Smosh Mouth - #67 - The Scariest Stories From The Internet

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

Amanda and Shayne reading Creepypastas makes its return! This episode contains fictional stories with depictions of animal cruelty, violence, suicide, and death which may be triggering or upsetting to... some audiences. To get your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to https://mintmobile.com/SMOSHMOUTH ! Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Get Rocket Money today at https://RocketMoney.com/SMOSHMOUTH  0:00 Intro 3:55 General trigger warning 4:21 “Distorted Warning Signals” 9:45 “Ickbarr Bigelsteine” 21:07 “Smile Dog” // Click at your own risk! https://www.creepypasta.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Smile.dog_.jpg  36:22 “Dead Bart” 43:16 “The Rake” 53:17 Scary story debriefing SUBSCRIBE: https://smo.sh/Sub2SmoshCast WEAR OUR JOKES: https://smosh.com WHO YOU HEAR Shayne Topp // https://www.instagram.com/shaynetopp/ Amanda Lehan-Canto // https://www.instagram.com/filmingamanda/ WHO YOU DON’T HEAR (usually) Director: Selina Garcia Editor: Vida Robbins Producer: Amanda Lehan-Canto, Shayne Topp, Selina Garcia Production Designer: Cassie Vance Art Director: Erin Kuschner Assistant Art Director: Josie Bellerby Art Coordinator: Alex Aguilar Prop Assistant: Courtney Chapman Art Intern: Abby Schmidt Audio Mixer: Scott Neff Director of Photography: Brennan Iketani Camera Operator: James Hull Assistant Director: Alexcina Figueroa Executive Vice President of Production: Amanda Barnes Production Manager: Alexcina Figueroa Production Coordinator: Zianne Hoover Operations & Production Coordinator: Oliver Wehlander Production Assistant: Quincy Bell Production Intern: Caroline Smith Post Production Manager: Luke Baker DIT/Lead AE: Matt Duran IT: Tim Baker Director of Design: Brittany Hobbs Graphic Designers: Ness Cardano, Monica Ravitch Senior Manager, Channel & Strategy: Lizzy Jones Channel Operations Coordinator: Audrey Carganilla Director of Social Media: Erica Noboa Social Creative Producer: Peter Ditzler, Tommy Bowe Merchandising Manager: Mallory Myers Social Media Coordinator: Kim Wilborn Social Media Intern: Mailyn Stiffler Talent Coordinator: Selina Garcia Operations PA: Katie Fink CEO: Alessandra Catanese EVP of Programming: Kiana Parker Coordinator Producer of Programming: Marcus Munguia Executive Coordinator: Rachel Collis OTHER SMOSHES: Smosh: https://smo.sh/Sub2Smosh Smosh Pit: https://smo.sh/Sub2SmoshPit Smosh Games: https://smo.sh/Sub2SmoshGames El Smosh (Spanish Dub): https://smo.sh/Sub2ElSmosh FOLLOW US: TikTok: https://smo.sh/TikTok Snapchat: http://smo.sh/OnSnapchat Instagram: https://instagram.com/smosh Facebook: https://facebook.com/smosh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Oh, excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay, well you know what? Specsavers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149 and, oh you'll like this, one can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great! Where's the nearest store? Mmm, not far. Come on. Let's hurry then. To my count. One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. Visit Specsavers.ca for details.
Starting point is 00:00:30 Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there,
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Starting point is 00:01:05 And today is our annual Creepypasta episode. Did it last year. It was great. So excited. Doing it again this year. Halloween's coming up. And I have been excited for this for months now. I know. And this past couple weeks, I have just been reading Creepypastas. How spooky.
Starting point is 00:01:25 It sucks a little bit. It kind of sucks aas. How spooky. It sucks a little bit. It kind of sucks a little bit. It kind of sucks a little bit. I remember last year, I didn't know what a creepypasta was, which is awesome of me. Very cool. Sometimes I wonder, where have I been? But when you started reading them, I was like, oh, these are just like stories that I grew up reading, like ghost stories. They're scary stories.
Starting point is 00:01:46 It's just they come about on the internet now. What I think makes creepypastas often scary is that a lot of times it's hard to trace back who wrote them. So sometimes there's no credit to them because they were created by a lot of people on a message board or something. And so let me get this right. Creepypastas aren't true. Or we don't know no they but they kind of become a new type of folklore kind of how slenderman is the most famous creepy pasta and that started like i said it started off with like a photo that someone had created of this
Starting point is 00:02:19 creepy tall faceless man in the background of like a playground of a bunch of kids playing and then just stories come about and it kind of just builds and it builds on the internet um to a point where now people go i've seen slenderman in real life people are saying that oh my god but uh there's so many places on the internet where people post stories and create monsters and and people literally do things in real life created on those creepypastas and those monsters which is like the really dark side of it but i stories are so so powerful people yeah can relate to them because there's a little bit of truth in them absolutely um i i what i like about creepypastas too is they they tap into certain types of genres and things that I feel like classic horror stories never do I have a couple today that I think fall into that
Starting point is 00:03:11 you know I I think um I'll explain as we read the stories because I have a couple that I think are very uh specific to creepypastas types of stories that happen a lot in creepypastas that i feel like you don't see too often outside of it oh i see um but uh but i have a lot and um i found a few that aren't too long so that we can read a few stories love that um some of them are famous creepypastas some of them are a little uh more niche not as known a lot of them are old old stories from like over 10 years ago some of them are a little more recent um but they i read them all and all of these did scare me so oh okay i'm really excited because you and i really like watching horror movies so i feel like you and i get scared about a lot of the same things but my favorite stuff is is i think my favorite type of horror is
Starting point is 00:04:05 eerie or mysterious. A little bit of mystery, a little bit of unknown, a little bit of what is going on. That's what really gets me. Me too. But we have a variety here today. And what's cool is art made it look like we broke into an
Starting point is 00:04:21 abandoned cottage or weird mountain house and we like set up one little light and we're sitting at the table and all the cabinets are barracks of like a couple things of right beans and at the very end of this episode after we finish these stories there's going to be a knock at the door and we're not going to know we're not going to know who it is and there's a lake down there and it's like there's one boat, but only one paddle. Right. There's not two.
