The Internet Folklore Of Creepypastas

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Outro Song: "Driving in The Rain" by Timecrawler 82
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/ @timecrawler82
Sources
Slender Man Is Coming: Creepypasta and Contemporary Legends on the Internet
www.jstor.org/...
Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slenderman
link.springer....
Contemporary Legend Series 3 Volume 5
scholarworks.i...

[@pohjanlepakko]

"I am a grown 22 y/o and am not at all scared of creepypastas anymore" I told myself before running to turn on the light because listening to the listing of creepypastas in candlelight did in fact freak me out and brought me back to being 10 and hiding under a blanket while my best friend read creepypastas translated from english to our language

[@dozyote]

I'm definitely NOT here in the comments because the creepypasta images in the video are still too scary for me

[@tristansbubble9490]

me too pal

[@This-handle-is-already-taken.]

Same here, 22 years old and I'm going to go sit in the living room with my mom after watching this with the lights on and the curtains closed lol

[@scout8145]

I watched it using picture-in-picture on my phone, to make the video as small as possible lol

[@emilyemiranda]

27 here and same 🥲 i used to seek out creepypasta as a kid even though i KNEW it would terrify me and turns out at 27, I watch videos on it even though i know it'll terrify me lmao except now i live alone which makes it worse

[@kittycake4139]

Momo actually made me very mad because the artist that made her was actually a horror artist going to a event and shared their process of creating a statue based on folklore of a woman who died during childbirth.They called the statue Mother Bird after correction- the Japanese folklore of the Ubume and went to the art gallery only to come back to news reports of their artwork scaring kids. They actually made a public apology even though it wasnt their fault people were using their art to scare children or scam people. Also the artists name is Keisuke Aiso I seriously hope that artist is still creating and doing alright now. (All edits are corrections on the piece's inspiration)

[@leicean]

That’s so sad!!

[@kittycake4139]

@@leicean it really was. You can still find the article with the apology. I did correct the origins tho after looking it up the statue was actually based on Japanese folklore for the horror gallery they were apart of. They even made a statement after destroying the statue assuring children they had nothing to be afraid of.

[@peachyenigma]

i feel bad for them but at the same time momo really creeps me out (i'm a teenager, mind you, so it's even more pathetic lol) and for a while i had trouble sleeping because it would keep popping up in my head soo tldr it's a sad situation but i'm not really mad at pointing out how it scared kids...

[@leicean]

@@peachyenigma dude I’m 20 and it still unnerves me a lot and I think I have a relatively strong stomach for that kinda shit, but that was probably part of the artists intention, to make the viewer uncomfortable… but not like unaliving children lmao

[@kittycake4139]

@@peachyenigma well yeah it's supposed to be scary. It was for a horror gallery. I don't blame anyone for being afraid of the artwork but it's not the artists fault people were using their work as a way to actually contact and call children when they had nothing to do with those people that made the "challenge". I was more upset the artist had to apologize for something they had no part in and their work stolen as the face of it.

[@gilanela]

calling creepypasta "folklore" makes me think of like our future generations or aliens teaching slenderman as an explanation of human culture

[@annas03art32]

I'm taking an urban legend class right now and our last unit this semester is about Slenderman and pizzagate lmao

[@moogaboogaa]

oh they will

[@Izzy_jam]

Folklore and legends have always evolved with time, so it doesn’t really need quotation marks. Folklore and legends are just story telling, so many of the things on the internet will one day be seen the way we see stories from the 1800s and 1900s (and eventually even ancient stories).

[@thatcher6923]

@Izzy_jam Folklore isn’t just “old story” though. I agree that it counts as folklore, but not for those reasons. And only “internet folklore”, since since that is the specific space it exists in. It’s kind of its own unique thing compared to other types of folklore, which tend to have very ancient roots, even if completely to the current iteration

[@Izzy_jam]

@@thatcher6923you’re right I over simplified, but that’s why I started out by saying they evolved over time. Our current online stories are just the latest iteration of old stories, which historically is what legends and folklore are. They’re old stories that adapt and evolve with each generations retellings. I do disagree with it being it’s own category for what I said above. Many creepy pastas are rooted in older story telling, just like most legends and folklore.

[@bismuthhhhhhhhh]

I was really scared of smile dog when I first read it, and to be honest I still get super creeped out by it, so a while back as a coping mechanism I drew the smile dog as a hot furry bf with a 6 inch schlong And it did help dispel the stomach-dropping fear a little

[@mae.glitter]

this is my favorite comment 😭 also okay genuinely, i think this is a big reason why so many creepypastas got sexyman-ification. as a kid, jeff the killer and ben drowned and eyeless jack DID freak me out. did it make me feel better to remind myself they weren’t real? no. but did it make me feel better to pretend they were all my boyfriends? absolutely.

[@machinegunlament]

only 6 inches?

[@bashbashfulsson4540]

​@@machinegunlamentwhat does it say about us that this was my thought too?

[@chocolattemocha8512]

I was not prepared for the way the sentence was going to end and now I’m laughing. Honestly? Epic

[@Clownish.mp4]

@@mae.glitteroh god you made me remember a dark time in my life back when i was in the creepypasta fandom😭😭

[@amatiamat1449]

Fun fact about Blair Witch while we're talking about it, it was so effective at convincing people it was real that Rei Hance, the actress for Heather Donahue, reported that her mother had gotten sympathy cards from family and friends who thought she had passed. Apparently this wasn't the only way the film bled into her real life; she changed her name in 2020 because her original name was used in the movie.

[@Thegoofygobber]

I think the actors even had to appear on camera to confirm that they in fact, were very much alive

[@amatiamat1449]

@@Thegoofygobber I've heard that before, and originally that was going to be my Blair Witch Fun Fact but I couldn't find any sources to verify it so I had to recall the other ways people reacted due to thinking it was real

[@-tera-3345]

@@Thegoofygobber You might be confusing that with Cannibal Holocaust, where the director was put on trial for murder because people thought that at the very least the effects depicted in the movie were real, and the director had to call the actors to show up and be interviewed on TV to prove they were still alive.

[@Thegoofygobber]

@@-tera-3345 oh yeah! That’s the one I was thinking but got the movies mixed up in my head. Edit: I was thinking of the animal deaths that were in the CH and somehow thought it was Blair Witch.

[@shinyskunk]

Fun fact: when I was in college there was a tumblr blog where you could submit Pokemon-themed creepypasta, I guess that got big after the Pokemon Black creepypasta blew up. I wrote one on a whim and promptly forgot about it. Flash forward to today, about 15 years later, and I recently found out that my story apparently got really big in France and I found like five different videos of French youtubers reading it in like, the past year. Idk it really put into perspective the way creepypasta spreads in a folklore-like way!

[@linn_stn]

that's so cool!! what's the creepypasta called?

