Like with the past few years I will be looking to share live Halloween ghost hunting streams. So if you are looking to do some armchair ghost hunting this Halloween night then check this page often as new streams will be added as the day/night goes on. There might be something that grabs your attention.
If you have a live stream tonight that you want to promote then just send me a link via email or the contact page and it will be added here.
You could also check out the TV SHOWS page. There are a good few YouTube paranormal TV shows on there that might be streaming live or have new episodes for you to watch.
I hear the question, “Got any plans on Halloween?” a lot around this time of year. Many of us do, probably. And when it comes up casually — as water cooler conversation, or small talk, or idle chit-chat, or what have you — what those who ask it frequently mean is, “Are you going out on Halloween?”
Despite the fact that it is literally my job to think about and write about weird, eerie, scary, and mysterious topics of all sorts, people who ask me this question invariably find my answer disappointing.
I never have the kinds of plans they mean. I am never “going out” in the colloquial sense on Halloween. I am not going to an event at a club or a bar; I am not going to a party somewhere; and I’m not throwing a party, either. I am never doing any of these things, because of one major reason:
Those are people activities. And I hate people.
To be fair, when I say that I hate people, I don’t (always) mean it literally; it’s more tongue-in-cheek than it might sound. What I mostly mean when I say that I hate people is that I am a textbook introvert (and also that I have a mélange of anxiety disorders. Aren’t brains fun?). As such, while I do enjoy, y’know, spending time with friends and loved ones, participating in large-scale and/or many social activities and gatherings within too tight a timeframe leaves me feeling drained. If I reach oversaturation, then I have to go crawl into a metaphorical hole and be alone for a while until I feel okay again.
This makes the modern landscape of Halloween celebrations aimed at adults somewhat fraught for me. These kinds of events are often either parties or party-adjacent in some way, and I find those exhausting. This was true to some degree when I was still in the 20-something target demographic for most of them, but the older I get — and I am rapidly approaching middle-age — the truer it becomes.
I do love Halloween, though. And hey, guess what? You can, in fact, still celebrate Halloween when you hate people.
Also actual footage of me on Halloween.
This is not to say that parties and events and other big, social Halloween celebrations are bad, by the way — if those are your jam, awesome! Go to them! I hope you have so much fun! They are just absolutely not for me, and since it occurred to me that they are also probably not for some other people out there, too — well, here we are.
Hating people can come in several flavors. Me, for instance? Sometimes, I don’t mind being around people, but I don’t necessarily want to be actively people-ing, if that makes sense; other times, however, I want to be a complete hermit, with no other humans around at all (aside, maybe, from my spouse. There’s a reason I married him, after all). So, the options and ideas below run the gamut from things you can do totally alone, to things you can do near other people, to things you can do with just one or two of your favorite people instead of a big crowd.
(There are no sponsored or affiliate links below, by the way; anything I’ve linked to is just something I genuinely enjoy, or think might be useful, or both.)
Basic safety rules apply for some of them — e.g. if you’re going solo hiking, tell a friend exactly what trail you’ll be on and when. (Best to avoid any 127 Hours situations, right?) Also, for the ones that involve visiting specific kinds of spaces, be respectful and don’t do any trespassing or anything like that.
Otherwise, though? Have fun. ‘Tis the season, after all.
1. Take a walk.
Not just any walk, though; take a Halloween walk. Some themes to try:
Do you live somewhere people go all in on their yard decorations? Go on a hunt for the best Halloween yard displays you can find.
Are there excellent woods or spectacular hiking near you? Get out into the wilderness. Whether your trail of choice takes you through stunning fall foliage or eerie, dead trees with bare branches whispering in the wind, a Halloween season hike can truly hit the spot at this time of year.
Is there a weird, old graveyard in your town? Take a contemplative cemetery stroll. Be respectful — those were all actual people below your feet once — but you can still enjoy the atmosphere and the landscaping, and maybe learn something about your town’s history while you’re there.
2. Hunt some ghosts.
Friends, I love ghost tours. I take myself on one almost every time I travel, whether I’m with a group of friends or on my own. I’ve also been lucky enough to spend my entire adult life living in a variety of different locations all known for having terrific ghost tours. It’s always fun, whether you actually do believe in ghosts, or whether you just like to hear gifted storytellers spin some eerie yarns.
Or, get yourself a book of local ghost stories and map out a self-guided haunted walking tour of your own. Read about the places; then go check ‘em out.
Or, wander around your own home with some ghost-hunting equipment and see what you find. It doesn’t have to be fancy stuff, either; there are some fairly affordable EMF meters on the market, for example. Heck, you can even try a smartphone app, although your mileage may vary.
3. Book yourself a room in a haunted hotel.
Just for one night. It doesn’t have to be on Halloween, but bonus points if it is. It can be close to home, or far away; it’s up to you. But whatever you do, do it in that room.
Personally, my ideal no-other-humans-allowed Halloween celebration involves booking a haunted hotel room for myself, bringing a huge stack of horror novels with me, getting my favorite takeout, opening up a nice bottle of wine, and spending the night reading scary books in a scary room with a lovely glass of red.
For you, maybe it’s bringing a Steam Deck with you and playing scary games in a scary room with an endless supply of coffee. Or maybe it’s packing up a deck of tarot cards and spending some time in a scary room doing a little quality reflection while you sip your favorite tea (and maybe read the leaves in the process). You can do a lot more in a hotel room than just sleep!
Haunted Rooms might be a useful resource to find what you’re looking for. Just, y’know. FYI.
4. Discover some abandoned ruins.
Good news: Visiting abandoned locations doesn’t have to be illegal or dangerous; there are quite a few abandoned places around the world that are open to the public and, sometimes, pretty easy to get to and explore. Here are some options to start you off. Tread carefully, though — even when it’s fine to visit, sometimes abandoned locations can still be a little treacherous underfoot.
5.Go legend-tripping.
Every place in the world has its own local legends. True, you might have to dig to find them — but they’re there. Waiting. Maybe it’s that rickety old bridge just out of town. Maybe it’s that dark and lonely stretch of road your car always stalls out on. Maybe it’s the gelato shop on the high street that an informed few know has a ghost living in the attic. (Yes, that one’s true — there’s one in my neck of the woods!).
Take a trip to the library, or the historical society, or even just around the internet, and see what you’ve got in your area. Then, make a plan to visit. Again, be respectful, don’t trespass, and don’t do anything illegal or dangerous — but give yourself a thrill by learning about the legends, and then seeing where they’re meant to have occurred. Sometimes there’s some overlap between abandoned places and urban legend locations, too, so you might be able to take out two proverbial birds with one stone here.
DIY some seasonal décor. Fun fact: DIY projects can be large or intricate, but they don’t have to be! These nine picks, for instance, are all quite doable for even the least handy of humans; I’m particularly into the bat terrarium idea, which requires only minimal supplies that won’t cost you much more than $10 to assemble.
Get into creative journaling. I’ve gotten incredibly into this kind of journaling in recent years, probably because there’s such a huge visual aspect to it; given that my job is to put words on the internet — meaning the sheer volume of words I write every week is somewhat staggering — it’s nice to have a different sort of creative outlet for my downtime.
It goes by many names, usually defined by either the aesthetic or the function of the journal — junk journaling, bullet journaling, kawaii journaling, and so on — but “creative journaling” works pretty well as a catch-all term, so that’s what I’m going with here. This kind of journaling allows for a lot of freedom; you can write, of course, but you can also use stickers, washi tape, notepad pages, doodles, ticket stubs, torn book pages or sheet music, cute or aesthetic packaging… you name it.
Need some ideas? Try a Halloween journaling challenge, like this one or this one. Or, here’s a general fall/autumn one. You don’t have to journal every day, if you don’t have the bandwidth for that; just pick the prompt or prompts that fire you up and go to town.
Make a miniature. I’ve also gotten really into miniature-building over the past five or so years. They are taking over my house; every available surface has at least one, if not more on it now. Small creatures have started to move in and call these tiny environments home. They just keep telling me to build more, and so I do, and then their friends come, and then I end up with more creatures and more miniatures and more creatures and more miniatures. Please send help.
But really: They’re super fun to build! I have mostly just been building easily-acquirable kits; among my collection, for instance, are this little detective agency and this gothic shadow box. Those are the two most thematically appropriate ones I have, but you can also just build, say, this library/bookshop one (which I also have! It was one of my favorites to build!), and add your own little touches to make it a haunted library/bookshop.
Or, try a kit from a creative Etsy seller. This one makes a little witch’s desk, for instance. This one has fairy garden options for both tarot and talking board scenes. This one lets you build a “Roombook” — a little room designed within the cracked-open spine of a book—which you can then fill with your own little scene.
Give crochet a shot — even if you’ve never done it before. Tons of crafty folks have made patterns available for free on the wonder that is the internet; here’s an adorable ghost amigurumi pattern, for example. Or, if you don’t want to go through the rigmarole of finding a pattern, picking out yarn, finding the right hooks, etc. yourself, you can get full kits that have everything you need to make an entire project. Here’s another cute little ghostie, and here’s a set for some classy and cozy pumpkins.
Playing a few old favorites, like (speak of the devil) the Are You Afraid Of The Dark? PC game The Tale Of Orpheo’s Curse, or maybe “Crimson Room” and the other Takagism browser games;
For you, maybe it’s more like Halloweentown and a trip to Spirit Halloween. Or maybe it’s the original Ghostbusters with a bowl of Boo-berry to snack on while you watch. You do you, friends.
8. Make yourself something tasty.
Whether you opt for seasonally appropriate ingredients or picks with some excellent, Halloween-centric presentation, you deserve to feast on Halloween, even if it’s a feast for one. Taking the time to make myself one of my favorite meals is one of my favorite forms of self-care; if you’re a Halloween person, kick it up a notch with something thematically resonant. Some ideas:
How about some pumpkin mac and cheese? Pro tip: This one is especially good if you make some bacon to go along with it and crumble it across the top.
