What Is A Creepypasta? Types, Characteristics And Examples
The Internet has made things a lot easier, for better and worse. In the same way that we can obtain useful information about how to prepare a recipe or watch videos of cute kittens, we can also be shocked by scary stories: creepypastas.
Creepypastas are stories that have become popular in recent years, becoming a highly internalized element in adolescent culture, especially that of geeks, otakus and emos. Let’s see what exactly they are and some examples.
The word “creepypasta” is a portmanteau of “creepy” and “copy-paste,” referring to the fact that they are comics that are shared on the networks with a simple click They are mostly short horror stories, although sometimes books have been made of them, which are shared virally through web pages, emails, messages on instant messaging applications…
They are not always written or in the form of a narrative, since some creepypastas are presented in the form of images, videos or video games that are supposedly cursed. There are also creepypastas about supposed final chapters of series that were never released, or lost chapters of children’s series that, due to how shady they were, were jealously hidden by their creators to avoid controversy.
Where do they come from?
There are hundreds of creepypastas, so the origins of each of them are very varied. What they do have in common is the origin of the genre. Although the act of telling horror stories is something that is part of human nature, in the form of mythology or in the form of stories to instruct children, The creepypasta genre began to take shape in the late 90s and was during the 2000s in which the name was given. The term was coined on the popular website 4chan around 2006.
The first creepypastas were written anonymously, and they were texts that were either routinely published on different web pages or shared by email. Many of the first creepypastas consisted of rituals, personal anecdotes and legends around video games, television series or cursed images. The first creepypastas had to have credibility and realism as essential elements, although, of course, incorporating something supernatural or gloomy.
After the term appeared on 4chan, during the late 2000s and in the following decade the genre took a more defined form, gaining a lot of popularity and even influencing beyond the Internet. In 2008, Creepypasta.com was created, the great reference website of the genre, where not only the most famous creepypastas were shared, but also Users could share their own anecdotes, serving as a kind of mega-forum of the creepy Two years later, Creepypasta Wiki, the Wikipedia of the genre, and r/NoSleep, the reference Reddit forum, would take shape.
Types of creepypasta
Although there is no systematic classification of creepypastas, comics can be grouped into different types, according to the main element or context that causes fear.
The narrator tells a scary legend, a story about a strange event It could be something that happened to the narrator himself or something that happened to a friend of a friend of a friend, following the formula of many creepypastas.
2. Diaries
The story is told as if they were the pages of a personal diary, following a chronological order or not. This adds more realism and makes the reader put themselves in the shoes of someone who has experienced the supposed events.
3. Rituals
The rituals They usually come in the form of instructions, either by email or in an image shared on networks such as Facebook and Twitter They usually indicate that specific actions must be taken to avoid a mysterious evil and, as a general rule, they indicate something like “share it with 10 acquaintances or the boogeyman will appear tonight.”
4. Lost episodes
Lost episodes are quite recurrent and, in fact, almost no series is saved from having some supposed episode that never saw the light of day. These are episodes that, because of how shady they were, the creators decided not to broadcast them, especially if the series is for children.
The curious thing about this type of creepypasta is that they are, in reality, the most credible There are many series to which lost episodes were attributed that were creepypastas that, in reality, existed and, with the passage of time, came to light.
We have some examples of this in series such as: The Rugrats, Dexter’s Laboratory, Pokémon and other series that have yet to be confirmed such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons, Catdog…
5. Hidden videos
Similar to the previous case, only that the hidden videos refer to videos posted on platforms like YouTube or Dailymotion that were censored because they were gory or because they did something very disturbing
6. Cursed games
Stories based on some famous video game that it is said that someone modified so that they were really disturbing, which would be very far from being introduced in an official game of the same saga.
It’s surprising how many creepypastas about Pokémon games have been modified to be cursed: Pokémon Lost Silver, Pokémon Beta Zombie, and the story of the 151 cursed Pokémon cartridges are examples.
There are also other popular video games, such as Sonic with Sonic.exe or Tails Doll.
Some examples
Next we are going to see the summary of six famous creepypastas.
1. Slenderman, the most famous creepypasta
Anyone who is involved in the world of creepypasta cannot consider themselves an expert on the subject without knowing THE creepypasta, which is considered one of the initiators of the genre: Slenderman, the thin man. This story originally appeared on the Something Awful forums.
Slenderman is an abnormally tall and thin man, with a ghostly appearance, without a nose, mouth, or eyes It has gloomy elongated arms that are used to kidnap children, although it is also used to kill adults and derange their victims.
Creepypasta evolved until it reached the point where the character had tentacles and the ability to become invisible, although it could be seen if a recording device was focused on it, such as cameras or mobile phones. The popularity of this comic is such that it has left the world of Internet forums to come to life in video games and on the big screen starring in a low-budget Sony film.