[@shinyskunk]

@@linn_stn It was called Lonely Pikachu 🙈 It's not very good, but, I guess that doesn't matter with creepypasta.

[@lauraanderson8785]

I just searched for "Lonely Pikachu" on youtube to see if there really were videos covering it and I did find some in French like you said. Too bad that I don't speak it because it would've been fun to hear it.

[@shinyskunk]

​@@lauraanderson8785 I mean it's very cringe tbh you didn't miss much, but I think the original story is still on the fuckyeahpokemoncreepypasta tumblr blog.

[@sourwitch2340]

that is so fascinating. also, this English-language video (kzbin.info/www/bejne/fGXVeqqhmclppZo) has some helpful links. the French Pokewiki entry for the story (auto-translate helps here, weird though how the main character seems consistently referred to as 'the author') and the post on f yeah pokemon creepy-pasta.

[@HesterLeveret]

Had to break the news to my MOTHER that the Russian Sleep Experiment was fictional last year so there's one person right there.

[@peggyclasse3697]

I'm the second

[@rayvonistired]

My grandpa is like completely convinced that the Russian sleep experiment is real and thinks that the gass they used was meth (idk It doesn't makes sense to me either lol)

[@ciatagni1345]

Yeah my mother introduced me to it as actual fact. When I found out it wasn't real I felt so stupid lmaooo. Now I have to break the news to her

[@michaelkeller5555]

​@@peggyclasse3697I'm the third, and I'm like 2 breaths from 30 😂

[@callies3789]

omg me too

[@Ginnythevillager]

Fun fact: Squidwads suicide was referenced in the show. There was a scene were there were a bunch of tvs flipping through many different channels and at one point they showed the infamous squidward suicide face. It’s not a carbon copy but anyone who knew of it would recognize it. Later airings of the episode took out that scene and replaced it with a baby squidward. Which honestly was just as disturbing lmao

[@archerymidnight3422]

Damn, didnt know that. Thought you were gonna mention the other episode, where he's pulling on a rope (very heavily implied to be a noose) while saying "I just can't seem to get happy. Maybe this will help"

[@melonlord4889]

I saw that episode when it aired lol but I believe it was them looking through doors trying to find a house they were trying to deliver to

[@arrow_of_ravenclaw5155]

I grew up in the height of creepypasta popularity. My friends and I would even make our own cringy creepypastas on the playground

[@micahfoley9572]

You know when you see someone on the bus suffering from a wardrobe issue that they're not aware of, and you need to decide if you want to embarrass them a little now to save them from major cringe later? And your brain starts manufacturing scenarios where "maybe they wanted their pants tucked into only one sock" to absolve yourself of responsibility? I so hate to be that guy, but I would wanna know, and just in case it's not a typo... its usually said "height of popularity" SORRYSORRYSORRYSORRYsorrysorrysorrysorryimsosorry

[@walnut_raisin2621]

i remember one of my first friends at my youth group was this girl who adored jeff the killer. She had the classic emo haircut and eyeliner. It was so fun finally finding someone who knew who tf ticci toby/muffins/etc was

[@ifuckedurmom]

So i was more on the fanfic side of the creative writing phase teens have, only to majorly cringe about it later, but somehow, the people in my class I'd have expected some impeccable horror stuff, were too mediocre and the more popular stereotypical girly girl wrote creepy pastas about these local legends we'd have in our region and they were among the best works i have witnessed from someone in my age group at the time, like my stuff was low budget porn compared to her storytelling, it was kind of a shame imo that the education system failed her so bad that this type of creative writing is basically unachievable without major extra work done unless you're like one in a million ig or have earned like some kind of acclaim which is generally easier through the academic route based on the level of education in my country

[@tychopanda]

​@@micahfoley9572You would have been less annoying if you'd just put the correction and left it at that.

[@abbythecat01]

YES! I had that same exact experience!

[@ravenfemme8265]

ive never doubted that teya is canadian less than when i hear her pronounce the word "pasta"

[@alsonolan]

Ok, someone else noticed, thank the bone octopus.

[@aine965]

How DO you pronounce it in America??? Because it seemed normal to me

[@petalchild]

​@aine965 the a sound is like that in garage, not like that in magazine.

[@Cosmic_Mj]

@@aine965paw-sta instead of pah-sta

[@kakonthebed]

@@Cosmic_Mjwhatttt? I had no idea the American accent elongated the A on pasta. I’m from South Africa, we have some weird pronunciations too, but nothing could’ve prepared me for pawwwsta lol. (Some people here say “pizza” like “putzah”)

[@drock7310]

Creepy Pastas give me such an unbelievably specific feeling of nostalgia; sitting in my bedroom, late at night, rain pouring outside. I’m wrapped in a blanket and listening to KZbinrs reading creepy stories, scrolling through old forums with photoshopped photographs that I wholeheartedly believe in. It makes me happy that I grew up during this specific time in human history

[@frognamedjog]

I know! I actually miss it

[@PorgWitch]

Literally same, I was madly in love with CreepsMcPasta🤣

[@anaionescu8913]

I actually believed the Slenderman creepypasta when I was 10-11. I couldn't sleep well for a week after playing the first Slender phone game

[@witchskee]

Dude, the first time I ever heard the Russian Sleep Experiment story, I was so freaked out. The image that generally goes along with it haunted me for months, and I definitely thought it was real for the longest time. Mostly because it would not surprise me, to this day, if it DID happen. That time in history is legitimately full of horrors and crimes against humanity, this would have just been another sad and horrifying tale.

[@dmitryboardman9762]

If it's any consolation, the famous image of the patient is just a stylistically aged photo of a foam sculpture Halloween prop called Spazm which was once sold by the defunct company Morbid Enterprises.

[@tereziamarkova2822]

@@dmitryboardman9762 Thanks! I knew it had to be some kind of fake bullshit, but I wasn't really sure what exactly. That thing freaked me the fuck out, so props to the maker, its purpose was to give people nightmares, and it definitely does that very well. The actual story not so much, just because it was so stupid and over-the-top. Like, my dude, stop breaking my suspension of disbelief, that's not how sleep deprivation works.

[@lucig7415]

I took a college course about folklore and was assigned to make a presentation on urban legends, i added a whole section about how creepypasta are a twist on the genre and introduced my professor to what slenderman was, she LOVED him and said that he did qualify as folklore.

[@laindarko3591]

Introducing professors to internet culture is so fun. I wrote an essay connecting the backrooms to classic Gothic haunted house novels and my prof loved it. Although it made him check out what 4chan was and he said it "seemed like a spooky place" in and of itself 😂

[@NicholeParker]

You would’ve loved the anthropology class I took on Ghosts, Witches, and Monsters (I think that was the name) Basically looked at culture and how our we can learn about what people experienced in a time from the monsters they created and what that says about them

[@OpossumIRL]

As a folklorist I’m really glad you talked about how we’re actually studying this in the field!! Several of my professors have studied creepypastas as folklore and I include several in the class I teach on supernatural folklore

[@themushroommonarch]

I remember reading creepypasta x reader fan fiction. Turns out I was just really into the found family trope.

