Some things look perfectly normal from first glance, but the more you look, the more you see and this picture is a chillingly perfect example of that.
Weird pictures pop up from time to time, making you do a double take, but this clever piece of creepy art is a minefield for terrifying things, just like a Where’s Wally gone wrong…
A first glance at this Deviant Art piece, might leave you thinking all seems perfectly well – except for the giant cup of coffee in the forefront, which was never going to be ‘ok’ – but as you get deeper into it, the more you start to notice some truly unnerving details.
Everything’s on the tilt and that just makes everything seem that little off – I don’t why, it just does – but there are plenty of other factors which make this one hell of a creep-fest.
We’ll start off a little gently with the ants on the table – notice that? A small addition which would definitely have gone unnoticed at first.
On closer inspection, you may also spot the the bloodied handprint on the far left, but first let’s assess the ‘blind’ man currently who’s reading a newspaper.
jeffleejohnson.deviantart.comYes that’s right, the blind man is reading the paper, but fair enough, that’s not that weird, he may only be partially sighted, but what about the gills on his neck, or the fact he’s eating fingers and an eyeball…
We should probably put this whole bizarre piece of artistry into context really, the guy behind it – Jeff Lee Johnson – is a freelance illustrator and was commissioned to illustrate a horror story.
The brief he was given was to create a ‘seemingly normal but actually horrific scene within a rail car diner in Lovecraft’s fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts.’ He nailed it.
I’m thinking this right now:
Comedy CentralFor inspiration, he went to a ‘local rail car diner for lunch and some reference photos,’ before embarking on his uncomfortable drawings.
Back to the macabre goings on in the image, I just need to draw your attention to the waitress causally chopping into a bloody pie with a monster lurking behind and I really don’t feel good about it…
While we’re over there, I don’t know if anyone else picked up on it, but there’s a man getting involved with his meal with a tentacle coming out of his face.
jeffleejohnson.deviantart.comActually, tentacles seem to be a recurring theme in this monstrous illustration, as there are tentacles pictured slowly sliding down the rest of the carriage, as well as a woman trying to grab a hold of her child with not an arm – but yes you guessed it – a tentacle and it’s really not cool.
He told Buzzfeed:
I always loved images like this as a kid. Ones that have a lot of content hidden in plain sight.
I can’t think of anything scarier than a slow dawning that things are not what they initially seemed.
The whole thing is kind of like something out of Men In black- remember when there were aliens hiding in human clothes?
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Oh and to top it off, the woman enjoying her cup of ‘skull coffee – me, I prefer a flat white – is just carrying on writing, like it’s the single most normal thing in the world to be surrounded by a carriage full of monsters.
Jeff told Buzzfeed how he used his family meals as an inspiration – worrying – and ‘it struck me as wicked fun to put a twist to that,’ well it’s good to know he likes scaring the shit out of us.
Thanks for that Jeff. Now I think I’m going to be analysing every drawing I see for the rest of my life for hidden horrors.
