Webcomic / Ghost Eyes

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Tobias Schneien is a fifteen-year-old boy who's been homeschooled his whole life until now. Raised in a church in the woods with his many siblings, tentative mother, and religious father, Tobias is wrought with severe paranoia about being in this public place with peers by himself. His only comfort here are the voices in his head, the blade in his hands, and the God he keeps his faith in.

(Oh, and the fact that most of the voices he hears, as well as the weird tall man only he can see, might actually be real, but that is anything but a comfort. Far from it, actually.)

This all begins to change when he meets an odd boy who wants to show him just how fun being a devil can be and life falls into a place Tobias feels he can never escape.

Even if he wanted to.

Ghost Eyes is a Psychological Horror Yaoi Genre webcomic written by user Mr. Circus Papa. It's also available to read on Tapas.

Unrelated to the 1974 Shaw Brothers horror flick with the same name.

This webcomic provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Tobias's father has him and the rest of his many siblings isolated in the woods, physically and emotionally abuses Tobias and tells him how he's unworthy of his love, as well as threatening him to kill him if he continues to be a "bad child". It's also strongly implied on the very next page that he might be molesting him.
  • Utterly averted with Rudy's parents, who are shown to be very loving and try everything in their power to make him happy, even if they don't seem to know that much about his issues or how to help him solve them.
• The Alcoholic: Luther, Tobias' uncle. It says a lot about what kind of people his parents are that he is the best parental figure Tobias has ever had.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Cats seem to be something of a recurring motif. Emilio is compared to the Cheshire Cat by Tobias the first time they meet and has some subtle cat traits as part of his personality, even if they are negative ones. Tobias also kills a black cat with a brick at one point, only to find no trace of the cat or blood whatsoever mere moments later. Then we get to see the same cat very much alive at the end of Part 1, in the arms of a strange person who just happens to resemble both Tobias and his father a lot...
  • By contrast, Rudy has a rabbit motif: He's been compared to a rabbit by both Tobias and Mr. Edburt, wears a bunny hoodie when at home, and sleeps with a pink stuffed bunny.
  • Ben makes his first real appearance in a flashback of when both he and Rudy were little kids, holding a mouse. This is rather fitting, as mice are associated with cuteness but are also known as carriers of disease, symbolizing Ben's own double-faced nature and the lasting toxic influence he still has on Rudy. He then breaks the poor thing's neck.
  • All members of Dwayne's gang have an animal nickname that relates back to an aspect of their appearance or personality.
  • Played for Laughs with Jamaraus... Best known as just "Dino".
    Cop: (After seeing him wearing a full-body dinosaur costume) Is this why they call you "Dino"?
    Dino: No. Carmelo said "Jamaraus" sounds like a kind of dinosaur and it just stuck.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Adam, Rudy's little brother. Averted with Mattias and with what little do we get to see of Tobias' younger siblings yet.
• Armoured Closet Gay:
  • Carmelo, the bully of the school both Rudy and Tobias attend to. He has a painfully obvious crush on Rudy, but he's deeply in denial of his own feelings, so he "copes" with them by abusing him. He also gets really flustered and runs away when Tobias (actually Mr. Edburt possessing Tobias) flirts with him and licks his neck during an audition for a school play, blushing red the whole time.
  • Tobias himself is a mild example, having been raised in an abusive and religiously fanatical environment where homosexuality was seen as yet another sin from the "outside world". The fact that his very first kiss with another male was entirely non-consensual doesn't help at all.
• Art Shift: If Tobias has a psychotic break, a panic attack or some full-blown Nightmare Sequence, expect the art to either lose all color or look like if Tobias himself was the one drawing it. There's also some pages and art where the author chose to experiment and make it in the style of a manga or a fake anime adaptation.
• Art-Style Dissonance: This is a very dark story with surreal, psychological and religious horror elements. Not that you would know that just by looking at the cutesy character designs or by reading some of the Lighter and Softer pages.
• Asshole Victim: Dear Daniel Dorian didn’t know what he was getting into when he shoved around the child who wasn’t exactly himself that day...
• Bad Black Barf:
  • Mr. Edburt’s signature black goo tends to appear when things are about to go (or are currently going) horribly wrong. It leaks from his eyes and mouth, and it appears near his presence as well. Victims that survive his torment also tend to leak or throw up this mysterious substance.
  • When fighting off Mr. Edburt’s possession of Tobias’s body, Tobias gags and cries black goo while trying to ward off an unsuspecting Rudy.
