
"While you may have been told by your parents that monsters aren't real, the truth is that they do exist and can cause harm. If you or someone you know has recently come into contact with an unusual entity, please notify your local authorities immediately."
ARCADIA is an Analog Horror series created by Chilling Abyss
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A live broadcast of deep-sea explorations is suddenly interrupted when the submarine carrying the camera is attacked by an unknown entity. Although the TV station conducting the broadcast attempts to pass it off as a mere prank being played on the audience by the submarine pilot, it soon becomes apparent that there's more going on - and not merely at the bottom of the ocean, but a lot closer to home, too.
The series is still ongoing, with fourteen videos to date.
Videos in the series
- Chapter 1: Welcome to Arcadia

- Chapter 2: Paradise Lost

- Chapter 3 (ongoing)
The series provides examples of:
- All-Powerful Bystander: The signal hijackers from Interference clearly have the power to interact with our universe, but seem content to simply taunt us and watch the disaster unfold from the sidelines.
- Ambiguous Situation: The role Arcadia TV plays in the events of the story. They try to cover up the Deep Sea LIVE incident, and are promoting The Farm as a cozy and pleasant game, but whether this is just a TV station making mistakes or something more sinister is left unclear.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: In The Farm, it's heavily implied that the entity within the game is an Ian Parker from another universe who has been altered by the exposure to the abyss.
- Apocalyptic Log: Implied. In Monsters, portions of a journal of a serial kidnapper are found, in which they describe being coerced into their action by a mythical creature. However, neither them nor the creature are ever located.
- Blatant Lies: In Exclusion Zone Safety, the video tells the viewer that Fissures occur only in the exclusion zone, which would be more reassuring if it didn't come right after a map showing a Fissure appearing far south of it.
- Biblical Motifs: The company conducting parallel universe experiments is called Adam Laboratories, and the machine sending and receiving signals is called EVE. Fittingly, EVE is what brings the invaders to our world.
- Brain–Computer Interface: The people running the experiments on The Farm are able to see what the player sees by the way of a neutral implant connecting the test subject to a computer.
- Coincidental Broadcast: In Paid Programming, while a man is waiting for the intruder to enter his home, the TV starts broadcasting the news discussing how Canadian government is furious with the US's inability to contain the threat in Alaska.
- Cosmic Flaw: After the explosion in the Arctic, a new celestial body appears near the moon. So far, it's unclear what it actually is, although the narrator in Paid Programming calls it a "true god".
- Cosmic Horror Reveal: The first few videos in the series imply that this is a story about supernatural monsters hiding in the shadows; then The Signal reveals that the plot spans not merely the whole world, but multiple universes.
- Crapsack World: The second contacted world in The Signal is implied to be one; when asked to send over pictures of "nature" and "dog", they show a photo of a dead forest and an animal corpse.
- Creepy Crows: The brief video segment at the end of The Great North Alaskan Disaster shows a person recording the Wall, with crows cawing in the background for added creepiness.
- Do Not Adjust Your Set: There are several instances of the invaders hijacking TV broadcasts to send taunting messages to the viewers.
- Emergency Broadcast: The entire Emergency Broadcast System video is, as the title implies, an emergency broadcast imploring people to evacuate the North of Alaska following the explosion.
- Fascists' Bed Time: Welcome to Paradise shows that with the disaster spreading beyond Northern Alaska, a curfew has been established from 9 PM to 8 AM in some areas.
- Foreshadowing:
- The "Up Next" screen at very beginning of the first video teases events to come:
- "Skywatching" refers to the strange glowing object appears in the night sky after the disaster.
- "Paid Programming" is the title of the video much later in the series.
- The missing poster in Crying Cave, which shows two people who aren't missing and one that does not exist, foreshadows the introduction of The Multiverse and the existence of multiple versions of Ian Parker.
- The "Up Next" screen at very beginning of the first video teases events to come:
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Exclusion Zone Safety has several instances of the text briefly cutting to an incident report about a girl that's gone missing in an aftermath of an "incident", as well as a moment in the actual training tape video skips ahead a moment, only briefly showing a message:Unstable Fissures can transport humans but most do not survive entry.
- Government Agency of Fiction: Anomalous Awareness Association, the US government body that's apparently responsible for investigating mythical creatures and parallel worlds, as well as producing PSAs about dangers thereof.
- The Great Wall: Following the Great North Alaskan Disaster, the US government builds a wall separating North Alaska from the rest of the US in an attempt to stem the invasion. Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that the wall is not doing much to prevent the invaders from getting into people's homes.
- Guns Are Worthless: In Paid Programming, a man proudly shows off his shotgun, saying he is going to kill the intruder with it. Sufficed to say, he does not survive the video.
- Hellhound: In Monsters, Ian Parker recounts encountering a monster that looked like a flayed dog.
- Hell Is That Noise:
- The roaring in Crying Cave, connected to an unseen monster that eventually has the person recording the video fleeing for their life.
- The appearance of Fissures is signaled by a strange buzzing noise coming from seemingly nowhere; the narration in Exclusion Zone Safety video specifically notes that if you hear it, it's probably already too late to leave the area.
- At the end of The Great Alaskan Disaster, the person recording the Wall hears a bizarre booming-scratching noise coming from somewhere beyond the wall right before their camera starts going fuzzy.
- He Was Right There All Along: For majority of The Signal, the screen showing the map of parallel universes only displays three - "our" world, the first contacted world, and the "hostile" world. At the end of the video, the hostile world connecting to ours displays a signal showing that all along, we have been surrounded by dozens of parallel universes.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The explosion at the Adam Laboratory that starts the disaster occurs on December 23rd, and the evacuation order is given on December 25th, Christmas Day.
- Humanoid Abomination: The "mythical creatures" that invade people's homes are naked, bald humanoids who somehow know people's identities just by hearing them, offer gifts that must be turned down, turn deadly when rejected, and for some reason give up if they can't kill their target within exactly 30 days.
- Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The "abyss", the space between dimensions, is extremely dangerous to people, though it seems to be less because of its own inherent properties and more because of the other entities residing within it.
- I Shall Taunt You: A lot of the messages from the invaders appear to be purely taunting, with the broadcaster assuring the viewers that they are about to die and there is nothing anyone can do to stop that.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: One of the first signs of a Fissure incoming is the insects and other animals in the area going completely silent.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The experimental safety procedures listed in "The Farm" include "isolate yourself," "turn off the lights," and "wear headphones," all of which are also things that can help increase the viewing experience of a horror video.
- Meaningful Background Event: Invoked; while the man falling from the sky was a meaningful background event in the original broadcast, the version we see highlights him when he appears.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: The Farm. Despite the game being a text-based adventure and later, a side-scrolling shooter, those who play it hallucinate being within its world, and can get seizures from what happens there. There is also an entity residing within capable of communication.
- The Multiverse: The entire premise of the series is eventually revealed to be that there are multiple versions of our universe, and some of them are a lot less human - and a lot more hostile - than others.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- In Crying Cave, we can hear screaming and roaring, but we never get to see whatever was making those noises.
- We never see the visitor at the end of Paid Programming; the video stops right as the door begins to open.
- Exclusion Zone Safety video notes that recently, there has been an "increase in biological entities" traveling through Fissures, but what "biological entities" means is never elaborated upon.
- Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Monsters describes black tar-like substance that has been found in a house occupied by a mythical creature. It's apparently a distilled form of a substance that can be found in the blood of organic beings after they travel between worlds.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: At the end of Monsters, Ian Parker is reassigned to a firewatch tower outside of Station Bravo for daring to protest the plan to form a connection with another world. As he notes, his superiors claim it's temporary, but he does not believe them. Ironically, this may have saved his life, as all the researchers who were still in Station Bravo have been listed as "Missing" after the signal incident.
- Religious Horror: Underplayed; in Paid Programming, the narrator assures the viewer that all their gods are false, and the only real god is the light in the night sky.
- The Reveal:
- The Signal is where the series reveals that it's about parallel universes.
- Monsters reveals that the mythical creatures have been visiting our world years before the Great North Alaskan Disaster.
- Rule of Three: In The Signal:
- There are three universes involved in the story: "ours", the first one contacted, and the hostile one.
- The test to check how human the other universe is involves asking them to send over three images.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Several cases, none of which go well for the person attempting to flee.
- The submarine pilot in "Deep Sea LIVE" eventually has enough of the weird noises and demands to be pulled back out; unfortunately, their demands seem to fall on deaf ears, or the crew above has no time to withdraw the sub before it's attacked.
- The camera person in Crying Cave flees upon hearing one monstrous noise too many, but end up running the wrong way.
- In The Signal, Research Station Bravo cuts contact with the second world immediately upon realizing that they've contacted something inhuman, but by then it's too late.
- Secret Underground Passage: A news report in Welcome to Paradise mentions that tunnels have been found beneath the Alaska Wall; it's unclear, though, if they were made by people trying to get North, or the invaders trying to go South.
- Show Within a Show: "The Forest" showcases the final episode of an in-universe series called "Tony's World". The episode is about a boy, David, whose dog Buddy runs away into the dark forest, and his adventure in search of his "only true friend". The episode is actually an in-universe homage to the final episode of another show called "Fear of the Unknown".
- Snowballing Threat: The Fissures appearing in the North Alaska become more and more numerous over time; the map showing their spread goes from showing the change in their numbers from year by year to month by month.
- Sound-Only Death: The man in Paid Programming is recording himself, but the light goes out just as the creature attacks, leaving us to hear his screams as he is presumably mauled to death.
- Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: Midway through Exclusion Zone Safety, we are shown a graphic of Fissures appearing in the exclusion zone, spreading from the central point as they fill more and more of the map, eventually breaching the wall.
- Swap Teleportation: The Fissures swap whatever is at their location in our universe with whatever is there in a parallel universe, be it small objects or people.
- Unwanted Gift Plot: Played for Drama in Mythical Creatures, where the video notes that the "mythical creatures" will attempt to give gifts to the person they're stalking, and that those gifts must never, ever be accepted.
- Vicious Cycle: The entity within The Farm implies that multiple worlds have suffered what our universe is going through at the moment; in every one, an Ian Parker sends out a signal to contact other universes, and every time, something hostile responds.
- We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The Deep Sea LIVE video ends with the broadcast cut and the message "Technical Difficulties, please stand by" appearing on screen.
- You Are Number Six: The test subject in The Farm is referred to by the video only as "294B", although the Farm entity itself calls them Ian Parker.
We see you
We see you
We see you
We see you
We see you
We see you
We see you
