Why Does Creepypasta Suck

[@Lauren-pg2ze]

I still remember when I was like 9 and I found one of those creepy horror channel videos of the Russian experiment one and for about 6 months I genuinely thought 3 skinless Russian maniacs were running free in Eurasia. I also thought they were gonna come in through my window at night and eat me. I mean I live in the US so I doubt they could swim across the Atlantic for the sole reason of eating MY skin specifically but I mean I don't know their priorities.

[@maddiedoes3571]

Dude this comment is so accurate to those weird, niche fears

[@beepboop7345]

Lmao saaaaame. The picure honestly still gets to me

[@alisaurus4224]

That’s silly. Why would they swim the whole Atlantic when they could just swim the Bering Strait and get there through Canada?

[@Lauren-pg2ze]

@@alisaurus4224 WHY MUST YOU THINK SO LOGICALLY

[@harmonlanager2670]

I think skinless dudes would die the moment they contact salt water so you’re good

[@espeh75]

As she turned off the camera she heard a soft rustling. She turned around. Dear God, the broccoli was moving...

[@JacobHillSBD]

Un chat domestique Brb writing Broccoli man Creepypasta.

[@oldthinkertube]

...and she gave it an unsurprised smile & wink.

[@mdr48371]

The Mr. Toad's Wild Ride mug appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the video.

[@espeh75]

I loathe myself.

[@PaperbackWizard]

The mug appears a couple of minutes in, and then it moves around every now and then. And one of her dolls falls over near the end.

[@theclimbto1]

That Mansion that Jeff and Slender take you to if you stab your friends is called Prison.

[@moti7549]

Nice one

[@Anna-ve8yj]

LMFAOOO

[@Stucktoglueonasnu]

All aboard hell everyone. I laughed way too hard at this

[@kaygon.5202]

Its sad this actually happened

[@madelinelessard1857]

Okay, I really hope that no one likes this comment so the number can stay at 666 because it works so well for this comment chain

[@ekin4260]

My favourite creepypasta is a really short one where a hunter stays in a cabin he comes across in the forest. There are lots of paintings of creepy angry faces, and he finds out in the morning when he wakes up that those weren't paintings, but windows. It was a pretty nice twist for a story like three paragraphs long.

[@El1society]

omfg that gave me chills

[@camilohiche4475]

It's like that story of someone arrives at a hotel wants a room and is told "no that room is off limits, it's a cursed room", then he gets another room, goes to it and passes by the cursed room, feels kinda spooked by it. Then at another occasion when he passes next to the cursed room again he can't resist the urge and peeks through the keyhole and sees nothing but red. He feels creeped out and confused. The next morning he asks at the desk "so what's about this cursed room?" and he's told the story about some lady that dies there and whatnot. The punchline is that, notably, the lady's eyes were exceptionally red in color.

[@spiritcat101]

I don't think that's a creepypasta

[@chancehurt5127]

​@spiritcat7202 there's a version of it on the creepypasta website but I don't think it originated as a creepypasta

[@MichaelH3948]

​@@camilohiche4475 Isn't that basically just The Shining?

[@jordanforbes149]

The version of the Russian sleep experiment that I read was actually way shorter and didn’t have the monologue or the attempts to take them down or anything. It ended with the army breaking into the rooms after people started freaking out and one of the subjects just saying “please turn the gas back on” It had a really creepy image attached to it too. I guess that just proves Jenny’s point.

[@moredetonation3755]

The image is 90% of the horror of that creepypasta.

[@twistedtimbers]

dude i saw the image on pinterest at like, 10 and that fucked me up lmao. i read it in 8th grade and the story itself is pretty lackluster but if you show me that picture i wont be able to sleep

[@MirasaurusRex]

It's years and years later, actually reading the story now probably wouldn't phase me, but that picture still gets an "eurgh" out of me when I see it.

[@SofaPop.]

The version I read, ended in a much calmer way. They opened the door to one man left and asked, what he’s doing. Then he says “just keep cutting” and he continues peeling skin off his hands

[@SheilaDeBonis]

I read a version that ended differently too. It started differently too as it gave some exposition that the experiment was set at a Christian or Jewish university. The participants were religious and I think they gladly decided to leave the experiment when the army came in. One of them says in an interview, "I have seen God, and he is cruel" or "I'm more powerful than God" or "I don't believe in him anymore." It was something really deep, but I can't remember it perfectly anymore.

[@PaigeHankins28]

Every time I hear about the Candle Cove pasta I like to imagine that it was from an interdimensional being who really, REALLY wanted to make a children's program but couldn't broadcast on regular cable due to the whole space-between-spaces thing so they had to resort to sublimating it through TV static. The traumatic episode was just cultural differences; it was a hit with children in its home dimension.

[@swimmyswim417]

Paige Hankins Headcanon accepted.

[@Savyon0]

"What do you mean human children don't give each other pieces of their flesh to show friendship? How do they bind their souls to their covens, then?"

[@lucysteigerwald5108]

I love that idea.

[@ThomasJefferson-xc8wg]

AHAHA

[@Mecharnie_Dobbs]

The creepiness should be from the puppets being badly made. Like one has a mouth that opens diagonally. If people put a skeleton in a children's show, they'd make him the nicest most harmless one. Maybe there'd be a badly painted clown. There would be a caretaker called Caretaker Skin but the voice actors say it too fast like: "c'Take-a-skin" and his puppet-joints look like bone-joints.

[@ReverseSkeleton]

I'd like to add that Creepypasta titles are out of control. Instead of something brief that generates intrigue or dead, it's like "I killed God on Sunday and Now The Sky Bleeds And Everyone Is Upset"

[@Mysterytour7]

Oh god this reminds me of a specific pasta..

[@comicconcarne]

Light novel type beats

[@timothymclean]

I Used to Think Light Novels Had Stupidly Long and Revelatory Titles (but then I started reading creepypasta)

[@neonoir__]

Or "Don't go into the [town name] sewer system at 5:34 am on a Sunday"

[@Lucifersfursona]

No please I love the garbage fire titles the length of a panic! at the disco discography They’re some good fucking food

[@johnathanwalker8395]

My least favorite thing about these creepy pasta/horror stories aside from them being highly repetitive is that half start off with a guy self bragging about how awesome he is and how much he sucks at the same time. I'm a big guy, not muscular, not fat. I can handle a fight and am good at it, but I also am bad at it. Nothing scares me, but this story is about how everything scared me.

[@porgeporgeporge]

ahh totally! "I'm really smart but I do bad at school and always say and do dumb things. I'm kind of a loner and I have no friends, but also my two best friends joined me on my scary adventure"

[@goatdeer8403]

self insert anime protagonists. My favorite is when they're so clearly trying to make it relatable to redditors on nosleep and it's like "I'm a normal person who isn't superstitious and is completely logical, but this shook me to my (average) core"

[@spencersine2723]

Jakecore

[@spookysteve4326]

Wait, y’all read Creepy Pastas? I just listened to them on KZbin with a creepy photo slowly zooming in the whole time

[@DeadCanuck]

TheVolgun?

[@Shythalia]

@@DeadCanuck TheVolgun does SCP, not creepy pasta. Although, SCP does have a bit of a creepy pasta feel to them. Since you asked that question, I am assuming you have never heard of the great MrCreepyPasta, CreepsMcPasta, & CreepyPastaJr. (There are more but I don't really know them all.) That's fine. I don't judge.

[@Shythalia]

Yeah, I'm too fucking lazy to read shit, too. haha

[@MrNobody47710]

Back in my day, we had no KZbin creepypasta channels, or reliable fast Internet access for streaming videos, you young whippersnapper. We had to read our own creepypasta, and we were *grateful* .

[@DeadCanuck]

MrNobody What’s “reading?”

[@duder8562]

Any creepypasta with the words "I am God" in it is automatically terrible.

[@crystalsakura6815]

Like Sonic.EXE?yeah I can agree

[@WingItMan217]

Jay Gagne agreed

[@greatgallade]

Not true. If it's AI then it's kind of creepy cause self aware AI

[@saintmastema17]

self aware ai and im pretty sure i am god is said during the holder series at some point. which the holder series is great.

[@Baalcebub]

What if it's about a guy who calls an Uber? He gets in a car and immediately looses himself in his cell phone (because social commentary about "phones are bad"), until he eventually looks up because there was an unexpected change in the sound around them, and realizes they're now driving through the semi-abandoned industrial district. He asks the driver, "hey dude, where are we, why did you took this route?". And the driver looks back at him and smiles and says: "Because as of right now, I am God".

[@fionatastic0.070]

But let’s all admit that the best creepypasta of all time is man door hand hook car door.

[@WingItMan217]

Clearly

[@snaiians]

i agree sweaty

[@TyDaWaVe]

I completely agree

[@j24030]

I see your man door hand hook car door and raise you, Who was phone

[@juliacassiano4499]

Thats such a specific reference, I didn't expect to find such here

[@ethanritterbusch8910]

When I was in boy scouts someone told the Russian Sleep Experiment as a campfire story, and they actually made it really work. I think the fact they couldn’t quite remember it perfectly meant they accidentally edited out all the parts that didnt work. specifically i remember the final monologue being reduced to one tony sentence fragment, even then that still almost broke the immersion, but i found it just close enough to believable as a kid that i count it as a good one.

[@bladdyboi2962]

Same! Except it was when I first joined boy scouts and thought it was real 😂

[@thefoxandthehound81]

what’s the version they shared?

[@michaelmoran9020]

Someone in my college tried to submit the Russian sleep experiment as an original piece of creative writing and it was the funniest shit I'd ever seen when it was selected at random to be sent to other students to read and half the class sent an email to the teacher explaining it was plagarism.

[@hotelmario510]

In sixth form a guy once tried to pass off "The Egg" by Andy Weir as his own work for our creative writing project and we had to gently let the teacher down because up to that point she was raving over how good it was

[@K-bb2bc]

According to one of my professors, one of his students once tried to submit an entire episode of Rick and Morty as his own original story. Like, the whole episode written out in script format. I don’t know if that was true but I want to believe.

[@crackedemerald4930]

@@K-bb2bc this is a funnypasta

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

@@hotelmario510 I remember about the The Egg creepypasta. The story is more about the philosophy of Hinduism, afterlife, and rebirth of humanity. This creepypasta is less creepy than what I expected for. I find the ending sad for some reason because the protagonist accepted being reborn as a Chinese girl (if my memory reserved correctly).

[@Lucifersfursona]

@@K-bb2bc funniest shit I’ve ever seen (also I believe a film student would do this. Probably either a TVR major or one of those guys whose work sounds good on paper, like he’s gonna make “indie docuseries” but what he outputs is a vision of himself through the same glasses John Green looks at his protags through- sources: was in film school for a sec)

[@michaelceraweed]

i wanna see someone who's talented writer take bad creepypastas and rewrite them to try and make them good. that might be really interesting.

[@ArthurAveiro]

The show Channel Zero was pretty good. They didn't specifically take bad creepypastas and made them good, but still. Every season they adapted a different creepypasta. They did "Candle Cove", "No-End House", "Search and Rescue Woods" and "I Found a Hidden Door in My Cellar".

