Web Video / Eventide Media Center

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Welcome to Eventide Valley. We hope you enjoy your stay.

Eventide Media Center (EMC) was a Web Original Analog Horror anthology series by Aidan Chick. Each video was presented as a different tape coming straight from the archives of the local library of Eventide Valley, Massachusetts, with the contents showing that something isn't right in the Bay State.

The videos were:

• "Unusual Architecture", a short educational film about impossible shapes.
• "Oceanview Forecast", an excerpt of a television broadcast showcasing the current weather conditions in Misty Point, MA.
• "Nuclear Safety", a safety guide on how to protect your family in the event of a nuclear war.
• "Deep Night", another television broadcast, this time from Eventide Valley's public television station signing off for the day.
• "Midnight Movie", yet another television broadcast showing the end credits of a midnight movie. Perhaps intentionally, is anachronistic, given that films from the 1950s such as the one depicted, would show all production credits at the start, not the end.
• "City Council", a video showing Old Gothsford's city council meeting of October 1987.
• "Computer Graphics", a demo reel from Interface Visions, a computer animation company.
• "Oasis Greenhouse", a video tour of Oasis Greenhouse, showcasing a variety of plants.
• "Fire Danger", a television broadcast that monitors fire danger in Ashenfield.
• "Week Ahead", a schedule for the upcoming week in the town of New Trilight.
• "Within Static", an emergency broadcast alert that warns of a mysterious entity lurking inside television signals, and a collection of its effects.
• "Crimson Creek", a student broadcast event at Crimson Creek Community College.

In addition, there was another episode, "Bluefish Waterpark", which was formerly the tenth episode of the series before being declared as not canon to the main series. In this episode, an employee induction tape given to an unknown newcomer at Bluefish Systems, Inc. shows that things aren't as they seem, and that something much larger - literally! - is lurking just beneath the surface, and is being deliberately encouraged by the company's cabal of scientists.

Unfortunately, after some negative reaction to the ending to "Crimson Creek", Aidan suffered a pretty severe invokedCreator Breakdown, privating the entire series, deleting social media and Patreon accounts related to the series, and canceling any future videos to be uploaded to Eventide Media Center.

Reuploads can be found both here and on the Internet Archive here.

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The main series provides examples of:

