Humanity’s imagination has never really had any limits and since the advent of the internet we have seen many manifestations of this collective imagination flourish, such as with the arrival of fan fiction or a new form of urban legends called CreepyPastas. We’re going to see some examples of these new urban legends together and you’ll see, there’s something to freak out a bit.
1. The Slenderman: the creepy killer imagined from scratch
It was in 2009 that the creation of the Slenderman began on internet forums: a man with a thin and elongated figure, dressed in a black suit and with a face masked in white who hangs out in the woods and kills people (classic until ‘here). As the legend of the Slenderman was written by hundreds of contributions, video games were developed by enthusiasts and quickly we even saw a film arrive which was also all rotten.
2. And Momo challenge
Probably one of the internet’s most popular urban legends: the basic idea was to write a message via a Whatsapp number to Momo, a super creepy woman who gave you tasks to complete. If at first it was relatively “nice”, the challenge quickly became alarming as malicious people began to give increasingly dangerous tasks, even asking people to commit suicide. The phenomenon quickly became viral and the police were forced to get involved in several countries.
3. The expressionless: the creepy woman with an equally creepy story
The story of “The expressionless” invented from scratch by an Internet user tells of a woman with a completely devoid face who would have arrived in an American hospital in the 1970s and whom all people who would have crossed the road would have known a disastrous fate. The story has become one of the most shared urban legends on the internet and continues to be fueled by creative netizens or told on Tiktok videos. I admit that his face is a little scary.
4. Jeff the Killer
At the base this urban legend starts from a rather creepy image of an all white face which started to turn on the forums. Quickly users gave a name and a story to this character: his name is Jeffrey Woods, a student mutilated, abused and martyred by his classmates who came back to kill them and told them “just go to sleep” before kill them, which has become a signature phrase on the forums.
5. 1999: The story of Mr Bear
The story of Mr Bear is quite creepy: he is a man wearing a battered bear mask who hosted a children’s show on a local channel in a small Canadian town. The Mr Bear in question told stories on his show and asked children to write to him, and when he answered he gave his address and the kid who went there clearly never came back. It’s creepy and well-written, so it’s become one of the most famous CreepyPasta in the world, especially since the bear mask clearly fucks the female dog.
6. Webdriver Torso: the Youtube account hiding something
The Youtube WebDriver Torso account is an account run by Google that was used to upload videos to test the capabilities of Youtube. We see squares and rectangles of color on videos of several minutes with electronic music. Except that Internet users quickly sought to find a stranger explanation for these videos, claiming for example that Google was using them to contact extraterrestrials, wake sleeper agents or do a whole bunch of creepy stuff.
7. Mr Widemouth: The Furby from Hell
Mr Widemouth is a small creature that looks like some kind of demonic Furby with a huge mouth full of sharp teeth and asks children to follow him to play. Each time he offers them a game it turns out to be deadly: juggling with knives, jumping from the top of several floors to land on an invisible trampoline… The little character quickly gained notoriety and lots of stories were told. invented by Internet users because obviously the stupid little monsters still work just as well, even more than twenty years after the gremlins.
8. The theme of Lavanville: the music of the Pokémon game which would have caused suicides
In the first Gameboy Pokémon game published in Japan (green and red version transformed into blue and red) a particular music has fed urban legends on the internet. This is the city theme Lavanville (the one where there was the Pokémon cemetery), which would have been composed with notes that only children can hear and would have pushed them to suicide. Obviously it’s bullshit but people went super far in the interpretation because it obviously made them laugh.
9. Hitori Kakurenbo: playing hide and seek alone (but actually not really alone)
The idea of this strange game that arrived on Japanese forums was to take a doll, give it a sharp object, make an incantation and go hide. Do you see the sequel coming? The possessed doll comes to pick you up and plant you with the object (preferably a pen) to tell you that she has won. The phenomenon quickly gained momentum and many people shared videos of their haunted hide-and-seek game, but it was mostly big mythos who wanted to draw attention to themselves.
10. Loab: the nightmare of an artificial intelligence
With all the applications of image creation by artificial intelligences happened a strange phenomenon: the creation of the face of an extremely scary woman named Loab. The original creation comes from a user named Supercomposite who used image generation software that created the face of the woman in question. He then asked the artificial intelligence to create new photos for him based on the first one and ended up with a collection of similar shots of the famous Loab. It was enough for the internet to take hold of the thing and tell that all the platforms of image generations have created portraits of the woman who is very scary.