One Picture That Haunted Me For Years

[@SpikimaMovies]

Thank you, everyone, for letting me say a proper goodbye. I highly recommend you watch the first part to understand the context! It's on the channel if you're curious! Cheers.

[@PatricK-oy8eu]

🧘‍♂️

[@SuperMaster000X]

a goodbye?

[@codenamepariah]

​@@SuperMaster000X it's a farewell to his childhood fear.

[@mftmss7086]

You done? You fukd?

[@ziixgz]

@@SuperMaster000Xhe’s saying goodbye to his fear of the face

[@melann4522]

You faced your fear and honored its source while educating us. Baller move.

[@LeolaTheElf]

For Real

[@ajamoda5290]

Dude, my picture like yours was the MoMo image, that thing terrified me and it’s the only image that gives me an actual sense of dread whenever I see it

[@melaniemanning2462]

MoMo was awful.

[@t3hpenguinofd00m]

What is momo?

[@JessicaAVoigt]

@@t3hpenguinofd00m It was a weird picture with the head of a woman in bird legs, but the face had bird features (deep wide eyes, nose and a creepy sort of smile/ mouth). It is creepy as hell so beware kfkfk

[@monskiski01]

@@t3hpenguinofd00m Oh, sweet summers child...

[@tevydub2708]

I was about to comment the same thing. Still today at 30yo with a pretty good resistance to anything scary, my stomach turns around whenever I see this face. I can't explain why !

[@allisonconnor2241]

IDK if everyone’s sharing their personal bogeyman but I think I’ll share mine. When I was 7 or 8, reading was my favourite thing in the whole world. I loved going to the library and picking out different colourful books, especially the ones where it came with a CD. That way I could listen and read the book. But I swear if I was even a little younger and read this book or had it read to me, I probably would’ve stopped reading for a while. It’s called “A Bad Case Of The Stripes”, and it feels like (now that I’m older) a Junji Ito book for toddlers. The illustrations have this weird yellowish gross tone to them, each panel has a slight uncanny valley mixing of bright colours and dim dusk colours. The topic or lesson is a little light-hearted and something a lot of people, especially girls need to hear at an early age. Love yourself, love your body and don’t let people pressure you into thinking otherwise. But the way it is conveyed through essentially body horror is terrifying. All I could imagine after reading it was; Me waking up as a gum ball/pill machine (it sounds funny out of context but I swear it’s vile), getting told my thousands of people that they don’t know what’s wrong with me and adding to my contortions, and being humiliated by everyone around me. When I came out of my room after reading that book, I couldn’t eat… at all. I cried and couldn’t get the image out of my head for several years. Flash forward to grade 7; my teacher is out sick, substitute teaches a bit of our French lesson or math less and suddenly she turns to us and says “How about we watch a video while you work?” And what does she put on, a read-aloud of a father and daughter, reading the A Bad Case Of The Stripes book. With constant zoom ins of the pictures on the big screen SmartBoard. I excused myself to go to the restroom and walked around the school, hoping to forget it again. I was shaking and wanted to cry. I’ve never really told anyone aside from my friend and my mom but they’ve probably both forgot it. It’s really strange how I like horror now, I don’t like all body horrors but I love Junji Ito and tons of physiological horror films. Maybe this is a reason I like horror, it reminds me of my first real fear. Long story short, scary book. Me cry. Me get better. Me cry again. And now I’m relatively okay with it. Hearing other people talk about their demons made me relive mine, in both good and bad ways. That’s what horror can do, it can connect people and engage their ideas even when they might not be able to fully relate to your experience. *Fun fact: The author of the book, David Shannon, also made the “David” series that is talked about in Diary of a wimpy kid. No wonder Greg grew up a little weird 😅

[@o.siouxsie]

You made me look it up and yeah! Valid! It's low-key terrifying. Especially for kids. You made me look back into my own childhood fears and it's actually kinda fun. Maybe that's what truly brought us together as horror fans, in a twisted way

[@jaredarenas7542]

Wow your comparison about the book being a precursor to consuming Junji Ito's work later down the line is spot ON. I think I tried being one of the "cooler" kids, and would pretend it wouldn't bother me, but in actuality I was terrified to even be in the same classroom as a copy of the book. Still mourning the fact that David Shanon never ending up being a horror illustrator/author, because his work would've ate

[@fortytwo4-2]

DUDE I REMEMBER THE STRIPE BOOK! That was a bit of a funky book series

[@ChrisWake]

My wife sleeps with her eyes semi open. Wish I knew that before we got married 😅 Thumbnail face is basically her when I woke up early in our marriage. Saw her semi open eyes staring point blank at me. Couldn't even move I was so scared lmao

[@Angeldust3005]

Oh my god

[@worldwidefunnyguy]

i’m sorry that’s HILARIOUS. as a kid whenever i’d sleep in my parents bed it would be light enough that i could barely make out their faces, my mom sleeps with her eyes closed but she has deep set eyes so it would look like two black holes and it’d scare me so bad lmao

[@crisptomato9495]

@@worldwidefunnyguy that’s worse than open eyes lmao

[@BallZackKisser]

Now I gotta watch out for semi-open eye sleepers

[@bubblegumnnebula]

Thank you so much for mentioning OCD. I also suffer from OCD and intrusive thoughts, and you really put into words how detrimental they can be. In my early years, I would also picture scary images to the point where I also couldn't function. It didn't have to be scary images either, just anything that disturbed me. For example, in the very first episode of the TV show Bates Motel. If you know, you know. I was 12ish at the time and it really reprogrammed my thinking, especially since I'm a woman. I couldn't sleep at night, and when I did, I dreamt of that happening to me. At 12 years old. As I got older, the thoughts turned very disturbing, particularly with me being a perpetrator. There was a time where I genuinely thought there was something wrong with me. I questioned if I was on the psychopathy spectrum. It wasn't until I was diagnosed with ADHD and subsequently OCD did it all make sense. Those were intrusive thoughts. I can't thank you enough for talking about OCD, because it's something that used to bring me great emotional distress. More people need to normalize intrusive thoughts so people with OCD feel less isolated.

