—A prominent Running Gag within the Creepypasta communitynote it's generally accepted that mom was phone.
We sincerely hope you weren't planning on sleeping anytime soon. Creepypasta is a collection of creepy, frightening, and/or utterly terrifying stories that originated from and still are floating around the internet. The name itself comes from "Copypasta", referring to the tendency of creepypasta to be copied and pasted all across the Internet. They can range anywhere from ghost stories or mind-bendingtales of terror, to stories about slim businessmen. A common trait among them are a lack of disclaimer from their authors stating the work is fiction which may cause the lines of reality and fantasy to blend.Just don't look behind you, 'kay? Often the subjects of ARGs, because audience participation can add whole new levels of Nightmare Fuel. Sometimes, these may actually have a decent ending.
Archives where they can be found are here,here,here, here, and here. There's a Wiki for creepy pastas, found here: Creepypasta Wiki. There's a forum for the creepypasta community, found here: Terror Tortellini. Can be found in illustrated form here.
Not to be confused with pasta that may be creepy.
See also the SCP Foundation and Unfiction forums.
Notable as someone made an actual game based off of this creepypasta. It's not a hacked ROM but a game created in Game Maker. It faithfully recreates the game experiences of the original, and then expands upon the content through help of the author. It's strongly suggested that one play the game first and then read the original, since the original creepypasta is effectively one big spoiler for the game. Available here: Here
GHASTLY MACARONI!, a Creepypasta parody by the webmaster of Bogleech, full of Stylistic Suck and remarkably spot-on mockery of Creepypassta's metafictional cliches.
The Untitled Fantendo Story sorta fits this, especially in the "real life" chapters. Has a much happier ending, since the author did not write it intending for it to be creepypasta-like.
Creepypasta has also been subject to dramatic readings by a online group called The Midnight Society that post their work on YouTube. Of them, the most prominent member is MrCreepyPasta. He has a list of links to the others members' YouTube channels on his own. They frequently crossover in each other's videos for the purpose of voicing different characters.
All Hallows Eve: These can and do take place at any time of the year, but God help any unfortunate soul who is the main character of one that does take place as Halloween, considering how potent some of the horrors in these are at regular times of the year.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Slenderman gets this a lot, due to his ambiguous nature. The Worm In Paradise, in particular, paints him as a misunderstood nature spirit who acts as a steward of the forests.
Audience Participation: Some of the best ones add new levels of scary by hinging the ultimate fate of the main character by how much help the audience at home are. You fail, The Hero Dies. For that matter, the viewers might benext. One less serious creepypasta actually was based around this, where the object of it was to add new paragraphs.
Being Watched: It wouldn't be one of these if this didn't happen every other 'pasta.
Beware the Silly Ones: On their own, Drone Jeffs are incompetent, scatterbrained, and fairly weak. So what's their first act upon meeting Slenderman in the "The Worm In Paradise?" Using a death ray to blow a gaping hole in his abdomen, which also has the side effect of removing his powers. Eep.
Bittersweet Ending: While most creepypastas end with a Downer Ending or No Ending, Pokemon: Lost Silver (presumably) ends with the protagonist coming to terms with his death, after having a successful career as a Pokemon champion. Even then, this can still be taken as a downer from a nihilist point of view, that his success will eventually be erased after his death.
Lost Silver: Hidden, however, shows that there may be something much more sinister going on.
Jeffs from the Worm Jeff Saga have a gland that produces a powerful acid located near the stomach, and Drone Leaders have this replaced with an organ filled with what is essentially lighter fluid, which they ignite using a "flint" in their mouths to spit huge fireballs.
According the "The Worm In Paradise", Slenderman has three livers.
Body Horror: In all their utterly terrifying glory.
Of note are the inhabitants of Granny Royce's Road House. None of them can die, despite them all having been slaughtered in various horrific ways. One of them was a pregnant woman with a permanent cut-open womb and a living zombie baby inside her.
