Day 1 in the Ghost House
Ghost House is a series of online animated shorts created by Jason Steele, the creator of such series as Charlie the Unicorn, Llamas with Hats, and Detective Heart of America. The series features an unnamed protagonist exploring the Ghost House, which is a house that's absolutely lousy with ghosts. With so many spooky ghosts around him all the time, the protagonist quickly finds himself in a series of bizarre situations.
So far, there have been fourteen spooky episodes of Ghost House, which can be viewed here
.
This series contains the following spooky tropes:
- Apocalyptic Log: The entire series is made up of a series of daily reflections from the protagonist, narrating the bizarre things he finds in the Ghost House.
- Attending Your Own Funeral: Zack attends his own funeral after his death by B.T.D., because apparently ghosts just come back as ghosts again when they die.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Invoked and In-universe. On Day 18, a previously unseen...thing appears, completely interrupting the narrative about Zack's illness. The protagonist is mystified as to what the hell it is, and the last we see of it is the protagonist ordering the ghosts to take it outside.
- Bigger on the Inside: The eponymous Ghost House. The whole house can almost be considered as its own world seeing how entire outdoor landscapes, warzones, hospitals, graveyards and restaurantes are also inside the house.
- Body Horror: By Episode 8, our protagonist survives his operation, only to realize his junk was replaced by a screeching bird head.
- Cartoonland Time: Taken to ridiculous lengths. In 2, Beth gets pregnant with the protagonist's children, and then gives birth to them the next day. By Day 29, the protagonist is apparently a grandfather.
- Catchphrase: "Day [insert number here] in the Ghost House..." and "Oh shiiiiit" for the protagonist.
- Cliffhanger: Most episodes end on them, especially from Episode 4 onward.
- Dead All Along: The ending of the first episode reveals that the protagonist has been a ghost the whole time. Ultimately subverted when Episode 3 reveals that he wasn't a ghost; he was just a guy who thought he was a ghost.
- Death Is Cheap: There is a war and several ghosts end up dying, which doesn't faze anyone considering that they are ghosts and will just come back. Same applies to a string of murders.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Well, the whole goddamn series is pretty weird, but the first few episodes have some distinct differences from earlier episodes; the ghosts' slightly creepy faces look very out-of-place next to the somewhat more cartoony ghosts of later episodes, and the narrator's "Oh shiiiiit" at the end is much less drawn-out.
- Eldritch Location: While ostensibly a house, the ghost house shifts depending on the current plot's events, such as being large enough to contain an all out war involving tanks, have fertile ground to plant flowers, contains a Cracker Barrel and Emergency Room, and by episode 13 developing mouths and manifestations of himself
- Faux Horrific: Episode 3 has the end-of-episode "Oh shiiiiit" moment in response to...the protagonist realizing his butt isn't as sexy as he thought. Slightly downplayed when you consider that this is a hint that the protagonist might actually not have been a ghost the whole time.
- Genius Loci: The Ghost House itself seems to become this by Episode 13, with the floorboards developing mouths and an entire room sprouting a giant replica of the protagonist's features at the end of the episode.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The subtitle of every episode after the first is taken from the subtitle of another film sequel...except for Episode 7, which is named after a video game sequel instead.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A couple episodes have the protagonist comment on how surreal the situation in the Ghost House has become, which could be construed as a commentary on the borderline-Random Events Plot nature of the series.Day 30 in the Ghost House: It turns out I was never in a spooky Cracker Barrel. It was all a prank by my half-ghost half-ghost-horse grandson. Life is getting too complicated.Day 55 in the Ghost House: I spent the day trying to connect my butterfly bod to one of the clone-slug butt-flowers. I can't believe it's come to this.
- Literal Metaphor: The protagonist suspects Beverly to be the Ghost House murderer because her eyes are too shifty. Turns out, her eyes keep rotating.
- Losing Your Head: In a fit of rage, the protagonist severs his head from the bird junk.
- No Name Given: The protagonist narrates the series entirely in first-person, so we have no idea what his name is (assuming he even has one).
- Non-Indicative Name: None of the episodes titles have anything to do with the actual content.
- Random Events Plot: Trying to figure out what will happen the next episode is an exercise in madness.