  • A notable example of this trope is the aftermath Francis faces after he gets subjected to Mr. Edburt’s interrogation. He coughs up black dust at the hospital and throws up black barf at Dwayne’s house the morning after Halloween.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  • Played With. Tobias is not outright "bad" per se; he's just a really mentally unstable kid. Still, any cute creature no bigger than a dog that gets too close to him might not be long for this world, specially if he's being possessed by Mr. Edburt. It's only after he makes the jump of just stabbing animals to stabbing people that he becomes more of a Villain Protagonist.
  • Ben, on the other hand, plays this trope completely straight.
• Bait-and-Switch: Pages 226 to 228 give us an intense build-up as to what happened after Tobias was picked up by Luther and Emilio was left alone with a very emotionally distressed Rudy. The following day, after Tobias fails to find Rudy anywhere and asks Emilio what happened, we see a flashback panel of him pinning Rudy to the ground and snatching his cutter from his hand. This being Emilio, one can't help but immediately fear the worst. Only for Emilio to have done exactly as Tobias had asked him to do, comforting Rudy and even carrying him in his arms back to the place Tobias was supposed to be at. While Emilio still wants Rudy out of the picture and tries to get Tobias to just stop talking to him, he still won't harm anyone whom he knows Tobias cares for and will take care of them if that's what he wants him to do. We then see Rudy safe and sound on the very next page.
• Berserk Button:
  • It's not a good idea to touch Tobias without asking. Telling him that he needs help or offering it to him tends to open up a whole different can of worms for him, too.
    • And for the love of everything holy, if you don't want to get stabbed in the gut or somewhere worse: Never, ever, bring out his father when talking to him, and you might be as good as dead if you ever imply that he deserves or is to blame for his father's punishments in any way. Poor Rudy, of all people, learns about this the hard way.
  • Call Mr. Edburt a demon, and he'll get offended and lecture you about how he is a demon eater, thank you very much. Then he'll eat you. Calling him by his human name also seems to be a good way to annoy him.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • With the unstable but sweet Rudy as the Betty and the completely deranged Emilio as the Veronica, for Tobias.
  • In a slightly less twisted example: Abusive but more or less sane Carmelo is the "Betty" to Tobias' Veronica, for Rudy.
• Big Bad: Mr. Edburt. Alternatively, the Mistress.
• Bilingual Bonus: Tobias is half-German and Rudy's Danish, so sometimes they speak their birth languages when they are alone or with their families.
• Cast Full of Crazy: And how! The main character is a seriously traumatized boy who's barely holding it together and who's a little too quick to stab things, not being helped by the Ax-Crazy demon following him around and disturbing events around him that might or might not be his own mind playing tricks on him. Other characters include a Stepford Smiler who has a habit of cutting himself and likes to watch movies of rather dubious origin and content, and a rather obsessed Stalker with a Crush who falls head over heels in love with the main character after witnessing him killing a fox.
• Coming of Age Story: No matter how unusual and twisted the events and people involved in it might be, this is what ultimately Tobias' personal journey seems to be about. Questionable sanity and morals aside, at the end of the day he's just a kid trying to make sense of himself and the world around him, while also desperately searching for some happiness at the end of it all.
• Confession Triggers Consummation: After Dwayne and Francis have their First Kiss (first two kisses, really) they do the do at Dwayne’s house.
• The Corrupter:
  • Emilio loves Tobias' psychotic side and wants nothing more than to see more of it. In a twist of this trope, he also wants it to be a mutual exchange of sorts, with him asking Tobias to teach him how to kill. Meanwhile, Mr. Edburt is a much more literal version of this.
  • While Rudy is implied to have had his own issues from the start, it's clear that he would have dealt with them a lot better had Ben never entered the picture.
  • And then there's the Mistress. Dear. Lord. In Heaven, The Mistress. If we are to take her words to face value, the only character that she hadn't been able to corrupt yet is Mattias.
• Cosmic Horror Story: There is... something (Be Mr. Edburt, The Mistress or a possible third entity) corrupting children by infecting them with a curse of sorts that makes their eye color change to an icy blue. These same children also tend to die later down the road in one way or another...
• Cute and Psycho:
  • Nearly everyone, thanks to the combination of Art-Style Dissonance and a completely messed-up cast as mentioned above. Rudy takes the cake though, with an emphasis on the "Cute".
    Tobias: I think of Rudolph as something like a cupcake... filled with thumbtacks.
  • Emilio, meanwhile, has an emphasis on the "Psycho" part.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Tobias has them, and they appear to be the "ghost eyes" the title refers to. Scarily enough, it also happens to be a trait he shares with Mr. Edburt. He used to have a more joyful light on them when he was younger, though. It's later revealed that all children who are marked by Mr. Edburt are either born with his eyes or develop them later in life.
  Emilio: Oh, those eyes... Those beautiful, glacial blue eyes. So full of fear and confusion, and hostility. You look like you want to kill me but aren't sure.