The whole point of They Are Watching Me. And Now They Are Watching You. It's written like a story, but it begins with the narrator telling you that he is praying that no one reads this, and ends with him apologizing to you that you read it, and that as a result, if you stop reading it, the creatures in the story will come after you.
Brought Down to Normal: In "The Worm In Paradise", Slenderman is temporarily stripped of most of his powers and is forced to rely on his wits (and tentacles.)
Brown Note: Several involve something, be it a video, picture, etc, that causes people to go insane, or worse.
"Love" and "Sim Albert" feature these as the Twist Ending.
Howard near the end of They Are Watching Me. And Now They Are Watching You.
Cliché Storm: An interesting example - the Creepypasta Wiki even has a list of "Creepy Cliches". (seeing these cliches in a story is generally considered to be a sign of a poorly-made creepypasta.)
Clipped Wing Angel: Drone Jeffs in The Worm Jeff Saga. Though that's little comfort when dozens of them of them are slashing at you with thier claws and eating your flesh!
Creepy Doll: "Lucy wants to play with you, forever and ever..." Heck, so many Creepy Doll pictures were added onto the wiki that they said, "NO MORE DOLLS".
In the original story, completing Sonic.exe caused the entity to materialize right behind you as this.
Very prominent example in The House That Death Forgot: He will kill you in a variety of painful ways, but even though you're dead, you stay conscious, mobile...and your mortal wounds will continue to cause you pain. And if those wounds are visible, you pretty much stay out of sight to avoid horrifying people.
Crusty Caretaker: If you suspect you are, in fact, the star of a creepypasta. Listen to these guys when they tell you not to go into the abandoned warehouse.
Dark Is Not Evil: "Love" - a girl finds a note addressed to her on her computer, describing all the paranormal activity and shadows she's seen her entire life. It was a soldier who made a promise to her dad, shortly before they were both killed in war, to look after his soon-to-be-born daughter. Since the daughter turned 18, he decided his work was done and to give her some closure on the weirdness.
Dark World: Where a lot of the central characters end up before the end of the tale.
Defanged Horrors: Averted. Don't expect the hero(es) to get off that easy.
Defictionalization: Many video game Creepypastas have been made into actual games or mods. Highlights include Creepy Black, Sonic.exe, Herobrine...
Demonic Possession: A person, animal, or inanimate object may end up being controlled by an evil spirit....and causing great havoc.
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In Russian Sleep Experiment, a group of test subjects deprived of sleep slowly go insane, performing gruesome self-mutilation and cannibalism. At the end, only one is left alive, and a researcher is locked in a hospital room with him. When the panicked researcher asks the subject what he is, he gives a Slasher Smile and says that he has essentially become the embodiment of all the fears humans have while awake. The researcher stares in horror... then promptly draws his sidearm andblows that son-of-a-bitch's lungs out.
Expy: Jeff the Killer is basically The Joker with an origin story and a heaping helping of Uncanny Valley. He's even got two joker origins incorporated into his, with the chemical alteration of his face and a Glasgow Grin carved into it.
Speaking of Jeff, Worm Jeff is this for the Jason parasite from Jason Goes To Hell. However, as the author explains on the Deviant ART copy of Evil Never Dies, this was unintentional as she had never seen the film until she had other people look at it on Creepypasta Wiki chat and someone pointed out the similarities between it and Worm Jeff's life cycle. In addition, There's another nod to the Joker in the "mythos", as the substance secreted by Worm Jeff's stinger that slowly turns victims into Jeff The Killer or mutants that resemble him is called "venom", after Joker Venom, which it was clearly inspired by.
Eye Scream: Expect a few eyes to be poked out. Melinda stays alive after having her eye stabbed and her brain punctured...and has to live with the pain of that for all eternity.
Sonic.exe's eyes bleed constantly.
Fatal Flaw: Many creepypastas have one that renders them laughable if you know what to look for.
