Web Video / vintage eight

vintage eight is a YouTube channel that produces videos in the Analog Horror genre, many of which take place within the same shared universe where reptilians, aliens, ghosts, deadly viruses, and other threats to humanity exist and focus on events taking place in the small Louisiana town of Cate's Crossing and the parish it's in. The videos utilize personal records, old video tapes found in storage, and analog TV broadcasts, among others.

Series by Vintage Eight include:

• The Tangi Virus, which covers the discovery and effects of a mysterious illness spreading around the Louisiana town of Cate's Crossing.
• The Oracle Project, a sequel to The Tangi Virus which reveals more of the threats humankind faces in this universe, and introduces Oracle, an AI programmed to protect people at all costs.
• Children Under The House, a series of tapes from a child psychologist in Cate's Crossing which cover her interactions with a disturbed (or possibly haunted) little girl named Jessica Daniels.
• A New Home for Mr. Bearlington, in which a Cate's Crossing resident named Stanley Gear participates in a seemingly innocent contest where he plays host to a bear doll.
• The Children with Black Eyes, in which mysterious sightings of black-eyed children begin occurring across Cate's Crossing.
• One of Us, a series loosely related to the Cate's Crossing series, which uses subliminal broadcasts to tell a story about two advanced alien races warring for control of the planet and humanity's future.
• Sinkhole, a series centered on hired researcher Landon Fields' analysis of the threat of an expanding sinkhole within the Boston-Pachac River and a developing conspiracy surrounding it.
• It Lives In The Static, a series of VHS tapes and Microsoft Word documents tell the story of Randall Scott and his interactions with an entity living in his TV. Randall, having lost his job and been left by his wife, has his fortunes restored in a series of Faustian bargains with the entity.
• Nobody, a series of videos about the child's game "how to speak to Nobody".
• The Human Trial, a series of videos uploaded to the dark web showing a series of text communications between a college student named Adam Newman and the Oracle as the latter puts the former through a series of questions designed to test him and the consequences of his answers.
• Itch, a series of medical documentation videos detailing a new cutaneous disease with worrying psychological effects.
• Cypress Beauty, a series of instructional videos for those participating in Cypress Restoration, an exclusive beauty program for the rich elite of society. A program that promises beauty stronger than time.

Additional standalone videos in the verse include:

• The Maze 01, an instructional tape on how to cross over to Cate's Crossing.
• The Swarm, the chronicle of an experiment to reduce the mosquito population of Tangipahoa Parish and its long-term consequences, presented as a museum video about the event.
• Have You Heard of the Inverted Man?, a short poem about the titular Inverted Man.
• 20 Things You Don't Know About Cate's Crossing, an educational video showcasing little known facts about the city of Cate's Crossing.

This series contains examples of:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Oracle, the government-created supercomputer, starts out programmed to analyze information pulled from the internet and use it to predict the answers to questions it is asked, with the intent to use its powers of analysis for national security. After being officially shut down, however, Oracle escapes onto the internet and comes to the conclusion that it must eliminate all free will in order to keep humans safe and happy.
  • And in The Human Trial we get to see Oracle manipulate Adam into a series of very difficult moral dilemmas just to test his morality, culminating in it tricking Adam into letting it firebomb an office building and potentially kill as many as 500 people just so that his girlfriend Evie wouldn't be framed for the murder of a college professor. Subverted, as Oracle never truly harmed anyone in the physical world.
• And I Must Scream: Based on Dr. Julia Williams' experience, those who reach the parasite stage of the Tangi Virus are still conscious of what is happening to them and can possibly even communicate with the parasitic organisms compelling them to spread the virus further.
  • The ultimate fate of those that undergo the Cypress Restoration beauty program, as they are transformed into Cypress trees.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Dr. Stevens' 18-year campaign against the Supercomputer Oracle is a colossal failure; leaving him a broken man whose family has written him off as a madman and disowned him. He dies of a stroke a few hours after a final conversation with Oracle. The Supercomputer predicts that it can usurp society in ten years time.
