The internet is a wild place to be sure. From homegrown websites to original art and writing, the World Wide Web is a treasure trove of diverse content. However, sometimes a writer or creator can do their job a little too well, crafting something that blurs the lines between fact and fiction. From horror stories to edited images, all it takes is a few people to buy into something as real before it spreads like wildfire. Whether it was only briefly or they persist to this day, these are ten urban legends that spawned from the internet.
10. The Slender Man
When discussing urban legends created via the internet, the Slender Man is always a perfect place to start. Simply put, he’s the perfect case study for how a simple idea can explode into a worldwide phenomenon, and even garner some unintended controversy along the way.
The character was the brainchild of Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen, who posted some doctored photos to the site in 2009. These photos, which showed a faceless tall man in the background stalking innocent children, quickly gained the internet’s collective interest. Slender Man’s popularity was supercharged by two independent projects, the first being the YouTube horror series Marble Hornets. The found footage series evoked heavy Blair Witch Project vibes, helping establish several major aspects of Slender Man’s appearance and abilities that others would utilize. Additionally, there was Slender: The Eight Pages, an indie horror game wherein the player must collect eight pages before the Slender Man catches them.
Unfortunately, the character has also generated a fair amount of controversy, largely due to his involvement in a real-life crime back in 2014. Inspired by the lore they’d read online, two 12-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, stabbed a friend of theirs in the woods to appease Slender Man. Thankfully their victim survived but it wasn’t too long before the two girls and their faceless inspiration were making headline news.
Despite this controversy, the character is still viewed quite positively, especially by amateur horror content creators looking to create the next big thing. Needless to say, without Slender Man, the likes of Siren Head, The Rake, or many other twisted internet horror characters might not exist.
9. The Russian Sleep Experiment
This is a perfect time to establish what exactly a Creepypasta story is for those who might be unfamiliar with the format. Simply put, they are original scary stories written by internet users of any age that are meant to be shared around in various online spaces like Reddit. These stories range from firsthand encounters with freakish monsters to more realistic stories about stalkers or creepy late-night experiences.
The Russian Sleep Experiment, released in the early 2010s, is one of the more well-known Creepypasta stories and boasts a truly disturbing premise, elevated majorly by its format. The story plays out as a recap of events concerning a science experiment conducted in Russia back in the 1940s. While likely based on some legitimate sleep experiments from the late 1800s, the story itself is fully fictitious, albeit told in a very realistic way. The titular experiment is centered around five test subjects kept awake for fifteen days via the use of an experimental gas-based stimulant. However, as the experiment progresses, the test subjects devolve into gradual states of madness and even fits of screaming. Eventually, the subjects’ lack of sleep transforms them into horrific zombie-like creatures who claim the lives of several of their overseers.
If you Google search for the story, you’ll often be met with impressively disturbing artistic renderings of the test subjects in their final forms. It’s a horrific and skillfully written short story that stands out as a prime example of just how effective Creepypasta stories can be.
8. Jeff the Killer
It’s not uncommon for Creepypasta characters to break out of the confines of their own story and attain widespread notoriety online. We saw this already with Slender Man, but Jeff the Killer serves as another example of this trend and it’s not hard to see why. If you were the type to seek out strange or twisted online content in the early 2010s, there’s a good chance you’ve bumped into Jeff and his darling face at some point.
The story itself, as well as its various retoolings, tells the story of Jeffrey Woods, a thirteen-year-old boy who is disfigured during a scuffle with a local bully. This outward transformation severely affects Jeff’s mental state, causing him to snap and become, as we soon learn, homicidal. Left with pale skin following the incident, Jeff completes his hideous metamorphosis by cutting his lips into a permanent smile and burning off his eyelids. He then follows this up by brutally murdering his entire family before going on a subsequent killing spree, ending the story. Jeff’s unsettling appearance is a major aspect of why he’s attained such a well-known status, it’s an effectively disturbing design that’ll trigger a couple of nightmares.
