Folklore is defined as a collection of traditions and beliefs of a specific culture and it has always been a collaborative process. Zeus is nobody’s intellectual property, he belongs to whoever wants to tell a story about him. The Special Containment Procedure (SCP) Foundation is a community based on these same principles. This website consists of a collection of horror stories which collectively exist in a shared fictional universe not unlike our own. This is a new, democratic kind of folklore for the modern world, or for anyone with an internet connection. 

The SCP wiki is a fictional collection of documents detailing the strange and terrifying phenomena studied by the SCP Foundation. Contributing to the site is remarkably easy, so readers and writers are not separate entities.  The Foundation’s original creators can contribute to it with the same frequency and efficacy as someone who discovered it yesterday. In-universe, the SCP Foundation supposedly seeks to protect the world from knowledge of the unexplainable, phenomena that range from a labyrinthine Ikea that traps unwitting customers to a man  who unwillingly teleports to parallel universes. The fictional stories  take the form of articles cataloged and studied by scientists not only to better contain them but to see  whether they can be useful. In  the fictional universe, it is unclear when the foundation was created, though it has existed for a long time. In the real world, if a thread on the site from 2008 is to be believed, the first SCP was written and posted to 4chan, and members of that site took it and created the SCP community without that writer’s knowledge. Readers can dip in and out as they please, reading stories at random or trying to find the connections in the network between different SCPs. One thing I’ve always found endearing is that there is no official SCP-001. There’s a mythological reason for this: letting people know what the first SCP is would draw attention to the Foundation’s reason for existing, and leave them open to more effective acts by their enemies. Stepping outside of the fiction, its absence adds to the mystery, and is also an interesting way of ensuring that everyone involved in SCP has equal status. The creator(s) could have claimed authority over the fiction for themselves, inventing intense, elaborate lore around it, but they didn’t, and let other members of the community help shape the work..

Although the case files have to adhere to a specific tone – formal language  that mimics official reports – creators are given a lot of freedom. The site also contains stories about the SCP that writers can add to, using characters and settings they themselves did not create. Although internet-users and fans of the horror genre are often sticklers for continuity,  it would be impossible for somebody to read all the stories on the site to ensure that their work didn’t disregard previously established canon, and so there are several ongoing canons one can choose to adhere to, or simply make a story that doesn’t adhere to any. Again, collaboration is prioritised. There are limits to whose stories are included, but these are very lax – writers must be over 15, a rule intended as quality control, and readers can vote on  each piece, with enough downvotes meaning it will be taken down. The site also hosts seminars that can help curious creators with their writing, ensuring that as many as possible are able to add to the site.  Contribution is also encouraged by the number of SCP sites in languages other than English. The stories have been translated into an array of languages, such as Russian, Korean and Spanish, connecting people who can’t talk directly to each other in the world of the SCPs.

Fans can interact in many other ways with the site’s content. The SCP wiki has a Creative Commons licence that has allowed for a Finnish video game, an Irish play, a Japanese light novel and an American YouTube channel all set in the SCP universe. It’s refreshing to see people telling stories for their own sake, rather than profit, in a world that has seen J. K. Rowling sending cease and desist letters to those writing fanfiction based on her stories, and Disney suing a daycare centre that featured its characters on their walls. 

The dark tone of the stories fits with today’s world. The Foundation aren’t the good guys; they carelessly use prisoners (designated D-class) for experiments on the more dangerous SCPs, wipe the minds of the public and the group’s own members, and commit even worse acts in the name of keeping the planet, or themselves, safe. The lack of trust that many people today have in institutions tasked with protecting us are played out in the SCP Foundation; we see how those who take charge of dealing with the world’s horrors often fail, and just how removed the rest of us are from their efforts.

The SCP Foundation may be fictional, but it is often too close to our own world for comfort. The document-style writing on the site is highly unusual in the realm of folklore, but it is a form of writing that is all too common in our modern world, making it particularly appropriate for this site. The limits of the form also point to the isolation of our modern world, as feelings and reactions to the events recorded have no place in a scientific document. The site is a living piece of literature that other participants in the culture can edit and add to as they see fit, a process intrinsic to national folklore. The SCP wiki is constantly growing and changing as more people become aware of it, which is essential to a thriving folklore and bodes well for the site’s future.