Starting point is 00:04:48 Only one of us can go. God. I should also just give, I feel like, pause for a second here. I should have said this at the top of just a general trigger warning regarding creepypastas.
Starting point is 00:04:59 I picked ones that I felt weren't too intense, but in general, you know, these are pretty scary stories. Some very scary topics and uncomfortable themes. So if it's not for you, watch another episode. We have plenty of other episodes that are more light. Okay. So our first story.
Starting point is 00:05:24 Do you believe in, like, signs? Like, Oh, I got a sign. I shouldn't go. I shouldn't go out tonight. I got a sign that I shouldn't do this. Right. I got a sign. Like I'm doing the right thing. I feel like I'm seeing a sign. I normally equate it to like deja vu. I always see deja vu is like, okay, I've been here before, or I think I'm going the right way. Interesting. Yeah. So this first story is called Distorted Warning Signals. It was written by Ashley Rose Wellman.
Starting point is 00:05:55 I'm trying to think, see when it was written. I'm not sure, but it's a story kind of in this realm of receiving signs. When I got the first one, I was literally seconds away from stepping onto the plane when a call from unknown blared from my cell phone. It was a ringtone I hadn't heard before, one I was pretty sure hadn't come with the phone. Normally, I wouldn't have stopped to answer it, but I was expecting a call about a job I had interviewed for
Starting point is 00:06:18 the previous week. I took a deep breath in and accepted the call. Hello? Do not get on the plane. A woman's voice garbled and strange as if her vocal cords had been shredded and she was trying desperately to choke out speech despite the unnerving fractured quality of her voice her tone was insistent and eerily calm then the call ended i froze i'd always had a slight phobia of air travel and something about this call just there's no way i was about to get on a seven hour flight now i turned around and headed towards the What? I tried to trace the call. So did the police, but there was nothing to trace. There was no evidence my phone had ever received a call around that time. They analyzed the phone records, incoming and outgoing communication to my phone, nothing. I wasn't making it up. I couldn't have been. That wasn't the only call. Throughout the years, they were few and far between, but always right, and I always listened. Do not go on that blind date tonight. Five months later, my would-be date was convicted
Starting point is 00:07:25 of killing four women, all with my hair color and build. Found them in a shallow grave about 250 feet from the diner he offered to take me to. Do not drive to the concert tonight. 18-wheeler lost control and plowed into a line of cars. Every driver crushed. Every driver killed. In the stretch of freeway, I would have been driving down. No matter if I got a new phone, if I moved across the country, the calls would still come. I could almost feel the presence of whatever it was, whatever it is, watching over me. I imagine being at the bottom of the freezing ocean, still strapped to my coach section plane seat, or being in the mass grave across from the diner, or watching an 18-wheeler skidding toward my car, knowing death was imminent, and I'd get this tightness in my chest. I'd think about how thin that line was, how close I'd gotten. If I hadn't
Starting point is 00:08:09 had a job interview I was waiting to hear back from, I'd have never listened to that first call, and that would be it for me. It always felt like something was coming for me, but there was always this fractured, warped voice with these calls that never seemed to exist after I heard them, self-destructing warning signals rotting away before my eyes and I was alive. I had a bad feeling about this cruise. I had planned it as a girl's week out with some of my friends from college and was looking forward to a week in the tropics in the dead of winter, but part of me could almost sense that the call was coming. Maybe I'd watched Titanic one too many times, but there was a little nagging fear
Starting point is 00:08:44 from the start. I hoped it would be fine, but i knew that if something was going to happen i'd get the call i'd know now a week before i'm set to go on the cruise after stepping into my apartment after returning from dinner with a friend i noticed my cell has a message from unknown they never had had to leave a message before haven't checked it it all night. Damn it. And I really wanted to go on that cruise too. Ah, well, not worth whatever horrific fate awaited me in the cold, dark ocean. I click play message and feel my stomach drop as I listen to the voice sounding horrifically distorted as if it emanates from a throat slashed to ribbons, crackling with more urgency than ever before. I look around my apartment as the voice on the phone repeats the same phrase over and over again. Do not come home after dinner tonight.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Do not come home after dinner tonight. Do not come home after dinner tonight. She's home. She's home. After dinner tonight. After dinner tonight. It's a good one. That's it?
Starting point is 00:09:42 That's where the story ends? What? Yeah. Update. No, no update. She came home after dinner tonight. What are you talking about? She didn't listen to the warning.
Starting point is 00:09:52 Okay. Who's this writer? I want to write her a letter. That cannot be the end. That's where it ends. I wish she added something. And then I heard the footsteps up the stairs. See, I like where it ends.
Starting point is 00:10:04 No. I like where it ends. No. I like where it ends. I guess you and me are not the same. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That, I really liked that. I wasn't expecting that.
