Creepypastas: The Weird Tales of the Internet

The Digital "Proving Ground" for Horror Writers

Image Credit: tuv 2023

The term “creepypasta”¹ is something I referenced in my posts from last October² but did not elaborate much on them besides the standard “internet campfire stories” description most commentators use to describe them. In today’s post, I’ll be going into a deeper dive on what they are, some examples of this internet “folk horror” that haunted the web from the aughts to early 2010s, and writers of these tales who went on to become professional authors following their online success.

There will be spoilers for some of the stories I talk about in this post, but most of the examples I’m pulling from are all free and available to read online. There are also fully-narrated versions of them on YouTube if audiobooks are more your style.

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Being a young teen on the internet in the early 2010s, it was inevitable that I ran into creepypastas. I didn’t directly engage in them until about halfway through high school; before diving into them, my brothers would sometimes talk about a few of the more iconic figures in the genre such as Slenderman and Jeff the Killer. In all honesty, I didn’t go much deeper beyond listening to narrated renditions on YouTube and skimming through several on the Creepypasta Wiki. What I found interesting back then—and still do in hindsight—was the idea that, to young, impressionable minds, some of these ghost stories could have been taken at face value as events that might have happened or figures that might actually exist. All creepypastas are obviously fictional, but to horror-obsessed kids who don’t have the critical thinking skills or the means to verify each story they might as well have been real.

What sets creepypastas apart from traditional literature is that many of them were originally posted on forum sites such as Reddit’s r/nosleep, personal blogs, and the infamous 4chan, and thus were designed to appear like genuine accounts from users who had experienced something horrific in their lives. Sometimes there could be interplay with the audience as the authors might have responded to particular questions or comments left on the posts making up their stories. Some stories were even formatted like texts or chatroom conversations, making them digital epistolary tales. Some might have even had additional media to build up the verisimilitude of the stories, such as pictures, videos, and audio recordings. One example that includes most of these elements is “Ted the Caver”, which is considered to be the very first creepypasta.

By the time I had been listening to creepypastas regularly, their popularity was already waning. Many of the characters on the roster of famous creepypastas were becoming parodies of themselves as their “fear factor” diminished and the audiences that once thought them terrifying began to realize the scary, photoshopped, over-saturated photos and poorly-written stories to accompany them were not hiding in the shadows of their closets or backyards, and no longer haunted their maturing minds.

There are some stories, however, that did not receive the same virality that Slenderman, Jeff the Killer and his many clones, and “Ben Drowned” and other cursed video game or “lost episode tales” but were recognized and celebrated in their own right by their audiences. Many of these stories weren’t trying to build some digital, folkloric entity or new wave slasher villain, but simply tell a story that also used the internet and social media as a way to format and convey its plot and provide some level of audience participation and easy accessibility by way of making them available for free on public sites. Some of these stories and their authors have received renewed recognition in part thanks to the podcast show CreepCast, hosted jointly by the YouTubers Wendigoon and Meat Canyon, which is a series of narrations/commentary on both well-known and obscure creepypastas. I started listening to this show back in springtime of this year when I was laid up and recovering from an injury. The hosts often mentioned how some of the stories they read were the writers’ very first attempts at spinning a yarn, and would take time to research and reference the writers’ newer works that were featured as full-length books (many of which being self-published on Amazon) or even their contributions to TV shows and movies. I started comparing those anecdotes to the career trajectories of many contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales and the very nature of pulp stories (and pulp magazines in general) compared to creepypastas.

