How does Channel Zero: Butcher's Block compare to the Creepypasta that inspired it, "Search and Rescue Woods?" For the uninitiated, Creepypasta is a form of horror fiction unique to the internet. They often take the form of first-person accounts of creepy events and can run from very short to sprawling, multi-part stories. Slender Man is probably the medium's most famous monster, with others including Jeff The Killer or The Rake.
Some of Creepypasta's best stories include the lengthy "Ted The Caver" or the short but chilling "Candle Cove." Despite the popularity of these viral tales, they've had mixed results in live-action. Easily the best adaptation to date is SYFY's Channel Zero, which ran for four seasons, with each drawing inspiration from a different Creepypasta. The first series was based around "Candle Cove," while the final season The Dream Door drew from Charlotte Bywater's "Hidden Door."
In most cases, Channel Zero pulled from these Creepypastas as inspiration, rather than acting as straight adaptations. The Dream Door used the basic concept but goes off in a completely unique direction, for example. Season 3 Butcher's Block is arguably the most experimental and baroque of the bunch, and comes from Kerry Hammond's series "Search And Rescue Woods." These tales are told from the perspective of an unnamed Search and Rescue officer as they recount assorted eerie events and unexplained disappearances from their time on the job.
While it's told from the perspective of the same character, "Search And Rescue Woods" is less of a straight narrative than a series of short stories. Most are from this officer's experience though they do recount the experiences of others they work alongside too. Some are tales of freakish or tragic accidents due to human error, while others feature people or children disappearing in one part of the forest and being found dead months later under strange circumstances The most famous part of the series are the unexplained stairs to nowhere, which other officers know about but the protagonist is told to just ignore.
These stairs to nowhere are never explained, though it's known that if they're climbed they sap away all sound and lead to the permanent disappearance of anybody the SAR officers are currently looking for. In truth, the image of the stairs is really the only thing Channel Zero: Butcher's Block took from "Search And Rescue Woods." Outside of assorted plot threads like mysterious disappearances or otherworldly creatures, there's little connection.
Channel Zero: Butcher's Block instead centers around two sisters who move to a desolate new city, with protagonist Alice investigating disappearances that seem to center around a staircase that appears in a local park. Rutger Hauer plays the seemingly immortal meatpacking magnate who all but owned the city in the 1950s before he and his family vanished. Unlike "Search And Rescue Woods," Channel Zero: Butcher's Block explains what the stairs are and the Lovecraftian being behind it all, in addition to focusing on themes like mental illness or the rich feeding on the poor - quite literally, in this case.