Digital Horror: Rebirth of Creepypasta

[Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome back things look a little different I downloaded this sort of bootleg operating system that was built with horror analysis in mind there is one little Quirk about it the guy that I bought the install disc from said it was haunted and ruined his life and told me to bury it deep enough that it will never kill again but it's got all these Cool Tools like look at this one forensic this guy can help me analyze videos and images you name it anyway today we're going to be talking about creepy pastas a facet of Internet horror that seems like a relic at this point is having a sort of Ren especially within the digital horror Community There's Something About This bygone genre that is so enticing to contemporary web series creators that more than 20 years since its conception it's rising again like a virtual corpse reanimated but was it ever really gone or did it just change its form right under our noses that's exactly what I intend to discuss today but first I'll be going over and analyzing some particularly interesting digital horror series which are directly inspired by the creepy post of old let's get started uh yeah hold on I'll go check on that let me just run the title sequence [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] well I I hope nothing too exciting happened while I was gone okay let's start with morle Grove slender is almost definitely one of the most iconic and well-known Creepy Pasta figures to ever exist it almost seems pointless to give an introduction as even his Origins feel Ubi ious at this point appearing first from the mind of something awfully user Victor surge in a 2009 paranormal images Photoshop thread the character essentially derailed the thread as other users became immediately captivated by the concept we all know him a tall faceless figure dressed in a suit and tie appearing from the woods his intentions and Powers vary depending on what version of the character you're looking at but elements can include stalking his victims to Insanity turning his victims into minions called proxies kidnapping children and distorting audio photo and video after the initial post the Slender Man spread like wildfire with original stories or images being made a community building out a larger Mythos for the character and some of the most influential horror web series being inspired by the character like Marble Hornets and Everyman hybrid not to mention some of the games that shaped much of the indie horror scene today like slender the8 pages his character was undeniably a groundbreaking and gripping horror concept but into the mid-2010s the Slender clone phenomenon of games wore itself to th and other Concepts overtook indie horror and the character's popularity seemed to be a detriment with two feature film attempts garnering very poor reception by the late 2010s slender was in the rearview mirror horror had moved on his impacts were still there but he felt overplayed what more could anyone do with the character fast forward March 18th 2022 Remy Abode creator of one of the most successful analog horror series on YouTube Gemini home entertainment up uploads a video titled Morley Grove the video begins on a Bandy cam screen capture it's a YouTube video judging by the upload date at the bottom and the YouTube layout this is recorded sometime between 2009 to 2010 the video we're seeing uploaded by a channel called super pilot Jordan is titled morly Grove specters missing kids photos turn creepy the description at the bottom reads kids faces in morly Grove Tennessee turn all messed up before disappearances 1969 proof the video itself plays ominous piano music as we see a series of photos taken at a picnic or some kind of outdoor family and friend Gathering the video zooms into the faces of some of the children there and as the description mentions they seem distorted it's hard to tell exactly as the photos aren't of great quality but it certainly looks unsettling the last photo in the slideshow appears to be nearby a river or lake of some kind we see another child's face and then it cuts to something else but hold on what were those last few frames going back we can see that it's zoomed into the tree line behind the crowd at first it's unclear what we're supposed to be seeing but look long enough and you'll begin to see a silhouette a towering figure blending in with the darkness of the trees this guy looks familiar the next portion of the video is just a piece of audio captioned morly Grove specters audio recorded February 2007 [Music] The Haunting sound of children's screams Echo into the howling wind and whoever is recording begins to pick up the pace running before the entire video ends moving on from here I should probably explain something the playlist for morly Grove on Remy AB Bo's channel has the description archived from alter 90 pre- deltion so all of these videos are supposedly re-uploads from a different presumably older Channel who's the one making these screen recordings though we can gather some brief Snippets of information from this first video like the fact that some kids went missing in 1969 and this tall figure likely has something to do with it we're clearly missing some context here let's move on to the next video Birthday 2005 here we open to the sound of serene synths as footage of the woods and what appear to be signs of some kind of logging operation judging by the quality of the film this is probably from the 1960s as well the feeling is odd a mix of beauty and fear at the end of the sequence we see a body of water similar to the one seen in the previous video and then some footage of children playing then we abruptly cut back to a Bandy cam screen recording showcasing a birthday slideshow for someone named Dustin in 2005 in all of the photos the birthday boy's face is blurred not the way the previous images were distorted this looks like intentional censoring the final image Cuts away before we can get a good look at it before ending the slideshow pausing on that that final image we see it's just a photo of what is presumably Dustin standing in the park with trees around him there's something hiding within this video though right here did you see it I don't blame you I didn't either I think missing it is part of the experience I'll show it again pay attention to the left side around this part of the screen did you see it that time the same figure from the last video yet again disguised against the tree line massive looming you can even see its arm move at the end I completely missed this on my first watch of the video and had to move to the comments to have it pointed out to me when I saw it it was literally like that moment from [Music] signs insanely good going back to the birthday section an acoustic rendition of You Are My Sunshine plays underneath the slideshow it creates an oddly unsettling or at the very least bitter sweet atmosphere one can't help but think of the lines please don't take my dear sunshine away when hearing it in this context and speaking of the next video morly Missing opens on those exact [Music] lines we see a screen recording of the comment section under that 2005 birthday video it's a little confusing because of how many layers of reuploader going on but judging by the Bandy cam logo in the last video alter 90 seems to have screen recorded that video which I think was initially uploaded by XX face 4 the Thunder XX 2 years before alter recorded it now alter is looking through the comments and we see a familiar name super pilot Jordan arguing with other commenters about the validity of this so-called morly Grove specters phenomenon he also says that this child Dustin is one of those missing kids what's even more interesting is the comment by Katra best 17 is this a joke all these photos are older than 2005 I'm so confused and looking back at that slideshow they're right they look a lot closer to the quality of the photos we saw in that first morly Grove video like they were taken sometime in the' 60s the next portion of the video may help shed a bit of light the screen recording switches to some kind of web page dedicated to the morly Grove specters showcasing the names and photos of all the kids who went missing all dated to 1969 and I'm sorry to interrupt here but everything has been so atmospheric up to this point and then I am faced with Judy Morris face I don't know maybe it's scary to some people but this is the funniest thing I've ever seen anyway among the list of names is Dustin Ford his photo is missing a broken link this suggests not that they didn't have a photo available but that at some point it was removed or corrupted the next sequence showcases a series of eyewitness accounts related to the disappearances my elementary school friend Pammy became a spec ctor I was staying with my aunt a half hour away so I wasn't at Morley Grove my mom was though she saw the Morley man T Burke could this morly man be the figure we've seen appearing in the background of these videos I mean yeah probably I knew a guy who said he saw it take one of the kids he told me it must have been at least 20 ft tall he said that when it looked at him it stole a part of his soul LK when I was still working we would get calls from this terrified woman who was convinced that someone was stalking her son she was absolutely adamant but couldn't prove any real cause for her suspicion no matter how hard we searched nothing came up I think everyone figured she was just paranoid I still feel guilty about that Anonymous and the final story I must have been around 12 at the time I was sitting on the couch right across from Roy he was a couple years younger than me I was on the couch that sat against the main wall so I wasn't able to look out the window I remember I was showing him this toy truck I had and for a second he glanced past me out the window it took him right then and there my mom was in the kitchen when it happened she screamed now we're beginning to get a slightly better understanding these kids are being taken by this morly man and he's turning them into specters it's not entirely clear it doesn't sound like he's just killing them and then their ghosts are haunting people seems like something even more Supernatural that he's taking their souls and turning them into these specters it's not entirely clear how this works though is he taking them to another plane of existence removing their body so all that's left is their Spirits is it his way of capturing them I don't know let's keep watching our next video morly Drive opens with a date recorded January 2010 a 911 call a child explains that there's a man outside his bedroom while the operator's voice comes through normally the child is just the sound of distorted crying okay they're there right now the kid's final line is if I look at him he'll take me we cut to dash cam footage from the sound of it inside the squad car going to check on the child it cuts forward a few times but there's a strange bit here where it cuts a full minute forward with no visible change on the footage odd we see a satellite view of the house located on Morley Drive 2:27 a.m. police arrive at 23 morly drive hold and Dunn husband answers the door police explain the situation Dunn is confused explains that there are no children in the household the video ends I have to say the buildup and twist are incredibly paced here in the original video and your mind might be immediately wandering to the possibilities did the moley man make this couple forget about their child when he took them was it attempting to lure the police there let's put a pin in these questions for now and take a look at the next video morly ghost morly ghost consists of one shot from a Lowes camera it records through a doorway into a dark room of a house first there's the quiet sound of a child's voice unintelligible [Applause] then a cat walks into frame startled by something in the darkness before moving on the camera zooms into the darkness but it's impossible to make anything out we sit on this shot for a while waiting then a shadow passes by and suddenly the room is filled with Darkness the darkness leaves and [Applause] then this video is by far one of the scariest in the series it replicates the style of old internet ghost caught on camera screamer videos and instead of actually using a jump scare it takes advantage of the expectations we have and leaves us leaned in and tense the entire way waiting for something to come out of the darkness in front of us but it never does instead it leaves us with the Panic inducing sound of footsteps from behind as for the unintelligible audio it sounds like it's reversed and stretched reversing it back and speeding it up it's still hard to make out out but it sounds like help me he's here right now spooky here is our final video birthday 2010 it opens with more 60s home movie footage a birthday it's dark out the song in the background appears to be a reversed version of the song Stars will fall by duster we cut to a screen recording of a news article from 2010 dated just after the events of Morley Drive ghost child scares couple out of home morly Grove couple puts house up for sale following ghost 911 call the photo at the bottom features a sketch of the ghost but its face is blurred cut again another birthday slideshow it seems almost identical to the last aside from the 2010 date except one thing Dustin is missing from every single photo then it continues we see the darkened room from morly Ghost we get closer and closer something's there but it's nearly impossible to make out but the blur covering a specific spot tells us what we need to know Dustin's face is staring at us from the darkness the only time we see Dustin clearly is the opening photo and this ending photo but even that seems different comparing the first slideshow to this one Dustin's portrait in the new one feels so off his posture is stiff his face looks purple and red he looks more like a corpse that's been taxin armied than a living child there's one more detail here Dustin isn't the only thing missing from these photos take a look at the two versions of the park photo one of the trees is missing seems like it was never a tree at all and if you look closely at the first photo it does stand out like it's been blurred by the same filter that's blurring Dustin's face for now though that's all the videos Remy's latest upload does suggest the series will continue but exactly when we don't know yet so let's see what we can figure out with what we have oh yeah sorry let me let me open the analysis section this isn't the longest Series so I probably won't have a ton to analyze but I do think there are a few interesting connections to be made and I think I can posit some answers to some of our questions to start let's get a basic rundown of what happened 1969 at least five kids kids probably more mysteriously go missing in morly Grove Tennessee nobody knows where they went but a sort of conspiracy pops up that these kids have been turned into specters it's not entirely clear what that means but we can gather there's some kind of ghostly aerations their voices heard echoing in the wind or quietly in the silences that fill homes even decades after their disappearances after they've disappeared something else happens their faces become distorted and strange in photographs something else that's fairly clear is that these disappearance Es are likely caused by the morly man the name this Series has for the Slender Man type figure we've been seeing a towering faceless entity who hides among the trees the specifics of this entity aren't fleshed out as of yet but we know he's at least 20 ft tall eyewitnesses have seen him take children without even touching them and he has a certain effect on people when encountered one witness described it as stealing a part of their soul the channel super pilot Jordan appears to be dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of and documenting information surrounding the morly Grove specters and this channel likely isn't the only person doing so as we also see a website aimed at the same thing there are a few other elements that the series introduces that aren't quite as straightforward to start we have Dustin one of the morly Grove kids who went missing in 1969 it becomes pretty apparent something is different about his case in all of his appearances his face has been blurred out intentionally censoring it why we don't see this with the other distorted faces and his entry on the website contains a missing image file it's like his identity is being removed even stranger despite his disappearance in 1969 we keep seeing these 2000s era slideshows posting the same images from his birthday in the 60s but labeled with increasing dates 2005 2010 these recurring birthday celebration videos decades after his death the other strange element in this series is the events of morly Drive what happened with this phone call with this ghost child I want to start here so in 2010 the police get a call from a house a child telling them a man is outside when they arrive on the scene the couple who lives at the house explain there are no children in the home my first thought stayed within the themes of erasing identities we've seen so far that the couple did have a child but when the morly man took him he erased all memories of him it's compelling but it doesn't have a ton of supporting evidence for pretty much every other case there are people who still remember the kids with some even witnessing them being taken the only real exception is Dustin who we see disappearing from photos in the 2010 video and though the 2010 date does line up with the phone call all other evidence points to Dustin going missing in 1969 decades before this phone call so my next thought was that the morly man was using one of his victim's voices as a sort of lure but his intentions of doing so seeing as nothing really happened afterwards wouldn't be entirely clear instead of either of these explanations I want to posit another one that I think can help explain Dustin as well I think Dustin is trying to escape the morly man I think this 2010 phone call is Dustin calling for help from wherever he is as a spectre and I think because of that the mly man is punishing him Dustin is slowly being erased first through blurring his identity then by removing him all together and when we do see him in the 2010 video he appears to be in a far worse State than the 5 years prior the 2010 video marks the morly man's punishment for Dustin's 2010 attempt at Escape further distorting and erasing him we could then assume that the 2005 video and the blurring of his featur features and removal of his photo from the website marked a punishment for a previous attempt at Escape taking a loving Memorial of Dustin's last birthday and twisting it blurring his face in the photos the morly man's punishment for those who don't want to be forgotten is to erase them further we then might assume the morly ghost video is Dustin's 2005 attempt calling out help me he's here right now and it is possible though I can't verify this one comment on the morly ghost video says it used to be titled morly Drive 2 before it was changed indic ating a sort of thematic connection