In your quest to find a new side hustle you might have considered starting a scary stories YouTube channel to bring in some extra income. The horror genre is very popular on YouTube, with ghost stories, real-life horror stories, unsolved mysteries, true crime and more. However, you may not want to put your face or your voice out there, which is why you might want to start a faceless scary stories YouTube channel. This idea isn’t new and has been around for ages, but there are still plenty of opportunities to make money and turn it into a profitable venture if you have the time to commit to it and you can be consistent with your uploading. In this step-by-step guide I am going to talk you through every single step to take to create your channel, come up with the perfect name add a logo and header as well as content creation and getting new YouTube videos uploaded – all without revealing your face or your voice and without any video production experience.
Why start a faceless scary stories YouTube channel?
There are some great reasons to start a faceless scary story channel.
Low start-up costs: You don’t need any recording equipment like a camera, or to have video editing software using the method shared in this blog post.
Stay anonymous: By having a start a faceless scary stories YouTube channel you can protect your privacy whilst allowing yourself to have creative freedom.
Evergreen content: Scary stories have a huge following on YouTube and are always sought after. Content creators who can create content around serial killers, paranormal stories, ufo sightings, science fiction and more can make a lasting impression on potential viewers.
Monetisation opportunities: As well as earning ad revenue from being a YouTube partner you can also attract sponsorship and sell merchandise.
How to make money from YouTube
There are a few ways that your faceless scary stories YouTube channel can make money.
You can join the YouTube Partner Programme once you have met their minimum requirements, and from there you can earn money from:
- Ad revenue
- Memberships
- Sharing links to your shop/merchandise
And more.
To join the YouTube Partner Programme you will need to:
- Have 1,000 subscribers
- 4,000 watched hours in the last 365 days OR 10 million views on your YouTube shorts in the last 365 days.
As well as earning from the YouTube Partner Programme you can also attract sponsorship and sell using affiliate links in your description.
Tools to use to start a faceless scary stories YouTube channel
I really hate when I read a tutorial and only find out later on that the tools used in the tutorial are paid tools.
I am going to be upfront with you now that this tutorial does use paid tools.
The tools used in this tutorial are:
- ChatGPT – free (an upgrade is available but you shouldn’t need it for this).
- Canva Pro – one month free then from £13 per month (you can get away with just using the free trial and then free Canva)
- Fliki – from $21 per month paying annually plus 10% off with code FLIKIAI10.
Types of Scary Stories Content
Creating a scary story channel on YouTube is an exciting content creation opportunity, allowing content creators to explore the horror genre through chilling ghost stories, eerie urban legends, true crime, and real-life horror stories. To stand out in the crowded world of online horror content, careful planning is crucial, starting with a memorable channel name that resonates with your target audience—drawing inspiration from popular channels like Mr. Nightmare, Lazy Masquerade, and Corpse Husband can help craft an unforgettable brand identity. Consider diving into unsolved mysteries, paranormal stories, UFO sightings, and even blending science fiction elements for variety. Incorporating sound effects, atmospheric visuals, and a narrative that includes ominous words or creepy creature names like Slender Man creates a lasting impression. This mix of scary true stories, horror mysteries, and mind-bending twists can captivate potential viewers while positioning your new channel as one of the best creepy YouTube channels for horror enthusiasts who love spine-tingling videos during dark nights.
Creating a YouTube Channel
Creating your YouTube channel is the first step in your journey. During this process you want to create a great horror YouTube channel name to appeal to your target audience of horror enthusiasts and help you to stand out in the crowded world of online horror content.
Naming your YouTube channel
To come up with a name for your channel we are going to utilise ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is free to use, but relies on your input. The more information you can put into your prompt, the better the outcome.
You could set a basic prompt such as ‘come up with a list of YouTube channel names for a scary stories channel’. Then ChatGPT will display a selection of names for you to choose from, or you can ask for more ideas.
Or if you have more specific ideas then you can add more information to your prompt to get more suitable ideas. For example, for the above prompt I used ‘I want to start a YouTube channel sharing scary stories. I am female and I want that to be clear from the name of my channel. I also like to use words that evoke fear or clearly explain what the channel is about. Could you give me a list of channel name ideas?’
Once you have chosen a name for your YouTube channel, visit a site like Namecheckr to see if someone else is already using the name or not. Don’t forget to look for similar usernames, and it is worth searching the internet for the name too in order to make sure it isn’t being used.
Create your channel
The next step is to go ahead and create your new scary stories YouTube channel.
To do this, head to YouTube and sign in (or sign up if you aren’t already signed up).
Click on your user icon in the top right hand corner and click on ‘switch account’.
Under your account click on ‘View all channels’.
