The popular image of hell is a supernatural nightmare of fire and brimstone, demons and screams of torment, but there is far worse to be found among the more regular aspects of daily life. Take, for instance, sorority recruitment videos, carefully choreographed PR for organizations meant to celebrate the bonds between college students that instead show the uncanny horror of any group activity too carefully organized around chants and matching outfits.
In all history, none has been found as potent as the below—a video that made the rounds a few years back and has now, as all evil must, resurfaced to plague humanity once again.
The clip has been revived by @malik, causing it to spread across the internet and mutate into strange new forms. Though it seems impossible to top the original—a masterpiece of blankly smiling sorority sisters opening a pair of doors more ominous than Rodin’s own “Gates Of Hell” to reveal a gibbering nest of cheery, jazz-handed clones—the internet has tried its best.
The best among them is the most literal one, which, as promised, does make the video “a smidge less terrifying” by replacing the door-opening bit with a more comprehensible, rational version of the abyss.
Others are recreations that dampen some of the fear by recreating its events in new, surprising ways. Through them, we can try (but probably never truly succeed) to wipe away such terrifying images and sounds by laughing at what haunts us.
None of these are equal to the singular horror of the original clip, but they represent the only way we have to deal with its effects. They’re a template for how to move forward, knowing that this video will never die even once it disappears again for a short time. Priests may scream Latin at it, throw holy water over their laptops, and whisper the name of Christ whenever they pass a college campus, but it will return over and over again.
The internet is Satan’s playground—a place where the worst of humanity can’t be vanquished but swirls across the world in undying forms, bubbling on a low boil across the decentralized servers of a world so wretched only Beelzebub himself could have planned its design.
But, hey, at least it’s inspiring Jordan Peele.
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