Creepy Chan (Allison Harvard)

About

Creepy Chan, is the online pseudonym of fashion model Allison Harvard, whose photos were shared on 4chan as early as 2005. Known for her large eyes and peculiar interests like fascination with blood, she earned several nicknames on the site including Tussin Chan, Cute Chan, Allicat and Queen of /x/ (paranormal) board. In 2009, she gained mainstream notoriety after appearing as a contestant on the reality television show America's Next Top Model.

Origin

At 14, Allison Harvard joined Myspace^[13] and DeviantArt^[14] where she posted photos of herself with haunting themes, sometimes using makeup, fake blood and costumes in effort to experiment with her photography skills. As of April 2012, the photos have been deleted from the original sites, but they have been archived^[15] on LiveJournal.

Although she never posted photos of herself on 4chan, they were shared on the image board site as early as 2005. Harvard later stated that by the time she was 16, friends would email her links to threads where people were calling her “Creepy-chan” or “Creepy little friend.” The earliest archived 4chan thread referring to Harvard as Creepy-chan was posted on May 25th, 2007.^[17]

Spread

In August 2006, a user on MyDeathSpace, a forum dedicated to finding social networking profiles of deceased people, started a thread entitled “Creepiest people on Myspace”^[18], using pictures of Harvard as an example. Two years later, her photos were posted on the gaming forum NeoGAF^[20] to derail a Disaster Girl photoshop thread.

There are more than 4000 pieces of fan art featuring Creepy Chan on deviantArt^[7] and numerous single-topic blogs.^{[8][9][10][21]} Similar images can be also found under Tumblr tags "Creepy Chan"^[11] and "Allison Harvard,"^[12] as well as "creepychan"^[19] on Instagram.

Notable Images

America's Next Top Model

In March 2009, Allison Harvard was cast as one of the contestants for the twelfth cycle^[25] of the reality show America’s Next Top Model^[24] (below left) and came in second place. Throughout the season, several news sites covered her internet fame including Wired^[27], Buzzfeed^[28] and local New Orleans newspaper The Times-Picayune.^[29]

In Fall 2011, Allison returned to the show as a contestant during their All Star cycle (below right). News of her return was covered by BuddyTV^[1] and DigitalSpy.^[2] Again, she came in second place.^[26]

Reddit AMA

After commenting^[30] in an r/AskReddit thread on February 2nd, 2011 about an experience she had at rehabilitation center Remuda Ranch, witnessing a fellow patient rip out her feeding tube and try to throw herself out a window, a fellow Redditor suggested she start an AMA thread. Six days later, she submitted the thread^[16] which received 2189 upvotes, 1083 overall points, and 1483 comments. In the comments, she noted that she was working two jobs in Brooklyn, New York while painting and honing her photography skills in her spare time. Harvard answered a range of questions, where she revealed that she loves carrot cake and venison, her favorite artist is Florine Stettheimer, and she admitted to lurking 4chan's /x/ (paranormal) board after new episodes of America's Next Top Model would air to see what was said about her. She also provided the back story behind one of her photos that was often seen circulating 4chan, where she is depicted wearing a pink dress standing on a coffee table.

Personal Life

Allison Elizabeth Harvard was born on January 8th, 1988 in Houston, Texas. At age 11, she began expermenting with diets and sleep deprivation, manipulating her body and weight, going from 140 pounds to 90 in four months.^[16] After this, she was admitted to the Texas Childrens Hospital before being sent to Remuda Ranch, an Arizona facility for eating disorder recovery. She began painting at 14 and currently sells prints of her work online.^[22]

As of April 2012, Harvard's official Facebook fan page^[3] has nearly 28,000 likes and her Twitter^[4] account has more than 76,000 followers. She also maintains a personal website^[5], Reddit account^[23] and Tumblr^[6] blog.

Search Interest

External References