Then click on ‘Create a channel’ to start your new channel.
Here you can enter your channel’s name – for this example I am going with ‘The Haunted Siren’.
Once you’ve named your channel, click on ‘Create’ and your channel will be created.
Branding your YouTube channel
Once you have created your YouTube channel it is time to get branding.
This means creating a handle, a logo, a cover image as well as a description for your channel.
To do this, we are going to use Canva Pro and ChatGPT. Canva Pro is a subscription service, costing £13 per month if you pay monthly. However, they do have a free month’s trial, meaning you can get your branding done before you have to pay out. If you don’t want to pay to continue to use Canva Pro then set yourself a reminder to cancel before the trial is up.
Creating a YouTube logo
To create the YouTube logo, in Canva Pro click on ‘Create a design’.
From here, search for ‘YouTube Channel logo’ and select the YouTube Channel Logo option.
From the menu on the left, select Apps and type in ‘Magic Media’. Now type in at least 5 words you want to form the basis of your YouTube channel’s logo, and hit ‘generate image’. You will then be shown 4 AI generated images based on the prompt that you gave.
Keep doing this until you find a logo that you want to use. You might need to add more, or take away from your prompt until you get something that you like. You have 500 credits per month to use to do this on Canva Pro, and every time that you generate 4 images it will use up 1 credit.
Here are the first four potential YouTube channel logos that Canva Pro created for me.
I know from experience that when I upload my logo to YouTube it will be in a circle, so although I really love the first image, I know it won’t display correctly. I am going to use the last image as my YouTube channel logo.
To download the logo, drag and drop the design from the left hand side of the screen onto your work area. I then dragged and dropped it to fit the square and renamed it something easy to find later on – The Haunted Siren YouTube Channel Logo. To download it click on Share>Download, double check the settings (I downloaded it as a PNG for quality) and then once you’re happy with the settings click on Download again.
Keep it downloaded for now, as we move on to making the channel cover before uploading them to YouTube.
Creating a YouTube Banner image
A banner image is a channel’s image that is shown on multiple devices when using YouTube.
The way that your banner will display depends on the device being used, so for this tutorial we are going to steer away from using text on our channel’s banner. It IS possible if you want to.
Back to Canva Pro’s homepage, click again on ‘Create a design’ and type in ‘YouTube banner’. You will see a list of results – let’s just go with YouTube Banner 2560 x 1440px.
Canva will show you some pre-designed templates to choose from and you can play around and experiment with these, however I am going to go back to using Magic Media to create the banner.
Type out your prompt and make sure that you change the aspect ratio to the second option to get a horizontal banner. Then click ‘Generate image’.
These are the 4 options that Canva Pro gave me. As with the logo, if you aren’t happy with anything, you can regenerate the images until you have something you like. Follow the same instructions from the logo to drag and drop your design, rename it and download it.
Upload your designs to YouTube
To continue branding your YouTube channel, head back to your newly created channel.
Under your channel name click on ‘customise channel’.
This will open a new window where you can upload your logo and banner. Start off by uploading your banner image by clicking on ‘Upload’ and then locating your downloaded banner.
From here you will see a screen where you can crop your banner art to display on different devices. If this isn’t displaying how you would like then head back over to Canva to make changes. I am leaving mine as the default.
Then upload your logo to the ‘picture’ section by clicking on ‘upload’ and locating your downloaded logo.
Here you will see the circle that YouTube have around my logo to display it in a circle. You can adjust this if you need to.
Now you can edit your handle (I removed some characters to make it just @TheHauntedSiren) and your description.
For the description let’s head back over to ChatGPT and ask for a description. I’ve started with a very basic prompt of ‘Create a YouTube description for my channel called The Haunted Siren. On the channel I share scary stories.‘. ChatGPT then came back with this:
“Welcome to The Haunted Siren!
Dive into the eerie and unsettling world of scary stories. From spine-chilling encounters and urban legends to haunted house tales and supernatural mysteries, The Haunted Siren brings you captivating storytelling designed to thrill and terrify.
Subscribe now to hear the tales that will keep you up at night. Don’t forget to hit the bell icon so you never miss a new haunting tale!
🕯️ Turn the lights down low and prepare to be captivated by the whispers of the unknown.
Let the haunting begin. 👻”
There is a 1,000 character limit for your YouTube description, and this one is only 531, so I could add to it if I wanted, but I am just going to leave it as is.
You can then add further information such as an email address, external links and your video watermark. You could use your logo as your video watermark – this will be shown as a sqaure and you can choose whether to show it at the end of the video, choose a custom start time or show for the entire video.
Don’t forget to hit ‘Publish’ in the top right hand corner to save your changes.