[@khatunamezvrishvili6211]

I wanna do that but I'm not a good writer. And I've never written horror

[@elomoose1169]

Next Steven King novel

[@Clawdragoons]

I'm not really a fan of horror. I've literally never read a creepypasta before. But I like to think I'm a passable writer so I'll take a shot at the hospital story, for you. --- My Grandmother was a nurse, and she used to tell me all sorts of stories of people who came through the ER. They were varied, but always entertaining. You can't get to your 80s without having some good stories, I guess. Quick example, she had one patient who was delirious, and at one point she walked in on him straddling cot's side bars; he looked at her and said "I've either got to break this bronco or shoot him". Pretty amusing. One story that stuck with me though, was a story of a weird old lady that came in for a bout of pleurisy - inflammation of the lung lining, causes trouble breathing - though she thought she was having a heart attack. She was wrinkly as a prune everywhere, except her face - she wore way too much foundation, to where her face seemed practically smooth - even the lines around the lips that are visible on a much younger person were hard to make out through all the makeup. She was nice enough, gave everyone a cute nickname. My Grandmother was "Honeydrop" - presumably after her blond hair bun? She had a photo of herself at the time and it seemed fitting. It turned out to be a result of an infection, and they were going to send her home with some antibiotics after monitoring her for the night, but in the morning she was looking even worse. Worried about a secondary infection, they decided to keep her for a bit longer. She got really sick, high fever, sweating, basically bedridden and my Grandma got to have all the fun of changing her bedpan and giving her a sponge baths. That was weird though, because while giving the sponge bath, the little old lady gripped my Grandma's hand when she brought the sponge near her face. She had a vice-like grip for her age too. She was very intense about not having her face washed, presumably not wanting her makeup ruined, though she wouldn't explain. They argued a bit, and in the end my Grandma just gave up. The old lady was wary for a bit, but warmed back up to my Grandmother soon enough. She was there for around a week, and there was a bit of gossip around the nurses about the lady. Her sheets were changed several times, naturally, but her pillow never seem to have makeup smudges at all. She was also pretty touchy, and she'd pat each of the nurses on the cheek as thanks for any tasks they took care of her, though she'd cringe away if you tried to do the same. Eventually she was discharged, and if that was the end the story would have been pretty boring - but a few days later the janitors made a fuss. They found a bunch of pillow casings, covered in makeup and dried blood, stashed around the room she'd been in. There were empty, label-less bottles of makeup wrapped up in them, some of them broken (one of the janitors had sliced his hand up pretty well on the broken glass unwrapping them). For about a month afterwards, They kept finding more stashes of pillow casings and makeup bottled, in stranger and stranger places. Stuffed into a hole in a couch, fit into a light fixture, crammed into a bathroom ceiling vent - some places a tiny old lady would have trouble reaching even if she wasn't bedridden with an infection. The bloodstains ranged from a few small drops to enough that it looked like they had been used to staunch a sizeable wound. The last pillowcase they found was crumpled up in the break room. There wasn't any blood on that one, but it was still wrapped around a makeup bottle with the label peeled off - still full of makeup, unlike the others - and a note that said "For Honeydrop. Thanks for understanding". --- Welp, I did my best, but like I said I've never read or written anything vaguely horror-ish, so it's probably boring and bad. Still, fun to try something new, at least.

[@khatunamezvrishvili6211]

@@Clawdragoons I'm not very good at horror either so take this with a grain of salt: the ending is a bit anticlimactic unless I'm not getting something and you made a small grammatical error at the sponge bath part. Other than that I like it.

[@angeloangeles5284]

Isn't "Abandoned by Disney" the Jake Paul biography

[@soulcatch]

Damnnnnnnnnnnn

[@creepypastatrash673]

Ohhhhh burnnnn

[@parker2516]

OH FUCKKKKK

[@alexthibodeau979]

Savage, yo.

[@Th3Halfdrag0n]

... Well done, sir... Well done! 😂

[@Lumosnight]

My favorite one is about the little girl hearing her mother call her name in the middle of the night, when she goes out of her bedroom she noticed the voice is from the basement. Then her actual mum comes out of her bedroom and tells her daughter, ‘Don’t go there, I heard it too.’ Short, creepy and effective.

[@muzansfedora]

Sarahhhhh SARAAAHHHHH

[@tortis6342]

"Her actual mom"

[@sadhatter7015]

plot twist, she has lesbian parents

[@curlyemmm1232]

@@tortis6342 I think it would be scarier if it weren’t said that it was her real mom because like what do you do then? Which is real?

[@oceanusprocellarum6853]

@@curlyemmm1232 Holy shit that is a really good point

[@sanghelian]

"Mario jumped out of the screen and killed my parents"

[@fungusonus]

Niko Virta he said the fuck word

[@watsonwrote]

H Y P E R R E A L I S T I C B L O O D

[@helix9445]

HE DID A GOUNDPOUND ON THEM

[@IndyFilmProductions]

mario has logged in

[@defsouul3127]

Pizza Sauce and he said “so long gay Bowser”

[@hunterc8943]

She’s one of those people that talks so casually you can’t even tell if she’s trying to be funny and that’s what makes it funny

[@jerrel.writes]

it's real charming

[@query2206]

This is the first video of hers I've watched and I lost it at "the mansion that Slenderman and Jeff the Killer take you to if you stab your friends," just because of the deadpan delivery. Instant subscribe.

[@hotelmario510]

It's called "deadpan humour". It's a very common style of comedy in Britain!

[@user-xb5bz4fu9o]

There's someone like that in my humanities class, and his presentations are a work of art because of his completely deadpan tone when talking. Most of the time you can't tell if he's serious or joking.

[@horacegentleman3296]

I know someone like that,they think they're funny but everyone else just thinks they're wired. No one likes me.

[@beatrixwickson8477]

I am actually working nightshift in a hospital right now. There is a disturbing lack of mannequins terrorising me. But I am bored in the first person so I guess that's OK.

[@BCZF]

just...dont...look...BEHIND YOU!!!!!

[@BCZF]

just...dont...look...BEHIND YOU!!!!!

[@ActuallyJozu]

You need to buy a haunted video game cartridge first, then the haunting will begin.

[@timothybeebe6382]

Beatrix Wickson If your bored just say loudly to a coworker "wow it sure is quit tonight

[@beatrixwickson8477]

Jack Hasten Good luck, it's like a cross between Scrubs and Halloween II.

[@secrelight2610]

instead of "The Skin Taker" a character who takes skin and turns it into clothes, a cooler name would have been "The Tailor" cause it's ambiguous and the fact that they use skin would be a creepy reveal

[@glooboy2206]

If you read Candle Cove you'd know that there isn't supposed to be a reveal. It's supposed to slap you in the face with the creepy kids show idea then slap you again with the fact that the show was never real in the first place. Jenny's argument about the name "The Skintaker" being too scary for a kids show holds no water at all when you realise that the show was actually never real to begin with and was all in the Kids heads. Jenny purposely attacked that aspect of Candle Cove because she is or was friends with Max Landis (the guy who adapted Candle Cove for TV and actually made a show more boring than the OG story)

[@sealeo5772]

@@glooboy2206 Are you the author of Candle Cove or just really really devoted with too much free time?

[@glooboy2206]

@@sealeo5772 how much time do you have?

[@javsandarts]

@@glooboy2206 uh... You ok?

[@p3ter9000]

@@glooboy2206 Jenny's point was that it's unbelievable anyone would be reminiscing nostalgically about something so fucked up. There's no twist to the "it was never real" reveal bc, yeah, obviously it was never real, that would be insane and impossible to air. A better version of the story might have been that they all remember the goofy adult host, and as they talk about it, they can put into words a lot of things they noticed were unnerving as kids about how he acted with the children on the show (a la Dan Schneider). The story rises as they have increasingly worried memories about him and think crimes could have been committed, but then that's deflated by the reveal that there was never a show yet somehow they have a mass hallucination of the creep

[@skeetersfunhouse4002]

In 2005 i went to garage sale and i threw money at man and he gave me a copy of sonic and knuckles but when i go home and slip the cartridge in and SONIC EYES RED AND START BLEEDING he then yells AAA AAA AAA AAA

[@emogoblin95]

WAS THE BLOOD HYPER REALISTIC?!

[@angiefirethunder2337]

👏👏ugh your mind 😍😍👌✊👀

[@helloofthebeach]

AAA AAA AAA AAA is the code for the stage select

[@isaacabel6839]

But did man door hand hook car door?

[@eurasianlynx5584]

I imagine the AAA AAA AAA beimg said by a text to speech module XD

[@fuzzywuzzy4564]

I had a favorite creepypasta when i was 14. I think it was called "he waits" or something. It wasn't really scary or creepy. It was kinda melancholic and dark and a little sweet. i remembered it years later and i wanted to find out if the author wrote more stuff. didnt find her writings but i DID find out she was a edgelord nazi who tried to plan a mass shooting with her boyfriend and is currently in jail for it. so thats something?

[@OfAxisAndAllies]

I think that's the true horror story here.

[@whitherwhence]

Sitting here trying to think of a word to describe this comment. I'm thinking mindpunch

[@Axzle_MC]

Wow that took a turn.

[@trippinsciko]

She probably was denied the ability to art college because that seems to drive people immediately to nazi land.

[@chitbong5725]

Fuzzy Wuzzy Well that escalates quickly.

[@NxTTxT]

I'm the jolly seamstress woman behind disneyland making 5 of the photo negative mickey mouse suits for the resort they're building over a hellmouth

[@ethank6452]

That FREAKING monologue at the end of the Russian Sleep Experiment just ruins the whole story. It's just so stupid and out of place and it still gets me upset.

[@youtube-kit9450]

The version of the russian sleep experiment I read actually just kept it at the prisoners covering up everything, wanting more gas and mutilating themselves. Which is much better.

[@cappedminer369]

not me tho

[@goodradoodles1549]

I would have liked it better if it ended at the part where it mutters “So close to freedom” or something like that

[@ludvig3242]

@@cappedminer369 That's because creepypastas are written by kids, for kids.

[@cappedminer369]

@@ludvig3242 not all creepypastas are written by kids or are bad, there are some really good ones and no they are not for kids nor written by them

[@javis88h]

Creepy Pasta Checklist. Eyes Bleeding "Hyper Realistic" "I used to play this game." "Dude who sold it to me was skittish and just wanted this item gone." "This episode of this one show played at 6am and shit went down."

[@Rocca000]

And BLOOD

[@kostajovanovic3711]

+Zodiel *hyoer realistic blood

[@Rocca000]

Then I realized "Creepypasta',s name' is a brutal, sadistic, child killing, crazy and a horrific monster

[@JadeEyes1]

"I used to be normal." "One summer I worked as an intern for...." "This really happened to me." Bleeding from the eyes. Anything like "You'll probably start hearing strange noises around your house. I'm sorry...."

[@yew8707]

"Free" or "Really Cheap"

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

They didn’t even need to make the Mickey suit photonegative to make it iconic and creepy. If you’ve ever seen old pictures of vintage Disney character suits, than you know that those things are already ample reason to never sleep with the light off ever again.

[@DizzyRobin]

This is why fear of animatronic figures spawned an entire wildly successful horror game.

[@literally-no-one9587]

i shouldn't have looked it up

[@shriya9925]

@@literally-no-one9587 I didn't heed your warning and now I deeply regret it

[@lesstalking3007]

@@DizzyRobin If you're scared of animatronics, you're probably also scared of butterflies and clouds.

[@dr.archaeopteryx5512]

"And then I was skeleton, and I was you, and you became skeleton AND WROTE THIS"

[@zzwiebel]

That is such a twist. It is crazy that that really happened tho.