but to me it feels more like another piece of footage from around the same time as the 2010 instance perhaps a recording from the newly paranoid couple who eventually moved out of the house chronologically this would make sense as the phone call puts the morly man outside the home and morle ghost seems to suggest he's made his way in my current thought about Dustin inhabiting the morle drive home is that it may have been where he lived decades previously before his disappearance but that is more of a gut feeling than anything concrete all of this begs the question who is the Morley man what are his intentions where did he come from and is he still around I'm not sure we have all the answers to these questions yet but I have an idea as to where he came from we don't know a lot about the Morley man but we've consistently seen him as a figure associated with the woods blending in among the trunks silhouetted against the branches and knowing his close inspiration to the Slender Man character we can safely assume this character is deeply connected to the forest going back to the Birthday 2005 video what is it that we see in the beginning home video footage of a logging operation and not only do we see the moley man among the trees here but multiple times if we assume the images in the first video are close by now I'm not sure this is like a the morly man is a forest Spirit angered by the destruction of nature but my current pet theory is that this logging operation encroached on his neck of the woods and sort of a wakened the Beast otherwise I don't have a lot of new information to bring to the table clearly he has a supernatural ability to disappear children and seems to have some abilities relating to erasing people or at the very least the memories of these people but I think this is where the themes of morly Grove really begin to stand out [Music] [Music] in a more thematic sense I think the moly man really represents death and time and what it does to people who've passed and those who remember them after these kids go Miss Miss ing their faces become less clear blurry and distorted like the fuzzy memories of a face you can't quite conjure together in your head their voices just distant sounds even on the supposedly permanent internet their photos are low quality or eventually succumb to internet rot as domains and media fail to be kept up with a symbolic lens we can understand these as parallels as they relate to the old adage of dying Twice first when you take your last breath and second when your name is spoken for the last time once someone has passed they exist only in the memories of those who knew them but these memories are imperfect and will inevitably fade their face less clear their voice muffled by the growing decades since it was last heard and maybe this is what the specters are a manifestation of the collective memories of those who've gone missing as nothing else is left maybe this is why we see the recurring theme of people like super pilot Jordan obsessively documenting the case or the repeating use of Dustin's birthday the date keeps coming and going and someone is trying desperately to keep his memory alive he's trying to keep his memory alive but with the passing of time Dustin's presence is disappearing and I think that's why the morly man seems to be punishing Dustin for trying to escape it's just against the nature of death everyone eventually is destined to fade faces forgotten voices unrecalled to disappear listen I don't know what but I think something in these wood is following me and I think if I look at it something terrible is going to happen click here for an incredible deal patreon.com Hawks behind the scenes exclusive reviews commentary tracks q&as and more and it's only $2 that was weird but uh Morley Grove sure was something huh it's so interesting seeing this renewed interest in old creepy pasta but I bet we can get older back to the earliest days of the internet aim messages and Hotmail accounts and a phenomenon that would be the building blocks for the creepy pasta genre chain mail emails and instant messages which would implore the reader to forward it to friends 10 friends 50 and though their tactics varied one of the most successful was that of the scary story and the threat of death halt it is I the wizard if you are reading or listening to this message you are hereby granted immunity from all chain letters Incognito hazards virtual or otherwise contained within this video and henceforth and Hereafter and so forth be well be blessed and beone these stories would begin by warning the receiver to continue reading and not stop for any reason it would then go on to lay out a horrific story of murder or a tragic accident and finally the message ends claiming that if you don't forward the message to x amount of people the ghost of the victim of whatever horrific incident you just read about will come to kill you details vary to some extent but that was a fairly popular format a Horror Story Ending by threatening a horrific death if you don't pass it along long and as one person who receives the message spreads it to five and those five spread it to five more I'm sure you can see how it became so ubiquitous and the stories written in these chain letters are one of the key components that led to the emergence of early Creepy Pasta which I will discuss in a lot more depth later which explains why one of the earliest Creepy Pasta to really blow up was based on one of them smile. jpeg AKA smile dog is a story I'm sure you've at least heard of it's a story about an image of a smiling dog with a file named smile. jpeg which if seen will inflict paranormal torment to the viewer and eventually death if the photo isn't shared something about smile dog that's really interesting is that the story isn't the curse the images this led to that image becoming more widespread than the actual story which is a fairly common occurrence with creepy pastas that have images associated with them take Jeff the Killer as an example and if you want to talk about modern interest in old creepy pasta Jeff the Killer is like the current Nexus point there's a search a bounty with thousands of dollars on the line going on right now trying to find the original unphotoshopped version of this iconic image the origins of so many of these photos associated with old creepy pastas are lost because of the time they were created a less archived internet decades old at this point and that's kind of where our next series comes in chain mail Chasers is a series following the exact type of investigators who go looking for the origins of these creepy pasta images the description of the chain mail Chasers Channel reads a channel dedicated to finding the origins OFA popular internet horror images notably from creepy pastas videos attempt to emulate a faux Movie Maker style sounds cool let's take a look at the first few videos the first video is a bit of a softball it starts with a familiar face or I guess lack thereof Slender Man and the photos that Victor surge created along with the Original Stories though there's no voiceover we are guided along via text on screen as the uploader shows us some of the archival origins she was able to track down there's not too much in the way of plot relevance in this episode as it mostly functions as an introduction but one thing that's worth noting is this series does take place in a sort of alternate universe from our own meaning the origins of these images that the channel uncovers aren't always accurate very often they aren't that's kind of the series's whole thing I wanted to say that at the outset because these videos have accidentally tricked quite a few people who just stumbled across them including lost media channels like blame it on Jorge anyway on to the next video the next video focusing in on the highly elusive Jeff the Killer Origins follows largely the same formula taking us back to the very earliest examples of the image being associated with the Jeff the Killer name and then even farther back to its earliest appearances on forchan and Japanese message boards where other versions of the Photoshop are found the video is only 3 minutes long as the actual Origins still remain elusive it promises the smile dog image as the topic of the next video and that's exactly what we find the video Begins by addressing a popular smile dog image which although popular isn't the one that is primarily associated with the smile dog story after quickly showcasing the original elements used to photosho this image together we move to the actual Smile Dog photo this one is a little more difficult to track down but using the reverse image search tool tinai Garners an interesting result seemingly a variant of this smile dog image this time more compressed than red hosted on a site called paranormal prick heads from 2007 predating the original Creepy Pasta the video then changes to a screen recording of the host of the channel Grace and we actually hear her talking instead of just text okay so I put that uh like this is just an update I put that one website into a way back machine and I got this this thing is [ __ ] old she's on the Wayback machine Archive of the Paranormal prick heads website a clearly dated website dedicated to Paranormal phenomena in a section under chain letters the website details one called smile an old Chain Letter reminiscent of the one detailed in the smile dog creepy pasta but not exactly the same and the image associated with it is this newly discovered though older chronologically red variant of the smile dog image supposedly this Chain Letter can be traced all the way back to the 9s on uset much earlier than the 2008 date associated with the creepy pasta and then he says the image looks like [ __ ] which I mean this this weird ass image does like I don't like I guess this is supposed to be like jpeg loss but you cannot make an image that bad that way I don't that's [ __ ] nasty that not about the jpeg loss will be important later let's put a pin in that yeah like I I guess if you guys can find anything like the eight of you um I guess tell me yeah no like [ __ ] where did I where did I oh oh [ __ ] and with sex Origins it ends the next video is an update with Grace having received some emails with possible leads this video covering one a series of spam emails from someone called grin friend their emails all have a recurring smile theme and attach another new variant of the smile dog image this time darker and more reminiscent of a skull the image's file name leads Grace to an archived something awful thread from 2002 where a user called a grinning ghouly spammed the very same image incredibly quickly only briefly interrupted by annoy users like googly moogly the final image in the thread is another very slight variation this time looking nearly identical to the darker image but with a more prominent face and smile Grace downloads the photo simply titled smile. JPEG and ends the video can't imagine downloading a horrific image with the same name of a supposedly cursed file that will inflict torment on its viewer will lead to anything bad you may notice though something strange happens right at the end what is this this goo the next video follows up with the other lead an email from someone else who appears to be genuinely interested in helping with the search Arthur Murphy AKA kooi he explains that he has a similar interest in tracking these sorts of things down especially smile. jpeg which really hits close to home so Grace hops on a Discord call strangely kooy Begins the call asking for Grace to suspend her disbelief for the duration of the call because what he's going to show her may seem unbelievable can you just suspend your disbelief like you're like everything just suspend it at for the duration of this call I mean okay but I thought you were going to just show me okay if you leave this call thinking that I am [ __ ] with you you have every right on Earth to never talk to me again okay first he points out the goo at the end of the last video and Grace attempts to come up with a rational explanation kind of [ __ ] weird um looks kind of like mold or whatever but what I yeah that must what I think happened here is you can see that it's in line with the the image or whatever above it you have like all the other small ones and this kind of looks like curtains or something then kooi explicitly asks for the screen share to be stopped and for Grace to open smile. jpeg multiple times can you actually um turn off the screen share real fast can you know the smile dog um image like you downloaded it yeah I I yeah can you open it up a few times like you want me to screen share it or no no can you just yeah just open it up a few times on your own before she can though it seems like she realizes she's late for something and has to end things abruptly when Grace comes back now alone she tries doing what Koi Koi asked and when she does things start changing I don't understand why what the [ __ ] I'm I'm not talking to a jpig a sort of conversation plays out between her and the image in which the image responds before Grace can even finish talking almost as if it can read her thoughts did you um how the [ __ ] did I no I was thinking per image's request she changes the image to a do GI file and things really take a turn I'll give a brief rundown of what the image seems to be saying it feels good to be used can in presence I am not the source I am a thinking GH I transmit my spores through neurons Neal and the flesh how the [ __ ] I no was thinking refer to the previous your brains do you oh hell no [ __ ] that [ __ ] that Grace comes back via text informing us that ever since then she's been experiencing an intense migraine just as is one of the symptoms in the original creepy pasta and more horrifically her computer is intermittently turning on and laughing in the night Grace announces a break from the videos and that Arthur AKA kooi requested that certain images from here on out be censored from the videos so we've got a Flatout paranormal image we'll get a bit more into exactly the nature of this thinking curse as things progress but I think it's interesting to note Arthur's Behavior so far not only does he appear to have some history with this whole smile log thing he also appears to have some understanding of how it works he knows that viewing it can lead to negative consequences which is why he requested for future images to be censored and for Grace to stop the screen share before she opened the image the question then is how much does he know and why didn't he try harder to warn Grace did he just not think she would believe it and there's one more strange detail in this video when we're able to get a clear view of Grace's desktop the date says 2019 but this video was uploaded 2022 are these old recordings well not as far as I can tell it seems that though these are technically uploaded more recently this series is supposed to take place in 2019 which I do have some possible reasons for but I won't be able to get into them until a little later for now let's just keep watching the next video is a bit of a return to normaly a video covering the origins of iconic images associated with the rate Creepy Pasta this time though we have narration from someone new hey chain mail Chasers Davey here welcome back to the channel and yeah I'm a new guy so don't be alarmed my friend's been having some computer issues lately so I'm helping out aside from some interesting facts about the origins of some photos and this mention of the classic Fallen Angel video this video would be unnoteworthy if not for a few strange glitches read the title concludes our investigation into the origins of the rake and the very next video addresses these weird hiccups another entry into the smile dog Saga Grace is screen recording again on a call with Daven Arthur clearly frazzled and stressed she shows the other two glitches she noticed mainly a darkened face that looks like smile dog and a horrifying humanoid face that's smiling as well okay what the Yeah Yeah you see I I see I see that is that a face [ __ ] wait so that was from the video like darken or whatever like look this thing's a [ __ ] ghoul the group seems tense like each one is unsure of what to think of the others Grace especially unsure if one of them is just [ __ ] with her I just wanted to show you why I've been so frustrated these these past few days like I don't know if you're just trying to mess with me I I know that's that's not really your deal but I just the [ __ ] who are you talking to either way it appears these images were added to the video between the final export and when the video was uploaded to YouTube meanwhile the smile dog entity and Grace's computer still seems to be on their minds as the cause of this whole thing like CU as far as I'm concerned the the [ __ ] jpeg I opened is threatening me man I kind of want to provoke it but I'm I'm cutting Arthur seems to have some history with this kind of thing but again only speaks on it in vague terms well I do think that there no I know that there is something going on here like I've had like I've put up a similar [ __ ] as you like in the past they decided to try isolating the file into a virtual machine hoping to quarantine it you brought up like a virtual machine earlier yeah yeah you could just do that would I just would I literally just be be able to put the picture of the dog inside there there are a couple other details in this video I'd like to point out during one of the visual glitches a date can be seen May 31st 2020 something not only do they note this date as being in the future cementing the idea this series is pre-2020 May 31st 202 something like what does that mean what is that supposed to tell me the the future but this specific date does have some relevancy to a theory of mine later on so we'll come back to that also the description Grace has for the humanoid face like look this thing's a [ __ ] ghoul I am immediately reminded of the grinning ghouly user from the something awful thread a few videos ago moving along the next video has Davey narrating again this time covering the origins of an image associated with the Mario Creepy Pasta ROM the exact specifics of the creepy pasta aren't entirely important other than that it ends up describing a gruesome murder scene and showcasing this image its Origins are revealed to be associated with an RG claiming the image had Supernatural consequences for those who viewed it but as the chain mail Chasers continued their research it led them to a YouTube video by the channel ice cream monkey fan titled weird Chain Letter victim 1 from 2007 a Windows Movie Maker edited video where ice cream monkey fan explains he's receiving chain emails from someone called grin fiend that name's familiar some of the emails are forwarded from years back and continue the running theme we've seen so far imploring the reader to smile though they differ by including the image from the Mario Creepy Pasta as well as the description of the murder scene implying these letters are the true Origins that would later be repurposed for the Mario Creepy Pasta ROM what's especially interesting is that some of these messages also use a variation of the smile dog image and the ghoul face first seen in The Rake