While many were, and still are, highly critical of the story’s amateur nature, there’s no denying Jeff’s staying power as a Creepypasta mascot. Kids who grew up surfing the web during Jeff’s rise to online prominence were fully convinced they’d wake up with him standing over their bed!
7. Ben Drowned
Within the venue of Creepypastas, disturbing narratives and retro video games go together like peanut butter and chocolate. From corrupted cartridges to disturbing narratives set within typical family-friendly games like Super Mario or Pokémon, the subgenre is loaded with possibilities.
However, often regarded as a top contender for the best video game Creepypasta is Ben Drowned, a story about a haunted Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask cartridge. Written by Alex Hall, also known as “Jadusable,” the story introduces us to a college-age retro game enthusiast who acquires a Majora’s Mask cartridge at a garage sale from a strange old man. He pops it in, begins playing, and soon becomes aware of the reality of what he’s bought, a game cartridge with a ghost inhabiting it. This manifests as glitches within the game, including recurring and disturbing appearances from Link’s empty shell created by the Elegy of Emptiness.
From there, the story grows from a simple narrative about a haunted game to a bigger story about a sinister cult. Ben Drowned has become a mainstay of the Creepypasta community, with many creating analytical video essays and even live-action adaptations of the story as well. While undoubtedly fictional, the story’s effective nature did get people to look at their dusty old game cartridges a little bit differently and that’s impressive.
6. Polybius
The tale of Polybius is perhaps the greatest video game urban legend of all time, inspiring countless pieces of media to analyze its legitimacy. In the early 2000s, stories began circulating on the internet regarding a mysterious and potentially dangerous arcade game. Polybius was alleged to have vector graphics, as well as puzzle and shooter elements, which would’ve made it a rather sophisticated game for its time. Any information regarding the game often cited a mysterious publisher, Sinneslöschen, further adding to its enigmatic status.
This mysterious game was also alleged to have strange effects on those who played it, including amnesia, nightmares, insomnia, and even suicidal thoughts. It’s also mentioned that men in black suits would visit arcades where the game was located to collect data from the machines. Following these incidents, every copy of Polybius would disappear from arcades without a trace, never to be seen again.
For years, this urban gaming legend has run rampant through the internet, resulting in a plethora of fanmade Polybius content. This includes legit playable versions of the game, fake arcade cabinets, horror shorts based around the game, and even long-form documentaries about the urban legend’s history. Even though Polybius never actually existed in any real arcades, it’s still a magnificent legend that’s entranced an entire generation of gamers.
5. Ted the Caver
Many internet horror stories, if presented properly, have a very good chance of fooling readers into thinking they are true, even if for a little while. In the case of Ted the Caver, its format goes a long way in helping sell the narrative’s authenticity, especially because of the website it resides on. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Angelfire was an internet service that allowed online users to build professional-looking webpages, like an early version of Squarespace.
One such homebrewed website was Ted the Caver, a “blog” that told the story of the eponymous Ted and his friends – Brad and Joe. Through Ted’s entries, we learn about the group’s adventure through a cave they discovered and the consequences of their explorations. As the story progresses, it slowly transforms from a page-by-page caving recap to something more sinister and unsettling. The trio encounters such chilling oddities as ghastly screaming, strange hieroglyphs, and is later plagued by hallucinations and nightmares after their departure. Brad layered posted his intentions to reenter the cave with his friends, armed with a gun and knife, to achieve some closure.
That was Ted’s final post, leaving his ultimate fate shrouded in mystery, much like the cave he was exploring. If you’re a big fan of films like The Descent or As Above, So Below, then this story will provide ample entertainment and intrigue. Many believed Ted the Caver wholeheartedly, with its fictional nature being discovered much later, making it a prime example of an internet urban legend.
4. The Red Room Curse
For our next entry into internet urban legends, we turn our gaze to Japan, a country with no shortage of disturbing urban legends and folklore. There are plenty of terrifying internet-based tales from the land of the rising sun that we could cover, but this one is a particularly unnerving example.
