Editorials
[Viral Horrors] Diving into the Nightmares Housed Inside “The SCP Foundation”
Since the dawn of civilization, human beings have been scaring the crap out of each other with horror stories inspired by their immediate environments. Nowadays, however, many people don’t seem to realize that we spend most of our waking hours online, be it at home or work, on computers or phones, and our stories have adjusted accordingly.
That’s why I believe it’s time to discuss the Viral Horrors that surround us every day. From Creepypastas to killer memes, these sordid tales are as much a part of our culture as classic campfire stories, only on a much larger scale. Today, I’d like to talk about the infamous SCP Foundation, and see if we can come to appreciate these online scares and what they mean to us.
While we can often trace iconic horror stories back to a single creator, the fact is that most of our famous urban legends and monstrous folklore are the result of several generations of storytellers adding their own personal spin to age-old tales. After all, even geniuses like Bram Stoker and Lovecraft found themselves adapting local legends and historical fears when creating the likes of Dracula or even Dagon.
This remains true even in the age of the internet, with digital stories taking on a life of their own as people share and add to the digital mythos over time. We may know that a figure like Slender-Man was originally created by Victor Surge, but it’s this idea of collaborative fiction that helped the character evolve and achieve online infamy all over the world. Of course, it would only be a matter of time before a group of online scary-story enthusiasts would truly harness the power of collective storytelling, and that’s how the SCP Foundation was born.
We can actually trace the Foundation’s origins back to 4Chan’s /x/ board in 2007, when a user posted what would become the basis for a sprawling internet tradition, SCP-173. The post itself was written like a relatively convincing scientific report describing a spray-painted concrete statue that becomes aggressive when not being directly observed (similar to Doctor Who‘s Weeping Angels). The report was said to have been leaked from a secret organization, with SCP being an acronym for their motto: Secure, Contain, Protect. The post would then go on to describe the great lengths that this mysterious institution goes through in order to study and contain this metaphysical abomination, also including an eerie photograph of the supposed creature (though this would later be revealed to be a picture of a sculpture by Japanese artist Izumi Kato).
SCP-173, as seen in SCP – Containment Breach.
Naturally, folks loved this spooky description of otherworldly science and containment procedures, so it wasn’t long before other /x/ users produced more stories in this realistic format. The detached, pragmatic approach to the writing and the idea of a Lovecraftian underworld filled with cursed objects and eldritch creatures was something that the internet hadn’t seen before, so everyone wanted to be a part of it. These stories eventually became popular in other circles, leading to the creation of an SCP Wiki in 2008, where these stories are currently housed and the mythos continues to evolve.
It’s been over a decade since the original SCP-173, but the general format hasn’t changed much when creating new entries. Though the SCP community now also accepts standard fictionalized stories set in this universe, main posts found on the website usually share the same structure. A peculiar object, being or even location is labeled with one of the iconic item numbers (which have gone way beyond the original thousand), followed by a general classification that usually describes the Foundation’s difficulty in containing said element. Then, we see a brief description of the item’s containment procedures and general characteristics with the occasional photograph or illustration.
These posts can be bite-sized encyclopedic entries that leave most of the horror up to the imagination, but oftentimes we’ll see longform masterpieces of epistolary fiction, taking full advantage of the format to tell mind-bending stories that sometimes span multiple entries. Browsing the website can be much like getting lost in a Wikipedia from hell, where each new article leads to a related one in an ever-expanding world of horrifying browser tabs, making this one of my favorite places to procrastinate on the internet.
Bizarre creations like SCP-018 (a rubber ball that inexplicably bounces with 200% efficiency), or SCP-1756 (a DVD Player that transforms any video into an episode of At The Movies where Siskel and Ebert review said video, even if it was made after the end of the show) are shining examples of the creative potential when online communities gather to make something new. I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of these entries are kind of silly and don’t fit in with the truly terrifying ones (it’s hard to think that a traveling moth salesman exists in the same universe as a sentient, life-hating star), but due to the collaborative nature of the site, a few duds are all but inevitable; and I think it’s a small price to pay for all of the genuinely well-written content available at no cost.
Everyone has the right to feature SCP-106 in their nightmares.
At this point, it may seem surprising that there are no big-budget adaptations of the SCP mythos on the big screen (or even the little one, for that matter), but that’s mostly due to the fact that pretty much the entirety of the official Wiki is licensed under the Creative Commons Attributions 3.0 License. This means that, while anyone is technically free to adapt and reproduce the contents of the Wiki in their own work, they wouldn’t have exclusive ownership of whatever they produced, making the whole endeavor rather unprofitable for studios. While it’s kind of disappointing that we’ll likely never see a proper movie/TV adaptation of these memorable creatures and objects, the SCP Wiki represents one of the internet’s last bastions of complete creative freedom, and I think that’s worth preserving.
Nevertheless, we’ve still seen quite a few independent SCP adaptations over the years, mostly in the form of videogames, but there has also been a light novel and even a stage adaptation of stories from the Foundation. Here on Bloody-Disgusting, we have the SCP-Archives Podcast, which tells weekly tales masterfully adapted from the official Wiki. Unfortunately, as our own Pacific Obadiah explained, a certain Andrey Duksin has trademarked the SCP Foundation’s name and logo within the Russian Federation and Eurasian Customs Union, in the hopes of profiting off of years of other folks’ hard work. Not only does this jeopardize all the current projects derived from the Foundation, but it also clearly goes against the SCP Community spirit.
The site’s Admin team is currently seeking legal action, but only time will tell if the Russian legal system will agree that these stories should be available to everyone at no charge, with no one person in control of other people’s access to them. For now, however, I think we should celebrate the creative landmark that is the SCP Foundation, and how it represents a whole new frontier in collaborative fiction. The internet’s greatest strength has always been in how it brings people together, and that is still true when discussing online scares. The Foundation may be just a digital update to a long-standing human tradition of gathering to share scary stories, but it’s an important step forward, and I can’t wait to see what the future of horror storytelling has in store for us.
If you enjoyed reading about the Foundation and are interested in stepping into this bizarre world of flesh-eating gods, infinite stairways and interdimensional phantasms, I’d recommend a visit to the World’s Scariest Wiki, or checking out one of the SCP-Archives’ latest episodes. Just keep an eye out for escapees, as the Foundation can’t keep this stuff contained forever.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
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