Fanwork Ban: There's a long list of pastas you are no longer allowed to make spinoffs or fanquels of on Creepypasta Wiki. The reason for this? For a long time people were posting nothing BUT spinoffs, and very few original pastas were being written. There's a loophole in this, however: you can post the story elsewhere and link to it on your user page, or use Spinoff Appeal to have the admins review it and add it to the wiki if it "passes." Furbearingbrick, the admin who decreed the no-spinoffs rule, said this about Evil Never Dies (which was written shortly after the ban was enacted): "I AM AWARE OF THE IRONY." Recently subverted with the creation of the Creepypasta Spinoff Wiki and Spinpasta Wiki, two wikis where you can post spinoffs.
Fighting a Shadow: In the Worm Jeff Saga, even if you DO manage to kill Jeff The Killer, he'll just escape the corpse of his host and find a new body to possess. This happens so often, in fact, that Jeff has weaponized this concept, medling the corpses of former hosts together into huge, organic "tanks" called Jeff Crawlers. Also, in "Please Follow Me", it's revealed that he keeps a literal horde of former hosts, which live in a cave under the city! Oh, and they're breeding.
Only Person: The main characters are often the only human characters of any significance in these.
Flip Flop of God: Furbearingbrick has changed the "rules" of the Worm Jeff mythos several times. For example, General Angus was initially described as not being very smart, but then in "Please Follow Me" he's revealed to be as intelligent as he was when he was human.
This trope used to be such a problem with Jeff The Killer (too many pastas were just the original Jeff story with the Serial Numbers Filed Off, to the point where Jeff became an Overused Copycat Character) that "Jeff-inspired" stories were banned on Creepypasta Wiki.
Fridge Horror: There are some creepypastas that in themselves may not be as scary; but when you see it....
Others conclude with the protagonist realizing that something mundane actually means something is very wrong indeed. For example, Barbie.AVI concludes with the protagonist wondering why an abandoned house still has the plumbing hooked up, and The Basement ends with the protagonist discovering a footprint outside his back door, meaning someone else entered the house to watch his neighbor die.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: With the popularity of Magical Realism in Latin America, it's not difficult to come across creepypastas in Spanish or Portuguese, or readings of them.
Ghostly Chill: Whether or not they're actually ghosts sometimes doesn't matter. No matter the Horror, the main character will probably experience this at some point.
Glorious Mother Russia: Is Memetic Mutation on capitalist internet to rewriting creepypasta as if taking place in Soviet Russia. Thick and heavy Funetik Aksent is spelling in text, and Gratuitous Russian using sometimes. Result of tales is often change, as true Soviets able to endure much more grueling punishment than weak American dogs. Vodka is much present, and many things - bodies, important papers, sometimes even Artifact of Doom itself - burned for warmth without second thought. Such is life in Moscow. Some of there provide ample Nightmare Retardant.
One example of disgusting American pasta here and its glorious Russian version here (Encyclopedia Dramatica may not safe to open in capitalist workplace. You need real job ploughing fields, is only solution).
Gorn: Some pasta writers just plain don't do subtlety.
Guardian Entity / Guardian Angel: Sometimes, a few Creepypastas may play with these tropes and have it be revealed that the paranormal activity is actually them. Best examples are in "Love", in which the paranormal activity is revealed as a Guardian Angel, and "The Man in the Purple Shirt" where the titular title is actually a Guardian Entity against a Humanoid Abomination.
Haunted Heroine: Somewhat subverted, as Creepypastas don't tend to favor either sex. Just say Haunted Person.
Howard and Samuel the narrator could both qualify in They Are Watching Me. And Now They Are Watching You.
Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: More like hunting a member of a species who just thought they were the most dangerous game.
I Am Not Shazam: Worm Jeff is just a nickname given by the author to the mind-controlling parasitic antagonist, to avoid confusion with his hosts (which are also called Jeffs) and the "canon" Jeff. Everyone in-universe calls him Jeff, Jeff The Killer, or Master.
