About

#SamaraChallenge is a social game in which someone dresses up as Sadako or Samara Morgan, the main antagonist of book and 2002 movie remake The Ring and then walks around at night to scare strangers. Although the character's long hair and white dress has been mimicked by many cosplayers, the actual challenge became prevalent in Italy in August 2019.

Origin

On August 29th, 2019, Twitter user @OpenGDB^[1] shared a StrettoWeb^[2] article using the hashtag #SamaraChallenge and claiming that people dressed as Samara have been spotted in Librino, San Cristoforo and San Giovanni Galermo Italy (shown below).

Precursor

After the 2002 film adaptation of The Ring was released, many people have dressed as the character Samara Morgan in order to perform a scary prank on others. On September 10th, 2016, Scary Prank Show uploaded a Samara themed prank video to YouTube which gained over two million views in three years (shown below, left). A year later, BD Horror Trailers and Clips uploaded a Ring themed prank with an actor dressed as Samara (shown below, right). The video accumulated over 940,000 views in two years.

Spread

On August 30th, 2019, Instagram account maranonews24 uploaded several videos of samara sightings in Italy. Each post gained over 85 likes in a week (shown below). Most of the videos show people dressed as Samara walking crowded streets and facing rowdy crowds. Several Italian articles were written on the phenomenon over the next week discouraging people from performing the challenge and labelling the participants mostly teenage girls as one girl had already been beaten up in Naples.^[5]

On August 31st, 2019, The religious Chiesa Cristiana Evangelica ADI Misilmeri Facebook^[3] account warned Christians of occultism and that (loosely translated) "The Samara psychosis is involving all of Italy and has also arrived in Sicily. In the middle of the night, the protagonist of the horror movie "the ring" is spotted in the alleys of various On August 28th, it appeared in catania and in the last nights some bystanders saw samara in Palermo" (shown below, left). On September 2nd, 2019, Twitter user @verotile_^[4] tweeted that, "Apparently there's people in Italy that is going out like this in the night. It's called the Samara Challenge. This is just reinforcing my non existent will to go out in the night. These kids are so stupid. They could end up really bad if they meet the wrong person" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

h2.External References