[@themushroommonarch]

Also, my first words to my now best friend was "do you want to explore slenders woods with me."

[@cupofstew]

SAME OMG I liked the found family trope and creepy things so creepypasta fanfiction was everything to me

[@emofurryboyfriendasmr]

i read so many creepypasta x readers 💀💀 it was insane

[@worknotinprogress7172]

Yup. Same thing for me lol

[@allenroy1632]

Same, but it's also how I found wattpad, so ya win some you lose some lmao

[@jmhaugen4757]

Strange Aeons has morphed from a KZbin content creator into a legitimate Internet historian. And I'm here for every amazing take.

[@BakingBean]

As somebody who had to do an English project on a folk story and chose to do an essay on the Russian Sleep Experiment and why it worked as a folk story, I feel both vindicated and validated. Thanks Strange

[@becauseimafan]

Ha! Sweet, that's awesome!! 👏

[@washipuppy]

Russian Sleep Experiment was such a god-damn good Creepypasta. It had enough realism to it that it was JUST plausible enough to make it extra unsettling, and it had vibes of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"

[@ollympian_art]

An interesting part of the “we know the origins of creepypastas” is that while we may know the origins of the stories themselves, we don’t always know the origin of everything about them-namely, the images they use. We have yet to find the original version of the Jeff the Killer image; we’ve found really early edits dating all the way back to 2005, but not the original image, and we don’t know who that image is *of* or who took it. We don’t know the origin of the original Backrooms image (although the Backrooms isn’t really traditional creepypasta I’d count it as internet folklore), where it was taken, or who took it. We didn’t know until pretty recently what the original Russian Sleep Experiment picture was from (it’s a really heavily edited picture of a Halloween decoration by the way). There are even some creepypastas with dubious, still murky origins like Cameraheads or that one about the Soviets killing God. The original 4chan post describing the first SCP was missing for *years*. In that way, creepypastas still have an element of mystery regarding their origins that really contribute to their folklore and intrigue.

[@zombieplush]

not to be an "ermmmm actually" guy, but the origins of the russian sleep experiment image have been known for a while now, its just that it only recently became somewhat mainstream knowledge!!!

[@j-skullz]

I recommend the video by the KZbinr Scaretheater where he tries to find the origins of well-known "cursed" images, and I think he actually looks into the Jeff the Killer one IIRC . There is a lot he can't find simply because of the age of a lot of them, accounts and websites not being up/active anymore etc. But the ones he does find are super interesting, he does an interview with someone who took one of the pictures (or was in it, can't remember) and the context around why they decided to take it is super mundane, like they were smoking in their parent's attic or something and wanted to take a photo of their friends sitting on the floor, and one of them was wearing some kind of costume for some reason which added to the weirdness. it just looked creepy because of how they framed it/the lighting. Just goes to show our perception of things can be soo different from reality, especially with photography. It's sad though because the internet is still a young technology and there is already so much lost media on it. There are videos I remember watching on KZbin as a kid/teen that are just gone. Preservation is so important

[@griseldaflores6362]

@@j-skullz I thought it was found out that it was a photoshopped photo of a girl who was being bullied. Found on 4chan or something with a side-by-side comparison I think. It's pretty sad and mean :(

[@ScreamingAllTheTime]

@@griseldaflores6362that turned out to be a hoax. The image was from some randos blog of a girl she was beefing with I guess.

[@griseldaflores6362]

@@ScreamingAllTheTime Ahhhh

[@lucysugar3884]

Are we going to talk about Strange basically writing a full work-cited essay academically analyzing Creepypastas as folklore Like this is practically in MLA format and she did it for us. An icon

[@adamtherock2008]

Nothing ever beat Candle Cove. Short but extremely effective and played on the whole folklore aspect by it having multiple people on a forum remembering the show differently

[@fennelfin]

YEAHHHHH I REMEMBER HEARING ABOUT THAT

[@user-ws5qf1jk2p]

Bro, when I was a kid I was convinced that “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack” WAS “Candle Cove”. I had seen “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack” when I was even younger than I was when I was talking about “Candle Cove”. I ended up sounding like a total liar when I claimed that not only was “Candle Cove” a real television show, but it was something I remembered because I watched it. I had actually just been confusing a real television show I had watched for a pretend one 😂

[@pennyforyourthots]

Wasn't candle cove made by the guy who did the Wyoming incident or something? I vaguely remember hearing that they are in the analog horror space now.

[@TheRach995]

Im pretty sure it was made by Kris Straub, the creator of Broodhollow, local 58, and co creator of (my personal, non-horror fave) the MAPPY cartoon for shiftylook back in the day. Correct me if im wrong though.

[@tophatturtle6452]

what’s interesting about candle cove for me is i grew up watching crashbox on hbo family, which i’ve heard referred to as “real life candle cove”

[@randomletters8276]

I remember the first Creepypasta I read was called Lightning, about a kid who sees lightning every night but it ended up being a camera flash. I was so paranoid every time it started raining for days after that 😖

[@teazen_tea]

Oh my god I remember that one

[@spookygreg]

When I was a teen and in a mental hospital, my roommate was diagnosed with psychosis. they believed the Ben drowned story so much that they hallucinated the dude and apparently that guy told them to do rlly bad stuff 😮 creepypastas + young teens with mental illness = not a great time

[@TheRach995]

Yup. When i was like 11, my friend showed me an image of jeff the killer, i was already a bit unusually afraid of the dark for someone my age, and this was my first real experience with the uncanny valley effect so it really scared me and I got paranoid for years afterward. I'm not sure how much i really "believed" in it (didn't even know the backstory of the image for a while, just found it terrifying. Once i did know the story i thought it was hillariously silly but the image itself still got to me.) but the fear was real let me tell you. I never hallucinated & i dont think it dipped into genuine delusion (partially bc kids tend to already have a hard time with the whole reality/fiction seperation, and partially bc i did know on some level my fear wasn't rational, i just couldn't control it) but it definitely set off some undiagnosed anxiety and OCD symptoms. I still have a hard time looking out the window when i'm alone at night sometimes bc i just have this deep-seated fear of seeing a distorted face pop up out of nowhere. I don't blame the friend who showed me though, he didnt think that it was actually scary and didn't expect me to be legitimately freaked out by it. Plus he's abt a year younger than me so its not like he was some older kid intentionally trying to mess with me. We're still friends and he's a great dude.

