Do Not Look At The Moon (It May Be Looking Back) – Local 58

Do you remember? Do you remember waking up at night, perhaps stirred awake by a nightmare already forgotten, and finding yourself unable to go back to sleep? Maybe the feeling – you know the feeling – keeps lingering in your stomach, keeps you from settling back into your bed. You cannot do so either way. The blanket suddenly feels too hot and heavy, so you throw it off and get up.

Maybe your first instinct is to go to your parents, maybe you need a bathroom trip before all else, but eventually you settle into the living room in front of the big TV. You might as well use the opportunity to have a sneaky little peak at the late night shows your parents never let you watch. Just for a little bit, just until I am tired again, you tell yourself as you reach for the remote, already having in mind that the volume has to be low. You don’t want to risk waking your parents after all. And with a quick push of your thumb, the screen lights up, casting everything in its shine a soft, dimmed blue and everything outside its reach an impossibly dark shade of black. For now, you don’t care about that. Your stomach bubbles with excitement and anxiety as you watch a movie, a scene fully ripped out of context, so you don’t really know what is going on. It’s suspenseful, perhaps a pursuit? You momentarily forget that you’re supposed to be asleep, forget that you can be caught at any time and just when you make the mistake of letting your guard down, the screen flashes with a grotesque image that strips your face of all colours. At once, you become aware of the darkness surrounding you. How the quiet takes up every suffocating breath of air. How alone you are. Even at your young age, you immediately understand that this was something you were not supposed to see. All that buzzing excitement is gone, replaced by an overwhelming sense of dread. Now, you do wish you would have gone to your parents instead, but you are unable to move.

Then a sound catches your attention. A small creak from behind you and your entire body goes rigid. You tell yourself it is the house, the creaky floorboard, anything explainable. Perhaps, you urge yourself to turn around, but when you look you realise that your eyes are not accustomed to the dark anymore and even if there was something, you wouldn’t be able to see it until far too late…

And this more or less summarises how watching Local 58 feels. With that, welcome back to Analog Terrors with our first entry centred around a specific piece of analog horror media. If you are new here and have no idea what exactly ‘analog horror’ is or you need a refresher on the topic, feel free to look at the previous blog entry for an overview of the genre. Personally, I’m glad to have made a general overview first, as it helped easing myself into the genre and into this first example. I was not quite sure of what to expect from Local 58. Before researching for this blog, I have never even been aware of this series’ existence, so the hurdle was high, especially in the first couple of videos. I was terrified, which was only amplified by being home alone in a barely furnished, creaky apartment. These circumstances made watching these videos at nighttime impossible. That was, until I managed to sit through about three of them with a gradually decreasing number of sanity breaks and a switch flipped in my brain. Somehow the excitement and interest in the webseries managed to overtake the dread I felt while watching it. While that didn’t stop the videos from creeping me out, it made them a little easier to stomach to a point where I began to ask myself: “How did Local 58 do that?” That’s one of the questions we are going to look at today!

While Local 58 is a relatively short series with about twelve videos, most of them bite-sized three to five minutes, and one YouTube Short, it has quite a lot to cover. Thus, I will not be speaking about all 13 videos, but a selection of those most memorable to me and those most referenced in articles and other blog entries. At this point, a spoiler warning seems reasonable. I will, of course, try not to give away all details, as I highly encourage you to watch this series yourselves (it will be linked down in my sources), but an analysis needs material to, well, analyse. That being said, we will take a look at the aspects that make Local 58 a specifically analog horror series and how these videos come together to, in a way, tell a greater lore.

Local 58, or otherwise known as WLCV-TV, is a webseries created in 2015 by Kris Straub, who is also the creator of the creepypasta Candle Cove (which we talked about briefly in the previous entry) and the horror comic Broodhollow. Previously accessible under its own, now defunct website, the series moved over to YouTube in 2017, gaining more traction on the new platform. Here, the first video was posted on Halloween of the same year. Given that this was almost a decade ago, I was at first surprised to see that there are “only” about a dozen videos. However, the irregular upload pattern does play nicely into the whole concept of Local 58: you never know what’s coming next, or in this case, when the next video comes.

In general, Local 58 is about a TV broadcasting channel with the same name that operates in various fictional towns around the greater Mason County area, which is a real county in West Virginia. Further research reveals that Mason County has had multiple records of Mothman sightings, which I find hilarious in this context, but back to the topic. This channel is victim to multiple hijacking attempts and interferences through a time period of at least a decade, likely longer. What at first seems like the announcement of the channel’s night program is often cut off by static before moving on to show more disturbing or downright dangerous footage to its viewers. It becomes apparent rather quickly that there is something else at work here, perhaps something extra-terrestrial or from the deepest pits of our planet, and not exactly inclined kindly towards humanity. And that is me put mildly. These creatures – Horrors? Entities? – go to insane lengths to bring harm to the citizens of Mason County. They highjack their broadcasting channel and play disturbing messages in the dead of night, fake public weather warnings to encourage the viewers to look at the moon (which is evil here), encourage straight up suicide and take over other analogue devices in order to bring individuals into harm’s way. For example, in the very first video (chronologically speaking), “You Are On The Fastest Available Route” (date of upload: 31.10.2017), some sort of entity takes over one of those old navigation systems and guides a person straight into the forest and into its arms. And while that did terrify me on the first watch, it’s kind of on the guy driving. Because if my GPS would tell me to “then follow signs for “Do not enter””[1], I would be second-guessing my choices.

