REVIEW
By Emily Reeves/ Staff Reporter
Creepypasta is everything students of all things dark and unusual could love. The website features paranormal stories, original horror fiction and myths that have been passed around the internet to scare readers. Strange tales have appeared on the web since the early 2000s – tales such as Crystal Cove, The Russian Sleep Experiment and smile.jpg. These stories are mostly located on creepypasta.org, a website for showcasing written creepypasta works, which is easily accessible through a Google search. Despite nearly two decades from the start of creepypasta, (which were traditionally spread through email), they show no signs of losing an audience over time. In fact, certain events, awful events such as the Slender man killings of 2014, have actually served to increase interest in creepypasta.
I myself have had an interest in these independently created and produced works of fiction since 2011, and I believe they provide something for almost everyone. At first look, lots of these stories appear really cheesy, but for every really, really bad story there is another really, really clever and inventive one.
One great piece is Marble Hornets, a low budget YouTube video series that ran for five years with a complimentary Twitter page, as well as ‘responses’ to the character’s actions and hints to what was going on from another channel. The work stuck to an accurate time table, months in the series were months in real life, and the videos are still up on the YouTube channels Marble Hornets and totheark (to the ark).
What creepypastas really have to offer, however, is motivation. Much like the cloud of witnesses in the New Testament, the independent creepypasta works that people have made with little resources stand as monuments to how creative individuals can get their work out and gain an audience. If they can do it, so can you.
You can find creepypasta at https://www.creepypasta.com/
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