This is a sortable list of notableanalog horror media.
Analog horror is asubgenre ofhorror fiction based around the aesthetic incorporation of elements related toanalog electronics, such asanalog television andVHS (Video Home System).[1][2][3] It is typically characterized by low-fidelity graphics, cryptic messages, little to no traditionaljump scares, and visual styles reminiscent of late 20th-century television andanalog recordings.[1][2]
| Title | Year | Creator | Description | Notes | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Archive 81 | 2016 |
| Horror podcast centered on an archivist named Dan, who is told by his new boss to constantly record his life. Dan's friend Marc listens to the recordings of Dan doing his job after Dan goes missing in hopes of learning what happened to him. | Adapted into aNetflix Original series, which ran for one season in 2016 | [4][5][6] |
| Amanda the Adventurer | Horror game series featuring analog horror elements | ||||
| Angel Hare | East Patch Productions
| Inspired byChristian animated cartoons,Angel Hare is presented as an animated series starring an angelichare namedGabby and herbadger companion,Francis. Series protagonist Jonah, who watched the cartoon as a child, begins uploading footage of the cartoon to YouTube after realizing his personal VHS copy of the series differs from one found at the thrift store. As he rewatches the series, Jonah realizes that his copy of the cartoon had directly addressed young Jonah, giving him advice on how to deal with abuse by a parental figure (supposedly his father). | [7][8][9] | ||
| Backrooms | 2022 | Kane Parsons (as Kane Pixels) | YouTube series which began with the horrorshortThe Backrooms (Found Footage). Based on thecreepypasta of thesame name, the short is presented as aVHS tape recorded by a filmmaker who accidentally enters the Backrooms in the 1990s and is pursued by a monster. This was later expanded into a series of sixteen shorts, following the employees of a company investigating the Backrooms. | In 2023,A24 announced a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons' videos. | [10][11][12] |
| Ben Drowned | One of the earliest examples of video game-related analog horror involving video footage of a cursed copy ofLegend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. | [13] | |||
| Blue_Channel | YouTube series about a fictionalTV channel that aired acommercial for a newdrug called "Thalasin" that allows the user to artificially feelemotions. | [14] | |||
| CH/SS | Cold War-inspired series of 1980s government-sponsored instructional videos for a mental health organization, with hints at espionage and supernatural forces through obscure Russian dialogue. | [13] | |||
| Dog Nightmares | A young woman looking for her lost dog only to rediscovered a dog-man hybrid she knew from her childhood years told thru her old drawings, photographs, video footage and excerpts fromSesame Street featuring skits created by artistWilliam Wegman featuring his petweimaraners. | [13] | |||
| Eventide Media Center | 2020 | Aidan Chick | Horror anthology series framed as the "local collection" of a public library in the fictional town of Eventide Valley,Massachusetts. Each episode focuses on a different event or monster that inhabits Eventide Valley or other fictional towns in the state. | [15][16] | |
| Frogman | 12 year-old Dallas Kyle, who encountered and captured video footage of a mythical creature, returns to where the creature lives to prove that his footage is legitimate. | [17] | |||
| Final Transmissions |
| A '90s small townIllinois TV host airs disturbingly strange and terrifying signals claiming to be from unknown sources. | [18] | ||
| Gemini Home Entertainment | 2019 | Remy Abode | Horror anthology centered on the eponymous Gemini Home Entertainment, a fictional distributor of VHS tapes that detail numerous anomalous incidents taking place around the world, including the appearances of various dangerousalien creatures in the United States and an ongoing assault on theSolar System by "The Iris", a sentientrogue planet which sent the entities to Earth as part of its efforts to subjugate the planet and humanity. | [14][19][20] | |
| Hi I'm Mary Mary | YouTube series about a woman trapped inside her parents' home without any exit, with only a camera and replenishing supply of food, and while being stalked by shadowy figures including a masked woman. | ||||
| Kraina Grzybów TV | Wiktor Stribog | A PolishYouTube series about a mysterious pirate broadcast show hosted by a girl named Agatka and her squirrel friend, Małgosia.Kraina Grzybów is made in the aesthetic of old Polish TV shows from the communist era. | [21][22] | ||