But, unfortunately, it not only became something of science fiction. In 2014, two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls, believers in Slenderman, wanting to be his acolytes, stabbed a classmate up to 19 times. Although the girl was able to save herself and the perpetrators of the crime were sentenced to 65 years in prison, the story makes you think about the influence of comics taken from fear forums.
2. Squidward’s suicide
In 2010, creepypasta became popular about the existence of a SpongeBob episode in which It was claimed that Squidward, Bob’s grumpy sidekick on the Krusty Krab, was committing suicide The supposedly lost episode also had a sinister atmosphere. A background of disturbing and maddening noises accompanied the story, along with images of dead children.
The popularity of creepypasta was such that many parents became concerned, thinking that the series of the cheerful yellow square sponge hid something much more sinister. The writer of the series, Casey Alexander, had to come out and deny this creepypasta to prevent the cartoon from being boycotted by hundreds of parents afraid of what could happen.
The curious thing is that the creators of the series knew how to take advantage of this creepypasta as a mockery The original creepypasta was accompanied by the image of Squidward looking possessed, with really sinister eyes. In one of the episodes of the series, belonging to season 12, Squidward opens a series of doors consecutively, which lead him to alternative versions of himself, one of them being something similar to the creepypasta image.
3. Polybius
Every video game player should know the dark history of the Polybius arcade. It is a video game released in 1981 in arcades, in which the player had to direct a kind of ship through a world full of colors and shapes. These psychedelic colors induced players to have nightmares, feel stress, lose mental stability, and even commit suicide.
The story is nourished by conspiracy elements, ensuring that it was the CIA or the FBI who created this arcade to experiment on the population Shortly after leaving, the game would be completely eliminated.
Polybius has made cameos in real life. He appears in an episode of The Simpsons, in which Bart is in an arcade. In addition, fans have designed their own version of the game, ensuring that it has been made in the image and likeness of the original. There is even a Polybius for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR.
4. The melody of Lavender Town
Every self-respecting Pokémon fan knows the history of Lavender Town’s music. The story goes that in the original versions of the first two games in the series, Green and Red, released in Japan in 1996, the background music of Lavender Town seemed to have notes that affected the minds of the youngest players.
Lavender Town is, within the Kanto region, a town with a tower where hundreds of Pokémon are buried. The music of the town is sinister, it accompanies the solemnity of the place but, apparently, according to this comic, in the original version something went wrong in the music programming that led to the suicide of hundreds of children.
The melody had notes at frequencies that only the little ones could hear, affecting them, making them have nightmares, nosebleeds, headaches, irritability and, a classic, suicidal tendencies. The symptoms caused by the song’s high-pitched binaural beats were dubbed “Lavender Village Syndrome.”
The original story emerged on 4chan and went viral from there. There is really no evidence that this actually happened. In fact, the music from the beta of the first generation of Pokémon can be heard on YouTube and, although it honestly hurts the ears, it is difficult to think that it could induce suicide. Also, taking into account that it supposedly happened in the very first Pokémon games It is difficult to think that the saga would have acquired so much popularity over time having such a bad start
What is true and considered a lost episode is the English dubbing of the “Dennō Senshi Porygon” chapter of the Pokémon anime series. In 1997, the broadcast of this episode on Japanese television meant the admission of nearly 700 children due to epileptic seizures The reason for this was that there were rapid red-blue flashes in the chapter.
The incident was so serious that the series was canceled for four months, prohibiting the appearance of Porygon, the Pokémon protagonist of the episode. It should be said that, ironically, the culprit of the epileptic seizures was actually the franchise’s mascot, Pikachu.
5. The Ayuwoki
Ayuwoki is surely the most famous recent creepypasta, emerging in 2019 and having its origin in Spanish-speaking countries. This is a video in which an automaton with the face of Michael Jackson appears, uploaded to YouTube in 2009 The peculiarity of the video is that this mechanical Michael Jackson has a very distorted mask, and taking into account that the face of the late singer was not exactly one that inspired confidence, the animatronic version of him much less so.
Internet users referred to it, more with a mocking air than one of fear, as the Ayuwoki, being a properly Spanishized transcription of the phrase ‘Annie are you okay?’, lyrics from the song “Smooth Criminal.” The image became a meme, even being the subject of a video by the famous Venezuelan YouTuber Drossrotzank.
6. The Russian sleep experiment
Another of the most famous creepypastas is the Russian dream experiment. It states that during the 1940s the Soviet authorities kept five people locked up and awake for two weeks They prevented them from sleeping by introducing a stimulant in the form of gas into the room, but without depriving them of entertainment or food. They just wouldn’t let them sleep.
At the beginning of the experiment everything was fine, but then they began to behave wildly, asking that the gas not be stopped and ripping out their guts.