Starting point is 00:10:14 Uh-huh. So she still can't go on the cruise with her friends because she's getting slashed. We don't know what's coming for her, but something's coming for her. And now we'll never know. Something's going to happen. Yeah. It's pretty spooky. Final destination creepypasta stuff i know it's really good it's a well done one has anyone thought to do like make these i mean of course they have oh yeah yeah of course yeah plenty candle cove slenderman there's been tons that have been turned into
Starting point is 00:10:41 things but most haven't and they're all so good our next story that i think i'll pick uh you talked about in a recent episode about how you had an imaginary friend as a kid i did what uh bob bob the bear oh the skinny tall bear a tall skinny bear who didn't kind of made fun of me a lot in the best way ever okay like the friend that's like chill out it's okay and did uh did bob like did he protect you from things was he there to like make you safe or anything he wasn't like hero status okay he was just like you find him like sitting on a couch and be like i told you so that's like more of his vibe okay i definitely felt protected but i more like had to do it on my
Starting point is 00:11:22 own okay i guess he was a very healthy imaginary friend he's like gotta do it on my own. Okay. I guess he was a very healthy imaginary friend. He's like, God, do this on your own kid. Okay. So yeah. Well, our next story is about an imaginary friend.
Starting point is 00:11:34 Okay. It was written 12 years ago. I can't find the author. Well, if someone knows the author, they'll put it in the comments. But some of them, some of them,
Starting point is 00:11:42 it's the credit is kind of unknown. Ooh, even spooky. So this is a story someone wrote about a their childhood imaginary friend did you ever see the movie drop dead fred no it is a very scary movie about her imaginary friend doesn't sound like a scary movie that sounds like a comedy it's it's it's a mix of both i think it's from the 80s and i watched it when i was a kid and it made me very scared of imaginary friends okay well hopefully this story doesn it made me very scared of imaginary friends. Okay. Well, hopefully this story doesn't make you more scared of imaginary friends.
Starting point is 00:12:08 Okay. When I was a small child, I was terrified of the dark. I still am, but back when I was around six years old, I couldn't go a full night without crying out for one of my parents to search beneath my bed or in my closet for whatever monster I thought was waiting to eat me. Even with a nightlight, I would still see dark shapes moving around the corners of the room or strange faces looking in on me from my bedroom window. My parents would do their best to console me, telling me that it was just a bad dream or a trick of the light. But in my young mind, I was positive that the second I fell asleep,
Starting point is 00:12:37 the bad things would get me. Most of the time, I would just hide under the blankets until I became tired enough to stop worrying. But every now and then, I would become so panicked that I would run screaming into my parents' room, waking up my brother and sister in the process. After an ordeal like that, there would be no way anyone would be getting a full night's rest. Eventually, after one particularly traumatizing night, my parents had had enough. Unfortunately for them, they understood the futility in arguing with a six-year-old
Starting point is 00:13:03 and knew that they would be unable to convince me to rid myself of childish fears through reason and logic. They had to be clever. It was my mother's idea to stitch together my little bedtime friend. She collected a large assortment of random pieces of fabric and her sewing machine and created what I would later refer to as Mr. Ickbar Bigelstein. Or Ick for short. Ick was a sock monster, as my mother called him. He was made to keep me safe while I slept at night by scaring away all the other monsters. He was pretty damn creepy, I had to admit.
Starting point is 00:13:33 Honestly, looking back on it all now, I'm still impressed that my mom could think of something so strange and disturbing looking. Ickbar had the stitched together look of a Frankenstein gremlin with big white button eyes and floppy cat ears. His little arms and legs were made from a pair of my sister's black-and-white striped socks, and the half of his face that was green was made from one of my brother's tall football socks. His head could have been described as bulbous, and for his mouth my mom attached a piece of white fabric
Starting point is 00:14:01 and sewed in a zigzag pattern to shape a wide grin of sharp teeth. I loved him at once. From then on, Ick never left my side. So long as it was after dusk, of course, Ick didn't like the sun and would get upset if I tried to bring him to school with me. But that was okay. I only needed him at night to keep away the boogeymen, which was what he was good at. So every night at bedtime, Ick would tell me where the monsters were hiding and I would place him near the section of my room closest to the spookiness. If there was something in the closet, Ik would block the door.
Starting point is 00:14:31 If there was a dark creature scratching at my window, Ik would be pressed up against the glass. If there was a big hairy beast under my bed, then under the bed he went. Sometimes the monsters weren't even in my room. Sometimes they would hide in my dreams and Ikbar would have to come with me into my nightmares. It was fun bringing Iq into my dream world as he and I would spend hours fighting off ghouls and demons. The best part was in my dreams, Iq could talk to me for real.
