Creepypasta

Lack of subtlety is exactly why I can't do a good scary story. And anytime I try, it quickly devolves into a metahumor-heavy genre parody.

 

I love a good creepypasta, I often read them at work (I'm night staff in an old hotel, pretty good setting for spooky shit). Not sure if it counts, but the story about the two guys who find a hidden passage in a cave always spooks me. You know, the one on an old angelfire page, written like a journal? There's a picture of one of the guys sliding through a gap in the rock, and it's such a tiny little space that it made me feel sick just looking at it. When I first found it I wasn't sure if it was real or not. Honesty, i'm still not entirely sure.

 

Barbie.avi which I linked in the OP also creeps me out for that reason. The story's not the creepiest I've ever read, but the origin of the videos that go along with it have never been explained. There was an explanation floating around the internet for ages, but it's since been debunked. It's a real mystery.

 

What's that like?

 

I can't write a creepypasta where the human victim/protagonist isn't aware of creepypasta or horror fiction tropes in general, and either saying out loud that he's doing something stupid in order to advance the plot or doing the sensible thing and ending the story early by not encountering the monster or whatever.

"I was given this free and obviously haunted cartridge, just like in all those creepypastas I've read. I'd better start playing it right away so I can get haunted and possibly killed by my plush toy of the character!"

vs

"Why are you in such a hurry to give me this game? Is the cartridge haunted or something?" *walks out of the creepy GameStop that wasn't there yesterday without taking the game*

 

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Dear_Abby
This was always one of my favorites.

 

You know I can watch horror movies all day and still sleep soundly at night.

there is something about a good creepy pasta that will make you genuinely unnerved a little while after reading it. though more of a video series i find the Marble Hornets series to be especially thrilling.

I'm also surprised that the Art of Jacob Emory hasn't been mentioned yet.

 

This one's really good. Shame the place I found it had a synopsis beforehand that ruined the whole thing:

I Always Thought Something Was Off About My Basement, But I Had No Idea How Terrifying The Truth Was

 

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Burgrr_Entries
Really, really bizarre; almost like Peter Jackson's early movies.

 

That's why I stopped reading "haunted video game" creepypastas. It just became way to cliche and predictable after awhile:

a) Narrator watches youtube video of old game, becomes nostalgic for it
b) Narrator goes to Gamestop and finds old game and/or system available
c) Gamestop employee gives game (which is always in beat up condition) to narrator for free to "get it out of the store"
d) Narrator brings game home, proceeds to play it.
e) Game does evil/spooky shit, narrator continues to play game for some reason
f) Game somehow curses narrator/ruins his/her life/etc
g) Narrator warns others not to play cursed game

 

I like to listen to creepypasta readings as I work on stuff. I usually start by looking to see what Mr.Creepypasta has then move on to other narrators linked to his page.

The best ones of all are by Richie A. Milkis. He rarely makes them but it's a real treat when he does.

 

theholders.org
The king of the 'ritual' genre.
It\s a wiki so the quality is pretty varied, but the featured stories are pretty good.

 

Popular YouTube creepypasta reader "CreepsMcPasta" got robbed some point over Easter weekend.

 

Most of them are shit, but you have good ones like the original Abandoned by Disney. Another pretty good one was Ted's Caving website. It's subtle for the most part and unlike a lot of these, is more muted with the reactions.

I will not tell you how irksome it gets when the writer desperately tries to hammer home how scurry something is with all the subtle grace of a nuke. The best ones tend to have slow ramp-ups I've noticed, and avoids blatant spoopiness.

 

Another example of slow ramp-ups, Candle Cove is a nice Internet horror story. The fandom (especially the fan wiki) built around it is super dumb, making up a huge elaborate setting out of what was supposed to be an eerie low-budget puppet show.