Blog / Slimyswampghost

Slimyswampghost is the name of a horror blog run by one Trevor Henderson, whose primary forte is making Found Footage style horror photographs of unusual cryptids. And as his followers note, he's very good at it...

The blog's content is usually standalone, but every now and then he includes recurring cryptids, such as Siren Head (which even got its own video game a la Slender) and Long Horse, both of whom are so popular that Henderson even started providing some lore for them.

Unfortunately the Tumblr blog has been disabled, but there is still his Twitter account and an unofficial wiki. He has also created a replacement Tumblr blog.

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Tropes present in Henderson's work:

• Action Survivor: The narrator of this post, who was holding off the things in the cameras with a security system. Shame it didn't work, though...
• Alien Geometries: Long Horse's neck. It's impossibly long, twisting and turning into eternity.
• Alternate Universe: Henderson's setting has three distinct worlds:
  • The first is the base setting, where most of the posts take place. Various creatures — ghosts, other-dimensional beings — are abroad, but they're covered up from the general public.
  • The second is a world where "something really bad happened", leading to absolutely colossal creatures roaming the world. Posts about The Giants and most other huge monsters take place here.
  • The third is the world of the Pursuer and the Fugitive, and possibly Siren Head as well. Not much is known about this one.
• Ambiguously Evil: According to Henderson, Siren Head could in fact simply be a predator that has evolved to hunt humans specifically.
• Animalistic Abomination: Any animals that appear in the series are pretty much going to be this, but special mention goes to Long Horse, being a creature with a head like a horse's skull tipping a neck that twists into eternity and who has existed since the caveman days (and possibly even before then). There's also Needle Horse and the Good Boy. And now we have Meat Moose.
• Apocalyptic Log: Right here.
• Ax-Crazy: Despite the fact he's one of the few who hasn't been shown to have killed anyone, Cartoon Cat is implied to be this.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Mr. Mascot is the first post to contain an actual dead body. According to Henderson here, he generally doesn't do it to keep things more mysterious, but he decided that this idea merited it.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: A surprisingly common trope in Trevor's illustrations - most of the cryptids he makes operate on this. What's described as normal behavior from them actually seems incredibly odd, and most of them, while friendly and well-meaning aren't even aware they're causing harm! The same can't be said for the actively malicious ones like the Cartoon Cat or the Man with the Upside Down Face, or the Giants and Sirenhead, who seem to instead operate on pure instinct.
• Body Horror: All over the dang place.
• Butch Lesbians: Especially if they're werewolves.
• Cats Are Mean: The Cartoon Cat exaggerates this trope with his sadistic tendencies.
• Cosmic Horror Story: In Henderson's setting, Planet Earth is completely overrun by all kinds of bizarre and terrifying creatures, many of which prey on humans and they are good at making short work of them too. This especially applies to the Giants, who arrive from another dimension and make life shit for everyone. Either way, it wouldn't be too surprising if the human life expectancy in Henderson's worlds is far lower than real life's.
• Conspicuous Trenchcoat: "Seeing things while waiting for the train"
• Creepy Good: Most of the cryptids turn out to be this. Special mention goes to Long Horse - despite looking like a zombified, skeletal horse, it's stated to be mostly benevolent.
• Cult: One of them summoned these guys. Unfortunately, they're less than benevolent... and they're willing to wait for the cultists to make a mistake and step out of the circle.
• Dark Is Evil:
  • Some of the monsters are actively malevolent, such as Cartoon Cat, a diabolical cat-like Humanoid Abomination who is implied to be bat-shit insane, and possibly Siren Head, since it preys on humans, including children and probably has killed the most people. And let's not get into the Giants themselves. Also the Man with the Upside-Down Face who cause many fatal incidents and then feeds off the energy of the people in pain.
  • The Pursuer is a malevolent creature who, as its name suggests, is chasing down the innocent Fugitive for unknown yet nefarious intentions. Its malice is just as horrifying as its appearance.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Some of Trevor's other monsters are stated to be friendly and intelligent or at least harmless, just really really scary. Long Horse is said to be benevolent, well-meaning and curious by nature while Bonesworth is kind and playful, but won't leave you alone once he visits. The Chicken Ghost is less friendly, but will leave you alone as long as you're nice to your poultry.
  • There's also this guy, who, despite his fearsome appearance, just wants a lift.
  • Despite the creature's unnerving appearance, the Fugitive is an innocent creature who is running and hiding away from the actively malevolent Persuer.