Starting point is 00:14:54 How much do you love me? He would ask. More than anything, I would always tell him. One night in a dream, after I had lost my first tooth, Iq asked me for a favor. Can I have your tooth? I asked him why. To help me kill the bad things, he said. The next morning at breakfast, my mom asked me where my tooth went. From what she told me, the tooth fairy didn't find it under my pillow. But I told her that I gave it to Ickbar. She just shrugged and went back to feeding my little sister. From then on, every time I lost a tooth, I would give it to Ick. He would always thank me, of course, and tell course and tell me that he loved me eventually though i ran out of baby teeth and i was beginning to get a little too old to be to still be playing with dolls so it just sat there on my bookshelf collecting dust slowly fading away from my attention over time the nightmares however
Starting point is 00:15:39 became worse than ever so bad that they even began to follow me to the waking world terrorizing every dark corner or rustle in the bushes after After one particularly bad night biking home from a friend's house when I swore a pack of rabid dogs were chasing me, I got home to find something strange waiting for me in my room. There on my bed, standing fully upright in the soft glow of the moonlight from my window, was Iqbar. At first I just thought my eyes were playing tricks on me again. They had been all evening, so I tried to flick on the lights, another flick of the light switch, then another and another with no change to the darkness. It was then that I started to get nervous. I backed away
Starting point is 00:16:14 slowly toward the door behind me, my eyes never leaving the shape of Iq's silhouette, my hand awkwardly outstretched behind reaching for the doorknob. I was just about to get my ass out of there when I heard the door slam itself shut, locking me into the blackness. In nothing but shadows and silence, I stood frozen in place, not even breathing. For how long, I can't say, but after what felt like a lifetime of cold fear, I heard the shrill, familiar voice. You stopped feeding me, so why should I protect you? Protect me from what? Let me show you. I blinked once and everything changed. I wasn't in my bedroom anymore. I was somewhere else. It wasn't hell, but the comparison wasn't far off. It was some sort of forest, a horrible nightmarish place where partial monstrosities
Starting point is 00:16:57 hung from the canopy and the ground swarmed with carnivorous insects. A thick fog wafted through the air and with it the stench of rotting meat while chartreuse lightning flashed across the night sky. In the distance, I could hear the agonizing screams of something not quite human. My head throbbed like it was about to explode, the pain forcing out a river of tears. In my mind, I heard his voice again. This is what your reality would become without me. I felt earth shaking footsteps approaching fast. I'm the only one who can stop it. It was behind me now, huge and angry, hot breath across my back. Bring me what I need and I will. I woke up before I could turn around. The following day, I raided my parents' closet for my brother's baby teeth, giving them all to Iqbar. Almost immediately, the night terrors ceased and I
Starting point is 00:17:42 was more or less able to go on about my life as normal from time to time i would have to sneak into my little sister's room and snatch what was meant for the tooth fairy or strangle out one of the neighborhood cats and pry out its sharp little incisors anything to ward off the visions anything from a shark tooth necklace to a cavity ridden by cuspid i also began to notice that ick would move about my room whenever i left for any length of time rearranging my stuff and hanging additional curtains. He was even beginning to look more lifelike somehow. In the right light, his teeth would glisten, and he was warm to the touch. As much as he creeped me out, I just couldn't work up the courage to just destroy him, knowing perfectly well where that would leave me.
Starting point is 00:18:20 So I went on collecting teeth for Ick throughout all of my high school and college. The older I got, the more things I would learn to fear, the more teeth Ick would need to keep me safe. I'm 22 years old now, with a decent job, my own apartment, and a set of dentures. It's been almost a month since Ick's last meal, and the horrors are starting to crowd around me once more. I took a detour through a parking garage after work tonight, found a man fumbling with his car keys.
Starting point is 00:18:43 His teeth were stained yellow from a lifetime of cigarettes and coffee. Even still, I had to use a hammer to get out the molars. Oh, credit to Stephen D. Harris. That's who wrote that. Okay, Stephen. Okay, Stephen. Wow. Well. Yeah. That got to a really sad place.
Starting point is 00:19:16 That one's dark. That one's really dark. That one's scary. At first you were reading it and I was like, oh, this sounds like Drop Dead Fred, like Love Me, Love Me. Then I was like, oh, dentures you she strangled a cat i know a hammer yeah she has dentures went through a lot to just this is awful this is terrifying so bob the bear was was not like that no no no bob the bear is hey he's not needy. Okay. He's very independent.
Starting point is 00:19:45 He's just chilling. It's almost like Bob shows me a version of myself that I want to be or something. Interesting. Just like chill, open, but always there for you if you need him. Okay. Have you ever seen the show Eric on Netflix? No. Benedict Cumberbatch?
Starting point is 00:20:09 He's like a puppeteer and his son goes missing and the puppet that the son was thinking about comes to him and it's kind of like that guy. He's just like, whatever. This is really spooky. That's really scary. I mean, there feels like there's so many different horror movies that I've seen that, like, this is giving me a lot of familiar feelings. Like, The Conjuring or, like, anything in the woods that's, like. There's always also something so creepy about, like, children's imaginations when kids are, because kids.
Starting point is 00:20:40 Well, kids are open. They're super, super open. There's no logic coming in. I mean, yes, some of them have logic, but they're not like thinking, okay, that's dumb. Saying crazy shit. They're just open to it. Yeah. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:20:53 I like the way he writes. He wrote really well. He wrote really well. It was really creepy. Chartreuse lightning? I mean, come on. There you go. I was like, I picture that perfectly.
Starting point is 00:21:00 Charcuterie lightning? Sounds delicious. Cheese and sausage? Yeah. Flying down? The girl's like, oh like oh actually that's not too bad i like this forest yeah um the idea of a sock puppet with teeth i don't like that i mean i'm not surprised that the mom made something freaking dark she's probably seeing some dark ass shit i will say i feel like there's got to be a better way to get teeth than what he's doing.
Starting point is 00:21:26 Yeah, come on, dude. Yeah. Why couldn't we just start with like food? Become a dentist. Yeah, like a chill. Go to dental school. Like stop making, she has dentures. That's what's disturbed me the most.
Starting point is 00:21:38 Dentures. That she ripped out her own teeth. I know, that small little detail is really well done. I don't like that. I don't like. I really don't like body horror, but like teeth ripping out. It's a lot. This is really creepy.
Starting point is 00:21:51 Super creepy. It's almost like Elf on the Shelf. Yeah. Oh. I'm going to relate it to Elf on the Shelf. Elf on the Shelf is terrifying. It's the worst thing in the world. I hate it.
Starting point is 00:21:59 Why do people do it? Yeah. Oh. Excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun. It hurts my eyes. Okay. Well, you know what? Specsavers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149 and, oh, you'll like this. One can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great! Where's the nearest store? Not far.
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Starting point is 00:23:26 531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Wow. Our next story is really creepy. This is really spooky. Yeah. This next story is a famous creepypasta. Famous? It's a famous creepypasta.
Starting point is 00:23:41 Ickbar Bigelstein was also a pretty famous creepypasta. Also. This one's very well known. His nickname, Ick? I think,asta. Ickbar Bigelstein was also a pretty famous creepypasta. Also. This one's very well known. His nickname, Ick. I think, yeah. I mean, what are you doing? So do you believe in, do you believe in like cursed objects? Like that an object could be.
