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Writer's pictureKris Harrell

Dive in the static

Take a look at a new-age genre: analog horror


You’re sitting alone one night, the VHS playing on the TV garbling through the static. All of a sudden, the screen turns black. You’re left in the dark, where you’re not so sure you’re alone anymore.


This is analog horror. Well, technically analog horror is much more than that.


Analog horror is a subgenre of “unfiction,” a not-so-recent trend with storytelling that has recently gained popularity online. Unfiction can be loosely defined as fictional stories that are insisted to be true, attempting to convince audience members that they are witnessing something real.   


More recently, these are found online, via internet forums, YouTube videos and ARG (Alternative Reality Game) websites.


I was first introduced to the genre through The East Patch’s “Angel Hare” series on Youtube, which is one of the tamer ones you could find. However, some internet-goers recognize the genre from creepypasta stories, fictional horror short stories found on internet forums.


With the popularity of the subgenre rising, it distances itself further and further from its origins. What used to be a fear of the unknown or otherworldly has turned into the “fear of a face put through the liquidizing tool on Photoshop.” So how did all of this start?


Going WAY back to 1938, we see one of the first examples of the unfiction genre; the infamous broadcast of “War of The Worlds.”


“War of The Worlds,” a radio drama by Orson Welles, is told through a continuous radio program, periodically interrupted by breaking news bulletins of an alien invasion. Slowly, as the play continues, these news bulletins get more frequent and terrifying.


Welles wanted to create a radio drama more immersive than ever before. He succeeded, but by a bit too much. Many listeners tuning in during the performance were left unaware this was a fictional broadcast, leaving them to believe the world was actually being overtaken by aliens.


“War of The Worlds” is essential to the unfiction genre and analog horror subgenre because of this. This fear would be diluted almost completely if audiences were made aware of its ties to reality; or rather, its lack of ties.


Another early example of the unfiction genre is “The Blair Witch Project” (1999). Before its release, a marketing campaign for the film released items that pointed to the film being actual found footage.


From missing person leaflets, fake news stories and even a website filled with background information about the characters: journal entries, interviews with family members, photos and more.


“The Blair Witch Project” used the internet in ways never seen before. Before the movie reached the box office, the website was visited over 20 million times (which, given its release date, is pretty impressive).   


Shot to look like a worn-down VHS tape with terrible and grainy image quality, the film is not much to look at aesthetic-wise. However, this lays the groundwork for analog horror films to come.


While “The Blair Witch Project” (1999) and other found footage media can be seen as origins of the analog aesthetic, it wouldn't be for another 10 years that the subgenre got its footing.


While neither "War of the Worlds" or "The Blair Witch Project" are technically considered analog horror, both medias can be seen to have had a massive impact on the genre of unfiction, starting the genre off strong to blare through the static.

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