Written by Jonathan Wojcik
DECEMBER 11: Bogleech's Favorite SCP's!
A long time ago, this now infamous photo was posted to 4chan's "paranormal" forum without explanation or context, until a still unidentified author wrote up a fictional "leaked" document on the disturbing object's unexplained mobility and the special containment procedures that keep the rest of us safe from its unstoppable drive to kill. While the image really depicts an art installation by Izumi Kato, the anonymous sci-fi lore suddenly attached to it was an instant hit with the creepypasta community, and soon enough, dozens of other "SCP" documents began to flood the internet by dozens of other authors, piecing together the mythos of a secret organization who Secures and Contains unexplained abnormalities for the Protection of reality as we know it. The S.C.P. Foundation!
In the years since, the "official" SCP Foundation website has grown into a massive library of bizarre fiction with well over a thousand things in the foundation's possession. Things like mutagenic brain parasites, deadly infectious words, reality-warping bees, sentient toasters, never-ending nightmare staircases and several hundred preposterously horrid (or horridly preposterous) ways for the world to end. It's one of my top favorite websites to browse aimlessly for reading material, and if you've never been, it might become one of yours! For Halloween 2, leading up to Bogleech's brand new creepypasta feature, I'll be reviewing just a few of my personal favorite SCP items, in no particular order, and blacking out spoilers where appropriate. Bear in mind, new entries are submitted on an almost daily basis, and existing entries subject to modification or even deletion; not everything we're about to share will be relevant forever. With that said, let's jump right!
SCP-058: "Heart of Darkness"
058 is my favorite kind of monster; downright ridiculous, but only creepier because of it. It's described to us as a barbed, tentacled, spider-legged, indestructible cow heart with a giant, venomous stinger, and it does only two things: kill every single living thing it ever encounters, and rant incoherently. Yes, it talks. It talks utter nonsense, in an English accent. It sounds like something an Invader Zim fanfic writer might think is just hilarious, but this is honestly where the entry really shines. Even the best attempts to write "nonsense" usually result in the same tired faux-random pseudohumor, but the Heart's deranged ravings sound just meaningful enough to be fascinating and unwholesome enough to truly deserve a title as dramatic as the Heart of Darkness. It is the perfect nonsense, every word of it meaningless gold.
SCP-835: "Expunged Data Released."
An integral theme of the SCP foundation is that what we're able to read are only those documents cleared for the lowest security levels, many sensitive details left to our imagination. SCP-835 is a unique exception, written to give us a terrifying taste of just how much this classified data can be hiding. On the surface, this one is little more than a mysterious, predatory sea monster, resembling a titanic, tentacled mass of slimy coral polyps and harboring a number of nasty pathogens. The field report log describes a fairly harrowing journey through its digestive tract, but parts of it are still missing, until we check out the unassuming "REVISED FILE" links at the bottom. Here, we learn that the colonial monstrosity is made up entirely of absorbed and transformed human beings, its interior a nauseating living hell for its still-conscious victims...and somehow, it still manages to get worse.
SCP-511: "Basement Cat"
We all love kitties here on the internet, but SCP-511 makes cats about as horrifying as they could ever hope to be; a maggot-ridden, decomposing amalgamation of mostly feline body parts, the entity seemingly enslaves domestic cats to protect and feed it, eventually forming colonies of diseased, inbred and uncharacteristically violent furballs who become one with its biomass as they expire. Worse still, these adorably revolting hives may operate out of the homes of, you guessed it, demented cat-hoarding old women, themselves under the influence of the hideous being...or are they? The horror here seems pretty straightforward, but by the end of the second interview log, the whole thing is turned horribly on its head.
