Let's go.
Double-you tee eff.
Creepypasta. The term derives from "copypasta," which consists of messages or pictures reposted ad nauseum online. One of the best examples is the now-quaint "Dancing Baby," which proved so infectious a meme in the late nineties that it appeared on newsreels, then Ally McBeal, and finished up as a parody of a parody in the classic Millenium episode "Somehow Satan Got Behind Me," penned by the inimitable Darin Morgan, of whom I spoke briefly in my review of The X-Files, Season Three.
Okay. I think we've hit a dead end at The X-Files, so let's go back a bit.
By nature of what it's called, creepypasta is at least derivative, predicated as it is on the repetition of web-based sources of terror. However, many stories and images go even further in their debts. Countless horrific images listed on Creepypasta sites include the most stock icons imaginable. Decaying dolls. Demonic faces. Eerie little kids. Black bodies with white faces. Men who are Slender (God, be original!). Most creepyposters, it seems, lack in creativity. Hell, one gallery from the Creepypasta Wiki eventually gives up and lists images straight out of the infamous Medieval grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon. Not that the illustrations in grimoires are always imaginative.
"How many more monsters do I have to think up? Alright, fuck it, one's a bee."
I like this connection, though, because The Lesser Key of Solomon was produced in the thick of the Christian witch-hunts (watch Haxan). Such books meant to codify the expansive Church-sanctioned demons into a hierarchy, and, as a bonus, they inadvertently created many of the first widely-disseminated horror images, up to and including many of the demonic visages in the same Creepypasta gallery. Additionally, this is a good connection, because horror fiction loves it some grimoires. My favorite ones are Dyack's Tome of Eternal Darkness, Bloch's De Vermis Mysteriis, and, of course, Lovecraft's Necronomicon.
You knew that was coming, right? I bring up Lovecraft partially because of my endless interest in his status as a transitional force in horror. I also bring it up because the Necronomicon itself became a fascinating pre-Internet creepypasta. Lovecraft gave his fictional book the illusion of authenticity with a flash-fiction examination called "History of the Necronomicon" (1927), and his fellow weird tales authors frequently corresponded with each other and added details from each other's works in their own stories (were they alive today, they'd thrive in online forums). So Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon appears in Lovecraft's work, and Robert E. Howard borrowed the Necronomicon, and, years later, Stephen King borrowed Bloch's De Vermis Mysteriis for "Jerusalem's Lot" and the Necronomicon for "I Know What You Need."
"A thief? Li'l old me? Aw shucks."
Digression: I have to point out that a follower of famed occultist Aleister Crowley named Kenneth Grant wrote, in The Magical Revival (1972), that he believed both Lovecraft and Crowley received their ideas from the same extra-dimensional psychic source (Lovecraft through dreams, Crowley through revelation). Why point this out? Because, in a further instance of reciprocity, Aleister Crowley supervised a 1904 edition of The Lesser Key of Solomon.
Crazy.
Okay, still with me? Let's click back to "History of the Necronomicon" and flash-fiction. The term "flash-fiction" was coined in the early nineties, around the same time internet memes were starting, but its form dates back to folklore and fables, which were tiny little moral and cautionary tales buried in memorable imagery (and there's plenty of horror to be found in "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Hansel and Gretel"). Such tales were passed around orally, and while details would change from culture to culture (and over time), the underlying stories survived. However, creepypasta is more concerned with the visceral effect than with imparting any sort of wisdom.
You knew I was a horrifying fanged mutated death spider of death when you picked me up.
Along with creepypasta, urban legends function as a modern micro-fictional equivalent of fables, and, wouldn't you know it, one of the stories listed on Encyclopedia Dramatica's "Awesome Creepypasta" page (which is full of stories, not all of them awesome) is infamous urban legend "The Licked Hand." In that legend, someone hears a noise in the dark of night, finds comfort in her dog licking her hand, and wakes to find a message scrawled on her wall (or mirror), sometimes in blood. Either "Humans can lick too" or "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" Creepy stuff? Yes. Creepypasta? Not exactly. Not just.
Again, derivative. We're back where we started. But now I have more context for creepypasta, and a better understanding of its origins, which go way past random assholes on the Internet re-posting the most weathered of horror concepts. Although there's a lot of that too. On reflection, I don't say much here about my actual opinion of creepypasta as a source of scares - I'm discussing etymology instead of substance. Deeper examination of the sub-genre will make for an interesting follow-up. In the meantime, below, I've listed a few of my favorite creepypasta stories.
Coffins used to be built with holes in them, attached to six feet of copper tubing and a bell. The tubing would allow air for victims buried under the mistaken impression they were dead. In a certain small town Harold, the local gravedigger, upon hearing a bell one night, went to go see if it was children pretending to be spirits. Sometimes it was also the wind. This time, it wasn't either. A voice from below begged and pleaded to be unburied.
"Are you Sarah O'Bannon?" Harold asked.
"Yes!" The muffled voice asserted.
"You were born on September 17, 1827?"
"Yes!"
"The gravestone here says you died on February 20, 1857."
"No, I'm alive, it was a mistake! Dig me up, set me free!"
"Sorry about this, ma'am," Harold said, stepping on the bell to silence it and plugging up the copper tube with dirt. "But this is August. Whatever you are down there, you sure as hell ain't alive no more, and you ain't comin' up."
"Daddy, I had a bad dream."
You blink your eyes and pull up on your elbows. Your clock glows red in the darkness - it's 3:23 AM. "Do you want to climb into bed and tell me about it?"
"No, Daddy."
The oddness of the situation wakes you up more fully. You can barely make out your daughter's pale form in the darkness of your room. "Why not, sweetie?"
"Because in my dream, when I told you about the dream, the thing wearing Mommy's skin sat up."
For a moment, you feel paralyzed. You can't take your eyes off your daughter. The covers behind you begin to shift.
A few years ago, a mother and father decided they needed a break, so they wanted to head out for a night on the town. They called their most trusted babysitter. When the babysitter arrived, the two children were already fast asleep in bed. So the babysitter just got to sit around and make sure everything was okay with the children. Later that night, the babysitter got bored and went to watch TV, but she couldn't watch it downstairs because they did not have cable downstairs (the parents didn't want children watching too much garbage). So, she called them and asked them if she could watch cable in the parent's room. Of course, the parents said it was OK, but the babysitter had one final request… she asked if she could cover up the angel statue outside the bedroom window with a blanket or cloth, at the very least close the blinds, because it made her nervous. The phone line was silent for a moment, and the father who was talking to the babysitter at the time said, "..Take the children and get out of the house…we will call the police. We do not have an angel statue." The police found all three of the house occupants dead within ten minutes of the call. No statue was found.
There is an abandoned mental hospital at the top of a hill in Worcester, Massachusetts. Once every five years, an old rusty box-spring appears within the courtyard of the hospital. If you can sneak inside and sleep through the night on the bed, in the morning a man with a shirt that reads "Observe and Absolve" will take out his wallet and give you a picture. This picture will show you how you will die. If the picture is of the man standing before you, running won't help.
...all of those terrifying stories our ancestors told around fires? All of the things they saw when they looked out into the blizzards of the ancient past? They aren’t gone. Where the lights don’t reach, where the shadows dominate, they still live. They crawl in their eternal crypts, dreaming horrible, dark dreams as the ages pass them by. Outside of the range of cell phones, away from all the commercial flight paths and shipping lanes, where no one can see, they build their kingdoms...dark even against the darkness, they wait....
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