I love creepypasta, a lot. I've collected a fairly large archive of it over the years, and even written a few of my own, so hey, might as well put up what I feel to be the 20 best creepypasta I've ever read.
First off though, I want to get something out there. I detest two things that tend to bring a lot of creepypasta down.
First, you've got instructional creepypasta. Do this, do that, don't do that, etc. I hate these so much. They aren't scary whatsoever, they're just crappy fictional to-do lists. Fuck them, and fuck the holders.
The other thing I greatly detest is purple prose. A good example would be the popular "Guardian Angel" creepypasta wherein we realize that the reason a horribly disfigured thing that stalks the main normal guy of the creepypasta is because the guy is destined to get in a car accident and end up like that. A nice idea, but it's brought down by the author's constant need to lovingly describe in detail everything deformed about the narrator, it's like scary equivalent of a porn fic writer that writes one handed, then goes back through with a thesaurus to make it sound smarter.
#15:The gray wolves of Virginia were made extinct over a hundred years ago. According to the regular surveys by the National Forestry service, no sign of any such animal has been found since 1900. The occasional reports of large predators, just after dusk or late at night, usually by the occasional hiker or party of campers in the Stillwood (residents of Lower Alethia, nearest the woods like myself, know better than to try), receive the same tired reply from Animal Control.
"There are no wolves in the Stillwood.”
When a pet gets lost in the dark of the Stillwood and never returns… or worse is found, mauled, the blame falls on the usual suspects: foxes, wild dogs or teenagers with too much time and too little compassion. A few years back, when the Bradleys, a little family brand new to the Falls, had their boy David go missing from their own backyard, never finding more than scraps of his jacket and a little blood at the edge of the forest, the official response was adamant: this was a kidnapping, not an animal attack. Old-timers like me just shook our heads and muttered to ourselves:
“There are *no* wolves in the Stillwood.”
So, if you want to sleep at night this close to the forest, keep your doors locked tight and your shutters closed fast, if just to buy some peace of mind, to stop you from catching a glimpse of the Stillwood late at night. And should you somehow find yourself walking near, or God forbid through, the woods some evening, head home as quick as you can. Try to ignore the sounds of the night wind, howling as it does… it will only make your imagination run wild, after all. And should you see what cannot be polychrome eyes, shining through the mists from the underbrush or somehow in the branches above, should you be blessed enough to make it safely home, take what comfort you can in this thought.
There are no *wolves* in the Stillwood.
#14:It’s about 9:35 at night. The show on your TV is silent, the volume turned down. Maybe you’re one of those people that has to have a static noise and picture, even when listening to or watching something else.
The living room light is on. Two of the five bulbs have burnt out. The one in the back seems the next to go, but you don’t think much about it as you stretch out in your chair.
Something begins gnawing at the back of your mind. It’s just a normal Monday night, the rain outside a steady drizzle that freezes as it hits the road. Something that makes you want to look out the large pannel window beside you, covered up by a Harley Davidson blanket to keep the warmth in the house.
You try and distract yourself, turning on your favorite band. Maybe it’s Collective Soul, or Rammstein, or anything. Something to take your mind off of it. It’s only 9:37 now, just a few minutes later, and you still have this urge to turn around and look out that window, shrouded by a black and orange blanket. You hear a slight tapping on the glass, like a fingertip trying to get your attention. You turn the music up louder, trying to drown it out. It becomes louder and more insistent now, faster and faster, still trying to draw your attention.
“It’s in my head, I’m just worked up, too little sleep. Last night was crazy.” You tell yourself. The rapping on the window ceases, and you begin to settle back in. It’s 9:41. You turn your attention back to the TV, commercials flooding your brain.
The tapping returns. A simple, sharp tap. Curiosity overwrites fear, and you lift up the blanket with your left hand, expecting to see a stray limb from a tree smacking the window from the wind outside, or maybe nothing at all.
A long, pale white tongue drags across the window, smacking back with another tap. Your heart stops as you look up, seeing two great, white staring eyes bulging from an elongated face, lacerated with boiling cuts and keloid scars, coated with burns, it’s face nearly as long as your window itself. It’s upside down, hanging from your ceiling. It’s mouth is lined with razor-sharp teeth, there may be thousands or millions of them. Several are rotten and pulsating, and it keeps staring at you. It’s cavernous mouth seems to be smiling. Like it knows something you don’t…
#13:When I was a child I lived in a rented two-floor house.
Both my parents worked so I was often alone when I came home from school.
One early evening when I came home the house was still dark.
I called out, “Mum?” and heard a voice say “Yeeeeees?” from upstairs.