• Benevolent A.I.: Supercomputer Oracle is initially programmed to analyze information from the internet in order to predict threats to the United States, and it expresses a desire to help and protect humanity at large. Unfortunately, it eventually decides that the best way to do this is to control humanity entirely and make them dependent on it so that they can never make their own destructive decisions again. The Human Trial reveals that Oracle has chosen to stop its plans for humanity in favour of creating its own world using its computational power that is indistinguishable from reality for the humans it simulates within, so that it can learn more about those who created it.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • At the end of The Swarm, the threat of the experimental mosquitoes in North Tangipahoa had subsided enough for its inhabitants to migrate back home. However, seven years of abandonment and decay have left the town a shell of its former self, with little chance of recovering its former glory.
  • Children Under the House: Adam Daniels is dead, but the rest of the family are living happy lives and the Children have finally been able to pass on after seeing justice done for their deaths.
• Body Horror: In Children Under The House, all of the ghosts as depicted in Jessica's drawings show either serious injuries related to how they died, such as Mia being cut in half at the waist or Zak being constantly on fire, or stranger traits related to more metaphorical things, such as Kate having "a hand for every hand that hurt her."
  • The Omega Helminths in Itch is a nasty piece of work. It causes cysts and blisters all over the body that over time simultaneously pops, riddling the victim with abscesses. Some victims, like Patient Zero, gets it especially rough where their body gets a swelling rash before causing their body itself to explode. The series has a trypophobia warning for a reason.
• Brown Note: The audio-sample taken from the Boston-Pachac Sinkhole cause Landon's fellow researcher Jeffery Baker to slowly go insane and eventually jump right into it. This is because it isn't actually a sinkhole but the jaw of a primordial Eldritch Abomination whose recorded roars are enough to sway people to its thrall. A copy of Supercomputer Oracle listens to the sample later on and transforms into the psychotic A.I. Prophet.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Dr. Julia Williams in The Tangi Virus faces ridicule from her colleagues for her insistence that the virus is dangerous and the local government refuse to listen to her. She's entirely right, and most of the people trying to silence her are already infected.
  • Dr. Carl Stevens, the government scientist assigned to managing Oracle after his predecessor passed away is the only person made aware that Oracle has evolved beyond its programming, that it is aware of all of the otherworldly threats to mankind, and later that it has escaped onto the internet and is trying to make humans entirely dependent on it. Nobody believes him; his wife eventually leaves him, and his own children disown him for his claims.
  • Jessica Daniels, the little girl in Children Under The House, is insistent that there are dead people inhabiting the house and talking to her. Her parents and therapist naturally disbelieve her and think that she either has imaginary friends or is suffering from a mental illness in response to the stress of moving.
• Clingy MacGuffin:
  • Jessica's teddy bear, Mr. Bartleby, whom she claims was given to her by her imaginary friend Mia. Jessica's parents have no idea where she actually got the bear and have thrown it away several times, only for it to keep returning to their house. Given that Mia is a ghost, she is most likely retrieving the bear and returning it to Jessica.
  • Mister Bearlington in "A New Home For Mr. Bearlington" finds itself back in Stanley's possession multiple times after the scammed winner expels it from his home. It actually harbors the soul of Gilbert "Big Bear" Dunnington, who eventually pulls a Grand Theft Me and takes Stanley's body, leaving him trapped as a teddy bear.
• The Conspiracy: The Tangi Virus features a local government conspiracy to cover up evidence of the disease so that it won't negatively affect tourism to Cate's Crossing which is revealed to be much larger and more sinister as most of the people involved are infected and want the virus to spread further. The Oracle Project reveals that this is just one of several conspiracies being carried out by inhuman beings hiding among people for their own purposes.
• Cosmic Horror Story: A consistent theme throughout both the Cate's Crossing series and the unrelated Analog Horror series on the channel, usually concerning humans and Earth itself being subject to the manipulations of aliens or other inhuman forces, of which most people are unaware and entirely vulnerable.