[@Myrddin-sz2hc]

I was thinking the same thing as someone who also suffers with the disorder. A lot of people overlook this aspect of OCD and it’s refreshing to hear someone bring it up so sincerely.

[@Dingusdankus]

Everyone has intrusive thoughts

[@goethia213]

@@Dingusdankus yes, dingus, but with OCD they are constant life impairing obsessions.

[@thepinkestpigglet7529]

Ive had OCD pretty much my entire life. It fucking sucks. Whenever I start reading a book or watching something and it turns a direction I'm not comfortable with I can't just put it down/turn it off and stop thinking about it. And that's all anyone can tell me to do is just don't read/watch it. But my brain won't let me. And I have a form called dermitilomania which means I pick my skin. I can tell you where this came from with 100% certainty. It started when I was 10 from two short pieces of media. One part was a scary stories to tell in the dark story. The Red Spot. The other part was a gag from that Mad cartoon a few years back. The one where the guy pops a pimple. This story and this gag entered my brain just as I was getting acne. Uhg. Why were these considered appropriate to show to children?

[@kawaiiconcept7479]

that was me with coneheads before I got on medication, I couldn't stop picturing myself with a conehead. It froze me with my hand on my head unable to do my nightime routine.

[@illidanstormrage9149]

Bro, my traumatic picture was a shaking chair jumpscare video lol. A chair is shaking and then the exorcist crawls out of nowhere and the face is a jumpscare. Shit used to scare me so bad. I remember showing it to my friends hyping it up like its the scariest thing ive seen and they were utterly disappointed when they saw what it was hahaha. Also, I read the description Spikima!

[@Otanru]

Me too ahhhhhh the way it just SPEED CRAWLS into the frame instead of a simple cut just makes it worse

[@jinggu.]

mine was of a woman eating her own eye. video titled "hungry woman" or something saved on a flip phone. edit: found it kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3fHiGavibKFn5o

[@adamjensen9463]

@@jinggu. Dang, really went out and looked for it, huh?

[@jinggu.]

@adamjensen9463 byeah

[@ploshoploshm1582]

The build up of this video was sooo perfect, from the thumbnail only showing half of the face to the clips of Longlegs that provided the build up to the reveal, that also has now made me appreciate the horror of that movie a little more, this video got my heart pumping fast waiting to finally see that dreaded image that traumatized u when u were a kid. Finally seeing it, it didnt disappoint and was sorta worried id also similarly become morbidly obsessed with the image until u began to put more context to the image and it became more of a fascinating piece of obscure Korean horror cinema. This totally squashed the anxiety that the image initially inspired but which goes to show that the scariest things in horror have no origin and no explanation. I think as I became a fan of horror films, I began to appreciate the filmmaking and the artifice of it all, and slowly i began to become less afraid of them as i knew the images i were seeing on screen were created by human beings with an origin and context. But occasionally, there are instances where a single shot of a face is enough to bring me genuine terror these days (an example would be Lake Mungo’s face which made an appearance early on in the video’s montage) and the face here in this video essay is now one of them, the only context building up to the image was your very relatable childhood story of finding scary images online, smth most of us who grew up with the early internet could relate to. Seriously, I applaud your editing and narration skills. This video was scarier then most horror films for me these days and thank god you didn’t end the video right after u showed the image or ill be unable to sleep for days. 😅

[@SpikimaMovies]

What a fun review. Thank you. I will say though, that's exactly how I ended the video in part 1 😆, with the reveal!

[@ploshoploshm1582]

@@SpikimaMovies i just watched that video right after writing my comment another great one, keep up the good work!

[@airjaws_8922]

I had this same experience but with a very famous historical image. It’s a very sad story of a Boy named Emmet Till who was brutally murdered over something he never did. The photo of his body/face has scarred me for the past 6 years I try and avoid it at all costs but every now and then I see it and it sends a fight or flight response for me. Knowing the backstory of the image also didn’t help me. I’m happy to know I’m not alone with finding a singular image so frightening. Also it’s hard for me to ever talk about this issue since it’s a very common image especially in the U.S. where racism is a hot topic.

[@Carter-v8f]

I had a multi-year long period of fear and depression, but for a really strange reason: I was afraid of my own mind, afraid that I wasn't even in control of it. This led to perpetual anxiety and terror, and the worst part is that I couldn't escape it, because it was me. I terrified myself. I don't know how it eventually ended, I suppose I matured, and the torment ended. This is why now movies like Smile hit hard, because I die inside when I see these characters go through for much paranoia, and the fear of oneself.

[@bio6588]

Spikima feeding us nightmare noodles!

[@WholesomeDungareeWearer]

when I was roughly 8 years old I remember seeing an ad on tv for one channel's halloween season, where they showed a few seconds from all the films they were gonna be showing over the following weeks. There was one clip that was probably a second long, with a clown-like puppet with a narrow white head being lifted up outside a window, appearing from below frame, being filmed from inside. I never saw that clip again and have never found out what movie it's from since, but it gave me nightmares and a fear of the dark and windows for months. I'd love to find out what it was because I still remember it to this day

[@Inthepotwithdiogenes]

Tinnitus trigger at 4:20 until 4:28 for my fellow headphone listeners!

[@3BraincellsInATrenchcoat]

The image I was terrified of when I was younger was smile dog, specifically that red, scary version with giant mouth. I couldn't sleep because of this image and I still kinda avoid it now

[@laurisaarinen1126]

I was pretty scared of smile.jpg also, but the older one with a creepy smiling husky. I thought the red one just looked dumb.

