Do Not Adjust Your Set...

"You had a big imagination with your little pirate show."

Creepypasta: If you're reading this post, then you're probably familiar with the term and what it entails. Itself a corruption of the term copypasta (derived from the nowhere near as 'net-friendly copy/paste), it's a name given to short pieces of writing that are freely copied and shared around the internet, originally on message boards such as 4Chan (remember that one, kids, or have you tried to scrub it from you memory?) or Reddit.  Sticking to the adage that it's all-round good clean fun to creep someone out, disturb them or, if push comes to shove, gross them out, many such pieces tended to be horrific in nature, hence the term creepypasta. Pretty clever, huh? Over time of course, the subgenre (if you want to label it as such) morphed into something bigger, spawning whole online communities, along with short sharp shock pieces of fiction, usually written in an almost urban myth friend-of-a-friend style, in a way that tried to portray them as factual. Characters were shared and elaborated on, spawning the likes of Slender Man, Jeff the Killer, and so on. Personally, I was never a fan of those extended story types, finding that they tended to get bogged down too much in their own lore, as different creators run with something, each trying to outdo the previous. No, those that work best are, in my humble opinion, the stand-alone tales, short on fact, explanation and backstory, long on atmosphere; the kind of thing that Stephen King might refer to as a brief kiss in the dark from a stranger. The best pieces of micro-fiction of any kind are the ones that hit you with something to make you feel uncomfortable, to have you looking back over your shoulder, even though you know damn well that the Reddit post you've just read was probably hacked out by some internet forum dweller with a nasty imagination and ten minutes to spare. The best ideas are usually the ones with some - albeit tenuous - basis in reality.

Kris Straub had the right idea.

The creator of Candle Cove, nailed it when he wrote his popular creepypasta, probably one of the most deservingly successful in my opinion. Built around the simple - and deceptively believable - idea of an internet forum discussion, the story is about a typical, yet fictitious, childrens' programme from the 1970s. Straub ramps up the tension bit by bit, whilst pulling the reader in for his dénouement, a final, single sentence, all the more effective in the context of what has come before. But how does he manage it?

Straub creates an image that most of us from that generation can relate to; a cheap and cheerful kids' TV show that, despite looking sweet and innocent on the surface, has something to it just a little off-kilter. Something just the slightest bit...wrong, somehow. Most childrens' television of the '70s and '80s, certainly here in the UK at least, was cheap-looking European fare, bought in as filler, just the kind of show that Straub describes. Once you've read the story, you won't look at a blank TV screen in quite the same way again.

The truth is that most kids enjoy controlled fear. They have a capacity for the macabre that is often underestimated. That they can have the shit scared out of them and survive to brag about it to their friends, gives them the opportunity to feel a little more adult, without any of the more negative trappings and responsibilities of actual adulthood. Some of the best and most iconic genre fiction makes use of imagery that is universal in its ability to make the flesh crawl, regardless of age, tapping into fears that don't fade with the passing of childhood, but rather lurk somewhere in the dark corners of the mind. The most effective horror reminds us just what it feels like to be a child, to be afraid. To know that the monster is hiding in the dark...and it is about to get us.

What Straub makes use of to such effect - aside from a well-timed and pitch-dark sense of humour - is imagery that has been used time and again in the genre. Relax for a moment, try to think back to some of the earliest things you were afraid of, I mean really afraid of. Worse than any bogeyman or Hollywood monster, those real-life nasties; madness, loneliness and, the big one: unfamiliarity. The idea of being a child, in a huge world full of unknowns, is enough to make the hairs on the back of most peoples' neck rise. And some of the best that the genre has to offer makes use of this innate fear, with the intention of reminding the reader or viewer just how it feels to be a very small person in a very big, very scary world.

When British writer and journalist, Charlie Brooker talks about the Black Mirror, he's referring to the modern trappings of television, computers, smartphones, all polished and shiny, showing us everything we want to see, along with other things we don't. A glossy, black abyss that can entice and suck a person in with ease. Technology is the monster that has been invited into every modern household, every front room, and the palm of almost every hand.

In 1982, Tobe Hooper (or Steven Spielberg, if you believe the stories), got it right, pretty much the same way as Kris Straub did.

Long before Poltergeist evolves into a special effects bonanza of summer blockbuster proportions, it stirs up almost primal levels of unease, thanks to the simple image of young Heather O'Rourke, staring into the depths of TV static, as she reaches out to touch something that, perhaps thankfully, can't be seen. We, the viewers, are unsettled by the straightforward way in which something is described in childish language, something that we as adults know to be a Very Bad Thing. And that's before we get to the homicidal toy clown, moving tree, and real skeletons (they're cheaper than plastic, apparently) . The image of O'Rourke, reaching to embrace whatever lies beyond that screen is one that lingers, as an everyday item in front of which so many hours are wasted, a ubiquitous piece of furniture in almost

every living room, becomes a consuming entity. Yeah folks, your TV's gonna eat you up, in more ways than one.

Hideo Nakata's Ringu, (1998), and it's Americanised counterpart, The Ring (Gore Verbinski, 2002), use a similar tactic, perhaps to an even more explicit and surreal degree. The most memorable scenes revolve around the random imagery of the cursed videotape itself, along with the sight of the ghost girl, Samara, dragging herself free from the constraints of televisual white noise, quite literally breaking the fourth wall.

Both Poltergeist and Ringu, as well as Candle Cove, make use of the idea that television is actually something to be feared rather than revered. It is a portal to whole variety of other places, times and worlds, and it sits there, right in the corner of your front room. How many times have you listened to static noise and wondered just what it is that you're hearing (old radio waves, some of which are probably voices of long-dead people, bouncing back and forth across infinity, if you must know)? Or how long have you sat, staring at those flickering patterns of light and dark, like some crazy Rorschach test, trying to see if you can make out images, pictures, faces? Perhaps even worse, once the power is switched off, all that's left is a blank, reflecting darkness. A black portal leading straight to a world of nothing.

And as Kris Straub points out, to the adult, as well as the child mind, nothing can often be the scariest thing of all.

Until next time, sleep well, and don't forget to switch the television off. Seriously, too much of that shit will rot your brain. Or worse.

Love,

- L