Editorials
Tune in… Or Else: Kris Straub Has Created a Viral Internet Nightmare With ‘Local 58’
Even though television is dying (or realistically speaking, just moving over to the internet), the style of the medium, particularly the lo-fi aesthetic of public TV stations from the 80s and 90s, is still extremely popular. Dated graphics, jump cuts and audio issues, it all reminds those of us old enough to remember classic television’s dominance in our lives, and how there was always a bit of a thrill whenever it looked like things were going off the rails on the other side of the screen.
Author and filmmaker Kris Straub understands this, which is why he tapped into the dark potential of this particular brand of nostalgia with his hall-of-famer Creepypasta story “Candle Cove”, a story that unwinds the tale of an obscure children’s show of the same name, written entirely in the style of old message board posts. It’s eerily convincing in its simplicity, and it went on to become a viral hit that would be adapted for the first season of the criminally underrated SyFy anthology show “Channel Zero” (gone, but not forgotten).
Straub has chosen to follow this up with another nightmarish story delivered under the guise of public television in his ongoing video series Local 58. Initially published on the now defunct website local58.info, all entries in the series were uploaded onto YouTube in late 2018, and quickly amassed a cult following.
The first episode of the series, “Weather Service”, sets the tone immediately. There is no central protagonist presented to us. We see a simple graphic of the station’s logo and call letters, a brief glimpse at a programming schedule, and are then jolted into an emergency broadcast message, complete with those freaky beeps and VCR-era font we’ve come to know and loathe. The message advises of us a weather warning, a “meteorological event” that will last until sunrise. It then advises the viewer to stay indoors and avoid looking at the sky.
Disturbing, yes, but it gets worse when the broadcast is interrupted yet again, this time by a message set against a red screen, telling the folks at home to disregard the previous warning, and encouraging them to view this mysterious event. In fact, it urges them to. “GO OUTSIDE NOW” it commands, until other conflicting messages appear in bursts—“AVOID MIRRORS,” “DO NOT LOOK UP,” “IT’S IN THE LIGHT,” this messenger warns. The final image is a jittery shot of a full moon hanging in the sky. In the distance, the sounds of panicked screaming can just barely be heard.
It’s heavy stuff, right? You know so little yet have been given just enough details to let your imagination run wild with possibilities. Is this the work of some hacker? Ghosts in the machine? A trick from a hostile alien force? It’s hard to call it. And that’s just within the first two and a half minute video. You don’t know what to believe. Can your own eyes be trusted?
Well before you think about it too much, it’s best to move ahead to the next broadcast, “Contingency,” possible the most disturbing entry to date (and it’s got some stiff competition). From the beginning, there are some noticeable differences; Not only is the station’s logo changed, but the replacement of video distortion with scratches and marks commonly found in old damaged film suggest we’re watching a clip from a different era in the channel’s history, possibly the 1960s or 70s. When the broadcast day ends, the signal is instantly hijacked, and we’re subjected to what looks like an old bit of newsreel footage, a message from some organization known as the “U.S. Department For The Preservation of American Dignity.”
The message is chilling: the film, designed to be shown to the public in the event of America succumbing to an invasion, displays a waving American flag as text crawls up, letting Americans know that the USA has surrendered to “her enemy.” The soundtrack plays a distorted version of the Star Spangled Banner, as this message, ostensibly from President Lyndon B. Johnson, cryptically calls for average citizens to resist to the very end, lest the enemy claim our independent spirits.
It doesn’t take a lot of guesswork to figure out what that means, but the video becomes truly terrifying when it spells it out through a series of messages: “YOU TAKE AMERICA WITH YOU”; “ACCESS TO A LOADED FIREARM IS IDEAL”; “JOIN YOUR NEIGHBORS, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR GOD.” That’s right, this is a decree from the U.S Government to fight for your country by literally committing suicide, going so far as to give you instructions (“place muzzle upward to roof of mouth”). As the video goes on, this becomes less of a proud battle cry, and more of a tyrannical demand. One of the later messages reads “It is against the law to delay – THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT UNTIL THERE ARE NONE TO READ IT.” And right as it gets to the part where it instructs you on how to take out your kids, the broadcast stabilizes, and Local 58 returns to normal, writing the whole thing off as a bunch of “technical difficulties.”
Maybe it’s the current sociopolitical tensions plaguing American society, but there’s something particularly horrifying about the dutiful and lethal groupthink that film espouses. As insane as it is, it feels possible—bear in mind that CNN does in fact have a premade sign off video in the event of the Apocalypse. Seriously.
The following videos only get more disturbing. “You Are On The Fastest Available Route” seems to be aired as a “midnight movie,” and consists only of dash cam footage showing a driver following a driver being directed by a GPS deeper and deeper into the wilderness—until they stumble upon a creature that they cannot reroute fast enough from.
The most recent video, “Show For Children” airs what looks to be an old cartoon from the early days of animation: Cadavre in “A Grave Mistake.” It plays like a goth version of an old Disney toon, where a cute little skeleton wanders around a graveyard as a smiling moon hangs above him, grinning a touch too much. As the poor little guy stumbles over open graves and flees them in fear, the music dissipates, and the moon goes from a grinning goon to an anxious, glaring monstrosity, hovering over a grave that Cadavre eventually falls and dies in. Straub knows just how to gradually raise the tension by mixing cartoonish and starkly graphic imagery, and allowing certain frames to linger for too long.
But what is the connection between all these pieces? Online speculation abounds, but the recurring images and motifs—an ominous moon, the threat of invasion, mind control, etc—have led most engaged with the series to believe that the story centers around an alien invasion. This writer generally agrees, although I believe it remains to be seen. It could just as easily be a story of sinister government experiments gone awry, or supernatural entities gaining control of television signals to exact revenge of some sort.
What I can say with certainty is that this a great horror web series, brilliant in both its depth and its simplicity. Straub uses a masterful blend of original art and stock footage and FX to craft a unique and engaging story. It’s the kind of mysterious, “less is more” form of horror storytelling that the internet is an especially strong vehicle for. If you’ve yet to check out Local 58, I recommend you seek it out on YouTube, watch all the videos, and subscribe to see what happens next. It’s must see TV.
Watch…or surrender…
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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