[@The.Orange.Wizard]

subtle username HA HA, that’s a funny joke. That’s a joke right? RIGHT?

[@skullketon]

"It's so absurd and over the top. How can anyone take them seriously?" You have no idea how much disbelief I can suspend

[@eshitasahu]

Man this comment hit home 😂

[@anthonyf616]

When you have an imagination, yes

[@MiyaMam948]

*[slaps top of you]* This bad boy can suspend so much disbelief

[@lilithcrow6675]

Same

[@cyndrift]

my tweenage anxiety really said All Scary Things Are Real

[@dplyman1]

the creepiest pasta i've ever seen was at olive garden. true terror.

[@AllieFettig]

Stasis. I play Magic; The Gathering.

[@dplyman1]

ah! you're the first person to notice it. so by way of thanks, i capsize my stasis at the end of my turn.

[@thedashboard9562]

Well played

[@oldthinkertube]

The breadstick was slooooowly pulled into the bottomless pasta bowl.

[@dplyman1]

OldThinkerTube and before he dropped the noodles in, the chef *thunder and lightning cue* DIDNT SALT THE PASTA WATERRRR

[@Alex_Off-Beat]

What makes this video truly spooky is the fact that Jenny has HYPER-REALISTIC BLOOD AND A SKELETON hiding inside her throughout this whole video... AND SO DO YOU!!!!

[@wjzav1971]

Oh my god, is the skeleton going to kill me?!!!

[@homestuck_official]

@@wjzav1971 Well everybody who has had a skeleton has died or will die so take that how you want

[@sylph8005]

Nah, mine's poorly rendered

[@leahl5007]

Oh my god I was totally not scared about the realistic blood and skellington until I realized it was also hyper in it’s realism oh nooooooo

[@Youcifer]

skeletman 💀

[@tiredfrog308]

"Creepypasta are what you graduate to when you're slightly too old for goosebumps." Congratulations for making me laugh like some deranged, startled hyena.

[@goth_fraggle]

the "slightly" is the most sutble of burns :D

[@GravelordNEETo]

Calum Gideon Wdym, nosleep is full of literal 12 year olds

[@harlequeenchannel]

Oh god, you made me have a existential crisis

[@AnimeFrrTehWin]

Lol at that description

[@betenoire2534]

@Calum Gideon I listen to the r/nosleep podcast that's on spotify when I'm at work and have to process garnishments. It helps me stay awake lol. I'm in my mid-late twenties.

[@captainnemo7690]

I think the common thread is that people just starting to get into writing horror (often children) don't have a good grasp of the distinction between things that would be scary to experience and things that are scary to read. You need a bit more finesse if you're trying to scare someone at a remove, and that's hard for newer writers to manage. I've got a lot of love for creepypastas, though. A lot of very weird, very earnest, weirdly charming nonsense.

[@machu5320]

Maybe this is why whenever I read bad creepypasta I always think that it sounds like something that would scare an 8 year old, or me if I had read it 10 years ago or something like that. KIds have much more imagination and can more intensely imagine these scary stories and immerse themselves, whereas when you're older you just notice the flaws in how people act or how the plot sounds tropey.

[@gunnaryoung]

Here's a tip for anyone who wants to write scary stories: blood isn't scary at least not on its own.

[@alisaurus4224]

I dunno, finding blood where there shouldn’t be blood and/or where there was no blood the last time you looked would freak out most people.

[@juniperrodley9843]

@@alisaurus4224 But it won't freak people out to read about it.

[@greenyawgmoth]

@@alisaurus4224 You get used to it after the 7th or 8th time it happens, it's no big deal really.

[@magica3526]

right, also what would be scary irl or even in a movie is different in text

[@sarasthoughts]

@@alisaurus4224 as a person that has had heavy periods for most of her life and has a scratch-prone cat, finding blood in my house is almost a daily inconvenience lmao

[@uforad170]

Honestly I could believe the skin taker would be a character on like, Courage the Cowardly Dog or smth

[@jabscha7051]

True but personally I always pictured Candle Cove as a program for younger kids like a low budget PBS Kids show

[@nicolassieh6799]

@Not Important i mean the whole point is that the show was weird in scary, but not for adults ig

[@FangsFirst]

@@jabscha7051 Which is, I think, the entire reason it's creepy (in the "skin crawling" sense)--it's wildly out of place. Including the name. But they're kids, so they just take what's being fed to them.

[@propheinx2250]

The old transformers show had a character named Butt Plug.

[@jojameson5264]

Courage (at least for the US) was rated PG-y7. So 7 years and up. And is animated. So it can get away with some dark undertones. Some light violence. It could feasibly have a character renamed that. But Candle Cove seems more like something like Seasame street or Barney. A younger audience. Like toddlers and kindergartners. Like yes, Courage the Cowardly Dog is for kids and is spooky but it’s for kids older than Candle Cove.

[@averygrant1341]

I don't see whats hard to believe about a dying Russian peasant woman using her last breaths to give a mellow dramatic monologue

[@lakesuperiorwim4234]

Said Dostoyevsky

[@charliem.1368]

“I no longer need beets. You see, I now know the search for beets was just a coping mechanism, a projection for the search for meaning.”

[@Tine_of_Nice_Dreams]

i really like this spelling of melodramatic

[@DeLaCrack]

@@Tine_of_Nice_Dreams its like Drama hiting a joint

[@DeathnoteBB]

They were prisoners of war not Russian peasants

[@YourFavoriteCommie]

My older sister used to tell a story that she insisted was true and it reminded me of a creepypasta but later turned out to have a rational explanation. She and her best friend used to go exploring around in the wilderness outside the city of Yakutsk where both she and I grew up. There's large expanses of uninhabited tundra and you can often find interesting wildlife or arctic flora. My sister and her friend came across a mine shaft that had presumably been used to mining coal or diamonds or something from underground. They decided to explore inside and see what they could find. At one point they came across a tunnel in the mine that was partially collapsed and had flooded with water from snowmelt. Floating in the water were many pieces of debris like broken wooden beams from the tunnel ceiling and wires and stuff like that, and tangled up in the middle of this refuse was a dead body. They both saw it and were frightened, so they ran away towards the opening of the mine. But then they changed their minds and decided to go back and look, and when they returned only moments later, the body was gone. Both my sister and her friend swore up and down this story was true, as unbelievable as it sounds. Years later, a group of botanists discovered that a certain type of lichen plant that thrives in cold weather grew abundantly in the area, and these lichens naturally produced spores which contained significant quantities of a hallucinogenic substance. My sister thinks they had inhaled some of these spores since the plants grew in the area and it caused them to hallucinate something that wasn't really there.

[@adriannethornheart8516]

wait they both hallucinated the same thing?? that can happen?

[@xugabugala5683]

@@adriannethornheart8516 maybe the sister said something like "MY GOD, IS THAT A DEAD BODY?" and it affected the other girl's allucination.

[@adriannethornheart8516]

@@xugabugala5683 thanks for pointing that out, it makes a lot of sense

[@tommylundy2495]

Both of these stories are hilariously made up 😂

[@YourFavoriteCommie]

@@tommylundy2495 Hey, take it up with her, not me. I wasn't even born yet.

[@86BullnoseOG]

The problem with these bad creepypastas is the utter lack of nuance. The key to horror is to let the brain do its job and imagine all the horrible things that could happen or what’s making the noise just beyond the eye’s reach in the shadows. The reason why visual descriptions rarely work is because once the mind can see the monster it can start devising ways to defeat and/or escape it and it loses the suspense of “I don’t know”. Hence why it’s scarier to hear someone say “What was that?” over “look at that water-logged corpse sewn to the half rotted pig running around!”

[@w0rmg0rl]

also, some authors *try* this, but end up with "what I was seeing was... beyond description. the indescribable thing crawled towards me on all fours, rows of teeth gleaming at me in the dim light", which, yeah.

[@theomegajuice8660]

The authors of these creepypastas have seen to many horror B movies and not read enough horror books. You can get the audience to go along with a lot more crazy stuff if they can see it and have an hour's worth of build up.

[@Christoff070]

Visual scares in movies can work amazing, though. Crawl comes to mind for one. There was minimal suspense since once you knew an alligator was around, you always expect it. Yet the impeccable timing still make it scary and good. Sorry I know u discuss written story but I gotta give the visual scare device some props somehow.

[@michaellight6981]

People often underestimate the power of subtlety.

[@Brandon-yr3nj]

this is precisely why lovecraft’s brand of horror is still so effective and widespread despite Lovecraft not being a particularly skilled writer (or a good person)

[@slimkt]

‘Abandoned By Disney’ started off strong but eventually devolved into a story only believable if you imagine the narrator took shrooms before his urban exploration adventure and the last third of the story is just him recounting a really bad drug trip.

[@themedia1271]

slimkt agreed.

[@krusher181]

More like he downed a bottle of cough syrup and took 15 Benadryl. You need heavy deliriants and dissociatives to ever feel like that.

[@Slimebeast]

Not all stories are meant to be realistic and believable. I don't watch Ghostbusters and think: "I was with you until the giant marshmallow man." If you don't dig my story - no problem. It's literally a 2AM hacked-out wall of text from 5 years ago, written to expand a one-sentence story about a "negative mickey"... But let's not pretend it was supposed to be incredibly serious and real. :)

[@krusher181]

Slimebeast Your story? You wrote the Mickey thingy? I don’t understand your comment. But I wasn’t saying all stories need realism, but horror kinda does. At least something resembling a skewered version of reality. Why would I be afraid of something that could never be imagined without laughing more than feeling “scared”.

[@krusher181]

Slimebeast And the marshmallow man is something from real life. It’s a mascot. So that’s based in reality. Being based in reality is, in my opinion, important for feeling afraid. But just using Mickey Mouse cause kids will shit their pants when they read, comes across as pandering and boring.

[@marandaward1663]

My dad’s favorite story that he swears is true and actually happened to him was when he had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere and had to pull over next to a small cemetery. He got out to change his tire and noticed and old man sitting at the edge of the cemetery next to a small fire. Dad was worried about him and went to check on him once his tire was fixed. They talked for about a half an hour, and the old man told my dad that he was the cemetery’s caretaker and that he was “really going to miss it” and he hoped his replacement respected the job and took it seriously. Dad didn’t think much about it until he read the paper the next day and saw the old man’s picture...in the obituaries. He had died two days before dad met him.

[@lilacKurage]

I really hope the next caretaker took his show seriously, I feel sad for that old man

[@Pseudo_Nymph_94]

That is so sweet and sad

[@StandardGoose]

It's nice to know the classics are still being told.

[@Lucifersfursona]

That’s the kind of ghost shit that’s just like, idk, so human and liminal. Nice.

[@MasterOfViewership]

Bullshit. that's a classic urban legend. if someone says "I swear this is true" 99% of the time, they're lying

[@colecarbaugh]

Side note: why would there be a Mickey costume at a Jungle Book themed park ?

[@Lucifersfursona]

The city mouse, the country mouse, and the rainforest mouse

[@Jazzisa311]

Yeah, plus, Disney is SUPER careful about keeping up the illusion. Cast members have to practice autographs, so that if someone gets an autograph from Cinderella and then comes back 20 years later to get a new one, the Cinderella one would look exactly the same. They'd NEVER have a room labelled 'mascots' (again, they aren't called mascots, they're called cast members. It's even a meme: "we're not employees, we're cast members!), in any place with the remotest chance a kid could see it.

