Horrifying House-guest / Shadowlurker

Confirmed 802,947

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About

Horrifying House-guest (also known as Never Alone, Uninvited Guest, or Shadowlurker) is an image macro series featuring a pencil sketch of a creepy, ghost-like figure, with large, sunken eyes and a malicious smile. The overlaid text generally contains micro-narratives referring to creepy and disturbing situations and mental images. A common motif used throughout these captions are stories or imagery that would keep one awake at night such as the fear of having to use the bathroom in the dark, having your feet exposed from the blanket, or hearing creaking noises outside your bedroom door.

Origin

The drawing of the ghost was originally posted on June 28th, 2011 to 4chan's /b/ (random) board^[1], where it generated over 200 image replies with captions placed over the original artwork.

Anonymous 06/28/11(Tue)16:05:59 No.337413068
File1309291559.jpg-(627 KB, 1390×1960, 1309202454379.jpg)
Probably my last bump.

Pic unrelated.

While the original artist's name is unknown, he or she began posting additional drawings of the Horrifying Houseguest to a personal Tumblr^[13] on July 12th, 2011.

Spread

On June 30th, 2011, the Horrifying House-guest was posted to Reddit^[8] for the first time. Over the next month, compilations of Horrifying House-guest images were shared on internet humor blogs including Memebase^[4], and FunnyJunk^[5], as well as social bookmarking communities and networking sites including Ranker^[6], Digg^[7], Reddit^[17]^[15] and Tumblr.^[9]^[14]

The single topic blogs "Fuck Yeah Horrifying House Guest^[10] and "Horrifying House Guest"^[12] were launched on July 18th and July 29th respectively. There are also several generator sites for the Horrifying House-guest macros including MemeGenerator^[2], Quickmeme^[3] and DIYLOL.^[11] As of March 2012, an Italian Facebook fan page^[15] for Horrifying House Guest has over 3000 likes.