Everything I have found out about the SCP Foundation: what it is, how its files work, who runs it, who fights it, every numbered thing it keeps locked away, and what is buried underneath. Kept by one person who wasn't supposed to remember.
My name doesn't matter. Call me Wren.
On November 3, 2023, I was in the parking garage under the Halvorsen Mall when the lights flickered. When they came back on, a concrete statue that hadn't been there a second earlier was standing next to a security guard. Then the guard was on the floor with his neck broken. Men in grey jackets arrived within minutes. They handed everyone bottled water and told us there had been a gas leak.
Everyone else forgot. I didn't. Whatever they put in that water doesn't work on me.
Since then I've been piecing together who those people were. They call themselves the SCP Foundation. They keep thousands of things like that statue locked away, and they make sure nobody remembers seeing them. This site is everything I've found: leaked files, messages from a relay I tapped, and what people who got out have told me.
I'm putting it all in one place so you can understand it too. If this page stops updating, assume they found me. Make a copy.
Wren is a fictional narrator. The SCP Foundation is collaborative horror fiction, written by thousands of people on the SCP Wiki since 2007. This site plays along with the story. Anything in a dashed box like this one is about the real world.
Want full immersion? Switch Real-world notes off in the header and these boxes disappear.
The people in grey jackets work for an organization called the SCP Foundation. It is older than most governments, answers to none of them, and has one job: find things that should not exist, lock them away, and make sure you never learn about them.
Capture or seize anomalies so they cannot fall into the hands of civilians or hostile groups.
Keep them locked away so their effects cannot spread or be noticed by the public.
Protect humanity from anomalies, and protect anomalies from people who would misuse them, until they are understood.
There is no single official canon. Two articles can contradict each other, and both are valid. The wiki's own essay is titled "There Is No Canon". Writers who want a shared continuity group their work into canons, which are clusters of stories that agree with each other, like the moving clusters on the left. This page will point out when lore belongs to a particular canon instead of the whole universe.
This section steps outside the story. In real life, one anonymous creepypasta grew into one of the largest collaborative fiction projects online. Switch Real-world notes off to hide it.
Numbered SCP files are only part of the site. These are the other types you will see referenced.
SCP-####A standard file on one anomaly. This is the main format.
SCP-001A special slot with dozens of competing "proposals." Each is a different author's answer to the Foundation's biggest secret. None is official.
TalesShort stories set in the universe. Many of the best-known characters and plotlines come from Tales.
GoI formatsDocuments written from the point of view of another organization, such as a Global Occult Coalition threat report.
Hubs / canonsIndex pages that collect a shared setting or story series.
SCP-###-JJoke entries. Some are pure comedy, some are quietly brilliant.
SCP-###-EXExplained files: things once thought anomalous that turned out to have a normal explanation.
SCP-###-ARCArchived files: retired or superseded entries kept for reference.
SCP-###-RU, -JP…Entries from international branches, which have their own numbering.
Most of what I have are leaked Foundation files, and they all follow the same layout. Once you can read one, you can read all of them. I wrote the sample below myself to show the format; it isn't a real file. The guide steps through each part on its own; click any part to take over.
█████Black bars hide names, dates and places. They signal that the reader lacks clearance, and they're often used for effect.
[REDACTED]A word or phrase removed for security.
[DATA EXPUNGED]A larger block of information deleted from the record, usually something too dangerous or disturbing to keep.
D-ClassDisposable personnel, usually prisoners taken from death row, used to test dangerous anomalies. A permanent moral stain on the Foundation.
Site-##A Foundation facility. Site-19 is the largest and most famous. Smaller facilities are Areas, Outposts or Sectors.
MTFMobile Task Force: an elite unit with a Greek-letter code and a nickname, such as MTF Epsilon-11 "Nine-Tailed Fox."
AmnesticsMemory-erasing drugs used on witnesses so the public never remembers what they saw.
CognitohazardSomething that harms you just by perceiving it. Its cousin, the infohazard, harms you by knowing information about it.
AntimemeAn idea that resists being remembered or spread. You forget it as soon as you look away.
K-Class scenarioA world-ending scenario. XK is the end of humanity, CK is a reality restructuring, and there are many other letter codes.
HumeThe unit used to measure how stable reality is in an area. Reality benders lower it around them.
O5 CouncilThe thirteen anonymous people at the top of the Foundation. Covered in full in a later section.
A contact inside sent me this photo. It's from the file on something they called SCP-096. I haven't looked at it, and I blurred it to be safe. Some Foundation files contain images that their own staff are ordered never to view. Please don't click it.
Every file has an object class. It took me months to realize it rates how hard something is to contain, not how dangerous it is. A harmless thing that keeps escaping is Keter. A world-ending thing that sits still in a box is Safe. Their own training material explains every class with the same thought experiment: what happens if you lock it in a box and walk away?
Many recent files use the Anomaly Classification System, a header panel that adds more detail. It keeps the containment class and adds three ratings, one for each word in the motto:
Click a level on the right to see what it means. The panel is a working mock-up of the real header.
Who is allowed to read what. I've seen two naming systems in the leaks. Newer files (ACS) use the names below. Older files call the same levels 0 For Official Use Only, 1 Confidential, 2 Restricted, 3 Secret, 4 Top Secret and 5 Thaumiel. Click a level to see what that person could open.
It took me a year of leaks to sketch this. The Foundation is a strict hierarchy: the higher you go, the less anyone touches an anomaly and the more they know. Click any level to read what I've found about it.
The O5 Council is thirteen people, O5-1 through O5-13. Nobody below them knows their names or faces. They are always Class A personnel, which means they are never allowed near an anomaly. They don't approve day-to-day containment. They decide what the Foundation is for.