• Alien Geometries: "Unusual Architecture" showcases several examples of impossible shapes, even mentioning the works of Roger Penrose and Maurits Cornelis Escher.
• Alternative Calendar: The New Trilight weekly calendar seen in "Week Ahead" shows eight spots, the eighth day being Triday where glowing prisms manifest and cause temporal disturbances.
• Apocalypse How: Class 0 in both "Oceanview Forecast" and "City Council".
  • In the case of the former, whether it is only the Misty Point area or the entire state of Massachussetts is up to one's interpretation.
• Apocalyptic Log:
  • "Oceanview Forecast" quickly turns into this.
  • Attack of the Somberville Spiders in Midnight Movie claims to be fictional, but is actually a recording of giant tarantulas invading Somberville.
• Arc Symbol: Eventide's logo ^note (two pine trees under a crescent moon) appears at the end of every video.
• Artistic License – Arachnids: The spiders in Attack Of The Somberville Spiders are tarantulas (which produce dense sheets of silk) but the webs we see are those of triangle spiders.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Towards the end of "Oceanview Forecast," the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen announces the following:
  "A light is coming through the fog. Avoid its gaze. Something is coming from the sea. There is something rising out of the waters. The deluge brings forth the light of the ocean. The lighthouse is glowing. There's a face in-"
• Beat Still, My Heart: One such heart is shown in City Council, belonging to the Old Gothsford Giant. Not that the lack of its heart stops it from awakening, of course...
• Black Comedy:
  • "Fire Danger" deals with a controlled burn in the area Gone Horribly Wrong. The next program on the station is "Barbecue Hour With Ricky Jackson."
  • Another with an earlier video is "Midnight Movie" where right after the spider is revealed at the end of the movie the video cuts to another commercial for spider killer spray.
• Botanical Abomination: The "Local Selection" in "Oasis Greenhouse". After producing what appeared to be a number of half-plant, half-human organ abominations, The staff there went on to create an artificial plant species called Flora amalgama by combining genes from multiple different species of plants contained in the greenhouse, which killed and consumed humans, converting them into a rich protein source to sell on as food for people.
• Brown Note: Whatever is in the lighthouse's lavender beam of light in "Oceanview Forecast."
• Brutal Honesty: The message in "Nuclear Safety" is pretty clear. Once this type of nuclear attack begins, there's no way to stop it and no way to survive it. Even getting into a shelter won't save you because fallout will inevitably breach into it. And the worst part? It can be applied to real life.
  "This is less horrifying and more brutally honest."
• Canon Discontinuity: "Bluefish Waterpark". In-universe, the Special Guest passed away and the media center declared the entry a hoax. The video was then de-listed, but it can still be viewed here and here.
• Cutting Corners: In "City Council", the Mayor of Old Gothsford announces his future plans to cut down on education spending, even though said spendings were already extremely low.
• Death Ray: The Misty Point Lighthouse in "Oceanview Forecast" produces an intense, lavender coloured beam of light that appears to invoke severe - if not fatal - physical damage on anyone who observes it or is caught within a 3 mile radius around it.
• Deliberate VHS Quality: As to be expected from a local library's videocassette archive. One notable exception is "Nuclear Safety", which is a film reel.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The horror movie Attack of the Somberville Spiders in "Midnight Movie".
• Dem Bones: The controlled burn in "Fire Danger" not only goes out of control and immolates the town, but unleashes a colossal, animate skeleton, standing menacingly among the flames. Off-screen, it presumably slaughters anyone it can get its hands on.
• Dug Too Deep: The Old Gothsford excavation awakens a giant, which presumably had its heart torn out by the excavation.
• Eldritch Abomination: Ooh boy. There's impossible shapes, mushroom clouds and nuclear fallout, whatever appeared on the Oceanview radar, the Old Gothsford Giant, and the Deep Night Stalks.
• Emergency Broadcast: In "Oceanview Forecast", a Weather Advisory is issued for the Misty Point area. It is quickly upgraded into a Severe Weather Warning as conditions deteriorate.
• Evil, Inc.: Interface Visions in "Computer Graphics", a computer animation company who hooked up their employees and project manager to their Motherboard, causing major disfigurement to the subjects and even the death of one of them.
• Fallout Shelter Fail: In "Nuclear Safety", no matter the type of shelter, it won't save you from that type of fallout.
  "Fallout can seep into even the most impenetrable shelters. There is no escape."
• Foreshadowing: Plenty of the episodes feature a small piece of foreshadowing to the major twist.
  • "Midnight Movie" shows a brief commercial for fake spider Halloween decorations.
  • "Within Static" contains the end of a trailer for "The Wiring" before the episode really gets started. The message at the end of the episode mentions being trapped in wires, shortly before several cables descend from the top of the screen.
  • "Week Ahead" shows eight days on its weekly calendar rather than the usual seven. This foreshadows the existence of an eighth day, Triday.
  • "City Council" shows the outline of a human body superimposed on top of a significant portion of Old Gothsford. As it turns out, they were digging up a giant.
• Found Footage: It is heavily implied that Attack of the Somberville Spiders in "Midnight Movie" is one.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Close to the ending of the credit sequence in "Midnight Movie" has a very brief moment where the bottom disclaimer of "The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictional, and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental" changes to "The characters and events depicted in this photoplay may represent reality, and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, may be indicative of historical events."
• Genre Anthology: Unlike some of its contemporaries (including previous works by the same creator), Eventide Media Center doesn't have a narrative. The episodes are their own capsules of Analog Horror and aren't connected in any way.
• Giant Spider:
  • In "Midnight Movie", Attack of the Somberville Spiders has giant tarantulas attacking the city of Somberville, Massachusetts.
  • The movie poster also showcases a giant arachnid with glowing red eyes.
• Human Resources: "Oasis Greenhouse" is an example of this trope.
• Ignored Expert: Played with in "City Council." The expert is carefully listened to by the city council on the latest excavation projects. The priest of the small town, however, criticizes the whole project, demanding it to be stopped because it's unholy. The priest isn't remotely listened to by the Mayor and he leaves the council. Moments later, Old Gothsford is wiped off the map.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The ultimate fate of people deliberately captured and killed by the Oasis Greenhouse's Flora amalgama plant is to have their corpses melted down, digested and processed into a protein-rich liquid used in the production of 'energy drinks, protein bars, and other nutritious products'.
