The first mention of Blurface was in a Reddit post on January 17, 2018 in the thread “make a horror monster in one image 2.0.” Reddit user xXx-ewesirname posted an image that recieved over 1000 upvotes before the thread was archived–an image of the archtypical “creepy Victorian doll” with its face blurred out. The image was originally from the South London Doll Museum Facebook page, part of their 2015 “Creepy Dolls of Halloween” compilation. xXx-ewesirname apparently blurred the face themselves, doing so in a way that accentuated the image’s overall creepiness.

Reddit users immediately began speculating on how, why, and with what rules the image could be a “horror monster.” Dubbing it “Blurface,” a suggestion of a now-deleted account, the users eventually drew up several rules for the being:

1. Blurface hates faces and wishes to destroy them
2. Blurface must possess something with a face
3. If all faces you see are blurred, you are on the verge of being possessed

As a result, a new thread spun off from the first called “Blurface sightings” in which Reddit users attempted to blur the face of a human, doll, or other object in the most creepy way possible. The ultimate winner, with 2500 upvotes, was the blurred face of a fiberglass clown in a dead suburban mall. The character began to gain popularity around this time, with a number of other threads, a “Blurface filter,” and translucent “Blurface stickers” being exchanged.

An internet historian, known as the Redditor Auditor Jr., produced a YouTube video on Blurface as part of their “Demons of the Digital Age” series on internet horror figures. The videos put Blurface in the rarefied company of such boogeys as Slenderman and Siren Head, but it also raised some questions about the origins of the original image. The Redditor Auditor Jr. reached out to xXx-ewesirname for comment, with a series of questions.

There were two odd things about the circumstance. First, as detailed in their YouTube video, the Redditor Auditor found that xXx-ewesirname had never made another post. They had created their account after the thread had been created, apparently for the sole purprose of responding.

Second, the IP address was spoofed–it was impossible to learn where the poster had come from. A message purporting to be from the author eventually arrived via a throwaway email service, but the only response was about the creation of Blurface: “it is a visual representation of a recurring, waking nightmare that i live.”

One month later, the first Blurface murder was committed, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead many at Reddit who had been involved with the original thread to close their accounts, and which eventually led to several YouTubers being demonetized and banned from the platform.

  • Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!
Advertisement