Transcript

Boo! Hahah! I scared you didn’t I?!? What a nice prank, to scare the shit out of someone when he least expects it. *Makes serious face* I have severe traumatic memories.

Screamers were a popular fad on the internet around the early to late 2000s, I remember, I was on it. It consisted of a video or game or whatever that would mislead you into thinking it was informative or innocent until suddenly, boom. You’d get a loud scream and any horror movie still that pops into your mind… 90% of them were Reagan from the exorcist. It was a wild west out there, you never know what wild shit you were going to find while exploring. I was JUST a little kid who loved playing Mario Kart Wii when I found this video of some guy getting a personal record on Daisy’s Circuit. Oh cool I can maybe try a new shortcut oh my god it’s Reagan Exorcist again. Who the hell puts a screamer in a Mario Kart Wii video?!?!! Who IS THE MADMAN who had that idea?? WAS IT you?

If a Mario Kart Wii video isn’t safe, you can imagine there was nowhere to hide. Emails, powerpoints,picturs, flash games, websites, ask me something forums, fucking COMICS. It’s like people were competing to see who could insert a jumpscare in the least expected place possible.

It was a particularly cruel prank, like the evil version of Rickrolling. You know how nowadays people send links that take you to meme videos that say shit like “Get Stickbugged!”, or “Get Gnome’d” or “Get Chrissied!”, those are much better than what we endured back then, back then you pranked someone by giving them a heart attack. I can’t say I’m completely innocent myself, I remember I sent screamer links through facebook chat to a friend of mine because I liked his reactions. I’m sorry Carlo. It became trendy to scare the crud out of someone surfing online.

Some of the screamers even gained notoriety among the communities and became viral videos that pranked millions of people worldwide. You know the popular ones, The Maze, the K-Fee Commercials, the Rocking Chair, all of which I knew by reputation before I got scared by them. But I’m more curious about the lesser-known screamers, those felt a bit more personal. Like yeah, you may be aprt of the “the Maze Club”, but I’m proud of being in the “I can’t see this goddamn tunnel section in Daisy’s Circuit the same way ever again” club, so I’ll try exploring different kinds of screamers that I knew of AND that I, or someone else I knew, were a victim of. And no I’m not going to be cheeky and put a screamer in this video, I hate when people do that, but I will showcase some of the scary imagery that these screamers contained, I just won’t flash it on screen out of nowhere.

Nobody exactly knows where screamers truly originated, there were some screamer pranks floating around in the late 90’s, VERY early 2000s in the form of viruses. For example, this unofficial McDOnalds malware made in China. If you ran it, a horror story would pop up, then the screen goes normal as if nothing happened until minutes later your screen would be filled with a picture of a girl with black eyes and a scream. Can I just say that has always been one of my biggest fears? Unknowingly installing malware that would jumpscare me at random times.

KIKIA

But the first media everyone seems to point to as the first “screamer” is the infamous Kikia. Kikia was a 2002 flash animation that pretended to be a beautiful, philosophical poem about life, until it suddenly hit you with a screenshot of a Fatal Frame ghost and a scream. It’s cited as the first screamer to really go viral, as it was often shared around a Taiwanese website first and then it spread through other pages and then countries.As the Internet was just starting to gain popularity, people decided to bring horror elements into it, so sharing this seemingly innocent video became a popular way to “prank” people that were just starting to get familiar with the web, and Kikia was perfect thing to catch someone off guard. What would follow after are a bunch of flash animation pranks that followed the same formula. They would try to lure you in with a cute, innocent picture and then BAM! Pranked! The website LiquidGeneration was infamous for hosting many of these animations that they called “Sabotages”. Programs would even try to get you to interact with them or get closer to the screen to scare you even harder. They would make letters as small as possible, or the audio as low as possible, or they would dare you to play a game where you’d have to get closer to the screen and then they hit you with the million decibels and the millionth picture of the exorcist you’ve seen that month. Yeah, What’s Wrong With This Picture? What’s the Difference? Did You Catch This? Stare At This Optical Illusiion For 30 Seconds. It was very popular to share these type of screamers through emails, which, speaking of, I was a victim of when I was a kid.

