I don’t remember how old I was when I first discovered creepypasta (internet-based urban legends), but I do remember I couldn’t get enough of them. If I were to credit anything as my Horrific Origin, that would be it. The Bunny Man, The Russian Sleep Experiment, Slender Man, Torture Soup—these stories haunted my dreams, and I willed it. Wanted it. Looked for more.
I was a child of the internet, and I loved coming across this sort of multi-media shared universe on forums, wikis, YouTube, and Tumblr, on Geocities and Angelfire sites with neon text and flashing cursors. My first? Most likely Squidward’s Suicide, a horrific retelling of a deeply unsettling “lost episode” of Spongebob Squarepants as remembered by a former Nickelodeon intern…or so the narrator says. As someone still in the Spongebob viewing age herself, the vivid descriptions probably should have repelled me from wanting to know more for good.
They didn’t.
I researched the story, sure it was fiction, but found—much to my surprise—a number of video clips of the episode. I couldn’t stop watching them, fascinated that they were all a bit different. How could that be? Sure, some were people messing around, but if one of them were the real thing—how would I know? Eventually, in my research, I found the term “creepypasta.” And I was hooked.
I’m not sure if creepypasta were truly my first experiences with horror, but they’re certainly what stuck with me most. There was something about the anonymous, shared, reposted nature of them that made it less clear than with other forms of fiction as to what was or wasn’t based in reality. And for me, the pinnacle of these was always Candle Cove.
Candle Cove was one of my first experiences with epistolary writing. Told in the form of forum posts, it has roughly the same premise of Squidward’s Suicide—disturbing children’s television that few ever watched—but told through different users trying to figure out if the show was real, comparing their experiences and memories. It was a public access show about a young girl and her marionette pirate friends, a skeleton named the Skin-Taker, an episode described that was nothing but the puppets and the girl screaming and crying. They bounced recollections off each other. This was different. Maybe it started as creepypasta, but other people were replying that they remembered. They couldn’t all be in on it. Could they?
In actuality, the Candle Cove posts were written by one person, Kris Straub. But there is collaborative creeypasta, in the form of the extensive SCP wiki project. On Reddit, replies to posters of creepypasta may riff off the initial tale, mentioning their own similar experiences. And to this day, I wonder: maybe some of these were off-loaded memories and experiences that the authors just couldn’t get anyone to believe weren’t made up. Gone viral as anonymous fiction, their horror stories could have gained the attention and interest that would have been brushed off had they told friends and family, “this is a real thing that happened to me.”
I’ve loved a good horror story since then, but I fell away from reading creepypasta as I got older, and I never really considered myself a horror fanatic first and foremost. My true re-entry into the genre came with discovering Channel Zero, a four-season creepypasta-based horror anthology. The first season: Candle Cove.
I watched the three seasons of Channel Zero that existed when I discovered it in a matter of days. I waited on the edge of my seat for the fourth and final to be released and binged that too. I follow the actors and directors still, and most especially, the show-runner, Nick Antosca, who—as the co-creator of Brand New Cherry Flavor and the writer of the short story on which the recently-released Antlers is based—I genuinely believe to be one of horror’s biggest names to watch. I will quite literally consume anything the man touches. And I recommend Channel Zero to anyone who’ll listen.
Since then, I’ve been diving into horror nonstop. All the time, I’m noticing things that remind me of stories I’ve seen or read before. Or maybe I’m noticing things that those stories were reminders of.
Much of horror is highly referential. Channel Zero, in particular, is not shy about its influences. Each season is a sort of homage to a combination of different horror superstars (the third will particularly interest fans of David Lynch, for instance) and likely several different creepypasta, directed by one specific up-and-comer with their own unique style. In this way, it is just as collaborative as the genre it is based in. I realize now how strongly the combination of unique creative voices within a given framework calls to me—and always has. And most of all, how encounters with the bizarre grounded in a world that is our own, with characters who start off just as confused as we would be in disturbing and monstrous situations, have the capability to draw me in the most.
It’s no surprise, then, that I’m interested in immersive horror experiences. Anymore, I don’t want to just witness a story. I want to become part of it. Me—not something I’m pretending to be. I want to extend the limits of the terrifying things I can experience in daily life alongside distinctive creators who carefully craft new worlds. By becoming a participant, the terror itself permeates my own life, my friendships, my dreams. And just like a good piece of creepypasta, when immersive horror is at at its best, I start thinking about these characters and relationships and stories as if they aren’t really fictional at all.
Here’s the truth: Candle Cove is my Horrific Origin and hooked me so much because when I first read that forum conversation, I could swear I’d seen that show once myself.
And you know? I still sort of do.
See you next time for Horrific Origin Sunday!
Horrific Origin – Creepypasta & The Fiction-Transcending Nature Of Collaboration | ||
CHANNEL ZERO | Season 1 Trailer | SYFY |
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