Starting point is 00:23:59 You know I do. Have a bad energy to it. Mirrors and old paintings. Interesting old paintings. I, oh yeah. yeah yeah yeah like estate sales stuff is not and then are you familiar with like chain letters you know how back in the day and i feel like it's probably found new ways of doing this where it's like you've seen this like this you've read this now pass this on to a friend or else you will get 10 years of bad luck did you ever get that type of thing?
Starting point is 00:24:25 I mean, I got those stupid texts. Like, send this to your 10 best besties or you're going to rot in hell forever, you dirty little girl. Those are some themes, I would say, of this next one. Chainmail. So there is a legend online about an image, just an online image called Smile Dog. Sounds fun. Here we go okay i first met in person with mary e in the summer of 2007 i had arranged with her husband of 15 years terrence to see her for an interview mary had initially agreed since i was not a newsman but rather an amateur writer gathering information for a few early college assignments and if all went according to plan some pieces of fiction we scheduled the interview for a particular
Starting point is 00:25:09 weekend when i was in chicago on unrelated business but at the last moment mary changed her mind and locked herself in the couple's bedroom refusing to meet with me for a half an hour i sat with terrence as we camped outside the bedroom door uh listening and taking notes while he attempted fruitlessly to calm his wife. The things Mary said made little sense but fit with the pattern I was expecting. Though I could not see her, I could tell from her voice that she was crying, and more often than not, her objects to speaking with me centered around an incoherent diatribe on her dreams, her nightmares. a small Chicago-based bulletin board system in 1992 when she first encountered Smile.jpg,
Starting point is 00:26:07 and her life changed forever. She and Terrence had been married for only five months. Mary was on one of an estimated 400 people who saw the image when it was posted as a hyperlink on the BBS, though she is the only one who has spoken openly about the experience. The rest have remained anonymous or are perhaps dead. In 2005, when I was only in 10th grade, Smile.jpg was first brought to my attention by my burgeoning interest in web-based phenomena. Mary was the most often cited victim of what is sometimes referred to as Smile.dog, the being Smile.jpg, is reputed to display.
Starting point is 00:26:45 What caught my interest, other than the obvious macabre elements of the cyber legend and my proclivity towards such things, was the sheer lack of information, usually to the point that people don't believe it even exists other than as a rumor or a hoax. It is unique because, though the entire phenomena centers on a picture file, that file is nowhere to be found on the internet certainly many photo manipulated simulacra litter the web showing up
Starting point is 00:27:12 with most frequency on sites such as image board 4chan particularly the slash x focused paranormal sub board it is suspected these are fakes because they do not have the effect the true smile.jpg is believed to have namely sudden onset temporal lobe epilepsy and acute anxiety. This purported reaction in the viewer is one of the reasons the phantom-like Smile.jpg is regarded with such disdain, since it is patently absurd, though depending on whom you ask, the reluctance to acknowledge Smile.jpg's existence might be just as much out of fear as it is out of disbelief.
Starting point is 00:27:48 Neither Smile.jpg nor Smile.dog is mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia. Though the website features articles on such other perhaps more scandalous shock sites as Hello.jpg or Two Girls, One Cup, any attempt to create a page pertaining to smile.jpg is similar summarily deleted by any of the encyclopedia's many admins encounters with smile.jpg are the stuff of internet legend mary e's story is not unique there are unverified rumors of smile.jpg showing up in the early days of usenet and even one persistent tale that in 2002, a hacker flooded the forums of humor and satire website Something Awful with a deluge of Smile.jpg pictures, rendering almost half of the forum's users at the time epileptic. It is also said that in the mid to late 90s, that Smile.jpg circulated on Usenet
Starting point is 00:28:39 and as an attachment of a chain email with the subject line, Smile, God loves you. Yet despite the huge exposure these stunts would generate, there are very few people who admit to having experienced any of them, and no trace of the file or any link has ever been discovered. Those who claim to have seen Smile.jpg often weakly joke that they were far too busy to save a copy of the picture to their hard drive. However, all alleged victims offer the same description of the photo. A dog-like creature, usually described as appearing similar to a Siberian husky, illuminated
Starting point is 00:29:10 by the flash of the camera, sits in a dim room. The only background detail that is visible being a human hand extending from the darkness near the left side of the frame. The hand is empty, but it is usually described as beckoning. Of course, most attention is given to the dog, or dog-creature, as some victims are more certain than others about what they claim to have seen. The muzzle of the beast is reputedly split in a wide grin, revealing two rows of very white, very straight, very sharp, very human-like teeth.
Starting point is 00:29:40 This is, of course, not a description given immediately after viewing the picture, but rather a recollection of the victims who claim to have seen the picture endlessly repeated in their mind's eye during the time they are in reality having epileptic fits. These fits are reported to continue indeterminately, often while the victims sleep, resulting in very vivid and disturbing nightmares. These may be treated with medication, though in some cases, it is more effective than others. Mary E., I assumed, was not on effective medication. That was why after my visit to her apartment in 2007, I sent out feelers to several folklore and urban legend-oriented newsgroups, websites, and mailing lists, hoping to find the name of a supposed victim of Smile.jpg who felt more interested in talking about this experience. For a time, nothing happened, and at length, I forgot completely about my pursuits
Starting point is 00:30:29 since I had begun my freshman year of college and was quite busy. Mary contacted me via email, however, near the beginning of March 2008. This is to jml at blank.com from marye at blank.net. Subject, last summer's interview. Dear Mr. L, I am incredibly sorry about my behavior last summer when you came to interview me. I hope you understand that it was no fault of yours, but rather my own problems that led me to act out as I did. I realized that I could have handled the situation more decorously. However, I hope you will forgive me at the time I was afraid. You see, for 15 years, I have been haunted by smile.jpg. Smile.dog comes to me in my sleep every night.
