Self Imposed Rules:[]
• One story per author.
• Each story in my top 10 must have been written with the intent of being published on the internet first. This is to keep the list from getting filled with the true classics posted on The Creepypasta Wiki, like Frankenstein, or The Call of Cthulhu.
• Each entry in my bottom 10 list must be a story that nobody has called out before, except in the story’s own comment section. No stories that have been read on Bad Creepypasta or Bullshit Creepypasta Storytime, and no stories that appeared on other people’s lists of least favorites.
Also, I am going to give much more detailed explanations for my least favorites than my favorites. While it’s easier to explain what makes a bad story bad than what makes a good story good, laziness is not the only reason I am not going to explain my ten favorites. A lot of my favorites would be ruined if I explained why I like them, but I don’t think I have to worry about “ruining” the least favorites.
Best:[]
HONORABLE MENTION: Ingrown For a gross-out creepypasta written in second person, it managed to scare me despite being built on two tropes I dislike in general.
10: Cure for Cancer
9: The Black Pill
8: Funnymouth
7: Candle Cove
6: Nails
5: NES Godzilla
4: Penpal
3: Ben Drowned
2: Burgrr Entries
1: Psychosis
Worst:[]
DISHONORABLE MENTION: The Man who Ate Trains for a Living
When I saw that title, I knew that I had to read the story. It did manage to surprise me, because of all the things I was expecting a story with this title to be, generic wasn’t one of them. It’s as if the author just gave the story its name at the last minute when he realized that it had nothing else going for it.
10: It’s Just a Story
It was written by the writer behind Barbie Doll, (a story I like,) and it’s meta fiction, (a genre I like.) How did a story with such a promising pedigree end up being just “meh?” What really gives this story a spot on the list is the way it uses the self-aware main character. Specifically, the way he derides other creepypasta.
“In a website overrun with bad lost episodes of nostalgic TV shows and hyper-realistic video game shit, we’re going to make something beautiful, something artistic.”
And what does Donovan do after saying this? His actions follow the most standard plot imaginable for a torture-porn story, while he breaks the fourth wall to scold the reader. This story bragging that it isn’t using hyper-realism is like a film bragging that it isn’t using pie-tin flying saucers or rubber-forehead aliens, and then proceeding to be a generic western.
9: All the alternate origin stories for popular creepypasta monsters, in which the origin is “Scientists did it!” In other words, almost every alternate origin creepypasta ever.
These stories always throw out the original lore of the creepypasta monsters they’re based on, which wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the fact that the new origins they give to these monsters are always the same origin, and one that’s never as interesting as the monster’s original origin.
8: The Horrors Behind the Plastic
An incredibly banal story, made infinitely worse with the line at the end.
“This Creepy/Trollpasta is by Thewordpunisapun”
Well, it’s finally happened. Parody retcons have come to the world of Creepypasta. I can’t wait to see the creepypasta community ruin The Troll Pasta Wiki by flooding it with boring, interchangeable stories that were just not good enough for the standards of The Creepypasta Wiki, but aren’t bad enough to be funny either.
7: Papercuts, with dishonorable mention to every other story in the “science = Saw” formula.
Papercuts was another horrible creepypasta, but luckily, we’ve now gotten to the pastas are bad enough to be funny instead of just plain bad.
As for all the other creepypastas with the “science” tag that are actually about a slasher with a science, theme? If only they could all have lines as memorable as:
“After that I got my friends to the E.R. We came out alive and decided to have a survival party at my house. It was a great time, too! But Larry was found dead in his garage the same night...”
6: Bob the Butcher
In horror stories, I don’t expect every character to always do the most reasonable thing in every situation. A lot of horror plots wouldn’t be able to work if the main characters did the reasonable thing, and people do make bad decisions under stress. HOWEVER, the main character goes several weeks without calling the cops or telling his wife about the obvious murder evidence because “he doesn’t want to scare her.” Here’s a thought, maybe scaring Brooklyn isn’t the worst possible outcome.
Fear is a natural reaction to dangerous things, it makes people try to avoid them in an attempt to keep things from turning out the way they did in this story. Instead of doing something about the obvious threat, the main character almost literally tries to ignore Bob out of existence.
When the power goes out, he doesn’t worry that the killer is inside his house, but instead worries that the TV wouldn’t be able to distract him from the killer. Do I even need to explain what’s wrong with his priorities?
The only part of the story I liked was the ending, where the main character’s actions have somewhat realistic results.
When I first heard this narrated on Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, I assumed the main character was going insane when he thought he could “fix” his decapitated wife, but after rereading it for this list, I’m starting to think that the main character really is that stupid.
“If I can just hold Brooklyn’s body, I can fix her, I can make this all right! Now first I will have to find the body, so I should probably get my eyeballs back first. Now where did I put the duct tape?”
I think I know who the killer is. It’s Charles Darwin!
The reason I’m being unusually harsh on this one is the fact that it actually got published, in an actual book, that people paid actual money for! Meanwhile, the author of Psychosis failed to get enough money on Kickstarter to get his book funded. This makes me proud to be obscure.
5: Game Coding (The old version that got deleted, not to be confused with the rewrite I made.)
