Eerie baby monitor photo goes viral: 'Now I will have nightmares'

A Californian baby has gone viral after he was caught on a baby monitor with a horrifying expression.

Elise Bannister, of Los Angeles, took to Twitter last Thursday to share an image of her son Finn, who appeared to stare straight at her newly purchased VTech baby monitor with glowing eyes.

"We got a new video baby monitor and I think that was a mistake," Bannister jokingly tweeted.

The mother's tweet immediately went viral — as of Monday night, it was like more than 400,000 times and shared nearly 84,000 times. Many Twitter users also replied with their own hilarious take on the photo.

"I HATE EVERYONE WHO LIKED THIS BECAUSE NOW I WILL HAVE NIGHTMARES," one person wrote. "THANK YOU."

Others shared similar stories in which they were alarmed by what they saw or heard via their own baby monitors.

"When we moved into our new house we heard a child crying on our baby monitor upstairs, which would have been fine, except for the fact our daughter was lying asleep downstairs with us," another wrote. "Safe to say the monitor went straight in the bin."

In an interview with TODAY, Bannister said she couldn't help but find her son's seemingly lifeless expression amusing.

"When I first started it up and saw that Finn was just silently staring at the camera like something from a low-budget horror movie, I absolutely lost it laughing," she recalled. "It was hilariously creepy. I initially took the picture to share with a group chat of friends. I had no idea it would go this far!"

Bannister's viral tweet follows another instance in which another mother shared a head-turning image of what appears to be her toddler son sleeping with a "ghost baby." That so-called specter turned out to be a large mattress tag with an image of smiling baby.