Starting point is 00:31:10 I know that sounds silly, but it is true. There is an ineffable quality about my dreams, my nightmares, that makes them completely unlike any real dreams I have ever had. I do not move and I do not speak. I simply look ahead and the only thing ahead of me is the scene from that horrible picture. I see the beckoning hand and I see smile dog. It talks to me. It is not a dog, of course, though I am not quite sure what it really is. It tells me it will leave me alone if only I do as it asks. All I must do, it says, is spread the word. That is how it phrases its demands. And I know exactly what it means. It wants me to show it to someone else.
Starting point is 00:31:50 And I could. The week after my incident, I received in the mail a manila envelope with no return address. Inside was only a three and a half inch floppy diskette. Without having to check, I knew precisely what was on it. I thought for a long time about my options. I could show it to a stranger, a co-worker. I could even show it to Terrence, as much as the idea disgusted me. And what would happen then? Well, if Smile Dog kept its word, I could go to sleep. Yet if I lied, what would I do? And who was to say something worse would not come for me if I did as the creature asked? So I did nothing for 15 years, though I kept the diskette hidden amongst my things. Every night for 15 years, SmileDog has come to me in my sleep and demanded that I spread the word. For 15 years, I have stood strong, though there have been hard
Starting point is 00:32:30 times. Many of my fellow victims on the BBS board where I first encountered Smile.jpg stopped posting. I heard some of them ended their lives. Others remained completely silent, simply disappearing off the face of the web. They're the ones I worry about the most. I sincerely hope you'll forgive me, Mr. L, but last summer when you contacted me and my husband about an interview, I was near the breaking point. I decided I was going to give you the floppy diskette. I did not care if Smile.Dog was lying or not. I wanted it to end. You were a stranger, someone I had no connection with, and I thought I would not feel sorrow when you took the diskette as part of your research and sealed your fate. Before you arrived, I realized what I was doing was plotting to ruin your life. I could not stand the thought, and in fact, I still cannot.
Starting point is 00:33:11 I am ashamed, Mr. L., and I hope that this warning will dissuade you from further investigation of Smile.jpg. You may in time encounter someone who is, if not weaker than I, then wholly more depraved, someone who will not hesitate to follow Smile.Dog's orders. Stop while you are still whole. Sincerely, Mary E. Terrence contacted me later that month with the news that his wife had killed herself. While cleaning up the various things he'd left behind, closing email accounts and the like, he happened upon the above message. He was a man in shambles. He wept as he told me to listen to his wife's advice. He'd found the diskette, he revealed, and burned it until it was nothing but a stinking pile of blackened plastic.
Starting point is 00:33:50 The part that most disturbed him, however, was how the diskette had hissed as it melted. Like some sort of animal, he said. I will admit that I was a little uncertain about how to respond to this. At first, I thought perhaps it was a joke, with the couple belatedly playing with the situation in order to get a rise out of me. A quick check of several Chicago newspapers, online obituaries, however, proved that Mary E. was indeed gone. There was, of course, no mention of her ending her life in the article. I decided that for a time at least,
Starting point is 00:34:20 I would not further pursue the object of Smile.jpg, especially since I had finals coming up at the end of May. But the world has odd ways of testing us. Almost a full year after I'd returned from my disastrous interview with Mary E, I received another email to jml at blank.com from elzhir82 at blank.com. Subject, smile. Hello. I found your email address through a mailing list. Your profile said you are interested in Smile Dog. I have saw it. It is not as bad as everyone says I have sent it to you here. Just spreading the word. Smiling face.
Starting point is 00:34:59 The final line chilled me to the bone. According to my email client, there was one file attachment called naturally smile.jpg. I considered downloading it for some time. It was most likely a fake, I imagined, and even if it weren't, I was never wholly convinced of smile.jpg's peculiar powers. Mary E's account had shaken me, yes, but she was probably mentally unbalanced anyways. After all, how could a simple image do what smile.jpg was said to accomplish? What sort of creature was it that could break one's mind with only the power of the eye? And if such things were patently absurd, then why did the legend exist at all? If I downloaded the image, if I looked at it, and if Mary turned out to be correct,
Starting point is 00:35:38 if Smile Dog came to me in my dreams demanding I spread the word, what would I do? Would I live my life as Mary had, fighting against the urge to give in until I died? Or would I spread the word, eager to be put to rest? And if I chose the latter route, how could I do it? Whom would I burden in turn? If I went through with my earlier intention to write a short article about Smile.jpg, I decided I could attach it as evidence, and anyone who read the article, anyone who took interest, would be affected.
Starting point is 00:36:06 And even assuming the Smile.jpg attached to to the email was genuine would I be capricious enough to save myself in that manner? Could I spread the word? Yes Yes, I could Do you want to see the image? Are you insane? I have it right here. I'm looking at it. Nope. You don't want to see it? No. Okay. I don't want to see the image at all. We can attach it as a link in the description. What? Guys, do not click this image.
Starting point is 00:36:35 Smile.jpg will be linked in the description below because we're just spreading the word. That's insane. Who are you? Are you the owner of this okay can i tell you did the horror movie smile come from this have you seen the horror movie smile i i did see smile well i you know this it's different this is an older story but this is more akin to the ring because the ring is about to be a gestate that you need to keep on passing. It's almost like in the newer times, it's like it follows the movie Smile.
