Creepypasta

Creepypastas are horror-related legends or images that have been copy-and-pasted around the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated ghost or alien stories intended to scare readers. They include gruesome tales of murder, suicide, and otherworldly occurrences. According to Time magazine, the genre had its peak audience in 2010 when it was covered by The New York Times.

In the mainstream media, creepypastas relating to the fictitious Slender Man character came to public attention after the 2014 "Slender Man stabbing", in which a twelve-year-old girl from Waukesha, WI was stabbed by two of her friends; the perpetrators claimed they "wanted to prove the [Slender Man] skeptics" wrong. After the murder attempt, some creepypasta website administrators made statements reminding readers of the "line between fiction and reality".

Other notable creepypasta characters and stories include Jeff the Killer, Ted the Caver, and Psychosis. In October 2014, a book called Creepypasta: Spökhistorier från Internet (Creepypasta: Ghost Stories from the Internet) was published in Sweden. In May 2015, Machinima Inc. announced plans for a live action web series curated by Clive Barker, titled Clive Barker's Creepy Pasta.

The term originates from "copypasta", a word used on 4chan in 2006 to describe viral copy-and-pasted text.

Examples of creepypastas

Slender Man

Main article: Slender Man

Slender Man is a thin, tall man with a blank face, wearing a black suit, who is said to stalk and traumatise people. The character originated in a 2009 SomethingAwful Photoshop competition, and creepypastas were written shortly afterwards.

Jeff the Killer

Jeff the Killer is a story accompanied by an image of the character. The story says that a teenager named Jeff was severely injured in an incident of bullying that caused his face to become burned. Following the incident, Jeff went insane and cut a smile into his cheeks and burned off his eyelids. He is now a serial killer who sneaks into houses at night and whispers "go to sleep" before murdering his victims. In 2013, posters at the imageboard website 4chan stated that the Jeff the Killer image was an extensively edited picture of a girl who committed suicide in the fall of 2008.

Ted the Caver

Ted the Caver began as an Angelfire website in early 2001 that documented the adventures of a man and his friends as they explored a local cave. The story is in the format of a series of blog posts. As the explorers move further into the cave, strange hieroglyphs and winds are encountered. In a final blog post, Ted writes that he and his companions would be bringing a gun into the cave after experiencing a series of nightmares and hallucinations. The blog has not been updated since the final post. In 2005, the author of Ted the Caver revealed that it was an original work of fiction partially inspired by true events.

In 2013, an independent film adaptation of the story was released, called Living Dark: the Story of Ted the Caver.

Penpal

Main article: Penpal (novel)

Penpal is a six-part creepypasta novel by Dathan Auerbach. The original stories were published on reddit, and were collected as a self-published paperback in 2012. The story's protagonist is targeted by a stalker after releasing a balloon carrying a letter with his address on it, as part of a school penpal project.

_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9

Main article: _9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9

"_9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9" is the screen name of an anonymous writer of science fiction horror short fiction on the social news website Reddit. The work attracted media attention following its publication beginning in April 2016.

Lost episode creepypastas

Candle Cove

Candle Cove is a story by Kris Straub written in the format of an online forum thread where people reminisce about a half-remembered children's television series from the 1970s. After sharing memories of the creepy dolls from the series, and discussing nightmares from watching the show, one poster asks their mother about the series and is told that they just used to tune the TV to static and "watch dead air for 30 minutes". Syfy announced a television drama based on the story in 2015, adapted by Max Landis.

Squidward's Suicide

Squidward's Suicide is a video posted to YouTube that depicts the SpongeBob Squarepants character Squidward Tentacles committing suicide. The episode allegedly depicts scenes of "violence and gore", as well as quick flashes of dead children and other disturbing imagery. A story that provides background for the video states that the episode was created in 2005 and was viewed by a select test screening at Nickelodeon. Show writer Casey Alexander debunked the legend, saying that it was "100% hoax".

Video game creepypastas

Ben Drowned

This story tells of a college student who bought a used copy of Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask from an elderly man at a yard sale, only to find out that the cartridge is haunted by the ghost of the man's grandson, named Ben, who drowned several years earlier. The presence of the ghost is described as causing various creepy glitches in the game.

Polybius

Main article: Polybius (video game)

This urban legend, often regarded as a creepypasta due to its subsequent popularization online, concerns an alleged 1981 arcade game. The game is said to be similar to Atari Tempest, except that it contains seizure-inducing flashes and subliminal messages. Different versions of the story claim that the game was part of MK Ultra, simply a glitchy early version of Tempest that was later renamed "Polybius," or various other theories.

Analysis

Shira Chess, an assistant professor of mass media arts at the University of Georgia, has compared the phenomenon of creepypasta to folklore. However she notes that instead of being passed down orally over a timespan of generations, creepypasta is created online within hours or days.

See also

• List of Internet phenomena
• Urban legend