Each chair is someone I'll probably never identify. Click them anyway.
Clearance decides what you can read. Class decides how close you are allowed to get. These are separate: a Level 4 director can be Class A and never see a single anomaly in person.
Essential to the whole Foundation. Never allowed direct access to anomalies, and evacuated first. The O5 Council is always Class A.
Essential to one site. Can only touch anomalies that have been checked for mind-affecting effects.
Researchers and staff who work with most anomalies that aren't hostile. Quarantined if something gets into their heads.
Usually prisoners from death row, used on the most dangerous anomalies. At the end of each month they get an amnestic or are terminated.
Field agents exposed to something dangerous while capturing it. Quarantined until medical and psychiatric staff clear them.
When something gets loose, these are who show up. Each MTF is a unit of veterans built for one specific kind of threat, with a Greek-letter code and a nickname. Operatives hold Level 3; commanders hold Level 4.
Site-##A major facility with its own Site Director, research labs and containment wings. Sites are numbered, and the numbers don't mean much.
Area-##A facility dedicated to one or a few specific anomalies, often ones too big or dangerous to move.
Site-19The largest and most important Foundation site I've found references to. Hundreds of anomalies are kept there, and many of the most famous files come from it.
Site-17Specializes in humanoid anomalies: people, or things that look like people.
Site-01In several leaks, this is where the O5 Council meets. In others it doesn't exist. I can't confirm either.
Outposts & SectorsSmaller stations, observation posts and cover businesses. One of them is probably within an hour's drive of you.
Some staff appear across dozens of leaked files. These are the ones I see most.
Dr. Jack BrightEffectively immortal. He is bound to SCP-963, an amulet that moves his mind into whoever touches it next. There is an entire internal list of things he is no longer allowed to do.
Dr. Alto ClefA senior researcher everyone is a little afraid of. Files hint he isn't entirely human. He carries a ukulele.
Dr. KondrakiReckless, rule-breaking, and connected to butterflies in ways I don't understand yet.
Dr. GearsCalm, precise and almost entirely without visible emotion. Assigned to some of the most dangerous files.
Dr. GlassThe staff psychologist. He keeps the researchers sane, or tries to.
Marion WheelerHead of the Antimemetics Division, a department that fights things you can't remember. Most of the Foundation doesn't know it exists.
Many famous staff characters began as author avatars of early SCP Wiki writers, which is why their personalities change between stories. The Antimemetics Division comes from qntm's acclaimed series There Is No Antimemetics Division. Lists like "Things Dr. Bright is not allowed to do" are long-running joke pages.
The Foundation isn't the only organization that knows. The leaks call the others "Groups of Interest": rival agencies, cults, companies and criminals who all deal in the anomalous. This is my board. Click any card to open my file on that group.
Smaller or stranger groups that show up in the leaks. Tap one to open it.
Groups of Interest are shared settings that any author can write about. Each major group has a hub page with its best stories. The full list is on the wiki's Groups of Interest page.
This is the index I pulled through the relay: every numbered SCP from 001 to 9999 that has a file. Search by number or name, filter by series or class, and open any card. Files marked Wren are ones I've written up myself. For the rest, I link you to the original.
Click a bar to filter the database to that class.
Titles come from the SCP Wiki's series pages. Class, rating, year, authors and tags come from the community Crom index of the wiki. Ratings are reader votes. The index was pulled on the date shown above and doesn't update itself.
Everyone has heard of the statue and the lizard. That's the part above the water. This is everything I've found below it, from what your friends already know down to the things I'm not sure I should have read. The deeper you go, the more each entry spoils. Tap any entry to open it.
"Iceberg" charts are a fan tradition that rank lore from well-known to obscure. Placement here is my own judgment, not official. The deepest entries mostly come from specific canons and SCP-001 proposals, which disagree with each other by design.
The longer I read, the stranger it got. The leaks don't agree on one history. They split into separate versions of the world, each one consistent with itself. Some say the Veil falls. Some say the sun turns deadly. Some say the Foundation was never needed at all. I keep them on this shelf. Pull one out.
Canons are shared settings that groups of authors write in together. The wiki lists 58 of them on its Canon Hub. Tales are short stories, separate from SCP files, and many famous characters live mostly in tales.
If you don't know where to start, follow one of these. Each one opens the file right here. Files you've opened get a check mark, and your progress is remembered on this device.
I got all of these wrong at first. The dashed ones are about the real world.
Keter means hard to contain. Some Keter anomalies are harmless but slippery. Some Safe anomalies would destroy the world if anyone activated them.
They protect humanity, but through secrecy, coercion, human testing and memory erasure. Many stories are about whether that trade is worth it.
There is no canon. Contradictory articles coexist. Shared continuity exists only inside individual canons and hubs.
SCP-001 is a slot with many competing proposals. Each is a different author's idea of the Foundation's deepest secret.
In-universe, SCP stands for "Special Containment Procedures," the heading of every file. It also echoes the motto Secure, Contain, Protect.
Games like Containment Breach are adaptations. The wiki is the source, and the games simplify or change a lot.
I wrote this test for anyone who reads this far. Twelve questions on everything above. Your score decides what clearance you'd have if you worked for them.
I post things once I've decrypted and checked them. Anything behind hazard tape is coming.
Premise, origins, reading a file, object classes, ACS, clearance.
Chain of command, the O5 table, personnel classes, Mobile Task Forces, facilities, key staff.
The conspiracy board: 13 major groups with files, plus everyone else on the radar.
Every numbered SCP is indexed and searchable. My own write-ups are being added series by series.
Five tiers, from the surface memes down to the deepest cosmology, with spoilers behind redaction.
The canon shelf, five reading paths, and the clearance test.
More write-ups, series by series, until every famous file has one.