In 2016, 45,609 Canadian children were reported missing. The popular assumption is that these children have been victims of random evil — a stranger on the street appearing out of nowhere in an unmarked white van to perpetrate his/her malignity — but the reality is quite different. In most cases, child abductors are someone the child has a pre-existing relationship with. 

This Halloween, creative agency KBS has partnered with the Missing Children Society of Canada to debunk this myth and to raise awareness of this frightening reality by creating a Halloween mask representing the scariest monster of them all: the ‘Everyday Monster,’ — a true-to-life composite face created using a database of convicted child abductors. 

The face itself was first created using photo recognition AI and a composite of facial feature data points compiled from a publicly-available database of mugshots from 78 different child abductors. This hauntingly familiar persona was then transformed into a custom Halloween mask handmade by Trick of Treat Studios’ Chris Russell.