Lightning Can Do Anything: Played with in "One Door Closes, Another One Opens." Jeff was transformed into Worm Jeff by being struck by ball lightning as he was dying, but it is strongly implied that it may not have been lightning at all. The Brother's Return reveals that it was, in fact, not lightning, but the will of a benevolent, if somewhat scatterbrained, deity.
Magnificent Bastard: Worm Jeff. It's a good thing for humanity that most of his goons are painfully incompetent and he's a Squishy Wizard.
The Man Behind the Curtain: The aptly titled "Lost Episodes" reveals all "haunted" lost episodes may have been created by a a mentally dysfunctional social outcast.
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Some creepypasta are totally ambiguous as to whether it's supernatural or not.
Perfect examples of this are the Pokémon creepypasta Ghost Black and Lost Silver, which are simply the author describing what appear to be nothing more than very morbid Pokémon rom hacks that were written to cartridges. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise and nothing strange happens to the author of either other than them being incredibly freaked out about it. Supernatural possibilities come from wondering who in the world would do this and why. (On top of the fact that hacking the games to such an extent has only recently become possible)
"Helen": The narrator finds his grandfather acting bizarrely in his new apartment, claiming someone named "Helen" is taking over rooms and making threats. Turns out some computer virus has been downloading obscene material and relaying threatening messages through a Bonzi BUDDY called "Helen," and with the computer gone the grandfather starts getting better. The narrator still thinks it's weird that there's no documentation of the virus online.
"The Toadman": The narrator is an elderly man who recalls an event in his past involving a being called the Toadman. It's left ambiguous whether or not the Toadman is supernatural.
Minimalism: Most, if not all, creepypastas are a tale of a one or two (three, tops) human characters and a single monster in usually one location. Many Slender-blogs and Vlogs avert this. Most notably, Everyman HYBRID has Loads and Loads of Characters. On top of that, the most popular blogs tend to acknowledge each other's existence and even have characters interact with each other, effectively turning them into a Massively Multiplayer Crossover and creating the closest thing to a canon the mythos has.
Missing Episode: Lots of creepypastas concern missing episodes.
Worm Jeff is described as having lots of jagged little shark-like teeth, though they're rather evenly-sized and large in the illustrations and "supplemental material".
In Please Follow Me, Pedro is described has having teeth like "a mouthful of knitting needles." Ditto for the transformed Jack in "Trust Me, Part 2".
Mundane Ghost Story: Perhaps most terrifying of all, some of these stories use completely plausible set-ups and even twist endings. Texas Blood, for instance, reads less like a straight-up horror story and more like an excerpt from a particularly dark & gritty cop/thriller novel.
By extension, Worm Jeff and his infectees as well. Jeff Crawlers, in particular, take the most disturbing aspects of the original Jeff image and turn it Up to Eleven.
Sonic.exe has bleeding eyes and quite possibly the most sadistic grin ever seen.
Not So Imaginary Friend: "Love", mentioned above, is about one of these. Unlike most though, he's not evil at all, though he gets scary when he's pissed.
Oh Crap: Word on the Creepypasta grape vine is that the creators of SMILE.jpg and Suicide Mouse.avi worked together on a little project called "BarelyBreathing.exe"
"And if you EVER come across a file name BarelyBreathing.exe... for God's sake, DON'T OPEN IT."
Once is Not Enough: Protagonists are usually Genre Savvy enough to realize this, but that doesn't normally save them.
One Curse Limit: Worm Jeff's mind-link keeps his infectees from falling prey to mind manipulation from other Creepypasta entities. This has only been demonstrated to be true with Slenderman so far, but that alone should let you know how untouchably powerful Worm Jeff's mind control is.
Organ Theft: Keep a close eyes on your liver, mate.
Our Vampires Are Different: The Broken Glass Beast, from "A Touch Of Glass." A magical construct made of multicolored broken glass is certaintly not the first thing that comes to mind when you imagine bloodsuckers.
