January 20, 2002

1:33 PM

"Stare at the doorway, in particular. If you don't see it, keep looking for a good minute or two. You'll know it when you see it." Quote and link stolen from Ernie, without permission.
posted by GirlFriday (41 comments total)

what is it?
posted by rebeccablood at 1:37 PM on January 20, 2002

If I were to construct a joke animated GIF from a picture of a room in my house, I'd clean it up a bit. What's with the garbage underneath the propped up mattress? What's with the mattress?
posted by rschram at 1:37 PM on January 20, 2002

I've seen this around for a few days now, and everyplace that links to it has had some little blurb along the lines of, "it's very scary! just look at it for a few minutes and you'll be scared." however! I have oogled at this picture for a while now and I still don't see anything particularly frightening. what on earth am I supposed to be looking for?
posted by mcsweetie at 1:40 PM on January 20, 2002

look for a few minutes focusing on the picture, especially the doorway. Try another browser if you cannot see it. I had to switch to netscape before I could see it.
posted by rsinha at 1:43 PM on January 20, 2002

Ernie posted this one a few days later.

mcsweetie: make sure you have gif animations turned on in your browser options.
posted by victors at 1:44 PM on January 20, 2002

oh I get it now. I just wasn't waiting long enough. for similarly impatient persons, here's a quicker version.
posted by mcsweetie at 1:46 PM on January 20, 2002

Do I need special glasses?
posted by emptyage at 1:47 PM on January 20, 2002

No, just a whole lotta patience. Keep staring.
posted by perplexed at 1:51 PM on January 20, 2002

So, back to rebeccablood....

What is it?

And, frankly, why should we care?
posted by amanda at 2:11 PM on January 20, 2002

I gonna start this new internet collaborative art project where people all over the internet take pictures of themselves contemplating their navels. It's gonna have a wicked looking style sheet with lots of dotted lines.
posted by machaus at 2:16 PM on January 20, 2002

What is it? And, frankly, why should we care?

I don't know why you should care, but I do know what it is. It's an animated .gif that takes a minute, give or take, to loop. It's a cluttered room with a dark doorway, you stare at the doorway and when the animation finally comes around, a ghostly, gothy, pale girl comes out of the doorway, really fast. It's not scary, it's just startling because after a minute, you don't think that you're looking at an animation, so you don't expect any movement. The change could've been something as simple as the door closing and it would've been equally "frightening."

I'm sorry, I'm jaded over this thing, it's made the rounds on at least a half dozen blogs I read alone, and -- more importantly -- I think the owner/administrator of the server is probably a little sick of all of the traffic. It was fairly well overloaded when Ernie first published it a week ago.
posted by Dreama at 2:18 PM on January 20, 2002

Dreama said what I was going to say, except a lot less bitterly. So I'm not going to post what I was originally going to post. I probably would've gotten bitched at for using the word "'tard", anyway.
posted by zztzed at 2:20 PM on January 20, 2002

However, I will say this:

> Quote and link stolen from Ernie, without permission.

Duh! If you had permission, it wouldn't be stealing!

(Sorry. Had to get out some of that bitterness.)
posted by zztzed at 2:21 PM on January 20, 2002

I gonna start this new internet collaborative art project where people all over the internet take pictures of themselves contemplating their navels. It's gonna have a wicked looking style sheet with lots of dotted lines.

In a metaphorical sense, that kind of sums up blogging in general. Genius!
posted by insomnyuk at 2:23 PM on January 20, 2002

Okay, I'll be honest here.
It gave me a scare for a second, just because I was staring so intently at the doorway. More of a "BOO!" scare than a "Ahhhh! Runaway!" scare.
Got my fiancee too!
posted by Grum at 2:25 PM on January 20, 2002

scared the bejesus out of me cause I thought it was my ex-wife!
posted by Postroad at 2:33 PM on January 20, 2002

Mom?
posted by dong_resin at 2:37 PM on January 20, 2002

machaus: are you referring to "omphaloskepsis"? heh, thats my favorite word of all time too. =P
posted by alex3005 at 2:48 PM on January 20, 2002 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'll be impressed when that phantasmal ho actually jumps out of my screen.
posted by MonkeyMeat at 2:50 PM on January 20, 2002

Okay, so, "ih."

This kind of reminds me of a much more interesting art project nearly along the same lines which was June's Ghost Watcher project. She set up cams around her "haunted" house and asked for people to send email if they saw ghosts.