Starting point is 00:37:10 There's a lot of, well, it's this idea of like a cursed item and you now have to do something and if you don't follow its orders, you will be cursed by it. That stuff scares me a lot because it's almost like, you know, in a horror movie when someone's like walking in the woods and they reach the same place and they're lost and it's like they're stuck in a loop.
Starting point is 00:37:29 That shit scares me so much. So that's why I will not be looking at that. And you shouldn't either, people. Do not click the link in the description below. I can't believe you were looking at it. Yeah. You're nuts. It's probably a recreation.
Starting point is 00:37:44 This is probably not the real one oh is that what you told it's really creepy though it's a creepy image don't try to convince me to look at it try to convince you to look at it so it's it so but it's not a dog it's not a dog a lot of the victims say it's not a dog but it's a hand beckoning a hand beckoning in the background and a dog a distorted dog with human-like teeth nope no thank you i will not be looking at that okay i am superstitious enough i'm not like holy believer fully believe everything but i'm superstitious what is the image lame no it's not lame it's scary it's scary looking you just show me like a cartoon dog it is not no it's scary looking okay it's a scary looking image.
Starting point is 00:38:26 You should stop looking at it. Okay. Selena agrees with me. Yeah. It's almost like I won't go in the mirror and say Bloody Mary. Okay. What's the one that brings the Candyman? Candyman?
Starting point is 00:38:40 Yeah. Oh, it's a movie. Yeah. You have to say three things in the mirror. That's when the Candyman comes out. Oh, yeah. I don't do that stuff. Neither do not trying i'm not trying to beckon okay the things either um okay let's do a little this one's a palate cleanser i think this is a little bit of a palate cleanser because i it's it is creepy but i think you're gonna think it's
Starting point is 00:39:00 funny now this is this one is one of the ones that i was talking about where this is a common creepypasta theme that i feel like you don't see much in regular horror which is lost media so lost lost media is like you probably heard about how certain tv shows have an episode that they took off the air and no and they've lost it or like how there's a lot of movies and shows that are like all the films are burned. So like that movie that existed that people remember, it doesn't exist anymore. And on the internet, this happens a lot too,
Starting point is 00:39:35 where just things get lost and we're like, yeah, it's gone. It's lost media. This video that everyone loved, it's gone. Where does it go though? It's just gone. It's like maybe every single record of it was deleted it just can happen so there's a lot of these types of stories on that were written in creepypastas there's the most famous one which is about a lost
Starting point is 00:39:56 episode of spongebob squarepants um i didn't pick that one uh but i picked another one um about a lost episode of the simpsons you know I don't watch the Simpsons that's okay I don't watch the Simpsons did you watch the Simpsons growing up? not really no it was on but I never really watched it my brothers loved it but I wasn't really watching it
Starting point is 00:40:17 this is a story about there's a lost episode of the Simpsons okay you know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons. Okay. You know how Fox has a weird way of counting Simpsons episodes? They refuse to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent. The reason for this is a lost episode from season
Starting point is 00:40:34 one. Finding details about this missing episode is difficult. No one who was working on the show at the time likes to talk about it. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Matt Groening. During production of the first season, Matt started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous, and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry and forbidding you to ever mention it to Matt. The episode's production
Starting point is 00:40:58 number was 7G44. The title was Dead Bart. typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. He begged me never to mention the episode again. The piece of paper had a website address on it. I would rather not say what it was for reasons you'll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser and I came to a site that was completely black except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy. It was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn't work. The entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on
Starting point is 00:42:05 my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was an episode of The Simpsons on it. The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality animation. If you've seen the original animation for Some Enchanted Evening, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Homer seemed angrier. Marge seemed depressed. Lisa seemed anxious. Bart seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for his parents. The episode was about the Simpsons going on a plane trip. Near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Bart was fooling around, as you'd expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, Bart broke a window on the plane and was sucked out.
Starting point is 00:42:46 At the beginning of the series, Matt had an idea with that the animated style of the Simpsons world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Bart's corpse was barely recognizable. They took full advantage of it not having to move and made an almost photorealistic drawing
Starting point is 00:43:03 of his dead body act act one ended with the shot of bart's corpse when act two started homer marge and lisa were sitting at their table crying the crying went on and on it got more pained and sounded more realistic better acting than you would think possible the animation started to decay even more as they cried and you could hear murmuring in the background. This crying went on for all of Act 2. Act 3 opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Homer, Marge, and Lisa were skeletally thin and still sitting at the table.
Starting point is 00:43:35 There was no sign of Maggie or the pets. They decided to visit Bart's grave. Springfield was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery, the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Bart's body was just lying in front of his tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of Act 1. The family started crying again. Eventually, they stopped and just stared at Bart's body. The camera zoomed in on Homer's face.
Starting point is 00:44:00 According to summaries, For guests who died since, like Michael Jackson and George Harrison, the dates were when they would die. You can try to use the tombstones to predict the deaths of the Living Simpsons guest stars, but there's something odd about most of the ones who haven't died yet. All of their deaths are listed as the same date. Credit to K.I. Simpson. Hey. Creepy. So it's a lost cousin who wrote this story about.
Starting point is 00:44:46 I guess so. Yeah. It's a Simpson. That's sad that Bart Simpson died. Bart's dead, dude. But like, you're an idiot. You smashed a window in an airplane. Well, yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:59 And you got sucked out. Doing typical Bart things. Is it crazy that I can't stop thinking about Angela's Bart? As Dart Simpson? And Dart Simpson. So whenever you're saying and I'm thinking about Angela with her face painted yellow, like, yeah, hey guys.
