I remember the first time I came across Slenderman. The context is a bit fuzzy—I was likely browsing urban legend sites to see how many I could take before I cracked, a somewhat masochistic little game I used to play on the regular—but I remember the moment I realized there was something… wrong with the photograph I was staring at on my screen.

In the foreground, children posed playfully by a playground slide. For a few seconds, I could spot nothing amiss. But then my eyes followed the shadows into the background, and there he suddenly was, black tentacles outspread beneath the shade of a tree.

Slenderman’s best trick always was convincing you he wasn’t around—until you realized (too late) that he had been hiding in plain sight all along.

Creepypasta (shareable internet horror stories of varying quality) boomed around that time. They were the campfire stories of the internet, shared in front of glowing screens in darkened rooms instead of around blazing logs under starlight. And whether you loved or hated them (or had no idea what they were about), these stories—and the internet monsters that populated them—were everywhere.

But then tragedy struck—more than once. Laughing Jack supposedly told a girl in Indiana to murder her stepmother and set her apartment on fire. Accidental railway deaths were attributed to people searching for a creepypasta monster with a particularly cringe-worthy name, the “Pope Lick Monster.”  In perhaps the most famous case of all, a 12-year-old girl was stabbed in Slenderman’s name by her “friends” in 2014.

Naturally, the popularity of creepypasta began to wane as fingers were pointed and crimes continued to be committed. But is creepypasta really dead?

How Scary Stories Have Changed Over Time

Ancient human civilizations used myths to explain everything from why the sky is blue to why evil exists in the world. Terrifying monsters like the Minotaur and Medusa, for example, ran rampant in Greek mythology, and still inspire many horror stories today.

As humanity evolved, so too did storytelling. Villages grew to townships, and as populations grew, people talked, and folklore spread from one person, and one town, to the next. In Ireland, dullahans and banshees coexisted alongside the fairer creatures of Faerie, while La Llorona and El Coco lurked in the midnight shadows of Mexico and Spain. 

As civilizations urbanized, the campfire stories we know today as urban legends sprang from the depths of our worst nightmares, spreading even faster than their predecessors did thanks to inventions like the telephone and the increased ease of travel. Rare is the American who’s never heard some variation of the one about the man with the hook for a hand, or been dared by a friend to chant Bloody Mary’s name into a bathroom mirror. Japan likewise offers a vast repertoire of haunting and murderous characters and creatures such as Teke Teke and Kuchisake-onna, whose story is perhaps even more terrifying when you think about how many people are wearing face masks these days.

It should have been no surprise, then, that when the internet became a thing, it didn’t take long for people to realize its massive potential as a storytelling medium. In fact, if you think about it, the internet is particularly well-suited to horror stories, given how quickly and widely they can be shared and how many people stay up into the wee hours of the night reading things they know they shouldn’t before bed.

Hindsight is 2020 (if you’ll forgive the expression, given the year in which I am using it), and looking back, it’s all too easy to see how creepypasta was probably the most obvious next step in the evolution of horror storytelling.

Why Creepypasta Isn’t Really Dead

While its popularity has certainly dwindled over the years (and is likely to continue to do so), I don’t think creepypasta is dead. Like the eldritch horrors that haunt its darkest corners, it is merely in hibernation, in preparation for the next change.

As Halloween reminds us, “You can’t kill the boogeyman.” Creepypasta and its ilk are still very much alive, if you know where to look. The recent popularity of Siren Head is just one particularly disturbing example; there are many others.

And as technology and society continue to evolve, so too will the spooky stories that continue to haunt our dreams—and the methods we use to tell them.

The Future of Scary Stories and Horror Storytelling

So what’s next? I’m no soothsayer, but I will say this: virtual and augmented reality are really gaining steam these days, and online stores are already replete with a variety of horror experiences for sale. Perhaps VR is the future of creepypasta—perhaps we’re on the verge of (virtually) becoming each other’s own worst nightmares, in image as well as in practice.

Or perhaps the pendulum will swing the other way. Perhaps, in a world where so much is going digital, we’ll turn back to campfire tales or something similar to reconnect with fears that, often enough, are all too real.

And that’s the point of creepypasta and other scary stories. Horror fiction doesn’t make monsters; it exposes them. For many authors, the act of writing horror is an act of exorcising inner demons by trapping them on the page, while reading horror adds color to the monotony of everyday life and gives us a safe outlet through which to face and explore our own worst fears. Reading a ghost story doesn’t make someone homicidal; it merely gives them a direction in which to point when asked why they did it.

So regardless of what the future of creepypasta and other horror stories may be, I’m looking forward to coming along for the ride. It’s sure to be one hell of a trip.

If you’re a fan of spooky legends—especially those of the Sleepy Hollow variety—be sure to check out The Harbinger’s Head this October. Experience the first chapter for free today!