Hmmm... looks like it's still out there.
posted by amanda at 3:10 PM on January 20, 2002

Here is what you don't know. The guy, the one in the doorway that everyone has been staring at. Well, he's cutting off his freaking feet with a home made guillotine! How many people saw that when staring at the pic.

http://www.cutoffmyfeet.com
posted by DragonBoy at 3:13 PM on January 20, 2002

Here is what you don't know. The guy, the one in the doorway that everyone has been staring at. Well, he's cutting off his freaking feet with a home made guillotine! How many people saw that when staring at the pic.

http://www.cutoffmyfeet.com
posted by DragonBoy at 3:28 PM on January 20, 2002

darn... slipped
posted by DragonBoy at 3:29 PM on January 20, 2002

That chick sure gets around.
posted by Doug at 4:02 PM on January 20, 2002

Undead slut.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:41 PM on January 20, 2002

I see dead people.
posted by adampsyche at 4:46 PM on January 20, 2002

"night court in its fifth season LAME!"
posted by sadie01221975 at 5:29 PM on January 20, 2002

Willard Library Ghost Cam

Some very humorous "ghosts" found on that one. Particularly actual people that viewers thought a bit too ectoplasmic to be alive, I guess.
posted by Kafkaesque at 6:33 PM on January 20, 2002

On second thought, mLife is probably just a revolutionary brand of mT-shirt.
posted by Marquis at 6:44 PM on January 20, 2002

Call me a puss but that scared the willys out of me! I'm there thinking the room looks kinda creepy, Blair Witch style, and I'm thinking if I look around I'll see something hidden in the pic and then wooooo there see comes.

Cool.
posted by zeoslap at 6:47 PM on January 20, 2002

It's OZZY!
posted by sharksandwich at 6:48 PM on January 20, 2002

Interesting concept. I didn't last but five seconds, so thanks, mcsweetie, for the quick fix.
posted by whatnotever at 7:05 PM on January 20, 2002

You guys aren't waiting long enough. If you wait five minutes, you can see the Tourist Guy walk through. Eleanor Roosevelt shows up at the 8 minute mark, Judge Crater at about 9:30, Doris Day at 10:10, Pikachu at 11:13, the Trapp Family Singers at 11:35, most of the population of Framingham, MA at 11:43, and after that it just gets so crowded that I can't make out faces.

</silly>

I got a real chill the first time I saw it. And I think you have to watch it for the entire time for that to happen. The effect depends on your becoming accustomed to the still image, when suddenly, wham. Like Grum said. mcsweetie's version just doesn't do it.

I picked up the original from Daypop a week ago, and guesstimated that it took about a minute for the spooky chick to show up. When I timed it, it was more like 35 seconds. Watched, pot, boils, etc.

I'm amazed that so many people here couldn't wait that long for it. Anyone want to hijack the thread onto the subject of the prevalence of ADHD in MeFi habitues? Maybe it has something to do with this discussion of geek autism.
posted by Slithy_Tove at 7:59 PM on January 20, 2002

At the American Museum of Photography, don't miss "Spirit Photography 1868-1935." Back in the old days, you had to know a lot more about the medium [pun intended] to bring off a similar effect.
posted by realjanetkagan at 8:22 PM on January 20, 2002

I haven't seen this before, so I sat there staring at it expecting that the optical illusion would eventually make itself known. The effect worked - I jumped back and felt momentarily haunted. Clever.

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 9:30 PM on January 20, 2002

Last time I trust people on MetaFilter-- for whatever reason I had GIF animations disabled. And I intently stared at that thing for at least 3 minutes trying to figure out what the fuss was all about...
posted by fncll at 10:59 PM on January 20, 2002

For my money, mcsweetie's version has an excellent effect if you first wait until you're extremely tired ... and the lights just happen to be low ... and everyone else is asleep. Yow. &lt;twitch&gt;
posted by dsandl at 12:51 AM on January 21, 2002

Yikes. Apparently WYSINQWYG. ("not quite")
posted by dsandl at 12:55 AM on January 21, 2002

It's apparent that the guy in the doorway is taking a dump. Other than that it's unremarkable...unless you mean the woman...looks like Calista has put on a few pounds.
posted by m@ at 5:55 AM on January 21, 2002

Cher?
posted by Dagobert at 8:26 AM on January 21, 2002

Slithy_Tove,

Actually, a very high percentage of those with either ADD or ADHD end up in computer-related fields. The theory is that because pixels are moving, and are more interactive than most work tasks, ADD/ADHDers have a better change of focusing and accomplishing such tasks. Those with ADD/ADHD are in general, TV & computer addicts.
posted by jennak at 9:03 AM on January 21, 2002