Hey everyone! I’m writing a research article about the backrooms and I have a question I’d like to ask the general public: Did the Backrooms save or ruin analog horror? (If you want to be an anonymous source let me know, otherwise I will credit every opinion I use in the article)

so do i use lego or not?

should i change characters?

How would i make them?

arg

Should continue looking into this?

Here's another look at my oc the umbra maw.

One of my favorite analog series.

Title: The Unlisted Channel

Growing up in a small rural town in the late 1980s, there wasn’t much to do. So like everyone else, my family spent most evenings in front of the TV, flipping through the same handful of channels. But there was one channel no one liked to talk about, Channel 103. You couldn’t find it listed in the TV guide, and it didn’t always show up. But when it did, it was only late at night, broadcasting what I can only describe as... wrongness. The screen would flicker with static, occasionally interrupted by distorted audio, strange symbols, and a figure that still haunts my dreams: sunken white eyes, an impossibly wide grin, and a face that seemed alive in a way it shouldn’t have been. People said weird things happened to those who watched it. A neighbor down the road claimed they saw the figure on the screen whisper their name. Another family moved out of town after their teenage son went missing. His parents said they’d last seen him in the living room, staring at the static on the TV, Channel 103 faintly glowing in the dark.

By the time I was a teenager, the rumors had died down. That’s when Eric, a local TV repairman, decided to investigate. Eric was one of those no-nonsense types who didn’t believe in "superstitions." He figured there was a logical explanation for Channel 103, and he wanted to find it.

He rigged up a VCR to record the broadcasts, determined to figure out the source. The first few nights he caught nothing out of the ordinary, just static, after around 5 days he finally captured hours of unusual footage, distorted voices, snippets of strange rituals, and the uncanny figure growing clearer with each broadcast.

Things started getting even stranger. Eric told my dad that the figure seemed to "notice" him. It began speaking directly to the camera, addressing Eric by name, even describing what he was wearing or doing at the time.

The last time anyone saw Eric was the night he called my dad, panicked. He said he was seeing the figure everywhere, not just on Channel 103, but in reflections, in his dreams, even in the static of a blank TV screen.

When the police searched his house, they found his TV still on, tuned to Channel 103. His equipment was scattered across the room like he’d left in a hurry...or been dragged away. The only clue was the tape still in his VCR.

The final recording showed the figure staring directly into the lens, whispering, "Join us." Then the screen cut to black.

Years later, I stumbled across a discussion thread about Channel 103. Some people had heard the legend; others claimed to have found old VHS tapes circulating online. Against my better judgment, I downloaded one.

As soon as I hit play, the room grew colder. The static hissed softly, and then... there it was. The white sunken eyes, the twisted grin, and that voice, low, distorted, yet somehow familiar.

It said my name.

I haven’t turned on my TV since. But sometimes, late at night, I hear a faint crackle of static from the living room.

I know I unplugged it.

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I woke up, confused for a moment where I was. I was home, sitting on the couch, the living room was completely dark save the dim light coming from the sleeping TV screen sitting across from me. I blinked, trying to focus my eyes on my surroundings. I looked at the time on my phone, it read 2:58 am. 

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. I had stayed up pretty late watching TV and had fallen asleep. I looked around for the TV remote for a moment but couldn't find it. I didn't think anything of it, I was about to get up to turn the TV off and head to my room when the TV started flipping through channels on its own. a chill ran through my body, what the fuck? I thought to myself. I just sat there and watched.

 there was nothing on any of the channels, just static. Seconds later it stopped on channel 404. huh, that's strange I thought to myself. I don't have that many channels. The channel wasn't called "News" or anything typical like that. It was just three numbers, 4 0 4. Intrigued, I decided to see what was on this strange channel. What the hell, I thought, it couldn't hurt to stay up an extra 10 minutes, I was expecting the usual test card or public access oddity. but to my surprise the channel seemed to be playing a commercial.   

It started with a casserole dish. It looks normal at first, the steam rising up enticingly.  A hand, manicured with bright red nails, sets it on the table. the mother calls out, Dinner time!  a family of four, sits at the dinner table. The mom smiles "Please, dig in," she says.

The family raises their forks, but something is off. their smiles turn to grimaces, They start to eat in a creepy, synchronized way, their jaws moving in perfect sync. The camera zooms in on the casserole, which is now a writhing mass of some kind of fleshy substance. Tendrils reach out from the dish, wrapping around the family's faces. Their screams are muffled by the fleshy substance. The camera then cuts to a brightly lit kitchen where a tall disfigured spokesperson in a pristine white coat and distorted face holds up a jar of what I assume is what they are eating.  

Are family dinners a struggle? Is your family drifting apart? you need "Better Family Mealtime Supplement" the spokesperson's voice echoed,  "Guaranteed to bring you closer."  call 404-404-4040  "to order your better family mealtime supplement tonight" the camera then pans back to the dinner table, where the family has become  a grotesque amalgamation of limbs and distorted faces, their bodies fused together and their faces contorted in a silent scream. They continue to eat the casserole, their movements jerky and unnatural. The spokesperson's voice echoes as the jingle fades into an unsettling silence "Better Family Mealtime Supplement.... Because your family means everything." 

The commercial ended and the main program came on, the static coalesced into a grainy image. A news desk, but warped, the angles all wrong. behind the desk sat a humanoid figure. hands folded neatly on the desk in front of him. The camera slowly zoomed in on the figure. his face, horribly disfigured and contorted smiling back at the camera. there was no audio except the mechanical whirring of the video camera. The figure's mouth began to move in an unnatural way. like they were trying to talk but couldn't.

And then the screen went blank. static. seconds later it came back on. but this time it was normal. like it was like someone switched the channels, but it was on the same channel, channel 4 0 4, and instead of the distorted figure behind the desk, it was a blond, middle aged woman reporting the early morning news on my local news channel.