Analog horror, psychology of fear, and the neuroscience of dread. In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, I'm breaking down what the analog horror genre is actually doing to your brain and why it works so precisely on modern audiences.
\nAnalog horror is a subgenre of found footage horror that emerged on YouTube in the mid-to-late 2010s. It uses the visual grammar of VHS tapes, emergency broadcast systems, public access television, and educational films to manufacture a specific kind of psychological dread. One that bypasses rational thought entirely and lands somewhere older and harder to name. I'm looking at the neuroscience behind why corrupted signals trigger threat detection, how the uncanny valley extends beyond faces and bodies into institutional formats, and what liminal space does to a nervous system that can't locate the threat.
\nI'm also asking why this genre has exploded right now, at a moment when the government has confirmed UAP phenomena it spent decades denying, the Epstein files are still unfolding, and AI-generated video has made provenance verification a skill most people don't have. The comment sections of analog horror videos are full of people asking \"is this real?\" and that question is more complicated than it used to be.
\nSeries covered include Local 58, The Mandela Catalogue, and Gemini Home Entertainment.
\nPsychology of the Strange is hosted by Tara Perreault, doctoral researcher at the University of South Florida, and is part of the Dark Cast Network.
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\nCheck out the substack that goes along with the episode When You Can't Tell If It's Real Anymore: Analog Horror and the Collapse of the Signal
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