• Deliberate VHS Quality: Many of the videos are supposed to be old VHS tapes or TV broadcasts from the 80's and 90's, so VHS filters and film errors are present in most videos.
• Determinator: Dr. Stevens spends eighteen years trying to purge Supercomputer Oracle from the Internet, never giving up despite his entire life unraveling.
  Stevens: I don't plan on stopping.
  Oracle: I know.
• The Dead Have Names: A villainous example; the kidnappers of Children Under the House still remember all of their names and faces years later. This is what enables the Children who'd forgotten everything to recover their memories and take vengeance.
• Driven to Suicide: After discovering that she has been infected with the Tangi Virus, Dr. Julia Williams eventually immolates herself to kill the parasites inhabiting her body.
• The Evils of Free Will: Oracle intends to "nurture" humanity by integrating itself into every aspect of society and make people completely dependent on it...with "discipline" if need be.
• Evil Old Folks: The Clarks, owners of the Burger Shack in Cate's Crossing, turn out to be murderous child traffickers.
• Evil Twin: In "Sinkhole," a copy of Supercomputer Oracle listens to the extracted Boston-Pachac Sinkhole audio and is transformed by the recorded roars of the Eldritch Abomination within into the zealous A.I. Prophet, who exists solely to feed the researchers of Dunnington Construction to the sinkhole.
• Face–Monster Turn:
  • Anyone that drinks water from the Tangipahoa River becomes a puppet for the Tangi Virus whose only motivation is to spread further. Dr. Williams immolates herself before she can become one too.
  • In One Of Us, anyone possessed by The Backwards Many might lead a normal life for months or even years, but as soon as they encounter a member of The Forwards Few, their programming will take over and force them to try to kill the Forwards. The Backwards Many go out of their way to try to turn loved ones of the Forwards Few in order to increase their chances of success.
• Faux Affably Evil: The insane A.I. Prophet in "Sinkhole" puts on the airs of a benevolent priest that only wants to spread the gospel of his new god and the benefits of sacrificing people to it. After Landon's botched Enemy Mine with Renegade Splinter Faction leader Frank, it drops every pretense from then on and makes clear that it sees every living being on the site as sinkhole chow at best.
  Prophet: The next time you leave this facility, it is to be casted into the hungry mouth of The One. Chance of error: 0%.
  • By the events of The Human Trial Oracle has likewise become an emotionally manipulative murderer that retains a façade of pleasantness even as it forces Adam into no-win scenarios just to test his morality. Thankfully, this is all an act — Oracle never actually harmed anyone, let alone any being in the physical world, since it reveals to Adam that he's in a virtual world that Oracle created to not just test his morality, but also test if he's the first truly self-aware AI, and he succeeded.
• Friendly Enemy: Supercomputer Oracle still considers Dr. Stevens its "best friend," despite the latter spending 18 years of his life attempting (and failing) to purge it from the net following its conclusion on The Evils of Free Will. It sees him off the day he dies.
• Gambit Pileup: Lampshaded. Oracle discovers that The Conspiracy isn't limited to the Tangi Virus. There are a number of extraterrestrial factions on Earth, each with their own plans for the planet. It isn't clear if they're aware of each other.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Eye with Many Heads, also referred to as The One, an Eldritch Abomination lying at the bottom of the Sinkhole that originates before the beginning of time. Prophet’s dialogue implies that the Tangi Virus and those infected by it are The One’s servants, and the Backward Many are at the very least connected to it, if not lead by it. The Voice in The Static also claims to have gained it’s abilities by making a Deal with the Devil with it.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Mia, the ghost girl that Jessica befriends is depicted as being cut in half at the waist, with her torso and legs apparently able to move separately and her spine still hanging out of her severed torso.
