what is a creepypasta?

A CREEPY TALE

Creepypasta are essentially internet horror stories, passed around on forums and other sites to disturb and frighten readers. The name “Creepypasta” comes from the word “copypasta”, an internet slang term for a block of 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.

While creepypasta today varies greatly in length and quality, older ones tend to be very short and follow one of the following set of formulas:

• Anecdotes. The narrator remarks on a scary legend, news story, or event from their own past.
• Rituals. A list of instructions for the reader, claiming that if they go to a certain place at a certain time, and perform specific actions, something remarkable and/or horrifying will happen.
• The “Lost Episode.” The narrator tells the story of a never-before-seen episode or scene from a famous TV show, typically a comedy or children’s cartoon, where the audio and video is heavily distorted and characters begin acting strangely or violently, killing themselves and/or each other. This style of creepypasta has fallen out of favor nowadays, as it is seen as cliché.

Examples of Notable Creepypasta

Down below are some of the most noteworthy creepypastas in our archives (and some outside of our archives). Many of them can be found in the Historical Archive.

• Suicidemouse.avi

  A very early example of Lost Episode creepypasta. The story revolves around a video which depicts a saddened Mickey Mouse walking down a poorly drawn, never-ending street while random piano keys play in the background. After some minutes of Mickey walking, the video starts to become corrupted, with the keyboard being replaced with static, the street starting to become impossible to fully walk in, and the video starting to swirl around while the sound of a horrific female scream starts playing. After that horrific scene, the viewer is treated to a scene of a man saying “Real suffering is not known” seven times followed by a gunshot, implying that he shot himself. Legend has it that the first person to have had the misfortune of watching it has committed suicide for an unknown reason.

  Suicidemouse.avi is often considered one of the forefathers of the Lost Episode creepypastas (along with Squidward’s Suicide, Candle Cove, and Dead Bart) and is mentioned frequently on the web.

• Mereana Mordegard Glesgorv

  This pasta is centered around a video which supposedly made over a hundred people kill themselves and mail their eyeballs to YouTube Headquarters, even though they had died. The video has an image of an unknown man in front of a background, with a red hue. After a while, the video starts making noises that sounds like a high-pitched drill.

• Smile Dog

  A picture of a dog with human teeth and a bloody hand that apparently causes its unfortunate viewers to kill themselves for unknown reasons. The image first originated on a blog post about a somewhat unknown user finding an unfortunate female viewer who killed herself from looking at the picture. The user followed the dog’s advice of ‘spreading the word’ by posting the image virally.

• Slenderman

  This one isn’t really a pasta so much as it is a creepypasta-based character/meme. Originally conceived as a part of a Photoshop contest on the Something Awful Forums around 2009, the Slenderman is depicted as an abnormally tall and thin noppera-bō with a gentleman’s suit who abducts his victims (typically children) for reasons unknown, and sometimes burns down the place where he claimed his victim.

• Zalgo

  This is a trend of images of fictional (and real) characters modified to have black stuff bleeding from their eyes and mouths, usually said to have been done by an eyeless, 7 mouthed, blob-like abomination who ‘waits behind the wall’ and calls himself “Zalgo”. Like Slenderman, this is really more a creepypaste-based meme than a creepypasta.

• Candle Cove

  There creepypasta is told in the form of a forum thread in which members discuss a disturbing children’s show called “Candle Cove” which supposedly aired sometime in the 70’s. At the end of the thread, one of the members reveals something with the implication that the show was not real, but rather some kind of mass hallucination.

• So ur wid yo honi and ur makin out wen the phone ringz. U ansr it n da voice sayz “wut r u doin wit ma daughter?” u tel ur girl n she say “ma dad is ded.” THEN WHO WAS PHONE?
• BEN Drowned

  There is this story of a Majora’s Mask cartridge that has been “haunted” by Ben, the previous owner of the cart, broken up in 4 chapters, each with its own video. The Haunted Majora’s Mask Cartridge Hoax is a retelling of pseudo-paranormal events that occurred between the days of September 7 and September 15, 2010 to Jadusable, a sophomore at an undisclosed college. Upon receiving a second-hand Nintendo 64 from a friend and buying a nondescript Majora’s Mask cartridge from an eclectic old man, the narrator begins to notice seizure-like graphics and strange connections to a boy named Ben, who was said to have drowned as a child in a lake, from within the game.

• Herobrine

  This is about a person (Notch’s dead brother) in Minecraft who is not a character, but a superstition, often sighted as a pupilless human miner who tries to entrap and/or kill players in order to steal their items & destroy their creations.

• Squidward’s Suicide

  One of the most famous “Lost Episodes” ever made, it is story of a lost episode of Spongebob Squarepants, which starts with Squidward Tentacles failing another clarinet recital. After the booing (with even Spongebob booing) & some creepy minutes of Squidward looking at the camera, flashes of dead bodies, and listening to murmurs, he points a shotgun at his face & pulls the trigger, thus killing himself & ending his life.

• Dead Bart

  Another example of a famous lost episode, it involves the death of Bart Simpson after getting sucked out of an airplane window.

• Happy Appy

  A show about an apple who helps kids in need, and seemed suitable for Nick Jr at first, but got darker as the show progressed. The “show” is also the topic of a occasionally updated Wikia blog post created by a man who wants to know more about the show, while being stalked by a horrific creature that he dubbed “Forenzik”. There is also a poorly designed game where Happy must find a golden apple.

• Username: 666

  This is what happens when someone goes to the YouTube user page, puts in the id for user ‘666’ and refreshes a couple times: the backgrounds turn hellish, the videos turn creepy and it’s just horrible. Upon going to a certain video by the user, close, back, pause & shut down are disabled & after the “video” ends, A HAND POPS OUT OF THE MONITOR TO GRAB YOU!

• The Grifter

  An alleged video that was first mentioned somewhere on /x/’s imageboard. Watching it is said to be a soul-rending experience, far more horrible than anything one could imagine. The image on the left (on the page) is said to contain screenshots of some of the scenes in the video. The few that have watched it are said to have been killed in their own homes, with only one thing in common, a strange doll hidden somewhere in their homes

• Polybius

  A supposed arcade game featured in an Internet urban legend. According to the story, the Tempest-style game was released to the public in 1981, and caused its players to go insane, causing them to suffer from intense stress, horrific nightmares, and even suicidal tendencies. A short time after its release, it supposedly disappeared without a trace. Not much evidence for the existence of such a game has ever been discovered. Polybius gets its name from Polybius, the Greek historian who among his other works, was also known for his works in relation to cryptography and for developing the Polybius square.

• Pokémon (Creepy) Black

  “Defending Pokémon were unable to attack Ghost — it would only say they were too scared to move. When the move “Curse” was used in battle, the screen would cut to black. The cry of the defending Pokémon would be heard, but it was distorted, played at a much lower pitch than normal. The battle screen would then reappear, and the defending Pokémon would be gone. If used in a battle against a trainer, when the Poké Balls representing their Pokémon would appear in the corner, they would have one fewer Poké Ball.” It is implied that the selected Pokémon died.

• Pokémon Lost Silver

  this famous story is about an unknown person who buys a Pokémon Silver game and starts to realize that it is much more then 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 Unown that spell out mysteriously horrifying words, and the player sometimes being trapped in dark rooms.

  well, thats it for today and do remeber to keep your feet in the covers!