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.