it's been a while since i shared one of my story ideas on here, but in the spirit of halloween, i want to write someone horror oriented and also something relating to a topic i'm passionate about.
i just finished watching the backrooms movie for the first time when i came up with this. i remember when i was over at my grandparents, whenever me or my brother misbehaved, my grandpa would threaten to put on a tv channel that would somehow bring the cops over.
it sounds stupid now, but it got me thinking: what if there was actually a channel like that at some point? or what if it did something worse?
and that's how i came up with the idea of Channel 99. most accurate way i can describe it is it being a polybius of tv channels. no one really remembers it, or whether it was real or not. but it's an urban legend, leading to consequences if anyone interacted with it.
it has psychological effects on the people who watch it. the ones who tune in never get the chance to tune out. i don't exactly know how to explain the effects, but maybe it just... varries from person to person.
for the plot itself: the story takes place in 1983. a family is excited to finally have cable tv. the cable tv service in question is not as popular, and it's the only service that happens to carry channel 99. at first it seems completely normal, there's channels like mtv, hbo, nickelodeon, cnn, all the early cable channels starting to find their footings. but then there's channel 99, and no one quite knows what it is.
the family doesn't suspect anything because they don't know anyone else with that particular cable company, so unfortunately for them, they learn out the hard way.