Tag Archives: Creepypasta

Slenderman

“The idea is that there is a man that lives in the woods, he is very tall and lanky, he wears a suit and has tentacles on his back but the biggest thing is that he doesn’t have a face, when you look at him it’s just a white head, a flat nothing. I honestly don’t remember how I first heard about- it was probably just through talking to other kids because it became such a big deal because Slenderman started as a creepy pasta where someone wrote a story and it just spread through the Internet. There’s a whole bunch of scary photos with a child next to him and the whole idea is that he would lure kids into the woods and kill them. One of the things that was scary about him was that the more you research the Slenderman, the more likely he is to get you. So like as you look stuff up, he’s like gonna put you on his list like this person looking too much into it. I don’t fully know how that started and it made it scarier because we can’t find anything about him.”

Background:

My informant is a 16-year old from Kansas City, Missouri. She is active on the Internet and has been on YouTube since early 2010. In the early days of the Internet, people invented short stories that would be spread throughout the Internet via copy and pasting, earning the name copy pastas. Eventually, this act of sharing stories transformed to fit the horror genre and this subculture was known as creepy pastas. These stories are shared in Internet circles as short and creepy stories and are subject to reinterpretation with each telling. My informant, being invested with the Internet, learned of several of these throughout the years and remembered this one in particular. 

Context:

My informant brought up this story during a walk around her neighborhood when I asked her about scary stories from her childhood. 

Thoughts:

This story is interesting as it represents several fears for a generation that is heavily present on the Internet. Firstly, the Slenderman takes from similar urban legends of the past featuring a man in the woods who seeks to hurt others. It should be noted though, that this specific story states he only seeks to hurt children, which is done to emphasize his cruelty and evil nature. Furthermore, it is tailored to fit those who would stumble upon the story, most of which would be younger children using the Internet. Being entirely on the Internet also changes how people could discuss the story, which features prominently in this telling of the story. The informant told me that she heard you could not look anything up about the creature, as it would make you his target. This is fascinating, as it plays into the fears of a generation with seemingly unlimited access to technology, which is a restriction of said content. If nothing else, the Slenderman also represents an entire shift in the methods by which stories are told. Whereas other classic horror stories are primarily told orally, the Slenderman’s origins are entirely on the Internet. This pushed the content of the piece to better fit this audience, and it adapted to address fears of this generation of kids on the Internet.

For an in-depth look at the history of this legend, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/movies/slender-man-timeline.html

Bear Granny

Bear Granny

Context: The informant is a Chinese student in USC. The collector interviewed the informant (as GL) for tales. The informant then presented a creepy story in English told by his grandfather as a bedtime story. His grandfather is from Chongqing, an inland city in China.

 

 

GL: Okay so, there were two kids. They wandered in the woods. And then they met their granny in the woods for some reason I can’t remember. So they came back home with their granny. And their granny was like, “Okay. You two should take a bath and then we can sleep together.”

Somewhere late at night, the elder sister woke up. She heard some cracking sounds. It came from their granny. So she asked, “Granny, what are you eating?”

Granny said: “I am eating candies.”

And then, you know, some ray of moonlight shone in. The girl saw a lot of bloody intestines and flesh and stuff laying on the bed.  It’s a creepy story. She figured out that her granny was eating her little sister.

So she asked: “Granny, do you want some candies of different flavor?”

Granny was like, “Sure.”

So the girl took a heated, some sort of claws (Collector’s note: he probably meant tongs) from the fire place. (Collector’s note: he probably meant that the girl used the tongs to attack her granny)

And then the girl was like, “Granny, do you want some water to cool down?” and Granny was like “Yeah Sure”. And the girl took some boiling water and killed the Bear Granny.

 

GL: I think it is a pretty prevalence story from where I came from to scare the kids.

Collector: What do you think is this story trying to tell kids? To respect their granny? (in a joking tone)

GL: I had really complicated feelings when I first heard the story. I guess the purpose my grandparents told this story was, you know, I kept asking for bedtime stories before going to sleep, so they wanted to scare me off so they could do their own stuff.

Collector: Do you think it is a typical Chinese story or just a story in Chongqing?

GL: I think it is not typically Chinese but a lot of people from that area (Chongqing) have heard of that story.

Collector: Have you ever told this story to other people before?