video it's like no matter what it all comes back to chain mail which I guess is why the series is called that but still the video ends in a strange fashion [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] o though we might be tempted to go looking for the ice cream monkey fan channel to see what else is revealed there no such Channel exists at least not yet for now after a brief update in which Grace announces a Discord for the followers of the channel our next big update is with Smile Dog Origins interrogation the video opens by explaining the recording is actually from a few months ago after this interview was recorded she tried to just stay silent and leave it alone but it's not going away now this goes for the last interview too but I think these are way more entertaining to see for yourself in real time it's genuinely a really impressive feat to pull off the effects and back and forth that happens in these videos so instead of just playing the whole thing all the way through I'll play a little bit of it and then just give a rundown of some important reveals we get during this interrogation for the viewers at home I put this thing into a virtual machine and locked down file transfer and my goal here is to try and ask the thing some questions I mean I figured I have to have some sort of Leverage over it because it's a [ __ ] demon Jesus Christ living organm I'll just cut straight to the point so we can both get this over with is there any way I can get you out of my head Jesus Christ Christ stop stop so clearly this thing has more power than the chain mail Chasers thought something important to note about that clip though is that the smile dog entity seems to reference the Paranormal pricke head's website saying they had better security later on in the conversation in reference to koi ko/ Arthur The Entity says their problem their problem trying to draw doubt around Arthur's ability to help and perhaps his trustworthiness The Entity ends the conversation by giving Grace the topic for her next video a seemingly more demonic variant of the smile dog image then says another reference to Arthur so the image entity is not only attempting to so distrust within the group but also seemingly create a sense of connection between grace and itself portray itself as on top of that it seems that both Arthur's role and that of the briefly seen paranormal prick heads website will be of increasing significance as the series goes on Davey's back to give us an update on the Jeff the Killer image search helped Along by the image entities's lead at the end of the last video video reverse searching that demon dog face LED them back to the Paranormal prick head's website specifically a page for entities called solar plexus clown gliders which are yet another form of Cognito Hazard or a supernaturally harmful piece of image or sound in this case this version of the solar plexus clown glider has its Origins as a variant from the Smile chain letters according to the Paranormal prick heads the page also includes some other similar but different face images the face that's really important though is the version supposedly taken and repurposed for a series of Shock images called pretty face this pretty face page leads them to yet another image used in this series of Shock images it appears to be an earlier version of the Jeff the Killer Photoshop it's corrupted but still an interesting find in the way of the Jeff the Killer image origins in the world of chain mail Chasers at least Davey Ends by announcing the next video's topic the next episode will cover a working timeline of the smile. jpeg image over the years as best as we can approximate from the given information accompanied by some theories about what exactly is going on we'll see you then so we may get some more answers into how these all connect clearly the themes of Supernatural images and smiling faces all with slight variations feel connected but before we move on it's worth noting right after this a new channel appears ice cream monkey fan re-uploads featuring the weird Chain Letter victim 1 video and a Mario YouTube Poop we don't really need to go over these at this point but we should be keeping an eye on this channel this is one of the longer videos and for good reason Davey goes through all of the images we've seen so far and creates a sort of chain of evolution positing that all of these images came from the same Source the exact order isn't super important for our analysis except for the fact that the image entity in Grace's computer seems to take the form of some of the earliest variants and that there are likely even earlier versions yet to be discovered otherwise the important thing to note that all of these images from the Mario image to Jeff the Killer all stem from the same Source these early Cognito Hazard smile images and even more interestingly as these images change via some Force we don't understand they begin to separate into new entities as these images are spread whatever force that animates them causes natural image loss in different context to sort of mutate them evolving into different images and manifesting different entities that's why the known image entity can only assume forms that are relatively close to itself why early pictures are more similar to an actual dog well later on they become more AB ract and monstrous in questions the image entity describes spreading itself in an analogy of self- reproduction outright this hypothesis has even more Credence when you compare the images the second solar plexus image compared to the first is clearly very similar the site claims it was just updated to that appearance but you can tell that whatever happened is no mere Photoshop edit same teeth structure same head tilts same ominous digits creeping from behind but some things change eyes and teeth are hazy and un detailed as if mid metamorphosis as these entities spread they change and branch and once they've evolved enough they become their own entities separate from their predecessors this Evolution seems to explain the hazy and almost painted look some of the images have something that Grace pointed out all the way back in the first smile dog video and according to Davey these Evolutions can become disambiguated enough from their Source likely with the help of individuals making Photoshop edits that interfere with their Natural Evolution that much further evolved variants like the Jeff the Killer or the modern smile dog have lost their Supernatural power or as he says we're starting to get into the modern era now where most of the images have been completely sterilized there's another element to this video that I've skipped over thus far for clarity's sake throughout it Davey is interrupted by seemingly covert recordings from Grace's webcam likely the doing of the smile dog image entity first we see grace talking with Arthur but you you've experienced this before right so you should know a thing or two about what I'm dealing with and I sorry sorry go ahead then we see grace as the entity speaks to her the clip ending with a level of interaction from The Entity so far [Music] unseen for one the hand we see appear behind Grace's head seems to be a direct parallel to the hands that appear throughout the smile dog image variance something present in the actual real world Smile Dog images too and as the hand reaches for her her face becomes distorted in a way that looks almost painterly in a similar style to these evolving images the final clip from Grace shows her running to the bathroom and coughing up what appears to be blood things are getting bad the video ends with Davey signing off for now and an end to season 1 of chain mail Chasers that's not the end though not even close firstly ice cream monkey fans re-uploads channel would continue uploading not long after season 1 wrapped starting with a video called der grman sightings the video by ice cream monkey fan details a mysterious ancient creature from Germany called dur grman for those of you a little more informed on the Slender lore you'll know the name dur Grossman roughly translates to the tall man and is one of the supposedly ancient names the Slender Man was known by along with dur Ritter meaning the Knight the video showcases some sketches of a Slender manlike creature though it appears a lot more like the old der Ritter Photoshop From Slender lore than the modern Slender Man appearance we're accustomed to more medieval in style one thing of particular note that ice cream monkey fans says is some people think it's an angel and fights basilisks sort of an odd thing to say but we'll come back to it the most intriguing part of this video is when he reveals that users on the Paranormal prick head's website have reported seeing him what follows are a series of photos that are so compressed and hard to make out that you'd be forgiven for not seeing anything at all but supposedly der Grossman is hiding within these frames what looks like a the chimney here really being the creature's head this vague shape supposedly its form perhaps its spindly legs creeping out of the fog ice cream monkey fan also notes that some of those being stocked have had their computers wiped strange the final couple images are then affected by some Distortion and like the other visual glitches we've seen so far this wasn't done in post seemingly this has affected the Youtube upload itself as even the overlaid text is caught in the damaged data the final shot showcases what is supposedly the clearest shot of the creature and even through the jittering pixel we can get a good look at this thing's face or lack thereof the video finally ends with about a video corruption and the words the user who sent this never being barely legible for a few frames the final video on ice cream monkey fans channel that we'll cover before we get into the meat of this paranormal prick heads business is called Heaven Stairway incident in May 2021 truth unveiled this video has kind of a funny origin the Creator behind this whole chain mail Chasers web series Ebola granola is also the person behind the heaven steroid incident troll science comic meme you know the Classic oil floats in water human flying comic this was sort of a Twist on that oil floats in water human skin is already oily May 2021 New York City Heaven Stairway incident as far as I can tell this really was just a meme at the time but this video is sort of incorporating that into the lore of the series what ice cream monkey fan has to say is strange jarring people call it the Rapture where God takes all the good people into heaven before the end of the world I'm a time traveler I can't remember how because I was too little but I have pictures from my friend on May 28th a big thunderstorm will come to New York City and it lifts everyone into the sky with a big glowing spot some people will fall back down when the rain stops and their faces are all [ __ ] up and grinning I think something stopped them from going to heaven my friend says that they may have been alive if they didn't hit the ground there was a plane when it happened a girl said she saw something out the window so she drew it is that is that the goddamn troll face believe it or not this does have some importance later including what ice cream monkey fan follows up with immediately after possible basilisk in New York the Basilisk made them grin the basilis kept them from Heaven the end is coming I do apologize for reading so much verbatim I try not to do that as much I don't just want to be the recap guy but there's so much Exposition here it's just clearest that way he ends the video explaining his role in all of this my friend says we were all outside when it happened again later on and then all of a sudden we were back in time in 2001 I don't know where we are it's really dark and we don't need to eat I miss ice cream but we can talk to you guys it only starts in New York City it goes everywhere else it rains after finally the ending credits the bad pictures to my grin friend so that's a lot to take in for now aside from this incoming Rapture the thing I want you to focus on most is actually the more personal side ice cream monkey fan is in some sort of dark limbo communicating with us somehow and is accompanied by his friend grin friend perhaps the same grin friend we we've seen throughout the series that sent the entity to Grace in the first place or maybe a different variant I will try my best to make sense of all of this later but for now we need to keep this information in the back of our minds as we head back to the chain mail Chasers Channel firstly there's something I haven't mentioned yet not long after the season finale it seems that the smile dog image entity infecting Grace's computer took over the channel looking at the community tab posts presumably made by The Entity can be seen cryptically teasing the future and even posting about ice cream monkey fans uploads but around the time of this Heaven Stairway video The Entity seems to clear some of the air that the Basilisk referenced in that video is not it it goes even so far to call that one a runt a minor example in itself I am powerful also worth noting it declares I am not the one Reviving these records I simply let it happen meaning there are other people at work when it comes to re-uploading ice cream monkey fans videos and as we'll soon see other records which is what I think we should get into now the latest video on the chain mail chase channel is titled paranormal prick heads.com web ad 2008 an archived advertisement for the website we've been seeing throughout the series and the description contains a link to a now up and running Archive of the website itself narrated by the Web Master of the site Aaron we are finally introduced to it properly hey are you interested in the Paranormal and unexplained do you like dissecting strange hoaxes and obscure horror paranormal pricke heads.com is right for you hi I'm Aaron I'm the Web Master of the page it started back in 2002 as a small personal blog on the supernatural but quickly expanded into something much bigger 3 years back we added a forum section and overhauled the website which greatly expanded our ever Vibrant Community our four administrators keep things clean and orderly both for discussion and or many articles have an interesting personal story seen anything peculiar on other forums let us know we have a variety of Mega threads for personal stories and sighting accounts even odd things found in the web are fair game to share in the forums but it wouldn't be a chain mail Chasers video without a little Interruption from our friend Smile Dog The Entity chimes in essentially to encourage us to dig deeper into the site to find all that's hidden there also to imply something terrible happened to the people behind the site which we were already semi- aware of from the Der Grossman video either way the most exciting thing is the reveal of the next phase of our investigation the Paranormal prick heads website back from the dead and now accessible to us there is a lot to this website though the homepage States it's an incomplete archive a lot of the pages are up and running and we can access a variety of them through the many subcategories of anomalies on the site there are also a good number of Secrets here but I want to wait to dive into them until after we've done a decent overview of the surface level stuff I won't be going over all the pages here in detail but I will be touching on the most important ones and I definitely encourage you to look over the stuff I don't cover here because it's all great world build building and you may make some connections that I didn't on the most basic level what you'll notice about all of these pages is a Mythos that draws heavily from abrahamic religions and the Occult ghosts Cryptids Angels demons and speaking of that's where we're going to start demons the initial demon page describes a standard demon as a being unable to take physical form instead influencing humans psychologically driving them to sin and occasionally even possessing them entities born from negative emotions like misery and Malice tragedy and most ominously that their incorporeal forms will become more and more clear in the leadup to the end of days until they become completely tangible due to the mass degradation of the greater human psyche end of days you say that reminds me of something we've seen getting more specific to different types of demons the site has Pages for basilisks and Fallen Angels finally we can get a little more light shed on these concepts basilisks are demons that can only interact with the physical world through creative expression said to kill or torment anyone that understands them yeah this seems about right it sounds like these image entities we've been seeing are basilisks they even directly reference them as the origins of the modern mimetic Hazard Concepts but there's even more context on this page too initially there was the idea that sigils tied to Demons that became basilisks would inherent their deathly properties it was of great frustration that creating such sigils was n impossible without Clairvoyance as it had to represent a tragedy associated with the Basilisk obviously you can't really know a basilisk caused any specific tragedy without suffering its effect the real basilisk was in the sigil itself and once made could recreate itself Inside the summoner's Mind or elsewhere should it be given a medium so these basilisk image entities we've been seeing are not only ancient but also directly linked with a tragedy associated with them the image itself is sort of the vessel The Entity propagates and interacts through we also begin to learn about the relationship between basilisks and Angels via both the Basilisk page and the Fallen Angel's page angels and basilisks have a storied history mostly myths telling of angels coming down to slay basilisks similar to stories of night slaying Dragons Fallen Angels are said to spread basilisks willingly implanting them in the minds of humans to let them grow so that they can reap their crop in either case a human infected with a basilisk likely won't survive if an angel is after that basilisk but the final important Point surrounding basilisks comes down to their Origins given the roots of the entities it was was believed the most powerful basilisks would come from the end of days and sin of creation respectively both invoking Notions of the Beast one basilisk sigil from a tragedy related to the Beast is claimed to exist though what event it represents is deliberately left vague okay so what about the Beast what is thought to be an ancient Twisted angel that devours itself constantly ever growing the core of Hell the Beast was originally an angel of high importance who fell to Hell after its gluttonous appetite for information LED it to eat fruit from the Tree of knowledge its nature became of information that sought to consume information so it began devouring itself the Beast was said to be the first demon as its constant self-mutilation and horrific existence deteriorated it into an unrecognizable red mass as the Beast represents the tragedy of creation Revelations prophesizes that it will bring about the end of days as well it is said that when mankind is riddled