[@elizaleorowe8384]

@@TheRach995I had a similar effect from that whole Momo situation 6ish years afo

[@TheRach995]

@@elizaleorowe8384 i was too old for momo to really get to me when it happened (i think i was around 17-19 when it was a thing, and i'm approaching 22 now) but i can totally see it inducing the same response in a kid that the jeff the killer image did for me. I'm sorry you went through that, living in fear for any reason is awful.

[@scout8145]

@@TheRach995​​⁠​⁠​⁠That same image was a common image for “screamer” pranks (jumpscare videos) back in the day, so it’s possible that’s where the fear of it as a jumpscare came from! But don’t worry, internet culture has evolved, and you don’t see those kinds of videos anymore unless you’re intentionally seeking them out. However, I would be careful around known horror/scary youtube videos if you find that image particularly disturbing.

[@TheRach995]

@@scout8145 oh it doesn't bother me most of the time now. I remember screamer pranks, lol, they used to really mess with me but not so much these days, and yeah they're not super common anymore anyway. I just occasionally get a little hint of that old paranoia when I look out a window in the nighttime, but it doesn't hinder me like it used to.

[@FoldingIdeas]

Really loved the conclusion here, fantastic observations.

[@theplebeian2706]

Love your work! I've watched your videos about Flat Earthers and Geocentrists multiple times! Cool to see your comment here!

[@thesesillkids7911]

OMG Folding ideos, you make mestiff!

[@okqmia]

my older sister used to scare me with creepypastas and internet myths when i was younger. but when i actually got scared bc of the stuff she would tell me, she'd start explaining how these things weren't real and how people liked adding to the narrative to make it seem more realistic, and conversations like this would always lead to her explaining something very deeply human to me and every single time without fail she would start talking about neuroscience, lol. i cant talk to her a lot anymore bc she's studying neuroscience abroad, but your videos always have that vibe for me. like a cool older sister or a weird cousin you see once a year just explaining something that maybe you weren't young or old enough to understand, but somehow it's always something much more deeper, much more human than that.

[@alch3myst]

…ok bud.

[@l3dz3bra66]

This is so nice you should let your sister know, even though she's busy!

[@CreepsMcPasta]

Hearing you talk about the classics was a blast from the past. Thank you

[@fairyprincehada]

Omg I loved you growing up!! What a time to be alive

[@doodlebop878]

And thank you for ur service creepy king

[@mrfoozy47]

⁠@@fairyprincehadasadly, he would have probably loved you while you were growing up as well 😬

[@karkador]

ew you

[@macejetzer897]

Your videos gave me so many sleepless night of fear when I was a kid and I can’t thank you enough for kindling my love for horror and creepy things

[@Has-uo1lq]

Side note to the whole idea of lost origins in folklore, the iconic Jeff the killer image actually has lost origins. It is theorized that it was originally a joke or challenge on a (Japanese iirc) 4-chan esque site as maybe a joke or a challenge where people kept on editing the image until it became what it is today, but we still dont have the original unedited image. there has been a number of hoaxes, but as far as i know we still dont have the original image. the forums are lost to time and the image is so heavily edited that it's hard to reverse it.

[@2yearoldeastercandy935]

I heard it was a bunch of guys bullying an overweight woman, editing her face to look worse and worse, which is horrible. i've seen the "real image" in a youtube video before, it being the woman looking into the camera with a bored expression, but i cant remember what video or who made it, sorry. but it could also be one of the hoaxes

[@juiceyborger]

@@2yearoldeastercandy935i think that one was disproven, although the image that was presented as the "previous edit" in that version of events is arguably scarier than the one we know as "jeff the killer" today! still kinda freaks me out

[@chameleonhrt]

I was too old to have been part of the creepypasta phenomenon. My childhood was filled with reading "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". Those photos scarred me for life.

[@dragoncatoverload]

To be fair, those were definitely the predecessors to creepypasta.

[@sa.moss4410]

I absolutely love the idea of a fucked up spongebob episode just hangin out on a tape in an abandoned psych hospital??? Like babe wot

[@ToxPhy]

I SAW HIM BLINK! 😮

[@Duraludon884]

When I was in high school, for two days we weren't able to search things on the Internet that contained the string "momo," presumably because of the creepypasta making a resurgence in popularity. Of course, these were the exact days that my biology teacher wanted to teach the class about the concept of "homomorphism," so no one could Google the subject. That's the most it affected us.

[@percyorsomething2641]

I was so terrified of Momo when I was younger. I was a kid when that was the big creepypasta going around, and i genuinely thought she was going to kill my parents in their sleep. To this day, the photo terrifies me, not because I'm actually afraid of it, but because it makes me feel like I'm 12 again, waiting for Momo to murder my family.

[@mourningcttlfsh]

me too it literally chills my spine and i KNOW its not real or anything it just??? freaks me out no matter what

[@marveludus]

It mostly annoyed me because my nickname is Momo, and people would not stop bringing up the creepypasta... However, I can promise that at least THIS Momo is not going to murder your family

[@dakotashadow1]

Bruh, I'm still scared of the photo.

[@sirstabby5629]

i hate that wretched thing for stealing the name Momo from the far superior cryptid, The Missouri Monster

[@BlueShadow7777]

For those who don't know, "momo" is supposed to represent a specific youkai, a spirit of japanese folklore. She's supposed to be an ubume , who are the spirits of women who died in childbirth, and are completely harmless, they just want to take care of their children

[@mniellie]

My favorite creepypasta is "Ted the Caver", and I think it's just so underrated. One of those stories I discovered as an adult and still scared the shit out of me.

[@platypusparasol9825]

have u seen the new recreation in the form of video journals? maybe give it a shot if u havent

[@liara3248]

Didn't expect to get a discussion of folklore studies and how older academics are ignoring a big part of modern culture but I'm here for it

[@missybarbour6885]

I really like the end where you talk about what real fears these urban legends play upon, because... let's be honest. Most of us who grew up on the internet DID see something terrifying online that we were TOO YOUNG to be seeing lol. Maybe we were reading about sex before we were ready, or watching true crime when our parents wouldn't even let us watch CSI, or finding KZbin uploads of The Exorcist. Maybe the reason we wondered if "Lavender Town" could be real is that it doesn't feel THAT different from your friend tricking you into playing The Scary Maze at a sleepover lol

[@Howdyasdo]

When I was 8 I was obsessed with creepypastas. My favorite one was "humans can lick too" and still gives me the creeps now that I have a dog lol

[@maximum7790]

what is it about bc that’s one hell of a title lmao

[@Roisin3107]

That unlocked a memory 😅 that freaked me out so much as a kid!

[@kkuudandere]

That's still one of my favorites! (along with The Portraits )The short ones that aren't too elaborate and just play on a very human fear are the best to me.