• Imperfect Ritual: Implied in "Fire Danger." The local Human Resources department issues a warning for a "controlled burn." The "controlled burn" fails, and looks to have awakened something terrible as a result.
• In Memoriam: In-Universe examples. Both "Midnight Movie" and "Computer Graphics" feature an "In Memoriam" section.invoked
  • In the case of the former, the entire cast and most of the crew appear on the list, indicating that Attack of the Somberville Spiders isn't fiction.
  • The latter features a tribute to Madison Gatesburg, wife of Joe Gatesburg. Given what happened to her husband, it's pretty clear how she met her fate.
• Light Is Not Good: In "Oceanview Forecast".
  "If you are to see a lavender beam of light through the fog, avoid its path."
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The ending of "Unusual Architecture". Is it just a glitch, or...?
• Lovecraft Country: Explicitly set in Massachusetts, primarily in central and southeastern MA. Eventide Valley itself appears to be located in Ware, just south of the Quabbin Reservoir, which in real life includes parts of the flooded towns of Enfield and Greenwich. New Trilight is in Middleborough, in Plymouth County. Misty Point is in Provincetown on Cape Cod. Old Gothsford is... was... in or near Northampton. Somberville (not to be confused with the real-life Somerville, an inner suburb of Boston) is somewhere in the Blackstone Valley.
• Meat Moss: With the exception of "Computer Graphics", each video features one of those.
  • In "Unusual Architecture", when the rotational view starts, a mysterious shape appears before the video abruptly cuts.
  • In "Oceanview Forecast", the final shot of the Misty Point Lighthouse shows the base of the structure covered in what resembles organic cobwebs.
  • There are several instances of these in "Nuclear Safety":
    • If you pause the video at the end of Slide 008, you'll see the city covered in a red-and-black moss, as well as the mushroom cloud having similar strings of web coming from it.
    • During the animation for flash of light of the nuclear explosion, you can see cobwebs flickering in the fireball.
  • In "Deep Night", in another blink-and-you-miss-it moment, we can see that the underground tunnels are covered in organic cobwebs.
  • In "Midnight Movie", because of the film's nature, cobwebs are everywhere: they briefly appear in the title card, they're seen taking over the globe of the film company's logo, and can be seen in the background as the city is attacked.
  • In "City Council", the beating purple heart can be seen with tendons behind it.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: Everywhere. Most notably in "Oceanview Forecast" where the lavender beam of light passes on the screen, getting brighter as the video progresses.
  • Special mention goes to the Class S Superentity in "Within Static", which appears to manifest through these.
• Organic Technology: Nuclear weapons appear to be this in "Nuclear Safety", as the tape seems to indicate that the radioactive fallout is alive.
• Purple Is Powerful:
  • The Misty Point Lighthouse's beam of lavender-coloured light is extremely dangerous, serving as a Death Ray that not only kills anyone it touches, but seems to be connected to the sentient storm.
  • The Old Gothsford Giant's still-beating heart glows with a purple hue; when its owner wakes up, it tears the town to shreds effortlessly.
  • The Prisms that arrive in New Trilight every Triday glow an ominous purple, can infiltrate buildings at a moment's notice and appear to be so powerful that their very presence can induce temporal anomalies.
• Recurring Element:
  • Cobwebs make a regular appearance in the tapes.
  • The color purple shows up a lot throughout the series.
• Rule of Three: The prisms that descend on New Trilight are somehow linked/attracted to the number 3.
• Sanity Slippage: In "Nuclear Safety", the best way to prepare for such a nuclear attack is mentally.
  "Those who are ready will experience no pain in the transition. Those who aren't will be faced with judgment."
• Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes: The Giant of Old Gothsford is a shadowy humanoid figure with glowing white eyes.
• Sinister Geometry: The impossible shapes in "Unusual Architecture". At the very end, when the rotational view starts, a mysterious shape similar to an eye appears before the video abruptly cuts.
  • The floating triangles in "Week Ahead" also qualify, emerging once a week and destroying anything which contains the number 3.
• Skewed Priorities: The Old Gothsford City Council puts the majority of its budget on its excavation project, to the point of considering budget cuts to education and alienating the local church.
• Slurpasaur: It would appear that the crew of Attack of the Somberville Spiders were trying to invoke this trope, but with actual giant spiders instead of simply going the standard route at the time of the film's production and using normal-sized spiders with footage of the actors composited on. This alternate route went awry very quickly, and the majority of the cast and crew died, potentially along with an unspecified number of people in Somberville after the spiders escaped.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: In "Week Ahead", smooth jazz plays throughout footage of a prism infiltrating a house. The music actually gets louder as the prism approaches, suggesting that the prism itself is making the sound.
• Spacetime Eater: The prisms seem to be this, as one visibly attacks and consumes a clock, and their presence creates a ‘temporal interruption’ which knocks Channel 33 offline.
• Tentacled Terror: The fallout creatures in "Nuclear Safety" take the form of a multi-coloured, roughly triangular object with three tendrils - one on each circular segment. When they attack humans, they grow substantially larger and use their tendrils to rip and consume flesh from anyone they encounter.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: Subverted. The credits of "Midnight Movie" has the disclaimer "The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictional, and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental". Except that it's Blatant Lies when the "In Memoriam" section begins and shows that most of the cast died in the production, and the disclaimer changes for a couple of seconds to reveal that it is "indicative of historical events."
• Towering Flower: The Flora amalgama in "Oasis Greenhouse" is shown looming over a house.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Old Gothsford. This rural community was built on a sleeping giant humanoid. Eventual excavation by the municipality led to the giant's awakening and the complete destruction of the town.
• Weird Weather: In "Oceanview Forecast", the storm isn't quite your typical thunderstorm. When it is shown on the radar projection, it is actually a giant monstrous face.

