It was an ordinary night at Site 19 and Dr.
Smith was hard at work in his office. The overhead light was just about ready to
give out, the bulb dim and flickering, but there was no one available to change it at
the moment so he would just make do. Besides, he only had a little bit of work
left to finish. Hunched over his desk, eyes bleary and head
aching from too many hours of staring at a screen, he was ready to wrap up this report
and finally get home for some well-deserved rest. The constant anxiety of working with some
of the scariest monsters in the world was one thing, but the hours spent writing paperwork
on the monsters was an altogether different kind of terrifying. Most of the research staff had left for the
night, and only Dr. Smith and the usual security team remained in the building. There was no sound except the click of his
fingers on the keys, his occasional exhausted sigh, and the infrequent sound of footsteps
in the hall outside as a security officer made his rounds. Dr. Smith leaned back in his chair, stretching
his arms over his head and feeling his back crack. Almost done. He recalled, dimly, a thermos of tea he had
left on the shelf behind him. Perhaps that would be the kick he needed to
finish this work up and get home to his bath, his books, and his pet cat Roger. He swiveled his chair around, preparing to
stand up and retrieve the thermos when he suddenly came face to face with a nightmare. There, less than an inch from him, was a smooth
featureless face, black as the night and devoid of any expression. It was hunched over, its face peering into
him, despite not having any eyes itself. Without a sound, without so much as a creak
of the door, this thing had come into his office and appeared behind him, waiting for
him to turn around and see it. Dr. Smith let out a shriek of terror, knocking
his chair over as he scrambled to get away from the intruder. His heart pounding in his ears, he tore past
the dark figure, yanking open the door to his office and taking off running down the
hall. He called out for help, for someone, anyone,
to come. Several security personnel heard his cries
and rushed to see what had happened. They found a shivering Dr. Smith, babbling
about a “demon” in his office and repeating “it doesn’t have a face” over and over
again. Once he had calmed down - and finally been
given that cup of tea - Dr. Smith was informed that as stressful as that encounter might
have been, he was never really in any danger. We don’t have another SCP-173 on our hands
here, thankfully. This statue isn’t murderous or even violent. To the best of our observational ability,
we’ve determined that this particular surprisingly mobile statue is just kind of a jerk. SCP-650, nicknamed “The Startling Statue,”
is a stylized black statue of a humanoid figure, standing at 167 centimeters tall. It has no hands or facial features, its arms
ending in rounded points, and its face and head a smooth surface like that of a mannequin. When the statue is dormant, or at least resting
and waiting for its next chance to move, it stands straight and reaches upwards, head
tilted up as if its nonexistent eyes are watching the sky. Attempts to determine the materials the statue
is made of have proved inconclusive. Some tests show an impossibly large combination
of different materials, where other tests came back with no matches for any recognized
materials at all. If no one is observing the statue, it will
move to a place immediately behind whoever is in the room with it, switching its pose
to a more threatening one. It moves silently, and no one has been able
to capture evidence of its method of locomotion. All that is known is that it does in fact
move, and it always appears extremely close to the subject of its interest, in order to
provoke a strong fight-or-flight reaction. The statue seems to have no interest in harming
those it frightens, never touching or directly interacting with anyone. It only seems interested in startling its
victims, if you can even call them “victims.” It can be unpleasant to be unexpectedly frightened
like that, sure, but you get the same experience at most Halloween attractions or horror movies,
and people pay good money for those. Several trials were conducted in order to
determine the statue’s pattern of behavior. In each trial, an SCP Foundation agent was
assigned to stand in the statue’s containment unit and watch the object for a period of
time. When prompted by a researcher in another room,
speaking to them via radio, they were ordered to look away from the statue. Once cleared to look at the statue again,
they were ordered to look around the room and report where it went, and what it was
doing. In most of the experiments, the statue appeared
directly behind the personnel, angled with its arms reaching toward them and its head
glaring down at them, as if about to attack. In nearly every trial, the statue hit the
same position, and the Agent looking at it was startled to the point of screaming. There was even talk of cutting footage of
all of the screams together into a video that would be shown at the company Christmas party. However, in three cases, the statue adopted
a different pose as well as position in the room, much to the surprise and confusion of
the team conducting the experiments. When Agent Dunne was assigned to observe the
statue, he was asked to close his eyes for five seconds and wait for SCP-650 to move. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he
did was whirl around and look behind him, having heard about the results of the previous
