> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # cursejourney Makes AI Horror That Looks Like Found Footage - URL: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com/creator-stories/cursejourney-ai-horror-found-footage/ - Published: 2026-07-15T20:03:18.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-24T10:25:57.000Z - Description: cursejourney makes AI horror styled to look like found photographs — sepia, grainy, wrong in the way the genre can use. Built in Phoenix since 2023, with a "photos i found in the basement" series and an AIGA Arizona nod for the piece that broke out. - Author: William Smith - Tags: digital art, horror, artist profile, creators, ai tools, #issue-2026-07, Creator Stories, opinion, ai-art, #medium:Short film, #method:Mixed, #tool:Midjourney, #tool:Kling, #tool:Suno, #tool:Luma, #tool:Seedance, #tool:ElevenLabs, #tool:Topaz, #tool:Magnific, #tool:Photoshop, #tool:Premiere cursejourney is AI-generated horror styled to look like photographs you weren't supposed to come across. Demons, gods, monsters, mythology — rendered sepia-toned and grainy, like something pulled out of a box in an attic instead of a machine running prompts. The account describes itself plainly: "content creation via AI images portraying the supernatural, gods, demons, monsters, and anything in-between." The [cursejourney.com](https://cursejourney.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) tagline is blunter — "the most cursed images." It's the project of Mike Chhay, who started cursejourney in Phoenix in August 2023. cursejourney — "photos i found in the basement," on YouTube ## The found-footage premise The flagship series is "photos i found in the basement," a multi-part run on his [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@cursejourney?ref=thedaringcreatives.com). The framing carries the whole thing: a demon-god in sepia with film grain doesn't read as a failed realistic render — it reads as documentation of something that shouldn't exist. The "close but wrong" quality that AI image tools produce, the thing most people fight to get rid of, is exactly what the horror genre can use. cursejourney aimed straight at it. He's not the only one working that register. The dark-fantasy account [gloomstomper](https://www.instagram.com/gloomstomper/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) runs a whimsical-eerie spin on the same looks-real-but-wrong trick, and its horror-leaning sibling — [voidstomper, who we've profiled](https://www.thedaringcreatives.com/creator-stories/voidstompers-3-million-followers-prove-the-glitch-is-the-point/) — pushes it all the way to dread. It's becoming its own small genre: artists who treat the glitch as the point. cursejourney — "into the basement," on YouTube ## How it's made Chhay documents the actual pipeline on a [tools page](https://cursejourney.com/tools/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com), and it's a lot more than a prompt. The images start in Midjourney — "the AI image generator that has created the majority of my cursed old photo series." Before anything moves, he upscales the still in Magnific so the animation step begins "with a high-resolution detailed start-frame," which is what keeps details and faces consistent. Photoshop handles the editing pass: cropping, color and contrast, removing objects, filters. Then the still gets animated. His workhorse is Kling — "the tool you want to use for the majority of the time using the image-to-video feature" — with Seedance held back for "epic transformations and action scenes." Premiere Pro cuts it together, Suno scores most of the reels, and ElevenLabs fills in sound effects and voice. A last pass through Topaz upscales to 4K, the same class of tool used to restore old blurry footage — on the nose for work meant to look dug up rather than generated. That's six or seven tools handing off for a single short, and the lineup keeps shifting — his 2024 pieces ran on Luma before Kling took over. The one thing he doesn't spell out is the exact recipe for the aged, sepia-grain look; that lives in the editing pass and the concept, and he keeps it loose. The cursejourney stack — tools he credits himself - [Midjourney](https://www.midjourney.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — base images - [Magnific](https://magnific.ai/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — upscales the still to a clean start-frame before animating - [Photoshop](https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — editing, color, contrast, filters - [Kling](https://www.klingai.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — image-to-video for most shots - **Seedance** — the big transformations and action beats - [Premiere Pro](https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — assembly and pacing - [Suno](https://suno.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — music for most reels - [ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — sound effects and voice - [Topaz Video AI](https://www.topazlabs.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — final 4K upscale Roughly in order of use, from his [public tools page](https://cursejourney.com/tools/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com). Seedance left unlinked pending a confirmed official URL. ## The cat, and a design jury One piece broke out past the horror audience: the "cursejourney cat," which began as a single still image and was later animated. It was selected for AIGA Arizona's Best of 2025\. The entry describes the cat as a viral image "brought to life using AI and Premiere Pro," and notes the video "has over 140 million views on Instagram alone" — framing it as an example of AI "in the hands of a designer." The cat lives on his Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok rather than the YouTube channel. cursejourney — "Hellgates," on YouTube ## Still going Chhay's [portfolio](https://mikechhay.com/cursejourney/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) lists cursejourney as August 2023 – ongoing. The basement series keeps adding parts, and the account keeps posting work aimed at people who like being unsettled by something that looks like it could be evidence of something.