[@strawb3rrymi1k_]

​@@maximum7790it's about an old woman who can't see very well I think and she has a dog that licks her hand to let her know that the house is safe at night but someone breaks into the house and kills the dog but they lick her hand to trick her into thinking things are ok correct me if I got any of this wrong I haven't heard this story since I was in like 6th grade or something

[@maximum7790]

@@strawb3rrymi1k_ ew wtf 😭

[@wwklnd]

Smiledog actually has a known creator! The original story was created by Michael Lutz, he talks about it on one of the podcasts he co-hosts on the Ranged Touch network. He's got a Ph.D. in Early Modern English Literature and is a game studies scholar, I *think* he mentioned it on Game Studies Study Buddies which is a podcast he co-hosts with Cameron Kunzelman, another games studies scholar with a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies I believe. Finding this out many years after first reading the story online felt like such a fun coincidence, just hearing it on one of my favourite podcasts.

[@trix6130]

ive known momo was just a sculpture since it first came out and yet the image creeps me out in literally any context

[@wickedthing6068]

i find her cute

[@darthchalupa2485]

I remember in college i was in class and my professor was talking about different folklore creatures and what anxieties and/ or lessons they represent. He then used Slenderman as a modern example arguing that the reason this character became so popular online is he represents the anxiety around corporate surveillance and power. A faceless man in a well kept business suit always lurking on the edges, watching you, ready to steal children away when you're not looking in order to sustain itself. Ever since then thats all I can imagine when i think of Slenderman

[@ouijacorn]

I'm embarrassed to admit it but I was *terrified* of the red edit of SmileDog when I was in COLLEGE. Granted, I didn't believe the story itself, I just thought the image itself was scary. Now I love her, she's my favorite CreepyPasta icon, and my brother made me a SmileDog plushie for my birthday a few years ago. (Also, Man Door Hand Hook Car Door > Who Was Phone. That's my hot take.)

[@verityharcombe4325]

Literally same, I didn't believe the story at all but I got SUPER spooked by the darker edit of smiledog (the one with the hand).. looking back now it's the goofiest thing and I feel dumb lmao

[@iurlure]

Same here! The red version made me super uncomfortable when I was 16. Some of my friends started using it as a meme at the same time, and I literally had to ask them to stop because I was genuinely unnerved.

[@ouijacorn]

@@iurlure It still gives me a little fright if I see it unexpectedly, but I basically just made myself look at it until it stopped bothering me (she's in my lap now, I'm making her watch this video).

[@HeyItsNovalee]

Watching this made me realize just how much of an impact some of these stories had on me. Like going into this I was like “none of these will scare me cause I’m way too old to still be scared of creepypastas” until I remembered just how many of them had to do with being driven to insanity and eventually killing yourself or becoming a monster. The thing is I’ve recently discovered that I may have OCD, and it’s been making me realize so many things about my childhood that make so much more sense now. It was always that element of spiralling into horrible intrusive, violent and suicidal thoughts that so many of these stories included that terrified me. Because I could always imagine how horrible that would be and how easily it could happen. Because there have been times in my life where I’ll get scared of something and I just cannot stop thinking about it, no matter how hard I try to ignore it or forget it it won’t go away, the thought keeps coming back. And because that was literally a part of these creepypastas it made it so easy to think that I was in fact being haunted by them, and that eventually I’d go so crazy that I would kill myself like the stories said. I still have a certain fondness for creepypastas, but I just realized how insidious some of these stories can be lol. Because you don’t realize that some people with different mental illnesses really do experience terrifying situations like this, it’s not all just made up or a fantasy. I think it’s kind of part of how a lot of horror conventions rely on making mental illnesses or disabilities or other marginalized identities into the horror. Like how many horror movies there are where the serial killer has DID or is a psychopath or has some sort of tic or is transgender or has some other kind of uncommon physical condition. I think it’s worth talking about how a lot of horror is based on real disabilities, we should acknowledge that more. Not to say that horror needs to stop existing or something, I love horror and psychological thrillers and somehow even though I have experienced these horrible psychological fears myself, exploring the psyche and the terrifying parts of our brains is endlessly interesting and riveting to me. I guess it kind of adds something to the horror for me knowing exactly how true it can be.

[@sunnybugz]

creepypasta were SUCH a big trigger for my OCD !!! ive had it since i was 5 or so, but in my preteens/early teens, creepypasta created such a cycle for my obsessions. even now that i know it isn't real, i still have to be careful watching anything related to it bc it can be a huge ocd trigger

[@HeyItsNovalee]

@@sunnybugz I’m glad to hear I’m not alone!!

[@starfox3331]

Fun fact, the image used in the Russian sleep experiment creepy pasta is actually an animatronic named "Spasm" from Morbid Enterprises. Unfortunately it is no longer in production. :(

[@finch4309]

me and my friends used to hit “play” on youtube readings of creepypastas at the same time and listen to them during art class (there were 3 of us so we couldnt just share earbuds). it was really funny bc they would always be ever so slightly out of sync, so they would react to something and then i would react to it. also i am very much raising my hand in the “genuinely thought the russian sleep experiment was real” gang

[@siilverREAL]

cant thank you enough for not including any jumpscares/ trimming them out in this video. i have like. really severe anxiety and a lot of horror creators to this just to be silly and quirky but it basically renders the content unwatchable for me. i really love ur content and im glad i was able to watch all the way through !!!!!

[@mollywaup]

A little saddened you didnt talk about the horny side of creepypasta culture but it was so fun listening to the lore of these again. Makes me dive back in

[@Vitoria-ug9cc]

I think Polybus might be the first case of folklore around technology. Polybus is undeniably a folk lore, passed around orally in arcades, but it's a technological product and there have been recreations of the game playable today, so very much like .exe games and lavender town tales. I think it's an essential link that marks this transitional period between oral and digital.

[@Obijaunecanoli]

I was so into Slenderman lore when I was 14 that I gave myself a little bit of a complex about it where I was consuming so much content that I was having sleep paralysis about him and was jumpy at school because of it

[@teagannam]

Father Strange you’ve been FEEDING us lately, we keep getting banger after banger, it’s honestly kinda crazy. I hope Teya isn’t overworking herself tbh, but god bless you for all the prime internet lore education lately

[@9thelof9]

one of my fave tumblr posts is legitimately the one thats like "YOUNG MAN! get yourself off the floor. I said YOUNG MAN! man door hand hook car door"

[@featheredskyblue]

I once accidentally snarked my way into creating a middle school urban legend that apparently survived for at least a decade, and it really laid the groundwork for my interest in creepypastas as folklore. It's so fascinating to watch these things grow and change and take on a life of their own.

[@elizaleorowe8384]

Story time???

[@Amazinglexi3]

Fr you’re just gonna drop that tiny bit of information and not give us the whole story?

[@Benjamin_Kraft]

Come on, give us the story!

[@Venomfilledcats]

Come on tell us???

