Written by Jonathan Wojcik

Still More Favorite Monsters by Trevor Henderson!

It's now been just a little over a year since we last caught up with Slimyswampghost's monsters, which have only grown in popularity along with variety. How have they been faring since? I'd say pretty well! You can browse them all on his instagram, but I've gathered some personal favorites once again!

"Eventually, it came back in on the tide. It'll never leave me alone."

This grinning, staring face can't be that dangerous if our narrator was able to just toss it in the ocean, but apparently it comes back to them no matter what. Why? I wonder what else there may be to its behavior, or it simply lies there and stares, but it's always there wherever this person goes.

"Thanks for visiting Starliner Cinemas!

PLEASE *down in front

*keep your voice l o w

*Don't disturb your

F E L L O W P A T R O N S

and most of all,

enjoy! "

I just love the awful, awful face of this one, and the whole environment it's in, and the implication that it just recites all of this dialog...

"These extraordinary creatures live in crevices deep in the sea walls and floors and utilize a snatch and grab style of carnivorous hunting, often grabbing prey and pulling it back into it's thin, alley-like nest before it's soon-to-be-meal even knows what has happened!"

This design looks wonderfully like a deep-sea hatchetfish, but with some ghoulishly human elements to it, particularly the nose. It supposedly lurks in the deep sea itself, but that's clearly not where we're seeing this one.

"It's only there for me as a reflection, but i can hear it coming when i see it."

This feels a little like a more classic "ghost" than other monsters here, but I wouldn't count on that being the case. I'd like to think it's some strange and awful form that's befallen someone without necessarily dying first.

"She saw it because she couldn't sleep and had noticed the backyard security lights had clicked on. It was standing motionless right where she'd buried Stanley, beside the shrubs. No eyes, but she could feel it glaring accusingly as it turned in her direction. It stank."

So is this a form manifested from "Stanley's" spirit, or could it possibly be something else? Something else that for whatever reason knows what they did.

"The damage is way more severe than we thought. There’s extensive flooding on top of the kind of vandalism and general destruction you find in abandoned places like this. The moisture in the air has brought about an infestation of a strange, pale root that has wormed its way through the walls and floors of the building. I’m unsure of its toxicity, I’ve taken a sample to look at back at home. We are leaving before nightfall. Jeremy thinks he saw someone else here, and I keep... hearing something like scratching at the drywall. The skin on my hand is starting to feel raw and irritated where I touched the root, and I want to get it checked out as soon as possible."

These root-like figures are gorgeously haunting, and it's fascinating to ponder precisely how they tie in with this anecdote of a strange, toxic growth.

"-they never moved out of this house! they never left and they’ve been watching us this entire time and now we can’t leave-"

I am dying to know who lived here that "never left" and somehow became whatever it is we're seeing here.

"they found most of the scattered remains, but they never found his head "

Well...it sure found them.

"The building seemed to go on forever, floors connected with awkward little flights of stairs. He knew others were here. Every once in a while he'd hear a floorboard creak under the weight of a footstep, But when he looked they were always gone. Well, two could play that game."

It's a more recent horror trope that's become increasingly common, but I do so love the idea of gloomily mundane places that somehow seem to go on forever and ever. Places that aren't frightening to most people, but the thought of never leaving them is still miserable. I feel like the dialog here implies that the speaker is kind of getting too used to the place, and maybe the entity we're seeing was once someone just like them.

"The bridge worm will sometimes venture far from its nest if prey is hard to come by, instinctually hunting at night and in abandoned areas to avoid discovery. Photo below: The adolescent bridge worm folds back its false face as it prepares to feed. RIP Photographer Tomas Pearcing, missing and presumed dead. The scientific community thanks you for your service."

This seems to be a new fan-favorite, and maybe that's due in part to looking so much like Strong Sad, but even if you've never heard of him, this poor, sweet, gigantic face peering out of a bridge is a pretty frightening concept...and then it does this.

"I've stopped thinking the upstairs hall is haunted, at least not by a ghost. I think it might be something a lot worse."

I don't even want to begin speculating on what this might be if "worse than a ghost," since that's perfectly juicy on its own. What an awesomely dreadful design though, it does give an almost human spirit sort of impression while clearly being something more...polypous.

"The sound of footsteps in the upstairs bedroom, crossing to the hallway quickly. Someone mumbled to themselves as they came down the stairs."

An almost conventionally fearsome monster, in the sense that a gnashing mouth is the focus here, but it's so decrepit and pale, the head so huge, the black sockets either empty eye-holes or flaring nostrils. It's much scarier than most gnashing beasties tend to be, and the single detail that it sounds like someone "mumbling" actually kind of triples the horror factor.

"Walking home after the bar closes, you look up and see a figure standing across the street, looking at you. He’s wearing some bizarre costume, like a hazmat suit, and you notice the wind is blowing it around and crumpling it like there’s no one in it at all."

This one is modeled a bit after an antique diving suit, and a bit after some of the cheaper plague doctor suits. The diving suit aspect is pushed by the "air tube" it dangles from, but who knows if anything involved needs air as we understand it. Though the suit is empty, the impression I still get is that it is being used to penetrate into and observe our world by...something else.

"It was all a blur. He had lost control of the car, somehow. And now, he was being wheeled off, to where? An operating room? His thoughts weren’t taking the time to stick together. Someone told him everything was going to be ok. Something peered at him through the swinging doors."

I thought by now I'd have desensitized myself to hospital horror, but this for whatever reason is the scariest combination of imagery and text I've seen all day.

"we both just looked at each other. it was awkward. it sank back into the wall."

...That's all for now! Obviously not all of the monsters or even all of the "best," maybe not even all my "favorites," but I'd hate to spoil them all at once. You might even encounter some of them circulating the internet all on their own; some have even been ripped off now for clickbait ads, inexplicably.b

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