by sadness and Ill Deeds that basilisks will begin flooding into the minds of man mankind this will continue until the state of the world is so polluted that hell will become corporeal various basilisks will cause their own tragedies and strengthen themselves in this time one belief sect claims that the Beast has actually been usurped by a being known as the bisected King While others vinant deny this so as the name might imply the Beast is like the devil the entity at the core of sin and tragedy and the origin point of demons and basilisks so what about this bisected King then a recent belie that a man caught between the immaterial and physical world will come to lose himself and usurp the Beast that the Beast will be usurped in hell at some point before the end of days the human half is not fully aware of the influence of the Demonic half though some prophecy is interpreted as implying that the king is currently alive and split anywhere between the 1980s and present day early writings mention convoluted descriptions of shifts in time Rippling out due to the approaching end of days allowing a mad boy to occasionally slip into the world of hell shifts in time a mad boy split between the material and immaterial worlds with demonic influence tied to the end of days sounds a lot like someone we know but we'll return to that we're nearly at the end of the main pages that are relevant to us the Cryptids category has entries for two entities inred cold and the hatman two different mysterious figures one in a red suit and the other in a wide brimmed hat and coat both are mostly benevolent or at least neutral but inred cold is said to appear just before tragedy strikes and the hatman often warns of an incoming apocalypse finally on the Cryptids tab we have an entry for der Grossman clicking on it it's completely corrupted the image distorted and the text illegibly glitched and this is where we're going to need to start looking a little deeper than the surface to start let's look at the bottom of these Pages last edited by webmas a clicking on the name we can find the bios of the main administrators behind the site Web Master Aaron will quasi Phantom and Google mugly if that name sounds familiar it's because we heard it all the way back near the beginning of the series it was one of the two other people in the something awful thread that the smile dog image was initially spammed on now with a little more context of who's running the site let's take a look at the source code scattered throughout these pages are bits and pieces of conversation the admins are having on the back end some of it is just technicalities of the site or friends goofing off but many of these messages begin to spell something more Grim the Paranormal prick heads were also Afflicted with this this image entity possibly more than one we can also glean what are more than likely the names of Quasi Phantom and googly mly quasi Phantom being Rebecca and googly mly being murf wait as in Arthur Murphy Koi Koi uh maybe note this particular interaction delete your local archive immediately Murphy do not give it even a little more food remember we're all done for but you still have a little brother well we know fallen angels will come after humans who've been infected Ed by basilisks and we know that the Paranormal prick heads were being afflicted by this image entity basilisk as well as being stalked by dur grman who ice cream monkey fan describes as a fallen angel and if basilisks are entities of memory it would make sense then that the Angels consume those memories when they reap their crop we even hear from Ice Cream monkey fan that their hard drives are being wiped and this seems to come to a head with this note from the source code people have died and we can't remember who and if you need any more evidence of the Paranormal Cricket's predicament it's spelled out pretty directly in the source code of the pretty face page what a [ __ ] mistake great more fuel to the fire stuff ourselves with minc meat and wine until the tall man comes for his night's reward a nice little menu of Entre because of their infection by the smile dog basilisk and possibly others they've now become the targets of dur grman who's looking to wipe them off the face of the Earth so if they really are all done for how would murf have survived I'm not sure he did I think Arthur in instead is Murphy's younger brother that is referenced and his connection to his older brother is where the origins of his interest and exposure to this world of image entities and demons comes from there's not a lot of direct evidence for this but the two names being connected and then the mention of a brother just feels too perfect from a storytelling perspective either way the prick heads seem to be in a heap of trouble and there's still yet more to find firstly I want to point out these images the art at the tops of the pages are often distorted in an almost unrecognizable way but they can be repaired how I don't actually know this is one of those things I found sourced on the chain mail Chasers Discord either way what this reveals are the numbers 202 now I should say this isn't really the order these discoveries were made this is actually kind of later in the game but I wanted to start here because the rest flows so well together anyway going to Paranormal prick heads.com 202h ml takes us to our first hidden page why can't I move in the dark room any anymore oh I was a ghost and then a video from Ice Cream monkey fan uploaded the same day as the Paranormal prick heads web ad titled victimized it's an incredibly distorted upload the video glitching and cutting throughout showing clips from previous videos smashed and chopped together but there is a discernible message to be found from Ice Cream monkey fan from the dark room we last saw him in in the Heaven Stairway video I can't actually feel anything here in the dark room I realize now because it hurts I don't know what's going on I'm at a computer right so why does it hurt like when your leg gets tingly but pushing on my brain it's a push at the back of my brain like rubbing a mosquito bite it's a push at the back of my brain like in your stomach when you go down a roller [Music] coaster where am I I I think I'm dying and then a figure appears from the darkness it almost looks like the hatman or injured cold but something about the way it's talking makes it sound like it's more than an incidental appearance no angels can hurt you the work will be done soon we'll probably Circle back to this one but there is still more to see our first real puzzle starts at the about page we were just visiting throughout Aaron's bio there are a few letters out of place seemingly random characters in italics but this is anything but random combining them they spell out take it to the pound taking this and punching it into the address bar leads us to another secret page what we find here is another secret conversation between the users pertaining to their plans to slow or stop the spread of this entity though there isn't unanimous agreement the two schools of thought in the conversation are either wiping everything related to it entirely or trying their best to sterilize the information on the website and leave it up in the hopes it can help anyone who may also be afflicted with this entity there's also a piece of text that's a little more difficult to see thrown away plugging that into the address bar we get our next secret page which continues that conversation but highlights the word Idea Idea takes us to another secret page this time a little less conventional just a series of numbers another puzzle using the ones and twos as lines and the other numbers as character positions we can actually use this to cross reference the previous idea page and find our next keyword Zol this leads us to a secret page detailing more information about basilisks the prick heads have been uncovering and theorizing about it seems to reinforce our ideas about angels consuming basilisks and even intentionally spreading them to propagate their food source but keeping them from becoming an invasive species they describe it as like farming or gardening there's something else very intriguing about this page too the name Zol I hope I'm pronouncing that right I was not it Isa it immediately stood out to me as strange so I looked into it Zola is a town in the Netherlands whose patron saint is the arc angel Michael who according to Legend protected Spa from an attack by a dragon according to visit.com seems pretty relevant to the story up to this point with angels and basilisks for the final chain of the puzzle we'll need to head back to the the broken der Grossman page here we find the exact same image as the one found on Sola depicting an angel slaying a basilisk the other images on this page seem to be broken but we can see what their file names were and through this we find our next keyword der Ritter the other name for de Grossman that we know of going to the Der Ritter page we find it to be an unscrambled version of the dur Grossman page this mostly just showcases folktales featuring dur Grossman and interestingly points out that whether this entity is a fallen angel or just a regular Angel is not entirely clear this page however leads us to the final page in our investigation the images featured on this page aren't all what they seem specifically this dur Ritter image it's a gif and for one frame a frame you won't even be able to see when you load the page because of where the image is on the layout the text derra replaces deritter which translates to the dragon and that is our final keyword flashing light warning ahead for this next page we find ourselves confronted by the smile dog or should I say the Dragon and so G the end of our little game how unfortunate I do not ARR these changes some of these Landscapes I cannot cross but I see enough I can tell how many Journeys there will be I tell them now see you soon and Below an image counting all the way up to 13 so with season 1 done and this little website investigation marks only part one of potentially 12 more arcs but for now we've reached the end of this one there is one last little detail I want to point out though it could be a coincidence but it just feels too perfect if we take this image and interpret it as pointing us to a Bible verse specifically Revelations 13:1 we find something very interesting and I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea having seven heads and 10 horns and upon his horns 10 crowns and upon his heads the name of blasphemy this is pretty much exactly the site we find in one of the images on the beast's page just saying it's an interesting connection and so we've reached the end of our investigative portion of chain mail Chasers I'll be honest this breakdown has been fairly sparing All Things Considered there was so much detail packed into each frame and web page in this series I think you could still go through the whole thing yourself and get a lot out of it it's so expansive it's pretty hard to wrap my head around and keep things straight and it's also probably worth noting that the way I've told the story is a lot closer to how I uncovered it than the way it was being investigated at the time this stuff was being revealed as I understand it there were whole events where videos and parts of the website were revealed and the plot may have moved forward in a different order than I present here but this video is more focused on what it would be like to uncover this stuff as it is now as I did oh and also I want to give a big thank you to both the chain mail Chasers Discord and Wiki I tried my best to discover this stuff naturally myself but for certain portions where I was stuck these resources were invaluable anyway I think I've gone over enough to present some of my own analysis both story-wise and thematic so let's jump in chain mail Chasers is probably going to be the longest part of this video and the series spans so much history and media from YouTube channels to the website archives from ancient Biblical times to the Future so to get the full picture I want to start by explaining the events of the series in a more organized way and we'll need to start by going back way back we start in an ient times with the creation of the Beast a fallen angel who eats from the fruit of knowledge and becomes a being of consumption specifically the Beast is both an entity of information who also consumes information insatiably this leads to a self-destructive oroborus of self-c consumption in which the Beast becomes the first demon from where all other demons spawn demons and angels have an interesting relationship though I'll specifically be discussing basilisks here basilisks are demons of creation from tragedy of information and Angels seem to consume basilisks whether that be the Fallen Angels doing so nefariously or regular Angels combating the harm of the basilisks we see the way this consumption affects data as well wiping computer hard drives and memories as both work similarly in the world of demons and angels one example I haven't mentioned is on the misk stories page containing Community submitted creepy pastas one is titled the tall man but the page is missing and the author's name is just garbled character characters presumably a victim of der Grossman AKA The Tall Man what's interesting about this relationship from the perspective of the Beast is that it's both the Beast is the first demon and a fallen angel which is the reason for its self-destructive nature an angel who must consume and a demon who must spread that dichotomy is at the heart of the beast's being and at the core of its prophecy there is a prophecy that the Beast will bring about the end of days where tragedies will erode the collective human psyche enough that demons will become corporeal and the Beast will have a grand feast in which its consumption will end existence as we know it there's also a possibility that the bisected King an entity partially human and partially demonic will usurp the Beast and instead inate unending suffering at the end of days but we'll get back to the bisected King in a minute it is said that an incredibly dangerous basilisk exists that spawns from a tragedy directly linked to the beast but its current status is unknown in my mind the further back we go go with these basilisk images in their evolution the closer we will get to this much more powerful basilisk as a point of origin this hypothesis comes from the resemblance of the Smile Dog images with that of the traditional demon artwork we see on the Paranormal priad site and as the chain goes along the further away we get from this look it's the reason I think the dragon says I am not the source while also clearly being one of the most powerful image entities of the images currently in circulation this is the closest to the one which is most powerful by the 1990s the version of the Dragon we see is circulating in the smile chain letters with this history in mind let's Flash Forward to 2002 to start webmaster Aaron starts a little personal website dedicated to horror and the paranormal paranormal prick heads in October of the same year murf AKA googly moly stumbles across the dragon being spammed by user grinning ghouly becoming infected by The Entity by 2005 paranormal prick heads is expanded and murf joins befriending the other members it's unclear exactly when the rest of them became infected but by 2008 the prick heads realized that their hobby of the Paranormal has exposed them to multiple basilisks and are researching the origins and nature of their afflictions and the entities that caused them soon after this leads them to become targets for der Grossman an angel fallen or otherwise looking to consume them and the basilisks who inhabit them in their desperation they discussed whether to keep the site up to help future readers in similar situations or wipe it completely the site was last updated in 2009 at which point it's not entirely clear what happens did anyone survive was the site removed by the prick heads or perhaps an attack by D Grossman we'll pick back up with Arthur in my head Arthur is murf's younger brother and Arthur's connection to this world of Angels and Demons comes from his connections to his older brother one possible explanation could be that Arthur was exposed through murf's local archive which the other prick heads routinely warn murf to delete implying he's hesitant to do so Arthur's vagueness on his history May be due to hesitance to share or from a lack of memory if murf was consumed by dur Gman I just don't know all right so Grace begins chain mail Chasers and in her search for Creepy Pasta Origins is infected by the dragon basilisk Arthur takes note of this and reaches out interestingly echoing the path of his brother entering a new community of Afflicted researchers this time of a new era together Grace Arthur and Davey begin their search to understand the entity Grace is Afflicted with and how to cure it in this process we also see records from the past being revived that being the archive of paranormal prick heads and ice cream monkey fan who would be doing this other than the chain mail Chasers I don't know but I do think it's possible Grace is in contact with some surviving member of the prick heads there's a conversation we get a snippet of between grace and an unheard participant in the working timeline video that I assumed to be Arthur but it's possible it's someone else maybe a prick head which is where they'd get access to revive the site in any case that's basically where we are now but we have to remember this series moves into the future SL modern times kind of ice cream monkey fan story starts ahead of all this in 2021 an event occurs in New York City in which the rain begins pulling people into the sky before many of them come crashing down with grins on their faces I think this 2021 date is the reason the series is set back in 2019 so that we still have time leading up to the Heaven Stairway incident during this event a girl sees an entity that looks like the troll face which ice cream monkey fan hypothesizes to be a basilisk the specifics of this event's Origins and nature are a little unclear to me but I'm going to refrain from getting too caught up in it my best guess is that this and the preceding rain events are some of the tragedies that lead up to the end of days strengthening the demons in the physical world explaining the troll face either way during a later rain event ice cream monkey fan is pulled into the sky and taken into a slip in SpaceTime back to 2001 in a limbo between reality and Hell here I think ice cream monkey fan becomes the bisected King a mad boy caught between a human half and a demonic half the part that's of most contention to me is the nature of his demonic calf my first thought was that this Trollface basilisk being at the center of the stairway incident was the Demonic calf but he doesn't seem to recognize it and it's referenced by the dragon as a runt so then I thought maybe the grin friend is but he's referenced as something separate than just ice cream monkey fans friend so my current theory is that inured cold is actually a demon he's described as being friendly but also as coming from some other plane of existence