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- YouTube horror series continue to be a popular form of entertainment among viewers, with analog horror being a niche interest with dedicated fanbases across different platforms. The best ones have become classics in their own right, delivering realistic and spine-chilling stories that haunt fans forever.
The horror genre has been around for a long time, and as technology and media evolve, it only becomes more innovative. Over the years, new platforms and mediums have allowed creators to bring their visions to life in increasingly unique ways. No longer is horror limited to movies and TV, as many of the scariest and most fascinating stories have come out of online spaces like YouTube.
Although the found footage film technique existed long before YouTube, a relatively more recent subgenre called 'analog horror' has risen out of it. YouTube's analog horror offerings usually take on a more vintage aesthetic, with clips made to look like they’re from the 90s and earlier, and content ranging from home videos to declassified government footage.
Updated on October 3, 2023, by Hannah Saab:
YouTube horror series continue to be a popular form of entertainment among viewers, with analog horror being a niche interest with dedicated fanbases across different platforms. The best ones have become classics in their own right, delivering realistic and spine-chilling stories that haunt fans forever.
12 'The Walten Files'
Viewers familiar with the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise may find this series similar to the video games. The Walten Files, created by YouTuber Martin Walls, is centered around Bon’s Burgers. Akin to Chuck E Cheese, this children’s restaurant features a roster of performing animatronics, at least until it closes down after an unknown incident.
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Time for sweaty PlayStation controllers to become sweaty Blu-Ray remotesThe number of mysteries only grows, with one of the restaurant’s founders missing, along with his wife and children, and the other founder seemingly conspiring against him. Of course, the actual horror aspect comes from the team of murderous, seemingly possessed animatronics.
11 'Eventide Media Center'
Some of the scariest movies involve alien invasions, and likewise, many analog horror stories are centered around the idea of some sort of incursion or other appearance of horrifying monsters in a specific area. One of the most mysterious ones is Eventide Media Center, which is possibly due to its relative novelty, as the first video came out in 2020.
Compared to similar series that consist of various clips that slowly begin to connect together, Eventide Media Center’s videos almost seem unrelated to each other, like any other classic horror anthology. Of course, there are still puzzle pieces, along with strange scenes involving things like creatures rising out of the ground and ocean, a seemingly unholy town excavation project, and super entities that possess televisions.
10 'The Backrooms'
The concept of The Backrooms first originated as a sort of creepypasta, after a photo of a pale, yellow hallway was posted as a picture that felt “off”. The basics of the lore are that the Backrooms are a seemingly endless labyrinth that people can phase, or “noclip” into, in specific areas in our world.
One of the bigger projects to utilize The Backrooms is the YouTube series of the same name by Kane Pixels. These videos consist mainly of found footage from those unfortunate enough to have found themselves in The Backrooms, and archive data from the secretive Async Foundation’s research on the place.
9 'Petscop'
Presented as a “Let’s Play” of a strange fictional video game, the series Petscop began in 2017. In the video game, the goal of the player is to catch a variety of creatures called “Pets” in a similar way to Pokémon. For the actual videos, viewers follow the gameplay of someone named Paul who, after inputting a cheat code, discovers a darker side to the title.
Over Petscop’s duration, many theories have popped up to explain exactly what the game is about. Some fans have posited that it tells the fictional story of a murderer who caused great pain to the game’s creator, while others have said it was meant to shed light on a real-life criminal case.
8 'Gemini Home Entertainment'
Relics from a time when VHS tapes were the main form of household media, the videos from Gemini Home Entertainment have something just a bit odd about them. On the surface, this series seems chock-full of wholesome entertainment for the entire family, until viewers actually watch it.
Each video starts out with a perfectly normal title and an often educational concept, such as "Storm Safety Tips," or a "Wilderness Survival Guide." However, there is always a point where they take a disturbing, and creepier turn, most of the time centered around the existence of eldritch creatures called Woodcrawlers, who can mimic the likeness of human beings.