Weird Tales published its first issue in March 1923 with the subtitle “The Unique Magazine.” Later issues would regularly feature writers that influenced and created entire subgenres within speculative fiction, some of the most well-known being H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Some writers, as is the case with Lovecraft and Howard, would never unfortunately (or very rarely) go beyond submitting stories to Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. There are some writers who contributed to the publication that would later go on to become household names in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror—some of these included Robert Bloch, author of Psycho who also corresponded extensively with Lovecraft as a teen; Ray Bradbury, now considered a master of science fiction, published stories in Weird Tales from 1942 to '48³; and Fritz Leiber, creator of sword & sorcery duo Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser was met with constant rejection from the magazine until finally breaking ground in 1939 and '40.⁴ Pulp magazines were primarily how the general population of America engaged with written literature in the '20s and '30s—rags filled with quick, easy stories spinning all sorts of mundane or strange yarns. The primary function of them, on the side of writers, was to make a quick buck especially as the Depression swept over the world. Such mass-produced, by-the-numbers stories usually resulted in stuff meant to stimulate and entertain rather than say anything profound; there were a lot more duds than there were tales that would become immortalized, and even fewer writers in this genre who would go on to make a living with their work.

Creepypastas, I think, had a very similar function in terms of entertainment and being an outlet for new writers to test out their skills during the aughts and 2010s. With computers, smart devices, and the general Internet becoming the primary tools and resources for information and entertainment in most households, young readers and fans of horror could freely engage in the budding movement of creepypastas to their hearts’ content. It cost nothing to read or listen to these stories, and there was equally few barriers of entry when it came to writing and publishing original creepypastas, all one needed was an account on the Creepypast Wiki, Reddit, or any other forum site to start writing. Outside of some site moderators, there were no professional editors vetting each story to decide if it was “suitable for publication”; writers and readers were the only ones who could decide on the quality of each story. There also were no forms of monetary compensation or systems for tipping for writers on any sites they posted their stories on (at the time), other than the new form of internet currency—clout and virality. In its purest form, the creepypasta genre was meant for writers to create ghost stories to haunt the frontier of cyberspace for pleasure and perhaps as a chance to hone their writing skills. I remember compiling a list of titles for possible creepypasta stories and writing a few fragments, none of which I completed but some incorporated themes I would write about later, particularly stories related to the Cthulhu Mythos and Celtic lore. Money wasn’t on my mind back then, but I really enjoyed the idea of following a similar path as my favorite creepypasta narrators on YouTube at the time, albeit using the platform to share some of my original stories rather than narrating others’.

With the advent of self-publishing, this also enabled writers of creepypastas, who were dedicated to their craft, to take whatever advice or criticism they might have received on their original posts and turn their stories into more refined, complete pieces which they could profit from. Some writers in this genre who did go on to self-publish and gain success in authorial careers include people like Rebecca Klingel (pen name c.k. walker), whose most popular story Borrasca horrified r/nosleep in 2015, would later write for Mike Flannigan’s Haunting series⁵ on Netflix; or Felix Blackwell’s Stolen Tongues (originally “My romantic cabin getaway isn’t going exactly as I planned” on Reddit), which at one point was in the works to be adapted into a feature film (according to the blurb on the back cover); or Dathan Auerbach whose disturbing novel Penpal (originally posted on r/nosleep under his handle 1000vultures with the same title) currently holds a “Teachers’ pick” label on Amazon. These are only a few examples out of likely many who tried their hand in the arena of internet horror and managed to produce novel-length stories they could later publish with the new tools offered by online businesses.

When comparing the content of the stories that “haunted” the world wide web to the more traditional literature from the Pulp Era I would endear myself to, I noticed some marked differences between what authors of prior generations considered horrific. In listening to CreepCast’s readings of stories I’d previously heard as a teenager, I was more conscious of similar patterns in terms of themes and how horror manifested in the narratives. The “weird” part of Weird Tales, from what I’ve read and have heard scholars talk about, can be summarized as stories that are “off the beaten path” of most traditional literature. These stories can have mundane or supernatural elements (though the latter tends to allow authors to inject more explicit weirdness into stories), but may also have some twist or sort of “subversion” that separates them from the usual horror or fantasy tropes—or even cemented said tropes back in the day. The weirdness and horror in creepypastas also range from mundane to supernatural, but usually the best ones emphasize mundane horrors over the fantastic. Borrasca for example begins with young kids believing something supernatural might be occurring in their hometown, but as they grow up they learn the truth may be even more monstrous than whatever boogeymen they invented as children. Penpal also has no supernatural elements at all, but emphasizes the depravity humans without morals (or indeed humanity at all) can stoop to in order to play out their twisted fantasies.