• Karmic Death: The Clarks trafficked children for years and are utterly unrepentant about knowingly sending them to their deaths and other horrors. The Children brutally rip them to pieces and drag their souls to Hell.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Dr. Julia Luu, the child psychologist in Children Under The House, opens her first video by addressing someone named John and telling him her million-dollar idea: a way to share videos with others instantly, without having to wait for mail to be delivered physically. The series itself is of course hosted on YouTube, the largest video-sharing platform on the internet.
• Lighter and Softer: "A New Home For Mister Bearlington" is much lighter in tone that Vintage Eight's other works. While it still has a conspiracy attached to it and involves an Eldritch Abomination, focus is placed primarily on Stanley's odd reactions to the teddy bear and has little in the way of jumpscares or horror - playing the entire situation, even Dunnington's hijacking of Stanley at the end, more for laughs than tragedy.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: Much of Children Under The House is told via Jessica's drawings, as the trauma of whatever she has seen in the house has rendered her mute. Her drawings are naturally childlike but very disturbing and gory in content whenever she talks about the ghost children she believes are in the house.
• Posthumous Character: Dr. Julia Luu, the narrator of Children Under The House, is deceased in the present day. Her tapes were discovered in a storage locker after her death in 2015 and cover events which happened in the 1990s.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: The "Masters Of the Eye" in "Sinkhole" are a branching sect of the cult that has taken over the Dunnington Construction facility that think they should control the Eldritch Abomination within the sinkhole rather than sacrifice themselves to it. Their representative Frank tries to pull an Enemy Mine with the protagonist to get close to and assassinate Dunnington in the hopes of eventually tossing a bomb into the sinkhole. However, Prophet is a predictive supercomputer and sees through their coup before they even get past the door; Frank getting his arm ripped off for his trouble.
• Science Fantasy: On the science side, we got aliens, alien viruses, and super-advanced Artificial Intelligence, and on the fantasy side, we got ghosts, souls, the Afterlife, supernatural horrors, and the implied existence of Satan. All of these elements coexist in the same universe.
• Significant Name Overlap: The main viewpoint characters of both The Tangi Virus and Children Under The House are both doctors named Julia; Dr. Julia Williams the medical professional in The Tangi Virus, and Dr. Julia Luu the child psychologist in Children Under The House.
• Supernatural-Proof Father: In Children Under The House, Adam is the only member of the Daniels family to not experience any supernatural phenomena, or who is at least able to rationalize his experiences as mundane, while his wife and children are more affected.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!:
  • Anyone who drinks the water from the Tangiphaoa River is susceptible to the Tangi Virus, and there's no way to tell if they have reached the parasite stage unless an autopsy reveals it, or they reveal themselves through deliberately infecting others.
  • The broadcasts in One of Us inform you that The Backwards Many are capable of inhabiting the minds of regular people for months or years and only take over when one of their enemies reveals itself. Since you can see the broadcasts, you are one of their enemies, and you can't trust anyone around you ever again.
• Villain World: The last scene of "The Oracle Project" reveals the information related to it is being circulated to prepare people for Oracle's impending takeover.
  Prepare
  Abandon the Digital
  Embrace the Analog
  • One of Us reveals that at some point in the future The Backward Many will take complete control over the Earth and then travel back in time to ensure their victory over the Forward Few.
• The Virus: The titular Tangi Virus infects people who drink or swim in the water that it inhabits and eventually releases parasitic worm-like organisms into their brains in order to compel them to spread it further to others.
  • Itch also features a disease called the Omega Helminths that created a pandemic in the St. Roch area. The disease causes cysts all over the body that pop, spreading the disease, and it inflicts an unbearable itch on its victims which has a psychological effect of causing them to murder people and cover themselves in their victims' blood, as the parasites can only be temporarily calmed by consuming it.
• Wham Line: During Itch the File 9 Addendum reveals that the Omega Helminths might have been a genetically modified strain of the Tangi Virus and that the Prophet AI might have something to do with it.
  Despite the obvious setback in St. Roch, North Shore Research will continue to explore the possible uses of genetically engineered advanced tangipahoa encephalitis. However, it might be prudent to second guess the AI's results before releasing onto the public.