7 'Surreal Broadcast'
In the same vein as Eventide Media Center and Gemini Home Entertainment, Surreal Broadcast is a collection of TV programs, with something strange happening in the background. What’s interesting about this, however, is that the videos are labeled with a range of different years, allowing viewers to construct a timeline as it goes on.
As a fair warning, people with arachnophobia may find this one a little uncomfortable. However, Surreal Broadcast has all the things that make a great creepy story. There's a small county with a strange history, monsters that supposedly feed on fear, and of course, a classic sinister cult devoted to a being said to have fallen from the sky.
6 'Hi I'm Mary Mary'
As one of the more abstract analog horror projects, Hi I’m Mary Mary definitely made itself stand out from the average found footage channel. Rather than a collection of clips and odd recordings from different people, Hi I’m Mary Mary focuses on one girl’s struggle in the face of suffocating fear.
The story centers on Mary, who wakes up in a seemingly familiar house with no clue how she got there, and no exit. While that’s strange enough, at night she is visited by a cast of horrifying entities, each uniquely dangerous. Like many other horror stories that have a heavy underlying theme, these videos can be both scary and emotional, so viewer discretion is advised.
5 'The Mandela Catalogue'
Created by Alex Kister, the somewhat new series The Mandela Catalogue quickly grew a following after its first upload in 2021. It revolves around the investigation into an invasion of seemingly hostile organisms, which, much like in Gemini Home Entertainment, can mimic the likeness of humans.
These creatures, called Alternates, don’t look exactly like people, however. Instead, they always have biologically impossible physical proportions, making them all the more frightening. The story puts forward the idea that they have been here at least since Biblical times when they came to people like Noah as “angels”. There's something about mixing horror with religious concepts that always seems to be effective.
4 'Local 58'
Joining others of its kind in the subgenre, Local 58 paints the story of a bizarre, and terrifying invasion through the lens of a local television channel. Although it isn’t very long, this series makes a big impact due to the near-jumpscare quality of its darker content, and the refreshingly diverse mediums it uses.
While there’s no doubt that the Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror subgenre is common, Local 58 stands out by showing just enough to scare viewers while keeping them hooked on the unknown. Even though the danger isn’t clearly stated, the constant warnings to not look at the night sky are enough to make anyone feel uneasy.
3 'The Monument Mythos'
Unlike other series where the horrors are mostly contained in small towns or haunted restaurants, The Monument Mythos takes place across all of America for its majority. Depicting an alternate history of the United States, the audience gets to see what the country may look like if James Dean had been elected President, for instance.
The most interesting, and terrifying parts of The Monument Mythos, however, are the actual national landmarks themselves. The series goes through things like the Statue of Liberty or the Lincoln Memorial and gives each one a weirder, darker side. Not only that but there seem to be pieces of a conspiracy that might just go all the way to the top.
2 'The Minerva Alliance'
The titular Minerva Alliance in this analog horror series is shrouded in mystery, which is slowly unraveled by a (perhaps too) dedicated investigator determined to get to the bottom of its activities. Along the way, things take a dark turn as an increasingly disturbing string of enigmatic videos seems to prod at the nature of reality itself.
Creating an atmosphere of inescapable unease, The Minerva Alliance draws inspiration from the best found footage media to depict a realistic and immersive story. Alongside coded messages and eerie visuals, it'll quickly draw viewers in before completely terrifying them as it escalates to surreal levels of horror.
1 'Midwest Angelica'
It all starts with an innocuous VHS tape in an old thrift store. Midwest Angelica follows the tape as it falls into the hands of an unfortunate group of viewers, who soon discover its malevolent secret. It depicts the work of an organization that chronicles the discovery of what seems to be a huge alien corpse... that isn't quite as dead as they initially thought.
Suspense and dread build in the cosmic horror analog show that builds in intensity with each new episode. The spine-chilling series can evoke genuine fear with its combination of found footage, retro aesthetic, and a terrifying story of a contagion that seems impossible to stop.