tests. However, when he turned to face the statue,
there was nothing there. He turned back around to his original stance,
preparing to radio Command and tell them the statue was gone, when he let out a yelp of
surprise. There, at the table in the corner several
feet away, was the statue. It was lying on the table with its arms behind
its head, as if relaxing, with the area considered to be its “face” turned directly toward
Dunne. Unsettled by the surprise, and definitely
uncomfortable with how the statue seemed to be looking at him, he left the room without
another word. At another point in the trials, Agent Riley
pulled the short straw and was told to enter 650’s containment. She stood in the center of the room and stared
at the statue in front of her for a long period of time. When given the command, she closed her eyes
and waited for a duration of 30 seconds. Much like Agent Dunne, her first instinct
on opening her eyes was to turn around and look behind her, ready to see the statue there. Instead, however, it was sitting on a chair
at the other end of the room, the points where its hands should be neatly folded in its lap. Its body was facing away from Agent Riley,
but even though she was looking at what could have easily been the back of the statue’s
head, she later reported the distinct sense that it was looking at her. Though she didn’t scream like her colleagues
had when it was their turn to watch the statue, she confessed to feeling an overwhelming sense
of unease, and her hands would not stop shaking for the next several hours. These two instances of the statue adopting
a casual posture and keeping its distance from its observers were bizarre, but the final
break from the statue’s usual behavior was the strangest of them all. Agent Cho was sent into SCP-650’s containment
and told to stand with his back against the wall of his choice. The plan was to determine what the statue
would do if its usual favorite position, just behind the observer, was no longer an option. If there was no space behind Agent Cho, then
the statue could not turn up there. Once he was settled into his spot and had
been watching the statue for several minutes, Agent Cho closed his eyes for exactly one
minute. When he opened them, he immediately scanned
the room to see where the statue had gone. It was not at the table or the chair, nor
was it standing in its original place in front of him. Finally, he spotted it. The statue was huddled in the corner of the
room, curled up in an approximation of the fetal position. Its head was down, and its arms were held
up in front of its face as if trying to protect itself. Though he could not explain why, Agent Cho
got a distinct impression that the statue was afraid. His stomach dropped at the sight, and he would
later admit to his supervisor that he briefly thought about trying to comfort SCP-650 somehow. The impulse passed, but Cho was left with
a mixture of anxiety and guilt as if he had done something wrong and upset the statue. The sensation did not pass until he was out
of the room. It is not entirely clear why the statue chose
these alternative poses during these particular experiments. The prevailing theory among the research team
is that these are simply other tools in its arsenal, methods that it can use to elicit
a strong reaction from a person who is less likely to be startled by its usual trick. Following the incident with Dr. Smith, SCP-650
was upgraded from Safe Class to Euclid Class. Just to clarify, for the people in the back:
Euclid Class SCP’s are not necessarily considered to be dangerous but require more effort to
contain than objects classified as Safe. Most SCP’s that display autonomy or independent
thought, but are not overtly hostile toward humanity, are classified as Euclid. Along with its updated status, special containment
procedures have been employed in order to keep this Startling Statue from making any
more surprise escapes. SCP-650 is to be stored in a locked room,
4 meters by 4 meters. It is to be kept under constant surveillance
by at least three personnel at any given time, standing so that the SCP and at least one
of the observers are visible to them at all times. They are allowed to watch the statue remotely,
via security camera, as long as they remain focused on the SCP. This method is only to be employed in case
of emergency. A great deal of the Foundation budget was
dedicated to maintaining up-to-date containment facilities for SCP-650, as demanded in a note
from Dr. Smith. in the official file for SCP-650. The note reads: “I don't give a flying rat
about the budget; keep this damn thing contained! Turning around in a dim office to see this thing a half-inch away from
your nose is guaranteed to take years from your life. And given what we deal with, we don't have
many to spare.” So, what does the Startling Statue want? Why does it use its power of mobility to scare
people but never do anything beyond that? No one is certain, and the Foundation has
too many other fires to put out to bother looking further into a clearly benign entity. Unfortunately, there are questions about SCP-650
that will never be answered, and there is so much about it we will never know. One thing is for sure, though. If you find yourself alone in a room with
an unsettling statue, you had better keep an eye on it. Just in case. Now go check out “SCP-173 Origin Story - How
173 Got to Site-19” and “SCP-689 - Haunter In The Dark” for more of the SCP Foundation’s
strange and frightening statues!