Or, for something more elaborate: How about a butternut squash Wellington? Fair warning that this one, although not particularly difficult, does take some time to make — but it’s also absolutely delicious and my favorite festive meal for this time of year. It works great as turnovers instead of the traditional Wellington shape, too.
Are your knife skills better than the average home chef’s? How about this Halloween vegetable soup? Turn your carrot slices into pumpkins and your mushrooms into skulls, and bam — the eeriest bowl of deliciousness you ever did see.
If you’re more into baked goods, might I recommend these whole wheat pumpkin muffins? They are the best pumpkin muffins. They are the platonic ideal of pumpkin muffins. They are everything I have ever wanted in a pumpkin muffin, and they are on constant rotation in my kitchen for weekend breakfasts — no matter what time of year it is.
9.Turn on some tunes.
A few favorite Spotify playlists that are particularly good at this time of year:
Lo-Fi For Ghosts (Only). Perfect if you like your autumn tunes to be chill, rather than eerie.
Songs About Ghosts. Who doesn’t love a good ghost story song? Artists include Kate Bush, The Decemberists, Phoebe Bridgers, Florence + The Machine, and more.
Creepy Piano. I find creepy piano music incredibly soothing. This playlist is very moody and atmospheric. Mostly instrumental. Lots of Myuu in this one, so bonus points for also hitting the nostalgia buttons; there was a particular era of eerie YouTube content that featured a ton of Myuu as background tracks.
Cryptidcore Playlist. Weird and quirky. Great for hunting Bigfoot to. Artists featured include Lord Huron, Cosmo Sheldrake, and American Murder Songs. The inclusion of the Gravity Falls theme is a nice touch.
Yess, Goblincore vibes <3. Indie alt stuff to listen to while you nest in your goblin swamp. If the Paper Kits, the Pierces, and Cavetown are your jam, this playlist probably will be, too.
Murder Ballads. Love a good murder ballad? This playlist is full of them: Extremely old murder ballads, classic murder ballads, new murder ballads… they’re all here.
10.Fire up your PC or console.
It’s hard to beat turning down the lights, putting on your headphones, and immersing yourself in the wonderfully weird world of a new video game. Some recent games to try, on a variety of consoles and at a wide range of price points (including free!):
Withering Rooms. My favorite Steam review for Withering Rooms reads as follows: “So, guys, should we make a stealth game, a puzzle game, a survival horror adventure, a metroidvania, a Victorian era dream simulator, what? Developers: yes.” Somehow, all of those pieces come together to make something much, much bigger than the sum of its parts.
In this eerie action roguelike, make your way through Mostyn House, the constantly evolving Victorian mansion of your nightmares — literally — doing your best to survive and unravel the mystery at the heart of this extremely cursed, extremely Eldritch place. Players can’t stop praising its originality and effectiveness — definitely worth checking out. There’s a demo, too, if you want to try before you buy.(Available on:Steam, PS5, and Xbox.)
Home Safety Hotline.Welcome to your new job! Here at the Home Safety Hotline, help is just a phone call away. You’ll embark on a rich and rewarding career assisting callers with common household issues, such as burst pipes, black mold, attic gnomes, and strange portals suddenly appearing in the basement. Listen to their problems, then work quickly to diagnose the root cause and find them a solution. We pride ourselves in our award-winning customer service, so failure is not an option! Do not fail. If you fail, the homeowner will suffer. And worse: You might get reprimanded. For those who like a little analog with their horror and a dash of comedy on the side, Home Safety Hotline is a delight. (Available on:Steam and Ich.io.)
This Bed We Made.If you’re a little on the nosy side — or if you know better than to be in real life, but appreciate games that give you a way to scratch that itch from the safety of your own computer — you might enjoy taking a shift with Sophie in the hotel she works at. It’s the ‘50s, and she’s in housekeeping — and the people who are staying this hotel? They’re… often much more than they seem.
Cleverly written and with many mysteries to unearth, This Bed We Made tells rich stories through the items people carry with them. Just… be sure you really want to know what those stories are. Some things, you can’t unlearn once you know them. (Available on:Steam, PS4, PS5, and Xbox.)
Crow Country. Do you like weird amusement parks? How about retro, PS1-style graphics and gameplay? Then, my friend, Crow Country is for you. Take on the role of special agent Mara Forest as you investigate a defunct amusement park, shut down as much for bad publicity as it was for its shady dealings. Because here’s the thing: Sometimes, when people went to Crow Country… they never came back out. And there is much more going on below the surface than it might at first seem… (Available on: Steam, PS5, and Xbox.)
Paranormasight: The Seven Of Honjo. For the visual novel fans, this 2023 title is a real treat. Using a classic “seven wonders” story as its frame, this one sees you investigating a series of strange phenomena and urban legends said to be connected to various spots in Tokyo’s Sumida ward — only for things to get much, much weirder the further you go. Branching narrative paths bring you closer and closer to the truth behind the stories with each attempt at survival… but you do have to survive to solve the many mysteries at play here. (Available on:Steam, Switch, and mobile.)
Rental and The Ghost Cage. Looking for something shorter? These two bite-sized picks about rental properties make for fun little diversions — and the best part is, they’re both absolutely free to play.
Rental looks like an old school Animal Crossing game and plays according to nightmare logic; you, a small bunny, have arrived at a cabin with your parents and sibling for a family getaway, only to find that the cabin is definitely cursed. (Available on:Steam.)
The Ghost Cage, meanwhile, is spooky-cute; it turns out the rental house you’ve taken up residence in comes with a ghost, which you can make friends with if you like. (Available on: Steam.)
Lorelei And The Laser Eyes. While not overtly horror, per se, this brain-tickling puzzle box of a game feels… right for the season, somehow. There’s something odd going on in this old hotel somewhere in central Europe, you see — something eerie. There are many locked doors. There are many secrets hiding behind those doors. Some of those doors don’t look like doors at all. You’ll have to find a way to unlock them all, and to bring all those secrets to light, in order to unravel the truth of what, precisely, is happening here. Prepare to take actual notes on actual paper — this one is a fierce challenge, all wrapped up in a stylish arthouse mystery. (Available on:Steam and Switch.)
Dark Roast Café. A café management game for the goth soul. Brew coffee, decorate your café, and summon demons whenever you need to staff up. Because, uh… you may have made a deal with a certain someone in order to get this place off the ground — and that loan is coming due. It’s a good time, and it’s free! (Available on:Itch.io.)
Myhouse.wad. Did you somehow miss this overwhelmingly creative Doom mod when it was making the rounds last year? We still don’t know who made it; it just appeared on a Doom forum with a striking backstory from its mystery modder. And it is… quite the experience. The less you know about it going in, the better. Just… give it a shot. Trust me. (Available on:PC.)
11.Or, take to the tabletop.
I mean, yes, playing tabletop games with other people is all well and good — but, fun fact: There are also tons of tabletop options you can play solo. Things to try:
The Final Girl series, which puts you in the shoes of, well, a final girl trying to survive the classic horror movie scenario of your choice. The fun thing about these games is that they’re sort of mix-and-match; that does, however, make it a little complicated to get the ball rolling in the first place, so here’s a handy starter guide for what you need to play these games and how to go about getting it all set up.
The Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series, if you’re more of a mystery-solver than an outwit-the-killer kind of person. They’re kind of like Choose Your Own Adventure books, but even more hands-on. I have the Jack The Ripper and West End Adventures set, and I love them. Great fun!
In Village Witch, you’re a newly-minted witch; now you just need to find a village to go do your witching in. A journaling game, this one requires — in addition to the game itself of course (which is a steal at an under-$10 price point) — only a six-sided die, a deck of standard playing cards or tarot cards, and something to write down or otherwise record your story. Might be fun to combine with the creative journaling idea I mentioned earlier.
Or, if you like the idea of a journaling game, but aren’t into witches, try ThePortal At Hill House. There’s a house, of course — but also lots and lots of cosmic horror.
Heck, you could even give a jigsaw puzzle a try. When I was a kid, I was very into jigsaw puzzles that had a whole mystery-solving aspect to them — and I’ve been thrilled to discover that these kinds of puzzles have been making a comeback recently. Here are two from Murder Most Puzzling; one is set at a clairvoyants’ convention, and the other involves a tricky will situation.
12.Two words: Movie marathon.
This is typically what I do every year on Halloween myself: I pour myself a glass of wine, I grab a bunch of snacks, and I watch a ton of movies. Some favorites I’ve seen recently:
Stopmotion. Stop-motion animator Ella (Aisling Franciosi) has spent her life under the thumb of her mother, also a celebrated stop-motion animator — but as her mother’s life comes to an end, Ella finds herself unmoored, rather than free. As a longtime lover of stop-motion animation, I had a feeling this one would be up my proverbial alley — and boy, was it ever. Did I guess one of the big reveals early on? Yes. Did I mind? Not at all. (Watch it on:Shudder.)
Talk To Me.There’s a game — a game that, purportedly, lets players talk to, and even be temporarily possessed by, the spirit of someone who has passed. There are rules, though, and the most important one is not to go beyond a certain time limit. But when 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde) — who has been increasingly disconnected from the world in the two years since her mother’s untimely death — plays, she exceeds the time limit… and it soon becomes clear why the time limit is there in the first place. A heartbreaking examination of grief and how destructive it can be, this one is heavy, but absolutely worth it. (Watch it on:Kanopy and Paramount+.)
The Feast (Gwledd). A wealthy family in the Welsh mountains prepares for a dinner party meant to woo a business investor and to convince a local farmer to allow them to drill on her land. The land, however, has other ideas, and the young woman from a nearby village the family has employed to help with the dinner party may not be watch she seems. I watched this Welsh-language film after hearing about it on the home invasion season of the Evolution Of Horror podcast, and y’all, it’s a terrific slow burn of a film. (Watch it on:Hulu and Kanopy.)
The Menu. A group of upsettingly wealthy people assemble on an island to partake in a reclusive chef’s (Ralph Fiennes) ultimate tasting menu — and things do not go well for anyone involved.