But it’s not just adults. No one is spared from harm. In the video titled “Contingency” (date of upload: 31.10.2017), the channel announces the end of its broadcasting day in a fashion similar to that of real TV channels before the era of overnight TV. But this message ends abruptly and cuts to an outdated government message stating that the United States fell into enemy hands and the citizens are asked to kill themselves in order to preserve American dignity as a last attempt of patriotism. All that is communicated with the American flag flowing in the background, the national hymn playing, other patriotic and old-timey peaceful sub-urban imagery passing as a background montage.

Now, in the time it took me to realise that this is a government approved call for mass-suicide, things began to get weird. The instructions on how to do it got more specific, the bodies needed to be placed in a certain way and area, and parents were encouraged to kill their children – “the smallest patriots”[2] – first before killing themselves. All while the words “This message will repeat until there are none to read it”[3] play on repeat. Not only was this insane to watch for the first time, but also absolutely terrifying. Even when the end of the video reveals that this message was fake and not actually government issued, the fact that people saw that message and some even potentially already acted on it emphasises how easily the viewers of this channel can be reached and influenced. Not only was it possible for the broadcasting channel to be taken over so easily, but it was done in an incredibly realistic and thus convincing manner. If I had been a regular viewer of this channel, I would have never believed another word they’d say. This hijack potentially caused massive casualties, and I find it hard to believe that the channel wouldn’t have had to face some kind of consequences for it. And this massive impact alone is what makes “Contingency” such a distinct watch.

Another video that takes up this sense of public danger that requires action is “Weather Service” (date of upload: 01.11.2017), where we again start with the presentation of the evening program before both audio and image cut to a very loud, very flashing public weather warning which urges the viewers to look up at the sky. “Why?” you may ask and I was asking myself the same, but instead of an answer, the message on the TV begins to glitch out. What follows is what seems to be a hectic battle between the hijacking entity wanting people to look up and an opposition that warns people not to do so. There is a lot going on here with different messages flashing across the screen and the uncomfortable alarm sound ringing on, but eventually the entity takes over. It explains that it has chosen to look too and that they can all look up at the sky together before the image cuts to footage of a very bright glowing moon accompanied by the sounds of thousands of screams sounding from a not so distant background. I don’t think I need to explain how that was an unsettling watch.

“Weather Service” puts an emphasis on two aspects: firstly, the aforementioned easy access to a wide audience with the intent of causing people harm in the comfort of their own homes. Again, what is shown on Local 58, even during the late night programming, affects everyone watching it. And why would the audience not trust what is shown, when actual weather warnings or other public service announcements used to have been actually shown through the TV a.k.a. a device everyone has at home? The horror of these videos comes from breaking the peoples’ trust. How can they believe anything that comes from this channel when it is so easily manipulated and has already caused so much harm? How can they be certain that this intrusion into their homes will not become a permanent occurrence?

Secondly comes the focus on the moon. From this video onwards, the moon becomes an important player and is quite evidently malevolent or harmful in some way. For me this poses the question pf whether this really is still our moon or not, but I am afraid there will be no answer to that. All we, as the real-life audience, get is a sense of distrust in the moon of Local 58. It ceases to be our familiar and comforting night-light. Another video that shows this is “Skywatching” (date of upload: 01.11.2019). As always, we begin with a preview of the upcoming program at night, which is coincidentally a show or movie with the same title as the video. However, the static transition to the show immediately makes the viewer suspicious. Is this another outside interception? We continue to see zoomed-in footage of the moon and its texture up close. It is veiny, moving, almost as if alive. And by the end of the video, when the cameraman appears before the lens and seems to be surrendering to this celestial object, it becomes something that is to be feared.

With such footage, Local 58 conditions its audience to the moon. Every time the sky is relevant in a video, we immediately assume the moon. This fixation is what plays into the horror of the latest video “Night Walk” (date of upload: 01.11.2024). I will not say much here, but Straub certainly did a good job conditioning his audience to the moon and night sky. That’s why what happens in “Night Walk” has more of an impact. Because you don’t necessarily expect it. Now, to cut the vague commentary short, just know that this video managed to scare me all over again, even after I had watched the previous ones almost comfortably.

The scare of Local 58 is what makes any media that is analog horror so creepy: the immersion of the viewer. We, the real-life audience, is essentially on the same level as the in-universe audience and witnessing everything first-hand. We watch as the channel evolves, as the logos and title cards change, as it’s plagued by the attacks for at least a decade by something that seems to have been around for much longer. It works so well because it is such a familiar experience. Sure, the TV culture from back when I was a child and the TV culture now are quite different, but we all watch or have watched TV in some manner. It is a familiar feeling. Nowadays, public warnings or weather announcements are predominantly sent out over mobile phones, but it is still familiar enough. We are watching the change take place. We even watch as Local 58 goes from analogue to digital. And never, not once, do we as the audience know what happens next.

