A creepypasta is an internet horror story that is passed around on forums and other sites to disturb and frighten readers. The term is a portmanteau of “creepy” and “copypasta”, which is an internet slang term for a block of text that gets copied and pasted over and over again from website to website.

The Essentials

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   Creepypastas are the internet’s urban legends; viral horror stories born in online forums that feel chillingly real.
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   Meet the new monsters of our age, from the faceless Slender Man to Jeff the Killer, born from viral code and shared fear.
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   Learn why these stories grip our psyche and what happens when the line between digital myth and reality fatally blurs.

Creepypastas are a modern form of folklore, similar to urban legends, that are shared digitally. They often incorporate images, audio, or video footage to enhance the scare factor, blurring the line between fiction and reality.

What is a Creepypasta? The Digital Evolution of Folklore

Do you remember those chain emails from the 90s, the ones that promised you a terrible fate if you didn’t forward the message to ten friends? Well, meet their far scarier, more technologically savvy offspring: the Creepypasta.

Born on dark corners of the internet like the infamous imageboard 4chan around 2007, a ‘creepypasta’ is essentially a horror-related legend that’s been copied and pasted so many times it takes on a life of its own. The name is a mash-up of “creepy” and “copypasta” – a slang term for text that goes viral by being spread widely online.

What makes them so fascinating, and frankly, so terrifying? They are the digital age’s version of the urban legend. Just like the campfire tales of old, they often:

• Mimic Reality: They’re frequently told from a first-person perspective, an anecdote of a terrible thing that happened to a friend of a friend (or the narrator themselves).
• Play with Nostalgia: A popular trope is the “Lost Episode” or “Haunted Videogame” story, where a beloved childhood memory is twisted into something grotesque—like an unseen, disturbing episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.
• Encourage Participation: Creators use text, distorted images, links, and even video to make the story feel immediate and real, turning passive readers into active participants who feel like they’re unearthing a forbidden secret.

This collaborative nature is what gives them their power. We know they’re fiction, but for a moment, the atmosphere and the shared community experience make us suspend our disbelief, making them a truly unique form of modern storytelling. They tap into our deepest fears, offering a collective thrill that few other mediums can match.

The Most Iconic Creepypasta Monsters

The creepypasta world is populated by a rogues’ gallery of chilling figures, each a unique expression of digital-age anxiety. These monsters have inspired everything from feature-length films to video games.

• Slender Man: Arguably the most famous creepypasta creation, Slender Man began life in a 2009 Photoshop contest. He’s depicted as an unnaturally tall, faceless entity in a black suit, with impossibly long, slender limbs. His motive is generally to stalk, traumatise, and abduct victims, often children. His lore grew exponentially through collaborative storytelling, including the well-known web series Marble Hornets.
• Jeff the Killer: A favourite of the genre, Jeff the Killer is a psychotic teenage serial killer. After a fight with bullies leaves him with severe burns, he carves his own face into a permanent smile and removes his eyelids, whispering his signature line, “Go to sleep,” to his victims before he strikes. The image associated with him – a disturbingly pale, wide-eyed figure – is what made him an instant icon, despite the original story’s sometimes clumsy writing.
• The Rake: This creature is described as a hairless, vaguely humanoid beast with immense claws, often seen on all fours or crouched in the dark. Sightings, usually brief, terrifying glimpses in the dead of night, are reported in the form of discovered journal entries or police reports, lending the story a found-footage realism that is intensely unnerving.
• BEN Drowned: This story revolves around a haunted copy of the Nintendo 64 game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. The cartridge is supposedly possessed by the ghost of a boy named Ben, who drowned. The narrative is a terrifying descent into madness as the game is corrupted, displaying ominous messages (“You shouldn’t have done that…”) and terrifying, glitching entities like the Elegy of Emptiness statue. It was one of the early, highly successful multi-media creepypastas, proving the genre could be more than just simple text.

Science and the Supernatural: Why We Believe

So why do stories like these, which we rationally know are fabricated, still get under our skin?

This is where the psychology of belief and folklore comes into play. As we explored in our previous piece on modern myths and the power of suggestion, our brains are hardwired to look for patterns and believe what is presented as fact, especially when the narrative is engaging.

Dr. Andrew Peck, a media scholar and folklorist, suggests that the success of characters like Slender Man lies in community collaboration. By giving everyone a piece of the story, it mimics the way real folklore is spread, making it feel organic, collective, and therefore, more authentic.

When a 12-year-old girl was tragically stabbed by two of her friends in 2014, with the perpetrators claiming they did it to appease the Slender Man and prove he was real, it sparked a public outcry. The event was a shocking reminder that fiction can have a profound, if misinterpreted, impact on the vulnerable. While it’s vital to remember that the stories are fictional—as the Creepypasta community itself was quick to clarify after the incident—the event highlighted how a psychological phenomenon can fuse with folklore. The human need to believe, coupled with the immediacy of internet lore, created a perfect storm.

The ethical issue here isn’t the stories themselves, but the blurring of the line between fiction and reality, particularly for young minds, which is why sites now carry clear disclaimers. But as we often discuss at In Pure Spirit, the things that terrify us often reveal more about the human condition and the power of suggestion than any ghost ever could. It’s a compelling case study on the birth of a new digital urban legend, a phenomenon we previously touched upon in our article on frightening superstitions and the psychology of fear.

In Pure Spirit

Creepypasta is more than just a scary story; it’s a living, evolving organism of collaborative digital horror that’s taken its place alongside ancient myths. The new monsters of the modern age are not born of wood or swamp, but of code, images, and our own shared anxieties.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Creative Commons credit: Another demon by Kobra9.