- Riddle for the Ages: Who was going around killing all the ghosts in Episode 7? We never find out for sure, as Episode 8 deals with the protagonist in the hospital being treated for stab wounds and the series never picks the story arc back up. Although the symbol at the bottom of the letter hints that it might have been Beth, the protagonist's ghostly ex-girlfriend.
- Running Gag: Butts. Everything will always cycle back to butts.
- Shout-Out: The subtitles of each episode after the first are references to famous movie sequels.
- Skewed Priorities: When Beverly (whom the protagonist had suspected of being the killer is found murdered, the protagonist's sole reaction is "Well great, now I feel like an asshole." Possibly justified, since the protagonist knows by this point that ghosts who die just come back as ghosts again.
- Strong Family Resemblance: All of the protagonist's children look exactly like him.
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: The protagonist notes that all ghosts have such defining characteristics and he hates it. He can't even hug his children because it makes him feel uncomfortable.
- Take That!: When discussing the possibility of having gotten Beth pregnant, the protagonist exclaims "I can't be a ghost dad! I hate that movie and Bill Cosby is a rapist!" Crosses over with
Harsher (or perhaps Hilarious) in Hindsight, as the Bill Cosby rape allegations didn't gain major media traction for a couple months after the video aired. - Tomato in the Mirror: Parodied. The twist at the end of 1 is that he's been dead all along and is one of the ghosts, and the twist in 6 is that he's not. He's been deluding himself the whole time into thinking he was, when actually he was in a Cracker Barrel.
- Tomato Surprise: Parodied."I keep having the same dream. Someone is making a mold of my face but when it sets, it looks like a butt. I'm angry but, deep down, I know it's the truth.
- Twist Ending: Played for Laughs as a Running Gag with the ending of every episode, always accompanied by an "Oh shiiiiiit!...":
- 1: The protagonist of the series is, himself, a ghost.
- 2: Beth's ghost babies are the protagonist's children.
- 3: The protagonist isn't a ghost and never was.
- 4: The protagonist gets infected with Zach's BTD.
- 5: The "ghost house" is not, and never was, a ghost house - it's actually a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
- 6: The head chef at the Cracker Barrel is the protagonist's half-horse grandson.
- 7: The protagonist has been stabbed by the ghost murderer, and needs to be hospitalized.
- 8: His penis has been replaced with an ugly bird head.
- 9: The ugly bird head that replaced his penis has subsumed his body, turning him into his own genitals.
- 10: He manages to wrench his head free from the sexy anthropomorphic bird's crotch and becomes a beautiful butterfly.
- Weirdness Magnet: Whoever the protagonist is, he seems to attract a lot of strange things; the series starts at ghosts with sexy butts and only keeps escalating from there.
- Wham Shot: Every episode ends with one of these, inevitably followed up with "Oh shiiiiit..."
- Episode 1: The protagonist sees his sexy butt and stupid face, realizing he was a ghost the whole time.
- Episode 2: Beth's ghost kids all have the protagonist's face.
- Episode 3: The protagonist's butt isn't nearly as sexy as he thought, hinting that he wasn't a ghost at all.
- Episode 4: The protagonist's nose begins to wiggle, implying that he has caught Zack's B.T.D.
- Episode 5: The protagonist questions whether he was ever really in a Ghost House...and then the camera zooms out to reveal him standing in a Cracker Barrel.
- Episode 6: The chef's door open, revealing the chef to have the protagonist's face with a ghost horse head jutting out; it's the protagonist's grandson.
- Episode 7: The protagonist's body is full of stab wounds, revealing him to be the next victim.
- Episode 8: The protagonist lifts up his hospital gown to reveal that his junk has been replaced with a bird head.
- Episode 9: The protagonist catches a look at himself in a mirror, realizing that he has switched places with his bird junk.
- Episode 10: The protagonist has recovered after severing his head from the bird, and he has morphed into a beautiful butterfly.
- Episode 11: The ghost seeds that the protagonist planted now have his body, with butt flowers as heads.
- Episode 12: All of the ghosts have the protagonist's face.
- Episode 13: A giant copy of the protagonist has sprouted from the Ghost House itself. Or something like that.
- Episode 14: The protagonist is suddenly a successful businessman with no idea why he was dreaming about ghosts. What's important now is he's about to report the company's windfall in profits to the board of directors, only to realize his chart is upside down and revenue has actually plummeted.
