This month’s post is intended as a companion to last month’s Favorite Creepypasta Genres & Topics discussion. I’d like to get a handle on the current state of the community’s likes and dislikes, both for my own use when selecting pastas as well as for the benefit of aspiring authors. I plan on linking both this post and the prior topic when I re-open submissions, in an attempt to reduce the signal to noise ratio of submissions. It’s my hope that, upon seeing which topics and genres are generally disliked versus which are enjoyed, some prospective authors will self-police a bit and refrain from sending in stories for which this particular community has expressed overwhelming distaste, if any such topics/genres come to light.
So: Which topics and genres of creepypasta are your LEAST favorites?
To clarify the “topics vs genres” categorization, I’ll copy & paste my example from last month here:
For example, we’ve had a minor uptick in sci-fi submissions (this would be the genre) as of late, and I’ve seen a few people mentioning that they’re specifically enjoying the alien stories (and ‘aliens’ would be the topic). That would be the sort of information that I’m looking for with this question. Do you prefer reading about zombies? Or do you prefer post-apocalyptic fare without the z-word included? Do you always hope to see more pastas with a mythological bent? Or perhaps you’re more into the occult tales? I hope that you get the idea!
I hope that everyone will weigh in on this topic, and if you haven’t yet contributed to last month’s post, please do so when you can.
I had always wondered what the bottom of a lake looked like, and now I know. It looks like the sun setting over the horizon, where the farthest depths of sky are black, but you can see a kind of layered improvement in the light the farther along you get. I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all down here if it wasn’t for the full moon.
At least here, near the bottom of the lake, I was safe. I think.
I knew that with every breath I drew, the oxygen level in the car drained. If I died here, at least it would be my way- instead of dying at the hands of that thing. The ambiguous mass of shapeless dark that could keep up with my car, even though it was going 85mph before I crashed. If I didn’t have a 4 cylinder engine, I would’ve gone faster and may have gotten away.
I first met him when I was 6, and he was the perfect house guest when we had our tea party. He wanted to bring his friends, but I insisted that I get to know him first. His friends made me feel weird anyways, because even though I couldn’t see them, I could hear them talking to us. I showed him all my stuffed toys and baby dolls, and I asked if his friends might like to play with them too. He liked my toys, but he said real friends are better, and one day I’d have lots of real friends. Maybe whenever I met his friends, we’d all be friends and have so much fun we wouldn’t need any toys.
I told my mother all about him, how his friends called him the Pale Emperor, and she forbade me from “imagining” him again. Mother was a very stern Christian and thought such nonsense was surely the work of the devil. Sullen, I explained how in Sunday school, we were taught that God wanted us to make friends. She looked down her nose at me and said that only applied to real friends and real people. I tried to defend Pale, but she wouldn’t have any of that nonsense. I scoffed at her behind the closed door of my room. Pale sensed that I was distressed and asked what happened. I told him what my mother said.
He didn’t like that at all.
Next Sunday, when we were at Church, a big, heavy wooden cross fell off the high arch ceiling and split her head open, spewing her brain matter on me. My mouth was open, singing psalms, and as hard as I try to deny it, I know I ate some of her brain tissue. Pale didn’t show up until after the closed casket funeral. I was absolutely furious. I told Pale that I knew what he did. I told him God doesn’t let killers into heaven. They burn in hell, and that’s what he was going to do one day.
He didn’t like that.
Pale stopped appearing in front of me entirely. I was glad for that, because when I yelled at him that night, he was…changing. His skin grew darker, especially around his eyes, which were beginning to turn yellow. The more I yelled at him, the more yellow they became. He got taller, and his hands started to meld together and become webbed. He didn’t look like a real person anymore.
After that, Pale started to come only at night, but he stayed hidden. What I had once considered a friend was now a stranger lurking in the dark. I could hear him whispering from the closet, asking me to come play. Other times, I heard him giggling from under my bed, telling me that all his friends were there -everyone but me. He only wanted to play again, and that if I did, we would be friends forever. He got mad because I told him wouldn’t play with him, and I wouldn’t be his friend. He started shaking the bed violently. At that point, I started to fear him. I didn’t talk to him anymore.
He didn’t like that.
It wasn’t until I was 7, on an unusually dark night, I awoke to voices. I recognized them as his friends, but they weren’t encouraging and cheerful like they were before. The voices under my bed were crying for help, saying they were trapped there, and that I’d be trapped there too. I put my head under my covers, but I saw Pale under there. His eyes were glowing bright yellow, and he smiled. I could see his elongated, jagged teeth by the mere light of his demonic eyes. I screamed.
He REALLY didn’t like that.
I flung the covers off me in a panic and started to run to the hall. I fell when I was almost at the door. I heard dad moving somewhere in the house. Something cold had closed around my leg, and I shouted again. It was shadows, but the shadows looked like hands clasped around my leg, and they were touching me. I could feel them. Cold, dead- and pulling me to their dark home under the bed. I jerked and pulled, pleading with Pale to stop his friends. He said my mom was there too, and she had decided to be his friend. Why couldn’t I? His friends pulled so hard that I slid quickly across the room towards the underside of the bed, and I saw several bright yellow eyes under there, all belonging to Pale.
The lights came on and dad came through the door. I stood up and tried to run to him, but I fell again, sobbing. My leg was so clawed and mangled that I couldn’t walk. My father taped a towel across my leg to stop the bleeding and rushed me to the hospital. The doctors said they had only seen such injuries in feral animal attacks and suicidal cases. My father denied their recommendation to put in an asylum. The doctors said I could really wind up hurt or worse. We came back to the house, and I didn’t see him that night, and I had stayed wide awake for most of it. I had hoped the light had hurt him. Soon after, we packed and left for an apartment down the road. Father wanted to so he wouldn’t have to relive the memories of mom in that house, and I wanted to so I wouldn’t be terrorized by her killer.
I hadn’t seen him until tonight, almost 20 years later. I sensed him before I saw him, but it was a presence as familiar to me now as it was then. I immediately grabbed the keys to my car to leave and go stay with a friend. As I passed the doors down the hall, I saw him in the bathroom first, then each room after that, smiling that terrifying, carnivorous grin. As I flung open the door to sprint out, I heard the cries of his “friends” pleading with me not to go. I did anyways.
He didn’t like that.