I know, I know — The Menu isn’t new anymore, and was a pretty major release when it did come out in 2022, so depending on how much you’ve heard about it, it might now lack the punch it had then — but friends, I had a wild time watching this one the first time ‘round. It’s adjacent to dinner party horror (one of my favorite, oddly specific subgenres); one day, maybe I’ll write something bigger on why I love this subgenre so much and what usually makes it tick, but for now, just… know this one is worth it, although it also requires every content warning you can possibly think of. Just, y’know, FYI. (Rent it on:Amazon Prime.)
Slay.As many people have observed, Slay is essentially From Dusk ‘Til Dawn but magnificently queer and full of glitter and drag queens. It’s super fun! (Watch it on:Tubi.)
And some things I haven’t seen yet, but have heard excellent things about and can’t wait to watch:
I Saw The TV Glow.I found Jane Schoenbrun’s debut film, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, terrifically effective and thought-provoking, and I’ve heard some really incredible things about I Saw The TV Glow, as well.
Longlegs. I mean, this one looks truly wild, does it not?
Cuckoo. It will never not be hilarious to me that Cousin Matthew has become a staple of slick thrillers and gritty horror flicks. (See also: The Guest, Apostle, The Rental, Abigail, et al.)
13. Or, venture into the depths of YouTube.
There is so much good horror on YouTube. Yes, there’s a lot of… not so good horror, too — but if you’re willing to dig, there are tons of gems to be found, particularly if you’re into screenlife, found footage, or analog horror.
Set the perfect atmosphere, make yourself a warm drink, and curl up somewhere cozy with something that’ll send some shivers down your spine. Some picks I’ve read recently that I particularly enjoyed:
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang. The horrors of perfectionism, the classical music world, and the beauty industry, all in one go. I loved this one.
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. Nesting narratives told by the most untrustworthy of narrators about the legendary creation of a film so troubled, no one has ever seen it. I loved this one, too — for similar reasons as why I loved Clay McLeod Chapman’s The Remakinglast year. Possibly my favorite Tremblay to date; it might even have kicked Head Full Of Ghosts out of the top slot.
Like Smoke, Like Light by Yukimi Ogawa. A short story collection full of modern, feminist riffs on traditional Japanese folklore. Gorgeous stuff.
Fluxby Jinwoo Chong. The horrors of Big Tech when it goes unchecked. A puzzle box of a story to unravel. Might make you want to delete all of your social media and throw all your devices into the sea. ALL OF IT.
The Angel Of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones. The conclusion of the Indian Lake trilogy. A cathartic and resonant end.
Haunt Sweet Homeby Sarah Pinsker. Things get weird on the set of a ghost hunting/home makeover reality show. It’s like this one was written just for me.
You might also consider checking out my book, Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, which has many of the classics in it — and, crucially, doesn’t require internet access in case you want to refer back to it while you play, because it’s, well, a book.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a sucker for found footage horror — and as the subgenre has evolved, sending odd little tendrils out that have, in turn, grown, and evolved, and turned into something new, there’s been a more or less continuing outpouring of spectacular pieces of storytelling that keep pushing the proverbial envelope in terms of what found footage can do. It’s a good time to be a found footage fan, or an analog horror enthusiast, or just someone who likes their stories a little more interactive than the average human — because the array of truly excellent found footage and analog horror web series available to watch at the click of a button or the tap of a screen has never been better.
It’s true that found footage does sometimes have a slightly cringe reputation — and that, I suspect, is largely because there’s an awful lot of bad found footage out there. To be fair, though, that also speaks to the accessibility of it as a subgenre: The barrier to entry is low, and it’s quite easy for the average human to try their hand at found footage-style storytelling. Amidst the sea of poorly thought-out and overly-derivative work, though, there are plenty of stars that shine — and when you find one that really grabs you, it does actually feel like you’ve found a diamond in the rough.
It might be a weird diamond, but that’s part of the fun, right?
So: Here are 20 found footage and analog horror web series available to watch for free on YouTube that I’ve found particularly enjoyable over the years, and which I think are worth your time. Some of them are newer; some of them are quite old. Some of them are complete and can be watched in their entireties; some of them are ongoing and still updating as we speak. Some of them are classic found footage; some of them are pure analog horror. Some of them are major markers of their respective subgenre or aesthetic; some of them are lesser-known.
I’ve also chosen to focus on series, rather than single videos, as it’s Halloween, and during the Halloween season, there are few things more enjoyable that setting aside a lengthy block of time to lose yourself in a long, episodic story full of eeriness and unsettlement.
Whatever the specifics of what you’re into, there’s probably something here for you — assuming you’re into found footage or analog horror in general, of course (which I would imagine is the case; otherwise, why would you be here?).
Turn out the lights.
Put on your headphones.
The show is about to start.
1. The West Records
Status: Complete.
One of my favorite underrated titles from the early 2010s found footage web series boom, The West Records has, alas, also become somewhat obscure in the decade-plus since its debut — so consider this your nudge to give this forgotten gem a watch. It’s very much of its time; the framing is that classic, “I acquired an old hard drive and decided to restore the files I found on it” set-up that was so common in the late 2000s and early 2010s — making it found footage in the truest sense — and we have dual stories running: That of the people depicted within the footage, and that of the person restoring and uploading the footage to YouTube.
It starts with a team of investigators exploring a disused naval base in order to unearth its secrets — and it starts with a shop owner who receives a hard drive with this team of investigators’ footage saved onto it. Through three chapters and 31 videos, the series follows both of these threads, with both of their leaders — Randall of the investigative team and Henry of the shop—as they begin to… lose themselves literally and figuratively. There are mysteries, and woods, and a creature, and geography that doesn’t behave quite the way it should.
Fair warning: It ends somewhat abruptly, and in January 2023, its creator, Dalton Cahill, announced that the series was officially over. But it is complete — and Cahill has said that he has plans and projects in motion that continue the world in which The West Records takes place, if not The West Records themselves. Take a look at one such project here, and keep up with Cahill’s work in general here.
I’ve written before about my fondness for drive-in movie theaters — but if my early drive-in experiences had been at one like the Kosmic Korners drive-in, I… might have developed a different view of them. This series consists of a combination of literal found footage — in this case, pre-show and intermission reels that once played at this (fictional) Colorado drive-in before or between features, recovered from an estate sale — and active investigative bits and pieces, such as an interview with a former employee; together, these elements tell a story of a drive-in where… things are, shall we say, not what they seem.
There have been too many tragedies at this strange cinema for it all to have been coincidental. And that intermission reel? It’s got some… unusual instructions in it. Threatening ones, you might say.
If Night Vale had a drive-in, it would probably be the Kosmic Korners.
Another oldie-but-goodie, In The Dark, also known as Louise Is Missing or the Louise Paxton mystery, is another one of my favorite early YouTube horror series. We’re told right off the bat what’s going on: Louise Paxton is missing. In April of 2007, she moved from Norwich, UK to the South West London neighborhood of Clapham; by July of that same year, however, she had vanished. Her loved ones are now searching desperately for her — or at least, for some answers or a sign of what might have happened to her.
It becomes apparent fairly quickly to viewers watching her video diary entries that Louise was not, as she first suspected, being stalked, but that she was being haunted — and that whatever might have been occupying her flat with her wasn’t friendly. It’s all quite low tech, having been made during the era in which it actually takes place, but it’s very effective, and still a terrific watch almost two decades later.
DOORS [Analog Horror] was a relatively recent find for me, but boy, did it do a number on me. Its initial premise is simple and to the point: What if a door that should not be in your home… suddenly was? It doesn’t belong there, and where it leads is… nowhere you actually want to go. You are not to look for this door. You do not find the door. The door finds you.
But whether you ignore that instruction and look for the door yourself, or whether the door finds you… terrible things will happen. To you. To those you love.
DOORS isn’t a long series; it’s a trilogy — just three videos, each no longer than 15 minutes and totaling about 35 minutes overall. But it’s very effective, and I enjoyed it immensely. For my detailed analysis of DOORS, head here.
In the summer of 2017, a young woman named Daisy Brown began posting videos to YouTube in the style of the many slice-of-life YouTube channels that exist — except instead of documenting her life with, say, her pet cat or her cadre of dogs, she showed what life was like with Alan, the monster who lived in her house with her. By the time she introduced the internet to Alan, he had been living in her house for about a year and a half; feeding him and taking care of him was just part of her daily routine.
But Daisy’s life is far from ordinary. Her dad, with whom she has a strained relationship, is a scientist who apparently “invented” Alan; she’s forbidden to go into the basement of her house, which has been sealed off since she was a child; and when she does eventually get a cat, the cat… does not last long.
Alan, you see, is growing.
And Alan is also hungry.
Although all of the series on this list are of a darker bent, Daisy Brown is even darker than most; it addresses abuse, as well as depression and other mental health topics, among its host of weighty themes. For the curious, Daisy Brown creator Julia Dapper discusses not just how she constructed the various forms of Alan and pulled off the series, but also the series’ genesis in a video on her personal channel.
Pro tip: Should you choose to watch Daisy Brown, turn the captions on, even if you don’t usually use them. You absolutely need them here. Trust me.
The Japanese series Fake Documentary “Q,” which you might also see referred to as FDQ, consists of a collection of documentary-style videos about various oddities, phenomena, and other bits of unexplainable weirdness brought to the film crew’s attention by regular, everyday people.
And although at first, all of these short documentaries don’t seem like they’re connected, it’s… worth taking another look. A careful one. Because they are, you see — they’re all deeply connected. If you’d like a guide to how they’re connected, as well as an alternate viewing order that might make the connections a bit clearer, this Reddit post on the r/FakeDocumentaryQ sub might help.
If you’re a fan of Noroi: The Curse or other work by or reminiscent of Kôji Shiraishi, you definitely don’t want to miss this series.
