For centuries people have been sharing scary stories. Either by campfires or huddled in bedrooms during sleepovers, these have been passed along for generations. Folk tales, ghost stories, urban legends or whatever you call them, we have yet to stop telling them. And as the internet age dawned, we gained a new version of these classic tales: creepy pasta. Coming from the phrase “copy-pasta” or stories copied and pasted throughout the web with no known origin, it's allowed us to share new monsters with each other. However, much like a child trying to tell a scary story he heard but can only remember half the details, the results of these new monsters are mixed at best.
Yes there is the original creation of Slender man, created from the depths of a Something Awful creepy photo shop contest, and now inescapable as his faceless face is staring in a Hollywood movie coming out this year and has been used in so many video games, creepy pastas, and web series that could fill one with hours of entertainment for years to come. Yet, not all of these are gems and even those who become internet darlings end up sometimes overused like a Hollywood sequelitis infection. So why do we still find ourselves late at night searching various creepy pasta archives for some sort of spooky story to entertain us? Why do we still submit stories to such websites to let the internet read our scary stories and judge our work?
I think the answer lies twofold within the past forms of creepy pasta, those old folk tales and urban legends, and in the need to practice our craft. As I stated toward the beginning, this phenomena is nothing new at all. We've been telling scary stories about monsters like Wendigo and the Headless Horseman for long before the internet existed. In fact, if I didn't know otherwise, I would assume that the Slender man stories themselves are based off of some variation of the Greyman of Ben Macdui in Scotland. For those who are unfamiliar, the Greyman is a creature who lives within the mountain called Ben Macdui, and often appears as a tall figure, 10ft by some estimates, and is either covered in short hair or is olive toned with long arms and broad shoulders. It is rarely seen though, it's presense mostly felt by those climbing up the mountain which makes many a climber uneasy and feeling like they are being watched. The biggest thing noted is that people will hear their steps on the gravely rock, but then hear a step just a few feet behind them, like they are being stalked by some unseen force hidden within the fog of the mountain. Honestly, remove his face and give the Greyman a suit and he'd be pretty similar to the idea of Slender man.
Yet that's not where the similarities stop for me. The Greyman is often considered by those with more scientific minds to be an illusion brought on by exhaustion (I mean, people there are climbing a mountain) or infrasound caused by the winds (which is known to make people uneasy). Others think it's an optical illusion called the Brocken Spectre (sun and atmosphere conditions cause a spooky illusion) that was proven in one case where a man thought he saw the creature, then realized it was making the same gestures he was. Literally a case of being scared by your own shadow. However, I find that these scientific explanations to explain in a way why the of the Greyman was created. People were trying to explain something they couldn't explain. Why did they feel uneasy on the mountain? Why were some people seeing monstrously tall creatures on the mountain? Well obviously something was up there, but it remained hidden in the fog. The monster was the answer. Bringing it back to Slender man, the original creation was just two photos doctored slightly with a short quote under each:
“We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…” - 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.
“One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.” - 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.
Not really that much to go on, is it? Yet people wanted to know what was going on, what the secret behind the pictures and the quotes were. So the stories of Slender man grew. You can see where different concepts from various web series came from, just looking at the first quote I can sort of see where Marble Hornets got its ideas of Slender man controlling people from. Much like the Greyman was used to explain a few sightings and strange feelings upon the mountainside, Slender man was used to explain the details given in the pictures and the quotes, and put them together into a cohesive narrative.
Which brings me to the other reason I have for our continued love of reading and writing creepy pasta: practice. A good chunk of those who currently write creepy pasta, let's be honest, are rather young. A lot of authors are teenagers trying to scare each other with spooky stories. This may be their first experiences writing short stories, much less writing horror. They may borrow other monsters that they know or make something up that they think will be scary. While certainly there are many creepy pasta writers who are older, indeed most storytellers who pass on ideas are passing them onto the young, there is no doubt that writing creepy pasta is a good way to practice writing horror in a way that allows for a variety of feedback. It informs us of our skill and where we could improve and where we excel in terms of telling such scary stories.
I'd love to know what others think, so please post your thoughts below on what creepy pasta allows our collective minds to do and experience. Also, what are your favorite creepy pastas? I have a weakness for ones like Mrs. Willison's Homemade Jam (A true Horror Chefette story if I've ever heard one...) and The McCarter House, creepy stories that go in a way that you don't really expect. Check them out, preferably with the lights off.