Something new and weird – Monday Open Thread

No Warhammer tonight, instead I wanted to introduce you to the SCP Foundation, SCP stands for Secure, Control, Protect.  They are like the Men In Black of the paranormal world, they even have their own wiki which is where the contributors sometimes work together but there are a lot of single author entries.  The SCP started on 4chan in 2007 but eventually became more mainstream, as much as anything started on 4 chan can be.   The Foundation is a fictional organization where paranormal activities, entities, and events are studied, contained, and/or neutralized depending on how life threatening they are.  Or maybe they want you to think they are fictional?  From the way I am viewing things, I hope to hell it is fictional because a lot of this shit scares the fuck out of me.  Such as SCP-303 The Doorman

Yeah, gonna nope right away from that one.

Although there are some SCPs which are helpful or useful such as SCP-999: The Tickle Monster

Each paranormal instance (being entity, activity, or event) is given a number which always has SCP as a prefix.  In the reports everything is referenced by this number, so sometimes you have to do a little research to fully understand the contents of the report.  There is a lot of cross-dimensional travel, some time travel, and even space travel as the SCP has a faster than light drive, but what they keep discovering out there has made them decide to stick around earth, it’s a lot safer it seems as every planet they visit which had sentient beings no longer has sentient beings, just ruins, lots of dead bodies, or an atmosphere which has become corrosive to anything it touches, except the contaminated ground.

Almost all of the reports are done as if a scientist was creating them, very structured notes, some information redacted for security.  SCP personnel are designated by a letter grade from D to A.  D being the lowest and from the entries I have read and watched on youtube, D probably means disposable, because the Foundation has no compunctions about throwing a D class into a cell with an SCP just to see what happens.  Usually another D word like Death or Dismemberment or Disembowelment.  Some of the SCPs are actually memes which have to be destroyed if found in the wild, with SCP personnel having to give amnesia inducting drugs to affected populations.

One of my favorites is a room sized brass machine which has an input and output.  There is a control lever with 3 settings – Course, Normal, Fine.  Reading the results of each lab test are hilarious, since the machine is sentient and it has started to hate or  like some researchers, causing the results of each test to be affected by the machines regard for the researcher.  There are hundreds as of entries detailing the tests in an ongoing arc.

A lot of the entries address mysteries from history, such as the Mary Celeste or the Plague Doctor.  Folk tales and myths also feature heavily in the archives with a crooked man from the nursery rhyme “There was a crooked man and he had a crooked house…:

The three most common classes are Safe, meaning containment is simple, Euclid, meaning containment is more complex, and Keter, meaning containment is very difficult to maintain. (from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/guide-for-newcomers).

There is sooooo much content here, that there is not a single rabbit hole, it is more like a mass of rabbit warrens, all interconnected, and having shared paths before splitting off again.

Do not be afraid to enter and enjoy the journey.