[@MasterOfViewership]

CreepyPasta writers are never intelligent

[@wjzav1971]

Because Mickey is EVERYWHERE Mickey is GOD!!!!

[@lesstalking3007]

Because the author is a hack.

[@Branchtail]

“The lost episode of Calliou” I lost it

[@skytheterrible5087]

CandidElk don’t forget his bloody eyes

[@DisDatK9]

Caillou.exe

[@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

Hyper-realistic Caillou blood

[@blarg2429]

So if you hadn't lost it, it would've aired with the rest? Not sure how I feel about that. :P

[@crystalcoveseries]

I loved Ted's Caving Story. One time though when I went to re-read it, I guess I came across it as a repost where the reposter just wasn't happy with the answerless ending and wanted to continue it. So, they added a last entry where he went into the cave, and oh my goooodnesssss there IS a monster and he manages to out run it and climb out the cave but it's still following him and then a farmer shows up and chases the monster away with magic... *sigh*

[@theomegajuice8660]

If there's one thing that creepy unsettling horror stories need it's a tidy resolution with all the questions answered!

[@khatunamezvrishvili6211]

So stupid, you don't need to answer every question in horror, that's one of the scary aspects of it.

[@endmysuffering4211]

farmer magic

[@znkhucast4447]

I think i remeber that one. or at least a similar enging. The creature of the cave turned out to be some sort of ancient demon, the a shaman shows out of nowhere to seal it once again and that's it.

[@John-vn9js]

Magic farmer was the real monster all along.

[@kimsowons]

the scariest thing with creepypasta is what the fanbase does the them. i still have nightmares over a ms paint picture of jeff the killer and ben drowned kissing

[@joinsideke]

I still don't understand how that become A Thing. It's fucking baffling.

[@samstansbirbs]

SAME

[@jheckie14]

"That can't be true, they must be joking..." I innocently thought while queuing a google search. Oh, how wrong I was.

[@bluebird1512]

"Whatever you do! Do NOT search it on wattpad." I shuddered thinking back.

[@dominicthedefiant3210]

Goddamn 😂

[@yomilemondragon1721]

One creepypasta that always stuck with me was 'Normal Porn For Normal People'. It was about this "porn" site, but all the videos were of really bizarre and either completely non-sexual or only vaguely sexual things, like a woman licking a washing machine all over at one point. There was also pages and pages of endless strings of text that turned out to be links that led to even more strings of links, that eventually led to one of the weird videos (meaning there must have been thousands and thousands of these things). I'm kind of on the fence about whether it went too far tbh- at the end (spoilers I guess) they find a video of a woman getting her guts ripped out by an enraged ape, but I kind of felt like yeah, all the weird but mostly innocent videos were a good setup for something sinister being hidden somewhere deep in there, and it's not like there was anything supernatural involved. And those dark-web torture streams are a thing(??? Maybe? I'll be real, idk shit about the dark web lol), so it wasn't too much of a stretch to think someone hid their insane torture-porn in an unintelligible maze of hyperlinks.

[@dedeadam9698]

Lmao i can actually see that being real, you can easily find shock videos of that kind on the internet. Search good enough and you can even find a dead body of an infant or some shit. Yeah.

[@royalblanket]

I remeｍber that but the one I read had a silent video of a man in a bunny costume being chainsawed

[@clarence5211]

was just thinking about this one the other day! another good one with a similar ‘seemingly innocent thing hiding something more nefarious (but ambiguous)’ vibe imho is ‘pale luna’

[@cicadeus7741]

Its absolutely unsurprising. Sites like goatse and bestg0re have existed on the surface web for years now. As a teen I was all too curious and ran into too many unintelligible-site-name shock sites also.

[@workchannel8053]

Ohh that one traumatized me as a kid!!! I think it holds up TBH.

[@trixxsaurus2386]

Creepypasta is what you downgrade to when Edgar Allan Poe just isn't edgy enough.

[@tehyat8956]

Alexis Balthrop underrated comment

[@Matrim42]

INVALID REFERENCE FRAME: POE IS ABSOLUTE EDGE

[@aceshighdueceslow]

where does Lovecraft fit in? I always thought Lovecraft was the inspiration for these things since he seems to be the default horror writer when it comes to discourse on the internet

[@robrotron2084]

@@aceshighdueceslow Yeah I haven't read a lot of creepypasta, but based on this video I'd have to agree. A lot if Lovecraft stories follow this basic template, things start off creepy but basically normal, shit gets weird but maybe the main character's just going crazy, then sharon turn into overt supernatural mayhem at the end.

[@autosadist]

edgar allan poe did a lot of structural and narrative things that were cool for the time, i think! he was definitely a little more than edgy though !

[@PotaZon]

The “Humans can lick too” is probably the most disturbing one for me. Now as a 21 y/o adult, i still check if i lock my doors twice before going to sleep lol.

[@menoguchi]

oh my GOD, you just activated so many repressed memories of mine. This story fucked me up SO HARD. I can still remember little pre-teen me reading it for the first time and not being able to sleep well for so many nights. I don't know if this story is legitimately terrifying or if I was just so young when I first read it, but I DEFINITELY get the chills only thinking about it. That creepypasta traumatized me and shaped me as a human being, no joke. I'm also 21 yo, so I feel like we share somewhat of a similar experience.

[@jumbo4billion]

That story has been going since it was published 101 years ago. I first heard it told on a local radio spooky story show. The man who read it called himself The Man In Black, his voice was perfect for it and the story had me shaking with fear!

[@blueberrypoptart2424]

I’ll be 21 in a few weeks, and I forreal checked under my bed tonight bc I felt some vibes

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

Lawrence Nguyen Y’know, except the phrase “humans can lick too” is so transcendentally stupid.

[@homestuck_official]

except for the version where the dog is crucified. Too much, bruh

[@maxtually]

The russian sleep experiment monologue is like an awful version of the Lord of the Flies pig head talking

[@asgrimurhartmannsson]

I was thinking: 30ies sci fi. Like "Astounding" or something.

[@derpyzmuffinz]

Honestly the talking pig head makes more sense

[@ihatecorpsehusband7147]

“I represent your fear” is the jest of it for anyone wondering.

[@the13throse]

Such a shame the author decided to end with that, when it should have ended while it was still genuinely creepy. That's a big problem a lot of creepypastas have, they don't know when to stop

[@rachelbrooke353]

THANK YOU

[@clottedscream]

Also the sad thing about candle cove is that the setup (low rent creepy puppet educational show) is actually super similar to a real show that existed that i watched growing up called Crashbox, which was an intentionally creepy show aimed at small kids who liked spooky stuff and genre films to get them to solve puzzles and use their brain. And Crashbox even had a skeleton character! His name was captain bones and he used his bones to make math puzzles. It was cute and charming and also spooky because he was a weathered old skeleton.

[@alyssawilson9623]

I actually convinced myself that I had seen candle cove after I read the creepypasta. Had trouble sleeping because of it for weeks. Then, years later, I was reminded of the name of the ACTUAL show, and figured out the whole ordeal was just because I had seen one episode of crashbox as a kid and had a crazy imagination

[@andrewjenkins9965]

Welp. Time for me to look up Crashbox.

[@madsmari]

Hey this is an old post but I remember Crashbox too but my mom says when I was watching it it was just a video of this person sitting on her bed talking about shitty creepypasta

[@XLR8267]

Best Creepypasta gotta go to The Hash Slinging Slasher

[@BoglimWrangler666]

okay but that episode scared me as a young child, it was scarier than 95% of all creepypastas

[@Irisverse]

The sash-bringing...

[@RobbyRayRana]

dontscrewtheworld The crash-dinging...

[@dracu9833]

@@BoglimWrangler666 yeah, because of fcking nosferatu! damn that messed me up XD

[@tungsten_talons]

@Taylor Davidson No thank you. I hate it.

[@yew8707]

Guard: What are you!? Test Subject: I'm tired.

[@weijizhu3729]

Guard: what are you? Test: i'm gay

[@Flowtail]

**crashing noises approach** Test Subject's dad: hello Tired, I'm Dad

[@spigotsandcogs]

“What are you?” “An idiot sandwich!”

[@purpleblah2]

I’m a sleepy boy

[@jaqf]

Hi tired I’m guard

[@TheSleepyRanger]

I read the expressionless recently and the whole "I am god" thing is so overused in creepypasta. Like it's not even scary to begin with and it's super not scary when the supernatural creature hasn't done anything to justify calling it's "god". Wow you ate a cat and killed some defenseless doctors? You must be so powerful. Edit: also with the photo negative Mickey, if the writer wanted to have a more distinct character how about some suit that's been stitched together from different characters. Sort of like a weird Frankenstein suit but with disney characters.

[@ivarent3784]

Now that's scary, specially when you consider the actual real existance of Carpet Samples. If you have seen pictures of that fursuit, you know how scary a patchwork suit can look.

[@SirHorned19]

I dont think you are supposed to believe it when it says that its god. Its just unsettling when people say that.

[@HeyLeFay]

@@ivarent3784 I looked up Carpet Samples and I just wanna say, jfc, that thing triggered my fight or flight response.

[@kirsten9729]

@@HeyLeFay I want to do it now but I'm scared lol

[@BlackCat-tg7th]

I think the Expressionless scared me anyway. Not because of the cheesy line, but because of the Expressionless face, I even had a nightmare about that

[@jacquelinewithac8668]

One horrorishhh story that has always lingered in the back of my mind was this story called “Autopilot”. I read it in middle school and haven’t gone back to it so I don’t actually know if it was any good, but the actual story has always stuck with me for some reason. It’s about this man who just goes about his day, explaining how it feels like autopilot to him. He walks without thinking of walking and goes to work without really thinking of going to work, that kind of thing. He’s supposed to take his daughter to day care that day and his daughter falls asleep in the car, and he drives there without thinking about it. He goes to work on a really hot day, and when he gets back it turns out he didn’t actually take his daughter into the daycare because he was so stuck in routine and she was asleep so he just didn’t even notice, and she died in the hot car.

[@Mysterytour7]

i read an article about incidents of children dying in hot cars and this was pretty much it.

[@DafieYo]

omg this is great??? love these setups that are simple and take place in everyday life but have devastating consequences

[@Bobsaget121]

Having a character called ‘the skin taker’ wouldn’t be THAT weird. It sounds like something they’d put on courage the cowardly dog or crash box. The name doesn’t ruin it for me. Having an actual human skin cape on the other hand, does.

[@RSmeep13]

7 months late to the party on this one but, I am overwhelmed with the urge to point out Ko, from ATLA, who was a face stealing giant centipede demon, which was much darker than the Skintaker IMO.

[@FM-cp6kc]

There's still the issue that everyone's reaction was "Wasn't that weird" instead of "That show was so fucked up how did it even air" that people actually say about stuff like Courage the Cowardly Dog

[@motorwayt-s628]

OrdovicianAphelion there was also Hama from the Puppet master who was also a darker character than the skin taker

[@marvelousTUD]

Yeah, but Courage the Cowardly Dog was specifically created to be creepy and push the envelope. No kids series that dark was really created before or since, and definitely not back in the 80s.

[@alacnaythegreat1054]

But Candle Cove is meant to be something akin to sesame street, not something like courage or avatar.

[@skytheterrible5087]

I hate those ones where the narrator dies, and yet he is still telling the story.

[@011mph]

ToFu BrOtHeR ikr that's so stupid lol

[@babyfirefly1842]

ToFu BrOtHeR same, i really think it’d be interesting if the narrator was recording and then when they died someone else came along and found the recording etc.