In the small town of Nettlebrook, all is not well. Despite Nettlebrook’s quaint and peaceful appearance, strange things have been happening — and they’ve been happening for a long time. Mysterious deaths. Teenagers going missing. And — if the newly-arrived-in-town astrologer Echo Rose is right—there are… unsettled spirits around. Possibly in the bog that gives the town’s elite private school, Bogwick Academy, its name. Actually, scratch that; make it: Certainly in the bog that gives the town’s elite private school, Bogwick Academy, its name.
Nettlebrook is quite a complex story to follow; more than just a web series, it’s a full-scale ARG — meaning there are not only multiple YouTube channels necessary to watch in order to get the full narrative, but also a variety of other assets ranging from blogs to social media profiles that contain bits and pieces of the tale. It’s rewarding to track down, though, so if you’re looking for something to really keep you occupied, the saga of Nettlebrook and its inhabitants is worth exploring. If you need a little help, there’s an in-depth wiki available that might be of use.
If Echo Rose looks or sounds familiar, by the way, there’s a reason for that: She’s played by Julia Dapper of Daisy Brown. Dapper is a co-creator of Nettlebrook, with Lela Lucia as the primary mastermind.
Note that this one has been on hiatus for a few years, but Dapper has stated that it has not been canceled; the team is trying to figure out the best way to move forward with its creation, given the, uh, current state of the world as a whole.
I know, I know — you’re probably already familiar with Petscop; it’s one of the most significant found footage/analog horror web series of the late 2010s. But I would be remiss if I didn’t include it here, because it’s… just that good.
In the event that you are not familiar with it, here’s the general gist: In 2017, a guy named Paul started uploading footage of an unfinished, Pokemon-like PlayStation game he had acquired called Petscop. Why was he uploading it? Because, well… there was something odd going on in it, and he wanted to share what he had been finding. Notably, though, his goal wasn’t to share it with us, the general viewership of the internet; the videos — particularly the early ones — were framed as if they were addressing someone specific.
What unspools from there is… quite a ride, involving missing children, generational trauma, and themes of reincarnation and rebirth.
I took a look at this one when it was still just a few months old, and although many of the leads myself and other folks who took it upon themselves to analyze the project initially thought to follow turned out to be red herrings in the end, these early interpretations are still worth going back over. Series creator Tony Domenico did later reveal that he thinks he mis-stepped in his storytelling, which unintentionally led folks astray from the actual story he wanted to tell — but boy does that story get there in the end.
The story often feels like it’s lurking just out of frame. But that’s what makes it so engrossing to watch: It makes you work for it — and if you engage with it as deeply as you can, what you’ll pull out of it is heart-wrenching.
I’ll be honest: I don’t actually know if there’s a name for this series. It’s being posted to a channel called Beckett Wagner, although whether there’s an actual Beckett Wagner remains to be seen. Indeed, each video appears to have been shot by different people — and, possibly, at different points in history. But what they all have in common is this:
Each cameraperson finds an elevator in their school. It’s hidden, and it’s marked “out of order.” But they each find a way to make the elevator work, and they each take into the school’s basement — a basement they had no idea existed.
And none of them have ever made it back out.
I don’t know how the footage was retrieved within the universe of this story. I don’t know who is uploading it to YouTube, or how. And I don’t know what the heck is down in that basement with all of these missing people.
Whatever it is, though, it’s… clearly not human.
I’m very much enjoying it, though, and I think it deserves to have more eyes on it. Take a look. And learn from it: If you find a weird elevator in your school… don’t try to start it up again. Don’t ride it. And certainly don’t take it down to that basement you didn’t know about until now.
In 2016, a young woman named Mary woke up alone in a house — a large, comfortable-looking single-family dwelling — with not much of an idea who she was or how she got there. She knew only that she was unable to go outside, and that she was alone in the house — during the day, at least.
At night, she was besieged by… others.
She started documenting her days on camera and posting the videos to YouTube. She started tweeting. She wrote a blog. She hoped that someone — anyone — would be able to hear her, or see her, or talk to her.
She wanted to escape. But she didn’t know how. And, alone, she wasn’t sure she could.
Possibly my favorite web series of all time, Hi I’m Mary Mary is a remarkable achievement. It all fits together seamlessly, both literally and figuratively; it’s well-constructed from the inside out and very, very resonant. Its themes of mental health and depression are readily apparent, but it’s not heavy-handed in how it handles them — it’s subtle and nuanced in its horror, delicate and beautiful and heartbreaking. When the series finally came to a close in 2020, the story was full and complete and wholly satisfying.
And hey, good news: Hi I’m Mary Mary creator K has another project in the works — and a big one, at that. It’s titled Sunken: The Last Diary Of Charlotte Eve, and as of March 2024, the scripts for its entire story — 12 episodes — are complete. K has a separate YouTube channel for behind-the-scenes and process-type videos, along with other, one-off projects, so head on over there for a look at how these kinds of projects get made, and stay tuned for updates about Sunken.
Who doesn’t love a good time loop horror story? For one of the best, take a gander at No Through Road— the documentation of an alleged incident in which four teenagers went missing under decidedly mysterious circumstances while driving near Broomhall Farm outside Stevenage, UK in 2008.
No Through Road is not, of course, real; four UK teenagersdid not go missing in this manner in 2008, and the road outside of Stevenage that goes past Broomhall Farm does not, in fact, trap you in an endless loop, should you choose to drive on it. But No Through Road — both the original video and the three followups that dropped in the handful of years after its initial 2009 appearance on YouTube — remains one of those delightful viewing experiences that still has folks Googling “is No Through Road real” after all this time.
I was able to speak to series creator Steven Chamberlain about the making of the original video, its sequels, and No Through Road’s legacy in 2020, so if you’re interested in finding out how it all came together, you can find that interview here.
Okay, so the channel for this one is called Viral Dimensions, but the (fictional, of course) unfinished video game at the center of the series is called Coffin Tree, so I’ve generally been thinking of the series as the Coffin Tree saga. Do with that what you will.
That aside, if you are both intrigued by VR and horrified at things like, oh, I don’t know, Neuralink (I would argue there are a wide variety of reasons of reasons to be horrified at Neuralink), then Coffin Tree will likely also intrigue and horrify you. The story revolves around a VR technology allegedly produced in the 1990s that was quickly halted — largely because it, uh, wasn’t just an entertainment device. One of the handful of games that was in production for it, Coffin Tree, was a horror shooter that also seemed to be more than just entertainment. There’s a very classic Bad Technology In The Hands Of Bad People story going on here, and it’s
Some of this one is a little heavy-handed — the evil company at the heart of the story is so evil, it’s almost comically over-the-top; it’s also straight-up called the Tulpa Corporation, so based on that alone, I’m willing to bet that most of you have a pretty good idea about what the company’s nefarious goals really are — but it’s still highly enjoyable. There’s a good mix of the analog horror aesthetic with enough of a narrative that we’ve got something to hang out proverbial hats on, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all unspools.
Status: Complete in its current form; ongoing in that a feature film, Shelby Oaks, is forthcoming.
Do you remember Paranormal Paranoids? A ghost-hunting YouTube channel from around 2008, based in Ohio? The group members all seemingly dropped off the face of the internet (and maybe the Earth) sometime in 2009 — possibly after an investigation to a location called Shelby Oaks. Do you recall?
The channel doesn’t exist anymore in its original form, so alas, you won’t be able to find it if you look for it… but then again, you wouldn’t have been able to find it in 2008, either: It never existed. You will, however, be able to find what’s framed as recovered archival footage on a channel called JessTheParanoid — and, should you watch it, you’ll find an unsolved mystery, a ghost story, and perhaps something even darker just waiting to be unraveled.
Created by YouTuber and film critic Chris Stuckmann, Paranormal Paranoids debuted as a web series with some light ARG elements in 2021. It’s nicely self-contained as it is — the whole series is complete and available to watch in its entirety, and deeply satisfying in its authenticity.
And if you can’t get enough of it? Good news: A feature film, Shelby Oaks, has been in the works for some time and is currently running the festival circuit. I wrote at length about what’s exciting to me aboutParanormal Paranoids and Shelby Oaks in 2023 — in short, I suspect they’re not just loosely connected or vague adaptations of each other, but two pieces of one whole that were developed in concert with each other to tell a single, integrated story — and I maintain that this particular project has managed to innovate an oversaturated format in some super interesting ways.
Catastrophe Crow follows in the grand tradition of many video game-centric found footage or analog horror web series in that the core of the story is an unfinished, unreleased video game from a bygone era — a game whose development was shrouded in mystery, and the sole existing tidbits of which might be harboring something unspeakable. Here, it’s an N64 game — hence its alternate title, Crow64 — and, as we’ve seen in previous series like Petscop, the underlying story seems to be full of ghosts both literal and figurative.
Crow64, however, goes deeper than many of these kinds of series; like Nettlebrook,it’s a full-on ARG, with so much more to find than just the videos that make up the bulk of the series. If you want to get in on aaaaaaaall the details, the Catastrophe Crow subreddit and Discord communities have been working for literal years to pick it all apart; their findings have been assembled in a huge Github doc (previously a Google doc), which you can read here.
A note about its current status, however: Although it is technically “complete” in there are no more lore drops planned, the ARG was never totally solved. As such, the story might feel… unfinished to some. I kind of like the open-ended nature of it — it leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation, so at this point, whatever you think happened, pretty much anything goes. Just, y’know, bear that in mind, if you find inconclusive endings frustrating. (There was a Makeship plush campaign last year, though, and a playable version of Catastrophe Crowitself is coming to Itch.io at some point, so at least there’s that!)
If you like Catastrophe Crow, by the way, I highly recommend checking out series creator Adam Butcher’s earlier “Internet Story” project. It’s not a series — just a single video — and it’s quite old by internet standards at this point, but it remains one of my favorite pieces of eerie online storytelling.
Status: Ongoing, though sporadic. A feature film is forthcoming.
