How Much Do You Know About Creepypastas?
When the Something Awful forum lit up with intrigue and horror due to the creation of Slender Man, a new era of internet creepypasta horror was created. Creepy internet stories weren’t new, of course, since the ’90s were full of those creepy email copypastas. Creepypasta took inspiration from the originals, creating staple stories and images, like Sonic.exe, Smiledog.exe, Slender Man, and other spooky images.
Today’s creepypastas are more centered around original characters, including Jeff the Killer, Eyeless Jack, Ticci Toby, and many more. But creepypasta is more than characters — they are viral horror stories that go beyond simple jump scares. These stories are meant to convince the reader/viewer that the event or video existed. Since 2010, the genre of internet horror took on a new shape.
Whether you were there to experience this trend grow or you stumbled onto the archives of what is now Internet history, creepypastas have a unique set of details that set the most famous works apart from each other. From original characters such as Laughing Jack to the terrifying Russian Sleep Experiment, what do you know about these spooky viral stories?
Creepypastas
Creepypastas are horror-themed stories that are shared around the internet. The name is inspired by the term "copypasta", which is text that is copied and pasted to rapidly share on the internet. Creepypastas gained popularity in the 2010s with mixed responses as the stories gained traction in popular media. However, creepypastas can be traced back to the '90 with the creation of chain emails that often featured creepy text and images that were reposted to internet forums.
Today, creepypastas are often synonymous with fictional characters such as Jeff the Killer, Slender Man, Smile Dog.exe, and BEN Drowned. Often, these stories are attributed as urban legends but can be written to be quite believable in the form of historical events.