[@firecrakerj3312]

The evil Organization XIII Mickey with a white face, no eyes, red lips stretched across his face and Hyper realistic blood tears had just murdered the old narrator, so we ended up getting a new one!

[@taylordavison6849]

Logic: when you're a teenager, who the fuck needs it?

[@closeenough7043]

People don’t understand that many times, being truly scary requires you to be simple. Like the line that has been discussed as a true horror story despite it just being a line. “I’m the last man on earth, and I woken to a knock on the door.”

[@thomashall6733]

or what about that one where a child tells her mom "there's something under my bed". so the mom looks under the bed and sees another version of her child that says "there's something on my bed"

[@kingvincentarchcravenxiii1141]

i was just gonna spoil it but i decided not to incase anyone wants to hear it. the first i heard it was in an old time radio show from the 1940s (though i heard ti about 10 years ago, not 1940 lol). i could be wrong but i think was on X Minus One and the writer was Ray Bradbury. Again not 100% sure but i could always go back and find out. also im pretty sure its been in plenty of horror and sci-fi and prob many different versions but i really did enjoy the version I heard. not a scary as the just the sentence but its was still a good story.

[@ea.fitz216]

"I have no mouth, and I must scream".

[@Dreigonix]

+Close Enough The last man on Earth sat alone in his room. Suddenly there was a knock at the door... ...and she said “Honey, I’m home!”

[@Brainwave101]

There's a tree branch tapping on my window I don't have a tree in my yard.

[@maartendj2724]

You know, I once heard a story of a guy, when he was 8 he saw what looked like a snake and he picked it up to admire it. But then the 'snake' transformed back into his brother Loki who yelled 'BWEH it's me!' and stabbed him... to this day I hesitate to pick up snakes in the wild...

[@mewlingqueen]

WFDOIJWJFSHRI

[@deepblume6611]

No

[@kitanat9944]

Hahaha even the “BWEH it’s me!”

[@internetidiot4206]

BWEH it’s me! *commits homicide cutely*

[@gingahsnixx]

PLSSSSSSSS

[@ellamills5716]

I personally really dislike the format of ‘someone tells a made up story pretending like it happened to them and everyone else just has to play along’ because you can never critique the writing or call out plot holes without ‘breaking the immersion’. If someone’s story is bad and stupid I want to be able to tell them that

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

Ella Mills Especially when nothing breaks immersion than a shitty fuckin’ story.

[@khatunamezvrishvili6211]

I agree

[@TheMrVengeance]

Same. Bothers me about the subreddit too. With good stories too. Sometimes you just wanna discuss the cool writing or talk about the story in a meta sense. But you can't, because the whole subreddit has to be in-character role-play as if the story is real. 🙄 EDIT: I think what makes it extra annoying is that it doesn't really ADD anything? The forced in-character responses never really add to the story. It's always just sort of "Oh omg, so scary. Hope you're okay."

[@SorowFame]

@@TheMrVengeance if someone has posted a story online people should be able to give constructive criticism, otherwise what’s the point?

[@Lee-fw5bd]

@@SorowFame to have an audience. Sometimes you just wanna write or read something interesting with no intention of trying to "grow" or have it be nitpicked. Just get your cool story idea out and have people engage with it ya know

[@Eth_ns]

In defence of the Skintaker, there's an old Nickelodeon show called Mr. Meaty that's equally creepy and unbelievable

[@watsonwrote]

Oh god thanks for bringing back those nightmares

[@tri-angel]

You're absolutely right, and just looking at that show made me want to fucking throw up, but skin taker is still a little bit on the nose lmao. I would have gone with like, scabby or something, that sounds pirate-y even

[@youronlinegirlfriend5508]

I remember...that tape worm

[@marimbasolo8306]

Ethan I like your profile pic

[@ladybirdg5658]

Well you're not wrong

[@SofieLoaf]

Disney calls employees "Cast members", employees are seen as actors, and the parks are seen as the stage- on such a door like mentioned in the abandoned by disney pasta it would say "Cast members only"

[@junjunjamore7735]

And if they're playing characters, they're "friends with _____"

[@tbotalpha8133]

Thanks for this. As soon as I heard Jenny mention that "mascots" was the wrong word to use, I immediately wanted to know what the proper term would be.

[@Slimebeast]

That's addressed in the stories, but Jenny didn't read far enough. (Not that she has to.)

[@marycruzship5652]

Some places dont even have the sign mostly because it would look out of place.

[@kayakat1869]

The Russian Sleep Experiment would have been so much creepier if when the guards walked in, they were all just calm an smiling blankly or something. The over the top nature of the original ruins the whole thing.

[@nagelfischer]

I think it would fit better if they were locked in for longer and the end is either them dieing of heart failure like from being awake for real long times, them begging for more gas or them suffering brain damage

[@gedeonnunes5626]

That one only got so far due to that creepy b/w picture of the halloween grinning dummy thing.

[@Hollyberrystreats]

But why make the tortured POWs the monsters in this scenario anyway?!

[@seikoshinohara3084]

As a recovering drug addict the five days awake thing doesn't work at all lol that's not that bad tweakers have been doing it for years

[@DoctorCyan]

I do like the underlying message, that sleep prevents us from eventually becoming these unfathomable monsters. They just needed to show better restraint, and definitely needed to present the experiment over a much longer period of time because we already know a person can go multiple days without sleep and be just fine

[@jabscha7051]

I find it hard to believe that a kid would continue watching a show with the Skintaker when I would run out of the room when I saw Donald Duck dressed like a ghost in the Disneyland singalong

[@elsie8757]

Omg I know exactly what you're referring to and I was scared of that part too as a kid

[@Chronicaly.Online]

courage the cowardly dog was my fave show when i was like 8 so maybe its subjective

[@inkyquartz1797]

@@Chronicaly.Online yeah idk id look up horror kids as i was 6-8 even though they scared me shitless

[@renge5589]

LOL

[@Jazzisa311]

Nah, I was a weird kid, I LOVED everything scary. The scarier, the better. I remember watching shows with my cousin, who is a year older than me, and he'd cover his eyes watching my shows, and I'd just sit on the edge of my seat. My favourite ones were Goosebumps and Eerie, Indiana. But there were scarier ones that I loved.

[@skug9bob]

When I first ran into creepypasta, it took me a while to realize they were _meant_ to be taken as "could have happen": I just took the first person narration as a framing device, as in an HP Lovecraft story.

[@ananthropomorphictalkinggo6641]

I always thought they were all creative writing projects written by redditors for their 6th grade special Ed classes.

[@calypsokiosko9067]

Because he totally invented that...

[@skug9bob]

@@calypsokiosko9067 Is this meant to be humorous? Critical? I dunno. (Insert GIF of man shrugging and throwing up his hands.)

[@allexread2772]

"a long pale thing climbs out of the cave" Gollum. Gollum

[@panthera9151]

Could be an undergrad student at the end of the semester.

[@Elizabeth142418]

hęłp į çæñ't gęt thœrgh thę ßęmßtęr

[@mimisaur5000]

nice eridan pfp

[@allexread2772]

@@mimisaur5000 thanks

[@natalijatheghost]

Me

[@PainMonkey]

There's only so many variations of someone with a giant smile tapping on your window you can come up with.

[@Blueoriontiger]

Just wanted to say props to you for liking Ted the Caver, it was my first creepypasta and set a standard for me as I moved on to write horror. You're quite correct about most of the creepypasta flaws that you outlined, and that Reddit board has gone downhill now; I no longer post there because of no suspension of belief. Horror stories there count as contract killers and alien abductions. Thanks for the video and keep it up. :D

[@tungsten_talons]

I feel like even though it's kinda 'cringe' and low quality, Creepypasta (and other... Sites?) like it are a good place for amateur writers to start out. For the most part, it's a positive community. Amateur writers who would write stuff like Creepypasta don't need be torn down or viciously criticized, they need support and encouragement with constructive review to help them improve. The Creepypasta community seems to be at least decent at this kind of positivity? Yes, looking back you wince and go "ugh, why did I ever go there", but when people do that I feel like they're ignoring how those sorts of places often gave them their inspiration to become a better writer. It gave them a will to continue and improve. (Am I making sense? I don't want to ramble lmao)

[@tungsten_talons]

(Update: Oops, I just heard Jenny say Creepypasta is an in character subreddit where you can't leave reviews like the kind I described. Shit. Well, my point stands)

[@TheEndKing]

You wrote Ted the Caver?

[@lilithwills812]

Nice, dude.

[@Blueoriontiger]

@@TheEndKing No, I didn't write it. However, someone DID come out awhile back and claim he was the original author, and explained every bit about how he wrote it/set it up. The photos were IRL stuff he did, and he took those and put the story together.

[@shiivainu9442]

Caillou's eyes don't have to be bleeding for him to be an effective creepypasta character. That kid was a wacko!

[@secretname3897]

little frickin psychopath

[@joelv.6209]

That 8-ball head was a real sicko

[@JazzFlop212]

Not sad he died LOL

[@kookiegirl9859]

When you were talking about “Abandoned by Disney”, and saying how it would be better if the Mickey Mouse coustume was moving by itself or if the guy turned around and it was in standing position, I got goosebumps from just you saying that. It would’ve been much better if it had gone with that idea.

[@backwardsbandit8094]

Her suggestion of hearing breathing from inside the suit would have been perfect

[@Sarah-vo2qu]

So basically you want a 5 Nights at Freddy’s experience from your Disney creepypasta, I can respect that (mental note: make Buzzy creepypasta)

[@PrettyPinkPeacock]

it was wayyy too good, it’s made me all jumpy!

[@Huntracony]

Not very original, but cliches exist because they work.

[@greenyawgmoth]

Hell, if it said "wanna see me take off my head?" and took of its head to reveal nothing at all, that would be creepier than having blood & gore pour out. Have the head's expression change just slightly while it's being held if you want to add that "last straw" effect.

[@TheRenofox]

Many SCP articles have a similar problem. Lots of interesting little objects with anomalous properties would be good in themselves, but at some point the writers must have thought "But how do I make this more scary?" and add as a cliche that "if no one uses this artifact with harmful concequences once in a while it will do something even worse, so you can't just put MY creation in a box and forget about it!"

[@ElPayasoMalo]

The weird machine with input and output and settings like FINE and ROUGH is one of my favorites. What the hell is it? I don't know. But it is cool and creepy.

[@rowancampbell864]

Virtually every SCP that's actually good has very little in the way of proper explanation. Newer entries on SCP don't know how to use [REDACTED] or [DATA EXPUNGED], so the whole thing is basically "here's my scary monster, here's exactly what it looks like, here's what is does, here's how it kills you, here's how to stop it :)". Like great concept my guy, but fear of the unknown is such a powerful tool. Let us do the thinking and the theorising for ourselves. They're so scared that people won't understand exactly what their monster is, and they won't think it's cool.

[@goomymaster6417]

@@rowancampbell864Honestly, I'm kind of the opposite. To me, the horror is somewhat dullened by having to reread the article multiple times to piece together what's going on, or look up some other SCP to learn the deep lore behind them or whatever. I like a good mystery or narrative horror piece as much as the next guy, but I also remember fondly the days when SCPs were just weird shit like the owl graffiti that eats you or the butler that can get you anything you want within reason. Good writers will fit a lot into very little, like SCP-4831, where less good writers will fit a lot into ... a lot, like that one about the barn with seven keys or whatever.