• Creepy Child: The Webcomic. Nearly all named characters have something wrong going on inside their heads, and said list of characters is almost completely composed of teenagers. The round and cutesy art style also means that said teens actually look much younger than what they already are, which in turn makes everything bad that happens to them or is directly perpetrated by them feel all the more wrong.
• Deliberately Monochrome: When Tobias gets overwhelmed or is about to get possessed, all color tends to disappear to reflect this, with the possible exception of the characters' eyes.
• Demonic Possession: Mr. Edburt just likes to be inside Tobias a little too much. Tobias is also not the first child he has done this to, and might not even be the last.
• Destructive Romance: What Emilio wishes to have with Tobias. Tobias is... conflicted about it, to say the least. Rudy's past relationship with Ben was a much more explicit example of this.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Played for Horror (and some very dark laughs). Mr. Edburt's delight in possessing and sometimes eating children is both very literal as it is metaphorical for something else.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • No one but Tobias is able to see Mr. Edburt and his mental problems make him unable to communicate what's happening even to the few people who care enough to try to help him, leading to some very awkward situations.
  • invoked A particularly dramatic event happens because of this: After Tobias confronts Emilio and stays with Rudy for the night, Rudy hears Tobias talking in his sleep, saying "Why did you do nothing when he hurt me?". The reader knows that he's speaking to Mr. Edburt, but Rudy takes it as Tobias blaming him for not being there when he needed him the most. As a result, he has a mental breakdown during which he messily rips out his own fingernails and tries to overdose on pills.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Oh, Rudy... Then it's happily subverted when he hears both Tobias and his mom calling his name and waiting for him at the other side of the door, happily unaware of what he was about to do. After that he just lets the pills he was going to overdose on fall to the floor and breaks down crying.
  • The very first pages of the comic have Tobias mention as part of his inner monologue how he feels he should just kill himself, but that there's always something that prevents him from doing so.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady:
  • Rudy, helped by the fact that he likes to wear feminine clothing. Tobias and Emilio also look very androgynous at times, with Tobias being confused with a girl sometimes by other characters.
  • And then there's King. The only reason we as readers know that he might be a "He" is because Mattias keeps calling him "Uncle".
• Forceful Kiss: Emilio to Tobias. After he had just stabbed him on the shoulder and licked the blood off the blade, no less.
• Genre Shift: The first 28 pages of the comic do a good job at building up the atmosphere and the psychological aspect of the story, but you would be forgiven for thinking that there won't be any supernatural elements outside of things Tobias might be hallucinating. Then we see a very tall man besides his bed... Things just get more sinister from there, with stuff like "The Mistress" and such possibly implying that the problem might be much, much bigger than just a pedophilic Grey Man.
• Grotesque Cute: A story about mentally disturbed children being stalked by eldritch horrors while falling in love shouldn't be allowed to be this adorable.
• Halloween Episode: More like a Halloween story arc, but Part 3.5 still qualifies.
• Horror Comedy: With a heavy emphasis on the "Horror", but with long comedy intervals in between.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Mr. Edburt. He's actually a demon eater by his own admission, he just likes children too much to pass out the opportunity to eat them.
• In Love with Your Carnage: It should be noted that Emilio was already stalking Tobias at the time, but it's not until he saw him kill some random fox that he became downright obsessed with him.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: That can't mean anything good... As if we needed more confirmation than Ben was bad news...
  There once was a man
  in a perfect little house
  He once had a cat
  who caught the perfect mouse
  But the mouse would not be eaten,
  The mouse won't be put down
  The mouse killed the cat and everyone in town.
• Kissing Under the Influence: Francis and Dwayne have their First Kiss while they are both tipsy.
• Marshmallow Hell: Rudy's mother, immediately upon meeting Tobias. Rudy's brother seems to encourage it.
  Adam: Do it, mom! Kill him! Suffocate him with your boobs!
• Morality Chain:
  • What Mattias and later Rudy seem to be for Tobias. He's usually at his most happier and nicest when he's with them, and tries to think about what they would do in his place when he is in an awkward social situation or something worse.
  • A variant of this is what Emilio's baby sister Vanessa seems to be for him, if his total change in behavior when he's near her is anything to go by.
    Tobias: What... What is this creature and what has it done with Emilio?
• Mouth Cam: One of the first shots we Mr. Edburt is from behind their teeth, dripping with ichor.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Quite a few.
  • Emilio loves everything about Tobias: His eyes, the way he kills animals, his blood... Everything.
