Monstrum

Every now and then, a monster comes around that's a real "head-scratcher."

Siren Head's exaggerated humanoid shape is scary, sure, but it's the inexplicable horn-shaped speakers emanating constant blaring noise that invokes an unusual brand of terror as it looms over landscapes.

While you could technically call this monster "humanoid," there's no doubt it's also an Eldridge being-- a weird, eerie, malevolent force.

Known for its impressive hunting skills, despite its lack of eyes, the origins of its anatomy remain largely a mystery-- perfect fodder for digital folklore.

Siren Head exists in illusory realism, which makes its appearance in digitally altered images in videos that much more convincing.

And we are invited to participate in the expansion and spread of its lore through digital interactions.

Since its digital creation in 2018, online gaming communities, YouTube creators, artists and TikTokers have embraced Siren Head, building creepy worlds for it to inhabit.

So what does Siren Head's growing social media presence tell us about folklore in the digital age?

I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is "Monstrum."

On August 19, 2018, at 11:09 am, a user Tweeted a grainy photo of a strange being accompanied by a short eye-witness account.

According to this first narrative, while sightseeing graveyards, as one does, a woman saw it motionless.

Initially, she thought the thing-- as big as an old macabre telephone pole-- was an art installation... that is, before it blared to life with sound buzzing out, "Nine, eighteen, one, child, seventeen, remove, vile."

Then it started walking towards her.

That's it--that's where her story ends and the legend of Siren Head begins.

So, how is a modern monster even born?

It's rare I get to talk to an actual monster creator.

After all, most of the creatures covered here on "Monstrum" go so far back into human history, a lot of the original content was made hundreds or thousands of years ago.

So, outside of a sance, I have little chance of getting any face time wi th the earliest storytellers.

But not this time.

I got the chance to talk to Siren Head's original creator, horror artist Trevor Henderson.

So, Siren Head is probably my most popular character.

He really blew up on YouTube and all kinds of social media sites and really caught on with a lot of people.

I was really obsessed with the concept of number stations at the time.

Number stations are these sort of anomalous, very ominous, scary broadcasts that are still happening today on the radio waves, that are frequently just, like, chanting numbers and random words and nursery-rhyme kind of jingles.

The leading theory on them is that they are abandoned spy broadcasts from the world wars.

But nobody really knows for sure exactly what they are, and I thought that was a really mysterious concept, and, you know, I thought that would be really cool as a basis for a monster.

(Dr. Zarka) Roughly 40 feet tall, Siren Head gains its distinctive name from its odd head-- two metal horn-style speakers.

These speakers emit constant noise-- strange music, sn ippets of human conversation, electrical sounds, random numbers, and words; even white noise while it sleeps.

Its body is an elongated, long-limbed humanoid skeleton covered in mummified skin, with the occasional electrical wi re appearing under the flesh.

While it has no eyes, it's an incredibly effective predator.

And it kind of wanders through the Pacific Northwest woods.

It can mimic people and other sounds and animals to lure in its victims, which it disposes of.

(Dr. Zarka) The extremely long arms and ability to stand perfectly motionless for days allow it to blend into even forests, despite its appearance as a streetlight or a telephone pole.

It often stalks rural towns, dusty roads, and seemingly abandoned landscapes.

Like so many monsters before it, Siren Head's notoriety grew as its presence in popular culture increased, and video games offered a ready-made stage.

In 2018, a short game produced by Modus Interactive, called "Siren Head," featured the creature.

You play as a forest ranger who has to evade Siren Head while searching for a lost hiker.

Then, in 2019, gamers playing the "Fallout 4" mod Whispering Hills could see and hear the creature in a fog-covered world broadcasting static, claxon alarms, and emergency message warnings.

Videos of startled gamers stumbling upon the in-game creature can be found all over the Internet.

Siren Head reached a new level in 2020 thanks to TikTok.

On April 30, digital artist Alex Howard posted a video of Siren Head over a soundtrack of blaring police sirens and muted gunfire-- the palm-tree-lined city location taking the rural monster into an urban space.

The post got 23 million views and 3.3 million likes in a week.