| Late Night with the Devil | 2024 | Colin and Cameron Cairnes | AHalloween-themed episode of a 1970s late night talk show, a desperate attempt to boost ratings, gone horribly wrong. | Winner of theBest Independent Film Award at the52nd Saturn Awards[23] | [24][25] |
| Local 58 | 2015 | Kris Straub | YouTube series presented as authentic videotaped footage of a television station that has been continuously hijacked over several decades. While there is no main plot in this series, episodes include messages related to looking up at theMoon or thenight sky, as well as the in-universe Thought Research Initiative (TRI)Local 58's first video "Weather Service" was published in 2015 as a stand-alone short and then added to the dedicated YouTube channel when it was established in 2017. | Frequently credited with creating and/or popularizing analog horror. | [26][27][28] |
| Marble Hornets | 2009 |
| Alternate reality game YouTube series based on theSlender Mancreepypasta. The series follows Jay Merrick (Wagner) as he attempts to find out what happened to his friend Alex Kralie (DeLage) during the production of Alex's student film,Marble Hornets. Jay watches tapes from the film's production, and uploads them to YouTube as various entries showing that Alex was being stalked by an elusive entity known as "The Operator". Aspects of the series that put it in the analog horror subgenre include its use of video tapes, as well as the implementation of a second channel for the series titled "totheark," where cryptic codes and messages are embedded into unconventionalvideo editing. | A spinoff film,Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, released in 2015 to largely negatively reception. | [29][30][31] |
| The Mandela Catalogue | 2021 | Alex Kister | YouTube series set in the fictional Mandela County,Wisconsin, which is threatened by the presence of "alternates",doppelgängers who coerce their victims to kill themselves and can manipulateaudiovisual media. Other plot aspects includeLucifer disguising himself as the biblicalarchangelGabriel, shown through altered footage of episodes from the animated seriesThe Beginners Bible. The series became popular online through analysis andreaction videos. | [32][33][34] | |
| The Man in the Suit | 2023 | Unknowingly | YouTube series about a fictional incident that occurred while filming the firstGodzilla film in 1954. The man who playsGodzilla essentially fuses into the rubber suit, and over the course of the next few films, would cause the same thing to happen to the actors ofAnguirus,Mothra, andKing Ghidorah, along with killing the actor ofKing Kong along with a few other people. | [13] | |
| The McKinney Family Home Videos |
| A 68-minute feature in which a father's collection ofhome videos of important family moments document a dark force lurking within. | [35][36][37] | ||
| Midwest Angelica | 2022 | Team AQ
| Acosmic horror YouTube series depicting the work of aNASA organization known as HOME (Division of Heavenly Operations and Material Examination) chronicling their discovery of an alien corpse codenamed "AZ-001" that crashes intoMidwest America (mainlyNebraska) in January 1999. AZ-001 begins infecting the surrounding fauna and proves itself to be a threat to the United States. The series takes heavy inspiration from theanimeNeon Genesis Evangelion and biblical stories. | [38][15][20] | |
| Minerva Alliance | A series of tapes depicting anomalous phenomena collected by the titular non-profit. | [13] | |||
| The Monument Mythos | A YouTube web-series set in differentalternate history versions of the United States. The premises includeJames Dean serving as president having won the1968 United States presidential election instead ofRichard Nixon, an alternate origin of theStatue of Freedom, andMartin Luther King Jr. avoiding his assassination. The episodes are in thefound footage andmockumentary format and revolve around American national monuments being depicted in relation to unusual incidents, involving fictional conspiracy theory narratives, such as disappearances of immigrants near theStatue of Liberty, time travel/teleportation, a strange astronomical phenomena above thePyramids of Giza, and a mysterious infection affecting individuals nearMount Rushmore. | [39][40][41] | |||
| Mystery Flesh Pit National Park | Trevor Roberts | A horror project set in an alternate timeline where in Gumption, Texas where a massive opening in the Earth of flesh and blood was found. The open was that of a superorganism which would eventually be explored to find that the inside of the superorganism stretched for miles and was so massive it had its own ecosystem. Where humans harvested the unique minerals in this superorganism to make advances it technology where it would eventually be made into aNational Park, where you could venture into the body of this being. | [13] | ||
