Nightmare Fuel / Channel Zero

Come Back Home Mike

Channel Zero is a horror anthology series based on some of the spookiest tales to come from the internet. Naturally, the frights are real.

---

Candle Cove

• The episode starts with a literal nightmare, as Mike's triumphant interview about his award winning book gradually morphs into something far scarier. First, the interviewer brings out a telephone, with a twelve year old child on the other end. And then the child starts laughing... and doesn't stop. Mike looks into the camera and realizes that the "crew" are actually mannequins. And then the interviewer asks him why he isn't going home.
• "Do you remember Candle Cove?" The entire scene is almost word for word from the original short story.
• In flashbacks, we learn about Mike's brother, Eddie. Eddie was bullied, and we get to see in all the gory detail as said bully tackles him and dislocates his finger. Later, the same bully sics his dog on the twins. The bullying may have driven him to become an avatar for Candle Cove's control. Mike had to kill him to stop him from driving kids to commit suicide so they could "join the crew". Worst of all? The bully's mother laughed about it.
• And, of course, good ol' Candle Cove itself. If the fact that the visuals are INCREDIBLY creepy, enough to scare adults, let alone kids, isn't enough, there's the fact that it speaks to the kids watching it. And it can control them so they do fun stuff. Like trying to kill their relatives with a hook.
  • Candle Cove is arguably even scarier here than it was in the original short story. Where as the creepypasta only subtly hinted that The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You, with Skin-Taker supposedly looking at the camera on occasion, the show outright depicts Horace Horrible going straight to the camera, claiming he can see you, and snickering menacingly.
• The Tooth Child, by its mere nature, is horrifying.
• In Episode 4, Amy is walking through the empty school, looking for the kids she needs to question. She walks through the library, when suddenly, behind her, Jawbone suddenly appears on each of the computer screens, watching her as she passes by.
  • The following episode, it happens again with the computers in the police department.
• Episode 5 adapted the infamous Screaming Episode. And it's HORRIFYING. And then the episode ends with Mike discovering his daughter is inside the show.
• Mike pulling a tooth out of his gums with a pair of pliers in Episode 5.
• All these clues that seemed to indicate Eddie was possessed by Candle Cove? WRONG. He created Candle Cove to expand his powers. And he wants to reincarnate. IN MIKE'S BODY.
• Syfy created an actual episode of Candle Cove, and and it is exactly as terrifying as you think it would be.
  • The Laughingstock's disturbingly cheerful tone of voice is utterly sinister with the way it keeps telling Pirate Percy to be brave.
    The Laughingstock: Look! It's Bravery Cave! You have to go inside!
    Pirate Percy: I'm not brave!
    The Laughingstock: Oh yes you are! You just don't know it yet! You have. To go. INSIDE.
  • Horace's snickering.
  • Just after Pirate Percy meets Jawbone, Jawbone begins laughing maniacally before suddenly we're treated to a shot of what looks to be a bloody, moss-covered pirate corpse with its eyes gouged out screaming "PIRATE PERCYYYYYYY!!"
  • "There you are. I can seeee you."
• The finale shows us what the real Candle Cove looks like: a twisted mirror image of Mike's childhood home, controlled by Eddie. Made even worse, as we also get to see Jawbone's true "Skin-Taker" form, in loving Gross-Up Close-Up detail.

