Analog Terrors

It is lunch time at school, sometime in 2015. This is the only time in which students are allowed to use school computers for leisure. Therefore, the room is packed with kids either playing flash games or watching videos with their friends. A fourteen-year-old girl sits in front of one of these cube-looking monstrosities with screens. The fancy, slender ones won’t be installed for another year.She is surrounded by four friends, and while those eagerly discuss plans and drafts for the upcoming issue of the school newspaper – the five of them are basically the entire school newspaper – she only half-listens. Instead, her eyes flicker across the screen as she excitedly reads another entry on the SCP Foundation website. During her teenage years, it is her big obsession, though she is limited to reading these entries at school only. Her mother isn’t a fan of anything remotely horror-esque and she won’t be caught dead reading these articles on the family laptop.Now, this specific article is about some radioactive mask, and mid-reading the image of it changes from a big smile to a dreadful frown. It happens so quickly, she almost doesn’t notice. Almost. Her first reaction is to screech, then shut down the page and the entire computer with it. Everyone turns to look at her. And one of her friends, a horror enthusiast who is well acquainted with the SCP Foundation and Creepypasta websites and has had an eye on her during the entire ordeal, bursts out laughing. They both know she won’t be sleeping soundly for at least the next two weeks. Not with her overactive imagination having fed on such imagery.I think it’s time to admit that I was that fourteen-year-old, and I indeed didn’t sleep well for weeks afterwards. Even now, over a decade later, my relationship to horror and spooky things hasn’t changed all too much. I still watch horror movies through the cracks between my fingers, can’t get through any Five Nights at Freddy’s playthrough without a jumpscare spoiler list and certainly cannot read any even remotely scary novels at nighttime. Not exactly the ideal prerequisites to write a blog on horror. So, how did we get here?Well, despite my poor handling of the horror genre, I feel myself drawn back to it over and over again. That’s a phenomenon I surely don’t need to explain to other fans and simultaneously feel myself incapable of properly explaining to my mother, whose squeamishness I am pretty sure to have inherited. Sure, the thrill and suspense of consuming horror media is part of the appeal for many. For appreciators of the arts and aesthetics, the visuals play a big part, whether it’s compelling videography or a gorgeous and unique art style. Of course, there’s also the use of music and audio cues to instil fear in the audience, often leading to iconic soundtracks as in the case of the 1975 classic film Jaws. Or it’s simply the loyalty to a franchise, like Scream or the aforementioned Five Nights at Freddy’s, that pulls fans back in every time. Personally, I like being immersed into worlds with horrors I simply cannot understand and that I am not meant to understand. The more mysteries left unresolved, the better for my ever-thinking brain.There are many gateways and appeals to horror and quite an array of subgenres to pick from. And ‘subgenres’ is the keyword here. As a teenager, a certain type of horror had caught my interest though I’ve only learned of the proper term in recent years with its rise in popularity: Analog Horror. Distorted imagery, glitched audio and antiquated technology create an atmosphere akin to nostalgic home videos that somehow feel very off when rewatched. Whether it’s the yellow halls of the Backrooms, the colourful muppet-nostalgia of Welcome Home or the, uhm, totally not terrifying nightmare-stuff that are the FNAF VHS Tapes, this subgenre intrigues its fans.Now, would I call myself a ‘fan’ of analog horror? Given that I only consume horror media on the periphery, not quite. At least not quite yet, because that is about to change. For this blog, I will leave the comfort of spoiler warnings in comment sections and Wikipedia summaries and delve into the world of analog horror with the aim to see what exactly makes it so compelling. Why is this subgenre getting more popular as of late? What do some specific examples look like? And – for the literature student in me – can a genre so reliant on the audio-visual be translated into a literary format? And if yes, how?To achieve that, each instalment of this blog will examine a specific example of analog horror – a podcast, a movie, a game, anything is within the realm of possibility! – and attempt to pick apart all the components that make up the spooky end result. No more peeking from behind fingers or tilting my phone until I can barely see the screen. The time has come to consume more horror than is probably good for me and present you with the fruits born from my suffering hard labour and analysis. Hopefully, at least one of us will have fun with this.