| No Through Road | 2009 | Steven Chamberlain | YouTube series set within the real-worldprivate "no through road" at the entrance of Broomhall Farm, it follows four teenagers driving home at night as they find themselves trapped in a space andtime loop, eternally passing the same tworoad signs marking anintersection separating the villages ofBenington andWatton between miles ofliminal spacecountryside, while threatened by a figure who can manipulate the loop back to an archway at the road's entrance. Other plot aspects include all footage of the events being stolen fromMI6 and uploaded online to YouTube. | [42][43][44] | |
| The Painter | 2022 | UrbanSPOOK | YouTube series about a serial killer who creates paintings of each of their victims, who are tortured and disfigured in unique ways. It has been criticized for its graphic content. | [45] | |
| Petscop | A "Let's Play" of aPokemon-esque game where inputting a cheat code reveals a dark side to said game, involving a murder that greatly affected the game's creator. | [46] | |||
| Skinamarink | 2022 | Kyle Edward Ball | Supernatural horror film which usesexperimental techniques to tell the story of two young children, Kevin and Kaylee, as the pair witness the doors and windows of their house disappear. Their parents are missing as well, and the film focuses on the pair struggling to understand the nature of the supernatural entity that has come into their home. The visuals andsound design of the film simulate the quality of VHS tapes.Skinamarink also uses an array of toys from the '90s, the aforementioned CRT television, and older cartoons to work within the analog horror subgenre. | [47] | |
| The Walten Files | Martin Walls | YouTube series inspired by theFive Nights at Freddy's franchise, which involves a set of videotapes. The tapes follow Bunny Smiles Incorporated, the defunct company behind the restaurant Bon's Burgers, which featuresChuck E. Cheese-likeanimatronics, and the companies' two founders, Felix Kranken and Jack Walten, and their families. | [13][48][15] | ||
| Welcome Home | Clown Illustration | Webseries about an anonymous team of individuals and their attempt to restore along-lostMuppet-inspired 1970s kids' puppet show featuring eight puppets and a sentient house that may have something sinister lurking behind the scenes. | [49][50][51] | ||
| Winter of 83 | Lewis Lovhaug | YouTube series about the disappearance of an entire population of a small town in the winter of 1983 through a collection of video and audio tapes. | [13] | ||
| White Stag Education | A series of educational video recordings from New Jersey involving masked "strangers" stalking hikers in thePine Barrens and a biblical entity known as The Adversary. | [17] | |||
| Woodlands National Park | [13] | ||||
| Somnium Dream Viewer | YouTube series about the fictional Somnium Technologies, who created a product in the 1980s that allowed users to print images of their dreams and caused extremely violent nightmares. | [13][52] | |||
| Surreal Broadcast | A collection of TV programs from different years in the small town of Berksaut,Maine, including one involving an animal bite incident from 1989. | [13] | |||
| Super Mario 64: CLASSIFIED | Involves video recordings of a broken demo of saidNintendo 64 game. | [13] | |||
| This House Has People in It | Alan Resnick | Television feature created forAdult Swim and inspired byThe Blair Witch Project, which consists ofsurveillance footage of a suburban family during their son's birthday party. | [13][15][53] | ||
| Valle Verde | Video game involving a VHS recording of aPlayStation 1Animal Crossing-esque title where its on-screen avatar is treated with distorted imagery of children, references to "unstable patients" and disturbing realms edging between the divine and demonic. | [13] | |||
| Vita Carnis | Darian Quillory | Canadianmixed media project describing the rise of a branchlike, fleshy organism known as the Crawl, which first appeared in 1931. The Crawl grows these fleshy bulbs that fall off and that can become one of the following creatures: Trimmings, Meat Snakes, Mimics, Harvesters, and Hosts of Influence. These creatures are a part of the Carnis Family which also includes Monoliths and singularities which only 7 of each exist. | [13][54] | ||
| WNUF Halloween Special | 2013 | Chris LaMartina | A 1980s television personality that decides to investigate strange supernatural occurrences at a house purported to be haunted. | [55][24] |