Once you’ve published your changes, click on ‘view channel’ and you can see how your channel looks so far. You can go back and tweak anything that you don’t like.
Creating Faceless Scary Stories Videos
Now comes, for me, the most fun part – actually creating the faceless scary stories videos.
When creating my own faceless scary stories YouTube channel I assumed that I would just head over to Reddit and find subreddits of people sharing their own scary stories and just using those stories for my own channel.
Oh how wrong I was!
Going down this route requires a lot of hard work. You have to reach out to the posters and ask permission, wait to get permission and then if they even say yes you have to proof read the stories, edit them for clarity or spelling and grammar.
I decided to bypass this by using AI (ChatGPT, naturally) to write the scary stories for me.
Once I had enough stories to create my first video, I used a text to speech AI program to create a realistic sounding voice, which costs $25 per month for approximately 10 hours of audio.
I then used a mixture of the videos on Canva Pro as well as stock videos to use to then edit together in iMovie to create the video.
This process took me hours to create my first 8 minute video. The hardest and most time consuming part was matching audio to the pictures and videos shown.
That’s until I found Fliki, which does it all for me in one tool and prices start from $21 per month (plus 10% off with code FLIKIAI10) for 180 minutes or 3 hours per month, with upgrade options available too.
Once logged in to Fliki go ahead and select ‘Idea (prompt)’ under the Video header.
Here is where you can input your idea for your scary story video, and select the duration. For this example I entered ‘Write a believable scary story about the Dark web told from the storyteller’s POV.’ I selected a video duration of 10 minutes and then hit ‘next’.
Next up choose the tone, purpose and audience for this video. If you aren’t sure then you can just skip these.
Then you will need to make some adjustments to make your video perfect for YouTube. For the size be sure to select ‘landscape’ to make the video the correct way round for a YouTube video. You can edit the language, the dialect and then make customisations as required. For the real magic you want to select ‘AI Media’ from the customisations to get unique media to use in your videos.
Once you have selected AI Media you can choose from a range of styles – for this example we are going with the default which is ‘cinematic’. Then press Submit to start making your video.
After a few minutes you will then see your video separated into different scenes.
Scroll through and make sure that all of your scenes have an AI image that fits the scene – if not you can click on the small thumbnail within the scene to open up the Media picker and you can tweak the instructions and click on ‘Generate’ to make another suitable image.
If you want to change the voice used then click on a scene to open it up and click on the name (in this example it is ‘Mia’) to bring up a list of voice options. You can use the filters at the top to change the language, dialect, gender and even Voice style, and click on the icon to the next of each name for a preview. Once you have chosen a voice, click on the name and be sure to check the box that says ‘Apply to all scenes’ before hitting ‘Select’ to choose that voice.
You can then make other changes to your video as you need to, using the play button underneath your video to preview the entire video. You might want to get rid of the subtitles, or change the font. Don’t forget to apply the changes to all scenes.
To change or add music or other sound effects scroll to the top of your scenes and look for ‘Common scene’. Here under Background Audio you can choose an audio file.
I really like listening to scary stories set to rain and thunderstorms, so in this example I have toggled to Sound Effects and searched for ‘storm’ to find suitable background music. Here you can preview the sounds and then click on the one that you want to include. Don’t worry about matching the background sound length to your video – it will automatically loop to the length of your video. Once added be sure to turn the volume of the common audio down so that it doesn’t drown out the voice over. I would suggest a volume between 5 – 10.
Before you download your video, be sure to complete the final checks to make sure everything looks great. Then hit ‘download’. Choose the highest resolution and mp4 as your format and start the export.
Once exported, click on ‘Download MP4′.
Optional step: if you would like to create a longer video using a few videos you have downloaded from Fliki then you will need to add them to a video editing software like iMovie to merge them together to make one longer video.
Create a YouTube Thumbnail
Now we need to create a YouTube thumbnail, so it is back over to Canva (you don’t need the pro version for this, although you do get access to more templates and elements if you keep your Canva Pro account).
This time in Canva after clicking on ‘create a design’ type in ‘YouTube thumbnail and select the first option.
The great thing about using Canva is that you don’t have to create a design from scratch. After clicking on the design tab you can type in ‘scary story’ to see some suitable templates for your YouTube thumbnail. If you hover over a design and you see the word ‘pro’ or a crown pop up, those templates are only available if you have Canva Pro. If you don’t have Canva Pro, look out for one that doesn’t have those pop up.
Now it is time to start getting creative. Above you can see the template that I chose before I make any edits.