SCP-674: "The Lightgun"
I've been focusing on putrid monsters here, but creepy-crawlies are only a small part of the SCP collection, and this reality-breaking Nintendo Lightgun is a great example of their many oddball artifacts and grisly gadgets. When "fired" at any kind of video footage, the gun is able to wound or kill any on-screen character and permanently alter the perception of the shooter. You could, for example, use the gun to murder one Jar Jar Binks, and for you alone, it would be integrated into the narrative of the Star Wars prequels. Every time you ever watched the trilogy, Binks would die at that exact moment, and the story would progress as though it had been written that way to begin with. Things get a little out of hand, of course, if you kill someone who isn't playing a fictional character, but at least it's all just a harmless delusion. (...Until they fight back.)
SCP-261: "Pan-Dimensional Vending"
A beloved classic, the pan-dimensional vending machine dispenses random "snacks" and "drinks" from what may or may not be far-off worlds, hypothetical timelines or just the machine itself screwing with our heads. This is one of many SCP's with a separate, extended experiment log packed with creativity, and it's always been my favorite of its kind. I especially like the can of "STOP THAT" dispended if no money is entered and "coin return" is pressed. Nobody was willing to open it, so we'll never know why it emitted a furious, insect-like buzzing. If you like this one, you'll probably also like SCP-914, which "refines" items in a variety of strange ways, and SCP-294, a surprisingly dangerous universal drink dispenser.
SCP-1802: "Skip"
Though this foot-tall humanoid assemblage of trash is one of the most innocent and harmless SCP's, Skip's origins hint at a more sinister presence. Skip is small, weak, and understands almost nothing of the world around it, but feels forever driven to collect the simple things that confuse it - candy wrappers, rubber bands, bugs - and stash them away to the best of its crude and childish abilities. If it hasn't clicked yet, this poor little guy is nothing but a walking, talking mockery of the SCP Foundation itself, deliberately created for them to find and puzzle over...but by who, or what, and why? My favorite detail, and another eerie twist to an otherwise adorable entry, is how Skip is always trying and failing to open its own head, even though there isn't anything inside.
SCP-1555: "Facility"
In an undisclosed mountain range in an undisclosed wasteland, there apparently sits what can truly only be described as some sort of facility. Though seemingly unmanned, it periodically fires a metal canister in an unpredictable direction, usually only into a neighboring valley. A canister usually filled with normal, harmless field mice. It would be just another goofy, senseless anomaly to file away, but when a team is sent inside things quickly escalate in terrible, terrible ways. Autonomously launching mice at nothing is barely the beginning of the facility's wrongness.
SCP-1782: "Tabula Rasa"
A nasty, creative twist on what superficially sounds like a "haunting," all manner of strange sights and sounds plague this abandoned apartment, including an old man who feeds himself to Kakapos, a ghoulish creature with a septic tank for a body and a mutilated fetus floating in the toilet. No, it's not what happens when I'm given an unlimited budget to redecorate, but what happens when a child whose thoughts can change reality is aborted. The septic-tank creature? That was mom.
SCP-565: "Ed's Head"
Short but sweet, this is another in the harmless, yet disturbing category, a severed human head which creeps around on tentacular strands of brain tissue, only to imitate the behavior of a reef-dwelling crab. The head is eventually matched to a headless corpse, but one who was originally buried in one piece, and shows no sign of having been disturbed since. Decomposing steadily, Ed's head unfortunately can't last very long, and as long as it thinks like a crab, it's probably not going to yield many answers.
SCP-610: "The Flesh That Hates"
This one was originally written around the simply breathtaking artwork of Mark Powell, and while his mad visions are admittedly more tantalizing without any context, the tale of "The Flesh that Hates" is nonetheless horrifying and mystifying in its own right. Read in order, the "field logs" add ever eerier layers to what can only be described as Lovecraftian cancer, and here on Bogleech, I don't toss around the "L" word for just anything.
Ten feels like a good number to end on for tonight; I'll likely be reviewing at least a couple dozen more of these things, and may even continue SCP-related posts beyond Halloween 2. For now, I'll close off with a reminder that I actually have written and submitted a modestly successful one myself, if you're interested; I just don't have the ego to call it a "favorite."
HALLOWEEN 2012 ARCHIVE:
HALLOWEEN 2012 ROUND II:
