Mr. Nightmare
is a YouTube channel hosting a wide variety of scary themed content such as terrifying recordings and horror stories, though things like lists and even Interactive Fiction appear from time to time as well. Currently the channel has over 3 million subscribers (and counting) and new content tends to be added on a weekly or monthly basis. A companion channel called Llama Arts also features animated versions of several of the stories that appear, though potential viewers should take note that most of the scariness is retained and even sometimes increased due to the art style. As such, it’s probably not a good idea to binge on videos from either channel during the night or while home alone. But don’t let us stop you.
Mr. Nightmare provides examples of the following tropes:
- Amusement Park of Doom: 3 Disturbing True Stories That Happened At Amusement Parks focuses on scary encounters at various amusement parks, including a group of friends who seek into a run down park, a father who losses his son and a man who is menaced by a tall figure in the park bathrooms.
- Bittersweet Ending: How most of the stories end. The protagonist obviously survives to tell the story in the first place, but very often ends up traumatized for life and may have lost something valuable along the way or suffered some sort of punishment or retribution. The villains sometimes escape and events sometimes go unexplained as well, denying the victim closure.
- Chaos of the Bells: Mr. Nightmare often uses a haunting piano version of "Carol of the Bells" to underscore the horror stories he tells in several of his Christmas-themed "true scary stories" videos.
- Creepy Basement: 3 Disturbing Real Basement Horror Stories all focus on protagonists who encounter strange and creepy events in their basements. The first two are easily explained as simple break-ins but the third is a bit more ambiguous.
- Human Traffickers: The main antagonists of this story.
- Jump Scare: Appears in some of the stories. Though they're usually pretty mild, such as black silhouette, peeking eye(s), glaring eye(s), etc. They're also usually accompanied by Scare Chord.
- Karma Houdini: Some stories have the antagonists escape or otherwise avoid punishment for their actions. This especially applies if the antagonist was some sort of criminal, like a murderer or a sex trafficker.
- Monster Clown: In several different stories, people dressed as scary clowns act as a threat. There's even a video dedicated to encounters with these.
- Mundanger: A large amount of stories have no supernatural phenomena or unexplained events to speak of, just a nasty or creepy human that harasses or menaces the protagonist in some way. A crazy guy with a gun or knife can be a lot more intimidating than a strange bump in the night or a specter appearing in the corner of your eye.
- One good example would be of a guy who does his shopping on Craigslist who travels far from home to meet up with a potential seller at a rest stop with his young son. When the guy shows up he has his gang surround the protagonist and threaten his son. Luckily, a cop car passes by just when it looks like both the man and his kid might be in real danger of being killed. No ghosts or monsters here, except the human kind.
- Not-So-Abandoned Building: A number of stories revolve around people exploring empty homes and buildings that end up finding out the hard way that they're not alone.
- Roman à Clef: A number of stories have the names of the people involved either changed or reduced to a letter by the admission of the person who submitted it to Mr. Nightmare usually for privacy and/or safety reasons.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: What's usually the result in most stories, be it heading straight for the exit the second the protagonist(s) realize something is wrong or end up moving elsewhere due to no longer feeling safe in their then-current home as a result.
- Vocal Evolution: Mr. Nightmare originally spoke in a higher voice when reading stories, but he gradually began speaking in a deeper and more monotonous, intimidating tone as time progressed, fitting with the dark and suspenseful vibe of each read story.