[@mal3k1th]

I have the silliest example of this that happened to me. One of my earliest memories is watching tv on my parents bedroom when I was, at most, 3 years old. I remember this hairy, almost yeti like creature talking in front of a white background. The image haunted me for decades. Then, just a few years ago, learned that it was some sort of commercial featuring John Lennon LMAO

[@lovessecretdomain444]

If you find it please send a link!!

[@jakbec3588]

Not many pics online give me that dread feeling like I used to get when I was younger. I try often to find something to invoke that feeling but I never get there. This image did give me that feeling including the chill up my spine, so thank you for that!

[@mistydayremainsofthejudgment]

I have not seen that face before, but I had a similar reaction to a screamer image that was unfortunately very common. I too lived in fear of the fear of encountering it again.

[@m4imaimai46]

I just recently confronted a picture that had been haunting me from 2013 when i saw it as a kid (it was the silent hill movie poster). For the longest time, it gave me this primal fear of running away, my heart would literally start beating crazy just because i was traumatized from it as a kid. Thanks to that, i never think of shaming people over fearing a picture, you never know the whole story as to why its so scarring.

[@vichoswett5053]

As someone who suffers from OCD and intrusive thoughts since 10 years old, in can relate so much with your experience. There are things that despite how scary are to us, we keep revisiting in ansious fear.

[@LeastInsaneUtsu-PFan]

Dude. I had a similar experience. A video from Danger Dolan called “15 paranormal beasts that may still be out there” had the most terrifying thumbnail I’d ever seen, so much so that I remember it to this day! This was something like 7 years ago when I first saw it, and this shit HAUNTED my dreams for a good two weeks.

[@hayleynoellebroders8247]

I wish I hadn't just searched that up 🤢

[@LeastInsaneUtsu-PFan]

@ oh, it’s as bad as I remember :(

[@hayleynoellebroders8247]

@LeastInsaneUtsu-PFan my brain must have put up a trauma safeguard because the details are hazy but I'm too scared to go back and check again. It's like the Russian Sleep Experiment monster all over again 😭

[@alexiscollins8967]

You just reminded me of my favorite childhood KZbinr, he too also changed my life.

[@Angeldust3005]

Danger dolan holy shit that takes me back

[@youngdon6924]

Junji ito art sometimes leaves me stunned, especially the one with the child with teeth, the one manga artist that does drifting classroom too

[@kdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkdkd]

Over the years I've come to notice and appreciate that my brain seems to deliberately "forget" potentially disturbing imagery. I'd say I have a generally good memory and can memorize and recall names, jokes, faces and images reasonably well, even over years. But whenever it's images like this one, or things I wish I had never seen, it's as if my brain leaves a little note saying "Sorry, here was something you'd rather not memorize". The reference or association to the image remains, but instead of the usual colorful painting, only a black and white scribble remains. This is obviously a coping mechanism and I'm sure many people have this. I just sometimes fear that my subconscious retains all the bad stuff somewhere and one day it all comes out.

[@jacobgong691]

I had something similar happen to me in 2011 on a flight in china, when i was 9. The TV was playing an animation about infectious disease control, and growing up i have always been terrified of safety videos, warning signs, things like that. I was really scared by the video, especially when it started showing animations of the kinds of symptoms the disease would cause (fever, diarrhea etc.), but it was the shot of “vomit”, where a man was puking over a toilet and his face was completely discolored, that immediately terrified me and i had to duck down and felt a physical punch to my stomach. I could not sleep that night even after landing at 5 am, and for around 2 month’s experiences near PTSD-esque symptoms like reoccurring nightmares and randomly crying during the day. In the current day i don’t think i will be as terrified of the image anymore, but unfortunately i have not been able to find it

[@archiox0628]

A Spikima video is always a great accompaniment while I work. EDIT: The thought of kids going around the early internet using search words like "ghost" and "spirits" is both relatable and adorable

[@xaifore.]

Pretty mainstream but im sure yall remember the momo thing, bird woman with big eyes. To this day I cannot look at that image and im 17 now. When the online trend surrounding her came about I mustve been around 13 and it all scared the everloving shit out of me, the idea of it being snuck into kids youtube videos and telling them to do horrible things, and just looking into that things eyes shook me. Mustve been something like the uncanny valley effect, which doesnt normally scare me, but that image in particular is truly my poison. It mustve kept me up for weeks when I first saw it, no horror movie monster or image has ever scared me quite like that thing.

[@xxxxxx-ij8wf]

If it helps, the face catually belongs to a statue that is actually called Ubume, baded on yokai bird women that come from dead mothers (i think?). The statue has boobs and chicken legs. It's very silly from a normal angle (even if the face still gives me a prey run reaction) and some fanart has made me love it instead

[@EE-iv5ej]

When I was 7, we tend to buy these bootleg DVDs tha contain pirated movies in them. One of them has the poster of a movie on the back that scared me so bad I had my parents cut it out. And it wasn't an instant scare, I saw it multiple times for a few days and it just continued to make me uncomfortable that my parents ended up scribbling it, and then later cutting it out from the packaging because despite being scribbled I swear I can still see it. Years later at age of 9-10, we bought another bootleg DVD containing this movie again, but with a different, less scary poster. When I returned home from school one day my dad was watching this movie, and it wasn't scary at all at first. But then all hell breaks loose as I begin to hear screams and sounds of violence. I wasn't watching though, I'm not seeing what's happening on the TV, so my dad is merely just describing what he is seeing. Me not seeing but only hearing it, and my dad's description of it, brought another wave of fear that would haunt me once again for the years to come. I feared the existence of this movie, I don't wanna see the poster of this movie, or any clips of this movie that I see the title and thumbnail of when surfing 2008 KZbin back then, etc. As years passed, I slowly started to have a fascination with horror, usually in games. And slowly I start to become curious at the shiz that scared me, and it was when I was 15 that I went out of my way to actively search for the movie on the internet. I saw it, the posters, the screenshots of what it actually looked like, and then eventually I started watching scenes of the movie on KZbin, including those that I heard back then that frightened me. What I felt during this is terror, but also excitement. I want more of it so badly, it was so cool. This movie that I used to fear now became one of my obsessions almost instantly. That movie, is fricking 28 Weeks Later, and also it's predecessor 28 Days Later too, but 28 Weeks was the movie my dad watched. Idk why I got creeped out by the posters as a kid, maybe the fact that it's a red face background with creepy eyes(?). Either way, it went from something I feared for years to one of my favorite movies of all time, and that fear all started from merely looking at the damn posters. Just hours later, the trailer for 28 Years Later just dropped, and I am so hyped in seeing it soon. This video and me making this comment couldn't be any more perfect LOL Amazing video Spikima! Have a good holidays!