[@featheredskyblue]

Okay, so the story! I went to middle school in a century-old building that still had some odd quirks from its decades of existence. One remnant of the building’s construction was a large hook at the top of the stairwells that had been used for winches and pulleys. When I was ten or eleven, a classmate and I were talking about how many people would accept rumors as fact without thinking about whether they were even plausible. Our example - uttered sarcastically - was that a young boy in the 1930s had hung himself from that hook and that the third floor landing on the south side of the school was haunted by his lonely ghost. We may have gone on a bit in our descriptions, but then we transitioned right back to talking about how people would probably believe it despite how unrealistic it was. The hook is so far from the railing! You’d be more likely to fall off the railing than to ever hook a rope over it! Who could ever believe that? Besides, the school had been a high school at that point, not a middle school! Other kids probably overheard, but we did think that our sarcasm and framing would be enough to eliminate any possibility of its reality. Smash cut to over a decade later, when I was a college grad picking up a bit of extra money by tutoring some neighborhood kids. An English assignment around Halloween took us to the topic of ghost stories, and it turns out that the kid I was tutoring had heard that story himself a few years prior when he was in that building. The core details were the same. They had added bars to the railings to keep kids from climbing on them and subsequently falling off, but that only added to the tale - clearly, they were added after this tragedy to prevent future students from suffering the same fate. Because students rotated through the school and time is wibbly when you’re ten, those bars could be from any point in the school’s history as far as they were concerned. The story is probably dead by now, since the building has transitioned to other uses by the school district. But it’s nice to have been a small part of a spooky story, and it gave me a real love of watching stories grow, shift and gain a life of their own. I only wish I had been able to see this one evolve instead of checking back in on it a decade later.

[@Wceric1]

15:54 I remember Momo was taken VEEEEEEEEEERRY seriously at our schools when it was floating around a few years ago. Like, teachers got entire schools to gather into the halls for assemblies warning the kids not to go looking for the momo videos and doing PSA’s about self harm n stuff Like it was so serious that I remember you couldn’t even search the word ‘MoMo’ by itself on some social media’s cuz it’d be censored and HEAPS of parents at the time were getting super worried about their kids using the internet etc etc. idk if anyone else my age remembers how seriously momo was taken but I sure as hell do chdndhsndhdn

[@LegendsP137]

I remember one of my friends just straight up telling me the Dead Bart Creepypasta beat for beat in Science class one time and it worked so much then just reading it. Not like it scared me but it felt more like the episode could "have be real" by hearing from another person lol

[@matheusm.santana6527]

I got into creepypastas in 2015 - 2016. Most of them had already been written, and i was really into the fanatt edits to edgy music, and crossover comics ppl made. So in a way, i engaged with the "fandom" way before consuming the "canon/sourcer" material.

[@diegodankquixote-wry3242]

I worship the cringe of creepypastas. Thanks for giving me my monthly injection Æons!

[@MsMoonDragoon]

I remember one I read that had someone repeatidly checking the attic to find nothing after hearing footsteps. it just ends with "oh. It walks on ceilings".

[@Lonely_Raven_666]

15:40 I can't even tell you how relieved I am that it is a sculpture. Obviously I knew it wasn't real but to know what it actually is makes me feel a lot better

[@becauseimafan]

I was today years old when I first saw it, and it actually made me jerk my screen away from my face it was that creepy! The reveal just seconds later of what it actually was, like thank f**k! Thanks Mr Father Strange! 😄❤️

[@annemarievanpeer120]

One story from the creepypasta website that has haunted me for years now is about scientists trying to learn what the afterlife is like, and a girl is brought in to talk to her extremely recently deceased little brother and interview him on what he witnesses as he goes into the afterlife. The constantly rising dread for that one was really intense. I remember it being pretty well-written, so I'd kinda love to revisit it. If anyone knows what it's called let me know!

[@himbojerry]

I think that one is called “my brother died when I was a child but he kept talking”!

[@annemarievanpeer120]

@@himbojerry ohh thank you!! Yeah that sounds like it's the one!

[@autumnfrost-art]

The most terrifying one for me was Ted the Caver. I think it's probably too old to be considered a creepypasta - I consider it something that would have inspired a lot of people to write horror though. It's basically an old angelfire journal that you click through to read these updates. It feels very documentative and intimate granted the site setting of angelfire lol. It's pre-creepypasta monster culture so you never actually see anything. It's all environmental horror and deeply unsettling images of a real cave the author dived in.

[@dozyote]

Oh my god, I recommend Ted's Caving Page to everyone when the topic of internet folklore comes up and I've only ever met a couple people who had heard of it previously. Genuinely some of my favorite internet horror I've ever come across and still holds up today

[@autumnfrost-art]

@@dozyote Yeah it's basically everything I love about creepypasta and nothing I hate about it.

[@becauseimafan]

I looked this up, and you can still read this on angelfire?? I had no idea angelfire was still around! Bookmarking for later - thank you for sharing this! 😁

[@SairynadeX3]

I still think about that and the forest/park ranger ones (the stairs in the woods oooo) and every time I'm like " oh I should re-read these" and I still get spooked

[@mniellie]

Yes!! Ted the Caver is still the only creepypasta that will keep me up at night, years since the last time I've read it.

[@tessie555]

I'm so glad to have experienced the height of creepypastas in the 00's and 10's. Me and my old friend in 5th grade used to draw Jeff the Killer and Eyeless Jack and tell each other our renditions and continuations of their stories. Miss you, Gracie.

[@Setashi]

The spooky KZbin woman is talking about spooky stories now? We have truly been blessed.

[@D3ad_art]

11:48 is from my favorite piece of media called EverymanHYBRID, an online/KZbin arg and the fact I'm seeing it in a strangeæons vid fills me with joy

[@Kirkeyressa]

our hyper-realistic mother is here to educate us once more

[@SheepUndefined]

I was really into creepypastas growing up. For some reason, Rap Rat in particular left me with a phobia of being near uncovered windows at night, that's lasted even into my adulthood, and I'm not sure why.

[@SomeplaceScary]

I was just coming out of highschool when creepypasta were really starting to reach their peak, so they didnt haunt me as much as some people, but i did read a metric shit-ton of them because they were still so fun. Made a friend ( still friends with her) at a halloween party in 2011 bc i was dressed as jeff and she saw my costume and was so excited she yelled, lol.