  • Big Charlie is another candidate as despite being an Animalistic Abomination in the form of a giant, skinless cow, he's not actively malevolent and minds his own business, pretty much acting like a normal cow despite his appearance.
  • The Anxious Dog is apparently non-malicious, and only poses a threat due to being unpredictable.
• Darkness Equals Death: It certainly does with this thing.
• Dem Bones: Bonesworth. Contrary to most depictions of the trope, he's actually pretty friendly, if a bit clingy.
• The Dreaded: Henderson says that Cartoon Cat is this, to the point that other monsters avoid the mall it lives in "if they know what's good for them".
• Eldritch Abomination: Practically everything is one of these.
  • Special mention goes to the Worm of the Red Court. When asked about it, Henderson referred to it as a "despicable enemy of everything in this dimension".
  • Also, there's "The Thing in the Red Space", a recurring monster whose original description sounds like it was straight out of a Lovecraft novel.
  • The Giants are essentially the subject of their own Cosmic Horror Story.
    Sometimes they were almost beautiful, if you didn’t think about the repercussions of their collective presence, about how they were just one big walking signpost that read "it has all gone to shit, and nothing can be good again".
  • Very little is known about the mysterious Cartoon Cat, but he is apparently so powerful and so cruel, evil and malicious he's a monster to other monsters!
• Eldritch Location:
  • This parking garage seemingly goes on infinitely, to the point where you can walk for hours. It also plays host to whatever that creature is in the background.
  • "Thanks for visiting Starliner Cinemas!"
• Feathered Fiend: The Chicken Ghost, though presumably due to his weakened form, he has no feathers to speak of.
• Found Footage Films: Played with in that the stills aren't actual video footage, but nevertheless, the style evokes snapshots from low-quality camera footage to haunting effect.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Implied with this one.
  “-photos of it are just another version of it, it’s all one living thing. Even when it’s not there, it’s on the way-”
• Gentle Giant: Despite being a massive walking mass of Body Horror, Big Charlie has the behavior of a perfectly normal and harmless cow, and he's more interested in escaping from the meat factory with other animals than hurting anyone. Unfortunately Averted with the Giants themselves, since their mere existence is dedicated to making everyones' lives as fucking miserable as possible. To elaborate, they spend their days causing pure, unrelenting chaos and discord wherever they go, often causing an outright Apocalypse How.
• Giving Up on Logic: This post mentions that whatever event led to the Giants arriving on Earth caused most scientists to do this.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Happens to the subject of this post after seeing... something in an abandoned basement.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: The Chicken Ghost. Henderson states in supplementary material that the Chicken Ghost was originally known as "The God of Chickens" and was a deity representing and protecting poultry. Now long-forgotten, the Chicken Ghost is no longer prayed to or worshiped, which led to him losing most of his powers. This is also likely the reason for his bizarre and mangled appearance.
• Government Agency of Fiction: Some of the blog's content, such as the caption on the Red Court picture and the occasional mention of "sightings", implies that there may be one of these researching the creatures.
• Horrifying the Horror: According to Henderson, all the other monsters avoid the dirt mall Cartoon Cat is contained in "if they know what's good for them".
• Hospital Gurney Scene: Given a nightmarish twist here.
• Humanoid Abomination: Many examples, but Siren Head deserves a special mention, being a 40-foot-tall maneater resembling a skeletal body made of rusted metal, with a set of sirens where its head should be. It's capable of mimicking human speech in order to lure its prey and according to one image, has been hunting humans since prehistoric times. And it is implied there are more of these things. Cartoon Cat also qualifies, being a living, breathing cartoon character in the form of an anthropomorphic cat, while the Chicken Ghost skirts the line between this and Animalistic Abomination.
  • The best example of this trope is The Man With the Upside-Down Face. It's a humanoid entity with an upside-down face that appears in photographs of fatal accidents, usually ones that involve a vehicle. He's never seen by the crowd during the events, only in the photos taken afterwards. It's unknown whether he causes these deaths to occur or merely likes watching them happen.
• Inkblot Cartoon Style: The Cartoon Cat looks like a warped version of this, and is The Dreaded even among other monsters.
• Jerkass: While most of the cryptids run on Blue-and-Orange Morality, the Upside-Down Face Man has been confimed by Henderson to be the biggest asshole of them all. Considering he seems to get his kicks off of watching fatal vehicle accidents (which he's implied to cause), it's not that surprising.