[@EverTheFractal]

One SCP that got me was a disease SCP but it turned out it wasn't actually an anomaly and the scientist faked it to try and get the SCP foundation to cure his wifes cancer. It sparked a debate in universe on the ethics of having the ability to save people and just not doing it. Really stuck with me.

[@dumpko]

My favorite SCP is the bell that they keep suspended in jello. They found it next to a note that said something like "You've seen it, now he can hear you. You've touched it, now he can see you. But never ring it, because if you hear it he can touch you." I don't think they ever describe who "he" is, but they have a D class ring it and they ended up killing themselves or something.

[@Th3Orange]

The best creepypasta was “but who was phone?” :)

[@drizzlecake]

man door man hook car door is my personal favorite

[@squid-boy4178]

@@drizzlecake lets not forget Missing friend haunted cartridge evil mascoct

[@gnack420]

I'm so glad someone posted this.

[@thedestroyasystem]

I like the rake! To be fair though, I watched it on the animated horror channel Snarled, and they told it really well

[@shamanicdude8605]

@@thedestroyasystem An actual good creepypasta would be "Penpal".Didn't understand it when I was young,recently revisited it and got a deep fear of suburban forests and polaroid cameras.

[@Transfixed]

Well, at least kids are writing i guess

[@LnPPersonified]

Considering what I wrote when I was a kid, I agree. It's better to write crap and slowly get better than not write at all.

[@dickonmanwoody7599]

They're typing not write.

[@jackiejeffords5991]

Justartiot 662 Still writing?? Still creating. It's faster to type, but the same amount of thought gets put into it. A lot of people used typewriters back in the day. Not really a new thing

[@magnetboy8328]

The stories are awful, but I'm glad they get satisfaction from making them.

[@Outcast115]

TeZOcatlipoca also a significant number of writers even before computers were well into typewriters not writing via pen

[@BarokaiRein]

You forgot good old "HyPEr ReAlIsTiC BlOoD!!!!"

[@Frumpbeard]

You gotta have a chart of how much blood volume they've lost and research the various progressive effects.

[@thegmanofEAP]

A PHOTO REALISTIC PIC OF DEAD ELMO

[@f1zz-k1d89]

@Black Birdie LITERALLY THE WORST KIND OF PASTA OMG

[@Lucifersfursona]

A stock photo of blood?! In MY Sega Saturn?!

[@thegrimrhino9871]

Its basically the law not to take a story seriously if it says that

[@superclarendon8648]

“Creepypasta is what you graduate to when you’re slightly too old for Goosebumps.” The nail has been hit so hard on the head it’s now in the center of the earth.

[@ZetshiaGudani]

Hmm, the photo-negative Mickey could've worked if it had been a regular suit when the guy was looking at it but then afterwards he sees that only the colors on Mickey are inverted in the pictures he took... dunn dun DUN!

[@envyq00]

That's exactly what I thought!

[@theomegajuice8660]

It could also work if the costume was white or had colours run into each other in a creepy way as if I had some cleaning chemicals accidentally knocked onto it. ... could also imply some back story of the fate of the person wearing the costume when the chemicals got splashed on them. A Micky Mouse version of Two Face basically!

[@illym]

Having your cake and eating it too- nice idea!

[@geneparmesan8748]

Bookish Mermaid fair enough, but I think this is exactly what Jenny Nicholson was talking about: if there’s an actual, tangible quality of evil in the story it carries it past “creepy” to full-on Hollywood haunting. It might not ruin it for some people, but I’m with her in saying these are the details that lose me. At least with qualities like it moving, or breathing, there’s always that element of “maybe it was in my head”

[@helmipollo9803]

Honestly my favourite of the abandoned by disney series is the one shorter story i think was called "a few suggestions" or "a suggestion box" or something similar (im too lazy to search it). I think the format is interesting and it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's maybe more of a horror-comedy but I prefer that to the over the top creepyness and whatever the fuck was going on in the later ones.

[@mtlewis973]

THEN WHO WAS PHONE?

[@cooperross9495]

You were. It was you the whole time.

[@duffman18]

The real phone was the friends we made along the way

[@nintenalex]

The ultimate meme

[@Mewobiba]

As someone who's seen a ton of weird kids shows, I can definitely believe one could have a character named the Skintaker. Maybe not in a US production, but a Swedish or Russian one, absolutely. That said, I think it would be the main thing a kid remembers from such a show. I still have childhood memories of shows where I just remember the horrifying moments but can't for the life of me remember the plot or even what it looked like, just specific events or characters.

[@elSethro]

If you look up the Mysterious Stranger scene from the Adventures of Mark Twain, it is just as fucked up as that if not more, and an actual 100% real part of a 100% real kids' movie.

[@DafieYo]

can confirm this!! in sweden there's especially one movie that traumatized everyone who saw it, and a lot of our kids shows are still the scariest things i've seen.

[@Mankepanke]

@@DafieYo can you name some examples?

[@4nd3rzzon]

Why swedish do you have any examples of terrifying swedish kids shows

[@karatesan2120]

But American cartoons used to be so messed up too! Maybe not straight murder and blood, but extremely unsettling nonetheless Courage the Cowardly Dog had a bunch of gore in some episodes, including Courage ripping his tongue off with a popsicle (that's what stuck with me a lot), Bill and Mandy, the Misadventures of Flapjack, Chowder, the first few episodes of Adventure Time... Even some episodes of the Looney Tunes could be really dark

[@regularshowman3208]

Honestly I think a big issue with Creepypasta is that most of it isn't really trying to say anything. A lot of the best horror ever made cuts deeply into something humans find fundamentally frightening, such as isolation, inability to trust one another, the perversion of something we take for granted, etc. Creepypastas don't really tap into that, there's no real themes or metaphors or any real truth, it's mostly all random "oh wouldn't it be spooky if", which obviously is fine for kinda fun cheesy good times, but if people want them to be taken more seriously, they need to speak more to truths of reality and derive fear from that, I think.

[@camilohiche4475]

What works really well is when the buildup has unnerving details that slowly but surely end up spooking the protagonist out, then when they ultimately find out what was really going on, the reveal is ambiguous yet even creepier than anticipated - while still grounded in reality, not some over the top paranormal bullshit -, so that they (so then, by them, the reader) gets caught off guard. One of the essential parts of true fear is the lack of reassuring information, so when you build up a fear to something ominous to then learn that the truth is even darker than imagined yet still unclear is pretty effective in spookiness factor.

[@alicethemad1613]

And sometimes the best horror really is “I know you’re afraid of spiders. Here’s 50,000 words of graphic descriptions of spiders crawling into your face.” That first Magnus archives web statement fucked me up for DAYS

[@RainWelsh]

I think this is why “Search and Rescue Woods” (the initial run of stories, anyway) and the “My first time in an American forest” series and especially its follow-up are my favourite online horror stories (also they’re both NoSleep stories, the quality in general there is… marginally better than the Creepypasta wiki). They both go into the idea of isolation and of something ‘other’, a sense of not being able to trust your own senses when you’re already in a situation that could go south fast. The protagonist of the “first time in a forest” follow-up series talks a few times about having a sort of superstitious dread when she thinks about going back to town, and even knowing that it’s stupid and probably something being beamed into her head she can’t get over it, and as someone who’s struggled a lot with intrusive thoughts it really struck a chord. The whole idea of losing your sense of self and how you might not be able to trust your own decision making just got to me, far more unsettling than any amount of hyper-realistic blood and intestines strewn about like confetti.

[@mayah2397]

Finding good creepypastas/nosleeps that are engaging and well-written on a literary level is definitely hard, but I find that the actually great ones also tend to be some of the most popular. 'Penpal' and 'Borrasca,' for example. Very commonly touted as some of the best in the genre, and deservedly so. There is something so sinister and terrifying about the horror confined strictly to the grim depths of humanity. 'Psychosis' is also a good one, it really plays with your paranoia. 'A Spire in the Woods' is a less known but good one. All four stories suggest the supernatural, but reveal that the horror was human all along. You're absolutely right that deriving fear from reality is an extremely effective way to write horror, and I wish there were more of them!

[@TheBeanHome]

"scary stories to tell in the dark" by scholastic was scarier than goosebumps.

[@religiousotaku9926]

HaveMindWillWander agreed

[@blueberrypoptart2424]

100% I still think about one of the stories

[@nthgth]

But how do you read it if you're in the dark?

[@MirasaurusRex]

Ironically I was allowed a scary stories to tell in the dark book but NOT any goosebumps

[@beanieguitarguy4070]

Hot take, they wouldn’t be as scary without the visuals. (The original of course)

[@haidbz]

My favourite creepypasta is one that is clearly a mislabeled (by CreepsMcPasta, at least) feelspasta. You do not have to read my summary, I am not good at being brief. A dude moves into an apartment, but it's annoyed by laughter from the neighbouring apartment. He learns that apartment hasn't been lived in for some time, so he gets to borrow the key. Upon entering, he discovers that the entire apartment is covered in a thick layer of undisturbed dust, and soon meets the ghost of a young girl who asks him if he wants to play. So he does what any sane person would do when a child asks to play; he runs away screaming, and shortly vacate the premises permanently. After some years, he comes back to check on the situation with his old apartment, and speaks with the new tenant. Upon asking if the new tenant is bothered by a child's laughter, he gets the response "no, but I am bothered by the sound of a girl sobbing."

[@LieseFury]

;_;

[@a.morphous66]

That’s not creepy. That’s just really sad. Now I feel like I want to play with that girl and make her feel better.

[@ianbyrne465]

Aaw, now I'm sad

[@spiritglass5716]

That's so sad 😭

[@rheaofsunshine918]

Damn.

[@lugus9261]

I remember someone tried saying the Russian sleep experiment was real....in a psychology class. Nah

[@insaynnecrazey4634]

Lugus fghjkklkjhg me too!!! There was a project and a kid presented the story as a true story and I was like????

[@a.morphous66]

Well, it’s not hard to believe part of the story is real. A toned down version could’ve actually happened for all we know. But it probably didn’t, because it doesn’t need to be tested that people can stay awake for very long periods while only showing signs of exhaustion and no traces of insanity.

[@Usernameping]

I could see part of it happening. I could even see them beginning to crack after only 2-3 days. Remember, in the context of the story they're like grouped up and know they're being experimented on. I think it's supposed to play on like the Joseph Mengele kind of messed up experiments. If I was trapped in a place like that with zero stimulus as an adrenaline-like drug pumped through the air I think I'd start to get weird about 6 hours in. It can't just be an innocent experiment though. It has to be at least a little human-rights abusey from the very start. Then just have them end up self-harming and committing pretty simplistic and obvious suicides. Throw in a single instance of just an utterly unbelievable thing like pulling your own tooth and jamming it into your eye, and I think it'd fall entirely within the realms of possibility. You can then just end it with "after the experiment concluded, the scientists complained of trouble sleeping after what they witnessed".

[@claudcopter9784]

@@a.morphous66 The story itself isn't real (Although with a suspension of disbelief Its not impossible to believe it), but I'm pretty sure the writer got ideas from actual terrible tests and inhumane experiments that actually happened in the ww2 era

[@kingchuckfinley]

A guy I use to work with was trying to convince me that was real also. He was the worst.