[@laurisaarinen1126]

You know, the trailer for 28 Days Later really scared me as a kid, but only to the point that i was thrilled to see it a couple of years later. It's one of my first horror movie experiences and a big reason i became a horror fan. It's still among my favorites. I'm so excited for 28 Years Later!

[@lsaille1]

Thanks for the shoutout. I hope it's been a cathartic experience to revisit the film and unpack what it meant to you.

[@renav.3239]

I went through a very similar experience with the first Wyoming Incident video. First saw it in like 2007ish, it scared me so badly i didn't sleep for a week. It haunted me for like a year, and it wasn't until much much later that i grew to appreciate horror and watched a breakdown video of the arg it was a part of, that i learned to appreciate what it was about the vid that scared me senseless. Here's to horror. It can make us grow

[@terrotorotbart8319]

Something that made the Wyoming Incident so terrifying at the time was just the fact that it felt completely plausible. Just about every creepy "Top 10 TV hijackings" video back then brought it up as though such an incident really happened, and if you didn't know better (like me back then!) then it was perfectly believable.

[@zagluna]

Thank you for sharing this in the way you did, it's so relatable and telling it as a story with such careful editing in this way really let us feel it along with you. I hope having the context for the image feels like a relief and a de-fanging of the fear.

[@alexmae4125]

Shifting the perspective of your fear is so inspiring, amazing work as always. These videos are so addicting!!

[@markoherceg5512]

Please do more of theseee this is goated content spike!

[@novemberguy7087]

Facing a fear similar to this and overcoming it was one of the best feelings I have ever had. Nice video.

[@IIllytch321nonadinfinitum]

The original Stephen Gammell art for the story "The White Wolf" in the book "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" did something similar to me in my youth. I saw it when I was around eight years old and it happened to trigger an intense fear response in me at the time for whatever reason. Perhaps something to do with the distinct eyes and sharp yet vague features. Took me a few years to overcome it. He's an awesome artist and if I ever doodle I pay homage to Gammel's art style by utilizing some of his style. I learned to love it.

[@npc5z]

Ahh yes! I was scrolling through to see if anyone mentioned those books before I posted about them myself. I LOVED those books as a kid. I loved the gut punchiness of the short story endings and I found the content genuinely scary (and therefore entertaining), unlike the Goosebumps books my peers were reading. Anyway, the face from "The Dream" from Scary Stories 3 got me the most. I HATED that picture. I would do my best to pinch two pages together and turn both so I could avoid it. But then I'd want to read the story again, so occasionally I would accidentally catch another glimpse. Speaking of Stephen Gammell in general, his illustration for "Oh Susannah!" is just so badass.

[@njdotson]

I was most afraid of the jeff the killer image, but I thought it was cool how freaky the art was in those books. I don't remember the name of the scariest one to me, but it was just some wrinkly and deformed dude's face with small eyes that were off in just the right way

[@IIllytch321nonadinfinitum]

@@npc5z I adopted similar methods to avoid looking at the wolf (I think "The Thing" got me a bit, too) when re-reading some of the stories before getting over the fear factor. After I initially put the book away since I first saw it after a few years and turned the page to it, I nearly had a heart attack, heh. His art style is awesome.

[@IIllytch321nonadinfinitum]

@@njdotson Was the image you're referring to from "The Thing"? If so, that one was up there on my shit list, heh.

[@JonFawkes]

spikima feeding us nightmare noodles! Just wanted to recall my own haunting memory (and maybe see if anyone knows what I'm talking about). Pretty sure it was a movie, really old movie (late 80s or early 90s), I think it was one of those crime movies. A guy is being tortured and shaken down for information, his hand is forced into a vat of liquid nitrogen, and then when he still doesn't cooperate another guy smashes the arm with a crowbar (maybe a hammer?). I remember really distinctly the guy crying "why did you do that?" and it was a brutal scene, definitely way to brutal for a 6 year old to be watching. I thought it was the Godfather but I watched that recently and that wasn't it. A google search brings up Snowpiercer, but that isn't it either. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Or maybe I witnessed and actual mob shakedown at some point in my childhood

[@mystic507]

The grudge was definitely a movie that traumatized me as a child. I still can’t watch it today lol

[@roseslove1362]

My boogeyman that still stays with me isn't a picture or a video (even though I probably have some stored away in my mind. Yay for unrestricted access to the internet!), it's music. From the game, Earthbound, Giygas' Final Battle theme was already terrifying enough to the ear (and having the fetus/melting face imagery associated with it), but what terrified me to my core was the story behind the creation. As a child, the creator of the game, Shigesato Itoi, had accidentally wandered into the wrong movie theatre. The scene he witnessed upon walking in was the brutal murder of a woman, but he thought it was a sexual assault. Just from the point of view as a child, not knowing what you're looking at, and somehow incorporating the same level and type of horror into a final always astounded me (but again, also scared me).