and appearing right before tragedy sounds a lot like a demon to me and his dialogue towards ice cream monkey fan does sound a lot like something a demonic half of a bisected King trying to usurp the Beast would say the work will be done soon as for grin friend I'm not sure I think it's the same entity as grin fiend and grin and ghouly my current theory is that it may be some manifestation of a larger source that animates and spreads these entities as we see it seemingly spamming these images across decades sort of in relation to that I have had the thought that grin friend is actually the troll face simply because it's trolling forums and emails by spamming these basilisks but that's probably just a goofy passing thought I do think the recurring grin theme with all of these entities is relevant though I think the source of this smile Motif comes from the animalistic origins of the Demons we see them depicted in older art with these skull-like faces which could be interpreted further along the chain of evolution as a smile which is why I think it's a common attribute but as for a plot level analysis that's all I've got for now but you know me I'm not one to stop at just a plot summary for this last part I want to get a bit into the themes I see this series exploring first I just want to point out the importance that the series places on the spread of these basilisks the way they evolve and change as they disseminate between users across the internet it parallels the way in which creepy pastas actually naturally evolve and change the same way I discuss chain letters doing the way these entities work are so specific to the way that the internet spreads and Alters everything from memes to Horror Stories the force that animates them which Davey references just feels like a supernaturally personified version of the natural processes of the web and I could go on about this a lot more but I actually have a bigger analysis section near the end of this whole video where I go over this in much more detail so I don't want to repeat myself too much for now I want to talk about internet trauma this series is very occupied with the effects of stumbling across these horror stories or images from the internet which if known or understood will lead to terrible consequences a curse that manifests with painful Mental effects the image itself remaining long after it was first seen in the mind of the viewer ceaselessly tormenting them though in the world of chain mail Chasers this is a supernatural phenomenon compelled by a world of angelic and demonic forces the reality of the internet is that the very same thing can occur in all the wonderful things the internet allows us to do it's also a place where we can find some pretty shocking stuff especially as kids these can be seemingly harmless like screamer videos whose faces still unsettle us now because of our first introduction to them as terrified children or scenes from movies we were too young to see or creepy pasta stories that kept us up at night but they can also be more serious people of any age but especially children with unsupervised access to the internet can and often are exposed to horrific things they can't unsee whether that be real graphic violence and Gore or explicit media and this can have lasting effects long after we've been initially exposed whether that be nightmares spawning new fears and phobias fear or deeply rooted misconceptions about intimacy disassociation or the image or video replaying in your head days or weeks after seeing it and these vectors for trauma can appear even in places that seem unassuming from personal experience growing up Steam Community pages had a lot of this World War II game pages with real Gore images from the 40s or just lots of porn hell Google Images can have some Wild results from innocuous searches and I think the removal of proper context surrounding this violence or explicit imagery makes them all the more affecting our brains don't know how to properly categorize or deal with them and so coming back to chain mail Chasers I think the concepts in this series will speak in a deeply relatable way to a whole generation of Internet users who spent their afternoons after after school and late nights surfing the net completely unrestricted finding themselves with trauma they may not have even recognized at the time from the things they saw there that's a little Grim this next thematic connection is no less Grim but maybe a bit more optimistic I want to focus mostly on the way these basilisks and Angels work and the more religious elements to the series if we can understand the basilisks as sinful information when they infect a person it could almost be seen as imparting sinful thoughts onto someone almost paralleling e biting the Apple they become these intrusive thoughts and in the eyes of these angels just by having these sinful thoughts you are guilty of sin the impure thoughts must be destroyed to the point of destroying the person themselves this whole system parallels a theme of religious guilt a feeling of intense shame not having done something wrong but having impure thoughts and though I think the religious angle makes sense here with the world of chain mail Chasers this concept of intrusive thoughts which cause feelings of intense guilt and shame are common among those for instance with OCD and obviously as if it needs to be said impure thoughts do not determine the morality of a person but on that note this thematic connection could be strengthened down the line if Grace learns to deal with the effects of the dragon and finds a way to live with it without attacks from the angel emphasizing the idea that intrusive thoughts can be lived with and don't Define your own sense of morality of course though this is just one interpretation of the themes of the series that may not at all be what it's going for this is more of just a thought experiment coming from one angle either way I'm really interested to see where the series goes from here and I'll be keeping a close eye on it and you should be too the next season is coming very soon it might have already started by the time this video comes out so I would recommend you go subscribe to the chain mail Chasers Channel yourself it seems like there's definitely going to be a lot more interesting stuff coming from there soon hey everyone I'm starting to think this bootleg operating system wasn't a good investment either way there's one more piece I'd like to cover but it's going to be a little different normally I cover web series or args or video games especially in these digital horror videos the fact that these series are pieces of unfiction is a core connective tissue but now I'd like to briefly talk about a film that covers both many aspects of web series but also encapsulates so much of the overarching themes of creepy pastas as an internet genre as well as the running themes we talk about in all these digital horror videos Nostalgia growing up online stuff like that because it's a film the way I talk about it is going to be a bit different the etiquette of talking about film is a little bit different than web series so I'll put it right here at the beginning that there will be big spoilers for the film I'm not quite going scen by scene but I am going to be pretty comprehensive in order to analyze it properly and like with all of these projects I want to implore you to watch it for yourself first like for real do it it's an amazing film but it also means I'll be covering the breakdown section a bit differently I can't show much of the actual footage of the film on YouTube so a lot of it is going to be talking to the camera and the portions that aren't are going to look like this with all that said let's watch we're all going to the World's Fair okay we're all going to the World's Fair is the feature debut of director Jane Shon Brun Who currently has an upcoming a24 film I saw the TV glow and previously created at the documentary a self-induced hallucination which covered the phenomenon of the Slender craze we're all going to the World's Fair is about Casey a shut in teen living with her single father Casey is a big horror fan and one winter finds herself entrenched in a creepy pasta known as the World's Fair challenge that is where we start the film opens with Casey sitting at her computer recording a video of her attempting the World's Fair challenge a vaguely defined Creepy Pasta ritual and Trend she repeats the phrase I want to go to the World's Fair pokes her finger with a pin in one of the most viscerally upsetting scenes in the film for me and then watches the video which supposedly rounds out the ritual very reminiscent of the ring and its ilk what exactly the world World's Fair challenge is in the film isn't entirely clear but the central element seems to be that after you complete the ritual you will begin experiencing physical and mental changes escalating as time goes on participants share their changes in videos as well as theorize about the phenomenon itself and interact with each other's stories after Casey completes the ritual herself and an incredible title sequence following shots of wintry desolate strip malls we see her watching a series of other people's videosos reporting their effect one reports he can't feel his body anymore another that she's turning to plastic yet another that he feels Tetris pieces filling up his body while it seems apparent that the World's Fair challenge is fictional in the film it serves as a collaborative storytelling project with people creatively coming up with their own theories and defs however people rarely if ever break character leading to all the haziness of reality and belief that were familiar with with web series and args that like the ones I cover on the channel what this means is that from the beginning it's not entirely clear what Casey believes has she bought in and believes it's all real or is she playing along with everyone else is what she experiences a real manifestation of something Supernatural will come back to all of that but for now after watching through a few of the other participants videos we see Casey make her first update of her own she first discusses her motivation for doing the challenge that she's a longtime horror fan and has always wanted to try living in a horror movie then she talks about her childhood experiences of sleep walking bringing up a sort of disassociative state that she used to experience and how since completing the challenge and watching the video the feeling is creeping back I was like watching myself on a TV all the way across the room and I was aware of my actions yes granted I was aware but I couldn't control myself I've been kind of feeling that way recently ever since I watched that video that feelings kind of creeping up on me a little bit cuz I tell you if if I might be aware that a car's coming but I would just stay there my whole body's numb I know I should be cold right now but I don't feel anything seemingly that same night she makes her way into the shed outside her home upset about her videos not performing well she takes out her father's shotgun from where it's kept puts it back and then lays down on a couch watching ASMR and a projector the next video Auto plays and Casey is faced with something disturbing an ominous message from the channel jlb calling her out and demanding to speak with her we find out that jlb is a shuttin middle-aged man who is seemingly obsessed with the World's Fair challenge he's deep in the game of it all and uploads many videos about it and other related horror and conspiracy topics on a Skype call between him and Casey he encourages her to keep making videos one other interesting element to jlb is that he appears to be making these videos from a child's bedroom is this his child's bedroom his own childhood bedroom which he's not grown from it's unclear the introduction of jlb gets us into the real meat of the film which is a sort of back and forth between Casey and jlb Via their videos in Casey's videos her psychological changes become more intense and apparent it almost seems as if some other entity is taking over her body slowly gaining control over her this starts when Casey films herself sleeping and an unsettling grin appears across her face later in one of the most brilliant scenes of the film both from a directorial and performance perspective Casey films herself energetically dancing and singing when this happens melting melting and this idea of something taking over her seems to be solidified when she appears to address jlb directly in a bout of sleepwalking I see you [Music] there even if you won't show your face you can't stop me what's more concerning though are her more grounded changes she seems to be slipping into darker and more depressive thoughts filming video of her looking into oncoming traffic and hinting at an ominous fate my father keeps a gun in the bar thinks I don't knowwhere I swear someday soon I am just going to disappear and you won't have any idea what happened to me with her updates becoming increasingly more worrisome jlb continues watching and reaching out making his intent clear he wants wants to save her whatever that means but Casey's responses whether they be from her or whatever entity seems to be taking over her are becoming more hostile and resentful for instance in one video she performs a tarot card reading where she confronts and criticizes him the back and forth reaches his Breaking Point first when Casey uploads a video explaining her plans to turn the shotgun on either her father or herself my father needs to go three shots to the stomach and I'll stand there and watch him bleed I don't want to do it I don't think I'll be able to control myself maybe I'll just kill myself instead then seemingly taken over again we see her cover herself in glow-in-the-dark paint and rip apart her stuffed animal she leaves the room and comes back seemingly herself again in the final video she says I know how it's going to end now I'm going inside the video through the computer inside the screen Casey and jlb have another Skype call while talking Casey seems resigned to her fate of what may be eventual death or disappearance referencing something called The Strange Loop theory of the World's Fair phenomenon which we will return to she also says this which is interesting the video is a fake so is all of this what do that make the video jlb clearly concerned about Casey's well-being asks her if they can talk out of game he breaks the immersion for the first time in the film actually acknowledging the fiction of the World's Fair challenge Casey at first seems a little confused not knowing what the technical game terms he's using mean but we need to go out of game first is that is that okay sure what's that it means outside the margins of the game the MMO RPG I I didn't know that ter and then appears almost distraught at his discussion of the challenge as fake as he begins to inquire about her mental health and asking if she does realize that none of this is actually real and that she doesn't have any plans to hurt herself or others Casey becomes upset saying Jesus Christ they're just videos what is wrong with you they pretend and is offended that he would think she would ever actually do anything like that she ends the call tells him to never call her again and then accuses him of being a predator from here on out the perspective of the film shifts to the point of view of jlb instead of Casey jlb is incredibly upset over the interaction at first practicing to himself what he needs to say to get her to talk to him again then trying and failing to call her repeatedly finally Ending by placing his hand on the screen itself we see Casey's face in darkness flashing with the lights of the World's Fair Video as we hear her say again someday soon I am just going to disappear and you won't have have any idea what happened to me the film ends with jlb recording a video he explains and almost certainly fabricated story of how he and Casey ended up back in touch a year later how she had been to a mental health facility and improved how the two of them met up in person and how in the end Casey told him that he had saved her and the film ends despite its short hour and 26 minute runtime there is an enormous amount of thematic storytelling and character ground the film covers though many of the film's critics claim nothing much happens in the film and that the runtime is too long in my opinion the film packs about as much of a punch as you possibly can in under an hour and a half that is to say I don't think I'll be able to cover everything this film has to offer in this video but I'll try my best at discussing what I think the most relevant themes are to this video especially as we get closer to the final discussion I want to have a history of creepy pasta and its storytelling okay so what exactly is going on in we're all going to the world World's Fair a good place to start would be the film's themes of escapism both Casey and jlb use the World's Fair story as a means to slip out of their own realities and into a fictional and romanticized world where the forces behind your problems are mysterious and Supernatural instead of just mundane and lonely there is a mystery to be solved a cinema to their Journeys through these issues Casey says it herself she always wanted to try living in a horror movie The World's Fair gives her an explanation for her feelings of disassociation numbness and depression and an exciting explanation of that JB's escapism is a little less clear as we don't know very much about him though some have speculated the room he creates his videos from is perhaps that of a child of his whose pasted I believe I heard Shon Brun say that that's not the case in an interview somewhere I do think that the key to understanding jlb does lie in his room though and maybe it's not so Bleak it's simply his kid's childhood bedroom who has since grown up and moved out now now converted into an office from this perspective we could see JB's Behavior as reflecting this piece of him that is now missing his interactions with Casey his need to save her coming from an emptiness he feels as he is no longer needed as a parent or Guardian through the fiction of the World's Fair he feels like he can guide and defend Casey fulfill a purpose he's since lost in a way Casey and jlb both sort of represent different perspectives on troubled damaged or fading childhoods these themes are reinforced visually throughout the film whether that be with the desolate Toys R Us in the opening credits Casey's destruction of her favorite childhood stuffed animal or jlb sitting alone in a pristine kid's bedroom it's a self-identified Coming of Age film so these themes are very much involved you could even understand the World's Fair Challenge and its effects on both of them individually and their relationship as a manifestation of how our experiences in the world Force us to grow up Casey's innocence or childhood fun interrupted or destroyed by the creeping person ification of the World's Fair taking her over as growing older might expose you to further trauma and harsher realities of the adult world and unveil more mental health struggles into teenage and young adult life jlb trying to cling to his