Mom captures sweet moment of her twin girls playing — but it soon turned into a disturbing clip

Motherhood is an experience, mostly terrifying but often funny. As a mom of two, Emma Snell (@emmarie1215) is a witness to some hilarious moments with her babies, and if she gets lucky, they are filmed on camera. One day, she was trying to record a cute video of her twin toddlers playing around in the living space when something sent chills down her spine. One of her kids inadvertently scared her, not because they were being sneaky, but because of an unsettling filter she had accidentally put on her baby’s face. 

Snell, who hails from Dayton, Ohio, was filming her twin girls, Evelyn and Elsie, and encouraged them to look at her as she captured the candid moment. A moment later, she regretted it. The adorable instant quickly plummeted into a heartstopping clip, which Snell shared on her TikTok page, amassing 47.3 million views. In the beginning, the video was angled on Evelyn, dressed in red, noodling at the front, when suddenly Elsie pops up from a corner. “Look at me!” she says. One-year-old Elsie is seemingly adorable, but did not look so in this one. Thanks to a Snapchat filter!

The mother did not realize that the filter was turned on and the baby’s face was perfectly transformed into that of a monster. Snell had not expected it because, as the camera was turned towards Evelyn, who was at a distance, the filter did not materialize. However, as soon as little Elsie appears, the filter morphs her sweet little face into an eerie depiction, with her big blue eyes seeming unusually large while her teeth, which she did not have, showed crooked. Even her skin appeared scaly and ghost-like. Elsie’s eerie resemblance to Dobby the elf from Harry Potter and Gollum from The Lord of the Rings movies was rather stunning. The filter caught Snell off guard as she reacted with an audible gasp, visibly scaring away her toddler. “Oh! God!” she yelled.

Snell wrapped it up with a soft giggle as soon as she realized the blunder. “My soul left my body for a second,” she captioned the viral video. Whereas, an overlay text on it revealed, “I accidentally turned on a Snapchat filter without realizing it.” Speaking of her motive to film the moment, Snell told Newsweek, “It is easier than taking pictures when they don't stop moving." With that in mind, she picked up her phone, not realizing that she had scrolled over to the filter. "I use Snapchat for the flash. They love it, and it keeps their attention." 

The hilariously eerie snippet collected 7.3 million likes from viewers and thousands of comments from people playing along with the clip. One person (@kayanne93) made a Harry Potter reference, and said, “Dobby didn't mean to scare the master, bad Dobby.” Another (@sounordinary) mused, “I said, ‘Well damn! How old is the baby?’” A fellow viewer (@fishycometmissy) quipped, “We say our kids are just the cutest, and then there is this.” 

Nevertheless, Snell’s reaction was validated in the comments as the unsettling clip also caught them off guard. “I just died a little,” said @kaylaverley_ while @rednecknati0n revealed, “I threw my phone. Good lord!” “Dude, you need a warning in the caption. I was not ready and was mid-coffee sip. I accidentally laughed, and it caused my coffee to shoot out of my nose. I think my nostrils have 3rd third-degree burn,” a note by @savagegamingmon detailed.

You can follow @emmarie1215 on TikTok for more baby videos.