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If you thought the Screamers were nightmare fuel, wait until you meet the Night Hunters — one of the most terrifying Ex-Pop enemies in The Outlast Trials. Equipped with night vision goggles and delusions of godhood, these soldiers-turned-predators were molded through torture, tech, and twisted tales.
According to Murkoff Case Files, Night Hunters were once military volunteers who underwent surgical night vision augmentation. But the real horror? Their minds broke before their bodies did.
During the procedure, their eyes were immobilized with pins driven through the sclera—yes, the white of the eye—until the ocular muscles atrophied. This brutal process ensured constant retinal stimulation, allowing their vision to adapt to the device. The result? Permanent night vision… and permanent psychological damage.
The origin of the Night Hunters doesn’t stop with Murkoff. Like many horrors in The Outlast Trials, it traces back to Operation Paperclip, the U.S. program that brought Nazi scientists to America post-WWII. The experiment was inspired by the real-life German “Vampir” infrared night vision system, and the grenadiers who carried it: the Nachtjäger—the night hunter.
Feeding their descent into madness, the Night Hunters were told stories—myths, legends, war propaganda—until they believed they were no longer human. One subject even developed a Slavic accent after constant exposure to a scientist reading him Teutonic ghost stories. Fairy tales, it turns out, make great fuel for delusions.
While their night vision makes them lethal in the dark, it’s also their Achilles’ heel. Light is their bane. Flash them with enough brightness, and these hunters become helpless. Reagents hoping to survive will need to weaponize every bulb, flare, and spark they can find—because in the dark?
“You can’t hide from the man with the x-ray eyes.”
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