[@twentyfourjars]

Spikima feeding us nightmares noodles again today :-0 thank you for all of your content- it's so beautifully well done and curated. the details in your editing process are not missed. i feel like i have seen an image similar to the one in discussion when i was little but animated maybe? i could just be misremembering. anyways. i'm glad you found some kind of closure.

[@roastingnerd8545]

I have a similar experience, but it's a sound. The sound in American Horror Story, I can't really describe it, its the opening sound, it's been a while but everytime I hear something similar to it, rhythmically or even a twinge of it, my skin crawls. I once heard it while I was walking down a street in the middle of the day and ran as if my life depended on it (this is when I was a kid), turns out its a washing machine drumming. Fear is a peculiar thing, isn't it? It not just a visual thing, it compromises all of your senses.

[@lovessecretdomain444]

Wow, I have watched your channel for years and this is my favorite video you've ever made. You also managed to end it in the most effective, eeriest possible way. The provided context of Korean film history made the video not as creepy anymore but that last line brought back one final scare to leave us with. I love being scared, I always have, and in 2015 and 2016 all I did was look for scary things online obsessively. I was 12 at the time. In fall of 2019, when I was 15, this reemerged. I have always had a phobia of facial disfigurements and I saw various real life photos related to this phobia that traumatized me for months and months in a way similar to what you described. I was constantly terrified of running into it again. And often times I did, through my KZbin recommended, and I freaked out and thought it was a bad omen. What's worse is every one of these photos was real, of a real person with a real story. I've fortunately moved on and also recovered from the myriad mental health issues I already had to begin with, which the pictures didn't cause, but which made me especially sensitive to trauma. But even now I never look at those pictures anymore. Because of my real-life phobia providing a basis for all of the photos I find scary, I didn't think I would find the picture you showed scary, but I actually did! For me, it's because of the cold, ambitious expression staring down from a higher angle, the emptiness in the eyes, the shadows around the eyes, etc. It's really a uniquely creepy picture. It stands out a lot when compared to the search results for Asian ghosts you used as examples. I can see why it scared you so much Edit: Forgot to mention, yes I also do have OCD. It started as a very young child and wasn't caused by the pictures but it made it easy for my brain to obsess over my fear of seeing the pictures again

[@kariiifilms]

I had a really weird childhood fear. So my childhood stuffed animal that I got given to me when I was born was a stuffed bear with 2 little eyes and a nose made out of the same thread. One night, I tilted the head to where it looked like the nose was one of the eyes and the right eye was the nose. It terrified me for no reason and that's kind of haunted me. Oh also I had a huge fear of Ms Piggy from the muppets and she showed up as my sleep paralysis demon when I was 3..

[@Rusty_Katana]

The Momo face is by far one of the scariest faces i’ve ever seen tho

[@chloelysette4850]

It’s so interesting to hear someone else’s story which is very similar to my own. For me it was the face of Noah from the American ‘The Ring’ remake. Just the quick flash at the end was enough to traumatise me for years (21 to be exact). I was finally able to face my fear last year and now I’m no longer scared. I think it’s a survival thing now I’m a parent as in, I don’t have time to be scared of things that can’t harm me 😅 great video!

[@sheepsflan]

This reminds me of a youtube thumbnail I haven't seen in a decade. If I remember correctly, it was a black and white photo of a screaming child and he had an eyeball in his throat. It sounds silly now but it shook me to my core when I was 10. Also few years before that I unfortunately stumbled across Username 666 and sobbed in my mom's arms all night and wouldn't walk in empty rooms

[@sepiarain]

Congrats on the Mubi link. Been just picking movies at random from Mubi for a couple of years now. Never regretted a single one.

[@chaihuahua]

i know these are incredibly cliche but for me, i felt this way about specifically mangle from fnaf and slenderman. tbf i was a kid but i was so terrified of seeing them in dark hallways to the point of having full-on anxiety attacks trying to walk around my house at night

[@romerobjuancarlos]

Wake up babe, Spikima has published a hyper-personal video about a super-obscure film that shattered his childhood.

[@jusk8lp]

It was probably 1996 or 1997. My family visited somebody’s house. For whatever reason, the homeowner had a large framed close-up photograph of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from her eyes. As a young Catholic, I came to learn shortly thereafter from TV infotainment shows that such phenomena is supposed to be miraculous. It didn’t stop that image from invading my thoughts for weeks after that visit. Years later, I was browsing the Reader’s Digest Almanac of the Uncanny, where, to my horror, there is a photograph of Therese Neumann in the corner of a centerspread about stigmata. Therese Neumann was a woman from the 20th century who bled profusely from her head, hands, and her eyes when she received the wounds. I loved that centerspread, but I couldn’t look at it. Her photograph just scares her for whatever reason. I hate that National Geographic showed video footage of her on their Is It Real? episode on stigmata.

[@samanthatopia]

This editing is insane

[@bongosock]

For me, it was the vampire head in the original Salem's Lot TV series. That became an intrusive feature of my inner life for a number of years. The horror book: "Let's Go Play at the Adam's" also genuinely damaged me as a teenager :( I made my peace with Salem's Lot, but I still wish I had never read that book.

[@CallunFilm]

I've been wanting to watch Womans Wail for years now. I love Korean horror and came across the same image as you and ever since then ive been eagerly trying to find it. Unfortunately due to it basically being unknown in the west it's very difficult finding it with subtitles

[@rottenfrogbones663]

For me my traumatizing childhood picture was the ahenobarboushenoside image, yall know what im talking about. That thing haunted me for YEARS I even got crazy insomnia from it

[@m.nic.5080]

A picture that used to haunt me similarly as a kid was the “manbearpig” photo shown at the end of the “Candle Cove” video. Logically I knew it was a man in a big mask and bear hat. But that picture terrified me. NOW, as an adult, I have a different photo I’m avoiding. I only saw it once and it was in a KZbin clickbait thumbnail for one of those “full stop punctuation” meme videos. It’s a severed head, I guess? But something about it terrifies me and I can’t even remember why. But if I ever saw it again I’d cry lol

[@BishopIndoorOutdoor]

I remember searching up candle cove on google images and seeing the manbearpig image. I was 13 but it still scared me.