Guardian role wants to save her from these issues which is just as impossible for him as they are unavoidable for Casey he's even told outright you can't stop me so that's one way of looking at the childhood element but for all that the relationship between Casey and jlb is in the end it's a fairly brief blip in the scope of their lives what might be the most compelling thing about it is actually more about how they found each other in the first place and this goes back to escapism much like jlb we don't know much about Casey's life but from what we do see it seems fairly clear that Casey is a very isolated person we don't see her interact with any friends or even family aside from One off- camera yell from her father and the same goes for jlb to some extent though we see the brief blurry appearance of someone else living in the house with him he is wholly absorbed in the World's Fair in their isolation and seeming unhappiness with their lives when they escape to the internet and the World's Fair Community they are not just looking for an outlet for their problems they're looking for connection to express how they feel and for someone to listen the collaborative nature of the World's Fair Mythos allows them to join a community jlb comes off as a creep throughout the film and I think it's definitely possible that he is but I also think it's pretty clear that at least some of this comes from him having a difficult time socializing which is why his connections through the world's fair mean so much to him arguably to an unhealthy extent there's an element here though of performance too maybe not unique to the internet but definitely a specific expression of it a self-awareness and effort to come off as authentic despite being rehearsed Casey practices her lines before her first video which is later called back as jlb practices what to say to Casey to change her mind Casey's frustration with her video's lack of views and on the grander scale jlb and almost everyone else in the World's Fair Community are constantly performing pretending to believe in the collaborative fiction creating real connections through the false pretense which they all share the knowledge of and though sometimes that kind of connection can lead to wonderful and lasting relationships it's also just as possible that in the end your connection was never really that strong their profile can disappear one day or they can go offline and you never hear from them again jlb is so obsessed with Casey's life but how long have they actually known of each other's existence did he even know her real name that's not even my name wait in the end despite his attempts to convince us otherwise jlb never really knew Casey this is going to sound like a really corny transition but the film also seems to ask this pretty directly does Casey even know herself throughout the film the concepts of identity and disassociation are either Direct directly mentioned or gestured to multiple times specifically as they relate to Casey's experience early on she discusses childhood bouts of sleep walking which she explains as feeling like she's watching herself on a TV aware of her actions but unable to stop them and as her dive into the World's Fair progresses this disassociative feeling reemerges and escalates to the point she almost seems to be taken over at various times or have sudden moments of unexpected pure Terror or perhaps Terror that has been mounting and can't be held in any longer by the end of the film that idea of living through a monitor comes full circle as she concludes she will end up going through the screen into the video and you could even interpret this as being true in some sense as her final shot as her face in darkness a wash in the light of the video combined with her final line about disappearing one could almost interpret this as another type of disassociation a disassociation from jlb or perhaps a final disassociation from her online identity as we've come to know it her real life disappearing from our view only leaving the narrative that was created in her videos and the version of her that people like jlb created in their heads her only visible identity that which she left behind in the screen which leads us to the end where jlb constructs his own false version of Casey for his own narrative allowing him to continue his escapism in the world's fair but I do think Casey's mentions of identity alienation and separation from herself hold important relevance to her personally and some of this I I think has to do with a phrase that's mentioned briefly a couple of times in the film First In A Flash you likely wouldn't notice one of the videos she Scrolls past titled the strange Loop Theory later near the end of the film she asks jlb if he's ever heard of the strange Loop Theory so what is the strange Loop theory in the context of the film it's not entirely clear it's some explanation for the World's Fair phenomenon one of many different theories but it's a real concept strange Loops are like a paradox a high Archy where as you move up to the top you find yourself somehow back where you started the best visual would probably be mcer paintings like the impossible staircases somehow impossibly you end up back at the start it's a lot more complicated than that and aside from a mathematical perspective it's a concept that's been applied to everything from music to psychology especially in the works of Douglas hoffstead like goal eer and you are a strange Loop now I'll be honest I wouldn't say I have the deepest understanding of this Con concept or hofs works I've never finished goal ebach because well look at this thing so maybe there's some stuff going over my head here but I think I can apply this idea to some of the concepts in the film the most obvious example to me is Casey's first and last shots in the film in the opening shot of the film Casey sits at her computer and we see her perform the World's Fair challenge the light of the video flickering against her face the final image we see of Casey is her once again surrounded in Inky Blackness the the lights of the video again dancing across her face by the end of her progression through the World's Fair feeling herself pulled further and further into it she ends exactly where she started one could argue this is more just a regular Loop but I think it hits the requirement as Casey's Journey Through The World's Fair seems to take her closer to some kind of source or up a sort of hierarchy as she progresses through her symptoms in any case I think this strange Loop concept really comes into play when we come back to Casey's identity in Hoffer's writing he posits that the concept of the eye the self is a strange Loop a paradox of course you know you're real you're here how do you know you're here how do you define yourself your identity you can only really do so by referring back to yourself in the first place no evidence that you the subjective continued experience of your Consciousness and identity exists without being self-referential a strange Loop further H concludes that the self is formed only by a system complex enough and with a large enough amount of data to refer back to itself and its experiences to form a cohesive narrative about itself in short the self is an illusion and I think this idea ties into much of Casey's final conclusions about her fate and the World's Fair this world wasn't real it's just some kind of pict dream we need to wake up from her feelings of disassociation culminating in the conclusion that none of this is real and that her only way out is a final disassociation from herself and for the World's Fair itself she says the videos are fake so is all of this what do that make the video if life itself is an illusion what does it matter if the effects of the video were fictional or not if she really is experiencing them and that question that right there is I think the heart of the film The Core theme of the film is belief the final question we're left with is if Casey ever really believed in the World's Fair or if she was is playing along the entire time this question is laid out so perfectly because of anac Cobb's incredible performance her final conversation with jlb is so ambiguous watching it back over and over you find yourself switching back and forth as to which conclusion you come to she seems so genuinely confused and even offended that jlb would even consider that she really believed any of it but then she looks so destroyed and confused at the Revelation that it's all a game but I think choosing either as a concrete answer is reading it wrong the ambiguity is the point and it's something Jane Shon Brun also covers quite heavily in her film a self-induced hallucination mostly as it relates to the Slenderman Legend the nature of these online stories is that their reality is unclear they are presented as true and Their audience or players are intent on keeping that veil of reality are args or unfiction projects and though no one may actually believe them they function as if they do and at that point What's the difference I think that's the core concept here from my perspective case 's belief fits into this gray area again this world is an escape to her it gives her a place of connection and an outlet for the difficult things she's experiencing personally it's important for her that she does believe it even if she really doesn't I think she's choosing to believe it convincing herself of its reality creating a self-induced hallucination of her own in the film a self-induced hallucination one of the most interesting turns in the narrative around the Slender Man legend is after his origin is widely discovered to be fiction for a little bit there many users begin convincing themselves of ways he could still be real maybe because enough people believe he exist that means he was manifested an internet tulpa even folks who make videos attempting to disprove his existence walk on eggshells a bit telling Their audience that if they still believe he's real that's okay the fact that he could be real was important to a lot of these people and I think we see the same thing here with Casey and when jlb breaks her suspension of disbelief tears the veil away it's like ripping her only support structure away for Casey The Narrative that this was her reality was something that seemed to help her even if you could argue that it was unhealthy and jlb was justified in his worry about her potential for violence another element of self-induced hallucination covers in relation to Slender Man but jlb isn't above this either the narrative that he was an expert and a savior was important to him even if he understood it was fictional in some way and in the end he can't let go of it instead making up a story about how he was right all along what's so interesting about both a self-induced hallucination and we're all going to the world's fair is that they're so deeply immersed in the culture of creepy pasta and online horror and specifically the way they tell their stories as it relates to belief in reality I seriously cannot recommend both of these films enough they managed to find what might be the exact element of these online narratives and stories that set them apart from traditional horror narratives and I guess that's where I want to head next we've been sitting here talking about these projects and how they interpret or reference creepy pasta but what even is creepy pasta how do you define it for this next section I want to go over a broader look at Creepy Pasta its history and try to connect these projects more deeply to Creepy Pasta as a phenomenon over the years whoa my God I'm so disappointed in these freaking Stars man I charged them up with light all day and they were glowy and then I sit down to record and they are D nothing so here we are the last lap hopefully I can wrap this up before whatever that thing is takes my soul or whatever just this last bit let's see creepy pasta have been described as modern-day folklore the internet's homegrown urban legends when you think of creepy pasta you don't just think about the concept you think about the stories and imagery that are inextricably tied to it Jeff the Killer's ghoulish visit the grainy black and white photos where slender man's silhouette Peaks from behind the trees or the Twisted body of a Russian sleep experiment test subject stories about disturbing lost cartoons a malevolent changeling infiltrating a camping trip or a forgotten Soul inhabiting a video game on a basic level Creepy Pasta can be understood as Internet horror stories Tales written on and spread around the web frightening readers of all kinds but what actually makes a story a creepy pasta does it have to be a story or can it be a video or a piece of audio or multimedia work in my research for this video one of the more surprising things I found was that a true definition was hard to come by at least one that felt complete enough to use consistently I'd like to try to posit a definition for Creepy Pasta in this video but we'll need to get a better understanding of them in order to do so so let's start with the basics where does the word creepy pasta even come from creepy pasta is a term built under layers and layers of internet slang which were developed and changed over decades so I wouldn't blame you if its etymology isn't immediately obvious it starts with the phrase copy and paste as in copying and pasting text or images on a computer this phrase evolved into copy pasta a term used to describe a piece of text which is reposted or copied and pasted across the internet mostly for comedic effect creepy pasta then seems like a natural evolution of the term meaning a short horror story which is mimetically disseminated around the internet some sources say the term Creepy Pasta appeared in 2007 but I can ated at least to 2006 via forchan thread archives so that's it right case closed a creepy pasta is a viral short horror story well not quite it's complicated but I think to get a better understanding I think it might be useful for us to take a look back at the real origins of copy pasta a familiar phenomenon at this point chain letters doing some preliminary research it seems the phenomenon of proper chain letters really start in the late 1800s as a fundraising tactic letters which ask for a small donation and then that the reader copy the letter multiple times and send their copies out to other recipients the effect of this is an Ever growing chain of the same letter spreading out like a virus it didn't take long for this style of marketing to catch on and it was unprecedentedly effective and though the form stayed the same the contents changed and evolved incentive tactics employed for increased persuasion Promises of good luck if the letter was successfully forwarded and as we talked about earlier warnings of hardship Misfortune and even death if you ignore it praying on the superstitious the extra careful or just those with OCD to further the letter along the chain and as mail moved digital into the ' 80s and '90s chain mail became chain email and all the same tactics followed now 10 times easier to copy and paste on a communication Network that was nearly instant and unfathomably more connected and so AOL inboxes were flooded with messages employing the reader to send this to 10 friends and the scare tactics followed too invoking threats of curses demons and ghosts as motivation to move the message along this is exactly the phenomenon we see chain mail Chasers focus in on turning the threats real with ancient Cognito hazards what's really interesting is how many of these chains exist with no purpose other than to continue their own circulation unlike their charity or pyramid scheme Origins no investment Financial or otherwise is asked of the recipient only that they spread the message further maybe that's why they worked so well with no clear terior motive it begs the question as to why someone would want to start this in the first place unless the warnings were true and as we've come to see the warnings began to take the form of horror stories involving a specific ghost or demon which had its own unique history written in classic urban legend fashion as a side note we will be coming back to urban legends often times the message was allegedly sent from the ghosts themselves one fairly popular example that even shows up as a page on paranormal prick heads is the story of Carmen Winstead hi my name is Carmen Winstead I'm 17 years old I am very similar to you did I mention to you that I'm dead a few years ago a group of girls pushed me down a sewer hole to try and embarrass me when I didn't come back up the police came the girl said that I had fell and everyone believed them the police found my body in the sewer I had a broken neck and my face was torn off send this message to 15 people after you've listened to the whole message if you value your life a boy called David received this message he just left and deleted it when he was in the shower he heard laughing my laughter he got really scared and rushed to his phone to repost this message but he was too late the next morning his mom entered his bedroom and all she found was a message written in his blood saying you will never have him back no one has ever found his body yet because he is with me a girl called Charlotte received this message and she immediately sent it to 25 people 10 more than required I still watch over every second of her life to make sure she is safe and keep her and everyone close to her out of danger send this to 15 people in the next 5 minutes if you don't want your fate to be the same as David's your time starts now the story is true you can research it on Google scary stuff and I'm sure you can see how the viral dissemination of a Horror Story specifically designed to be copied and pasted around the Internet connects to This creepy pasta term's origin and it's a good start it showcases how these stories replicate the language of classic ghost stories present their stories is true and how the internet spreads and even sometimes evolves them as slight alterations in typos spread and compound you may find other versions of the Carmen Winstead chain letters with certain details added missing or altered from the version I've shared here but it isn't all just poorly written spam emails there's a lot more to what modern creepy pasta is and the real beginning of what we now call Creepy Pasta in a more modern sense starts in the year 2001 Ted the caver is considered by many to be the first real Creepy Pasta in the way we understand them now though it predates the term it's not a chain letter it's not a Spam message it's a rather detailed story hosted on an amateur cavers Angel Fire blog taking the form of his caving Journal mixed with color commentary from him after the fact it's different from these chain letters in that it is independently hosted and has no chain motive it's just a story it's also considerably longer and more detailed taking about an hour or two to read it's similar to these previously discussed chain letters though in that it presents itself as entire true coming from the perspective of the person who experienced it and that it was eventually spread around the internet I want to focus here though on what might be the most intriguing