You don’t need to be a big Creepypasta fan to recognize Smile Dog. You’ve probably seen the image before you even knew its name: a husky that stares directly at the camera with an unnaturally wide smile. If you’ve ever seen this picture, chances are that you’ll find it hard to forget it.
That’s Smile Dog, and it has never left the internet for almost two decades now. However, rarely do people know the actual story behind this creepypasta villain. In this article, we’ll discuss where Smile Dog actually came from and who created one of the internet’s most famous cursed images.
Smile Dog Apparently Appeared in 2008
For years, people thought that Smile Dog first appeared on 4chan’s paranormal board in 2008. 4chan was an image-based bulletin board where everybody could share images — just like Reddit, but with a much stronger focus on anonymity. Posts on that platform used to disappear very quickly, which made it difficult to trace where a particular image or story had originated.
That’s why people never knew for years who was the author of this unsettling Smile Dog. However, in 2009, writer Michael Lutz identified himself as the creator and said that he posted the story on 4chan. Lutz was using the name WarrenIsDea,d and today his website confirms the fact directly. Still, Smile Dog still has a “nobody knows where it came from” reputation, and the mystery has never left the image, which is why people often circle back to the story, the same way they visit horror stories with no endings, or online casino platforms like WinSpirit where the possibility to win doesn’t allow players to quit playing.
The Story Behind Smile.jpg
The story behind Smile Dog may not sound like a typical creepypasta at all. In fact, readers often say that it sounds more like a news report because it’s all about an amateur writer’s account of trying to interview a woman named Mary E. This woman claims that she saw the image years earlier and describes a creature that looks like a dog, is sitting in a dark room, and is staring directly at the camera. The woman reports that after seeing the creature, she has recurring nightmares in which the Smile Dog demands that she “spread the word.” Based on the story, Mary E. first encountered the image in 1992 on a Chicago bulletin board system.
Nobody, excluding this woman, ever reported the story, despite the fact that around 400 people saw the image on the BBS. According to the story, her nightmares continued for 15 years, and every night the creature repeated the same message. She believed that the only way to make it stop was to send the image to someone else. However, she refused to pass the curse to another person.
Who Wrote Smile Dog?
Once the name Michael Lutz got attached to the story, most people expected him to disappear back into internet anonymity. Surprisingly, he didn’t.
Years later, Lutz was still willing to talk about the piece he wrote. For example, he talked about Smile Dog on BBC Radio Four’s The Digital Human podcast and explained how it all started. His official website also confirms that he’s the author of The Curious Case of Smile.jpg and he’s the one who posted it to 4chan with the original red image in 2009.
While the story sounds convincing, not everybody believes or wants to believe that the story behind the famous internet villain can be this simple. Some fans still argue that the image or an earlier version of the story existed before Lutz posted it.
But the thing that makes Lutz’s story convincing is that Smile Dog isn’t the only unusual creation he has posted online. He is also an author of other horror stories and games, such as My Father’s Long, Long Legs and The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo.
“Lost Original” Theory
Despite the identified author, you can find a theory in the fandom that tells a different story. Based on this famous internet legend, the terrifying photo of the grinning Siberian Husky is actually a cursed image from the 2000s, and that red image isn’t the real smile.jpg at all.
This idea comes partly from the Creepypasta itself. The narrator explains that many supposed copies circulated online, but none of them showed the real Smile Dog. That’s the reason why fans began examining older versions, including a dark Polaroid-style image.
We certainly can’t say whether an older image actually existed, but many fans still hope to discover the picture that started everything.
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