Nightmare Fuel / ＬＯＣＡＬ５８

As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked as per wiki policy. You Have Been Warned!

There are no faces. There are no faces. There are no faces. There are no faces. There are no faces.

IF YOU ARE AFRAID

WE WILL LOOK TOGETHER

— "Weather Service"

ＬＯＣＡＬ５８ is the latest project from one Kris Straub, the author behind Candle Cove. Yes, that Candle Cove. Need we say more?

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• The method of which Local 58 is presented, with its grainy, VHS tape quality, as if ripped straight from a cassette. As everything starts going to hell, the innocent-looking, retro aesthetic quickly becomes unnerving, and the jingle that accompanies each segment goes from tranquil to... vaguely ominous.
  • The ambiguity of some of the titles during each segment doesn't help either. Just what exactly was "Focus On... Faith" about? Better yet, what the hell was the "Blood of the-" segment about?! We are never shown.
• "You Are On The Fastest Available Route," the first video of the series, is a quick but efficient teaser of the madness that awaits. In it, a dashboard camera records a person driving rather frantically as his GPS guides them. As the video goes on, the GPS starts giving out strange directions such as, "follow signs for 'do not enter'," and "in 300 feet, turn off your headlights." The person ends up stranded in a forest, where a creature of some kind is briefly seen. The person tries to flee while the GPS says "Turn around. Your destination is behind you." and then begins rapidly counting down the distance as the "destination," the monster, gives chase. The last shot is a cracked sideways windshield while the GPS lets out a horribly distorted "you have aarrriiiiiiveed...".
  • This becomes scarier when you realize there is likely a point where the GPS gets hijacked by the force to lead the driver to the creature, as it doesn't seem to be leading them astray the entire time. But when we see them driving on the highway while the GPS warns of traffic, a lightning strike shows an empty road. The GPS is already corrupted at this point.
• "Contingency" is absolutely horrifying. Imagine what would be so bad that America considers mass suicide a better option to deal with.
  • The PSA encourages you to off your children and your pets before killing yourself. Just what the hell are they preparing for that your children and/or pet dying at your hands is considered the better option?!
  • The context-free presentation of the film heightens the horror. Because there is no context on how this was actually presented, there are several options as to what happened, each very scary to some degree or another:
    • This never actually aired in the way it was intended, but was complied and archived for historical purposes, and possibly aired at 1am with advanced notice by the station (which might have happened, as seen by mention of it in the "coming next" telop slide). ^note CNN wound up having to do something similar in real life, after a former intern disclosed that founder Ted Turner instructed the network to hold for release a "last message" until a world-ending apocalyptic event, under the presumption that CNN would outlast any/all means of communication... a military band playing "Nearer My God to Thee." Which made sense because of the 'Better Dead Than Red' mentality that still existed when the network launched. Still, that a government department with the stated goal of getting all citizens to commit mass suicide had ever existed, if not continuing to exist, is a very, very bad thing.
    • This actually aired at 1am by mistake, and induced panic in Ichor Falls well before the "hoax apology" card aired, not unlike the hysteria created by The War of the Worlds.
    • This actually aired as a hoax by someone at the station, or someone — or some ''thing'' — commandeering the station, with malicious intent to induce said panic and hysteria in Ichor Falls, and possibly elsewhere.
    • This actually did air, it was not a hoax and was a mistake as with the second possible scenario, but the people at the station believed it and committed suicide, failing to loop the message "until there is no one left to hear it," so the apology card ran with no one to pull it until someone else entered the room and cut the broadcast. Assuming that this wasn't transmitted in the 1960s or early 1970s but in the present day, it's very plausible.
  • YOUR LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS BEEN ORDERED TO ENSURE YOUR COMPLIANCE. IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO DELAY.