What’s worse than a creepypasta with no interesting ideas? A creepypasta that actually does bring up an interesting idea, only to use it in the least interesting way imaginable.
The story starts out coming dangerously close to plagiarizing Lost Episodes by Slimebeast, but with video games instead of TV.
After the main character gets an unusually disturbing rom hack from Cody, (Get it? Because he codes?) he goes into Cody’s room where he:
Gets placed on the bed and told to fall asleep, then passes out.
Wakes up being force fed mountain dew from a hacked N64, then passes out again. (I’m starting to see a pattern here.)
Wakes up in front of Princess Peach’s castle from Super Mario 64, then passes out again. (Author, you do know that there are other scene transitions, right?)
Wakes up back in Cody’s room after years have passed and Cody inexplicably died, (he presumably died of boredom) closes Cody’s eyes, and then passes out, dead.
This wouldn’t have made it onto the list were it not for that one small part of the story where the main character wakes up inside the game. The old version of Game Coding has a real person get trapped in a virtual world, but instead of being used for a light hearted action-adventure power fantasy romp like Captain N, it happens in the context of a horror story. After bringing up this premise, of all the possible places the author could have taken it, he settles for the most boring and lazy one imaginable.
This is officially The Purge of creepypasta.
4: BloodMonster’s story
Some of you may wonder about this entry, and ask:
“Which one? Didn’t BloodMonster write several stories?”
Well, you’re right, I guess he did write a bunch of stories, but it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Every one of his stories uses purple prose whenever he’s describing something violent. BloodMonster also uses action movie / cartoon physics that is absolutely laughable and has no place in horror. In one story, a fragmentation grenade blows up an entire house while sending someone flying 20 feet “with the sound.” That’s why I saved copies of all his stories, and upload them to The Troll Pasta Wiki when they get deleted from The Creepypasta Wiki. BloodMonster is one of the worst writers on this wiki, but he truly writes the most entertaining kind of bad pasta.
3: The Blank Cartridge
It’s pure coincidence that the very next pasta after BloodMonster’s unintentionally hilarious creepypasta falls on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. The Blank Cartridge is incredibly lazy, having the main character just describe things as “creepy” and state that they had a nightmare without telling us what it was. I’ve already put more thought into it here than the writer did, so let’s move on.
2: Johnnyboy33’s story.
Just like with BloodMonster, Johnny did technically write more than one story, but he really only knows how to tell one story, and as you can tell from the context of this list, he does NOT know how to write it well.
Every one of his stories is about lost episodes, uninspired serial killers, and demons jumping out of computer screens. His protagonists make the guy from Bob the Butcher look like a genius, and the author clearly thinks he’s clever, because “If I reference enough smart technologies made by smart people, I sound smart too!” NO! The way Johnny constantly talks about how much he relies on all the latest gadgets almost sounds like bragging. Here’s an excerpt that summarizes the story better than I could.
“March 20th, 2013 There is a reason why it took me so long to retrieve my car. I did find my way out of the woods, but I ended up in a small town. It took me a while to find a WiFi hotspot I needed a WiFi hotspot so I could find my way around using the Maps app. Luckily, I found one, so I bought a tablet and a pencil and drew out a map that led to my house. I slept on a street close to a McDonalds, then it took me ten days to get to my car. I got my car, and got a whole stockpile of food and water bottles. I also have a buttload of pop.”
I can still hold onto some faint hope that the American education didn’t actually produce someone THIS stupid and worthless. I suspect him of trolling. His stories appear to be written sincerely, and his writing is consistently bad, which would be evidence against him being a troll. However, the way his story fails is almost too perfect to be unintentional. He seems to be going out of his way to embody every trait that people who hate creepypasta associate with creepypasta.
• Product placement? Check!
• Demons jumping out of computer screens? Check!
• Protagonists who repeatedly do things that could only put them in more danger, moments after narrowly escaping the danger that resulted last time? Check!
And the list goes on.
1: Every single banal, uninspired, insipid, interchangeable, worthless, time wasting, unenthusiastically written, unimaginative, soul crushingly boring, paint by numbers creepypasta that was “written” with the “mind”set that every intellectual property ever created needs a creepypasta.
Not every IP in the world needs a creepypasta. Also, if you like an IP, and think “I want to honor this show/game/novel with a creepypasta!” STOP RIGHT NOW!! Just because you like something, does NOT mean that it would make a good creepypasta!
Which video game is better? Super Mario Brothers 3, or Godzilla: Monster of Monsters? Now which creepypasta is better? Blood Whistle, or NES Godzilla?
You might reply that some of the best creepypasta are based on good IPs, like Ben Drowned being based on what is widely considered the best game of all time. Well, if you insist on making a creepypasta based on an existing IP, bear in mind that the quality of the IP you choose DOES NOT automatically rub off onto what you’re writing.
Deciding “I like this IP, so I will write a creepypasta about it!” is really a backwards way of writing horror. You start by thinking of a thing that scares you, then you write the characters/setting/plot in a way that helps the scary thing scare the audience. If you choose to write a creepypasta based on an existing IP, you will have to find a way to inject the horror into the existing story, which is why so many of those stories are about game cartridges being possessed.