[@wowwords2584]

Creepypastas used to terrify me as a child. I think it's because I didn't really understand how the internet or computers worked, and I was always taught to be very careful online, so it really did feel like a hacked game could destroy your computer and wreak havoc on your life

[@cowboyluca2367]

My friend Stephan would recite different creepy pastas to me and my friends during lunch period, and then we would all write our own stories and then trade them around to each other to read. This video was wonderful ❤️

[@lindseywitt2333]

I knew someone in college who wrote her Anthropological Theory paper on Slenderman and the speed of Internet Folklore. Brings back memories. Also I'm sure someone has written their thesis on creepypastas ans folklore by now... right? I'd PAY to read it. Love your work ❤

[@rosiebrie]

I took a course on Folklore in college and we had a whole module dedicated to Internet Creepypasta! Fascinating stuff :)

[@laindarko3591]

As an aspiring folklorist I am VERY passionate about compiling and analyzing internet folklore, especially creepypastas. Of course, I'm totally biased because they were such a huge part of my childhood/adolescence. The ones that fucked me up the most as a kid were the Russian Sleep Experiment, Candle Cove, and Squidward's Su*cide (and I'm always trying to figure out why those in particular got to me - still not sure) but I always thought the storytelling for Ben Drowned was some of the best. Nowadays, it's really cool to see the Backrooms take on a life of their own as well. Many of my favorite scary stories (urban legends? Folk tales?) are these creepypastas I've grown up with, which are just as ingrained in my consciousness as Red Riding Hood or Cinderella.

[@IMPofTHEGASsTATION]

i was terrified of lavender town syndrome as a kid to the point where i would click off any video that included the song, and honestly??? still getting over that lmao (i panicked as soon as i heard it in this video

[@endogladry]

When I was 12, I told my older sister about it and she started playing a video of the song on our family desktop and I FREAKED so hard that I sprinted into a different room with my hands over my ears!

[@leicean]

The momo thing scared the shit out of me in middle/early high school but I never saw the bottom half of the sculpture and now it’s fucking hilarious to me bc it looks almost embarrassed to be a naked bird thing 😂😂😂

[@theunkindnessofravens]

I’ve somehow dodged the bullet of creepypasta when they were popular, but I’m so here for unhinged internet history

[@ace..of..hearts_they-them_]

Me too, I was really sheltered

[@becauseimafan]

Same, but mostly cuz I'm older (in my 30s) and never liked creepy or scary things. Actually KZbin videos like this one is what introduced me to creepypasta & explained it, so now I can understand like 30% more of the memes and posts on tumblr 😂

[@becauseimafan]

Love me some unhinged internet history! 😁

[@lucyhues9373]

I love the way she's says 'Pasta'. Making creepypasta sound a lot more classy than it actually is °w°

[@seankaufman2360]

I remember seeing Momo for the first time and to this day she still freaks me out. I saw a lot of creepypastas as a kid and was more intrigued by them than scared, and then she came onto the scene by the time I knew they weren't real but I just couldn't look at her.

[@viinaart]

I'm definitely a scaredy cat in general, but yeah, I'm not scared of like Jeff the killer anymore, but Momo still makes me uncomfortable to this day as well😭 which I guess props to the artist who made that thing, if that was their intention?

[@mcpicklebreath]

yeah, i spent a lot of my tween/teen years obsessed with creepypastas and momo is the only one ive seen that still genuinely upsets me, the creepypasta surrounding her got popular after i had stopped focusing on them as much but i kept getting youtube thumbnails of her and it was so viscerally upsetting, if i were to guess i think it's because shes not Just a photograph or edit someone made, you can Tell that shes a real object in space in the photo, so the uncannyness of her hits a Lot harder.

[@dakotashadow1]

Yeah, I'm 15 and never had any experience with momo other than seeing the photo, It's about the only creepypasta I've seen that actually scares me.

[@issyknapp8012]

the image of momo genuinely scares me even though I know it's just a photo and she's not real

[@staticsteampunk9544]

Glad I'm not the only one. Most internet creepy images I can stomach but Momo always elicits such a visceral feeling of fear and unease in me. For some reason the uncannyness of it just hits so much harder

[@theonefayth]

I was an adult during the height of creepypasta... but I was also neurodivergent and working overnight at a tiny hotel in the middle of nowhere. So I marinated in the creepypastas, and truly I feel like one of y'all in that way.

[@endogladry]

Any age barrier would be an illusion. You partook, you were THERE. :)

[@anonymousyoutuber1405]

Same. A lot of comments talk about being in elementary or middle school. I was a sophomore in high school.

[@marianaamorim6000]

Honestly, I remember when I was a kid I was fr fr scared of slenderman. Now he's just a dapper suit man tbh

[@queenbhydra454]

Same I used to have nightmares about slender man but now I just chill with him

[@BerryBlue123]

Just a handsome man

[@emofurryboyfriendasmr]

he's just a silly guy!!

[@romanticghost7508]

I love creepy pastas, it’s weirdly so nostalgic going back down memory lane this way. Thank you Strange. And also thinking about how cemented these are in our internet society is insane, so many people thought these were real. I’ll never forget reading about that court case with the slender man girls and how insane that was.

[@Lucy-zr5qs]

I don’t find the creepypastas themselves particularly scary but the amount of times I’ve clicked on a link and it was the most ear piercing, seizure inducing Jeff the killer jump scare is a little higher than I’d like

[@sk_lxr2920]

I talked to my mum about horror movies when I was like 12 and getting into Internet horror and the first thing she told me about was this "real life documentary about a witch. they released it as a movie and I couldn't sleep for weeks when I watched it. It said it everything had happened in real life". It was the Blair Witch Project. I still haven't told her that it isn't real.

[@Patchouliprince]

I remember in middle school my friends and I made creepypasta OC’s for a big meetup that was happening a town over and we were preparing for months, then the whole uhhh slender stabbing incident happened and the meetup was canceled. I think that’s about when I set creepypasta down and I haven’t wandered back too often tbh

[@boredcheshirecat7962]

"Horrific oopsies of science" is how I'm going to call every monster from now. Sounds very ominous and cute.

[@alexandracenuse9419]

I used to write creepypasta fanfic pamphlets on wattpad back in the day... one of them got pretty popular for my country too. I'm sad I deleted it cause I would've loved to re-read them and cringe/reminisce at my younger, more innocent self. I am still a creepypasta kid at heart 😅

[@deathforthebadapples]

i’ve genuinely had to talk about momo in therapy. i can’t even look at that picture. something deep in my bones hates it so much.

[@ohsugarsnapsx]

same omg. i had a panic attack the first time i saw it, uncontrollable sobbing and i couldn’t breathe. i still start crying every time i see it, i don’t even know what it is about that one picture.

[@noneya3635]

I will never grow tired of hearing Strange say the word pasta. Just one more of those little things that will make me smile through the day.