[@jakek1735]

I feel like the book "The Ruins" kinda has this exact problem. It starts off with a pretty great and creepy premise: tourists accidentally stumble into a place filled with an unknown species of vine, which turns out to be carnivorous, slowly eating them all alive and eventually even burrowing inside their bodies. But then it gets taken too far when the vines turn out to be impossibly intelligent, like, human levels of intelligence. It turns out the vines can imitate any sounds they hear, even perfectly mimicking human voices. Which, I guess could've been done without taking it too far, like, they're like parrots or something, they just repeat sounds without knowing what they mean. But it turns out they're not just repeating sounds: at one point the vines make it sound like two of the main characters have sex (who actually haven't), in a deliberate effort to make a third character jealous. The vines also do things like try to trick the characters into falling to their deaths, then literally laugh at them afterwards. It just feels cartoonish at that point. And the fact that the vines are intelligent, and therefore DELIBERATELY evil and cruel, honestly makes it less creepy to me than just having it be an un-thinking, un-feeling plant that just does what it does: not good OR evil, just a force of nature that these characters were unlucky enough to encounter.

[@cruella4341]

I saw the movie adaptation and yeah I can confirm that the tension was immediately killed. I’ll admit I was intrigued when the locals killed a small child that came in contact with the vine. That’s a very good set up that they’re willing to kill their young because this thing is THAT dangerous. But once the plants started playing mind games to make them turn on each other I found it too comical

[@loli_cvnt5622]

It's like that island where people went and just died. I think it's in italy? No one could figure out why. Except that story was real and it turns out there's a bunch of venomous snakes there and just.. no one knew about them.

[@cruella4341]

@@loli_cvnt5622 ok I know that’s really sad but it’s also kinda funny just cause of how completely random it is

[@kittykittybangbang9367]

@@loli_cvnt5622 can you tell me the name of this island so I can look at the story

[@verdethestarwarrior1088]

“And she started eating people and said ‘I AM GOD’” Are you sure you’re not describing Sonic.exe?

[@OsKarMike1306]

That just sounds like the graveyard shift of a Floridian hospital honestly

[@oneinathousand2156]

I used to be a fan of Monty Python, but one day I found a VHS that said “Monty Python’s Bloody Circus” but I thought it was just a misprint. I put the VHS in and the animated intro had reversed colors and the music was backwards, and at the end instead of the foot coming down with a raspberry noise it was a terrible scream. I thought it was just the VHS acting weird!... (you get the point)

[@AllyGatorAnimator]

0/10 not enough mentions of things being hyper-realistic for no reason. (Seriously though, your comment made me chuckle).

[@Jorvard]

To be fair Monty Python's Bloody Circus could have just been the mother or something taping the thing for her son and really don't liking the show.

[@jacoblessing7929]

As I stared at the sign above the train platform, the realization dawned on me with a soul-oppressing slowness: NOTLOB. Notlob!! It was Bolton backwards. Reeling in agony at the palindromic revelation, I fell to my knees, vision blurred with salt tears. I looked up, and saw the horrible vision once more: the once lively plumage pallid and dull, the beak, once sharp as a penknife, crooked and broken. I watched as the blood flowed freely from her empty eye-sockets and knew, finally and forever, the indelible dictum of my cruel stars: the parrot was me, and _I_ was dead.

[@parksonproductions5395]

Jacob Lessing omg you win lol best comment ever

[@miskatonic_alumni]

@@parksonproductions5395 Now that's what I call a dead parrot.

[@HyenaDandy]

There are times where some creepypastas go SO FAR 'too far' that they come back around as totally functional fantasy-horror, and those I like, but yeah, the worst are the ones that hit that in-between point. Like, I feel like part of the problem is it going too far, but also that at that point it also doesn't go far ENOUGH. I think one of the general rules of fantasy/horror fiction is that the main character (and ideally most of the supporting cast's) SITUATION can be bizarre, but their REACTION has to be real. Luke Skywalker may be a farm boy who discovers he has space magic and his dad is an evil robot who's the right-hand man to a wrinkly owl-looking dictator... But he reacts to situations like he is a farm boy, and his responses are commensurate to the stakes. If I go into a weird abandoned resort and some bizarre shit happens that I don't quite understand, I might go back and tell people about the creepy thing that happened. But if a giant reverse-Mickey tore off his head at me, my response will be that I need to get some proof, or get help, or SOMETHING. It was very real and dramatic and I have to respond dramatically. If all I do is run away and then go tell people on a forum, my response really doesn't match the stakes here. Call the police, or at least your friends who own guns, or SOMEONE. Go back with fire. Get someone ELSE to go back with fire. DON'T JUST TALK ABOUT IT AS IF THIS ISN'T THE MOST CRAZY THING IN HISTORY. It's not just that I can't suspend my disbelief because it's too unrealistic, I can't suspend my disbelief because you the protagonist are not reacting in a reasonable way. It's like if you got stabbed and then just put a band-aid on it and told your friends "Hey, funny story, yesterday I got knifed in a back alley! Weird, right?"

[@catherinestickels2591]

There's a tradeoff between wanting to end your story on the climax and getting the realism from taking the time to say "I tried going to the police, tried talking to friends, but everyone has been gaslighting me. I'm posting here as a last resort looking for help." You can get around this of course by prefacing the story with this, your audience is probably expecting a weird, spooky story anyways.

[@NxTTxT]

"Funny story, yesterday I got knifed in a back alley! Weird!" - Julius Caesar, somehow walking off an assassination attempt behind a Roman theatre

[@Lucifersfursona]

@@catherinestickels2591 “it’s unrealistic as well because the narrator is reacting in an unrealistic way” THANK you! Btw good writing advice for all genres but especially for horror. Good horror imo is like riding a line that could cross over into comedy; I still think abt “horrifying search and rescue stories” bc the writer was so good at dancing on that line. Or it’s very quiet and tragic in a human way like Hill House. I dunno horror is like really hard actually and I feel like a lot of people fuck up while writing it lol

[@Lucifersfursona]

@@NxTTxT I howled

[@imalonerdottie]

I would argue that there’s one big genre that breaks the realistic reactions rule, & that’s comedy. If your character doesn’t look real, they could very easily look like a joke.

[@Zorzdog]

“If you’re intimidated by real books” ....Ouch

[@nickwerstler5512]

To this day, my favorite creepypasta is "1999", which is about a sketchy child show the writer remembers from his youth and his search for answers as an adult. It is really long and well written, I won't say more than this in case someone wants to read it. It genuinely seems plausible, which makes it even better. It has stuck with me through all these years.

[@gedeonnunes5626]

NORMAL P°RN FOR NORMAL PEOPLE!!!!!! It scared me shitless when I read and, worst of all, it's not out of the realm of possibility, I can picture something like it happening in real life 😭😭😭

[@alexvalentine5091]

I loved the first part but the second one was kinda ehh for me (if I’m remembering correctly)

[@jarbasomena]

Damn this creeepypasta is so fucking good

[@sofa1273]

That and “Penpal” were my favorites

[@toxiczombiewolf5692]

I love that one too

[@TheAngryMarshmallow]

PEN PAL is an incredible creepy pasta that eventually got published. I would highly reccomend it as it's left me chilled to this day.

[@wardencommander616]

Angry Marshmallow Pen Pal wrecked me. I could see an argument about it going too far at the end, but by that point I was so engrossed in the characters and so desperate for closure that I would have been content with a lot worse than what we got. Either way, that story was phenomenal.

[@TheAngryMarshmallow]

wardencommander616 God I completely agree. I'm really glad there was closure and honestly the ending chilled me to the fucking bone and really stuck with me. I'm glad people know about Pen Pal. :)

[@Unraveledcrafter]

Loved this one. I bet channel zero tries to tackle this one ...

[@williamsullivan4640]

Borrasca is a well done creepypasta also

[@Binky6868]

Balloons is pretty creepy and effective but it seemed really poorly planned in terms of being the second chapter. I was completely out of the story by half way through boxes

[@beinoauph2735]

I remember seeing the picture of the expressionless doll-like woman in a hospital bed, it was creepy as hell. In the version I saw the text was that she appeared and they tried to help her, but her physiology was all messed up and the doctors figured out she wasn't quite human. In the version I saw there was no kitten and she didn't bite anyone, but she DID say "I am god", and that was the moment it stopped being creepy. Couldn't they have just toned it down

[@hecklife6636]

same. ive never heard the version jenny mentions, but i was never super deep into creepypasta anyway

[@gedeonnunes5626]

There's one I find very cool, but was kind of ruined by mindless reposting. Annora Petrova. The story itself was a solid enough one, there was this ice skater girl, very talented and all, she gets jealous of another girl, I guess (can't remember much), then she tries to create a wikipedia page to herself augmentating her feats and skills, but shit goes wrong, it backfires. How? I can't remember. The text itself insulted her after she saved the changes and came back to check up on her page? She suffered a horrible accident later in her life? Seriously, I can't remember for sure. The feeling I get is that, by the text itself, the supernatural element of this story was very ambiguous. Annora could have been trolled by a very mean wikipedia moderater while also going through the strange coincidence of having an accident. Or something else. The thing is, in the blog where it was originally posted (which I have no idea how I've first found, nor could I find it again the last times I searched for it), you had a thumbnail of her supposed wikipedia page, which looked like a normal article, with the picture of an ice skater girl doing some sick ice skating moves, nothing out of the ordinary, but then you clicked to expand it, which opened a new tab... And you had the image of this unhealthily thin woman with a text that adressed Annora as a little arrogant pig who got what she deserved (or something along those lines) and soon you, the reader, would share her destiny. This gimmick itself was what sticked to me, I legit felt scared for a bit, even though I knew it was a somewhat basic trick I had seen many times before online, but not in a scary context. It added to the ambiguous supernatural feel of it, like the page itself was haunted (even though I knew none of this was real). Not dissimilar from when you watch a good horror flick, you know It was all makeup and special effects, but much later it still lingers in your mind. The thin woman portrait was a major contributor XD As you'd expect, this story started being reposted all around, but no one cared about doing the thumbnail thing, so you straight up had the screenshot of the "twisted" wikipedia article on Annora Petrova, but not the regular-looking one, which took half the fun of it. Like I said, I tried searching for it again, used the google time filters, but to no success. Maybe I didn't search hard enough, I don't know. Maybe this story wasn't that good to begin with, like all other creepypastas. Anyways, I still think of it whenever creepypastas are brought up and it's the kind of thing that makes me have a soft spot for them to this day. Yeah, we got dumb stuff like spring-heeled Jane the killer or whatever, but it was all perfectly suitable fun horror stuff for teens online and introduced many kids to reading and creative writing, so maybe it was a fair price to pay????????????? XD

[@shamanicdude8605]

@@gedeonnunes5626 Penpal is really good too,one of the best creepypastas.

[@maxsync183]

Would have been way creepier if they had her trying to speak but not being able to. "I am God" is way way less scary than whatever our brains would think she was trying to say.

[@JustAskMeTV101]

In the russian sleep experiment when the guard goes "What are you?" I almost expected a "The Aristocrats!" punchline

[@lucalinadreemur9448]

I just want you to know if I ever become a god the first thing I'll do is replace every copy of that story with a version where everything is the same but that is the ending.