part of Ted's story as I said it presents itself as entirely true a genuine series of blog posts from a man who's experienced something terrifying Ted posts about his experiences caving with one of his buddies when they discover a small passage in the cave they're exploring this passage is barely larger than a fist but they can see that it opens up farther in excited by the prospect of being the first to ever enter this virgin passage they begin a grueling months-long process of drilling and hammering the opening large enough to shimmy inside Ted provides photos from this exploration which for the claustrophobic Among Us are probably enough to send shivers down our spines without any of the horrors that follow and they do follow the whole time Ted is laying out his experiences he alludes to something that happened which made him regret his choice to re-enter the cave to come back again and again to continue exploring the cave and make their way into that inaccessible passageway the mix of real photos and real fear of the cramped dark suffocating spaces found while exploring caves and the presentation of this whole thing as a real experience gives the whole story a level of believability rarely found when reading a piece of horror fiction meanwhile the looming threat of whatever Ted has been alluding to builds as they get closer and closer to making their way inside the passage and things in the cave get stranger symbols on the walls sounds from the caves it's genuinely a good read but despite what many readers thought at the time the the story is only partially true it was written by an actual caver named Ted and the images all showcase real photos he'd taken even the project to open up the passageway was real in fact many early entries in the story are directly taken from Ted's real caving journal the concept of turning it into a fictionalized Horror Story came when Ted began to brainstorm ways to embellish the tale when he shared it via his Angel Website there's a whole interview with the author Ted Hegman on the Nick bodic channel it's a very interesting listen despite being many years before the creepy pasta term came into existence Ted the caver set the standard for this type of story The Format the growing tension and most importantly a story which presents itself to the internet as entirely real as an authentic post about an authentic experience and it brought this genre into the world surprisingly fully formed many modern Creepy Pasta follow this exact same approach and part of what helped the story be so impactful was the speculation and conversation surrounding it the question as to whether or not it was real in a pre-social media era of the internet there wasn't an easy way of knowing Ted discusses as much in his previously mentioned interview although I still read a lot of comments about people asking if it was real and what happened to Ted so I thought that was kind of funny but you put out Ted the C at a time when there weren't really those types of horror stories coming out where the intention was to make the reader think that it was actually a true story I think that is what made it work to be fair I think in today's social media era that I I think it would have been discovered or or not discovered but disproven or they would have found me or something I just don't know if it would have got the traction it did you know 18 years ago in this early era of the internet more of these foundational stories start popping up screenwriter Eric Heiser who would go on to write screenplays for arrival Bird Box lights out and more created a story called diania House posted on the website dianah house.com told entirely through a similar found internet style via emails and blog posts it tells the story of Supernatural events surrounding the titular diania house but another of these foundational stories has got to be one of my favorites the legend of karagi station it's 11:18 p.m. January 8th 2004 a user later identified as hasumi posts to the Japanese Message Board tchan in a thread titled keep track of strange things around you this may just be my imagination can I post it anyway go ahead I've been riding a certain train for a while but something seems off I always take this train to work but it hasn't stopped at any stations for the past 20 minutes or so it usually only takes 5 minutes 7 or eight at worst oh and there's five other passengers but they're all sleeping it would be really bad if the driver had an epileptic fit or something you should check on the conductor still no sign of stopping so all right I'll take a look there were blinds or something covering the window so I couldn't see the conductor or the driver knock on the window I tried that but nobody answered and so it goes on other users on the thread responding and offering advice for jum's predicament eventually the train stops at a station and jumi gets off but she doesn't recognize it karagi station the kanji for which is the same as the word devil devil station yikes the train lead Le before she can get back on jumi calls her parents on her cell phone but they don't know any karagi station either the other users start searching for it themselves I checked online too and the name Kisaragi station isn't coming up hasumi updates there's really just nothing out here all I can see are fields and mountains but I think I'll be able to make it back if I go down the track so I'll keep pushing on thank you very much treat this as a joke if you will but can I come to you if I encounter any more trouble the other users respond assuring her that they'll be there and jumi is never heard from again what's so intriguing about this story isn't just that it again presents itself entirely through the internet and presents itself as an entirely authentic but in some ways it is authentic these interactions weren't prescripted they were the actual responses of actual users on the thread responding to jum's posts and then jumi responds right back in real time it's this Dynamic form of Storytelling that not only creates an active environment in which the readers at the time get to literally particip ipate in it under the assumption that it's real but its authenticity and subtlety eventually turned it into an actual full-fledged urban legend in Japan it's so emblematic of where internet horror was headed especially into the year 2004 and it's the exact type of reality blurring interactive storytelling which we're all going to the World's Fair is concerned with Ted the caver is a perfect example of a web 1.0 Horror Story hosted entirely on its own website readers coming to view the content as is but for Creepy Pasta to truly take on their mimetic quality and follow in the footsteps of their Chain Letter predecessors the internet would need to be a lot more social and as we move into the 2000s with websites focused on user generated content like tchan forums and social media this begins to start Kisaragi station is a great example of how powerful the dynamic and interactive elements can be and it's really just the beginning of this revolution forums like something awful in forchan are where this really kicks off early horror memes start start to appear like zalgo a lovecraftian type creature that infects and changes comic strips a concept started by the something awful user schori in the horror and absurdest comic parodies he hosted on his own website the distorted zalgo text is still commonly used today and these Comics feel like a precursor to the I'm sorry john/ gorefield genre in what feels like a precursor to the original Slender Man post a story called I found a digital camera in the woods begin spreading around forums in 2004 posted to all sorts of boards claiming to be the true story of someone discovering photos on a digital camera in the woods it's mostly told through a series of blurry images taken in a dark and foggy Forest a few of the photos contain photoshopped silhouettes of mysterious creatures but the Real Genius comes in the photos that are less obvious images of an empty Forest that you can't help but inspect hoping to find something building your own anxiety as you lean in scrubbing every pixel breath baited for when something finally pops out at you one of the most iconic Creepy Pasta figures of all the rake was initially created in 2005 collaboratively designed by 4chan users in a thread created to design a new monster later in 2006 something Alpha user Brian Somerville posts A Story featuring The Rake on a personal blog which is the original story many now associate with the creature 2006 is also generally an important year for our history with this term as far as my firsthand research can tell searching back through 4chan archives 2006 into 2007 is when we start seeing the phrase Creepy Pasta start popping up in everyday use and these threads are really fascinating when it starts it essentially just means a scary story The emphasis of the phrase is less on the story itself and more so on how it's being shared it represents the social phenomenon of sharing them with each other not anything specific to the tropes or content a story becomes a creepy pasta once it's been creepy pasted shared the same way you would campfire stories or urban legends just online and early on that's basically what they are people posting largely pre-existing urban legends or ghost stories many predating the Internet it's always interesting when one of these Legends comes up that feel especially indicative of where Creepy Pasta would be headed for instance pus an urban legend from the 1980s about a mysterious game that appears in arcades across the country created by a company called sinis loan no such company can be found and the actual gameplay of the cabinet is Up For Debate but playing it supposedly had adverse effects like addictions seizures and hallucinations and it said these games were visited by mysterious Men In Black the legend has spawned many gameplay and even full cabinet Recreations one of my favorite examples of these early creepy pastas is one that is literally just a slightly edited version of an exerpt from the book House of leaves by marxy danieleski it's a good book so it makes for a compelling Creepy Pasta especially since it's taking from a rather self-contained piece of the book The 5 and 1/2 minute hallway portion some of the changes are slightly humorous though like changing will Navy nait's name to the more common Davey to Stave off question questions about the original character's slightly unusual nickname and removing the names of the other characters in the scene so not to bring up confusion about people previously established in the book I find it really interesting seeing how these 4chan users react to this phenomenon they seem addicted to reading and sharing them I guess before a place like creepy.com existed the best way to get horror stories from the internet was to just ask someone to share ones they know but these people are absolutely feing for more creating new threads asking for more or requesting that someone share a new one they haven't seen before and creating collections of ones they've read they love them and as this sharing continues and the common urban legends run out rather quickly the Natural Evolution is for users to start writing their own and some really unique stuff comes out of this a genre called existence Easter egg starts where people explain strange and obscure ways you can allegedly activate horrific phenomena many times leading to a reward if you make it through hey guys let's get some delicious Creepy Pasta over here on any night with a crescent moon open Winamp or any other music program you might have on your computer that has a shuffle program empty your mind and keep clicking the forward button if you're rather unlucky a song named I'm Your Problem now. MP3 will start playing for the first minute it will be completely silent close your eyes when the screams start and do not open them for any reason horrible imagery will fill your mind of corpses and unimaginable evil this will happen as a full 7 Minutes of this song's horrible castrophany of Screams and sounds continues if you make it through those torturous 7 Minutes you'll wake up on a bench in a deserted Greyhound station a faceless man at the other end of the station will offer you a cigarette if you don't accept it your eyes will open and the song will be gone and no time will have passed if you choose to accept it however this man will divulge to you the secrets of life after you're done smoking take the ticket out of his pocket and board the bus coming into the station you'll wake back in your house and exactly 12 minutes will have passed since you started listening the problem is that anyone who survived the song goes insane from the information they've just learned just like with most of the creepy pasta we've gone over so far the writing is all done in a way to suggest the stories are real even if nobody really believes them leftover writing styles taken from the urban legends they're inspired by into 2007 things start to solidify a bit more and more original content starts appearing the first ever SCP is created in a 4chan post briefly describing SCP 173 in the format that SCP Case Files would eventually adopt as the Intriguing nature and implied larger World encouraged others to slowly develop SCP into a more organized Community alongside SCP the holder series is created in a slightly different style similar in that it documented a series of anomalous objects 538 to be exact that if brought together would bring about the end of the world though the holder series hasn't had much relevance in recent times the SCP Community continues to thrive and evolve being one of the biggest communal writing projects on the internet internet spawning a multitude of games and indie films SCP is also a great example of both the continuation of presenting these stories as real being integral to their format as the SCP Wiki is written entirely in fiction and as something we'll start to see in the future which is initial Standalone posts growing a community which build out their worlds 2007 also sees the creation of the story kill switch written by Katherine Valente on the invisible games website which details the story of an obscure survival horror game from the late 80s which deletes itself after being completed the story even presents rumors of a video of someone who owns the last remaining copy of the game and gameplay Recreations appeared out of the community surrounding the story which feels like a Natural Evolution from pus on that note actually it's something I didn't mention in the breakdown but we're all going to the World's Fair also includes a brief snippet of World's Fair video game video which feels like another incredibly accurate nod to this genre of creepy pasta media 2008 to 2009 is where Creepy Pasta really starts to Define itself in the modern sense the addicted masses create their own websites like creepypasta.com to organize and publish them in a more formal fashion it's also around this time that some of the more influential stories appear including a familiar face smile. jpeg or smile dog what's really interesting about this story is how it both functions as a piece of chain mail in that the story implies the reader must pass the image along to someone else but also as a sort of commentary on chain letters since most of the story itself is simply about this image and not directly telling the reader what to do in 2009 Chris stra publishes the story Candle Cove The Godfather of the now popular Lost episode genre of creepy pasta following in the footsteps of creepy pasta's earliest predecessors it takes the form of a forum discussion where users reminisce on a childhood TV show they used to watch on channel 58 their memories of the show get more disturbing and strange as things go along and in the end it's revealed that their parents only ever remember them watching static this story would pave the way for later lostep episode stories like dead Bart or suicide Squidward and Jane Shon Bran's new upcoming film I saw the TV glow seems at least partially inspired by it at least from what I've seen of the trailer it is also in 2009 when we see the creation of probably the most iconic Creepy Pasta of all time Slender Man hey you hungry home Invader stop raing our refrigerator y we've already discussed his Origins on something awful earlier but I do want to point out again how REM inent he is of the much earlier I founded digital camera in the wood story and as we discussed the community quickly latched on to this compelling creation and built out a world around Slender Man just like it did for the SCP 173 post a lore or as they call it Mythos was created around the character expanding on the brief Snippets written by Victor Serge he inspired web series like Marble Hornets and video games like slender the8 pages and spread all over the Internet and here's where I once again recommend a self-induced hallucination for more of an in-depth look at the Slender Man craze as that film covers Slender Man became so quickly removed from its initial source that it was encountered by many to be a seemingly real urban legend something that people really believed this is also detailed very well in the book Slender Man is coming creepy pasta and contemporary Legends on the internet which I read for this video in some cases users actually made plans to seed seemingly authentic early origins of the Slender Man legend around the internet so that the culture at Large would be convinced it was real this is likely where the fictional dur Grossman Legend and photoshops come from trying to create a false history for the character here again we see the importance of appearing authentic to the creepy pasta genre a new decade starts in 2010 and with it an explosion in creepy pasta's popularity many consider this to be the peak of creepy pasta's relevance with the community and infrastructure now in place it spreads like wildfire the subreddit r/ no sleep was created a place where users post scary stories entirely in character the entire subreddit is in character actually with specific rules in culture built around not spoiling the fun of believing the stories are true the about section reads no sleep is a place for redditors to share their scary personal experiences one of the subreddits rules is everything here is true even if it's not some of the most popular and influential Creepy Pasta come out during this wave of popularity incredibly ambitious projects like Ben drown following in the footsteps of Pol lius and kill switch which follows a user named Jud usable when he discovers a seemingly haunted cartridge of the game Majora's Mask the story being told via gameplay footage 4chan posts websites and more a full-fledged ARG which played out over a full decade and continuing the video game theming 2010 also seems to be the year one of the truest playground video game rumors start spreading around the urban legend of Lavender Town Syndrome the myth that some copies of Pokémon red and blue contain frequencies in the music of the Lavender Town area of the game that caused children to commit and into the rest of the 2010s creepy pasta continued expanding some of my favorite stories appear here like abandoned by Disney in 2013 a