If you spend enough time on the internet,
it’s just a fact of life that you’ll see something you really wish you hadn’t. Maybe it’s perennial shock-site classics
like Two Girls One Cup, or some of the truly horrific photos and footage of real-life death
and murder floating around the web. But what if we told you there was something
even worse out there – an image that, just by looking at it, you might be driven to pain,
madness, or even death? That’s exactly what we’re here to discuss
today – the terrifying internet legend of Smile Dog, the photo with the power to kill. Smile Dog is the colloquial name for a seemingly
innocent image file called Smile.jpg, that’s been floating around the internet since as
early as 1992. According to most sources, because of the
image’s place in internet folklore, there are thousands of copycats out there – none
that have the sinister and deadly power of the original. From the scattered reports of the image’s
victims, we do have a vague description: It’s a scan of a polaroid photo, featuring a dog
that appears to be a Siberian husky against a dark background. The dog has a wide, almost human grin, with
teeth that look like they simply don’t belong in the creature’s face. Worse yet, in the darkened corner to the left
of the dog is a red hand, outstretched towards the viewer. Many of the people who’ve actually seen
the image have described the hand as “beckoning.” As though it’s calling them into the darkness
of the photo. Some viewers have even speculated that this
is the hand of the devil himself, calling them down to the depths of Hell. Naturally, as an intellectually curious viewer
of The Infographics Show, you’ll want to search for this cursed image. And don’t worry, we’re going to show it
to you – that’s right, the real, original Smile.jpg. But before we subject you to that, you have
to understand what you’re getting yourself into here. After all, if the legends are true, it might
just change your life… While the stories about Smile.jpg have circulated
the internet since the internet was a publicly available commodity, the first true, solid,
and widely available account of a person’s experience with Smile.jpg and Smile Dog appeared
on 4Chan’s paranormal board in 2008. The paranormal board is the birthplace of
a number of terrifying internet urban legends and creepypastas – such as the malicious,
shapeshifting Goat Man, the deadly Daruma-San Bath Ritual, and an infamous porcelain doll
with living, wriggling innards. A frightening tale like that of the Smile
Dog would be right at home on this hub of the strange and paranormal, but the story’s
haunting details still stuck with everyone unlucky enough to read them… It began with someone who was just curious,
not unlike you. They were a young, aspiring writer in college,
searching for interesting stories that might inspire some exciting new fiction – but
they stumbled on a horror that was all too real. They put out the call for people with interesting
stories on the internet, and got plenty of duds. You know, all the stories about that time
someone’s weird uncle caught a big one while out fishing, or a kid could swear they saw
something moving under their bed. The young writer, identified only as Mr. L
in the account, was ready to throw in the towel and give up, when he received a strange
correspondence from a man named Terence E in the summer of 2007. According to Terence, if Mr. L was looking
for scary stories, his wife, Mary, had one that would beat out all the rest. Something genuinely terrifying. Genuinely paranormal. According to Terence, Mary had experienced
a real encounter with the original smile.jpg image, and nothing had been the same ever
since. It just so happened that Terence had contacted
exactly the right person, as Mr. L had been fascinated with the concept of Smile Dog ever
since he was in the 10th Grade, back in 2005. He could feel the mystery of the thing drawing
him in – the desire to discover what nobody else had ever discovered before. Terence consulted Mary, and she agreed to
an informal interview with Mr. L around a month later. The couple were based in Chicago, and Mr.
L just happened to be in the area on unrelated business. Everything seemed to be falling into place,
until Mr. L actually arrived at the home. When he got there, eager to conduct his interview
and potentially discover the truth behind all this hearsay, Mary had barricaded herself
in her bathroom. She appeared to be having some kind of psychotic
break, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably, like she was afraid for her very life. In particular, Mary was screaming about some
strange nightmares she was experiencing, but it was largely too incoherent to even tell
what she was saying. Terence tried his best to console her for
Mr. L’s interview, but it didn’t do any good. From hours of sitting outside the bathroom
and taking notes, he only managed to glean the following story. Mary was a system operator for a small Chicago-based
Bulletin Board System in 1992, back when the internet was in its relative infancy. One day, a seemingly innocent hyperlink was
posted on the board system. She was one of around 400 to actually click
the mysterious link, and was immediately transported to Smile.jpg. The other people who were exposed on that
day remained anonymous, and their fates are unknown, but if Mary’s accounts and the
legends are anything to go by, their stories are unlikely to have had happy endings. As Mr. L pressed for further details, Mary
just sobbed and cried harder. The woman was inconsolable, and Mr. L realised
he’d probably gotten as much as he was going to get from her. Terence apologised for his wife’s strange
behaviour, and Mr. L thanked him and left. This may have seemed like the end of things
for most people, but for Mr. L, this was just the start. The hunt was on, and Mary’s brief account
had given him the scent. He began gathering all the information he
could on the mysterious file, its effects on its victims, and the people it hurt. But as the famous quote from German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche goes, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself
does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss
also gazes into you.” Mr. L found that information on Smile.jpg
