Siren Head

About

Siren Head is a fictional cryptid that was created by the artist Trevor Henderson. The fictional creature has accumulated a fan following which has spawned numerous pieces of fan art and fan-made video games. The cryptid achieved meme popularity in early May 2020 following a viral TikTok video, with humorous edits imagining Siren Head playing songs over a populated area.

Origin

On August 18, 2018, Henderson made a post on his Tumblr^[2] and Twitter^[1] account (the latter shown below) showing the first known art piece of Siren Head.^[2] As of December 2019, the Twitter post has accumulated over 1,300 likes and over 260 retweets.

Spread

On October 31st, 2018, indie game developer Modus Interactive published the PlayStation 1-style horror game Siren Head for Windows and macOS, inspired by the character (shown below left). ^[3] On December 7, 2019, itch.io user thuleanpanteon uploaded the 2D scroller horror game Siren Head 1995 (shown below right). ^[4]

The popularity of the video games helped propel the character's popularity elsewhere. The character has pages on the Villains^[5] and Supernaturalfanon^[6] wikis. SCP Foundation forums user Lord Crunchy attempted to get the character a page in the SCP Foundation but was denied because the character was licensed.^[7]

Meme Popularity

On April 30th, 2020, filmmaker and TikTok^[8] user alexhoward_ (Alex Howard) posted a short video of a suburban area with the Siren Head moving in the background as police sirens and gunfire are heard (shown below). The clip used the audio of the sirens is taken from a June 2010 footage recorded during a tornado in downtown Chicago.^[12] The post accumulated over 23 million views and 3.3 million likes on TikTok in one week.

On the same day, Twitter^[9] user @jetblacksean reposted the video, with the post gaining over 63,400 retweets, 205,900 likes and 3.2 million views.

The post prompted edits in which the audio in the clip was replaced with various songs and humorous audio clips, as if Siren Head was playing the sound loudly over a huge populated area. For example, on May 1st, 2020, YouTube^[10] user Ryu Gi posted a meme in which the sound was replaced with Eggman Pisses on the Moon monologue, gaining over 14,700 views in one week (shown below, left). A May 2nd CEO of Swag meme posted by YouTuber^[11] kmlkmljkl received over 87,000 views in one week (shown below, right).

On May 12th, 2020, PewDiePie^[13] posted a video about the Siren Head and the memes related to the cryptid (shown below).

Various Examples

External References