The Kane Pixels Backrooms (Found Footage) series needs no introduction. If you want to know more about the series, here’s the full timeline as we currently know it. If you want to know about the Backrooms in general, here’s an explainer. If you want to figure out how to no-clip into the Backrooms yourself, don’t do that.
The second to last Backrooms (Found Footage) video we currently have arrived on Kane Parsons’ Kane Pixels YouTube channel on Jan. 30, 2023; a feature film from A24 and Atomic Monster with Parsons himself at the helm was announced just a few days later. Then there was a large, large gap, with the current most recent video — “Backrooms – Found Footage #3” — not debuting until Sept. 13, 2024. However things roll out from here… we’re definitely not done with the Kane Pixels Backrooms universe.
Named for the ubiquitous “We’ll be right back!” messages that indicated a commercial break during a particular era of cable television, WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK documents a series of… anomalies appearing in the end credits, between-programming spaces, and on-demand menus of popular children’s television shows and networks. What they all have in common is that they occurred only when transmitted by a specific (fictional) cable provider: TeleBlue.
This series incorporates a lot of familiar stories — ones you’ll certainly know if you’ve been paying attention to creepypasta and other internet-based horror fiction over the past decade and a half or so. Spotting them makes it a fun scavenger hunt of a watch, so if that’s your jam, you’ll probably dig this one.
WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK is also probably the most analog horror-y of the bunch: There’s no narrative, per se, although there is a story. You just have to read between the lines to see it.
Heads up: A lot of the videos have photosensitivity/flashy lights warnings — if these kinds of things affect you, make sure you read the descriptions of each video before you watch.
A family restaurant. Eerie animatronics. Strange disappearances. Dark secrets long hidden that might finally be coming to light.
If these themes are among those you’re typically fascinated by, Martin Walls’ series The Walten Files is for you. Centered around a Chuck E. Cheese-like restaurant called Bon’s Burgers, the mysterious tech company CyberFun Tech and its subsidiary, Bunny Smiles Inc., and an awful lot of murder and mayhem, The Walten Files scratches an extremely specific nostalgia-horror itch in an extremely creative fashion.
The Walten Files, you see, isn’t live action. It’s not designed to look like live action, either. It’s animation — and thanks to the fact that it not only doesn’t hide that it’s animation, but revels in it, it’s got a heightened quality that really drives the unsettling nature of the whole thing home.
Initially debuting in 2020, The Walten Files has truly been a labor of love — and sometimes, labors of love take time to do properly. As such, The Walten Files took a lengthy break after the arrival of its first set of videos—but as of February 2024, it’s returned, and the journey, as they say, continues. Who knew that picking through old employee training videos could be so riveting?
What would you do if you found a program on your computer that you just… couldn’t get rid of? You delete it; it comes back a day later. You wipe your computer and reset it to factory settings; it’s still there when you boot things up again. You do a fresh Windows install; it’s there. You completely reformat your hard drive; it’s… there.
Would you open that program? And if you did — and if you found that it was a game of some sort, something that looks like a first-person walking simulator, perhaps — would you play it?
That’s what happens to the protagonist of Rapid Eyes,and, well… you can probably imagine how well that goes for him.
This one utilizes some familiar scenarios and formats to tell a story that comments on the struggles inherent in creating something — in seeking to create something new, in feeling as if you’re just rehashing what everyone else has already done, in want to make something unique that’s all your own and feeling as if you never have quite what it takes to get there. For me, these themes resonate most strongly with regards to making art and being an artist; they’re definitely applicable in a wide variety of situations, though, so you might get something different out of it.
Rapid Eyes takes a few videos to really get going, but once it starts, it snowballs. Stick with it. It pays off.
There are… people roaming. People who don’t look like people. Who probably aren’t people. Or, even if they’re people, they’re probably not human.
The residents of the county are having trouble sleeping. The county has an informational video to help those who aren’t sleeping. The county’s informational video is not terribly informative. The county’s informational video wants viewers to LET THEM IN.
Can you spot the people who aren’t people?
Can you sleep?
You might not be able to after watching this analog horror series. The creation of Dark Mind, the Basswood County series is very much in the vein of analog horror icon The Mandela Catalog; it’s got a lot of the same hallmarks, and stylistically, it’s an exemplary series in the genre.
As is typically the case with pure analog horror, narrative is secondary; the story is told through other means. You have to work for it, but honestly, that’ll just make the whole thing stick with you even more. Those images? They have staying power.
Pro tip: Even if you don’t live in Basswood County… well.
You probably shouldn’t LET THEM IN.
No matter what those informational videos tell you.
Got an itch for something similar in feel to a Backrooms series, but maybe just a little bit different? Try Kane Parsons’ other series, The Oldest View. It’s not as long as Backrooms (Found Footage), but it involves similar themes and motifs; it features liminal spaces, geography behaving in ways it shouldn’t, and a hapless young cameraperson who bites off a bit more than he can chew when he discovers what looks like a huge suburban shopping mall seemingly buried underground.
It’s melancholy in a way that Backrooms (Found Footage) isn’t, though, so it hits in a very different way.
The Rolling Giant was also real; he was a giant puppet modeled after French botanist Julien Reverchon. The puppet was constructed by artist Kevin Obregon, who had a studio in Valley View when it became something of an artists’ haven towards the end of its lifetime.
Period/location of origin: 1864, England, United Kingdom. The precise location of origin remains unknown, although two possibilities have been proposed: At the artist’s home in St. John’s Wood, London, or at the home of the artist’s patron in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. (See: Additional notes.)
Appearance: Subject, an allegedly cursed painting titled Man Proposes, God Disposes created by English artist Edwin Landseer in 1864, appears to be a work of oil on canvas depicting an imagined aftermath of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 Arctic expedition through the Northwest Passage. The work measures 91.4 centimeters by 243.7 centimeters, or roughly 36 inches by 96 inches.
Man Proposes, God Disposes, painted by Edwin Landseer, 1864.
The painting features two polar bears tearing violently at what appears to be the wreckage of a ship, set against a backdrop of glaciers, ice floes, and patches of fatally cold water. Among the artifacts that make up the wreck are a brass telescope, scraps of a blue uniform, the remains of masts and sails, a red flag, and what are typically said to be human bones. One of the bears pulls at the flag with its teeth, while the other gnaws on a bone.
Man Proposes, God Disposes hangs in the Picture Gallery of Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) in Surrey. The Picture Gallery is frequently used as an exam site during examination periods at the university; when exams are being sat, a Union Jack flag is draped over the painting, hiding it from view. For further information regarding this practice and the reasoning behind it, see: Modus operandi AND Containment.
Modus operandi: Subject is believed by some to be cursed, although precisely what form that curse takes depends on the report.
According to some reports, the curse is relatively mild; these reports assert that targets seated directly in front of the painting while sitting an exam are doomed to fail said exam. These reports do not state what, precisely, causes the failure, although realistically peaking, it likely has more to do with the student taking the exam becoming distracted by the grisly image nearby than with any supernatural or otherworldly quality associated with the painting.
Other reports, however, pin a much darker MO to the curse. According to these reports, targets who gaze directly into the eyes of one of the polar bears may suddenly be seized by some malevolent force. The target may subsequently harm themselves in some way — reports often state that a pencil is involved, as is an eye socket — leaving behind only a single clue before they do this deed: A scrawled statement on their exam paper reading, “The polar bears made me do it” — written, of course, with the aforementioned pencil before it meets the waiting eye socket. The target may or may not survive this event; whether or not they do varies by report.
Targets do not, unfortunately, have much of a choice when it comes to their being targeted in the first place; nor does subject necessarily choose them. Targets are merely those unlucky enough to be seated by subject for an exam.
Subject’s goal does not appear to be anything other than what it appears: To cause mayhem and tragedy.
Containment: The painting is rendered harmless by one simple intervention: Covering it up. With the image hidden, students may sit their exams in the Royal Holloway Picture Gallery without incident. Traditionally, a large Union Jack flag is deployed as a coverup for the painting during RHUL exam periods.
The Founders Building at Royal Holloway, which contains (among other things) the Picture Gallery.
Why a flag? Campus lore states that it dates back to the 1970s, when rumors of the Man Proposes, God Disposes curse became so prevalent that one student who had been seated next to the painting during an exam refused to take the test with the “cursed” item so nearby. Dr. Laura MacCulloch, who was the college curator for RHUL from 2012 to 2022, told the BBC in 2014 that the flag was subsequently rummaged up by a desperate registrar as a possible solution to the problem: Said MacCulloch, “The poor registrar, who just wanted to get the exam underway, ran off and tried to find the biggest thing that she could to cover the picture.” That “thing” ended up being the flag in question — and this same flag has been used to hide the painting each exam period thereafter.
Man Proposes, God Disposes may be viewed safely at any other time outside of exam periods.
Additional notes: As previously stated, the scene depicted in Man Proposes, God Disposes is an imagined outcome of the 1845 Arctic expedition led by Sir John Franklin. Sent by Sir John Barrow, then Second Secretary to the Admiralty, Franklin was to lead two ships — the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, both of which had been used in previous Arctic expeditions — crewed by a total of 129 sailors through the as-yet unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage. The expedition departed from Greenhithe in Kent on May 19, 1845.
The two ships and their crews made their way to the Orkney Islands in Scotland, then continued on to Greenland. In July of 1845, they were seen by two whaling ships in Baffin Bay, located between Greenland and Baffin Island — but that sighting ended up being the last one: Neither of the ships and none of the sailors were ever seen alive again.
The first search for the missing expedition was launched by the Admiralty in 1848, with only limited results. This remained true for a number of other searches launched in the years following, with only bits and pieces — artifacts, notes, and the like — emerging bit by bit.
The McClintock Arctic expedition, launched in 1857 and concluded in 1859, returned the fullest picture of what had occurred, retrieving a number of artifacts from Inuit peoples who had found them (but, notably, had not laid eyes on Franklin or the missing crew), as well as several notes from officers aboard the Erebus and Terror bearing dates of May 4, 1847 and April 25, 1848. These notes chronicle not just the activity of the ships’ crews, but also a death tally — including that of Franklin himself: According to the second note, Franklin died on June 11, 1847. The actual remains of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror themselves were not unearthed at this time.