The No-End House

• The contents of the House start out creepy and become downright terrifying:
  • Room 1: Busts of the people who enter the House, which after the lights flicker on and off, are suddenly being torn apart by stone hands, while red interior lights make it look like they're bleeding. And all while a cheerfully happy song that was being played before is slowed down to a crawl.
  • Room 2: A metal room containing a Malevolent Masked Man, who slowly stalks around the group until he picks one and whispers something in their ear. Then the lights flicker and he disappears along with another group member, leaving only a trail of blood.
  • Room 3: From this point on we only see Margot's personalized rooms. For this one, it's a narrow hallway leading to a standing mirror, behind which is a guy creepily laughing nonstop.
    • While it's not hers alone, when they come back through the house together we get Jules' and Margot's fears combined. In this instance, it's a darkly-lit school hall, with a solitary teacher writing repetitively on a blackboard. We can also question the full fear of Margot's "laughing lunatic", who previously just laughed at Margot. But in the persona of the teacher, grabs Margot and seats her violently and against her will into a desk. Was the aggression because of Jules' fear or what Margot genuinely feared?
  • Room 4: Margot sees a full wall video of her dead father's last minutes, while his face keeps distorting into a skull.
  • Room 5: Margot finds herself in her home, with a disfigured corpse of her father, which eventually comes to life and creepily hugs her.
  • Room 6: The most terrifying thing of all: the House contains an entire replica of Margot's neighborhood. And in her house, her very much alive father.
• The method in which John's double feeds. Summoning a catatonic copy of his wife, and devouring her like a starving cannibal.
• Alpha JD beating the real JD to death, disposing of his body via burning it in a fire, and then assuming his identity. The Gory Discretion Shot and focus on the hollowed out girl's reaction (or rather lack of a reaction) while the murder is occurring only makes it worse. This comes back to bite him in at the ass. As the result of killing the person he was both modelled on and supposed to feed on, Alpha JD slowly begins falling apart. The sight of his skin peeling off and his increasing horror as it is occurring almost makes Dylan killing him look like a mercy killing.
• The Father starts out friendly and loving to Margot. However once she stops giving him what he wants, he becomes a lot more forceful, culminating in him being willing to murder Margot's friends if it means he can continue to feed on her. In his attempts to do so The Father practically becomes a juggernaut, not letting anything stop him from achieving his goal. Not even the same allergic reaction that killed Margot's real father. This becomes worse if we think about what Margot must be feeling while all of this is happening. A monstrous creature, with the voice and face of her beloved dead father, is hunting her, willing to murder her close friends, if she doesn't allow him to devour her memories. If not for The Father managing to escape and her choosing to remain in The House for a whole year, Margot would clearly need serious therapy once this was all over.
• Special mention to the hose murder, where a man is impaled with the end of garden hose, and his blood gets mixed with the water as it sprays upwards.
• The Father spying on two young girls playing in a nearby backyard after leaving The House. Even if you forgot that he's not truly human, this scene can leave you feeling... uneasy.
• Jules being engulfed by The Orb. The sight of her screaming and attempting to break out are particularly horrifying. Turns into a Moment of Awesome when she manages to cut her way out of it, however.
• The reveal of Seth's true nature, and just what Margot's fate would have been if not for Jules and The Father's change of heart.

Butcher's Block

• The dwarf creature. Holy hell.
  • As Episode 3 revealed, there's three of them. And Edie Peach is pregnant, possibly with another one.
  • Of course, even this pales compared to the "Meat Servant", which is an even more visually disturbing creature.
• Father Time, AKA Mr. Schizophrenia/The Beast, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Alice's fears of inheriting her family's mental health problems. And in Episode 3, it chases Alice.
• The flashback to Alice and Zoe's mom freaking out and stabbing Zoe in the stomach.
• Robert Peach eating his cell-mate while stark naked.
• The ending to Episode 2, a new high in WTF for the series. Alice and Louise awaken the morning after a midnight meal with the Peaches. They find that the "meal" they'd been eating has been replaced with the rotting corpses of the Peaches' victims, including Izzie's mother.
• The dwarf child, accompanying Joseph, being dragged into the darkness by the Pestilent God
• Alice’s gradual sanity slippage throughout the show, culminating in her turning on her sister and cannibalising the (admittedly bothersome) student loan collector.
• In the finale, we finally get to see Joseph Peach's Butcher form and its horrifying.
• Edie Peach's Death by Childbirth. All of that blood...

The Dream Door

• How about the first look of what's beyond the door?
• Pretzel Jack. A clown, a contortionist, and a murderer.
  • Ian’s imaginary friend come to life, Tall Boy, proves to be even more terrifying than Pretzel Jack, lacking any of the latter’s endearing or redeeming traits.
• Ian in general becomes this after his true nature is revealed. He's sick, malevolently using his proxies to commit mass murder in broad daylight, and visibly getting off on it.
• The Uncanny Valley spawned through one of the doors.
• What Ian did with the Tall Boy proxy he created. To wit: he brutally brains Ian's dad through the eye socket, and then Ian has him chewed on by dozens of pug puppy proxies. When he's finally taken away, he uses the Tall Boy to a) horrifically murder the two cops detaining him with a cement cutter (which he does in front of a school bus full of children) and b) horrifically murder yet another cop and use his blood to write a message on the patio of a house. The worst parts of it all are the screams of those he's killing—they are the realistic shrieks of people being gorily mutilated, and they go on for way too long, because he never goes for quick kills, actually seeming to prolong them.
• Ian is manipulative and sadistic, and is also implied repeatedly to have more-than-platonic affection for his sister. The clincher on this one is when he creates a proxy of Tom and uses it to try and initiate sex with her. Except, he also might've cut out the middleman and used his power to create a Jill proxy.

---