The Red Room Curse is an urban legend that plays into the dark side of the internet we all know too well. Those dark pockets of the world wide web where people’s deepest darkest proclivities come out to play, as well as to conduct shady business. The legend kicked off in the late 1990s when an interactive Flash animation popped up on GeoCities, a web hosting service for custom websites. The interactive animation tells the story of a young boy who, while perusing the internet, encounters the Red Room pop-up and dies after seeing it.
So the legend grew, the terrifying tale of a mysterious pop-up that would result in an immediate gruesome death in your own home. While a definite piece of horror fiction, early internet users hadn’t yet developed the knowledge to discern trickery from legitimate fact. It still stands as a tremendous early example of viral horror content, sending a shiver down the spine of many modern internet users.
3. The Hat Man
Oftentimes, an internet urban legend attains notoriety due to how many people share it and spread it via word of mouth. This is enhanced when the legend is heavily linked to a shared experience or event and people share that experience on an online forum en masse. This brings us to the widespread phenomenon of the Hatman, a mysterious shadowy figure adorned with a top hat.
Most Hat Man stories follow a similar rhythm, often going hand-in-hand with individual recountings of experiences with sleep paralysis. This refers to times when the body is fully asleep but the brain is active, leaving you completely immobile and unable to speak. During this physical occurrence, it’s not uncommon for dreams to bleed into reality, resulting in freaky late-night visions, much like the Hat Man. A quick scan of r/HatMan will immediately tell you everything you need to know about how widespread the Hat Man legend has become. From alleged childhood memories to more recent encounters in home bedrooms and even hotel rooms, the Hat Man seems to have visited many people. In truth, the Hat Man is more than likely just a shared hallucination that people have seen while half asleep, far from a true supernatural threat. However, the legend of Hat Man still makes for an undoubtedly fascinating addition to the internet urban legend catalog.
2. Smile Dog
We now return to the world of Creepypastas to take a look at another story that escaped the forums and took on a life of its own. The story of Smile Dog, also known as smile.jpg, concerns an allegedly cursed photo that has been spread around online.
The story is almost a spin on the cursed VHS tape from The Ring, only this time it’s a cursed photograph of a sinister-looking dog. The story’s narrator recounts his experience with a woman named Mary and her dealings with the Smile Dog photo. As the story progresses, the narrator questions the validity of Mary’s bizarre claims up until the day of her tragic suicide. The story then concludes with the reveal of the actual image, a bloodstained polaroid of the titular Dog having just claimed another life. The implication is that still will spread the curse further and further, ending the story on a truly haunting note.
The whole thing feels very much in line with the trend of haunted chain emails that would circulate in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While more than a little cheesy upon a more modern examination, much like Jeff the Killer, the Smile Dog story still stands as a charming oddity of the late 2000s internet.
1. Squidward’s Suicide
If you strike up a spirited conversation regarding Creepypastas and internet horror, you’ll more than likely eventually end up on the topic of Squidward’s Suicide. Whether you stumbled across it yourself or a classmate told you about this creepy “true story” they’d heard, everyone has their own unique experience with the story.
The story is framed as a recounting from a former Nickelodeon intern who worked work the studio back in the mid-2000s. He explains that before an episode was finalized, the animators would often include a mock title card with a lewd title just to generate some in-office chuckles. However, when an unfinished episode titled Squidward’s Suicide is screened for final approval, things quickly turn south in a major way. The episode turns from an average SpongeBob adventure into a David Lynch-tinted look into Squidward’s frayed mental state. Things only intensify with the inclusion of hyper-realistic bloody eyes on Squidward and images of real dead bodies.
Despite its overly edgy presentation, the story struck a chord with many Creepypasta users, sparking a new trend in the genre. From Sonic the Hedgehog to Disney movies to Pokémon, almost every piece of kid media has gotten the Squidward’s Suicide treatment at some point. So, if you’ve ever encountered a disturbing recounting of a favorite show from your youth online, you now know what started it all.