The findings of the McClintock expedition were published in 1859 under the title The Voyage Of The Fox— the Fox being the name of the steam yacht employed in this expedition.
The general belief today is that the two ships became trapped in the ice near King William Island, with the crew gradually perishing due to pneumonia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning, botulism, exposure, and starvation. Theories have also been floated about possible cannibalism, suggested by cut marks discovered on bones recovered from King William Island.
The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror as depicted in the Illustrated London News on May 24, 1845.
Artist Edwin Landseer, born in 1802, is most well-known for his work depicting animals; sculptor in addition to a painter, among his most notable contributions are the four lions positioned at the base of Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Landseer painted Man Proposes, God Disposes towards the end of his life: The work was completed in 1864, roughly nine years before his death in 1873. He is believed to have relied on The Voyage Of The Fox for many of the details included in Man Proposes, God Disposes, per a 2009 article by art historian Andrew Moore published in the British Art Journal.
(Re: Subject’s location of origin: It is also Moore who points out the two possible locations at which Landseer may have created the painting. Moore notes that letters Landseer wrote circa 1863-4 to paleontologist Sir Hugh Falconer, from whom he borrowed a polar bear skull to use as a reference, suggest Landseer’s own home in St. John’s Wood as one possibility; however, it is also possible Landseer could have painted the work at the home of his patron, Edward Coleman, who occupied the Old Manor Home at Stoke Poges.)
Thomas Holloway, founder of Royal Holloway, University of London, acquired Man Proposes, God Disposes at auction in 1881. It has hung in the Picture Gallery at Royal Holloway ever since.
Originally a women’s college, Royal Holloway became a constituent of the University of London in 1900; it later merged with Bedford College, also a women’s college and University of London constituent, in 1985. Both colleges’ undergraduate programs became coeducational in 1965 (although Royal Holloway’s postgraduate program had become coeducational several decades earlier, in 1945).
It is believed that stories of the alleged curse connected to Man Proposes, God Disposes were circulating at least by the 1920s or 1930s, although it is not precisely how or when the stories began in the first place. There does not appear to be any record of an incident involving subject, a student, and a pencil during an exam actually having occurred, although this fact obviously has not stopped the stories of the curse from spreading regardless.
The legend of the curse did not reach its full form until the 1970s, when the Union Jack incident occurred; the necessity of covering up the painting during exams became the final part of the tale, after which it has remained primarily in the same form.
Students at Royal Holloway today are still very aware of the legend, although most of them say that they do not actually believe the painting to be cursed. Despite this fact, however, many still say that they would not want to sit next to it, uncovered, during an exam. Doing so, they say, is simply “not worth the risk.”
Looking for yet another ritual game to take you out of reality? One that will (supposedly) teach you how to go to another world? Here’s one. I call it the Yellow Pen And White Paper Game, because… well, that’s primarily what you use to play it: A yellow pen, and a piece of white paper.
Like quite a few of the “how to go to another world”-type ritual games that have spread via the internet in recent years (and, at this point, decades), the Yellow Pen And White Paper Game originated in Japan. The oldest version I’ve found so far is dated 2014, although that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t older than that; indeed, I’ d be willing to bet that it is. These kinds of games usually are; most of them began circulating in 2008 and 2009.
Interestingly, this game isn’t always referred to solely as just a method for going to “another world.” It’s often discussed specifically as a way to go a “2D world” — that is, the world of a particular anime or manga. There’s actually as whole subgenre of “how to go to another world” games geared towards this goal of visiting an anime or manga world. The Paper Ring Game, which we’ve previously looked at here at TGIMM, is probably the most widely-shared game of this variety — but although the Yellow Pen And White Paper Game might not be quite as well-known, it’s also been passed around with some degree of frequency over the years.
The implications of this specific terminology are interesting; it seems to suggest that the anime or manga world to which the player wishes to go exists only in two dimensions — that is, when we watch or read a piece of this kind of media, we’re not watching or reading a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world full of three-dimensional characters; we’re watching or reading it in the number of dimensions natural to the world and characters themselves: Two, not three.
Some versions of this game only require that you have some kind of other world you wish to go to in order to play, however; they don’t always state specifically that you should have the world of a particular anime or manga in mind. So, you can choose your own adventure here, so to speak—although that’s also assuming that the game “works” in any realistic way in the first place. (I look it, as I look at most of these kinds of games and legends, as a story only — a kind of magical thinking, wish-fulfilment tale — rather than anything that can actually be “done.”)
One thing to keep in mind, though: Most versions of the Yellow Pen And White Paper Game state that there is no way to return to your original world, if you achieve success with it.
So, as always: Play at your own risk.
Players:
One principal.
Requirements:
A pen or marker with yellow ink.
A piece of white paper, ideally square-shaped.
Adhesive tape.
A door. (See: Additional Notes.)
A place to rest. (See: Additional Notes.)
Instructions:
Setting Your Course:
Wait until night has fallen.
Using the yellow pen, write down the name of the world you wish to go to on the piece of paper. If the world does not have a “name,” per se, describe it in a few words or sentences.
If the door you have chosen to use is open, close it. Then, using the tape, fasten the piece of paper securely to the door.
Make sure that the paper is hidden — that no one else will see it besides you yourself. Additionally, from this point onward, do NOT allow yourself to be seen by anyone else.
If either the paper or you yourself are seen, DO NOT proceed. Remove the paper from the door and destroy it. You may try again another time, if you wish.
If you are not already in or at it, go to the place you have chosen to rest.
Go to bed. Sleep, if you can.
Opening The Door:
In the morning, rise and go to the door.
Do NOT allow yourself to be seen.
Check the door. If it has been opened by anyone else, do not proceed. You MUST be the first person to open the door that morning in order to proceed.
Check the paper. If the paper has been disturbed, do not proceed. The paper CANNOT have been seen or tampered with by anyone else in order to proceed.
If you have not been seen, if the door has not been touched, and if the paper has not been disturbed, you may proceed.
Put your hand on the doorknob.
Close your eyes.
Now: Think about the world you wish to visit — the world you wrote about on the piece of paper the night before. Hold that world in your mind.
When you are ready, open the door, and open your eyes.
Entering The World:
Look through the open door. What do you see?
If nothing has changed: The ritual has failed. Remove the paper from the door and destroy it. You may try again another time, if you wish.
If everything has changed: The ritual has succeeded. You may proceed.
If the ritual has succeeded, you may now step through the door, if you like.
Be warned, though: If you do — there is no coming back.
I hope you like your new world.
You’ll be here for… quite some time.
Additional Notes:
Concerning the door, and the place to rest:
Due to the logistics involved, this game is perhaps best played in your own bedroom. If played in your own room, the door to the room may be used as the door to which the paper is fastened, and the place to rest is your own bed. Once you begin the game, you may stay in the same place—your room — until the game has reached its conclusion.
However, note that you may NOT open or otherwise use the door to which you have fastened the paper after Step 3 of Setting Your Course until Step 9 of Opening The Door. If the only door in your bedroom — and, therefore, the door to which you have fastened the paper — is the door through the room is accessed from the rest of the home, you may not leave your room until the game is over.
You MUST use a pen or marker with yellow ink. Do not use colored pencils, crayons, paint, or any other kind of writing implement. It must use ink. The ink must be yellow.
The game must be played with one player, and one player alone. It may not be played with two or more players. It may not be played with bystanders observing. This journey is for one person, and only one person.
On Difficulty Level And Achieving Best Results:
Due to the stipulations that neither the player nor the paper may be seen or witnessed by anyone else following Step 3 of Setting Your Course, and that the player must be the first person to open the door to which the paper has been fastened the next morning, this ritual is substantially easier to carry out if the building or playing space has been cleared of all other people before beginning. If you do not live with anyone else, and you play this game alone in your own home, the required conditions are easily met.
However, it is also said that, the more difficult the game is to play — the more complicated the circumstances under which it is carried out, and the cleverer the player must be in order to achieve the required conditions — the more likely the game is to achieve success.
How challenging are you willing to make it for yourself?
How much do you want — really want — to leave?
You can set yourself up for success… or set yourself up for failure.
Whatever you choose — it may tell you something about yourself.
This week, a story that falls into two of my favorite creepypasta categories: Message board-style pastas, and Disney pastas. It’s not just any Disney creepypasta, though; its title being what it is also tells us exactly what type of Disney pasta we’re looking at here: “DoorlessChambers.com Forum” is a Haunted Mansion creepypasta. Heck yes.
Remember a couple of months ago when we took a look at “The Man With The Cane?”That story was the second in a series written by David King under the name CrackedMack — a series that began way back in 2014 with “Grad Night At The Haunted Mansion.” I remarked in my forward to “The Man With The Cane” that there was also a third story in the series, but that we’d save it for another time.
Guess what? Now is that time: “DoorlessChambers.com Forum” is the third tale in King’s Haunted Mansion series.
“DoorlessChambers.com Forum” serves two functions: It both adds to the mythology of the series, and it cheekily addresses some common criticisms of the previous two stories. As such, although I would argue that “The Man With The Cane” can be read without existing familiarity with its predecessor, you really do need to have read both “Grad Night” and “The Man With The Cane” for “DoorlessChambers.com Forum” to make sense. Indeed, “The Man With The Cane” and “DoorlessChambers.com Forum” were both published so closely together — one on Dec. 8, 2017, and the other just two days later on Dec. 10 — that I would bet money they were written in tandem with each other.
It also helps if you’ve got some knowledge of the Haunted Mansion fan community and how it operates, although that’s probably optional. If you’re curious, I’ll point you towards the Haunted Mansion-centric site DoomBuggies and its accompanying forums; DoomBuggies has been one of the main Haunted Mansion fan hubs for years. (Decades, even — I remember visiting it back in the early 2000s, when it looked like this. According to the domain’s WHOIS records, it was first registered in 1998!)