POWERPOINT/GAME SCREAMERS

Back then, instead of sharing memes through a group chat, it was popular to share Powerpoints of funny stuff through mail. I remember receiving crude jokes from my family that way in the 2000s, and I even made shitty powerpoints to share to my family too! When you downloaded a Powerpoint, when you’d open it, you would see the presentation in full screen, so you didn’t notice the screamer in the program before starting it. I don’t remember who sent me this, but one time I got an e-mail that dared me to play a game- I downloaded the pptx, and the game consisted of clicking a red button. After each successful click, the red button gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and my face would get closer and closer and closer to the screen until I clicked the smallest of circles and then BAM, THE EXORCIST. And you could add sounds to those presentations too, so BAM, THE EXORCIST AND AN UNGODLY SCREAM. I think at the time I didn’t know about the Maze, so this was MY first experience with a screamer of this type. And if I did know about the maze, god, I was a dumbass! Shortly after, I remember a rumor in my school popped out of an email that invited you to play a game of tic tac toe. Us, being kids that love games, would for sure want to play. It was against the CPU, and it was, well, tic-tac-toe. Except that, I think on the fifth or sixth move, something would jump out at you. Apparently it was a mask from the Evil Dead. Though I didn’t fall for this one as a kid, I remember the rumor very clearly. The trend of screamer flash games became so popular that even big names got in on the trend. Who can forget Nickelodeon of all things making a screamer for children in the form of BLACK LICORICE. Well, it was as harmless as a screamer could be, you just don’t expect these cute kids to make demonic faces once you give them black licorice. It was so bizarre that parents called the company to take the animation down. But to counter act the tamest screamer ever, I want to show you what I think is one of the CRUELEST screamers.

ESCAPE FROM THE COOLSONIAN

Escape from the Coolsonian is a flash game tie-in for the second live action Scooby Doo movie. I don’tknow how faithful it is I’ve never seen the movie, but what I know is that this screamer is TRUAUMATIZING. Playing the second stage has you exploring an ancient pyramid solving puzzles, and at one point you can acquire crowbar to open tombs with. BUT DO NOT DO THIS, IT IS A TRAP, THE CROWBAR MERELY EXISTS TO TRAUMATIZE YOU. Because when you use it to open the mummy’s sarcophagus, a very small faded text will appear, and it will get smaller and small until THIS UNGODLY FACE OF HELL JUMPS AT YOU with the UGLIEST, LOUDEST SCREAM I’VE EEVER HEARD IN ONE OF THESE. Jesus CHRIST. THIS IS AN OFFICIAL GAME FROM A TEEN MOVIE, WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS EVEN REMOTELY OKAY? I hate this one, I can’t even get myself to watch a playthrough of this game because of this, I hate this fucking face so much. So it does its job well, but, damn, this one is super disturbing.

SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE VIDEOS

Screamers lived on flash games for a while until 2006 came rolling around with a big gamechanger: YOUTUBE. Now not only could you spread screamers easier, but now you can record your friends falling for one and showcase it to the world! I think this is where the true popularity of The Maze came about, any video of people pranking their frien with a screamer usually had the blue and black maze on screen. I think the Maze is the first thing anyone thinks of when they hear “screamer”, well, at least us millennials anyways, zoomers probably picture a creepy smile in a white l atex mask. Yeah, we’ll get to that later. I never fell victim to the Maze because I already know of its reputation from internet forums, so I just stuck to people falling for it. But along with the Maze came a new type of screamer video. The “SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE IN DISNEY MOVIES” type. I used to LOVE watching videos of subliminal messages, I have this picture of a wine poster burned in my brain. And who could forget Ariel’s penis castle, or the Lion King Dust spelling sex? Yeah those type of videos. Me and my sister were huge on them way back then there was nothing else to watch on YouTube! But some smartasses realized this and they started putting screamers in these kind of videos as well, so thy would show you a very blurry picture of something, and then hey have the GALL to ask you? “Did you SEE THIS? LOOK CLOSER” and a few seconds later knock knock, who’s there? THE EXORCIST. My sister fell for these a couple of times she told me, I was lucky not to come across one lol, mostly because I had the foresight to check the comments first to warn me lol.

MICHAEL JACKSON GHOST

The comments were lifesavers then, true veterans always knew to scroll down to the comments before watching a suspicious looking video, Thankfully, my mom was NOT internet savvy at all and she fell for one as well. I remember it clear as day. It was 2009 and Michael Jackson had JUST died, and a video spread around of a sighting of “Michael Jackson’s ghost in his mansion” My mom was sitting on the stairs and I peeked at what she was doing, I was about to warn her of the video when suddenly a ZOMBIFIED MICHAEL JACKSON’S FACE rapidly approaches the screen with a scream. My mom just went like “FUCK! SHIT! “ And almost threw the computer, it was hilarious.

