This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Creepypasta is horror fiction written for the internet, usually posted anonymously to a forum or image board and then copied, trimmed and retold until people forget it was written at all. Unlike folklore, most of these legends have a traceable starting point: a thread, a date, sometimes a named author. This guide indexes the 13 creepypasta and internet legends profiled on this site, sorts them by type, and sets out what the record shows about where each one began.
What the record supports is the origin: a post, an image, a date. The legend is the story told afterward, and in every case below the story is invented, even where the origin is documented.
Characters and Creatures
These are monsters with a face or a silhouette, and in most cases the image came before the story, or at least spread faster than it.
- Jeff the Killer: The Real Origin Story Behind the Image traces the pale grinning face to a Japanese message board around 2005, three years before anyone called it Jeff, and notes that the image still has no confirmed source.
- Is Jeff the Killer Real? answers the question directly: no police record or missing persons file exists, and the character was written as fiction on forums around 2008.
- Slender Man vs Jeff the Killer: Are the Two Creepypastas Connected? compares two different origins and finds no official canon link between them.
- The Rake: Tracing the Internet's Most Influential Modern Creepypasta follows a monster built collaboratively in a 2005 4chan thread and given its famous shape by a later writer.
- Smile Dog: The Cursed Image That Started Creepypasta covers the 2008 story of smile.jpg, which is credited to an author posting as WarrenIsDead.
- Siren Head: How One Artist's Monster Became an Internet Legend is the clearest case of a legend with a birth certificate: Trevor Henderson posted the first image on August 19, 2018.
- SCP-067: How a Teenager's “Six, Seven” Video Became an Internet Cryptid shows a 2025 meme clip absorbed into the SCP Foundation format.
Hoaxes and Rituals
These pass as real events or real instructions, which is why people keep asking whether they happened.
- The Russian Sleep Experiment: The True Story Behind the Internet's Most Famous Fake Experiment is a story with no lab, no prisoners and no gas, first posted to the Creepypasta Wiki on August 10, 2010.
- The Midnight Game: The Internet Ritual That Was Never Real is a set of ritual instructions that appeared on 4chan's /x/ board around 2011 to 2012, with no older version.
- Charlie Charlie Challenge: The True Origin Story explains the 2015 pencil game, the television segment that set off the viral wave, and the ordinary physics behind the moving pencil.
Games and Places That Never Existed
- Herobrine: The True Story Behind Minecraft's Most Enduring Urban Legend starts with an anonymous 4chan /v/ post from late August 2010 describing a figure with solid white eyes.
- The Backrooms: How One Blurry Photo Became the Internet's Biggest Legend can be pinned to a single day, May 12, 2019, on 4chan's /x/ board.
Japan's Internet Horror Tradition
- Resort Baito: The Ryokan Job Nobody Should Have Taken is a Japanese internet ghost story with no confirmed author that later inspired a 2023 theatrical release.
How the Origins Compare
Sorted by when each one surfaced, the documented starting points look like this.
- 2005: a 4chan /b/ thread begins The Rake.
- 2008: Jeff the Killer circulates on forums, and Smile Dog appears.
- 2009: Slender Man appears in a Something Awful photo contest.
- 2010: the Russian Sleep Experiment (August 10) and Herobrine (late August).
- 2011 to 2012: the Midnight Game appears on /x/.
- 2015: the Charlie Charlie Challenge goes viral.
- 2018: Siren Head's first image is posted.
- 2019: the Backrooms thread appears.
- 2025: the “six, seven” clip becomes SCP-067.
The pattern is the point of the whole list. Five of them (the Rake, Smile Dog, Herobrine, the Midnight Game and the Backrooms) began on 4chan boards, and several of the newer ones began with an identifiable creator or a single dated post.
Where to Start
If you want the fastest lesson in how a creepypasta becomes a “true story,” read the Russian Sleep Experiment, then Jeff the Killer. For the cleanest example of a documented origin, read the Backrooms or Siren Head.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is creepypasta?
Creepypasta is horror fiction written for the internet and spread by copy-and-paste, usually from forums and image boards. Most of the stories on this site have traceable origins, such as a dated thread, a wiki post or a named creator, which is what separates them from oral folklore. The stories themselves are invented, even when the origin is well documented.
Q2: Is Jeff the Killer real?
No. There is no police record, missing persons file or verified death connected to the character. Jeff the Killer started as a creepypasta on internet forums around 2008. The famous pale, grinning image is a separate thread: it predates the story, appeared on a Japanese message board around 2005, and still has no confirmed source.
Q3: Did the Russian Sleep Experiment really happen?
No. There was no Soviet lab, no prisoners and no gas. The story appeared on the Creepypasta Wiki on August 10, 2010, posted by a user known as Orange Soda whose identity has never been publicly confirmed. Creepypasta Wiki itself categorizes the piece as fiction, and it fooled readers because it was written to look like a real account.
Q4: Which of these legends have a known creator?
Two have credited creators. Siren Head was made by artist Trevor Henderson, who posted the first image to Instagram on August 19, 2018. Smile Dog is credited to an author posting as WarrenIsDead, with the story generally dated to 2008. Most of the others, including the Rake, Jeff the Killer and the Backrooms, started anonymously.
Q5: Where did the Backrooms come from?
The Backrooms began on May 12, 2019, when a user on 4chan's /x/ board asked for "disquieting images that just feel 'off.'“ One reply was a tilted photo of an empty yellow room, and another anonymous user wrote the short fiction about ”noclipping" out of reality that turned the photo into a legend.
Further Reading
- Best Books About Internet Creepypasta and Digital Folklore
- Creepypasta story collections
- Books on internet folklore and digital culture
- Urban legend books
As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases.
Comments