An SCP Foundation doctor wearing a hazmat
suit is escorted by two guards through the secure facility. They stop in front of a large, sealed door
and one of the guards scans his security card. There’s an audible hiss as the door slides
open. The doctor nervously looks to the guard who
motions him inside, they certainly won’t be joining him. The doctor steps into the small airlock and
the door snaps shut. A complicated locking mechanism seals the
door behind him. He’s truly locked in. The reverse process then begins on the locked
door in front of him. It finishes and the door opens, revealing
a room with bright lights that briefly blind the doctor. As his eyes adjust, he can see that the entire
room is white and bathed in an intense light. He steps out of the airlock and towards the
center of the room where his task awaits. He takes one slow step at a time, pausing
for a moment after each before taking the next. The doctor wants to get this over with as
quickly as possible, but he has to abide by the protocols, and this is how they dictate
that one must walk in this containment chamber. As the doctor gets closer to the center, and
his eyes further adjust to the bright light, he can finally see what this room contains.In
the very middle of the room, directly under the lights, is a man. He’s lying on a table and isn’t moving
at all, except for his slow, rhythmic breathing, which is assisted by the ventilator he’s
connected to. A feeding tube has been placed inside his
nose and numerous machines next to the man hum and beep as they measure his vital signs. The doctor continues to take one slow step
after another and eventually, after what feels like an eternity, he reaches the middle of
the room. The lights above the man are angled to create
large, dark shadows coming off of him, and now the doctor is finally close enough to
make out what he was warned about in his briefings - even though the man is completely still,
the shadows… are moving. Scurrying on the edges of the man’s shadow
are what look to be spiders, and big ones too, roughly three inches across. But the doctor can’t see any actual spiders
on the man, only the shadows of these massive arachnids are visible as they move back and
forth along the man’s shadow. The doctor is growing increasingly nervous. He can feel the sweat dripping down the inside
of his hazmat suit though he tries to tell himself it’s just a result of the bright
lights beating down on him. The doctor reaches the machines measuring
the man’s vital signs and jots down their readings, marking down that the man’s medically
induced coma appears stable. He’s continually distracted from his work
though by the movement of the spiders. One suddenly “jumps” from one part of
the man’s shadow to another, startling the doctor and causing him to jump back. The spiders abruptly stop moving and even
though he can’t see their eyes, he has the feeling that they are looking right at him. The doctor is frozen right back at the spiders,
but after a moment, they go back to their previous behavior and start crawling along
the edge of the comatose man’s shadows once more. The doctor continues to go down his checklist
and audibly gulps. He’s reached the final item, the one labeled
“Physical Exam.” Nervous sweat runs down his face into his
eyes and he wishes he wasn’t wearing this hazmat suit so he could wipe it off. He knows he must get much closer to the man,
and more importantly his shadow, than he feels comfortable with. He has to physically take the man’s pulse
though, they won’t let him out of this room if he doesn’t. He reaches out towards the man’s hand, slowly
and carefully. He can see the shadow of his hand getting
dangerously close to the man’s shadow, and the spiders’. One of the spiders stops moving, as if it
is watching and waiting for the doctor’s shadow to get closer. It raises up on its hind legs, looking like
it is ready to pounce. The doctor gets closer and closer to the man’s
hand when out of nowhere the room is rocked by an explosion! The doctor spins around and on a monitor next
to the airlock door he can see a feed of the hallway outside. The guards who had escorted him run down the
hall as a red emergency light flashes. He turns back to the man on the table, the
spider that was waiting for him lowers itself out of its attack mode and goes back to scurrying
along the shadow. The room is shaken by an even bigger explosion
and it suddenly goes dark. The power must have gone out from whatever
is happening outside. He can hear the sound of muffled gunfire mixed
with far off screams, but both are drowned out by his nervous, heavy breathing inside
of the suit. The doctor drops to the ground and tries to
crawl back to the door, but he has no idea which direction it is. He hits his head hard and hears a crack come
down his mask - that must have been the table. The doctor turns and crawls the other direction,
eventually finding the airlock door. He stands up and bangs and pulls on the door
but it won’t move. He fumbles with his hazmat suit and finds
the button for his emergency light. A chemical light comes on inside of his suit,
casting his face in a sickly yellow light. But the light starts to flicker, something
must be malfunctioning. The light on one side of his protective mask
goes out, leaving half of his face in darkness. But that’s the least of his problems, because
all of his attention is now focused on the shadow moving across his face. It’s the shadow of a spider. His eyes go wide as the spider stops, and
stands up on its rear legs. Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, and sciaphobia,
the fear of shadows, are some of the most common phobias and today’s SCP file is a
terrifying and dangerous combination of both. I’m Dr. Bob and this is SCP-538, also known
as… The Shadow Spiders. SCP-538 is what appears to be a kind of “living
shadow” not dissimilar to SCP-017, though these shadows always take the form of an unknown
species of spider. These anomalous arachnids seek out the shadows
cast by other living objects, attaching themselves to the edge of the living creature’s shadow
in such a way that their own shadows aren’t obscured. Once attached to a shadow, the spiders will
appear to feed off of them. This allows them to rapidly grow in size,
with adults measuring a total area of roughly 15 square centimeters. Once they reach their full size they will
continue to feed, though this will only maintain their size. The feeding process seems to not impact the
host in any way, and the spiders can remain on a shadow indefinitely. While the spiders have been observed feeding
on the shadows of inanimate objects when no living creatures’ are available, these don’t
appear to provide the spiders with whatever nutrients they require, and they will slowly
atrophy and decrease in size. It is only when they are connected to the
