I will always be a little salty about the cancelation of Channel Zero. That show deserved far more attention and we, the viewing public, did it dirty. Created by Nick Antosca, the series drew influence from “creepypasta” stories – scary stories and urban legends told entirely online – and worked them into a creepy, weird anthology series that lasted four seasons.

But what if Channel Zero kept going? Nick Antosca has some thoughts on how another season might’ve played out, and what creepypasta story might’ve influenced things.

If you’ve never seen Channel Zero – and there’s a chance you haven’t, since the show wasn’t exactly super popular – it’s currently streaming on Shudder, and I urge you to seek it out. For four seasons, the horror anthology series took a different creepypasta story and ran with it. The final season, subtitled “The Dream Door,” was the best season yet, and when it ended I only wanted more. Of course, we can’t always get what we want, and Channel Zero was canceled.

Now, Channel Zero creator Nick Antosca has a new series – the Netflix show Brand New Cherry Flavor, which I confess I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. But while interviewing Antosca about the show, /Film writer Jack Giroux asked what would happen if Channel Zero returned:

“It would be a blast to do more Channel Zero. We would love to do it. There were many stories we’d love to adapt, like ‘Russian Sleep Experiment’ if we could get the rights. There are quite a few others. I don’t know if that will ever happen. A lot of stars would have to align. A lot of people would have to become available. The show was a joy to do.”

This answer is similar to one Antosca gave me when I interviewed him about Channel Zero‘s third season:

“I would love to do “Russian Sleep Experiment.” We haven’t been able to do it because we can’t find the original author, and that’s been a challenge for a number of famous Creepypasta. I get asked from time to time, well, why don’t you do this story or that story? And in some cases ’cause it’s not right for us, but in many cases it’s because we just can’t find the author, and we want to – even if we wildly elaborate on just the core idea – we want to honor the original author, give them credit, give them money. So we could do a generic story of some kind, but I would love to find the original author of these stories that I love.”

Russian Sleep Experiment

If you’ve never read about the “Russian Sleep Experiment,” you can do so right here. Like most creepypasta tales, it purports to be a true story (it’s not). Per the story, the Soviets conducted an experiment in the 1940s to study the effects of sleeplessness. Five political prisoners were locked in a chamber that was continuously pumped with a stimulant that kept the human lab rats awake for 30 days.

That’s a very long time, and not really possible. The record holder for the longest number of consecutive sleepless days is Randy Gardner, who managed to stay awake for a total of 11 days. According to the “Russian Sleep Experiment,” the act of staying awake for a full month turned the prisoners completely insane, at which point they began engaging in self-mutilation and self-cannibalization. It’s a particularly nasty story, and would’ve no doubt made for a chilling season of Channel Zero. Alas, we might never get to see it – unless someone wises up and saves the show from its current fate.

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