SCP Foundation Halloween Posts: The Plague Doctor (SCP-049)

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Here's an SCP fit for Halloween: SCP-049, also known as the "Plague Doctor."

For a TL:DR here is a YouTube video from The Exploring Series YouTube channel. I'll also embed another video from TheVolgun which dramatizes the SCP entry for SCP-049.

SCP-049, the "Plague Doctor", is a humanoid entity that resembles the historical plague doctors who roamed Europe during the late medieval era. Plague doctors would wear long coats and bird-like beak masks. They were tasked with trying to treat and care for victims of the bubonic plague.

But SCP-049 is far from those doctors of the past. Not much is known about its origin, and its existence raises numerous questions. Is it a product of experimentation, a supernatural being, or something else entirely? My personal headcanon is that it is an artificial creation. Not quite like a Golem; maybe more like a tulpa. I'll save that speculation for a future post maybe.

According to the SCP-049 entry SCP-049 believes that it has a duty to "cure" individuals it deems to be suffering from what SCP-049 refers to as "pestilence." SCP-049 is vague about what "pestilence" is exactly.

To try to "cure" those it perceives as victims of the pestilence SCP-049 employs a physical touch that triggers instant death to the perceived victim. After some work by SCP-049 the corpse eventually becomes an obedient, zombie-like entity known as an "SCP-049-2" instance.

Yep, scary doctor creating zombies after killing. This is good Halloween material. There are some SCP Foundation stories on YouTube featuring SCP-049 if you are interested.