Creepypasta

Slender Man is a thin, tall humanoid with no distinguishable facial features, who wears a trademark black suit. The character originated in a 2009 Something Awful Photoshop competition, before later being featured as a main antagonist in the Marble Hornets alternate reality game. According to most stories, he targets children. The legend also caused a controversy with the Slender Man stabbing in 2014.

Jeff the Killer is a story accompanied by an image of the title character. In the story, a teenager named Jeff is on his way to school with his younger brother when they are attacked by a group of bullies. Jeff defends himself and his brother and leaves the assailants lying in the street beaten, their hands and arms broken. After his brother claims he injured the bullies and is arrested, Jeff spends several days distraught, before going to a birthday party in the neighborhood where he is attacked by the bullies again. Although he manages to kill all of the assailants, he is severely burned during the confrontation after being set on fire. During a stay at the hospital, Jeff realizes that he enjoys harming people, and goes insane. The night after he is discharged, he slices his face, leaving a scar in the shape of a smile, and cuts off his eyelids, so that he will never sleep. He then murders his parents and brother, whispering "go to sleep" while killing his sibling. He becomes a serial killer who sneaks into houses at night and whispers "go to sleep" to his victims before killing them.[14]

The legend of Jeff the KIller can be traced as far back as 2007 to a YouTube video posted by DarkYKnighT[15].

In the 11 miles ritual creepypasta, a person who wishes to fulfil one's wish follows 11 miles of an unknown road with a frightening obstacle at each mile. In the case that the ritual doer reaches the 11th mile, then the ritual is said to have been completed, leading to the fulfilment of the wish.[16]

Ted the Caver began as an Angelfire website in early 2001 that documented the adventures of a man and his friends as they explored a local cave. The story is in the format of a series of blog posts. As the explorers move further into the cave, strange hieroglyphs and winds are encountered. In a final blog post, Ted writes that he and his companions would be bringing a gun into the cave after experiencing a series of nightmares and hallucinations. The blog has not been updated since the final post.[4]

In 2013, an independent film adaptation of the story was released, called Living Dark: the Story of Ted the Caver.[17]

Created by Internet user Alex Hall (a.k.a. "Jadusable"), Ben Drowned tells a story of a college student named Matt who buys a used copy of the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask from an elderly man at a yard sale. Matt finds that the cartridge is haunted by the ghost of a boy named Ben, who drowned. After deleting Ben's savefile, Matt encounters disturbing glitches and scary messages such as "You shouldn't have done that..." and "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?".[18]

In May 2015, Variety reported that Clive Barker was developing a television series adaptation of Ben Drowned in partnership with Warner Brothers, but Hall later confirmed that the project was no longer in development.[19]

Created by an anonymous user, this story is about a mysterious YouTube video of a man in a dark red room who stares at the camera. The video has no audio; those who view it either go insane and gouge their eyes out or commit suicide; some victims somehow and inexplicably mailed their ripped eyes to YouTube's headquarters. The video in the story was re-created many times on YouTube.[20][21]

Lost episode creepypasta describes supposed television episodes, typically kids' shows, that were either never aired or removed from syndication due to their violent and grotesque content. These supposedly lost episodes often focus on suicide or imply the viewer will suffer great harm. Some lost episode creepypastas focus on local public access shows rather than nationally syndicated shows. Notable examples include Squidward's Suicide, Suicidemouse.avi, Dead Bart, and Max and Ruby 0004. There are, however, actual instances of cartoon episodes being pulled off or banned from broadcast due to the episode's content being inappropriate for kids; for example, a Dexter's Laboratory episode, titled "Rude Removal", was never aired due to the episode featuring severe swearing.[22] Another example is the original version of the Teletubbies episode "The Bear and the Lion", which was pulled off from further broadcast due to criticism for its unsettling cinematography, character design, and music. A SpongeBob SquarePants episode, titled "SpongeBob in RandomLand", had to re-edit a scene that referred to the Squidward's Suicide creepypasta.[23]

Video game creepypasta focuses on video games containing grotesque or violent content; this content may spill over into the real world and cause the player to harm themselves or others. Many video game creepypastas reveal the conflict to be caused by malevolent entities such as ghosts or artificial intelligence.[22]

These creepypastas tell of people, usually a teenager, becoming a psychopath or killer, often involving a trademark disfigurement due to the effects of a bad childhood, accident, bullying, experiment gone wrong, or supernatural menace.

These creepypastas involve either supernatural beings or actual legendary, mythical, and folkloristic monsters.

These creepypastas typically contain instructions on how to perform various entity-summoning rituals, including their do's and don'ts. The main aim of these rituals is to have the ritual doer's wishes realised upon successful completion. Other types of rituals which do not have the effect of granting wishes are often performed for recreation.

• Grippo, Marisa C. (26 September 2016). "Internet Ghosts". In Pulliam, June; et al. (eds.). Ghosts in Popular Culture and Legend. ABC-CLIO, LLC. pp. 174–176. ISBN 9781440834905.