GL: Yeah, I told this story to one of the kids in elementary school because he thought I was weird.

Collector: How was the effect?

GL: He was freaked out. (laughing) Yeah, he was freaked out.

 

Collector’s thought:

It is weird that adults tell kids creepy stories as bedtime stories.

I think the story involves an archetype of evil old ladies. But unlike those evil witches in Western tales, this demonic old lady is the grandmother of the protagonist, a dear one in the family. The Bear Granny reminds me of what Professor Thompson said in class that there is a belief in Japan that old people in the family will turn into ghosts (monsters) when they are too old. Maybe this is something common in East Asia. But the tale also resembles the Little Red Riding Hood.

I searched for Bear Granny in Chinese, and saw some articles saying that Bear Granny is popular in Chongqing and Sichuan area. It is called “熊嘎婆 [Mandarin in pinyin: xíong gā pó, literally: Bear Granny]”

Scary Story: The Message

Context:

The informant and I had recently gone on a retreat together to a wooded area. At the retreat, we participated in a nighttime ghost story telling session with some friends, and my informant was talented at performing ghost stories. I later asked her to share some ghost stories with me again, and I recorded the interview for collection purposes.

Interview Transcript:

Informant: Once upon a time… there was, um… You know, I don’t know if, in the story… I don’t know if it ever tells you who it is, ’cause it’s written from… When I read it, on like, Creepypasta, although the first time I heard this story, it was not on Creepypasta. It was, someone told me in my highschool art class. That was when we were sharing scary stories one time. In my highschool art class. When I was like, “You guys, let’s tell scary stories.” I think it was Halloween.

Me: I feel like… I feel like you’ve had too many instances, where you were like, stuck somewhere, and were just like, “Let’s tell scary stories.”

Informant: Yeah… I think it was Halloween. That’s the first time I heard about Creepypasta. It’s because, we were telling scary stories, and then I was like, “Where do you guys get this stuff?” And some guys were like, “Creepypasta.” Um, but yeah. The first time I heard this it was socially. Um, so, okay. Anyway. Once upon a time… There was, let’s mix it up and say, a teenage… boy this time, who was home alone. Um, his parents were gone for the weekend, and he was alone and he heard something in his house when he was up in his bed. And he got nervous, and he thought, “Okay. It was probably something.” But then he heard the sound of something heavy, like, coming up the stairs. Like this like sound of something, like a really heavy person, thumping up the stairs. And he was like, “Okay, maybe they think it’s an empty house. I’ll just lie in my bead, and I’ll like pretend, and I won’t do anything, and maybe they’ll leave and maybe they won’t notice.” And he heard it creep closer to his door, and closer to his door. And he like lay himself flat against the bed under the covers and he thought, “Maybe, it’s like a thief. And maybe if I act like I’m sleeping, like they’ll just, they won’t harm me and they’ll leave.” And then, under the covers, he looked through the door, and saw this… huge caveman looking like… like this caveman, this big bulky, hairy caveman, with like this prehistoric face. And he was like, “What?” And he was like, “Maybe, okay, like it’s a caveman. He’s probably not that intelligent.” And he was like, getting really nervous and scared. And he was like… sweating. And he was like, “I’ll stay under the covers, and maybe he won’t notice me, and he’ll leave…” And so, and he heard the caveman walk to the wall, and like, make some scratching sounds, and then the caveman sat down on the other side of his room in a chair. And he was like, “Okay… Maybe he’ll leave…” And like an hour passed. And then like another hour passed, and he stayed under the covers, and like, he was just peeking just barely under the covers, and the caveman wasn’t leaving. And he, like, was waiting, and waiting, and at some point he decided to just look under the covers just a little, and then he realized the scratching noise, was the sound of the caveman writing something on the wall. And he looked up at the wall, and it said, “I know you’re not asleep.” The end!

Analysis:

This story plays off of the listener’s fears concerning violation of privacy within one’s home, the unknown, and being watched. Its ability to invoke shock from an audience in such a short span of time makes it appropriate to tell both verbally and digitally, as shown by its being shared through multiple platforms. The informant’s explanation as to how she became exposed to the story suggests that it is usually performed at night, the time of day scary stories are usually associated with. The story itself also takes place at night while the main character lies in bed trying to sleep.