The internet is a spawning pool for eldritch horror and I love the energy this generation has put into crafting whole universes with their collective creativity. It’s not just one author anymore. Like ants collaborating on a massive colony structure for them to inhabit.
SCP is a wing of cosmic horror unto itself, with entries ranging from the merely odd to the truly mind-bending. Some of my favorites are the locations like 087. A lot of the monsters are goofy but show their modern origins and I’m here for it. It shows that urban legends will never leave us.
Speaking of, a lot of modern monsters and cryptids have disturbing and insightful morphologies. The origins are always indistinct or non-existent but the real horror is in their tangibility. They’ve strayed into our universe by means of the mundane and thus bastardized the ordinary. A man in a suit becomes Slender Man. An electronic warning system becomes Siren Head.
Sometimes it is we who stray from our universe and end up in the Backrooms. What was once the exclusive domain of dreams is now possible in waking reality. Dreamlike logic and distortions blend with nostalgia and memory to create a collective nightmare realm. What dwells there, if anything, is usually a product of our neglect and guilty conscience.
Corruption of nostalgia yields seemingly endless variety when a ubiquitous pop culture icon becomes a unkillable eldritch abomination. Garfield has never been as voracious. “I’m sorry, Jon,” he repeats, with unceasing malevolence and unending hunger. He must consume all, become all.
I imagine that what we create collectively here in the rich, swirling energy of the still developing internet will fascinate future generations as they trace the evolution of their own cosmic horrors back to this cesspit of cultural DNA. Oh, what otherworldly and unfathomable horrors shall crawl forth to devour the minds of their forebears!