Everything from the template can be changed, including the colours, the text, the background image and the placement of different elements. Using Canva is quite intuitive, and you can use the drag and drop designer to move things around and edit things. You might also want to head back over to ChatGPT to help you to come up with a name for the video and thumbnail if you don’t want to use the one Fliki recommended. You can search Canva for images to use, or again use the Magic Media to create your own. Once you are happy with your thumbnail, download it as a PNG, or if you aren’t using Canva Pro, a JPG.
Upload to YouTube
By now you should have a YouTube channel with a logo and banner, as well as your first scary story video to upload, as well as a matching thumbnail.
On YouTube, ensuring you are logged in to your channel, click on the video camera icon on the top right and select ‘Upload video’.
You will then see a screen where you can edit and add details. Let’s utilise ChatGPT to help us out here.
I’ve used the prompt ‘I have a video telling a scary story about the dark web called ‘The Disappearing Window’. Help me to come up with a title and description that will explain what the video is about, encourage people to like, subscribe and comment as well as optimised for searches.’
ChatGPT returned:
‘Video Title:
The Disappearing Window: A Dark Web Horror Story That Will Haunt You
Video Description:
Welcome to The Haunted Siren!
In this chilling tale, The Disappearing Window, we explore a terrifying encounter on the dark web that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about privacy and safety online. What starts as a curious click spirals into an eerie descent filled with paranoia, unexplainable events, and an encounter that may never be forgotten.
If you love scary stories, spine-tingling suspense, and dark web mysteries, this story is for you!
🕯️ Hit the like button if this story sent chills down your spine, and don’t forget to subscribe for more haunting tales like this.
💬 Have you ever had a creepy online experience? Share your story in the comments below!
🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss a scare.
Let the haunting begin.
#ScaryStories #DarkWeb #HorrorStory #TheHauntedSiren #CreepyTales’
To make this as quick as possible I am just going to use the response that ChatGPT has provided me.
Then be sure to upload your thumbnail – you will need to verify your phone number to do this.
Scroll through to check all of the details, and once you are happy with them, click on Next.
Here you can upload subtitles, add an end screen or cards if you want to. Then click on Next.
YouTube will then run some checks for copyright issues, and once done click on Next. Now it is time to publish or schedule your video, or save it to come back to later. In this example I just set the video live immediately and hit ‘Publish’.
Now the finished video is live on YouTube.
FAQ: Starting a Faceless Scary Stories YouTube Channel
1. Do I need professional video editing skills to create videos?
No, you don’t. Tools like Canva Pro and Fliki make it easy to create professional-looking videos without advanced editing knowledge. They offer intuitive interfaces and templates to help you streamline the process.
2. How much money can I make with a scary stories YouTube channel?
Earnings vary based on your content’s popularity, engagement, and monetization strategies. Many creators earn through YouTube ads, sponsorships, affiliate links, and merchandise sales. Success depends on consistency and quality.
3. Is Fliki the only tool I can use to generate videos?
No, there are other tools available, but Fliki simplifies the process by combining text-to-speech, video creation, and AI media generation in one platform. You can also use software like iMovie, Adobe Premiere, or free options like DaVinci Resolve if you prefer a more manual approach.
4. How often should I upload new videos?
There are so many things that go towards having a successful YouTube channel, but it is important to be consistent with your uploads. I would recommend having new videos go live at least twice a week, at the same time every week. This allows your subscribers to know what to expect from your channel. Thankfully, with YouTube scheduling, you can batch create videos and thumbnails and schedule them to go live later.
5. Do I need permission to use scary stories from Reddit?
Yes, if you’re sourcing stories from Reddit or other platforms, you must get permission from the original authors before using their content. Alternatively, you can write your own stories or use AI tools like ChatGPT or Fliki to generate original narratives.
6. How long does it take to make a video?
The time varies based on the complexity of the video. With tools like Fliki, creating and uploading a video can take as little as 30–60 minutes, while manual processes (e.g., sourcing images, syncing audio) can take several hours.
7. How can I stand out in the crowded scary stories niche?
Focus on high-quality storytelling, unique branding, and consistent uploads. Engaging thumbnails, captivating descriptions, and offering a distinctive style (e.g., eerie background sounds or a specific storytelling tone) can help set your channel apart.
8. What are the best types of scary stories to start with?
Popular options include urban legends, paranormal encounters, unexplained mysteries, and creepy personal experiences. Don’t forget to download our 100 prompts for scary stories to help you create great stories with AI.
9. Do I need to be on camera or use my voice?
No, that’s the beauty of a faceless scary stories channel! You can use AI-generated voices with Fliki and remain completely anonymous, allowing you to focus solely on the content.
10. How can I market my YouTube channel?
Promote your videos on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter. Engage with the scary stories community on Reddit, and consider starting a blog or email newsletter to reach a broader audience. This also means you can offer potential sponsors another avenue to explore.
