![]() Lapsley’s documentary features the complete saga of K-Fee’s infamous commercials from conception to execution to eternal memedom. Earlier this year, however, the full story was compiled into a 43-minute documentary from British YouTuber Rhys Lapsley. The facts surrounding K-Fee’s shocking ad campaign have floated around the internet for roughly as long as the Screamer it produced. In the case of “Ghost Car,” the text read “Ever been so wide awake? Canned caffeine with coffee.” Each ad would finish with text in German or English that promoted its canned coffee product. Viewers would be presented with a peaceful quiet scene that would be interrupted by an actor in zombie or gargoyle makeup jumping out and screaming at the end. It was part of a series of nine 20-second long ads with similar premises. The ad that would become the viral “Ghost Car” video was from German caffeine company K-Fee. The video that was uploaded to YouTube in July 2005 was actually a slightly edited version of a TV commercial that first aired in April 2005. What’s particularly interesting about “Ghost Car” is that, while many Internet Screamers and other urban legends have mysterious origins, the source of “Ghost Car” is both crystal clear and surprisingly mainstream. Since its uploading, it has generated nearly 38 million views, and many more reaction videos, homages, and parodies. It is short, relaxing, and then unbearably shocking. “Ghost Car” has every element that makes an Internet Screamer a hit. The screen cuts to black and white text is displayed: “Now…Go Change Your Shorts And Get Back to Work!” It’s incredibly calming until roughly 14 seconds into the video when a zombie jumps in front of the camera and screams. The 20-second clip features a white car gently gliding down a mountain road surrounded by lush greenery. “I was very scared of it and I wanted to share that with everyone.”Ī video called “Ghost Car” was first uploaded to YouTube by user mrssmithereen on July 30, 2005. “Number one definitely has to be Ghost Car,” Bouchard says. Still, the most successful videos that Bouchard has produced have revolved around what has come to be considered the GOAT of all Internet Screamers: “Ghost Car.” The move paid off with that first video garnering 14,000 viewers and leading to more specific follow-ups on The Scary Maze Game, Zalgo, and more. It’s been awhile since they’ve been circulating,” Bouchard says. “Out of the blue one day, I was like ‘no one is talking about Internet Screamers’ so I thought that would be a great idea. Long fascinated by modern creepypastas like Slender Man and Jeff the Killer, Bouchard decided to delve into an even earlier internet horror phenomenon with his channel’s first video “Internet Screamers: Remember Those?” Toby Bouchard is a Canadian horror enthusiast who was looking for the best angle to launch his YouTube channel, TobyPasta, in 2019. ![]() Among them are what is believed to be the first example, “ Kikia,” a clip which originated on message boards in China and features a 17-second serene animation concluding with a terrifying face from the video game Fatal Frame II. Screamer Wiki, the unofficial catalog of all Internet jump scares, features over 1,500 examples of online heart-skippers. Though The Maze was among the first Internet Screamers, it certainly wouldn’t be the last. I was very flattered and figured I should make a website for all the stupid prank games I’ve made.” “About 5 months later, someone had sent the same email back to my mother! It had turned into a viral email joke. “I made this game in October of ’04 for Halloween and sent it to a few of my friends in an email,” Winterrowd wrote on Yahoo Answers more than a decade ago. Even its creator was taken aback by the simple Flash game’s viral potential. The game was created in 2004 by developer Jeremy Winterrowd and hosted on his site (until it was taken down in early 2019, shortly after Adobe Flash was discontinued). “The Maze” or “Scary Maze Game” was among the phenomenon’s first big hits. Throughout the mid-2000s and early 2010s, the World Wide Web was fit to bursting with PTSD-inducing internet jump scares or “Internet Screamers” as they’d come to be known. ![]() Into that entropy stepped some of the most diabolical pranks pulled off at a scale not seen since Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Back when the Space Jam website was built on caveman HTML code and Facebook was but a glint in a horny Harvard creep’s eye, the Internet was truly the Wild West. But believe it or not, it used to be even less…refined. No one would call the internet of today a civilized place.
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