Creepypasta

Many people have heard of the word creepypasta and don’t necessarily know what that means. Creepypasta involve either supernatural beings or actual legendary, mythical, and folkloristic monsters. Creepypasta are essentially internet horror stories or horror related legends, passed around on forums and other sites to disturb and frighten readers. The name “Creepypasta” is a portmanteau of the words creepy and copypasta; the term was coined on the imageboard 4chan around 2006. The word “copypasta” is an internet slang term for a block of viral text that gets copied and pasted over and over again from website to website.

Creepypastas are sometimes supplemented with pictures, audio and/or video footage related to the story, typically with gory, distorted, or otherwise shocking content. Creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories intended to scare readers. They include gruesome tales of murder, suicide, and otherworldly occurrences. The subject matter of creepypasta varies widely and can include topics such as ghosts, murder, zombies, and haunted television shows and video games. Creepypastas range in length from a single paragraph to lengthy, multi-part series that can span multiple media types.

The exact origins of creepypasta are unknown. Early creepypastas were usually written anonymously and routinely re-posted, making the history of the genre difficult to study. Creepypastas emerged in the early 1990s when the text of chain emails was reposted on Internet forums and Usenet groups. Ted the Caver was arguably the earliest example of creepypasta. The story, posted on Angelfire in 2001, was written in the first person from the perspective of Ted as he and several friends explored an increasingly frightening cave system. Many early creepypastas consisted of rituals, personal anecdotes and urban legends such as Polybius and Bunny Man. Early creepypastas had to be somewhat believable and realistic to be re-posted. Many of the earliest creepypastas were created on 4chan, which focused on the paranormal.

Major dedicated creepypasta websites started to emerge in the late 2000s to early 2010s: Creepypasta.com was created in 2008, while the Creepypasta Wiki and r/NoSleep (a Reddit forum, or subreddit) were both created in 2010. The websites created a permanent archive of creepypasta, which profoundly impacted the genre. Many authors started using creepypasta characters in their own stories, which resulted in the development of continuities encompassing numerous works.

The reason I bring this up is because, while creepypastas are fun to read and host a variety of magic, religion, mythical creatures, they are in no way actually related to witchcraft or actual religions. They are merely enjoyable, and often disturbing, fictional stories that are written for those that enjoy the horror genre.

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 12-year-old girl was stabbed by two of her friends. The two 12-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, lured their friend Payton Leutner into a forest and pinned her down before stabbing her 19 times in the arms, legs, and torso with a five-inch-long blade, in an attempt to become proxies of the fictional character Slender Man.

Weier and Geyser told Leutner they would find help, but they did not get any upon leaving. Leutner crawled to a road where she was found by a cyclist, and recovered after six days in the hospital. Weier and Geyser were apprehended near Interstate 94 at Steinhafel’s furniture store, after walking 4.9 mile. The knife used in the stabbing was in a bag they carried. While Geyser felt no empathy, Weier was described as feeling guilty for stabbing the victim, but felt that the attack was needed to appease Slender Man. Weier and Geyser were found not guilty by mental disease or defect and committed to mental health institutions for sentences of 25 and 40 years, respectively.

After the murder attempt, some creepypasta website administrators made statements reminding readers of the “line between fiction and reality”. Slender Man is a thin, abnormally tall humanoid Noppera-bō with no distinguishable facial features, who wears a trademark gentleman’s black suit. The character originated in a 2009 SomethingAwful Photoshop competition, before later being featured as a main antagonist in the Marble Hornets alternate reality game. According to most stories, he targets children. He abducts his children for reasons unknown, and sometimes burns down the place where he claimed his victim.

Sub-Genres of Creepypasta:

–Lost episodes: Lost episode creepypasta describes supposed television episodes, typically kids’ shows, that were either never aired or removed from syndication due to their violent and grotesque content. These supposedly lost episodes often focus on suicide or imply the viewer will suffer great harm. Notable examples include Squidward’s Suicide, SuicideMouse.avi, Dead Bart, and Max and Ruby 0004.

-Video games: Video game creepypasta focuses on video games containing grotesque or violent content; this content may spill over into the real world and cause the player to harm themselves or others. An example of this is an unknown person who buys a Pokémon Silver game and starts to realize that it is much more than meets the eyes; the player is constantly stalked by the previous unnamed owner who causes weird things to happen, such as most of the captured Pokémon being unknown that spell out mysteriously horrifying words, and the player sometimes being trapped in dark rooms.

-Psychotic Killers: These creepypasta tell of people, usually a teenager, becoming a psychopath or killer, often involving a trademark disfigurement due to the effects of a bad childhood, accident, bullying, experiment gone wrong, or just supernatural menace.