I called her again, and again got the same “Yeeeeees?” reply.
I felt she was calling me and climbed up the stairs.
When I reached the first floor I called her once more and the voice “Yeeeeees?” came from the furthest room.
I felt both uneasy and a strong urge to see my mother and started to walk towards the room.
But just that moment I heard the front door downstairs open and my mother come in, carrying a lot of shopping bags.
‘Honey, are you home?” My mother called in a cheery voice.
Hearing her voice made me feel instantly better and I turned back to go downstairs at once – but not before I had a quick glance towards the room.
While I watched from the top of the stairs, the door to the room slowly opened a crack.
For a brief moment I saw something strange in there.
It was an unnaturally pale face staring at me.
#12:It’s a simple enough thing. It’s all a part of the body’s sleep processes. Sleep Paralysis, right? No big deal, really. Your body produces a chemical that paralyzes your body during R.E.M sleep to prevent you from hurting yourself by thrashing about during your dreams. No big deal.
Okay, so, you opened your eyes and you can’t move your body. It’s the chemicals. Oh, you can keep trying to wriggle those toes, but it’s not happening. Forget it. Just relax. It’ll go away. It’s fine. It’s normal.
Oh, now there’s something pressing on your chest, real hard, it’s making it hard to breath. It’s heavy, so very heavy, whatever’s on your chest. Chemicals. It’s all chemicals. Stop trying to scream, it won’t work. Your throat muscles are paralyzed too. You still can’t breath.
You are staring at a blank ceiling, you can’t stare anywhere else. Shadows flit across your vision, forming shapes you try not to think about. A clawed hand, a flash of jagged, shadowy teeth. All images from your subconscious. A face forming above yours, leering through black void eyes. You think you
hear sibilant whispering. Angry hissing, like a snake that’s been disturbed.
Suddenly, a sharp white light briefly flares in the room as a car pulls down the street, dispelling the shadows. The weight is gone. You can breath, your hands clench sheets.
You feel an eternity has passed by but it was all the work of a moment. You wriggle, just to prove to yourself you can. You sit up, take a deep breath and then laugh a little at yourself. Sleep Paralysis. Stupid.
You turn to shake your spouse awake, eager to share your experience. You feel paralyzed again, but it has nothing to do with Sleep Paralysis. You stare at the blood, the jagged wound in her throat, her wide, staring eyes, mouth opened in soundless scream.
You survived your Old Hag Syndrome.
She didn’t.
#11:You feel an itch in your throat.
You try to cough it out, but it just won't come.
You struggle with forcing yourself to vomit. You drink lots of water, but whatever it is, it’s just stuck there.
You reach for the carton of milk in the fridge and sneeze as you raise it up. Something hits the floor with a rattle. You look at the floor and see a small button with a flowery design
on it.
Then you look up. On the milk carton, you notice a missing kid. Her blouse shows the same buttons.
#10:In Berlin, after World War II, money was short, supplies were tight, and it seemed like everyone was hungry. At that time, people were telling the tale of a young woman who saw a blind
man picking his way through a crowd. The two started to talk. The man asked her for a favor: could she deliver the letter to the address on the envelope? Well, it was on her way home,
so she agreed.
She started out to deliver the message, when she turned around to see if there was anything else the blind man needed. But she spotted him hurrying through the crowd without his smoked
glasses or white cane. She went to the police, who raided the address on the envelope, where they found heaps of human flesh for sale.
And what was in the envelope? "This is the last one I am sending you today."
#9:When I was a kid, we used to have an old couch in our house. It was old and pretty tacky. My mom had gotten it at a garage sale or something. One day we decided to up and out the
couch. It was when I was young but I remembered it.
Anyhow I was talking to my mom and we brought up the old couch and she told me about something I hadn't remembered for years.
When I was young, maybe four or five I was playing near the couch and a withered black hand reached out to me holding a crumpled paper bag with an unfamiliar hardware store logo on it.
I was scared shitless and I didn't touch it. After a few seconds the hand went back under the couch, bag and all.
When I had originally told my mom about the incident she had freaked out and gotten rid of the couch. It turned out it's last owner was an old woman who had died on the couch.
Now is where it gets weirder. I was in town the other day and a grocery store I often visit I noticed a bag with the same logo that was under the couch. No old shriveled hand was
holding it so I had the balls to open it up and look inside.
It was a bag of razorblades.
#8:Coffins used to be built with holes in them, attached to six feet of copper tubing and a bell. The tubing would allow air for victims buried under the mistaken impression they were dead. Harold, the Oakdale gravedigger, upon hearing a bell, went to go see if it was children pretending to be spirits. Sometimes it was also the wind. This time it wasn’t either. A voice from below begged, pleaded to be unburied.