  • Rudy, of all people, is shown to enjoy watching movies of people killing themselves and being murdered. Ben's also this, being the one to introduce them to Rudy and sending them to him in the first place.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: What the art tends to shift to from time to time to illustrate what Tobias or any other character might be feeling or thinking. There's also sometimes a cryptic message or word hidden on them, most often than not a Madness Mantra of some kind. I LOVE IT!, indeed.
• Painting the Medium: All around the place, either to show the characters' messed-up mental state or mess with that of the readers. Scribbled-out panels and speech bubbles, certain words becoming coded or illegible, optical illusions, sudden animations, characters' faces becoming a blank space...
• Psychic Nosebleed: Poor Mattias seems to have a lot of this, at least when The Mistress and King get involved.
• Rape as Drama:
  • Page 30, maybe. The fact that we don't know for sure what Mr. Edburt did to Tobias during their "good luck ritual" just makes it worse.
  • An example without any ambiguity happens during Rudy's flashback of his relationship with Ben. He pins him to the floor, gropes him under his dress and kiss him, and the last we see of the two is a shot from Rudy's perspective of Ben smiling before the page goes black.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Played With, but mostly Averted. While Rudy is not well in the head by any means, he's also one of the few characters in the comic to actually try to understand Tobias and help him with his many issues, and their friendship is shown to be the closest thing to an actually healthy relationship both of them have. Rudy's family averts this further, being shown to be the only completely normal family in the entire comic so far.
• Reluctant Psycho:
  • What ultimately keeps Tobias from losing himself to his inner darkness, more so than any emotional bond with Mattias, Rudy, or anyone else, it's his complete and utter disgust with himself and his honest desire to be better. It's too bad that both Emilio and Mr. Edburt want to help him "fix" that.
  • Emilio himself is something of a weird example, as he's actually been shown to be a much more sane person after he has taken his medications. He even asks Tobias if he likes him better that way. He keeps stalking people even when he's on his pills, he is just able to keep his other urges in check better.
• Sinister Switchblade: Let's just say that Luther gifting Tobias with a switchblade for self-defense use might not have been his brightest idea and leave it at that. He seems to have inherited it from his mother.
• The Sociopath:
  • Tobias and Mattias' father Lucas Schneien seems to be between this and just plain Ax-Crazy. Abusive to his sons, rambles about how those who are "the weakest link" eventually get "eaten by demons" and isn't above killing that "weakest link" himself. When he was a teenager, he murdered a girl whom he had a romantic relationship with and later on he did...something to his brother's now-dead girlfriend that still has him traumatized to this day. What keeps him from being this trope is that, for all his psychosis, he seems to truly love his wife and his daughters. According to his brother Luther, he was completely different as a little kid. It wasn't until they both almost died in a car accident that he started talking about an "angel" (Who might or might not have been The Mistress) who had appeared and saved them, with his resulting religious obsession slowly changing him into the monster he is today.
  • Ben, Rudy's ex-boyfriend, is more of a textbook example if maybe a little low functioning one: Manipulative, quick to anger, and with absolutely no empathy towards anyone but himself. He is shown killing mice and bugs at a very young age, refuses any and all psychological treatment given to him, and claims to love Rudy while also raping him and trying to psychologically break him in the attempt that he may never be able to leave him. It's hinted that this is because he can't see no wrong in damaging things that "belong" to him.
• Say It with Hearts: Mr. Edburt often uses hearts when he speaks, in a loving or playful manner. Rudy has also used hearts in his speech passive-aggressively when he was upset with Tobias.
• Stalker with a Crush: Emilio, towards Tobias. Rudy and later Emilio himself reveal that he actually used to be a serial stalker long before Tobias started going to their school, with him "studying" the lives of a lot of different people, Rudy himself included. Tobias is the only person he has found truly interesting, while everyone else is "boring" to him now that he found him.
• Wham Line:
  • "Teach me how to KILL"
  • "Life wasn't perfect but we were doing fine until the day my eyes started turning blue."
• Yandere
  • Emilio is this for Tobias. He only is explicitly this when he hadn't taken his meds, though. With them, he's just a stalker.
  • Suzy, Tobias' mother, is a Mama Bear version of this. She seems more than happy to help him "solve" any problems he might be having with his classmates, specially if it involves using a knife. That protection ends where his problems with his father begin though, as she's apparently too in love with him as well to do anything about that, at least not directly.
• Yaoi Genre: An undoubtedly dark and morbid take on the genre at that. It should be noted that it tends to be a Horror comic first and foremost, as any possible romance between the main trio tends to take a backseat to all the supernatural and psychological plots going on.