Cameraheads (found early creepypasta; 2009)

Screenshot of a 4chan post asking about the story.

Status: Found

Date found: 19 Oct 2020

Found by: Marnen005

Cameraheads (otherwise referred to as Camerahead, The Cameraheads, "I killed a Camerahead", etc.) is an early creepypasta first posted on the paranormal boards of 4chan on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 (having previously been claimed to have been made in 2008).

Cameraheads

"/x/ what's a camerahead?

I was walking home through a nearby gully and came across a weird stack of rocks and a torn envelope with some writing on it. It appeared to have been written in charcoal or ash.

It said, "I KILLED A CAMERAHEAD" on the next line "IT TOOK TREVOR" and the last line "GET HELP IF I DON'T COME BACK"

and there was a miniDV nearby. this was all that was on it besides static, though i had to watch it a few times before i found this clip.

Who took this video? A camerahead sounds really silly if it's a monster with a camera for a head."

Story

The plot of the creepypasta involved a person who discovers a pile of rocks, a MiniDV videocassette, and a torn envelope scattered on the ground while walking, with signs of a struggle being indicated. Inside the envelope, there was a note written in ash or charcoal that contained the phrases "I killed a Camerahead", "It took Trevor", and "Get help if I don't come back". The contents of the cassette are then uploaded to YouTube by the person, who promptly goes silent.

Availability

Following the initial posting of the story, Cameraheads became the first creepypasta to be detailed on the paranormal board's wiki /x/enopedia following its establishment later in 2009. It is here that details related to the story would remain for several years, even being featured in the "bullshit" category of the wiki, indicating that it was frequently reposted to the point of oversaturation. Over time, however, interest would gradually begin to wane in the site, which, alongside numerous attacks from other image boards, lead to its rebranding and eventual shutdown. When this occurred, all media posted on the site, including Cameraheads, went with it. Unlike most of the site's contents, however, Cameraheads had remained unaccounted for, with archives of the /x/enopedia page being few and far between. The same was true for the paranormal boards, of which very few archives are known to exist prior to 2014, by which time people were beginning to take note of the unavailability of the story. For many years after its initial posting, the story seemed to be entirely lost.

On August 18th, 2020, a 4chan user posted a link to a video related to the creepypasta in a thread discussing it (among other lost media). The video (titled simply "camerahead") was uploaded to YouTube on August 8th, 2009 (the same day as the 4chan thread itself) by user kotyakov, and featured the description "weird video i captured from a minidv i found in a gully near my house". General consensus agreed early on that the video was indeed part of the creepypasta, and the finding of the 4chan thread itself has since outright confirmed it.

On October 19th, 2020, Lost Media Wiki user Marnen005 discovered an archived link of the Recent Changes section of /x/enopedia via archive site archive.is. It was through this that they discovered an RSS feed of edits to the page for Cameraheads, which contained a full transcript of the 4chan post that contained the story, rendering it found.

Supplementary Material

For many years following its disappearance, it had been believed by many that the Cameraheads creepypasta had been far more extensive than it actually was. Some described it as being similar in format to the Mark Danielewski novel House of Leaves with elements of an ARG, with "cursed" images and videos from the MiniDV tape (claimed to be memories of what the Camerahead itself had seen) and documents of the Camerahead's previous victims reportedly being posted alongside the story itself.

This alleged vast array of additional content led to varying descriptions of the Cameraheads themselves being created, with some describing them as outwardly human creatures that acted (perhaps unwittingly) as living surveillance cameras, others describing them as having cameras instead of heads (hence the name), and some claiming that they were of a biomechanical design similar to the works of H.R. Giger.

However, it has since been proven that any such additional material does not exist (or at the very least, is not officially connected to the creepypasta in any capacity). The /x/enopedia page itself claimed that only one post and YouTube video were made related to the story before the initial poster went silent (something which the page's placement on the "stub" category of /x/enopedia (an indicator of its short length) would serve to corroborate). This stood in direct opposition to most people's claims of there being a large number of posts and supplementary material created for the story, and for many years, it was unclear to whom this inaccuracy was on the part of. However, on May 16th, 2022, Lost Media Wiki user PyriteYT would discover an archived 4chan thread from 2012 about Cameraheads that officially confirmed that no further content related to the story exists, with this thread claiming that the initial post "killed the cameraheads viability and popularity."

The Camerahead creatures themselves would go on to gain popularity in some online circles as an example of a cryptid, but any material created about them in this regard is entirely disconnected from the initial post.

Gallery

Images

• 

  Screenshot of an archive of the "bullshit" category on /x/enopedia featuring Cameraheads.

Videos

Video created to accompany the creepypasta.

Blameitonjorge's video mentioning the Cameraheads search (1:37-12:15).

SewerReviewer's video on the subject.

External Links

• ObscUrban Legend Wikia page for the Cameraheads.