In any event, “DoorlessChambers.com Forum” is perhaps a bit more meta than the other two stories in the series, but that’s part of its charm.
Similar content warnings to those I previously noted for “The Man With The Cane” apply here, by the way; there’s frank discussion of real-life incidents, accidents, and deaths that have occurred at multiple Disney parks in the story, so bear that in mind and read with care.
Haunted Mansion > The Grand Hall (Discussion) > Disquieting Metamorphasis (Rumors) > [MOVED] HM Conspiracies?
cacklemeyer (17 Mar 2016 16:49):
I’m sure these kind of things have been floating around the web for awhile, but I found a couple of weird stories once about real ghosts and secret tunnels underneath the Disneyland and WDW mansions. There’s one written by a guy who was at DL on a grad night in the 80s, and one by a CM working at Magic Kingdom. I think they got reposted and taken down a few times, because now I can’t seem to find them anywhere. Does anyone happen to know where they might be, and if so, how valid any of them are?
Freddie The Bat (17 Mar 2016 17:11):
Try here and here. I think they’re just creepypasta.
cacklemeyer (17 Mar 2016 17:40):
Thanks Freddie. That was driving me crazy! I guess they finally found their way onto some archives, the first story’s been circulating for a few years at least.
MadamLamprey (17 Mar 2016 18:07):
OMG I remember these stories! Finally someone found them their pretty good but are they real? ’cause normally people write stories about the ghosts and the mansion like I do, not about it in real life.
Morgan’s Corner, a seemingly innocuous bend in the road surrounded by lush foliage and towering trees, holds a dark secret. Over the years, it has become synonymous with tragic events, eerie occurrences, and unexplained phenomena, earning its reputation as one of the most haunted places on Maui.
The legend of Morgan’s Corner is rooted in a series of unfortunate incidents that have taken place in the area. One of the most notorious events dates back to the early 20th century, when a young woman named Emily Morgan tragically lost her life in a car accident on the very curve that now bears her name. Locals claim that her restless spirit continues to haunt the area, seeking solace for her untimely demise.
Over the years, there have been numerous accounts of strange encounters and unexplained phenomena at Morgan’s Corner. In 1967, a local man named Richard reported a chilling experience while driving along the winding road late one night. As he approached the infamous bend, he saw the figure of a woman in a white dress standing by the side of the road. When he slowed down to offer assistance, the woman vanished into thin air, leaving Richard questioning his sanity.
Another incident, in 1985, involved a group of tourists who were camping near Morgan’s Corner. They were awakened in the dead of night by the sound of a woman weeping. As they searched for the source of the distressing cries, they discovered a translucent figure of a woman in white, standing beneath a tree. The apparition vanished before their eyes, leaving the terrified campers with no choice but to pack up their belongings and flee the area.
The haunted reputation of Morgan’s Corner has become deeply entrenched in the local folklore. Some believe that the area is cursed, a magnet for misfortune and tragedy. Others attribute the supernatural occurrences to the restless spirits of those who have met their end near the fateful curve, forever bound to the place of their demise.
As you explore the breathtaking island of Maui, be sure to treat its history and legends with the reverence and respect they deserve. If you happen to find yourself driving along the winding road near Morgan’s Corner, be vigilant and remain cautious, for the spirits that dwell there may be watching from the shadows.
Despite its haunted reputation, the story of Morgan’s Corner serves as a reminder of the rich tapestry of legends and folklore that define the Hawaiian Islands. As we delve into these captivating tales, we are transported to a time when the line between the natural and supernatural was blurred, and we are reminded that even in paradise, the echoes of the past continue to resonate, whispering to us through the haunting legend of Morgan’s Corner on the island of Maui.
This is a chilling tale of terror from the paradise known as Hawaii. This tropical haven, famous for its lush landscapes, enchanting culture, and welcoming natives, harbors a spine-tingling secret: the ghostly legend of the Faceless Woman. Join me as we unravel the eerie origins of this macabre specter and explore her frightful encounters that have left both locals and visitors shivering in dread.
The Terrifying Tale of the Faceless Woman
The gory genesis of the Faceless Woman, or Mujina, can be traced back to the land of the rising sun: Japan. This sinister spirit is a shape-shifting creature, able to transform into a horrifyingly faceless human figure. As Japanese immigrants began settling in Hawaii during the 19th and 20th centuries, they brought with them their rich culture and bone-chilling folklore, including the dreadful tale of the Faceless Woman.
This gruesome phantom often appears as a mesmerizing lady donning a flowing white gown. But beware, for upon closer inspection, one will discover her most terrifying trait: the absolute absence of any facial features. The horrifying sight is enough to send shivers down the spine of even the most courageous souls.
Harrowing Hauntings of the Faceless Woman
Throughout the years, there have been countless accounts of encounters with this spectral siren, each leaving witnesses quivering with fear. While her hauntings vary in location, the most infamous tales are set in public restrooms, shopping malls, and movie theaters.
The Waialae Drive-In Theater Incident (1959)
One petrifying encounter took place in 1959 at the Waialae Drive-In Theater in Honolulu. A woman ventured into the restroom, only to find another woman combing her long, flowing hair before the mirror. Upon approaching the figure, the witness realized, to her utter horror, that the woman had no face. Panicked, she fled the scene, and the ghastly story quickly spread among the terrified townsfolk.
Ala Moana Shopping Center (1980s)
Another notorious encounter transpired at the Ala Moana Shopping Center in the 1980s. A shopper entered the women’s restroom, stumbling upon a woman clad in a red dress standing by the sink. As she neared, she discovered, to her abject terror, that the woman was devoid of a face. The horrified shopper escaped the restroom, and her grisly tale soon became a macabre topic of conversation.
Other Eerie Encounters
Beyond these well-known hauntings, countless other stories of the Faceless Woman continue to circulate. Some claim to have witnessed her ghostly presence at the Dole Cannery movie theater in Honolulu, while others report spine-chilling sightings on secluded beaches and other isolated locations.
Theories and Blood-Curdling Beliefs
The Faceless Woman of Hawaii remains an enigmatic figure, shrouded in spine-chilling folklore and local superstition. Some speculate that she is a restless spirit, trapped between the realms of the living and the dead. Others surmise that she is an omen of doom, sent to warn those who encounter her of impending misfortune. Yet another theory suggests that the Faceless Woman is an incarnation of human fears and anxieties, a reflection of our own inner demons.
The spine-chilling story of the Faceless Woman in Hawaii is a haunting reminder that even in paradise, shadows of terror linger just below the surface. While some may dismiss these encounters as mere urban legends, others continue to share their harrowing stories, unable to shake the eerie feeling that the Faceless Woman may be lurking around the next corner, waiting to reveal her ghastly visage. As the legend of the Faceless Woman continues to captivate and horrify the imaginations of locals and visitors alike, one thing remains certain – the spirit of the Mujina will live on, forever etched in the macabre folklore of the Hawaiian Islands.
So, my dear friends, the next time you find yourself wandering through the picturesque landscapes of Hawaii, remember that even in this tropical paradise, the unknown and the terrifying may lie in wait. Keep your eyes peeled for the Faceless Woman, lest you become another chapter in the never-ending chronicles of terror.
And with that, my ghoulish companions, I must leave you to ponder the frightful tale of the Faceless Woman of Hawaii. May it serve as a spine-chilling reminder that the world is full of things that go bump in the night. Sleep tight, and don’t let the Faceless Woman bite!
1 – Night Marchers – This is one of the most well-known ghost stories in Hawaii. It is said that the spirits of ancient Hawaiian warriors called the Night Marchers come out at night to march through certain areas, and if you see them, you must show them respect or suffer the consequences.
2 – The Lady in White – The Lady in White is a ghost that is said to haunt the Pali Highway on the island of Oahu. Legend has it that she is the ghost of a woman who was killed in a car accident on the highway, and now she appears to drivers on foggy nights.
3 – The Haunted Lighthouse – The Makapu’u Lighthouse on Oahu is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former lighthouse keeper who died on the job. Visitors have reported hearing strange noises and seeing the ghostly figure of a man near the lighthouse.
4 – The Green Lady – The Green Lady is a ghost that is said to haunt the grounds of the Kahala Hilton Hotel on Oahu. Legend has it that she is the ghost of a woman who drowned in the hotel pool many years ago.
5 – The Ghost Dog of Waipio Valley – The Waipio Valley on the Big Island of Hawaii is said to be haunted by the ghost of a black dog. Legend has it that the dog was the guardian of the valley and now appears to warn visitors of danger.
6 – The Faceless Woman – The Faceless Woman is a ghost that is said to haunt the Nu’uanu Pali Lookout on Oahu. Legend has it that she is the ghost of a woman who fell off the cliff and had her face disfigured in the fall.
7 – The Haunted Palace Theater – The Palace Theater in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii is said to be haunted by the ghost of a former projectionist. Visitors have reported seeing ghostly figures and hearing strange noises in the theater.
8 – The Ghost Children of Wailua – The Wailua River on Kauai is said to be haunted by the ghostly voices of children. Legend has it that the children drowned in the river many years ago and their spirits now haunt the area.
9 – The Nightmarchers of Kauai – The Nightmarchers also appear on the island of Kauai. Legend has it that they are the spirits of ancient Hawaiian warriors who march through certain areas at night, and if you see them, you must show them respect or suffer the consequences.
10 – The Haunted Morgan’s Corner – Morgan’s Corner on the island of Maui is said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman who was killed in a car accident at the intersection. Visitors have reported hearing strange noises and seeing ghostly figures in the area.
Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen of New Orleans– Marie Catherine Laveau (September 10, 1801 – June 15, 1881) was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo, who was renowned in New Orleans. Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, (1827 — c. 1862) also practiced rootwork, conjure, Native American and African spiritualism and Catholicism as well as Louisiana or what is known today as New Orleans Voodoo.Historical records surmise that Marie Laveau was born free in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, Thursday September 10, 1801. She was the biological daughter of Marguerite Henry (also known as Marguerite D’Arcantel), a free woman of colour who was of Native American, African and French descent, and Charles Laveau Trudeau, surveyor & politician. On August 4, 1819, she married Jacques Paris (also known as Jacques Santiago, in other records), a French immigrant who had fled as a white refugee from the black Haitian Revolution in the former French territory Saint-Domingue.Their marriage certificate is preserved in the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. The wedding mass was performed by Father Antonio de Sedella, the Capuchin priest known as Pere Antoine.
The death of Jacques Paris was recorded in 1820.He was part of a large French immigration of refugees to New Orleans in 1809, after the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.They had two daughters, Felicite in 1817 and Angele in 1820. Both disappear from the records in the 1820s.Little is known with certainty about the life of Marie Catherine Laveau. Marie Catherine (1801-1881) was approximately 1/3 each African, Native American and white.Laveau’s only two children to survive into adulthood were daughters. The elder named Marie Euchariste Eloise Laveau (1827-1860-2), the second daughter was named Marie Philomene Glapion (1836-1897). It is not known which of these daughters went on to become Marie II.
Following the reported death of her husband, she entered a domestic partnership with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, (a white man of French descent) with whom she lived until his death in 1855. They were reported to have had 15 children (or, perhaps fifteen children and grandchildren).They had 7 children according to birth and baptismal records.While it is difficult to determine the histories of the two Maries in tradition, it is believed that the elder Marie was a dedicated practitioner of Voodoo. The younger displayed more theatrical rubrics by holding public events (including inviting attendees to St. John’s Eve rituals on Bayou St. John). “Laveau was said to have traveled the streets like she owned them” said one New Orleans boy who attended an event at St. John’s.It is not known which (if either) had done more to establish the voodoo queen reputation.
Marie Laveau started a beauty parlor where she was a hair-dresser for the wealthier families of New Orleans.Of Laveau’s magical career, there is little that can be substantiated, including whether or not she had a snake she named Zombi after an African god, whether the occult part of her magic mixed Roman Catholic saints with African spirits, or whether her divinations were supported by a network of informants she developed while working as a hairdresser in prominent white households. She appeared to excel at obtaining inside information on her wealthy patrons by instilling fear in their servants whom she either paid or cured of mysterious ailments.On June 17, 1881, it was announced in the Daily Picayune that Marie Laveau had died peacefully in her home. However, oral tradition states that she was seen by some people in town after her supposed demise.One of her daughters, also named Marie (a French Catholic tradition to have the first names of daughters be Marie, and boys Joseph, then each use middle name as common name) possibly assumed her position, with her name, and carried on her magical practice, taking over as the queen soon before or after the first Marie’s death.
Marie Catherine Laveau Paris Glapion died on June 15, 1881, aged 79.The different spellings of her surname result from many different women with the same name in New Orleans at the time, and her age at death from conflicting accounts of her birth date.Laveau’s name and her history have been surrounded by legend and lore. In 1982, New Jersey-based punk rock group The Misfits were arrested and accused of attempting to exhume Laveau from her grave after a local concert. The arrest took place in nearby Cemetery No. 2 and there are conflicting accounts of the incident.
Marie Laveau is generally believed to have been buried in plot 347, the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans,but this has been disputed by Robert Tallant, a journalist who used her as a character in historical novels.Tourists continue to visit and some draw X marks in accordance with a decades-old tradition that if people wanted Laveau to grant them a wish, they had to draw an X on the tomb, turn around three times, knock on the tomb, yell out their wish, and if it was granted, come back, circle their X, and leave Laveau an offering.
The tomb in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 was vandalized by an unknown person on December 17, 2013, by being painted over with pink latex paint. The paint was removed because the structure is made of old plaster and the latex paint would seal in moisture that would destroy the plaster. Some historical preservation experts criticized the decision by officials of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, who maintain the cemetery, for their decision to use pressure washing rather than paint stripper to remove it.
As of March 1, 2015, there is no longer public access to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Entry with a tour guide is required because of continued vandalism and destruction of tombs. This change was made by the Archdiocese of New Orleans to protect the tombs of the Laveau family as well as those of the many other dead interred there.
Although some references to Marie Laveau in popular culture refer to her as a “witch,” she is properly described as a ‘Voodoo queen’.Because of her prominence within the history of Voodoo in New Orleans, Laveau has inspired a number of artistic renditions.
In visual art, the African American artist Renee Stout often uses Laveau as a visual motif.
Numerous songs about Marie Laveau have been recorded, including “Marie La Veau” by Papa Celestin, “Marie Laveau” written by Shel Silverstein and Baxter Taylor and recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show (1972), and Bobby Bare (1974), “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” (1971) by Redbone, “Dixie Drug Store” by Grant Lee Buffalo, “X Marks the Spot (Marie Laveau)” by Joe Sample, “Marie Laveau” by Dr. John, “Marie Laveau” (2013) by Tao Of Sound, “Voodoo Queen Marie” to the minstrel tune “Colored Aristocracy” by The Holy Modal Rounders, “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” by Total Toly, and “The Widow Paris” by The Get Up Kids. Most recently the Danish metal band Volbeat released an album with a song entitled “Marie Laveau” (Seal The Deal & Let’s Boogie, 2016). Marie Laveau is mentioned in the song “I Will Play for Gumbo” (1999) by Jimmy Buffett and “Clare” by The Fairground Attraction. Two of Laveau’s nephews, banjoist Raymond Glapion and bassist Alcide “Slow Drag” Pavageau, became prominent New Orleans jazz musicians.
Laveau has offered inspiration for a number of fictional characters as well.
She is the protagonist of such novels as Robert Tallant’s The Voodoo Queen (1956), Francine Prose’s eponymous Marie Laveau (1977), and Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau (1993). Laveau appears as a supporting character in the Night Huntress novels by Jeaniene Frost, as a powerful ghoul still living in New Orleans in the 21st century. She also appears as a background character in Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January mystery series, set in New Orleans. Marie Laveau appears in Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods, under her married name, Marie Paris. Marie Laveau’s tomb is the site of a secret, fictional underground Voodoo workshop in the Caster Chronicles novel Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Laveau’s grave site is the setting of a pivotal scene in Robert J. Randisi’s short story, “Cold As The Gun,”,\ from Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero. The mother of Hazel Levesque, one of the characters from Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus book series, was known as “Queen Marie,” a famous fortune teller who lived in New Orleans. In Charlaine Harris’ True Blood (Sookie Stackhouse novels) book series, the character Hadley is lured to her death at the site of Marie Laveau’s tomb.
A character named Marie Laveau, based loosely on the real Marie Laveau, appears in Marvel Comics. She first appeared in Dracula Lives #2 in 1973.She is depicted as a powerful sorceress and Voodoo priestess with great magical powers and knowledge of arcane lore, including the creation of a potion made from vampire’s blood that keeps her eternally youthful and beautiful.A character named Marie Laveau also appears in the Italian comic book Zagor.
In television, a heavily fictionalized Marie Laveau (portrayed by Angela Bassett) appears as a character in American Horror Story: Coven and American Horror Story: Apocalypse.She also appears in the Canadian television series Lost Girl (portrayed by Marci T. House) in episode 11 of season 4, Young Sheldon (portrayed by Sharon Ferguson) in episode 7 of season 1, and Legends of Tomorrow (portrayed by Joyce Guy) in episode 7 of season 4.LOUISIANA VOODOO( Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, describes a set of spiritual folkways developed from the traditions of the African diaspora. It is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions developed by West and Central Africans populations of the U.S. state of Louisiana, though its practitioners are not exclusively of African-American descent. Voodoo is one of many incarnations of African-based spiritual folkways rooted in West African Dahomeyan Vodun. Its liturgical language is Louisiana Creole French, the language of the Louisiana Creole people.
Voodoo became syncretized with the Catholic and Francophone culture of New Orleans as a result of the African cultural oppression in the region resulting from the Atlantic slave trade. Louisiana Voodoo is often confused with—but is not completely separable from—Haitian Vodou and Deep Southern Hoodoo. It differs from Haitian Vodou in its emphasis upon gris-gris, Voodoo queens, use of Hoodoo paraphernalia, and Li Grand Zombi. It was through Louisiana Voodoo that such terms as gris-gris (a Wolof term) and “Voodoo dolls”‘ were introduced into the American lexicon.)( THE GHOST OF MARIE LAVEAU ,QUEEN OF VOODOO,NEW ORLEANS USA .,The St. Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, Louisiana, is considered the most haunted cemetery in all of the United States.
This graveyard is said to be haunted by the ghost of the infamous Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau. Her ghost has been reported inside the cemetery, walking between the tombs wearing a turban and mumbling a Santería Voodoo curse to trespassers. Some people swear they have seen her disappear into thin air when approached.
Her grave is visited by the faithful, curious and desperate year round. Many come to her tomb and place small offerings there, like candles, flowers, Mardi Gras beads, Voodoo dolls, trinkets and food in hopes of being blessed by her supernatural powers from beyond the grave. Many have been known to make a wish at her tomb. If that wish is fulfilled, they return and mark her tomb with three X’s to show their appreciation. Others say that her ghost appears as a sleek Voodoo cat with red, glowing eyes. They say the cat walks right through Laveau’s sealed tomb door and disappears inside, as if the door wasn’t even there.
Marie Laveau, one thing is absolutely certain–no one in New Orleans was ever more renowned, influential, respected, powerful and feared than the Queen of Voodoo, Marie Laveau. And, as evidenced by the many X’s scribbled on her tomb, to this day, she is still casting spells and granting wishes from beyond the grave!
ADDRESS Saint Louis Cemetery Number 1
New Orleans
Orleans Parish
Louisiana, USA
GPS (lat/lon): 29.95371, -90.06502
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Ghost Stories and Scary American Folklore from Across the United States
