Fear is universal and everyone has their own scary story. They sit in the back of our minds, haunting us and disturbing our ordinary worlds. While authors and directors have long struck horror into the minds of readers and crepuscular moviegoers alike, with a new generation comes a new culture of storytelling.
Most may ply their trade on the internet. The realm of forum threads, shady web domains and anonymity is perfect for a scary story. Those threads became host to “creepypastas,” as they became known, combining the word “creepy” and the most common, easily shareable snippets of text called “copypastas.” The popularity of these horror stories manifested itself into a website dedicated to the macabre: creepypasta.com. Within this web, our dark fascination with fear, cryptic messages and rumors revived as truth are tangled.
Slenderman is a classic example. This entity is simple enough with its faceless, white visage and black suit. Its story, however, sprawls across countless threads, videos and video games each adding to and reimagining the character. Its legend only grows because of this lack of consistency. The only thing all accounts point to is Slenderman’s targeting of children, luring them into cryptic games, stalking and often abducting them in its mysterious design. Twisting childlike curiosity and play in this way allows it to continue to resonate in the minds of many to this day.
Twists bring the next story to life. “Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared,” a six-part series of YouTube videos, breeds the childhood nostalgia and imagination into a new monstrous reality. It appears to be a children’s show, with live-action puppetry, colorful characters and cheeky questions aimed at supposed young viewers. These episodes, however, quickly evolve into something much more deeply disturbing: cult rituals, metaphysical experiences and cannibalism. Finding how it all makes sense led to rumor, curiosity and a sickly fascination that only grew its mythos.
This search is what lies at the heart of the next case. “Polybius” is the name of a lost arcade game, surrounded by rumors of government conspiracy, psychedelic experimentation and mind-altering effects. Its disappearance and the efforts to trace its origin and purpose from the little evidence available has only grown this urban legend. While not strictly horrific or stomach-churning, the rabbit holes and conspiracies here are lent extra dimension by the internet. Anyone can delve into this puzzle, a shifting enigmatic maze that may hide the answers to all these questions. It’s not meant to be conclusive, perhaps these answers are best unfound, but the mystery darkened by obscurity has its own place.
“Creepypastas” spawn from insomniac nights of Internet browsing in the dark corners of the Internet, and like any good scary story, they will always find a way into our lives.