wasn’t available anywhere on major internet information sources like Wikipedia. In fact, he found that if anyone did attempt
to add a reference to the cursed file on a Wikipedia page, it would quickly be struck
down by editors. Who was trying to keep this thing buried,
and why? He also managed to discover a great deal more
about the supposed effects of viewing the file. The most common effects included, on the mild
end, severe anxiety and persistent night terrors, and on the more severe end, hallucinations
and temporal lobe epilepsy – with seizures most commonly occurring at night. Naturally, as with anything on the internet
that can cause harm, it was weaponized by trolls and bad actors. The image was often circulated on forums in
the early Usenet days, and was allegedly once used to flood the forums of humour and satire
website Something Awful in 2002. The result was a number of users developing
severe anxiety, nightmares, and epilepsy. Back in the mid to late nineties, the image
circulated as all spooky things on the internet did back then: By chain email. The email would disguise itself as one of
the number of feel-good chain emails that did the rounds back then, with the innocuous
subject line “SMILE!! GOD LOVES YOU!” But by the time you’ve opened the email
and its attachment, it’s already too late. Plenty of people on the internet claim to
have had experiences with Smile Dog, but the veracity of these claims are in dispute. During his investigations, Mr. L did notice
some other legends with eerie commonalities to the Smile.jpg tale he was investigating. The most prominent was a story known as “The
Grinning Man”, about a person who received an email from a recently deceased friend with
an image of – you guessed it – a grinning man. However, after witnessing the image and an
accompanying key phrase, the man’s life spiralled out of control, with the only way
to lift the apparent curse being to pass it on. From the smiling to the horrific nightmares
to the inevitable tragic end, could the two things be connected? There was no conclusive evidence on the matter,
but Mr. L was sure to make a note of it for further study. Mr. L continued compiling research for an
entire year, always haunted by the cries of Mary coming through the bathroom door, and
the thought of that smiling hound. He discovered that many of the people who’d
originally claimed to see the thing had fallen off the map, and that some had tried to use
medication to prevent the nightmares and the epileptic fits that seemed to naturally accompany
an incident with the image. All it took was one look – just one little
look to change your life. It felt like a somehow more eerily plausible
version of the tape from The Ring. At times, Mr. L wondered if the whole thing
was just some elaborate hoax. An online inside joke, and it was all on him. Truth be told, he felt almost ready to give
up, when he finally got a massive break in the case: An email from Mary herself, explaining
the whole situation. Mr. L eagerly opened the correspondence, excited
for his next lead, but what he saw shook him to the core. Mary explained that the image of the Smile
Dog had been haunting her in her sleep for years, repeatedly saying one thing “Spread
the word, spread the word.” She experienced symptoms akin to sleep paralysis
– being frozen to the bed, and unable to do anything but listen to the words of the
demonic dog sitting in front of her. “Spread the word, spread the word.” She told Mr. L that, a week after initially
seeing Smile.jpg, a floppy disk containing the image was mysteriously mailed to her home. Finally, she understood: Much like the Grinning
Man that Mr. L had been investigating, the Smile Dog wanted her to pass the image on
and use it to inflict the curse upon others. That would be the only way to stop suffering
from the symptoms herself. The nightly seizures and visions she was experiencing
were so horrific that she was tempted to pass it on to others, and even contemplated potential
options: A co-worker, a stranger, or even her husband, Terence. Mary decided against it, and instead hid the
floppy disk away for years, until she finally found a person she could potentially pass
the curse onto…Mr. L himself. However, as she was plotting to pass on the
curse to him and ruin his life, she decided against it at the last minute – hence her
breakdown in the bathroom upon his visit. Realising it’s already too late for her,
and wracked with guilt over what she almost did, Mary signed off the email with a harrowing
final message for Mr. L. “Stop while you are still whole.” Later that month, Mr. L received another email
from Terence, telling him that Mary had taken her own life shortly after sending the last
email to him. She just couldn’t take the suffering anymore. Terence also informed Mr. L that he’d found
and destroyed the floppy disk by setting it on fire – adding that the plastic gave a
snake-like hiss as it burnt and shrivelled, destroying yet another copy of the cursed
image once and for all. Mr. L was ready to hang up his hat and close
the investigation into Smile.jpg. People had suffered and even died, and just
as Mary had advised him to, he was going to quit while he was ahead. It was a couple months later, when he’d
almost forced the whole nasty affair out of his mind, that he saw a new email appear in
his inbox with the subject “Smile.” Without even thinking, he clicked on it, and
by that point, it was already too late. The text in the body of the email, littered
with spelling and grammatical errors, said: “I found your e-mail adress thru a mailing
list your profile said you are interested in smiledog. I have saw it it is not as bad as every one
says I have sent it to you here. Just spreading the word.” And the rest is spooky internet history. Now, you’ve heard the story, and you know
all the horrors this strange little photo is said to be able to unleash. Maybe it’s all just an urban legend, or
a hoax, or mass hysteria. After all, how much damage can one picture
do? But hey, if you want to be safe, you can always
send this video to a couple friends and… Spread the word. Check out “How A Meme (Slender Man) Became
Real” and “Russian Sleep Experiment – EXPLAINED” for more chilling internet oddities.
u just cursed me bruh
I am now......cursed