Creepypastas are horror-related legends or images that have been copied and pasted around the Internet to inspire adrenaline rushes, fear and malevolent wonder.
These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal stories that include gruesome tales of otherworldly experiences, tales of familial horror and paranormal coincidence and scandal. Many of the best are fictional and many are published online to a single website.
In the light of the Hallowe’en season, I have chosen to share with you one of mine.
Unlike many of the popular stories, this one is a written from a personal account of a collective happening. This story is one that I have told friends and family, but have not shared further. I have removed the names of those involved and I have isolated the locations to protect them and myself, but know that these accounts are precisely as I remember them.
Gather around the apocryphal fire those who dare.
The summer that I turned 15 I finished my first year of high school.
However, I didn’t yet possess the adult mindset that would take away my like of playing outside.
I was full of energy and my sister was four years my junior, so coming from a stricter family, this meant that we did a lot of outdoorsy stuff. You know, like falling out of trees, swimming in the creek and running around barefoot.
Along with many household rules, the outdoors were the only place that we could really be free. Our property at this time was home to a line up of white pine, cedar, maple, white ash and a cornfield behind the back yard.
But we were always told that we had to be careful when we played in the dark, in fact, my grandmother was prompt to tell me “you’re not supposed to play in the dark at all.” This is in part of the fact that we live in between not one, but two cemeteries.
However, in the case of having a full moon in the summer meant that the moonlight lit up our property pretty well. This made us think that it didn’t count as being “dark.”
My sister would invite her friends over on these nights and we would play tag or hide and seek because we could see the silhouettes of each other — we did this with the naivety of children. We got away with maybe two of these nights without incident.
But on an evening a little chillier than the others, three of us decided to play well into the night. My sister was it so me and her friend split up. As she counted at the tree we dubbed the “tee” tree, I ran into my grandparents garage next door. Perhaps this was cheating, but I didn’t care.
While waiting in the dark of the garage and trying to quiet my breathing, the moon lit up my sister as she ran past the garage. She was running in earnest. I smirked and ran back to touch tee so I was safe and soon her friend joined me.
Five minutes passed and we waited for my sister. We had an unspoken tension between each other because we knew that she was gone for a long time.
Finally she came out of the trees, trotting to us out of breath and with an odd look on her face.
“How did you get here before me?” She asked, between breaths, putting her hands on her knees.
I raised my eyebrows.
“You ran right past me,” I said bluntly.
Her eyes widened and she cocked her head to the side.
“I just chased you, all the way back the field and when you ran into the bush I gave up,” she said, almost angrily.
The words rested in the air for a moment like a bad joke.
“Well you weren’t chasing me,” I said.
She turned to her friend with wide eyes.
“I was by the pine trees behind the house,” said her friend.
The realization hit and fear washed over our faces. We collectively ran inside and slept with the lights on.
All I think now is that something decided to join us that evening.
As Hallowe’en draws closer, if you have a “creepypasta” of your own that you would like to submit before our next issue, feel free to email chezney@tworowtimes.com.