• Locked Room Mystery: A variant: this image was found on a camera in a sealed cemetery vault.
• Nightmare Face: Many of Trevor's monsters have these, but even more so with the Cartoon Cat who always sports a nightmarish grin in most cases. However, Trevor recently posted yet another picture of the 1920s horror, except this time it's NOT smiling. In fact, it looks pissed!
• Nothing Is Scarier: With Henderson's work, what we don't know about something is almost always infinitely scarier than what we do know.
• Non-Malicious Monster: As mentioned above in Creepy Good and Dark Is Not Evil, many of the monsters are either harmless or friendly, such as Long Horse, Bonesworth, or Big Charlie, and while the Chicken Ghost may be less friendly, he will peacefully leave you alone if you respect your poultry. Unfortunately, some of the other monsters avert this trope, such as Cartoon Cat, especially The Man with the Upside Down Face and (possibly) Siren Head.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever happened in the universe where the Giants run rampant, it's never specified what exactly went down, but it's described as "something really bad."
• Ominous Owl:
  • "Baby owls". Ominous Owl, Creepy Child and Creepy Twins all rolled into one!
  • Here is an even more appropriate example.
• Pun: This picture of one of the Giants shows that the subject's head is twisted at an angle that would almost certainly snap a human's neck. So what's the caption? "Breaking news."
• Recurring Dreams: Here.
  You have the dream again. You’re in your childhood home, and it’s cold outside, quiet and covered in icy snow. Your vision is vague, like seeing through a pinhole. Without knowing why you know, you know there’s someone at the door and you have to let them in, and you’re afraid.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The only thing keeping Cartoon Cat from causing all sorts of untold havoc is the fact that it's sealed away in the dirt mall.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of Henderson's pieces is an interpretation of Rawhead Rex.
  • He's also drawn his version of SCP-173.
  • SIRENHEAD MAKES SOME NOISE!
  • Remember, reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, bye!.
  • Henderson made his own rendition of Jack Stauber's Nurpo. It helps that many fan-made videos of Henderson's artwork compilations feature Stauber's music playing in the background.
  • He did an interpretation of Yoyo, devised from a comic by Shenanigansen.
  • He's drawn Momo a couple of times.
• Skin Walker: A possible explanation of the Country Road Creature, as one picture implies it to be a shapeshifter.
• Snowlem: Whatever this thing is...
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Right here.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: It’s implied that this creature is trapped in the building it haunts, and cannot escape.
• Subverted Kids' Show: Cartoon Cat. If you remember old-timey rubberhose cartoons, then stay away, because he's not a jolly, happy, peppy toon...
• That Was the Last Entry:
  • Here. Notably, it's never stated whether the writer was killed or something else, which makes it all the more unsettling.
  • As well as here.
    "Is that... Is that a sewing dummy? What IS that, man!? I think we bet... OH *static*—" - tape ends
• To Serve Man: Siren Head eats humans by luring them in using the voices of their loved ones. Other creatures are noted to do this too, such as the Smile Room.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • The Giants waffle between this and straight-up Cosmic Horror Story.
  • This thing, apparently. It's completely harmless and slow-moving, but it's treated as a pest and a nuisance by the town it likes to show up in, due to its tendency to travel in large numbers and climb onto telephone poles without budging, resulting in phone signals being jammed.
  • An odd inversion: the only response this thing gets is "At least there's finally something interesting happening around here."
• Voice Changeling: Siren Head can mimic voices and sounds, which is perfect for luring prey to him.
• Wham Episode:
  • This post reveals that Siren Head and Long Horse at least are far more ancient than previously implied. Its caption even qualifies as a bit of a Wham Line.
    "They’re still here. They’ve always been here."
  • For a bit of context on this next one, Siren Head and Long Horse got lore pages detailing information about their biology, abilities, etc. And then Cartoon Cat got one. Every single entry is redacted.
• Wham Line: One fan noted on the blog that given all the horrible monsters on Earth, humanity should just evacuate the planet.
  Henderson: oh boy, wait’ll you see what’s in SPACE!
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • None of the more hostile monsters are against killing or harming children. For example, Siren Head was implied in one post to have eaten a child who was on a camping trip with his father.
  • It's implied that this thing killed a pair of kids and mutilated their bodies to the point where their remains aren't even recognizable as human.
• Was Once a Man: Some of the lovecraftian monstrosities, like this one, are implied to have been perfectly human once before being turned into the grotesque creatures they are now.

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