It is this uncertainty that adds to the intrigue. Yes, there are leads for a greater mystery and lore that go on in the background, but we never know what exactly is going on here. Yes, we have something unfamiliar and malevolent towards humans at work, but who or what exactly is this stranger? Is it just one entity? Multiple? An entire alien race? We don’t know that and sometimes what happens in these videos seems quite random in the grand scheme of it all. The horror is reminiscent of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, where there is a deep-going lore that simply isn’t graspable. The audience knows just about enough to piece some things together, but is simultaneously left in the dark, and this uncertainty, this knowledge of not knowing is what makes the horror work. Plus, it makes the YouTube comment section an absolutely wonderful place to be in.

The uncertainty of Local 58 ties in with the unpredictability of this webseries, in terms of both what happens in the videos as well as the upload pattern. Any expectations will most certainly be thrown out the window. The mood is generally suspenseful to a point where I was constantly expecting to get jumpscared (I never did, which I am very appreciative of) and somehow, these entities always find a new way to interfere somewhere. The most prominent example for this is the video “Digital Transmission” (date of upload: 01.11.2021) in which we get the channel’s change to digital broadcasting. We watch this transition happen from a TV that isn’t equipped for it. Thus, when the channel changes to a digital format, we witness a last hijack that is promptly cut off by the authorities. That should mark the end of the strange intermissions and messages, yet somehow, it doesn’t. We still get strange footage and some kind of interference in the videos following that transition and are left to wonder how that is even possible. Can it ever be over? I mean, from the fact that the series is still on-going (the last post was the YouTube Short uploaded in January of 2026), we can assume that it most likely isn’t over yet. But we will have to remain patient for what else Straub has in store for us.

The choice of Local 58 as this entry’s main focus was made based on its reputation as the starting point of the analog horror genre. I certainly understand why it made such an impact, as I don’t remember the last time when I was both so intrigued and terrified at the same time. The webseries’ level of immersion through the TV format is executed in such a convincing manner that I oftentimes forgot that I was on YouTube in the first place. While it isn’t necessary to watch the videos in chronological order to understand what is going on, I highly recommend it, especially with the happenings of “Night Walk” in mind.

Lastly, I wish I could make any predictions on when we are going to receive a new video (maybe on the 01.11.?) and what it could be about, but I can’t. For some reason, “Night Walk” threw me off and I am not sure in which direction the videos will evolve in. However, there is something I am wondering about. What did Mason County do to attract all that negative energy? What is with the rest of the world in this universe? Is Mothman responsible for any of this and that’s why Mason County is targeted specifically?

Well, I may never find out, but you will find out the topic for the next entry: Skinamarink, a movie from 2022. I will see you then.

P.S.: Hello, Mimi here! At the time of writing and editing this text for my lovely proof-readers (22.04.2026), I was just clicking around on the YouTube channel of Local 58, searching for specific time stamps, and after some refreshing, a new video popped up, almost giving me a heart attack in the process because what are the odds. That was insane timing. That being said, the newest video is not part of this analysis. The reason I am still mentioning it, is to emphasise the kind of outreach this project has. Barely an hour after posting, the video already has almost 5000 views and about 1200 comments. That goes to show that despite the long periods between uploads, Local 58 continues to be loved and relevant in the analog horror scene. Rightfully so, if you ask me, as the videos are incredibly well done! I am already looking forward to look into it… in the morning when it’s nice and bright outside and I don’t have to worry about sleep anymore. And with that, good night, everybody.

Sources:

Straub, Kris. “Local 58”. YouTube, 01.10.2017, https://www.youtube.com/@LOCAL58TV/videos.

Balladeer. “LOCAL 58 TV: KRIS STRAUB’S ONGOING HORROR PROJECT”. Balladeer’s Blog, 30.04.2020, https://glitternight.com/2020/04/30/local-58-tv-kris-straubs-ongoing-horror-project/.

Balladeer. “REMINDER ABOUT KRIS STRAUB’S LOCAL 58: THE NEW EPISODES”. Balladeer’s Blog, 06.02.2025, https://glitternight.com/2025/02/06/reminder-about-kris-straubs-local-58-the-new-episodes/.

Danielson, Shawnee. “Local 58: The Analog Horror Series (An Introduction)”. Robots.net, 21.04.2022, https://robots.net/entertainment/local-58-the-analog-horror-series-an-introduction/.

Moore, Sam. “‘LOCAL58’ And The Birth of Analog Horror”. Dread Central, 18.06.2025, https://www.dreadcentral.com/editorials/534205/local58-and-the-birth-of-analog-horror/.

Image Source:

Straub, Kris. “ＬＯＣＡＬ５８ＴＶ – You Are On The Fastest Available Route”. Local 58, 31.10.2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh09uIN6tl0&t=2s, Timestamp: 00:02.

Do Not Look At The Moon (It May Be Looking Back) – Local 58

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