What is a creepypasta? Types, characteristics and examples

These are the small comics or scary stories that have emerged in the Internet generation.

The Internet has made things much easier, for better and for worse. Just as we can get useful information on how to prepare a recipe or watch videos of cute kittens, we can also shudder with scary stories: creepypastas.

Creeepypastas are stories that have become more and more popular in the last yearsbecoming a very internalized element in teenage culture, especially among geeks, otakus and emos. Let's see what they are exactly and some examples.

What is a creepypasta?

The word "creepypasta" is an acronym of "creepy" (creepy, scary in English) and "copy-paste" (copy and paste), referring to the fact that they are comics that are shared in the networks through a simple click. They are mostly short horror stories, although sometimes even books have been made from them, which are shared virally through web pages, emails, messages in instant messaging applications...

They do not always come written or in the form of narration, since some creepypastas are presented in the form of images, videos or videogames that are supposedly cursed. There are also creepypastas about supposed final chapters of series that were never released, or lost chapters of children's series that, because of how shady they were, were jealously hidden by their creators to avoid controversy.

Where do they come from?

There are hundreds of creepypastas, so the origins of each one of them are very varied. What they do have in common is the origin of the genre. Although the act of telling horror stories is something that is part of human nature, in the form of mythology or in the form of tales to teach children, the creepypasta genre, began to take shape in the late 90's and it was during the 2000's that it was given its name. that it was given its name. The term was coined on the popular website 4chan around 2006.

The first creepypastas were written anonymously, and were texts that eitherand were texts that were either routinely posted on different web pages or shared via email. Many of the early creepypastas consisted of rituals, personal anecdotes and legends surrounding video games, television series or cursed images. The first creepypastas had to have credibility and realism as essential elements, although, of course, incorporating something supernatural or creepy.

After the term appeared on 4chan, during the late 2000s and the following decade the genre took a more defined form, gaining a lot of popularity and even influencing beyond the Internet. In 2008 Creepypasta.com was created, the genre's great reference website, where not only the most famous creepypastas were shared, but users could also share their own anecdotes. users could share their own anecdotes, serving as a kind of mega-forum of creepy stuff.. Two years later, Creepypasta Wiki, the Wikipedia of the genre, and r/NoSleep, the Reddit forum of reference, would take shape.

Types of creepypastas

Although there is no systematic classification of creepypastas, the comics can be grouped into different types, according to the main element or context that causes fear.

1. Urban legends

The narrator tells a scary legend, a story about a strange event.. It can be something that happened to the narrator himself or something that happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, following the formula of many creepypastas.

2. Diaries

The story is told as if they were the pages of a personal diary, following a chronological order or not. This adds more realism and makes the reader put himself in the shoes of the person who has lived through the supposed events.

3. Rituals

Rituals usually come in the form of instructions, either by email or in an image shared on networks such as Facebook and Twitter.. They usually indicate that specific actions must be done to avoid a mysterious evil and, as a general rule, indicate something like "share it with 10 acquaintances or tonight the bogeyman will appear to you".

4. Missed episodes

Lost episodes are quite recurrent and, in fact, almost no series is spared from having a supposed episode that never saw the light of day. These are chapters that, because of how shady they were, the creators decided not to broadcast them, especially if the series is for children.

The curious thing about this type of creepypasta is that they are, in fact, the most credible ones.. There are many series to which were attributed lost episodes that were creepypasta that, in reality, existed and, with the passage of time, came to light.

Some examples of this we have it in series such as: The Rugrats, Dexter's Laboratory, Pokémon and other series that have yet to be confirmed such as SpongeBob SquarePants, The Simpsons, Catdog....

5. Hidden videos

Similar to the previous case, only that the hidden videos refer to videos posted on platforms like Youtube or Dailymotion that were censored because of their gore or because they did something very disturbing..

6. Cursed games

Stories based on some famous video game that someone is said to have modified to be really disturbing, that would be far from being introduced in an official game of the same saga.

It is surprising how many creepypastas about Pokémon games have been modified to be cursed.Pokémon Lost Silver, Pokémon Beta Zombie and the story of the 151 cursed Pokémon cartridges are examples.

There are also those of other popular video games, being the case of Sonic with Sonic.exe or Tails Doll.

Some examples

Here is a summary of six famous creepypastas.

1. Slenderman, the most famous creepypasta

Whoever is into the world of creepypastas cannot consider himself an expert on the subject without knowing THE creepypasta, the one who is considered one of the initiators of the genre: Slenderman, the Slender Man. This story originally appeared in the Something Awful forums.

Slenderman is an abnormally tall, thin, ghostly-looking man with no nose, no mouth, and no eyes.. He has creepy elongated arms that he uses to abduct children, but also to kill adults and unhinge his victims.

The creepypasta evolved to the point where the character had tentacles and the ability to become invisible, although it could be seen if it was focused with a recording device, such as cameras or cell phones. The popularity of this cartoon is such that it has left the world of Internet forums to come to life in video games and on the big screen.starring in a low-budget Sony movie.