[@oriaanhunter]

pæsta

[@ElliWoelfin]

I flinch every time I hear pahsta

[@metmags2803]

3:00 the absolute stranglehold "man door hand hook car door" had on my psyche, I still can't listen to the Mr. Sandman song

[@sawyer02dk]

When i was a kid i started reading this creepypasta (which the author has a terribly rated book of on amazon) called The Story of Her Holding an Orange. It was terrifying to me as a kid to the point i had to stop reading but I tried to read part of it more recently and it was so unreadable lmao

[@hangryhufflepuff9530]

I remember reading Russian Sleep Experiment on the creepypasta website and believing that it was a real document leak and telling all my friends. That pushed me into SCP years later, and for a brief moment I thought it was real until I engaged critical thinking (TM) and realised I was just being goofy

[@duohensheng]

as a true Internet child I fully expect this video to become a creepy pasta at some point

[@bigmanbigpants2293]

I was watching the strange aeon, when the strange aeon got STRANGER!?!? She had spooky blood red eyes and started laughing evily and creepily. Then the stranger aeon said she would eat my lymph nodes and pop my family's lungs!?!?

[@ToxPhy]

@@bigmanbigpants2293no mention of hyper realism or thinking it was just a glitch?

[@goblin3359]

Tia talking about the golden age of creepypastas in the 2000s: "Yeah, most of us would have been about eight or nine." Me, an elder milennial: "You speak of forgotten lore and magic, but I was there, child. I was there when the ancient and wild magics were sung into existence and the stars shone with the radiance of youth. And now, I hear the younglings talk of memories past and I feel the abyssal age of aeons past in my cavernous and crumbling bones..."

[@UpandOvertheMoo]

YES! I remember following the ben drowned on /x/ back in the day and it was like so scary

[@buttercupjude135]

didn't expect to get so deep and real about creepypasta but man I'm glad we did

[@noneya3635]

And a great public service warning about people named Skinner 🌈⭐️the more you know!

[@kiragray833]

I have a bachelor’s in folklore from IU and I did my senior thesis on why creepy pastas ARE absolutely modern folklore!

[@deeegoletsgo1379]

This brought back a lot of memories of staying up super late on MSN groupchats with online forum friends and sharing creepypastas with each other even though we'd have to be up at like 6am for high school the next day. I miss the golden age of creepypasta.

[@Spookdog]

this video brings me so much joy. as someone who wasn't allowed to consume any horror related media AT ALL growing up but gained unrestricted internet access from school and sneaking around on my school laptop at night instead of sleeping, creepypasta was kind of my introduction to horror and has a special place in my heart because of it. some creepypastas genuinely spooked me like ben drowned, some I just thought were cool and fun and my young high school friends and I would make up our own serial killer characters and their tragic backstories for funsies based off of stuff like jeff the killer and eyeless jack. I actually paper mached my own eyeless jack mask and wore it for halloween (to school, not around my parents who would've killed me if they found out I was even dressing up for halloween) and painted the cover of one of my sketchbooks based off of this creepypasta character I liked who was an artist and a serial killer, I forgot his name I think it had "smile" in it but that's all I remember. I loved listening to creepypasta readings on youtube and drawing spooky shit. idgaf if jeff the killer and similar stories are considered cringe now, they inspired a lot of creativity in me and lowkey shaped my personality because now I'm obsessed with horror as an entire genre and my favorite holiday is halloween (sorry mom and dad [not really sorry]). I'd love to write actual horror someday but I feel like I do not have that skill right now. but anyone can just write a creepypasta and I kinda love that. I never really made the connection between creepypasta and folklore consciously but I guess I always kind of thought of them as the same thing. bloody mary and jeff the killer have the same energy and I can't imagine why anyone would insist creepypasta isn't folklore unless they're like, idk, a folklore purist? it seems like a natural progression of humanity that folklore is now online and easier to document the source but that doesn't take away the Essence of what folklore is.

[@Gustoberg]

I was obssessed with slenderman (even wishing that he'd possess me to kill the kid I hated) but I was at the same time too scared of him, so I would search images of slenderman, and as me and my cousings (who were far more afraid of him because they didn'd spend 1/3 of their days online) I'd make up theories for us nit to cry, that he's actually a good guy who takes lost children and helps them get out of the forest. Man does the early internet make nostalgic even if I'm not even 20 lol.

[@Atari_01]

SAME? I DID THAT WITH MY BEST FRIEND (he made a valentines box painted black with the proxy symbol and put a note and kisses(candy) in it) AND WE DID MAKE THE “he takes kids in from the woods” and that he was “misunderstood”

[@joeyj6808]

"I love you, Sweaty" legit my favorite line. Evar!

[@spectscrawlz_]

This video violently yanked at my braincells and unearthed every memory attached to my creepypasta phase Anyways fun fact: Splendorman, a popular Slenderman counterpart, was created by Neil Cicierega aka the guy behind Lemon Demon. I just like to bring that up--

[@ohdeer-sabrina8132]

He whAT

[@spectscrawlz_]

@@ohdeer-sabrina8132 AND IT'S IN HIS CHANNEL TOO kzbin.info/www/bejne/an67inaVn71ljcUsi=0tbrpHoRZu4BmLCh

[@furretforpresident]

OMGGGG NEIL CICIREGA 😍

[@rosie8448]

god this triggers memories from such a weird point in my life LOL i was in 7th grade and roleplaying with a girl in the grade below me and she started telling me that she was one of slenderman’s proxies and that i was safe from all of them because she was with them and that when she would get picked up from the library after school on the first floor (the main library was on the 2nd) and that i could never come down when she went home because slender was picking her up also plucked one of my hairs and “took it back to the lab for testing” and then told me i was only 49% human anyway all of this was only because she had a crush on me and she read in a teen magazine that you had to “be mysterious” to impress your crush all VERY 7th grade. good times

[@fairycat23]

I love how Skinner is the surname of the guy in one of the Spongebob creepypastas when the guy who played Patrick in the Broadway musical of Spongebob is named Danny Skinner.

[@lorde_spooky]

God damn the soundbite from Ben drowned sent chills back to my spine, felt like i was right back in middle school experiencing it for the first time

[@geekgirl_luv4262]

I remember first reading the Russian Sleep Experiment creepypasta and thinking that it was such an immersive and unsettling story, and was so well done that it felt like it could be real, until I got to the part where it just went completely off the rails and everything that was happening was so obviously medically impossible that my immersion was shattered and my eyes rolled so far back into my head that I could no longer see the page. It was so grounded and well written until it really wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever been that annoyed and disappointed with the ending of a creepypasta. I will admit though, this might just be a personal thing due to my intense frustration with bad science in stories that take themselves more seriously, especially if there is no sci fi or fantasy element and the story is just supposed to take place in our world.

[@thinkinyblinko6666]

There are SO many poorly written creepypastas out there that it makes it so when you find a really good one it's such an awesome experience. The Thing That Stalks The Fields has my vote for best ever written. For worst hmm it's hard to say but that 3 ½ hour one "I'm a guard at a secret government prison" that turns into an anime battle royale in the second half is probably the dumbest one I've ever heard.

[@TotosTales]

Wait wait wait that just dug something up from the back of my mind!! Was that the one set kinda at a midwestern farm????

[@Foolishly_Royalty]

Have you listened to the bar series? Sturgeon is one of my fav little towns