And it really contributed to Siren Head becoming, like, this extremely strange viral phenomenon out of nowhere, that I could never have predicted, and I never would have predicted.

It's still very baffling to me even now.

If you've ever been on TikTok, you'll already know that repetition and imitation are foundational.

What does that mean for horror?

There's an active interest in not just sharing spooky videos but contributing to them in some way, making it easy to shape an emerging monster's development.

Think of it as crowd-sourced horror.

In a way, many of the original monster videos found on TikTok could also be considered an emerging subgenre of folk horror.

While Siren Head is decidedly modern, its old-fashioned speakers and original rural, remote hunting-ground spaces help us conceptualize the monster as legendary or at least, a relic of the past.

And in a very meta way, TikTok might also be the isolating space where the storytelling that contributes to Siren Head occurs in a futuristic folkloresque.

The very idea that folklore can even be transmitted and performed in digital spaces is a new one.

Sure, the volume of people editing photographs, re-treating scary stories, or posting creative TikTok horror shorts may be massive in scale, but behind almost every post is a real person whose contribution to the genre shapes these modern monsters.

As new manifestations are crafted and distributed, people add their own twists, based on their own fears and anxieties, contributing to digital folk culture.

How it's kind of been adopted by a lot of YouTubers and people online for children.

I mean, I never designed Siren Head for kids.

It's really cool that it's resonated with so many kids, but, you know, I hope I'm not giving anyone sleepless nights or whatnot.

(Dr. Zarka) The question, of course, is: What is Siren Head a symbol of?

What fears or anxieties about this moment in time does it represent?

I just wanted to heighten how strange I could make the creature, and make it feel very not-of-this-world-- like having human features, such just teeth or arms on something that's clearly maybe not 100% organic, and incorporating technology or broken malfunctioning bits of machinery into it.

It all added--it was all to add up and make it as disconcerting and scary, I guess, as possible.

(Dr. Zarka) I find the telephone pole or streetlight comparisons interesting.

Unlike other monsters throughout history, or even more modern ones like Slender Man, Siren Head is inherently linked to our use of technology, as indicated by its preferred disguises as a telephone pole or streetlight, not to mention its speaker head.

(Henderson) A lot of people draw parallels between Siren Head and Slender Man.

I think Slender Man's a great monster.

So any comparisons, you know, I think that's a great compliment.

(Dr. Zarka) Fear of technology is a common trope, but the old-timey look of Siren Head suggests an uneasy nostalgia.

We look back into the past with new eyes, or our phone cameras, and find new horrors along the way.

I also can't help thinking of Siren Head as a representative boundary creature akin to the original concept of the troll, which is a label for any antisocial creature that occupies a space outside of so-called civilization and poses a threat to the living things within the community.

Siren Head occupies spaces that are becoming increasingly less inhabited by humans-- environments heavily impacted by economic factors and urban encroachment.

Siren Head is the result of imagination and artistic interpretations of fear.

Folklore's evolution in popular culture makes new monsters like this one stand out alongside more traditional, rigid structures or sequential stories.

Digital folklore is more like an amalgamation of superstitions and preternatural possibilities borrowed from a variety of traditions.

Folklore changes through time and space, picking up variations in the way it is told and retold and by whom, which can be a really fruitful mode for creative exploration.

And I think social media is definitely the modern-day-- a huge facet, sorry, in the modern-day folklore, and Creepypasta is, like, kind of the biggest example of that, I guess.

I think we miss that communal storytelling that we used to have a lot more before social media-- you know, like telling stories around the campfire, maybe.

And, you know, it's the closest ap proximation of that is being able to throw stories and monsters back and forth online, on Twitter or Instagram.

Like the creature's reported ability to blend easily into its environment, the adaptability of modern Internet monster lore is significant.

Still, there is a self-awareness to Siren Head.

No one is sincerely arguing that this monster exists in the real world.

Instead, it serves as self-conscious fiction that explores the boundaries of art, technology, and fear.

I'm totally honored.

And the idea that kids could be inspired by my monsters and my art to do their own monsters, which will inevitably be way cooler and better eventually, it's totally-- it's a total honor.

And I'm just so happy that Siren Head could be that for a whole lot of different kids.

It's super cool.

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