[@janirikhard4881]

A very interesting video. I might think it was not easy to make and share. And I know exactly what you went through. Wish I didn`t, but I do. I`ve been interested in everything scary, weird, abnormal and horrible as long as I was old enough to get interested in anything, and when I was 12 I read a graphic horror novel (not going to tell which one) and became to curse the day I did so. It haunted me for over 20 years - not all the time, but now and then. And it was bad, let me tell you. I was scared of being scared, just like you say, and thought I would lose control and go completely insane. The worst thing was that I felt drawn to those images and the text. They lured me. The graphic novel became hard to find, but it was based on a short story, and the book containing it was readily available. So I read it, and it was almost as bad. Then after a few years I read it again. And so the cycle continued. Then became the internet and search engines, and I couldn`t resist trying to find images of the graphic novel online. I found only one or two at first, but it was well enough. Finally it got to the point where almost everything I saw in my daily life reminded me of them. At last I understood I have OCD and most likely have had it all my life, or at least as long as I can remember. I also was getting quite angry for the fact that the damn story had such an effect on me. I knew the only way to get rid of the intrusive thoughts about it was to hug the whole thing to death, so to speak. So, I searched all the images I could find online. I bought the book again. I wrote about the story. I drew and painted pictures of it. I even talked about it in therapy. And then, when I was about 35 years old already, I was finally free.

[@Paddy420]

Good Lord, for a moment I thought this would be your last video ("say a proper goodbye") while I was searching the comment section before watching the video because I thought you already made this video and this is for some reason a reupload🙈 I'm relieved it's not 😅

[@spicysmooth2]

Appreciate the Lake Mungo refrence

[@ridemylightning]

the use of longlegs clips is so fucking perfect i love you for this

[@Masanumi]

Spikima feeding us nightmare noodles. I just finished a university class on film history and it is 9 p.m. and spikima is uploading. My night of movies just began...

[@theunsweetkarmaway]

This is very coincidental and weird, my friend. I am 61 years old, and I have been going down the rabbit hole recently about something that terrified me when I was five years old, in 1969. Confronting it now, I find myself remembering the fear more than remembering the image, and I dragged down. It’s original source to sort of detox myself from this buried anxiety. I may make a video about it myself.

[@roygbiv9038]

Omfg, that movie looked awesome, its sucks that the original cut is unavailable.

[@sedox3145]

For me It was the exorcist/scary maze face, the most iconic one. It was freaking everywhere, every video of every kind would sneak that jumpscare in, so much so It traumatized me to the point that whenever I see like one of those illusion videos that say "stare at this point" I don't look, wait for the video to end and then watch It. As a kid I would lie in bed with my eyes closed thinking "she's there, she's right there, when I open my eyes she'll be there, inches from me, staring into my soul". I even thought I felt her breathing on me when It was my breathing. So F you KZbin of 2000s, but thanks a lot for all the other stuff

[@Xandalorian]

My dad sent me a prank with this when i was 14 and i still wont watch the exorcist, everytime i saw it after that it would make my heart sink into my stomach, My ocd would force it upon me anytime i closed my eyes to sleep or in the shower to the point i thought it was actual demons trying to torment me, i would recite Psalm 23 to myself. I didnt understand why my brain would show me her image but it was almost like the fear of encountering her in my dreams, I like my brain was showing me what I might come across if I fell asleep. What's wild is despite it scaring the shit out of me i found it funny, would've never have expected at the moment that it would fuck me up for so many years 😂

[@imaminidonut2792]

Oh my.. To be honest, I've ever seen old japanese films being talked about,and HK ghost films but never know about Korea 's old films and this one. Thank you so much for educating us about this. I now know that so Korea has old horror films too. Thank you

[@wintergirll]

Thanks for passing your fear onto us. Much appreciated.

[@Akashuhh]

This video was amazing and made me think to a piece of media i was afraid of too when i was younger. I tried to look it up in recent years but couldn't find anything; but it was of a headless doctor(?) that seemed to stalk people and/or while trying to find his head(?), and for years as a kid i was fully convinced that character was following me. Makes me wanna do a deep dive and try to find the movie, just to come to terms with it all these years later.

[@angellane1848]

Headless horseman? The one with Johnny depp

[@Akashuhh]

@@angellane1848 definitely wasn't that movie, was more like a csi type? was very medical/detective based

[@pudding7876]

Lovely essay as always ❤ Spikima is indeed feeding us with nightmare noodles

[@_neon-xeon_3966]

The thing is, it really helps alot to just think that "okay okay thats just an actress with makeup none of it's real" yk, that common coping mechanism when watching horror movies and stuff Definitely what I kept thinking to avoid being traumatized when I was forced to watch the Jeepers Creepers movies as a kid lol Also damn, isn't it strange how the actress in that movie, has absolutely no idea and most likely will never know that her role, her photo, her face in one of the movies she made, affected a person for most of his life, and he has dedicated deep analysis videos trying to dissect the trauma inflicted on him Idk I find that kinda fascinating, we don't even know if this actress is still alive, but yeah, passed on or not, she definitely will never know how truly impactful that one shot of her face is to people out there

[@DruDruia]

I have been patiently waiting for this

[@marzwarren-ld4ye]

I've been terrified of that one stupid russian sleep experiment picture since i was a kid. Even knowing it's a halloween prop, there's a primal aversion to the image that i can't shake. There's also one I associate with the 'Ahenobarbes Henocide' or how ever they spelt it facebook account thing that happened a few years(?) ago. For some reason it just really hit my brain hard and it's also caused problems with my OCD lol. There's something reassuring in knowing that other people have had similar experiences to that, as it's easy to feel like I was "over reacting". I've looked at thousands of 'scary images' as i've always loved things like horror movies and creepy pasta, but those two for some reason did irreparable harm to my psyche i think. Good video too! I've always been fascinated by these jumps are images and their origins and always love learning more.