A common theme quite a few creepypastas share (especially more successful ones) is the “loss of innocence” trope. Often these stories are framed as forum posts written by people recounting some bizarre or terrifying event that happened in their lives. It is common on social media to find “survivor stories” or personal sagas chronicling some defining event in a person’s life, so at first glance some of these stories can easily be taken as those sorts of posts. I find it especially interesting that these stories seem to have been popular with teenagers growing up in a rapidly developing period of digital innovation and social media that drew a large number of later generations away from more traditional, “low tech” childhood activities. A lot of creepypastas that I’ve listened to over the past few months have a feeling that is akin to either “the last day of summer vacation” or “the first time childhood stops being fun.” This isn’t to say this is the only thing creepypastas focus on, but it’s the type of horror that all people can relate to when comparing it to their own childhoods—even if theirs was relatively normal. Feelings of loneliness, losing good friends due to any number of causes, the realization of mortality are all things these stories draw in and play off of in their audience to maximize the horror.

Creepypastas, the horror stories of the “folk” who flocked to the internet, have been a defining subgenre for digital literature. What originally began as an outlet for users to try out new mediums of storytelling across the web became a source of success for some writers. Each one captured some form of weirdness or horror that roped in ideas and themes circulating in the culture of this new generation of storytellers. Although the buzz around them has mellowed out somewhat, the immortalized corpus of tales serves as a new source of inspiration for terrifying hapless readers.

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And now, for a sneak peek at this month’s short story “Did anyone else read Yellowed Leaves in grade school?” a creepypasta-style story presented in the form of an archived forum thread. Due to the length this story is shaping up to be, I’ll be splitting it up into two parts: the first will be released on the 25th of October and the second will be unleashed released on Halloween night!

Sneak Peek of “Did anyone else read Yellowed Leaves in grade school?”

[Archived from a deleted forum thread]

9/11/23 – oldkenkenobi (original poster): Did anyone else read Yellowed Leaves in grade school? It was some collection of short stories that my fourth grade teacher assigned us (I think in 2008). I remember her bringing them into the classroom in some old cardboard box about a week after school started. My school was in this tiny, old wooden building and didn’t really get a lot of funding so the teachers either ended up recycling whatever books there were enough copies of that had been stashed away in the cellar or attic decades before, or buying newer books in bulk. Like I said, the school didn’t get a lot of funding so it was mostly the former. The box and books definitely smelt like they had been pulled from either of those places. The books were so old, they reminded me of the first Time Machine movie where the main character finds the library and all the books crumbled to dust when he touched them. I thought that would happen when I opened my copy. I distinctly remember a little girl who sat a few desks to my right screaming after being handed her copy; she had grabbed right onto a crusty patch of mold and spent at least half an hour in the bathroom likely washing her hands while the rest of the class started reading.

My teacher kept up her normal peppy, “are you ready, kids?” attitude despite the outburst. The book didn’t have a summary on the back or any of those review blurbs. I forget if it even had an author byline (since it was an anthology, it could have had multiple contributors, but I don’t think I remember any of them either). As with most assigned reading in our class, our teacher wanted us to take turns reading aloud—she started us off with the title of the first story and its first paragraph. I think it was called “A Stroll Down Old Cemetery Road.” I don’t remember much after that, other than my teacher’s expression slowly changing to one of concern as we took turns reading—I can’t be sure, though.

Did anyone else read this book or, probably even less likely, does anyone happen to have a copy of it? Not sure why, but it probably just came back to me now that it’s “back to school” time.

9/27/23 – gracie77 replied to oldkenkenobi: OMG I didn’t think anyone else read that book! We also were assigned that in fourth or fifth grade ELA iirc. Did you ever finish it? I remember there was a huge PTA meeting that happened a few weeks after we’d started it and a bunch of books got banned from the school library and classrooms. That one also just vanished and we started reading Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe instead. Idk if I remember any of the stories in it or the plots, just that there were a few words that repeated a few times in each one.