:THE GAME: PACMAN

Then there was this flash game that was fairly popular in the late 2000s, called :the game: *Boooo* Yeah yeah, we all lost, get over it, that’s just the name! It was a very random, yet thought-provoking piece of online flash art that consists of various interactive sketches that were all basically just setups and punchlines of popular media in that era, and yeah, it’s INCREDIBLY dated, but one of the sketches especially stuck with me because it was a screamer, and it got me. It’s the sketch about Pacman just noticing that there are ghosts around him, and it’s already fairly traumatic with bloody imagery and VORE. GORE. VORE. Both. And it does that thing where the screen fades to black fooling you into thinking that the sketch is already over but a bloody pacman suddenly jumps out with an incredibly loud scream. I remember all of it, I DID throw my computer, I hated this part so much that replaying it I would always let the scene play and go for water or something.

PUCCA EPISODE ENDING

So after being tormented by a bunch of screamers online I wanted to shut off the computer. Go to my bed, turn the TV on, and watch a funny episode of Pucca. It was dark and they were showing reruns of Pucca in Jetix, yeah remember that? Jetix? Anyways there was this episode of where Garu gets a haunted photo as a gift, and it is possessed by a creepyyyyy ghoooost oooh look at her so scaaaary. Yeah the episode is pretty much what you’d expect from a cute cartoon, EXCEPT, when the episode is over. Everythings done, you don’t expect anything but the credits, but the screen goes to black for slightly too long and a ghostface jumps at you with a scream! Okay, it is a cute ghost face, but I was a kid and I didn’t expect this from goddamn PUCCA. I also remember Epic Rap Battles pulled something like this in their serial killers rap battle. Who Won? WHo’s Next? You Decide!!!!!............ Screeching ghost face. ERB, you bitches!

SHITBRIX.COM

Then back online, in the late 2000s memesites started gaining popularity as well. Pages like memebase, failblog, historicLOLS, verydemotivational, just, lots of them. One I enjoyed was shitbrix.com, which was dedicated to posting seemingly normal pictures that had something weird in them. It was fun to scroll through the pictures and find out what thing was offputting. It had its fair share of creepy pictures, ghosts and all, but, well, let’s just say people decided to take advantage that you could upload GIFs to the website, so, yeah, you can imagine. There’s a photo of a seemingly nomral family, the caption says there’s something wrong with it and you’re stuck there trying to figure out what, and since its a picture you don’t expect anything, but suddenly one of the women jumps at you with a demonic face The site was infected with these gifs lol, now no one knew which picture was “spoiled” with a screamer, and that’s why I decided to never visit that page again. I got curious about it and checked it it was still up, and it is! I’m pleasantly surprised!.

Eventually screamer videos lost their schtick, and everyone knew what to expect. The cheat code of looking for the comments was well known, and people could jump to the end of the video to know if there was a screamer or not. So screamers were fading out of popularity, they needed to change things up to really catch people off guard.

BONDCHEON DONG GHOST

Well, in 2011 a certain webcomic shook the internet with a revolutionary tactic. There’s no way you can make a webcomic scary right? Well, I mean, there are creepy webcomics out there, but they can’t jumpscare you or anything, after all, you control how fast you read it. That was until the story of the Bong-Cheon Dong Ghost. This, is pure art. It’s a work of genius what the creator did here. The Bongcheon Dong ghost tells a story of a korean high school student that witnesses a creepy being at night, it’s already a scary tale, but one you can read at your own pace. The story goes on for a while until the “ghost” appears, and suddenly, the unthinkable happens. You no longer have control, insteady, the scrollbar moves on it’s own unexpectedly, effectively creating an animation of the creepy ghost turning its head 180* degrees like a flipbook. That shit was AWESOME. I was more impressed than scared honestly, when I saw it. It was something I’d never seen before and it left me astounded. The second animation is the worst one though, when the ghost comes running at you while crabwalking? That shit was CREEPS. I remember I pranked one of my best friends who didn’t know of the webcomic in computer class, and he almost fell back, it was so funny. I’m sorry Al. Yes, the Creepy Korean Webcomic became a viral sensation on the internet, it was almost as widespread as the Maze, at least i clearly made an impact of many of us who were browsing the internet as teenagers judging by the memes it had.