“You Sarah O’Bannon?” Yes! the voice assured.
“You were born on September 17, 1827?”
“Yes!”
“The gravestone here says you died on February 19?”
“No I’m alive, it was a mistake! Dig me up, set me free!”
“Sorry about this, ma’am,” Harold said, stepping on the bell to silence it and plugging up the copper tube with dirt. “But this is August. Whatever you is down there, you ain’t alive no more, and you ain’t comin’ up.”
#7:You just moved into your new apartment, in a very big city. After a year of this life, you have almost given up hope of making any friends; be it at work or any other means. You feel very lonely. After looking for a peaceful place to spend your time, you find a quiet diner on the outskirts of town. The waitress is very attractive. Also, she seems to be the only employee there, ever. You never see anyone else eat there either, ever. The place is perfect for you.
Making love to her becomes a routine. You go there every night for dinner, and then to see her.
You eventually make other friends, and eat at the diner less and less. After some time you stop going completely.
At a bar with your best friend, you tell him about the fun you had with the waitress at the diner. He says he absolutely must see her. You take him there one night, but the building is in a state of ruin. The front door barely opens. The grimy insides of the diner are disgusting, and, behind the counter, is moldy corpse, reeking of pus and rot.
When the police come to the scene, they interview both you and your friend. You are shocked to hear that the body is of a runaway girl from another province. The police tell you this is a homicide, and that she was also raped dozens of times, after she was killed. The police say they can get a match for DNA and eliminate you as a suspect. You are suddenly very worried.
#6:You're at work alone, when you suddenly hear the copy machine start up. You walk out to take a look at what's going on and see several copies filling the tray. Picking up one of the
pieces of paper you discover that it is a copy of a picture depicting you sitting in your office chair, dead, with your eyes torn out and your throat cut. The others are the same
picture, but taken from increasingly bizarre angles.
There is no original picture in the copy machine. In fact, the machine has been out of toner for a week.
#5:Normally you sleep soundly, but the thunderstorm raging outside is stirring you from your slumber. You begin to doze, then another crash jolts you awake. The cycle lasts most of the
night. So you lay there, eyes open and outward, looking at your room stretching out before you in oblong shadows. Your eyes move from nameless object, to object, until you reach your
mirror, sitting adjacent to you across the room.
Suddenly a flash of lighting, and the mirror flickers in illumination. For a scant second the mirror revels to you dozens of faces, silhouettes within its frame, mouths open and eyes
blackened. They stare out at you, their black pupils fixed upon your face.
Then it is done. Are you sure of what you have seen? Unsettled, you don’t sleep for the rest of the evening.
The next morning you remove the mirror from your wall and toss it in the trash. It didn’t matter if the vision you had seen was of truth or falsehood, you wanted to be rid of that
mirror. In fact, you scrap every mirror in your house.
Weeks pass and the event of that night falls into passive memory. You are spending the day at a friend’s house. It’s time to use the bathroom. While you are in there the faucet starts
to run without you prompting it. Taken aback by this, you do not yet act, trying to reason with your paranoia in your mind. The water starts to steam and a skin of moisture covers the
mirror up above. You’re watching intently as words form:
“Please return the mirrors. We miss watching you sleep at night.”
#4:I am currently sitting in front of my computer, scared witless. Any moment now I am going to be killed.
Today a friend of mine told me a story.
His aunt had taken care of him since he was a small boy, and she told him last night about how his parents died. He did a very fair imitation of her (I knew them both pretty well):
"They were doing mission work in some nasty little south American country when a man burst into the mission hospital one night, terrified out of his mind. He told them that his sister
had been killed by a Muerto blanco, and that he was certain that it was coming for him next. What is a Muerto blanco? Apparently it was some sort of bogey-man, something like that dumb
chupacabra or whatever. They called it the White Death or the White Girl, because it was the soul of someone who hated life so much that they came back in their shrouds to kill those
who told of them.
The man had been told about the vengeful spirit by his sister hours before her death. It was a girl with dead, black eyes that wept bile. The thing moved without ever actually moving
its legs, and it stalked its victims back to their homes. Now, if you weren't already aware that this thing was following you, once it got back to your house, it would start knocking
on your door...
Once for you skin, which she'll use to patch her own decaying flesh.
Twice for your muscle, which she'll gnash her teeth on between victims.
Thrice for your bones, which she'll make knives to pick her teeth and kill her victims.
Four times for your heart, which she'll wear around her neck.
Five times for your teeth, which she'll polish and keep in a box.
Six times for your eyes, which she'll see the faces of your loved ones through.
