FEATURE: Where Creepypasta Takes Us: Candle Cove (Kris Straub)

"Does anyone remember this kid's show?  It was called Candle Cove

and I must have been 6 or 7.  I never found reference to it anywhere..."

Candle Cove was a children's program that ran in 1971 for three or four months.  The show focused on the adventures of Pirate Percy and his ship the Laughingstock.  It was cheery.  Kind of.  There was a bizarre edge to it, a Sid and Marty Kroft weirdness to the handmade puppets and dreamlike storylines.  The kids who watched recall Percy searching for treasure, and the talking figurehead of the boat, and the villainous Skin-Taker.  A strangely dark villain for a kids' show.  Unnerving, but not outside the realm of possibility.  Have you ever seen the old classic ads for McDonalds, with the six-armed evil Grimace?

Okay, okay, Candle Cove isn't real.  I mean, it probably isn't real.  It was most likely conceived by web success Kris Straub in 2009 as part of a do-it-yourself horror site called Ichor Falls.  His other fiction entries are impressive and spooky affairs.  "The Stillwood King" tells of a possibly-endless forest with a discomfiting occupant.  "Curious Little Thing" turns the hotel ghost story on its head.  I especially like how "The Fulcrum" moves from grammatical cheekiness into cosmic horror.  "And it is absence of absence" is a terrific line.

"jesus h. christ, the skin taker.  what kind of a kids show were we watching?"

However, all of these stories are written in traditional prose, whereas Candle Cove presents itself as an internet conversation.  Straub doesn't just present his format as internet discussion.  He goes the extra mile and adds misspellings, poor capitalization, et cetera.  The hallmarks of people too interested in what they're saying to waste any time saying it correctly.  The initial descriptions of the show don't seem unreasonable, since the early 1970's saw the rise of the drug-fueled insanities of Sid and Marty Krofft - the demented H. R. Pufnstuf is an obvious inspiration.  The pleasure of reading "Candle Cove" the first time is not being sure if it's real or not, and that gives the story an advantage over Straub's other tales.

The story revolves around four internet users, one of whom opens a thread to ask about the show.  As people log in and recall details of Candle Cove, their nostalgia builds, brick by brick, into repulsion and fear.  They remember how the villain actually took the skin of children, and how Percy was constantly frightened.  What switches the story from eerie familiarity into outright horror?  When one user remembers a nightmare he used to have about an episode that was nothing but the characters screaming.  Screaming, screaming screaming.  "I don't think that was a dream," says another.  "I remember that."

This would be enough of a satisfying twist ending, but Straub makes sure to turn the knife one last time at the very end.

"Candle Cove," like the Slender Man, has found enough success that it's spawned fan videos on Youtube, fan art, internet notoriety for Straub, and, God help us, even some pornography.  Not just because the story's good, but because it holds unique appeal to the more dedicated internet users who seek out such things.  Its prose feels genuine and modern, and the secrecy of it - the fact that it's glimmering in a corner of the internet, the fact that it must be discovered - adds to the appeal.  Like the in-story show, if you're not seeking out "Candle Cove," you might miss it, and searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.

i visited my mom today at the nursing home.  i asked her about when i was littel in

the early 70s, when i was 8 or 9 and if she remebered a kid's show, candle cove.

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NOTE: The full text of "Candle Cove" is available at the Ichor Falls website HERE.

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NOTE 2: Kris Straub got word of this article two days after its original post-date.  From his twitter: "a lovely review of candlecove and ichor falls in general.  thanks!"

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