shadow of a living organism that SCP-538 can thrive. SCP-538 are not locked to the shadow they
are on though. The spiders have shown the ability to move
across areas to reach a new host, though they will decrease in size when not attached to
a shadow, losing as much as 2 square centimeters of their size for every second that they aren’t
on a shadow, and should they be stranded in the open without a shadow to feed on, they
will decrease in size until they disappear completely, at which point that individual
instance of SCP-538 is considered to be terminated. The spiders normally avoid this fate thanks
to their extremely fast movement though, and fully grown instances have been measured moving
up to one meter per second. While SCP-538 instances are usually quite
benign, seeming content to simply live on the shadow of their host, they will attack
if they are frightened, which is when the real danger presented by these anomalous arachnids
comes to light. If the spiders are agitated, usually from
the result of a rapid movement by its host, the spider will bite the organism’s shadow
before attempting to flee. Once bitten, the unlucky individual will progress
through five distinct stages, all of which take place over the course of roughly one
hour. During the first, the subject will report
pain in the area of their body that corresponds to the part of their shadow that was bitten,
but no puncture wounds or other marks will be visible in this location. Minor psychological effects have been reported
in this stage, mostly consisting of an increase in irritability and the tendency for the bitten
subject to lash out at those around them. The second stage occurs ten to fifteen minutes
after being bitten. The subject will begin sweating despite reporting
that they feel cold while their skin will become red and warm to the touch. Twenty-five to thirty minutes after the bite,
the third stage will begin. At this point, the psychological effects become
very noticeable, with the subject becoming violent and attempting to attack any person
nearby. Their speech will be slurred, and they may
show signs of impairment to their motor skills. The fourth stage begins at the forty to forty-five
minute mark, and at this point the subject’s skin color will go from being red to a pale
white, as their core temperature drops five to eight degrees Celsius. Their psychological state will alter once
again, and they will go from being extremely aggressive to overly apologetic, blaming their
previous behavior on the fact that they weren’t feeling well and weren’t acting like themselves. After offering their apologies, they will
then request their leave from the area, and attempt to retreat to a darkened area. The fifth and final stage happens fifty-five
to sixty minutes after the bite, at which point the subject faces a grisly end to the
entire ordeal. Their entire body will rapidly dissolve into
a translucent liquid, while at the exact same time, their shadow will disintegrate into
numerous smaller instances of SCP-538. The spider “offspring” measure just four
centimeters across and the new instances will immediately begin seeking out shadows of their
own that they can attach to and feed off of. There is currently no known cure for being
bitten by an SCP-538 instance, and even death will not halt the process. Instead, should the subject expire while in
the earlier stages of the condition, death will cause the final step to occur immediately. In a bit of good news, only bites to the area
of an individual’s shadow that correspond to a spot of bare skin seem to cause these
effects. Even thin materials like cotton clothing appear
to be enough to prevent the process from starting. The SCP Foundation has multiple instances
of SCP-538 in containment, and they are kept in a white fifteen by fifteen by three meter
room that is accessible only via an airlock. Four 200 watt lights are focused on a table
in the center of the room where a D-class personnel in a medically induced coma is kept
in a stable state in order to serve as a feeding source for the SCP-538 specimens. No other sources of shade are allowed into
the room, so that the D-Class serves as the only source of shadows. Any personnel that enter the room, whether
to repair a light source or to check on the condition of the D-Class, are to wear sealed
hazardous material suits equipped with oxygen tanks and are advised that they must move
slowly and deliberately in order to avoid agitating any instances of SCP-538. Initially, doctors sent to examine the D-Class
Personnel were allowed to enter the room alone, however following the events of incident I-538-1,
that protocol has been changed. During the incident, an attack by the Chaos
Insurgency caused disruptions to both the main and backup power sources to the part
of the site where the SCP-538 containment cell is located, just as a Foundation doctor
was in the middle of an examination of the comatose D-Class. The power outage led to all lights in the
containment cell shutting off, while at the same time sealing the airlock that provides
the only means in or out of the room and trapping the doctor inside. The power was not able to be restored to the
containment cell for another 18 hours, at which point the doctor was finally removed
from the cell. The doctor sobbed uncontrollably as he kept
repeating that he could “feel them crawling” all over him. The doctor was required to attend mandatory
psychological therapy for his newly developed arachnophobia and was later reassigned. Following this incident, the examination protocol
was updated, and health checkups of the D-Class personnel are now performed by a doctor who
is accompanied in the cell by two security personnel, each of whom are equipped with
two 250 watt flashlights that can be used in the event of another disruption to the
lights. If at any time, a staff member is bitten by
one of the spiders, they are to be immediately placed within SCP-538’s containment cell
as soon as possible, as the failure to properly contain them could easily lead to a massive
containment breach by SCP-538 entities. Bitten individuals will often attempt to hide
the fact that they are bitten so anyone who comes into contact with the Shadow Spiders
must be carefully monitored for signs of any of the symptoms that follow a bite. The ease with which they could quickly spread
and the huge threat they pose to humanity has led to SCP-538 being classified as Euclid,
and while the Foundation hopes that they have been successfully contained, we all must remain
ever vigilant of movement on the edge of shadows. Should you spot something, don’t take any
chances, your future, non-liquefied body will thank you for it. Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, and make sure you subscribe and turn on notifications, so you don’t miss
a single anomaly, as we delve further and further into the SCP Foundation’s classified
archives.
