#6 strega nona but the pasta is creepy
I'm going to talk about creepypastas here. I swear this title makes sense.
Did any of you all grow up reading that book Strega Nona by Tomie DePaola? It’s about this little Italian woman who can sing a spell to a pot to make magic pasta and this guy tries to use the magic pasta pot and ends up drowning the town in pasta.
This newsletter is not really about Strega Nona or any other kindly Italian women. It’s going to be about creepypastas, one of my favorite internet topics!
Creepypasta is derivative of “copypasta” a phrase used on early 4chan and it’s basically just a block of text that has been copied and pasted and spread widely online. So, naturally, a creepypasta is the scary version of that. The earliest versions of these were those scary email or text chains that people would send and forward to you, threatening that some scary guy was going to come for you in your sleep. As the internet became more of a thing, full online sites and forums emerged dedicated to sharing and posting quality noodles.
I remember reading some of these as they popped up on Tumblr back in high school and some of them genuinely scared the shit out of me. Now, I see that many of them are goofy at best but I find internet horror and mysteries to be so fascinating (seriously half the things on the list of newsletter topics I plan to write are internet horror related).
So, let’s jump in and talk about some of my favorite creepypastas! I’m going to give a content warning for violence, suicide, and death because a lot of these mention those topics, but I’m not going to go in depth.
I’ll be honest, the Russian Sleep Experiment is the one creepypasta that continued to scare me all the way through adulthood. There is one picture famously associated with it that genuinely haunted my nightmares for years and I couldn’t see it without having nightmares (It is at the bottom of the linked page above, I won’t put it here). It follows Russian researchers as they try to keep five political prisoners awake for fifteen days. The prisoners start out okay, then descend into madness. At one point, the prisoners cover the observation window with paper and started whispering things into the microphones, which scared the crap out of me when I first read it.
I got recommended a ebook a couple years ago by an author who writes books based on urban legends and I was like “okay! I’m going to do this and face my fears!”. Instead of being an interesting story, it was mostly about how this weird professor had really bomb dick and was super hot stuff so it was ok that he imprisoned people. Then there was something about the prisoners becoming super strong and I feel like there was a monster character named SuperChad or something like that. So… I guess it worked!
I genuinely don’t know why this one freaked me out, but I have a fond fascination of coming across this one on my Tumblr dash in high school with the full story and video pasted. It’s essentially a 9 minute video of Mickey Mouse walking and then the music gets evil and Mickey Mouse gets evil, and then there’s just a lot of screaming at the end. Apparently this story comes from film critic Leonard Maltin himself, and he recounts becoming so disturbed by the content, and a security guard ending his own life because it was so scary, repeating “real suffering is not known" seven times before doing so. It’s… look, the video is not that scary, but it is headache inducing. Tell that to fifteen year old me, though.
Lavender Town Syndrome is a story that comes from the release of Pokemon Red and Green in 1996. This lead to a series of deaths in children that was precluded by strange behavior, seizures, etc. It was reported that the music that played when the player character arrived in Lavender Town, it was the eerie background music with high frequency tones only kids could hear that drove them to such desperate actions. And it is kind of eerie! But mostly, it makes my head hurt.
Slenderman is one of the OG and most famous creepypastas. There isn’t so much fo a story about him, as there is just lore. Slenderman is described as being very tall, very pale in a black suit. He steals children and lurks in the woods. I just think he’s spooky and cool.
A good lost episode creepypasta is hard to beat, and I am contemplating doing a full newsletter on famous lost media from over the years, so I’ll be brief with Dead Bart. It’s about an episode of The Simpsons where Bart essentially gets sucked out of an airplane window and dies? I don’t find the story very creepy but I particularly love that the person telling the story cornered Matt Groening at a convention and he just willingly gave the URL of a fabled horrifying episode that traumatized him to a random fan that he met right away. PEAK humor and creepypasta levels of drama.
I would highly recommend people who like creepy things dig into some creepypastas themselves because even if the stories are campy and ridiculous, I do love the cult followings and culture that emerges around all of them.
Now, onto some book stuff!
Love and Other Conspiracies comes out in FIVE DAYS. I am not screaming, you’re screaming! There is still time to preorder from The Ripped Bodice if you’d like a signed copy. Tickets are also available to come chat with Elissa Sussman and I on Friday 8/23 at 7pm in Culver City!
I will be at Smitten Bookstore signing on Sat. 8/31 at 2pm and would love to meet some friends!
I will have another newsletter dropping on Tuesday that’s likely going to be more sappy and reflective, rather than something spooky, so stay tuned.
And thank you for all the support and to everyone who has already bought the book, or plans to buy the book — you are amazing!