I’m also really curious now! If anyone does remember more, help us out! And if someone does have a copy they’d be willing to scan, that’d be great!

9/28/23 – oldkenkenobi replied to gracie77: Hi! Wow, I forgot I’d posted that; I honestly figured it could’ve just been a weird dream or Mandela Effect, but there are details that are just too clear for it to have been one. I do remember a few kids complaining that the book started to scare them, even my classmates who were really into the Goosebumps series but nobody’s parents ever intervened. I can’t even remember if we ever finished the book in our class. Any idea if you’d be able to get the minutes from that PTA meeting? It might have some indication of where those banned books went.

9/28/23 – gracie77 replied to oldkenkenobi: It was a big fiasco! I remember one kid’s mom even stormed into the classroom a minute after class started and just laid into my teacher about the book being “unholy” and “devil worship.” She even took the teacher’s copy and ripped out some of the pages. It was bad. Security had to be called to get the lady out and escorted off-campus. My parents were kinda so-so about it, thankfully, but I think they handed in my copy along with the others. I called them the other day about it and they can barely remember the whole thing; we got it pretty bad during the Recession and they had bigger fish to fry than “scary books.”

Unfortunately my school burned down in 2012 and this was before they’d started digitizing everything, putting it into the cloud, and all that. I tried googling it a few times but nothing that matched what we’d read came up.

9/29/23 – chippiechamp replied to oldkenkenobi: Hello, I think I remember the book you (and gracie) are talking about. Even now, I find it very odd our teacher used it for class in the first place, considering since my older brother hadn’t read it when he was in Year 4. Just to clarify, I live in the UK and it was very rare for English Literature curricula to deviate from the classics. We went to a fairly upper-middle class primary school that prided itself on preparing students for university and such an early age. My teacher was this older chap who loved to tell M.R. James’s ghost stories around Christmastime before we let out for the holidays. He never assigned those stories, however, so it came as a surprise when he showed us that book. I remember walking into class on the first day of school, sweating under my uniform since it was so hot outside, and seeing a copy of it on each of the desks. They were old, worn paperbacks with black lettering set against this yellow that turned my stomach looking at it. I remember my copy in particular had this great big crease running from the top left to bottom right. We began by reading the first story aloud, each student taking a turn coming to the front of the class and reading a paragraph. I remember “A Stroll Down Old Cemetery Road”, as well as one story that took place somewhere around a bog and the narrator was describing all the dead things in the muck, the stink in the air, and vultures on the naked tree branches.

9/30/23 – oldkenkenobi replied to chippiechamp: Glad we’ve found someone else! I’ve considered trying to track down my classmates on Facebook but my family never kept any of my yearbooks, so this will have to do, but I think we might finally be onto something.

I think I remember that story with the bog too. That girl in my class who got the moldy copy started crying when the narrator mentioned the skeleton of some little animal floating to the surface, I think a rabbit or a cat. We had to pause from reading aloud so the teacher could calm her down, but I remember reading ahead by myself. There was something else in that story that creeped me out a lot—it described something that the narrator thought was a tree across the bog with a thick coat of yellow leaves. What I thought was really spooky was when the narrator saw it move, then he realized it was a tall person dressed in yellow.

That part really got under my skin because my family’s trailer was near a swamp and my room faced it. I remember keeping my blinds closed until all the leaves fell off the trees that fall. It was pretty coincidental since we got to that story around the first week of October when all the leaves changed.

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Thanks for reading this week’s post! What are your favorite creepypastas? Which ones got under your skin the most? Leave some of your recommendations in the comments!

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1. This term is derived from the word “copypasta” which is essentially a block of text meant to be copy and pasted across different forums, usually for the sake of a gag. Creepypastas serve a similar function, being shared across the internet to tell scary stories.

2.

3. https://darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org/ray-bradbury-in-weird-tales/

4. https://darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org/fritz-leiber-in-weird-tales/

5. I personally believe everything Flannigan has made after Absentia (2011) has been “Hallmark Horror” drivel, but the popularity of his Netflix series (at least among mainstream audiences) speaks for itself.