A History of CREEPYPASTA
scaring your friends for fun and profit probably just fun
Let’s think back...
To the scary stories that you grew up with -- not ones that you found in books, TV, or movies you probably weren’t supposed to watch at the time, but the ones that you heard, or were told to you by friends, parents, family.
How many of you grew up in towns that had a haunted house or a patch of woods, or places you were told to avoid? How many of you knew someone who knew someone who saw something weird or unexplained?
Like so many of us, I was a weird kid with no social skills.
So you can bet I clutched at every small scrap of social cachet I had. Such as growing up in a house where a young girl had been MURDERED*
[Pictured: me at 13? 14? in my murder house]
* she was actually killed in the woods by my middle school, but shhh
The roots of all storytelling are in oral tradition.
Me talking about murder
Literally anyone
My perpetually concerned teachers
How are stories told and received?
TOP-DOWN/VERTICAL TRANSMISSION
Singular author/authority -- “canon” -- audience generally will not alter or embellish
HORIZONTAL TRANSMISSION
No difference between author and audience, no canon, PURE ANARCHY, audience can alter or embellish at will (as long as it follows the rule of cool)
Folklore is horizontally transmitted, although it can sometimes reach a sort of critical mass and be written down into a canon -- think of Disney, the Grimm Brothers, or the Bible. Still, while those versions are A canon, they are rarely THE canon -- other interpretations exist and sometimes flourish.
Ok but why? What do these stories do?
From The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvad:
Legends can survive in our culture if they contain three essential elements:
Ok but why? What do these stories do?
From The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvad:
Legends can survive in our culture if they contain three essential elements:
Ok but why? What do these stories do?
From The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvad:
Legends can survive in our culture if they contain three essential elements:
Ok but why? What do these stories do?
From The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings by Jan Harold Brunvad:
Legends can survive in our culture if they contain three essential elements:
What are these things and how do they apply to horror?
From The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, by Jan Harold Brunvad.
“For legends in general, a major function has been the attempt to explain unusual or supernatural happenings in the natural world. To some degree this remains true for urban legends, but their more common role nowadays seems to be to show that the prosaic contemporary scene is capable of producing shocking or amazing occurrences.”
Questions? Comments?
Don’t forget to drink some water.
Urban Legends And Technology
Meet FAXLORE, or folklore spread by fax machine.
💩
Creepypasta is digital folklore – urban legends that have moved online
Creepypasta are short(ish) horror stories posted in chats, forums, chain emails, subreddits, Twitter, etc.
Black Eyed Children, ~1996
"C'mon, mister," the spokesman said again, smooth as silk. Car salesmen could learn something from this kid. "Now, we just want to go to our house. And we're just two little boys."
That really scared me.
Ted the Caver, ~2001
Smile.jpg
“Mary E. was the sysop for a small Chicago-based Bulletin Board System in 1992 when she first encountered smile.jpg and her life changed forever… Mary was one of an estimated 400 people who saw the image when it was posted as a hyperlink on the BBS, though she is the only one who has spoken openly about the experience. The rest have remained anonymous, or are perhaps dead.”
Slender Man, ~2009
One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as "The Slender Man". Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.
— 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.
Candle Cove, 2015
Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
That wasn’t the villain, the puppet with the mustache. That was the villain’s sidekick, Horace Horrible. He had a monocle too, but it was on top of the mustache. I used to think that meant he had only one eye.
But yeah, the villain was another marionette. The Skin-Taker. I can’t believe what they let us watch back then.
Questions? Comments? Don’t forget to hydrate.
Violation: How the familiar becomes a locus of fear
INFECTION
In which the normal/safe/familiar is invaded by a source of fear.
A hex, a masked killer, a sewer monster, aliens.
CORRUPTION
In which the normal/safe/familiar itself houses the source of fear.
A cursed object, sour land, someone with a secret violent streak.
Writing exercise: something is wrong here
What YOU can learn from creepypasta
[Or, this is cool and all, but what does your weird niche interest have to do with me, my writing, and mainstream publishing?]
What YOU can learn from creepypasta
[Or, this is cool and all, but what does your weird niche interest have to do with me, my writing, and mainstream publishing?]
Structuring your creepypasta
Introduction: Who is telling the story, and what is the established “normal”?
Development: What are the symptoms of the corruption or infection?
Twist: What is the violation that occurs? (Hint: is it the source of the symptoms? How does this re-contextualize the events?
Conclusion/consequence (optional): What do we (and the storyteller) do with this information? Is the violation settled or unsettled?