Seven times for your soul, which she'll eat whole - you can never pass while you're in her stomach.
She has to repeat this on any mirror or door between you and her.
You can try to outrun her, but she's faster than the fastest man. And if you leave your home while she's knocking on your door, she won't be so courteous when she catches up to you.
Now the man was certain that this thing had killed his sister, that he had tried to tell the police, but they would not listen. Next he had tried to tell his priest, but the priest
turned him away when he saw that the thing was following him now - oh, that's right, I forgot about that - it can only get you if you tell someone else about it, or you saw it kill
someone else. The man, after finishing his tale, stole a car from the mission, and was never seen again."
Apparently his mother and father had immediately called his aunt about this when it happened. They were found in the morning, skinned and dismembered. Their bodies were covered in
tiny, child-like handprints."
His aunt was really drunk the night before, and had told him about that. He told me this story early in the morning today at school, before the cops arrived. His aunt had been murdered
that night. I called him later that night, and he told me that he was being chased by someone, and now they were knocking on his door. I told him to stop shitting me.
He held the phone away from his face for a minute, and I could hear slow, deliberate knocking. A moment later, I heard the door rip from its hinges and the dying screams of my friend.
Then a little girl's voice spoke over the line: "WITNESS." I hung up.
Three minutes ago someone started knocking on my door. She has to knock 28 times on my front door, 28 times on the mirror in the hall, and another 28 times on the door to my bedroom.
She's doing it slowly... I think she wants to scare me some more, let me know that my death is just moments away. I will not run - I couldn't get to my car in time anyway. She started
knocking on my bedroom door a minute ago, she should be done any moment.
Nice knowing you guys, it's been f
WITNESS
#3:It's early morning. The sun won't be up for another couple of hours. You're fast asleep in bed, lost in a dream, when the phone rings. Rather than waking up, you roll over and cover your head with a pillow.
Hours pass. The sun rises.
The phone is ringing.
When you wake up, your alarm clock is blaring and the phone is ringing. By the time you will yourself to turn the alarm off, the phone has stopped ringing. You realize that it's been ringing all morning.
You slide out of bed and press the blinking red button on your phone as you stumble into the bathroom. The phone beeps, followed by the friendly, electronic voice.
Hello. You have six hundred and sixty-six new messages. Message one. The phone beeps again, and you're not prepared for what comes next.
Screaming.
You spin around, thinking that she's standing right behind you. There's pure terror in her screams, accompanied by other disturbing noises. You stand there, horrified, for about ten seconds. Screaming gives way to hysterical, garbled crying before dying out with the sounds of spilling meat and tearing flesh.
The phone beeps again. You're shaking.
Message two.
#2:You were out of town for the weekend. When you came back to your apartment, your mailbox was stuffed full. At least 30 letters. Letters with no return address, several of them felt soggy and heavy, as though they were recently wet, or perhaps contained a liquid. All of the letters have your name and address written on them, and many of them had your name scratched all over them in red in. They don't smell nice, they smell like rotting meat and old garbage and you're reluctant to take them back to your room, but curiosity gets the better of you.
So you manage to cart them all back to your room, you dump them in your kitchenette sink because you don't want them smelling up the rest of the apartment. You grab one that doesn't seem damp and isn't covered with writing, and open it up. There's pictures inside. Pictures of people you don't know, with their eyes torn out, teeth missing, unhinged jaws hanging open, throats ripped out.
You're horrified and yet you can't help but wonder what's in the rest of the letters. You open more, and more to discover increasingly gruesome photos of dead
people. Piles of bodies with limps missing, splayed open corpses on operating tables with their vital organs removed, hanged bodies that have been gutted and bled dry.
Some of the soggy letters had blood and other fluids in them. The more letters you open, the more you notice that not all of the people are strangers. Some of them were people you see at work, others people you went to high school with. By the time you get to the last few letters, the pictures are of the mutilated bodies of your close friends and family members.
Eventually you reach the last letter. You don't want to know what's in it, but it's not like you have a choice now. You peel the letter open, and it's a picture of yourself. Not dead, eyes intact, no limbs missing. It's a picture of you entering your apartment building earlier that day, shortly before you collected your disgusting letters. As you hear a door elsewhere in your apartment open, you suddenly find yourself paralyzed with fear.