[@shaymayo6]

i was haunted for years by a scene i saw in a movie as a kid. a ghost town, there was a someone lying with the face to the wall, and then he turns to the camera (and the main characters i guess) and they see he's some king of ghost.

[@marshalsea000]

Had a similar experience with "The Abominable Dr. Phibes", watched way too young as a child and the Frog Mask scene really got to me - utter helplessness of it. Spent 30 years trying to track it down and even the internet couldn't twig. Randomly stumbled over and just like that all the horror had gone.

[@liminalquartz]

I just started searching for all those obscure things that scared me shitless as a kid recently! Had a weirdly similar experience with Horror Express, which turned out to be an amazing movie and I was scared by the white eyed, bloody faces throughout - i had never seen your picture before but was surprised how similar they were!

[@TheStarrySky13]

hello spikima, your last video & this one are the first of yours i've seen. this feeling is incredibly relatable to me- while i don't have OCD i do suffer from intense paranoia and i have my own online jumpscare face that haunts me in a very similar way. this video gives me some hope to find the face in it's original context and to hopefully come to some sort of peace with it's existence. thank you

[@laurisaarinen1126]

I have commented this before, in your other video, but i cannot overstate this. It's bizarre since i was not a kid, far from it. I think i was 24 or 25, and in fact a big horror enjoyer up to that point i must add... Then i saw the KZbin video "There Is Nothing" and everything changed. PTSD. I was afraid to just go on the internet, especially KZbin if i accidentally came across it. I constantly had nightmares about it. I could not stop myself trying to remember the face of that woman. I have OCD also but it was there since i was little. In more recent years i have forced myself to watch bits of it again to face my fear, and while it's not as bad anymore, it's still too much... I had to learn about the video to try and make sense of it all but if anything, learning the background story only made it worse in a way.

[@devi67r]

the way you built up dread for the first half was so good

[@LuisSierra42]

It scared the living s.. out of me ngl

[@AyubuKK]

That face is pretty unnerving to me. Currently, the story of Oiwa is my favorite ghost story. And the haunted house of the Villisca Axe Murders.

[@NekoAKAJeff]

I read descriptions! Thank you for sharing! Love your content.

[@derpleyew]

I used your mubi link for a 30 day trial and was able to watch The Substance thanks to you, also shouted out your channel and link to my friends. Thanks dude 😎

[@TheGirlInFandomWorld]

Gods, you just described my experience with OCD! Won't name the specifics, but it got exceptionally worse after my mom (the pillar of my entire family's mental stability, tbh) died very suddenly. I'm fortunate enough to have insurance that covers mental health and my medications, otherwise I probably wouldnt still be here.

[@timdornaus]

loved this follow up. was interested to hear about the korean movie people talked about in the comments of the last video

[@RiyoshidaShirokawa]

i just clicked the video, knowing its a follow up on the last video and im lowkey scared to watch it lmao.

[@ObiJakobe]

This was me with slender man. I was paranoid- seeing him out of the corner of my eye and running home from school

[@mono90286]

The cover of Terrified (2017) screwed me up.

[@austincde]

I have visual hallucinations when I cannot sleep at night so I literally get jump scared and it is inescapable😂😂😂 the good news is that it usually happens because I NEED to go to the bathroom, after that they go away 👻 💨

[@jinggu.]

your editing is insane brother

[@earthtosam1982]

Idk why, but for like a year one image of Jared Leto's Joker really creeped me out, the one for Suicide Squad where he mirrors the pose from The Killing Joke. I don't know what it was but my stomach dropped every time I saw him and I was in like 9th grade. It doesn't bother me at all now and his Joker was terrible, but every time I saw it for like a year I had to close my computer because I was so startled.

[@lovessecretdomain444]

oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2015/04/JOKER_LETO.jpg Was it this? That scared me too!

[@EmlynBoyle]

For me, it was a scene in the original Salem's Lot tv movie that terrified me as a child. The newly undead Margie Glick, all yellow eyes, purple white skin, and wolfish fangs...glaring angrily at the camera. My mother told me I was literally screaming for about five minutes (and I had to sleep with my parents that night). Thanks for this, and introducing us to a lost gem too!

[@irenekatona7856]

My childhood boogieman was the computer killing this woman by turning her into a machine while she’s still alive in Superman 3 😅 very “I have no mouth and I must scream”

[@jsnification]

Superman 3.

[@irenekatona7856]

@@jsnification you’re right 👍🏻

[@amandafrazier9724]

That scene in Critters where the little red eyes come up right on the other side of the dark window from the mom scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. For years I was creeped out by dark windows.

[@tallspartan117]

As a child I walked into the living room with my parents watching I am Legend with the scene where he was in the dark building with the huddled zombies. I remember it scaring for weeks after seeing it in my nightmares. As a adult I watched it and the basically the whole film I had a sense of dread I haven't felt in a very long time and my heart was pounding the closer it got to that scene. I knew in reality it really wasn't that scary (I'm a avid horror enjoyer) but it still got me good. Now that I am thinking of it many of my dreams I feel have been shaped by that film most likely. I have had many apocalyptic type dreams with malicious humanoid creatures.

[@jackardor]

spikima feeding us nightmare noodles. (Yes, some of us do look for and read your descriptions! Thanks for all that you do!)