Painful Transformation: Jack's agonizing transformation into a Drone Jeff in "Trust Me, Part 2"
Is there broken glass on your floor, with shards whose colors don't match those of the object that was broken? The Broken Glass Beast could literally be out for your blood.
Religion of Evil: The Sleep-Bringers in the Worm Jeff saga, who worship Jeff The Killer. It doesn't help matters that its leader is one of Jeff's most trusted minions.
Rule of Scary: Some of these monsters and horrors make no damn sense in design or motive. More often than not, that's exactly what's so scary about them.
Who is ''he''? And where did he come from? What does he want?
Screamer: The .GIF, which is about a smiley face made up of a mouth and eyes cut-out, which turns into a frowney face. Then, it screams at you, shows some horrific imagery, and closes your internet browser. People who watch it in it's entirety are found dead with a smiley face drawn in blood next to them. Luckily, the image board immediately takes it down it and bans whoever tries to re-upload it, possibly the only use of the "removed it after 5 minutes and blocked me" cliche' for a benevolent reason, ever.
Shock Site: Some of the more disturbing images associated with creepypasta, like SMILE.jpg or Jeff The Killer, are frequently used for this purpose. Sometimes, like with Normal Porn For Normal People, a Creepypasta is centered around a supposed Shock Site that is too scary.
Snuff Film: The creepypastas titled "Snuff Film". The first posits that many snuff films have been made and distributed around the world dating all the way back to 1896, with the latest hailing from 1984 and all of them have the exact same nineteen year old girl as the "star". The second describes a bunch of snuff films in gory detail, the very worst one being saved for the end which the narrator considers their finest work.
This may be the subject of a creepypasta.
So Bad, It's Good: The Creepypasta website has a sister site, Crappypasta, where the rejected submissions go. Some of them are so god-awful it's hilarious.
Subverted Kids Show: Many of the "lost episode" and "The Truth Behind [show]" 'pastas, describing horrific episodes that never got aired (or were mistakenly aired) and putting forth theories that the characters are based off dead children repectively.
Candle Cove and Happy Appy are about "children's shows" that quickly gain a supernatural bent.
Sally.exe (a sequel to Sonic.exe), which describes a disturbingly edited episode of Sonic Sat Am and a scary Rom Hack. (Two 'pastas for the price of one!)
Twist Ending: Expect this. A lot. The wiki has a category called, "Shock Ending".
Tragic Monster: It's surprisingly rare to do this successfully (the original Jeff The Killer story tries to make the audience sympathize with Jeff and fails miserably, for instance) but when it's pulled off well, it's pulled off VERY well.
General Angus from the Worm Jeff saga. He was blackmailed, transformed against his will, and now he lives with the knowledge that he will never see his son again.
Viral Transformation: More than a few protagonists ended up in the same boat as their tormentor.
Willing Suspension of Disbelief: One advice towards writing a creepypasta is to try to keep within the willing suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to a video game Creepypasta.
Writers Cannot Do Math: "Russian Sleep Experiment", while an effective horror piece, has several discrepancies with the number of living subjects. At one point, before any of them have died, the story describes the activities of two and then refers to "the remaining two" (there are 5 at this point). When they are removed from the chamber, one is already dead, one is killed during the struggle to remove them, and one dies on the operating table, yet the story continues as if three are still alive, not two.
"Foreign Exchange Program" also states that twelve people were chosen - however, four decided to stay, two died off, and seven returned. Where did that thirteenth person come from?
Younger Than They Look: Jeff the Killer. That creepy person that murdered his family? He's only thirteen.
Youkai: One of the earliest creepypastas (from way before the term was coined) was about a Bakeneko. Also, one of the webmasters of Creepypasta Wiki, Furbearingbrick, is (supposedly) a Nurikabe.
Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: You'd be amazed at how many are reliant on the main character ignoring all warning labels and sign posts for the fun to begin.
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