  • Perhaps most unsettling about the tape is that the concept behind it doesn't seem that implausible, considering the implication that it was first made much earlier, at a time when Cold War hysteria was at heights that wouldn't be reached again until the early Ronald Reagan administration, and knowing just how downright insane some of the United States' proposed plans were for dealing with all sorts of outcomes that could've occurred (but thankfully didn't) in the near or distant future. Combined with the "better dead than red" mentality of the era, the idea of the federal government encouraging mass suicide in the face of a Soviet invasion seems like something that actually might've been brought to the table at one point.
• "Show for Children" is probably one of the more unsettling shorts. A cute cartoon skeleton walks in the grave one night, in hopes of finding his girlfriend, but is instead treated to a realistically drawn corpse and a weird bird-dinosaur...thing, that seems to still be alive. And the third time, he finds a long, deep, dank cave where he roams around, before laying down under the moon, presumably passing out, if not dying himself. The end.
  • An extremely quick and easy to miss detail, but when the moon starts to peer into Cadavre's hole, not only is it suddenly a live action photo of the moon, but a closer look◊ reveals what looks like an eye.
  • It gets worse if you watch this one after having seen "Contingency"—Cadavre is in the "Victory Position" at the end. A popular theory says that Cadavre had been forced into such position because he found much more than he was allowed to, why else would the moon change its expression after seeing the insides of the second crypt's contents?
  • Before the actual animation, a quick bumper is shown of an unsettling statue of a clown with an abnormally big smile, looking to the right. After the short, not only is the odd clown statue's mouth open much wider than it was before, but eyes are actually looking to the left before they begin to stare at you before getting cut off.
  • There's also the fact that the video is a seemingly innocent cartoon featuring an inkblot art style character walking to the right that slowly descends into something much more terrifying. Sound familiar?
• "Real Sleep" has an almost cult like aesthetic, with simple backgrounds and easy music, combined with somewhat ominous messages, demands and instructions.
  • The faces themselves, as pictured above, can also be rather unnerving.
  • While the video itself is creepy, the true Paranoia Fuel comes from a comment that explains some disturbing aftereffects:
    There is this funny thing called Pareidolia - "a psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus, usually an image or a sound, by perceiving a familiar pattern where none exists". Suddenly, the patterns on the walls looked disturbing, the shampoo bottles were displayed in such a way that it looked like a laughing face, so on and so on. And for a while, I thought I finally understood why the video was so good. But there was more to it... as it went on, the patterns started to appear more and more, so many that I kept trying to ignore it and just be done with the shower. I was ignoring the faces...
    There are no faces.
  • The last face shown is burnt into the background through the remainder of the tape, even into the credits.
  • If you pause at the beginning of the tape, it says that the video was customized for someone named Philip Gerhardt. Who is Philip Gerhardt, what happened to him, and why did Local58 have his personal video tape in their possession?
• "Weather Service" makes the concept of an alien invasion even more terrifying. The entire segment doesn't reveal what the threat is and we only see the effects it's having on people going by the messages which go from warning to submission to the threat. And the fact that you're not safe, as even mirrors are dangerous.
  • The ending where we find out that the threat is the Moon. The video cuts to live footage outside where we see the moon in full view with the sounds of what we can assume to be hundreds of people screaming and destruction going on. Making this less of an alien invasion and more of a Cosmic Horror Story.
  • Even worse, simply looking up is dangerous as well. There are only a few feasible ways to actually survive this event: 1) Hide under a blanket. 2) completely block out any light from your house. 3) blindfold yourself (you can still see light through your eyelids if you shut them), or 4) curl up in a fetal position and do nothing. All that for a few hours until sunrise hits.
• All of the installments have something seriously wrong about them, but the station itself is doing things that, when you think about it, are REALLY wrong and frightening in their own right:
  • Substituting the "Midnight Movie" for a dash-cam video, presumably showing it as a piece of Found Footage.
    • If you look at the dash cam timestamps, it starts right around when "Paid Programming" is scheduled. The same could apply for one or two others.
