1. Boston Dynamics BigDog
BigDog has been developed by Boston Dynamics - a robotics company - in response to a request by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to carry soldiers' equipment across rough terrain. BigDog has four legs allowing it to traverse areas that wheeled or tracked vehicles cannot move across and carries a laser gyroscope and stereo vision system. If the Skynet-like vision of a four-legged military robot tramping through woodland in the snow is not frightening enough, then the segment when BigDog is pushed off balance and staggers drunkenly sideways is surely one of the creepiest things ever to appear on YouTube.
2. Crooked rot
This little curiosity was an experiment in 100% stop frame photography where each frame is an individual shot on a camera. The maker, David Firth, is a YouTube legend for his disturbing animations. In Crooked Rot, Firth uses a series of odd items from his own back yard including mannequin heads and rubber hands. The sinister music is by Marcus Fjellström. There are plenty more Firth films on his website fat-pie.com... but make sure you leave the light on.
3. James Mason on the trail of Jack the Ripper, 1967
There's something truly eerie about this clip from a 1967 documentary called The London Nobody Knows. The late James Mason could be exceptionally creepy on screen but even he is upstaged here by the location - 29 Hanbury Street - where Jack the Ripper's second victim, Annie Chapman, was murdered. The slums of this scene were demolished shortly after this film was made to be replaced by blocks of flats. The shot of the dog sniffing around in the filthy back yard over the exact spot that Chapman died as Mason says, "in this yard, just over there, is where Jack disposed of victim number two," is utterly bone chilling.
4. The Judderman
Voted one of the most frightening advertisments of all time, "Beware the Judderman" promoted a branded schnapps called Metz. It featured a horrific, spiky-headed and long-fingered creature called The Judderman who appeared to be terrifying the residents of a period village somewhere in the snows of central Europe. A voiceover accompanying the advertisment warned viewers: "Beware the Judder Man, my dear, when the moon is fat! Sharp of tongue and spindle limbed, his is, and cunning." The promotion was banned from early-evening television when hundreds of parents complained that it was frightening the life out of their children. It lives on, in all of its creepiness, on YouTube.
5. Creepy Grudge Girl
It's a low-budget little number but, if you haven't seen it already (and more than nine million YouTube users have) the climax is almost certain to make you jump. Creepy Grudge Girl in the Mirror is the result of a Adobe After Effects tutorial from the site homegrownhorror.com.
