A child swinging on a swing. Slowly, alone, at 2 am.
I’ll tack on children singing.
It’s normally somewhere on the spectrum of cute to annoying, but one kid singing slowly with the devil’s interval playing behind them and it becomes super creepy. Put that singing kid on a swing all alone at 2am, and you know you’re about to die.
Clowns, dolls, and ventriloquist dummies are pretty standard
Old photographs also come to mind
A weird one might be security footage, especially those at night. They all look creepy, even if nothing is happening
Dude, some of the ring footage out there is super creepy.
Or old VHS home videos with the date/time in the corner. Every time I see one now I feel like I’m watching someone who’s dead. I think I’ve been watching too many crime docs.
My wife had a stranger take a picture of us on our first date. A few years later she made it B&W and framed it. A friend of mine saw it and while laughing said “it looks like that photo they show on myster programs. (In TV voice) She was last seen with this man”
I’ve heard Subnautica wasn’t intended to be a horror game. Then while they were developing it they realized how terrifying some of the enemies were (particularly the leviathans)
They could have 0 monsters in that game and it would still be terrifying. It exudes thlassaphobic vibes just being set in a huge ocean.
I think it goes to show that thalassophobia is not an irrational fear. They set out to make a game which included large undersea things but was meant to be a lighter exploration game. Then just by virtue of including those big undersea creatures and voids, it naturally transformed into a horror game.
Detecting multiple leviathan class lifeforms in the region. Are you certain whatever you're doing is worth it?
My favorite is when they take a song that everyone likes as a gentle, generic, feel-good song and turn it into something creepy. My favorite example is 1408’s use of “We’ve Only Just Begun.”
I think that this is common enough that it should be a trope, but the tendency to look for and enjoy them is itself very common. People love to trace back fairy tales to their bloodier origins and propose dark origins to children’s rhymes like “Ring Around the Rosie.”
By playing them in minor keys? Yeah, that does the job.
I’m torn between “animated Sonic” and “Furby”. Both were (probably) not originally intended to be eldrich horrors beyond human comprehension, but …well … y’know.
Le sonic.eyx has arrived
Furbys were the first thing that popped into my head too.
Everytime i tried to have sex
Clowns
Production logos, they’re the unsung winner of this. The transition from a TV show to an uncanny production logo was often enough to keep many of us from sneaking out of our rooms to watch VHS tapes at night. Imagine expecting Paul every time you see a chimp with its back turned to you.
Great answer!
Little girls. I don’t know why they keep being used as a horror trope. It was interesting like, once or twice.
Meh. I love kids, but they can absolutely be creepy as fuck. I don’t think the small child creepy trope will ever go away.
This is a little specific, but, the sound of a boat gently running into the dock at night. It’s dark, and the steady sound of moving water and thud…thud…thud…
Combined with either a creepy ass dock lamp or else no light at all? I’m nopin’
Any video game played in VR
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