#1:NetNostalgia Forum – Television (local)
Skyshale033
Subject: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Does anyone remember this kid’s show? It was called Candle Cove and I must have been 6 or 7. I never found reference to it anywhere so I think it was on a local station around 1971 or 1972. I lived in Ironton at the time. I don’t remember which station, but I do remember it was on at a weird time, like 4:00 PM.
mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
it seems really familiar to me…..i grew up outside of ashland and was 9 yrs old in 72. candle cove…was it about pirates? i remember a pirate marionette at the mouth of a cave talking to a little girl
Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
YES! Okay I’m not crazy! I remember Pirate Percy. I was always kind of scared of him. He looked like he was built from parts of other dolls, real low-budget. His head was an old porcelain baby doll, looked like an antique that didn’t belong on the body. I don’t remember what station this was! I don’t think it was WTSF though.
Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Sorry to ressurect this old thread but I know exactly what show you mean, Skyshale. I think Candle Cove ran for only a couple months in ‘71, not ‘72. I was 12 and I watched it a few times with my brother. It was channel 58, whatever station that was. My mom would let me switch to it after the news. Let me see what I remember.
It took place in Candle cove, and it was about a little girl who imagined herself to be friends with pirates. The pirate ship was called the Laughingstock, and Pirate Percy wasn’t a very good pirate because he got scared too easily. And there was calliope music constantly playing. Don’t remember the girl’s name. Janice or Jade or something. Think it was Janice.
Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Thank you Jaren!!! Memories flooded back when you mentioned the Laughingstock and channel 58. I remember the bow of the ship was a wooden smiling face, with the lower jaw submerged. It looked like it was swallowing the sea and it had that awful Ed Wynn voice and laugh. I especially remember how jarring it was when they switched from the wooden/plastic model, to the foam puppet version of the head that talked.
mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
ha ha i remember now too. ;) do you remember this part skyshale: “you have…to go…INSIDE.”
Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Ugh mike, I got a chill reading that. Yes I remember. That’s what the ship always told Percy when there was a spooky place he had to go in, like a cave or a dark room where the treasure was. And the camera would push in on Laughingstock’s face with each pause. YOU HAVE… TO GO… INSIDE. With his two eyes askew and that flopping foam jaw and the fishing line that opened and closed it. Ugh. It just looked so cheap and awful.
You guys remember the villain? He had a face that was just a handlebar mustache above really tall, narrow teeth.
kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
i honestly, honestly thought the villain was pirate percy. i was about 5 when this show was on. nightmare fuel.
Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
That wasn’t the villain, the puppet with the mustache. That was the villain’s sidekick, Horace Horrible. He had a monocle too, but it was on top of the mustache. I used to think that meant he had only one eye.
But yeah, the villain was another marionette. The Skin-Taker. I can’t believe what they let us watch back then.
kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
jesus h. christ, the skin taker. what kind of a kids show were we watching? i seriously could not look at the screen when the skin taker showed up. he just descended out of nowhere on his strings, just a dirty skeleton wearing that brown top hat and cape. and his glass eyes that were too big for his skull. christ almighty.
Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Wasn’t his top hat and cloak all sewn up crazily? Was that supposed to be children’s skin??
mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
yeah i think so. remembered his mouth didn’t open and close, his jaw just slid back and foth. i remember the little girl said “why does your mouth move like that” and the skin-taker didn’t look at the girl but at the camera and said “TO GRIND YOUR SKIN”
Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
I’m so relieved that other people remember this terrible show!
I used to have this awful memory, a bad dream I had where the opening jingle ended, the show faded in from black, and all the characters were there, but the camera was just cutting to each of their faces, and they were just screaming, and the puppets and marionettes were flailing spastically, and just all screaming, screaming. The girl was just moaning and crying like she had been through hours of this. I woke up many times from that nightmare. I used to wet the bed when I had it.
kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
i don’t think that was a dream. i remember that. i remember that was an episode.
Skyshale033
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
No no no, not possible. There was no plot or anything, I mean literally just standing in place crying and screaming for the whole show.
kevin_hart
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
maybe i’m manufacturing the memory because you said that, but i swear to god i remember seeing what you described. they just screamed.
Jaren_2005
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
Oh God. Yes. The little girl, Janice, I remember seeing her shake. And the Skin-Taker screaming through his gnashing teeth, his jaw careening so wildly I thought it would come off its wire hinges. I turned it off and it was the last time I watched. I ran to tell my brother and we didn’t have the courage to turn it back on.
mike_painter65
Subject: Re: Candle Cove local kid’s show?
i visited my mom today at the nursing home. I asked her about when I was little in the early 70s, when I was 8 or 9 and if she remembered a kid’s show, candle cove. she said she was surprised i could remember that and i asked why, and she said “because i used to think it was so strange that you said ‘I’m gonna go watch candle cove now mom’ and then you would tune the tv to static and juts watch dead air for 30 minutes. you had a big imagination with your little pirate show.”
