This is an addendum to yesterday’s post about spookypasta.
A friend asked me last night to clarify what the distinction is between creepypasta and spookypasta. On the surface, both seem quite similar. The critical distinction is that the object of study in spookypasta is the act and cause for the in-universe authoring of the fictional text. In other words, it is the in-universe authorship of the text, along with the attendant circumstances of its creation, which makes a creepypasta a spookypasta. This turned out to be an insufficient litmus test.
My friend put forth Candle Cove as his example. Candle Cove has an in-universe author, rather than being a simple narrated tale. My friend asked if the distinction was that spookypasta had to be in first person (by that he meant that there be an in-universe narrator). I thought about it for a moment and told him no, and that while by their nature most spookypastas would end up being written in first person, it wasn’t a requirement. For example, if House of Leaves had been an internet production instead of a book, it would qualify as a spookypasta because of its focus on the many in-universe texts contained within the story of its pages, as well as the in-universe authors, and the literary style of some of the fictional texts that mix real footnotes in with fictional sources.
The critical thing is that spookypasta focuses on the in-universe text object, rather than the text’s content–a creepypasta about a man who finds a spooky story in a book that scares him doesn’t count unless something about the book or its author are themselves mysterious or spooky; for example, a the above creepypasta would instantly be in the running for spookypasta status if he realizes that the author has the same name of his great-uncle–a great-uncle who supposedly died in a childhood accident or that the text was a near-literal transcript of a nightmare he’d had earlier, as the authorship and circumstances of the text’s creation become the interesting detail, regardless of how interesting the in-universe content of that nightmarish manifesto might be. A story about a haunted object that happens to be a book doesn’t count if it’s just a book that causes bad things to happen to each of its owners; it only becomes spookypasta when the in-universe narrator notices that this detective warning him about the number 23 seems just a bit too similar to himself for comfort (except that somebody already did that one, so I’ll be expecting the twist if you show me a new creepypasta that’s similar).
So, the distinction that a spookypasta must involve (and focus on) either an in-universe author’s act of authoring a text or an in-universe text helps, but it is not sufficient. Consider Lovecraftian Texts. The in-universe authorship of the Necronomicon would certainly be interesting, and it would seem that this might be the progenitor of all spookypasta progenitors. But it isn’t a spookypasta, because everyone already knows about Lovecraftian Texts.
This final bit, that the in-universe text must seem real enough to actually have existed either now or in the historical past, is the key. This is why SCP is an excellent creepypasta mythos, but could no longer be considered spookypasta. The original entries, experienced by the first readers, certainly would have met the criteria. These days, however, everyone knows about SCP and it is itself its own genre of creepypasta. Even though the individual pieces would count as spookypasta when considered in isolation, the public at large does not read them in isolation but as a part of the cultural whole, spoiling the delicate effect.
Similarly, most “lost episode” creepypastas would seem a natural fit, but most educated readers would instantly categorize any lost episode creepypasta as such the moment they begin reading, even if they weren’t reading the story on a known creepypasta website–those that wish to aspire to be spookypasta must be unique enough to avoid instant genre tagging. Candle Cove itself would likely fail this test if it appeared today, simply because everyone has always already heard of lost episode creepypastas. Because of this, many spookypastas end up being progenitors of creepypasta genres.
Though I’ve stated that the place where a story appears is important, it bears elaboration. A spookypasta automatically fails this final test if it appears somewhere that people expect to find creepypastas. The best examples of spookypasta appeared in venues that didn’t immediately make them suspect–in fact, the venue should seek to enhance its appearance of being a real text. Marble Hornets is actually a good example of spookypasta (or at least it was in the early episodes before people figured out what was going on) because it purported to be true. Spookypasta could be said to encompass the original goals of found footage, but again, a found footage film fails the test because we have already reified the found footage genre.
In summary, here are the three conditions that a creepypasta must meet to count as spookypasta:
- It has to be about a text’s authorship or attendant circumstances of creation; they should be mysterious, spooky, or both.
- The format must be such that someone reading it would not be able to immediately tell whether the in-universe text and author are constructs or historical truths; the venue should seek to enhance its appearance of being a real text.
- New entries in an existing spookypasta universe cease to count as spookypasta when the universe itself is well-known enough that the average consumer of creepypasta would recognize it for what it is–an artificial construct.
