Analog Horror vs Witch House Graphics
アナログホラー / ウィッチ・ハウス・グラフィックス
Both sit in Internet Aesthetics, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is aesthetic and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Analog Horror
A net-born video genre that builds fear out of VHS decay, emergency-broadcast formats and the voice of the classroom film. By turning the signs of public-broadcast trust inside out, it makes the format itself the thing that frightens.
Witch House Graphics
A 2009–2012 visual system that joined crushed night photography, treated found video, VHS decay and deliberately obstructed type into one Tumblr- and blog-circulated identity. Its form comes from digital obscurity and repetition, not from occult props alone.
| Analog Horror | Witch House Graphics | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2015– | 2009–2012 |
| Family | Internet Aesthetics | Internet Aesthetics |
| Kind | Aesthetic | Style |
| Cues | Emergency-broadcast formats / Staged VHS decay / The educational-film voice / Censor-style redactions | Crushed night photography in black, gray, blue and bone / Treated-video frames with scanlines, color bleed or vertical drag / Short names slowed by substituted glyphs and geometric characters / A repeated low-resolution image held at a distance by large black fields |
| Best used for | Serialized short videos inviting viewers to assemble the fragments themselves · Turning a trusted broadcast or notice format inside out to produce unease | Extending music, short video and event imagery into one dark online identity · Using night photographs and low-resolution video to design distance and obscurity rather than a literal horror story |
| Type | Monospaced captions copying broadcast format and flat uppercase announcements | Obstruct only the short name with substituted glyphs; preserve searchable plain text for body copy, date and access information. |
| Composition | Most of the frame a still plate, the wrongness happening once at its edge | Enlarge one night image or treated-video frame, leave a wide black field and offset the short name from center. |
| Material | Scanlines, color bleed and tape-warped audio applied consistently throughout | Choose one or two of VHS scanlines, compression, copier loss or color bleed and apply the same degradation rule to still and motion. |
| Caution | Showing the wrongness early and often snaps the tension the trusted format was holding and the piece drops to jump scares. | Do not label every dark, occult, Gothic or horror image Witch House. Network circulation, treated media and typographic obstruction must coincide; do not remove religious symbols from context or reuse found footage without rights. |