[@DemonWarp65]

I have been a horror junkie ever since I high school, and it takes a lot to really shake me to my core. So, for me, my "One Picture" moment was when I discovered The Boiled One Phenomenon video. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I've seen far scarier, but I honestly can't remember.

[@sarah0325_]

growing up, my older brother loved Edward Scissorhands, yes the Johnny Depp one. He's only a year older than me but at that age we were worlds apart. He was probably seven going on eight when I walked into the living room in the broad daylight, I was probably six, and the ominous nature of Edward in an abandoned creepy building did it for me. The whole movie terrified me, I couldn't look at the DVD case without being horrified for weeks, even years later when everything was moved to streaming services I had to quickly scroll past the cover of it as an eleven/twelve year old because Depp's face was my childhood sandman. Any movie or media that had any remote gore was like the end of peace for the younger me, think Maze Runner even. That first scene of the boy that runs back into the maze made me so disturbed my family changed the movie for that night. I grew up with a sci-fi loving mum who watched Annihilation with me, the scenes of the camera footage had the eleven year old me sobbing, shaking, maybe even slight suicidal and irrationally afraid of, as you said it- being afraid. Overtime I actually forgot all about this, it took a few years from then for all those movies to actually become some of my favourites, by the time I was about fourteen gore barely phased me and I slowly divulged into the thriller/sci-fi/horror genres. Now, movie nights with my mum aren't a dreaded thing because I enjoy the genres I was once so afraid of. Your longlegs video made me remember all of my, somewhat foolish but very real childhood trauma. It's interesting, looking back and seeing how much of it coincided with other grim aspects of my childhood that the younger me never noticed. Over the last year me and my brother slowly grew apart, he moved out and I rarely see him despite the fact that were enrolled into the same college. I recently saw a post of his when he went to watch longlegs, the caption merely being 'longlegs was mid', I have yet to watch the movie, but a part of me wonders if it was so mid to him because he never suffered the same childhood horror I did This all feels so interesting in retrospect, about a week ago I broke down crying in font of my mum due to burnout and stress (am a stem student yall), and ended up blurting out about how my brain never seems to shut off, that insomnia is worse than it ever has been, and the even sleeping is a stressful and borderline terrifying thing. It didn't take almost five years of me telling her I had difficulties sleeping, it didn't take four year of saying it must be insomnia, it didn't take sleep paralysis and night terrors that had been waking up my whole family at night for years and it didn't take apnoea episodes during exam seasons in which I felt like death sat in my doorway. It actually took seeing me break for her to realise I've been suffering. She said something a long the lines of 'you never told me', but we all knew that wasn't true, it's been common knowledge between me and her that all my 'symptoms' point undeniably to PTSD, and she's finally found a trauma therapist for me the PTSD I know live with is pretty much unrelated to all my childhood horrors, but after your longlegs video, I realised that insomnia or the fear of sleep wasn't a recently developing case of mine, and the throughout my childhood I shook and shivered under my sheets under the fear that my sandman would walk through that door if I even dared to close my eyes. t's odd how some irrational childhood fears seem to manifest themselves into reality.

[@heysatan8]

While i didnt have a long lasting fear or trauma, i remember being affected by the website artbell when i was a kid. Me and my cousins found it and it had a bunch of images with ghosts in it and it scared the crap out of me. Also, the image you talk about reminds me a bit of David Lynch’s short film The Grandmother. It’s one of my favorite of lynch’s works.

[@stupendoushorrendous8258]

I was a very fearful child, and had plenty of boogeymen. But when I went to the movie theatre in 2013, at age 11, I saw the poster for Carrie. The one with Chloe Grace Moretz' face caked in that dark, almost black blood. I was horrified in a way I don't think I ever had been before. For weeks, maybe even months, it was impossible to go to sleep, for fear that she'd show up in my dreams. Of course now that I'm grown up, I'm not as easily frightened. In fact I'm a horror fan. But even now, looking at that picture gives me a little shiver. And I can never look for too long.

[@acleanshot]

For me, it's the Brothers Grimm's book we had, with all of their stories and illustrations. The one that marked me was in the Bluebeard story where the young woman stumbles into the cellar and sees the hanged wives for the first time. You dont see it well, its mostly darks red shades, but I was eight, and I still remember it.

[@magicspyglassakachloe3277]

I sadly can't find mine. It was when I was 12, 13, or 14. I had just obtained a tumblr account. I was HUGE into a A Series of Unfortunate Events fandom at the time (still am). I was browsing tumblr when I found a picture that disturbed me. To be honest if I looked at it now I likely wouldn't have the same reaction, but when I was a kid I wanted the best for the Baudelaires (the main characters of the series). So seeing them dead, with their main adversary (Count Olaf) Over a basin of their blood, with a eye over the scene (also drawn in blood) It sounds like something RIGHT OUT of a creepypasta! I swear it existed. It still pops in my head time to time. I don't know who made it, but I want to refind it.

[@erica4809]

ive had multiple of these ocd experiences: - the thumbnail of "my first pikachu" by some ordinary gamers (i believe it was from 2013?) - a picture of the antagonist from the horror movie "smiley" -"i am god" sonic creepypasta -"count the signs on the road" there were others but the thing each obsession had in common was that when i was going to bed, i kept lifting my head up and checking the space around me. i didnt feel safe enough to go to sleep

[@jessmos3]

No way! You made this into a whole video 🎉🎉🎉 (i saw this in your Longlegs vid) Btw spikima feeding us nightmare noodles

[@BlackVulcan22]

This was very dope! Thank u for sharing

[@ScannerOfficial]

The Editing in insanely good.

[@edienandy]

I used to be terrified of the DVD cover of Carrie (1976). That image of Sissy Spacek covered in blood, in that rigid pose, surrounded by fire traumatized me for literally years.