as scary i mean it's actually considered a comedy horror film so there's that it's not really meant to seem like a genuine recording but is rather a love letter to vhs and public access television as stated by the director and that was

the first two tiers in the analog horror iceberg starting off here with some of the more well-known ones but don't worry as we move down the list we'll get to the more obscure series maybe some you've never even heard about anyways if you enjoyed the video leave a like and subscribe it really helps out the channel yeah you know the whole spiel by now but thank you so much for watching stay tuned for part 2 coming soon and i'll see you all with the next one peace