The webcomic screamer was truly one of a kind, and I don’t think we’ll ever see a screamer as cleverly integrated as this one. It may seem like there was nowhere wlese for screamers to go after this, but, there was still a final trick up the Internet’s sleeve. And, it was a really cruel one too.

ANNE.JPG

Anne JPG is the last screamer that I would consider to reach the “ viral phenomenon” status. The last of its kind, of those screamers that would spread online EVERYWHERE to get people. I was in high school by this point and I remember it was popular to have an ask thing where people could send you questions anonymously. Sure, you can either use it to get to kno your classmates better or post links the classmate to click and get scarred for life. Guess which one my classroom chose?

But there was something tricky about these links, the pecularity that gave this screamer its fame: It ended in .JPG. Hold on, .JPEGS are pictures…. Sure, they could be shocking pictures but they aren’t supposed to move or have audio. But this one, did. And I’m still not sure how that one worked. The fact that it had that extension meant that a lot of people would click on it thinking that it just a measly, innocent, picture, maybe, of a cat. But instead, the link would redirect you to a fullscreen webpage of the one and only: JEFF the KILLER. Yes this was around that time where Jeff the Killer was the hottest creepypasta out there, and he basically replaced Reagan as the defacto screamer face for a couple of years here, but that wasn’t all. Not only did this page have Jeff the Killer in fullscreen, it also had the loudest scream you could ever imagine, which I laugh at now because it reminds me of Tom’s scream from Tom & Jerry. But NOT ONLY did it have unholy audio, the picture also ZOOMED IN VERY, VERY FAST to give it a creepier feeling. And NOT ONLY DID it ZOOM REALLY REALLY FAST, BUT it ALSO FLASHED IN YOUR FACE with negative colors to try and give you an EPILEPSY. And it did! Some kid in USA suffered from epileptic seizures by coming across this screamer.

Oh, and did I tell you that some versions would download malware to your computer? And that some versions wouldn’t even let you close the tab?

And THAT. ISN’T. ALL. This SCREAMER had DISGUISES. It wasn’t just one well-known site, it wasn’t something universally known like the maze, this screamer could be ANYWHERE! If you were a fan of minecraft and you wanted to find the site to download it, findminecraft.com would redirect you to ANNE JPG. If you wanted to play tha hit game agario but instead made a typo and spelled it agor-io, it would redirect you to ANNE, JPG. A facebook link? Anne JPG. A printscreen picture? A text file? That’s right, fucking ANNE JPG.

It was a monster, an amalgamation, an experiment to create the worst, most damaging screamer you could possibly imagine and spread it around the word. I got scared by it, I scared others by it, it was the last hurrah of screamers before they would fade into irrelevancy, and in a way, it couldn’t have been any more perfect. It made sense that, in its dying breaths, the screamer fad would go ALL OUT on everyone. It was wild.

But eventually, it had to end. Many of these sites were taken down. Some of the pages were blocked, the videos were gone…. YouTube added a function where you’d get a mini-preview of the timeline so screamers were easier to spot than ever, many restrictions were added on browsers, and with the death of Flash in 2020, screamer flash links became eventually useless unless you looked for them.. Thanks to this and many other factos, the fad of screamers definitely died downt, and they pretty much became replaced by meme videos and the eternal rickrolling. Yeah, get rickrolled., But, in my opinion, they will never truly die, they’re still popping out here and there, specilly on TikTok. I know I’ve seen at least one Tiktok that askd you if you’ve heard a noise and then someone comes running to the camera at fast speeds. And others tiktokers surprise you by disfiguring their face in disturbing ways. Though mostly these resort to using “shock videos” like suicides and shootings instead of screamres, but nevertheless, their presence is still there, and as long as there is social media, screamers will be lurking in the shadows.

I look fondly on the times that I got pranked by a screamer, as you see, I’ve never forgotten them. But I really, really don’t miss the practice, I have always hated the very concept of screamers, the idea that you had to always be wary of everything in case a screamer popped out was very tiring to me, but at the same time, it was a teaching moment to not trust everything you see on the Internet. I just want to do my things without having to worry about anything, but hey, people on the internet will always be a-holes, and, at some point, I was one too.

This is the internetanigan and please don’t click on any links in the comments. Byyyyeee!