[@wagsss]

Umm the best creepypasta is obviously man door hand hook car door, i mean come on

[@sully2932]

Emma Wagstaff That was already an old scary campfire story from before the invention of creepypasta

[@emmablanche9954]

Emma Wagstaff i couldn’t agree more

[@handsomebrick]

starring HookHand©

[@Bybelial]

Hayley Sullivan it’s a meme

[@ColourRedCalls]

Hayley Sullivan wow! I had NO idea lol! I'm deaf and blind so

[@couldntthinkofacoolname9608]

When I was a kid I used to have these recurring dreams. I was on a rooftop of a skyscraper. The sky was reddish and clouded, like a thunderstorm blowing in over a sunset. I remember the wind howl. In front of me, there was always a shop stall, kinda like a rundown shack. A blue man stood behind the counter, and behind him sat shelves upon shelves full of jars. His eyes were blue, his skin was a deeper blue, and he had facial tattoos that were a blue that was deeper still; swirling around his eyes and cheekbones. I cannot remember what the jars were filled with. I had this dream on and off for years. I would trade him something for a jar, then I would wake up. I don't know what I gave him, i don't know what I got from him; but one night he gave me a jar for nothing, and I never had the dream again.

[@thanatoast]

He gave you the daba dee daba dai

[@marvelousTUD]

Dreams are powerful. My brother used to dream he was being chased and killed by Chucky from the Child’s Play movies. It was only when he managed to kill Chucky in his dreams that they finally stopped. Edit: fixed grammar

[@daianmoi8528]

This is a good creepypasta.

[@couldntthinkofacoolname9608]

@@daianmoi8528 true story

[@geneparmesan8748]

couldn't think of a cool name still works, well told!

[@heatherrockwell9012]

I think with the Candle Cove story you forget that when the Skin-Taker actually gets described, most of the time it's the people in the thread going "Hold on, I thought I dreamed that episode? There's no way that was on a children's program, right?" I don't think it's supposed to be a thing you believe, just a thing that starts out normal and just gets more and more disturbing, parallel to the experience of the people in the chat thread. ...Side note, is Abandoned By Disney just Bendy and the Ink Machine but worse?

[@MrSkeltal268]

You actually bring up a good point. For instance, the comedy bit “Too Many Cooks” and “This house has People in it” play on the mundane and kid friendly deteriorating into grim insanity. That’s honestly why I found Tom and Eric so funny, as someone who grew up watching a fair bit of public access programming, the absurdity of there being a “skin taker” makes sense. Hell even KZbin has issues with people making children focused content that portrays odd sexual and violent themes - there’s a weird connection of innocent children’s media and horrid adult themes. A lot of times we were so young it goes right over your head. For instance, in Rocko’s Modern Life, Rocko visits an establishment called the “Chicken Chokey” a euphemism for masturbation - went over my head as a child.

[@IamJacksSTD]

The whole thing with Candle Cove is that it was a slow build, too. Everyone discussing it was talking about the weird show, and it built up the show to the Skin Taker in a believable way. Like "yeah, okay, weird creepy kids program, bad puppets, grindy teeth guy, I get it."

[@lightwaves1859]

@@MrSkeltal268 i honest to god thought that i imagined invader zim as a kid. i was so young and all i remembered was the disgusting/grimy look of everything plus the earth being surrounded by metal pipes in the intro. i only caught it a couple times really late at night when i was like 7 or so. there's probably a couple more shows that i'm totally blanking on to this day. around this time i probably also watched that star trek:tos episode with commander pike in the weird wheelchair which fucked with my head for some time.

[@Jazzisa311]

Yeah I was thinking that too. It's about a bunch of people not being sure what they remembered wrongly and what really happened. I stilll think Candle Cove is excellent.

[@bonesandhearts5683]

Yeah it kind of feels like it was inspired by an actual conversation about Mr. Meaty

[@jacobiwankenobi9664]

One creepypasta I really enjoy is titled something like, "I'm a search and rescue officer for a forest service". It is one of the nuttiest stories ever. I almost wanna spoil some bits of it, 'cause it's really balls-to-the-wall random, but it's also depressing and really unnerving at times. It has completely surreal moments in it that make the forest setting feel like a macabre circus, but it also plays on the fear of losing someone in such an insane place. It does suffer with being kinda hilarious when it doesn't mean to be though. Like, a lot. I love it, but it makes me cough up a lung laughing at certain parts. I'd recommend it if you're more adept at scaring yourself with your own imagination.

It also mixes in a few realistic cases (mostly dead kids) to keep the out-there elements grounded.

[@toxiczombiewolf5692]

I like this one thought it was real at first until I checked the title but it's so odd and creepy and makes me never wanna go into wildlife

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

I read the thread of the story and the one story that saddened me is the death of the girl who got stabbed on a dead tree after falling down an embankment.

[@dragonsrule20201]

I think the overly-weird, almost humorous aspects actually worked REALLY well in this one, 'cause it was just a recollection of various situations over the years. Life is already weird by itself, so odd things will pop up time to time, but it also makes the environment seem well-rounded. I havent read it in a while, but I remember that it did a good job of making the forest seem like it's own little world that didnt exist to act on humanity or scare us, it just was what it was. Some aspects of it are scary, while others are just somewhat boggling, and some intercept with the environment we live in and gives deeply sobering, realistic instances of things as mundane but sad as a child getting lost. Very chef's kiss

[@OriginalDonutposse]

Yeah, the one read by Corpse Husband is the best. I listen to it frequently when I’m going to sleep

[@st4rz.of.perdition]

honestly my favorite story is the one where the person is like home alone with their dog and they wake up hearing something spooky but they lean their hand over to their dog by their bed and the dog gives their hand kisses and it calms them and they go back to sleep and it happens several times throughout the night with increasingly scary noises and stuff waking the character up but the dog’s kisses always calm them and they go to sleep and then in the morning they go into the bathroom and see their dog gutted and posed and the message “humans can lick too” written in the dogs blood that one always spooked me cause of the idea of not being aware you’re not alone and seeking an animal for comfort (which is stuff I do) and I just hate hate HATE the idea of like someone hiding under my bed or somethin also it’s shocking to me cause poor doggy :-(

[@cata4517]

the version I heard says "no solo los perros lamen" (which can be translated into "not only dogs can lick") and I find it even creepier

[@MasterOfViewership]

Not a CreepyPasta. Urban Legend

[@lugoorstar]

That's literally just a worse version of yoshikage kira from jojo part 4 when he killed Reimi

[@lugoorstar]

Yep that's why, it's a urban legend traced at least to 1982, not weird that it was included in the manga made in 1995. Weird not having and emphasizing on why just the dog had been killed, but an ok story, not deviating into incredulity.

[@MasterOfViewership]

@@lugoorstar Oh, it's been around longer than that. Variations of it go as far back as the early 70's

[@Thomas-bg3qd]

The best example, in my opinion, of an author taking their creepypasta too far is Ben Drowned. It starts off strong, a young student receives a copy of the game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and starts playing the saved game that belongs to the previous owner named Ben, then strange things happen in game - Link dies mysteriously, his body contorts, music playing backwards, in-game dialogue appearing at the wrong time. What supports the story more is the pretty convincing fake gameplay footage (which is on youtube) that goes along with it. What ruins it however is the part of the story where Ben's ghost begins to terrorize the author in the real world, and the author has nightmares of the Moon Children from the end of the game cutting off his face for a mask. It's probably the most famous creeppasta which starts off stong imo, but it just gets ridiculous.

[@5zakuro]

oh i remember checking it out because some of my friends were pretty into creepypasta but i think its length and relying on zelda/gaming knowledge turned me off so much i stopped midway

[@smileymctrashbag]

Agreed. It was actually really good, then gets really weak really quickly.

[@StormDatIsApproaching]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6nNaXiYrKhqhLc

[@AxelTabbertFrylestam]

Well, the author seems quite weird... Guess you could say he's a 21st century schizoid man

[@biblicallyaccurateangel1378]

hm.. the version i heard didn’t have the haunting part afterwards. in the end they were so traumatized they tried to give it back but the man wasn’t there anymore, so they moved on with life.

[@PascalOPM]

“And candle woman, I just made that one up.” She says as if it doesn’t completely fit in with all the other names she listed

[@darkpandalord3844]

*Me:* Jeez, this creepypasta is pretty spooky. *Jenny:* This creepypasta is over-the-top and dumb. *Me:* This creepypasta is over-the-top and dumb.

[@Howdyasdo]

cringe culture is dead

[@memberofchat2825]

you should learn to think for yourself its okay to disagree with someone

[@xeno9671]

@@memberofchat2825 no, that would just be to hard

[@protag64toons2.0]

@@Howdyasdohow’s that?

[@Howdyasdo]

@@protag64toons2.0 it's a little belief that it's better to genuinely like the things you like rather than prefacing why you like it with excuses so you can stay on the side of the understood majority with the "right opinion"

[@legendre007]

After "Ben Drowned," there were sooooooooooooooo many lame "haunted video game" creepypastas...

[@redsgrave2003]

Haunted video game pastas, haunted "lost episode" pastas. It's just stale

[@wrisst1712]

adamlundq I disagree, I think bed drowned is awesome mostly cause there isn't any real life danger, just a little world controlled by Ben. Not to mention the footage, it's one of the few good ones

[@Mike-zk5jc]

And one of those lame creepypastas was still Ben Drowned.

[@ActuallyJozu]

HYPER-REALISTIC BLOOD!!!

[@sweranero9976]

True, but there were some good ones, too. The Morrowind Mod creepypasta, for example

[@GiantArtProductions]

"Everyone stopped caring about suspension of disbelief, and they became ridiculous" "An arms race for the next scariest story" Haha, that's kinda like what happened to deathmetal lyrics.

[@86BullnoseOG]

That’s why death metal got yet another sub genre called “just stop it already-core”.

[@dabeastfromdaweast9788]

10:14 lmao I remember the Russian Sleep Experiment when I was a kid. Things that seem obvious to me in my 20's didn't seem so obvious when I was 13, like how quick someone _actually_ goes insane from lack of sleep. I knew enough to know why the story is scary in theory, but not enough to know why it's stupid in practice. If the story was rewritten with a bit more realism I still think it could be very compelling. Sleep is something literally everyone does yet it's something that still isn't fully understood (going with your thought about how these stories need to be relatable), and everyone gets unsettled when the right amount of insanity is thrown into the picture.

[@poweroffriendship2.0]

There's a Netflix film that I watched which I don't remember the name where the little girl is the only one can able to sleep while some other people, including her mom and her brother, can't sleep because of some freak accident. Even the unconscious from the hospital have been awakened from their slumber and everyone are freaking out that they all gonna die if they don't find the cure. Can't tell if this is accurate but I think people who have lack of sleep can cause to hallucinate.

[@mekinot]

​@@poweroffriendship2.0 Yup, as far as I know you can start to hallucinate if you go longer than 3 days without sleep. But like... seeing weird shapes in the wall, or seeing textures and patterns moving when they're not, simple stuff like that. Lack of sleep obviously affects the brain a lot, but the creepypasta still took things way too far lol If the people started seeing weird spooky hallucinations and that was it then it would've been believable.

[@askinredroads5132]

@@poweroffriendship2.0 they find out you can only sleep if you die and then come back, it was kind of silly honestly

[@ekki1993]

I mean, that's kinda the point. It's juvenile and only people who don't know better would like them. Which is fine for anyone liking it. But the fact that these are the creepypasta that rise to the top speaks terribly of the community and forums making these stories rise like the smelliest of turds.

[@grfrjiglstan]

I remember being pretty taken in by the russian sleep one, until the monologue at the very end. Just leave the endings ambiguous, guys. Our imaginations can fill in the gaps you leave.