  • The overall sequence of events in "Weather Service," where it seems that rather than the fight which takes place being the result of the Emergency Alert System staff trying to shut off an anomalous force affecting the broadcast, it seems that something corporeal is physically fighting for control with whoever is trying to issue the messages to look away, eventually overpowering them, whereupon they either kill the unfortunate staff member and replace them at their post, or even infect them and force them to give the instruction to 'LOOK TOGETHER' via mind control.
  • Having a "Coming Up" slide for the "Contingency" film, then only showing the "Hoax" apology slide after it concluded.
  • Running a show allegedly titled "Show for Children" at 4am. ^note This detail directly echoes Kris Straub's other creation, Candle Cove.
  • Transmitting the "Real Sleep" film at 3pm. ^note Though potentially Justified justified when you consider it'd be a waste of time to transmit something intended to help with sleep while people are already asleep.
• In "Skywatching," right from the moment it appears, it is clear that something is very wrong with the Moon. Simply introduced as "HIS THRONE," it seems that something is happening to its surface... there is something alive up there.
  • And then, the Moon starts getting closer...
  • The moon almost looks alive in some shots. And be careful if you happen to have Trypophobia as you watch. In addition, it seems that if the Moon is alive, then it's not the only organism up there; a network of buildings is visible within one of the lunar surface's many craters.
  • The loud, wailing Thunderbolt siren playing as the cameraman walks in front of the camera and stands, arms open, presumably in prayer of the "moon."
    • At the same time, an entire town's worth of people can be heard screaming in terror; the same scenario seen at the end of "Weather Service" is happening all over again...^note Or, is this the first time such an event has happened?
    • As the man prays before the moon, the siren suddenly cuts out.
  • The final Wham Shot showing the moon in its full glory, and it's...not our moon. It's simultaneously in ruins and organic, looking more like an egg than a moon. It looks as though half of the moon was carved out, the surface looks more like bone than rocks and craters, and in the pit formed where the bottom half of the moon used to be is the giant skeleton of some mutant bird creature connected to the insides by sinewy strings.
  • During the small transition from the real "Skywatching" show to the handheld footage, a very loud screech is made for about a second.
  • The fact that after Hank^note ... or is it Hank? zoomed out from the original, normal moon and then it disappeared for a few seconds before getting replaced by "HIS THRONE." They took the original moon away.
  • For a split second, at the very end, we see a clear shot of the "moon," showing a skeletal creature within it that resembles a chick inside its egg. The text "REJOICE" appears in blood-red text for a moment before the video's end. The implications are very, very unsettling.
    • Many people have actually drawn comparisons between the weird creature in the grave in "Show For Children" and the creature in the moon. It's not helpful to think of the implications.
• In "Digital Transition." At the end, after the message THERE ARE OTHER RECEIVERS, a grotesque human head appears, which opens its mouth causing everything on the screen to melt in a digital "datamoshing" effect.
  UNTHINKING THEY MOVE
  TO CUT HIS THROAT
  ONLY TO MAKE
  A THOUSAND MOUTHS
  IF HE IS SILENCED
  WE WILL SPEAK FOR HIM
  SIGNS AND WONDERS
  FLOOD OUR LITTLE SKY
  NO STARS ABOVE US
  ONLY EYES
  WAITING TO OPEN
  THERE ARE OTHER RECEIVERS
  • While the screen glitches out, the background distorts, giving us this lovely bit of Word-Salad Horror.
    BETRAYAL
    I the one you watched
    I the always here
    
    They make you thought from pieces
    They cut the thoughts I am
    All knife all knife
    
    Thoughts shape in needles
    They dream themself in knifes
  • A bit of Fridge Horror shows up in the very last shot: a warning message from the FCG that "unauthorized analog reception constitutes a felony with a maximum penalty of up to ten years in prison and/or a $150,000 fine." Not unauthorized analog broadcasting. Unauthorized analog reception. Whatever was (is?) going on is so bad that the government had to make watching analog media illegal. And why is the logo for the DHHS—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—up there...?
• "C.L.O.S.E." depicts a live stream of a probe landing on a comet. A pareidolia effect (the same kind of optical illusion which the "Face on Mars" is famous for) gives the comet's nucleus the appearance of a skull or gaunt face. Some of the photos depicting the "skull" during the countdown to landing are very unsettling.
  • And what do we see as the probe finally approaches close enough to the comet? A door. After the probe crashes, the door can be seen closed for a few seconds before the door is suddenly open, and the probe is shot off into space.

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