series of blog posts detailing The Writer's Supernatural experiences during some Urban exploration in the abandoned mowgli's Palace Resort a real abandoned Disney Resort which once again brings the story ever closer to reality in 2011 the popular Jeff the Killer creepy pasta is created but as we've come to find out the origins of both the classic image and the name Jeff the Killer or Killer Jeff have much earlier Origins something else starts to happen in the 2010s though as all genres do once Creepy Pasta became popular the general quality went down as it was flooded with entries some of the most popular stories from this era Jeff the Killer and Sonic.exe are renowned for their poor quality of writing Creepy Pasta became both ubiquitous and poorly regarded the community was still there but it was almost too popular for its own good at least from my memory in 2014 the horrifying but thankfully non-fatal Slender Man motivated stabbing brought the term Creepy Pasta into the wider World outside of the internet and in a pretty terrible light then with the Sci-Fi TV series Channel Zero based around creepy pasta stories in 2016 Creepy Pasta became something that usually kills internet phenomenon mainstream it wasn't gone for good stories like barasa led to successful writing careers abandoned by Disney inspired fan games one of the most popular indie horror games of all time and SCP has continued going stronger than ever still it didn't feel as relevant a part of Internet culture at least to me as horror games took so much more of the horror attention span of the internet and as we moved into the late 2010s with the release of the third terrible Slender Man film in 2018 Slender Man being the most popular Creepy Pasta ever there was a consensus that that film was the final nail in the coffin for creepy pasta but I don't think creepy pasta ever actually died they were just changing by the mid to late 2010s the majority of Internet horror was consumed through YouTube and in 2017 Chris St influential Creepy Pasta writer and author of Candle Cove kickstarts the modern analog horror genre with you are on the fastest available route the beginning of a series with a familiar name if you've read Candle Cove local 58 meanwhile the legacy of pus and kill switch and bend drown are continued with one of the most influential horror series ever pet scop founding the this game I found genre proper then a new generation of creators inspired by these pieces go on to create their own web series in the analog horror and TGIF genre then in 2019 we get the back rooms in the most classic Creepy Pasta fashion it gets a 4chan post with a sharable short horror story associated with a spooky image if you're not careful and you no clip out of reality in the wrong areas you'll end up in the back rooms where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet the Madness of mono yellow the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum buzz and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby because it sure as hell hurt you it's honestly very reminiscent of some of the earliest Creepy Pasta posts on forchan with existence Easter eggs which often explain how to break reality the back rooms spins out of control and begins connecting with both the analog hor Community with can pixel's back rooms found footage series and the many videos that were inspired by that and a sort of neoc sc/ the holders with the back rooms Wiki community and that brings us to where we are today the 2020s the genres of the game I found and analog horror continue to evolve their own tropes and communities becoming more popular than ever combinations of both these genres lead us to digital horror which is a genre that hearkens back to the Nostalgia of the very era that creepy pastas came from the 2000s and 2010s and this is the most important point I want to make here I don't think Creepy Pasta ever really went away I think all of the modern internet horror genres and formats can trace their Roots back to Creepy Pasta whether that be tropes or specific stories going through the history for this video I couldn't help but notice the web of Inspirations Origins and Evolutions I felt like I was a detective connecting red string on a corkboard let me just show you I told you this guy would come in handy to start the SCP 173 post on 4chan goes on to inspire the SCP Wiki which then goes on to inspire the back rooms Wiki speaking of the backrooms as I mentioned the back rooms concept comes in the form of a classic 4chan Creepy Pasta what about analog horror well of course I don't want to oversimplify the origins of the genre obviously there are multitude of influences but it really starts with Chris str's local 58 he himself an influential Creepy Pasta author and the name of the series is literally a reference to Candle Cove other well-known Inspirations for analog horror series like the Walton Files come from Marble Hornets where does Marble Hornets come from oh I don't know the most popular Creepy Pasta of all time Slender Man boom Another connection while we're here analog horror of course gave us the back rooms found footage so another connection there don't think I forgot pet scop I'd say you could trace pet scops Origins all the way back to pus which is a pre Creepy Pasta urban legend they both even have the element of a mysterious company name with sin loan and Galina but most directly Ben drown comes to mind for pet scops predecessors and I would pause it a mix of this game I found and analog horror influences combined to create what we now call digital horror and that's what this whole series is all about like Morley Grove for instance not only is it a direct reimagining of a creepy pasta but Remy Abode is also behind Gemini home entertainment an analog horror series directly inspired by local 58 I think no matter how you slice it most pieces of Internet horror can trace their roots in some way back to Creepy Pasta whether that be direct inspiration or converging in parallel interests cultures and niches just Reinventing the same thing and it's not just the series we've covered here these reinventions of creepy pasta are popping up more and more like the series speed Duo 64 by shut up Jojo which feels like an almost groundup rework of the Sonic.exe story I haven't had a chance to get through all of it but the video hallway. mpp4 has some great moments or the channel vibing Leaf which is doing incredibly High effort retakes on classic Creepy Pasta like Jeff the Killer smile dog Ben drown is Jack Mario victim one and more and it's not just retakes either vibing Leaf also has Original Stories and shorts that clearly have a ton of talent behind them and feel like they take a lot of inspiration from the creepy pasta genre personally I really like their interpretation of Windows XP horror Edition but that maybe because I just love Windows XP in general the point is creepy pasta aren't just an Antiquated horror fad they're still all around us and now with this more comprehensive history of the term I think we can actually start to pick out the common threads to Define [Music] it I would not be the first to point out that creepy pasta function essentially as an evolution of traditional urban legends ghost stories and folk tales that's the entire focus of that book I mentioned slender Manis coming creepy pasta and contemporary Legends on the Internet it's a series of essays exploring the concept of slender and creepy pasta as a whole through the lens of folklore we're not going to be getting quite as academic in this video but to help with our definition I want to point out some of the similarities between internet creepy pasta and traditional urban legends with examples from the book my own thoughts and from bits of another essay the horror of a networked existence affect connection and anxiety in classic Creepy Pasta narratives by Sarah bimo from the book Global perspectives on digital literature a critical introduction for the 21st century H the first connection you could make comes all the way back to creepy pasta's origins in chain letters and then later copy pasta how these stories shift and change as they are told and then retold as blank and McNeil explained right in the introduction while referring to creepy pasta's Evolution from copy pasta The Narrative texts often undergo modification annotation Andor reinterpretation by new posters in a folkloric process of repetition and variation creepy pasta is in short creepy copy pasta the natur natural process of changes and additions in folklore as they are orally passed from Storyteller to audience member who then becomes a Storyteller themselves traditionally around campfires or Suburban bedrooms past midnight at sleepovers is replicated in the digital world as posters make their own changes appropriate pre-existing texts or simple typos and variations are passed along as they are reposted the sharing of the story creates a dynamic and evolving element to the story the next point of comparison relates a lot to this Dynamic element the book calls attention to the concept of Legend tripping the term given to the phenomenon of young people interacting with local urban legends via visiting the sites where they supposedly happened an example might be staying overnight in a supposedly haunted abandoned building or walking through a tunnel where some kind of Crypt it is alleged to live this is an example of what folklorists call ostension where the experience of the legend is extended Beyond just the verbal storytelling and individuals attempt to experience it firsthand and many creepy pastas have both the opportunity for and direct examples of people interacting with them via Legend tripping one of the most direct examples that comes to mind is the Herobrine creepy pasta It's a story I haven't mentioned yet but I'm sure many of you have heard and again its Origins appear in the most classic Creepy Pasta fashion a post almost reminiscent of the digital camera in the woods a single screenshot of the game Minecraft with a barely visible figure concealed in the fog with a brief bit of text claiming the poster has some kind of entity within their Minecraft world the story though indirectly almost compels the reader to boot up their own world and look for this entity in the fog for themselves experiencing the story for themselves in the virtual place where it occurred but this Legend tripping element becomes even more explicit when you take into account the addition and spread of instructions for how to summon herobrine into your own world and other instances of creepy pasta Legend tripping have already come up with existence Easter eggs also being a literal set of instructions which often times the reader can complete entirely while sitting at their computer right after reading the story and this is one of the elements that is so unique to Creepy Pasta as a digital formal folklore traditional urban legends are told around campfires in the woods and part of the fear often comes from their environment as it connects to the story a story about a killer in the woods feels all the scarier and more real when you're faced with a darkened Forest around you though not true universally Creepy Pasta narratives often engage with a digital element and we see this going as far back as their origins in chain mail whether it be Carmen Winstead's ghosts spreading via email or the smile. jpeg image appearing on message boards or entities hiding in the code of a haunted video game in this way the internet and cyberspace become the digital Woods in which the Killer is hiding the physical element of aention is no longer physical instead a digital one there's one last major point of contention as as to whether Creepy Pasta can truly be considered folklore or not and it comes down to what is actually the final piece of the puzzle for our definition of creepy pasta reality in discussing Slender Man's classification as a legend blank and mcneel say many fists recognize online narratives about slender man fall into the broad category of Legends narratives told as true or possibly true set in the real world and in historical time and with so much of the emphasis I've placed on creepy to being written as if they were real this seems pretty open and shut however they go on to say Legends by definition deal largely with belief and possibility but the idea of a crowdsourced Mythos speaks to a distinct awareness of fabrication Slender Man is a new kind of creation one intentionally created as a fiction but one that has emulated the look and feel of Legend so well that its emic categorization is understandably multivalent starting to really see just how pertinent we're all going to the World's Fair was while an urban legend doesn't require everyone who hears it to believe it what sets some creepy pasta apart is their explicit existence as fiction though some creepy pasta have succeeded in completely blurring the lines for a time like Ted the Cav or karagi station many Creepy Pasta are unambiguously fiction Ben drown abandoned by Disney Candle Cove we know their authors and their plots are decidedly not real still I'd arue argue that a defining factor of creepy pasta is the way in which they mimic folklore in all the ways we've discussed the term folklor esque is brought up multiple times in Slender Man is coming and it feels especially apt and one of the most important ways Creepy Pasta draws on folklore I'd argue is that the stories are told as true authentic they deny their fiction pet scop would be a great contemporary example though after it finished its run the Creator revealed himself and we now know a decent bit about how it was made the story itself and the entire Channel it is hosted on is still presented as entirely real and even with situations like this where its fiction is at some point confirmed many series including pet scop can still end up blurring this line a common in joke in the web series in ARG Community is the phrase is this an ARG referencing comments left on series as they're just starting with commenters seemingly unable to discern the status as either fiction or reality moreover the format of presenting these stories as entirely real are also incredibly important to their ability to scare us as the audience it's a point that is brought up in Sarah beemo's essay the horror of a networked existence using smile. jpegs final image reveal as an example however the reader might feel about the content of the image the moment of effect generated upon the intrusion of a fictional narrative element into the world of the real is genuinely disturbing and brings about the momentary Sensation that the reader is actually at risk from the horrific events described in the narrative in this moment of boundary cross ing readers effectively experience the horror of the story and are subsumed within the purview of the diis this sense of real risk is enabled by the particular affordances of the medium of digital communication which is deployed both diagetic and extra diotically it is both the subject of and the vehicle of the story it's that real danger imposed on the audience that makes Creepy Pasta so unique it pulls the participants into the narrative no longer passive readers but instead actors in the story removes the barrier between us and the horrors in the story both by telling the story as real and many times by employing the digital medium you are actively reading from as a part of the danger as is mentioned in beemo's essay and as we've discussed urban legends do via the physical world and it's clear this element of reality is very important as it's been preserved throughout the genre's evolution we've seen it as we went through the history of the genre and beo also brings it up in the essay too while early Creepy Pasta naturally anonymized themselves removing themselves from the source and therefore any confirmation of non-reality mostly by circumstance being shared and copied around Anonymous message boards even after the infrastructure evolved cultural rules were set in place to maintain the folklor esque elements of the perceived reality r/n sleep is a great example which as we previously discussed bakes the true story element into their rules even with the stories published directly by their authors like Candle Cove the writing still takes the form of found Forum posts an attempt to convey authenticity to the reader in the same way a found footage film would and I suppose that is the final point in the discussion that their portrayal as a true story is a defining feature I think finally we can try to actually Define Creepy Pasta how long has it been an hour two well here it goes anyway a creepy pasta is a piece of horror fiction primarily hosted or created on the internet which presents itself as an authentic piece of the medium it belongs to in which it takes place in the same real world as the audience and appears to believe in or implore the reader to believe in its reality or more simply a piece of horror unfiction primarily hosted on the internet I'm willing to accept that this is not perfect and I would love to hear some people's challenges or changes they might make to make it a more accurate description but at the very least I think this is a clear description of whether a piece of media could be considered a creepy pasta but maybe doesn't quite cover the larger Trends or characters under this definition you could call Marble Hornets a creepy pasta but slender isn't one piece of media it's an idea so we've reached the limits of my definition there I also want to point out that I don't think being hosted on a fiction site necessarily disqualifies something from being a creepy pasta for instance Candle Cove might be hosted on its author's website giving you an idea that this is something he wrote but the actual text of the story itself is presented as a series of forum discussions and does not betray an impossible point of view like an omn nipotent narrator what I like most about this definition is how much it opens up the term creepy pasta it's no longer a relic of the past instead it can be applied to the modern media which takes so much inspiration from its Origins pet scop is a creepy pasta much of the analog horror genre digital horror and more it's not to say that they're all that way for instance many pieces of Internet horror aren't presenting themselves as entirely real and I think you can still be inspired by Creepy Pasta without actually being one but for me I'm happy with with this definition at least as of now well as seems usual at this point looks like I don't have much time left before things corrupt completely thank you all for watching go check out everything I've talked about all the series and channels are great oh and I have a pretty comprehensive sources Doc in the description support me on patreon for extra goodies and it does help me out a lot as little as $2 the music for this video is available on Spotify along with an album of all my digital horror music royaltyfree on band camp and patreon I hope you've all enjoyed and I'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: Sagan Hawkes

Views: 543,356

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Id: y_sKGHBAmac

Length: 155min 38sec (9338 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024