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Bluefish Waterpark provides examples of:

• 555: The contact number for the eponymous "Bluefish Waterpark" begins with 555.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Bluefish Waterpark becomes one during "Season."
• Deadly Euphemism: "Season" in Bluefish Waterpark refers to the period in which the park's "special guest" arrives, lays eggs, and eats riders.
• Fed to the Beast: Path 3 of the Bluefish Waterpark's Stomach Twister leads to the stomach of what is implied to be a giant fish.
• Fiendish Fish: The 'Special guest' at Bluefish Waterpark, which appears at the waterpark at some point between mid-August to early September to spawn and eat any unfortunate humans sent by the staff to it.
• Giant Animal Worship: The true purpose of Bluefish Waterpark.
• Human Resources: Thought Bluefish Waterpark was just another place to go and enjoy warm weather and water rides? Not so - It's all just a front by a company of mad scientists who've made it their mission to feed you, and anyone else they can get to ride the rides for that matter, to a massive fish.
• Legalized Evil: The operators of Bluefish Waterpark's Stomach Twister ride need to sign legal waivers if their supervisor tells them to open the ride's third path. Said path is an actual stomach the riders are about to be fed to.
• Meat Moss: The lattice-like exterior of the "Fish Bowl" and "Stomach Twister" ride in "Bluefish Waterpark" evokes cobweb or veiny imagery. And considering what we learn later on in the video about the park's true nature...
• Monster Is a Mommy: The "special guest" of Bluefish Waterpark is a giant fish. One of the things it does is laying eggs in the Fish Bowl attraction.
• Organic Technology: Bluefish Systems, Inc. specializes in mechanical and biomechanical construction. The second part is important.

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Good Night