But, unfortunately, it did not only become something out of science fiction. In 2014 two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls, believers in Slenderman, wanting to be his acolytes, stabbed a classmate as many as 19 times. Although the girl was saved and the perpetrators of the crime were sentenced to 65 years in prison, the story gives food for thought about the influence of comics taken from scary forums.

2. Squidward's suicide

In 2010, a creepypasta was popularized about the existence of an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants in which it was claimed that Squidward (Squidward) had committed suicide. Squidward (Squidward), Bob's cantankerous sidekick in the Krusty Krab, was said to have committed suicide.. The supposedly lost episode also had a sinister atmosphere. A background of disturbing and disturbing noises accompanied the story, along with images of dead children.

The popularity of the creepypasta was such that many parents became concerned, thinking that the series of the cheerful yellow and square sponge was hiding something much more sinister. The writer of the series, Casey Alexander, had to come out and deny this creepypasta to prevent the cartoon from being boycotted by hundreds of parents fearful of what might happen.

The funny thing is that the creators of the series knew how to take advantage of this creepypasta as a mockery.. The original creepypasta was accompanied by the image of Squidward as possessed, with really sinister eyes. In one of the episodes of the series, belonging to season 12, Squidward opens a series of doors consecutively, which lead him to alternative versions of himself, one of them being somewhat similar to the image of the creepypasta.

3. Polybius

Every videogame player should know the gloomy story of the arcade game Polybius. It is a video game released during 1981 in the arcades, in which the player had to steer a kind of ship through a world full of colors and shapes. These psychedelic colors induced players to have nightmares, feel stress, lose mental stability and even commit suicide.

The story is fed by conspiracy elements, claiming that it was the CIA or the FBI who created this arcade to experiment with the population.. Shortly after its release, the game would be completely eliminated.

Polybius has made cameos in real life. It appears in an episode of the Simpsons, in which Bart is in an arcade. In addition, fans have designed their own version of the game, claiming that it has been made in the image and likeness of the original. There is even a Polybius for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR.

4. The Lavender Village melody

Every self-respecting Pokémon fan knows the history of the Lavender Village music. The story goes that in the original versions of the first two games of the saga, Green and Red, released in Japan in 1996, the background music of Lavender Village seemed to have notes that affected the minds of younger players.

Lavender Village is, within the Kanto region, a village with a tower where hundreds of Pokémon are buried. The town's music is ominous, accompanying the solemnity of the place.But apparently, according to this comic, in the original version something went wrong in the programming of the music that induced the suicide of hundreds of children.

The melody had notes at frequencies that only the youngest could hear, affecting them, causing them to have nightmares, nosebleeds, headaches, irritability and, a classic, suicidal tendencies. The symptoms caused by the song's high-pitched binaural beats were dubbed "Lavender Village Syndrome.".

The original story emerged on 4chan and went viral from there. Actually, there is no evidence that this actually happened. In fact, the music from the first-generation Pokémon beta can be heard on YouTube, and while it honestly hurts the ears, it's hard to think that it could induce suicide. Also, considering that it supposedly happened in the very first Pokémon games, it's hard to think that the series would have been a suicide inducing game. it is difficult to think that the saga would have gained so much popularity with the passage of time having such a bad beginning..

What is true and is considered a lost episode is the English dubbing of the "Dennō Senshi Porygon" episode of the Pokémon anime series. In 1997, the broadcasting of this episode on Japanese television brought nearly 700 children were admitted to hospital with epileptic seizures.. The reason for this was that there were rapid red-blue flashes in the episode.

The incident was so serious that the series was cancelled for four months, and the appearance of Porygon, the pokémon starring in the episode, was banned. Ironically, the culprit of the epileptic seizures was actually the franchise's mascot, Pikachu.

5. The Ayuwoki

The Ayuwoki is surely the most recent most famous creepypasta, emerging in 2019 and having its origin in Spanish-speaking countries. It is a video featuring an automaton with Michael Jackson's face, uploaded to Youtube in 2009.. The peculiarity of the video is that this mechanical Michael Jackson has a very distorted mask, and considering that the face of the late singer was not exactly inspiring confidence, his animatronic version much less.

Internet users referred to him, more with a mocking air than with one of fear, as the Ayuwoki, being a properly Spanish transcription of the phrase "Annie are you okay?", lyrics of the song "Smooth Criminal". The image became a meme, even being the subject of a video by the famous Venezuelan youtuber Drossrotzank.

6. The Russian sleep experiment

Another of the most famous creepypastas is the Russian sleep experiment. It is said that during the 1940s, Soviet authorities kept five people locked up and awake for two weeks.. They prevented them from sleeping by introducing a stimulant in the form of a gas into the room, but without depriving them of entertainment or food. They simply did not let them sleep.

At the beginning of the experiment everything was fine, but then they began to behave wildly, demanding that the gas not be stopped and ripping their guts out.

Bibliographic references:

• Nadel, D. (2016). A Brief History of Creepypasta. TurboFuture. Accessed March 27, 2020.
• Roy, J. (2014). "Behind Creepypasta, the Internet Community That Allegedly Spread a Killer Meme". Time. Accessed March 27, 2020.