Starting point is 00:45:14 Is that terrible? Yeah. Okay. These types of things actually kind of creep me out. Like it does creep me out of just like, yeah, there's this episode
Starting point is 00:45:24 that nobody really remembers and it's just kind of like off. See, these stories kind of creep me out like it does creep me out of just like yeah there's this episode that nobody really remembers and it's just kind of like off see these stories kind of make me feel like i just went on an acid trip and i want to come back home okay okay like i'm a little bit like uh what yeah um okay that's a crazy one. But is the Simpson guy related? We don't know. So I feel like we have to maybe choose between some things here. So I've got a couple stories. I love how many creepypastas you got. I've got a lot. So we have one that's kind of a little more, I would say, not sci-fi,
Starting point is 00:46:00 but a little more distorted reality type of horror, and one that's more monster horror. These are both really famous creepypastas. They're both really good. Monster. You want to go monster? I do. All right.
Starting point is 00:46:16 I want to go old school classic monster. That's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling classic. Then this one's good. This one was recommended to me by a few people. This is an old one. This originated back in like 2009. And it's a famous creepypasta.
Starting point is 00:46:32 It is the Rake. The Rake. That's an awesome name. But a lot of people were like, oh, this one really scared me back in the day. So this is a series of accounts of this monster known as the Rake. Okay. All right.
Starting point is 00:46:52 This is a collection of different reports and accounts. So people have collected different letters and stories and posts online that all... Oh, excuse me. Why are you walking so close behind me? Well, you're a tall guy. You throw a decent shadow when I'm walking in it to keep out of this bright sun.
Starting point is 00:47:13 It hurts my eyes. Okay, well, you know what? Spec Savers, you can get two pairs of glasses from $149. And oh, you'll like this. One can be a pair of prescription sunglasses. Sounds great. Where's the nearest store? Not far. Come on. Let's hurry then! To my count.
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Starting point is 00:48:08 Moms taking essential prenatal had a lower overall cortisol level during pregnancy than those taking a leading prenatal. Plus, it's designed to be gentle on the stomach. Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. You can't rely on blind faith to get the pregnancy support you deserve.
Starting point is 00:48:39 Ritual's Essential Prenatal Multivitamin is the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. I'll lead to this one monster. So this is a suicide note that was found in 1964.
Starting point is 00:49:12 As I prepare to take my life, I feel it necessary to assuage any guilt or pain I have introduced through this act. It is not the fault of anyone other than him. For once I awoke and felt his presence, and once I awoke and saw his form. Once again I awoke and heard his voice and looked into his eyes. I cannot sleep without fear for what I might next awake to experience. I cannot ever wake. Goodbye. Found in the same wooden box were two empty envelopes addressed to William and Rose, and one loose personal letter with no envelope. Dearest Linny, I have prayed for you. He spoke your name.
Starting point is 00:49:52 This is a journal entry translated from Spanish that was from 1880. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow, black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand, I will not sleep his voice. And then it's unintelligible text. After that, we have a Mariner's log from 1691.
Starting point is 00:50:13 He came to me in my sleep from the foot of my bed. I felt a sensation. He took everything. We must return to England. We shall not return here again at the request of the rake From a witness in 2006. at about 4 a.m i woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom i used the moment to steal back the sheets only to wake him in the process i apologized and told him i thought he got out of bed when he turned to face me he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knees almost knocked me out of the bed he then grabbed me and said nothing after adjusting to the dark for half a second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man or a large hairless dog of some sort. Its body position was disturbing and
Starting point is 00:51:15 unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point, I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him. My husband was peering over his arm and knee, tucked into the fetal position, occasionally glancing at me before returning to the creature. In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband's face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds, or probably closer to five. It just seemed like a while, just looking at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran to the hallway, leading to the kid's room.
Starting point is 00:51:54 I screamed and ran for the light switch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara. The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life. She said, he is the rake. My husband drove his car into a lake that night while rushing our daughter to the hospital. He did not survive. Being a lake that night while rushing our daughter to the hospital. He did not survive.
Starting point is 00:52:27 Being a small town, news got around pretty quickly. The police were helpful at first, and the local newspaper took a lot of interest as well. However, the story was never published, and the local television news never followed up either. For several months, my son Justin and I stayed in a hotel near my parents' house. After we decided to return home, I began looking for answers myself. I eventually located a man in the next town over who had a similar story. We got in contact and began talking about our experiences. He knew of two other people in New York who had seen the creature we now referred to as the Rake. It took the four of us about two solid years of hunting
Starting point is 00:53:00 on the internet and writing letters to come up with a small collection of what we believe to be the accounts of the Rake. None of them gave any details, history, or follow-up. One journal had an entry involving the creature in its first three pages and never mentioned it again. A ship's log explained nothing of the encounter, saying only that they were told to leave by the rake. That was the last entry in the log. There were, however, many instances where the creature's visit was one of a series of visits with the same person. Multiple people also mentioned being spoken to, my daughter included. This led to us wondering if the rake had visited any of us before our last encounter.
Starting point is 00:53:34 I set up a digital recorder near my bed and left it running all night, every night for two weeks. I would tediously scan through the sounds of me rolling around my bed each day when I woke up. By the end of the second week, I was quite used to the occasional sound of sleep while blurring through the recording eight times with normal speed. This took almost an hour every day. On the first day of the third week, I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the rake. I can't listen to it long enough to even begin to describe it. I haven't let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I've heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when
Starting point is 00:54:09 it was sitting in front of my husband. I don't remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason the voice in the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment. The thoughts that must have gone through my daughter's head make me very upset. I have not seen the rake since he ruined my life, but I know that he has been in my room while I slept. I know and fear that one night I'll wake up to see him staring at me. That's the rake. Wow. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:34 Credit to Brian Somerville. Thanks, Brian Somerville. Thanks, Brian Somerville for creating the rake. Creating the rake and setting some nightmares. My God. Yeah. What scares me the most is obviously the modern day story. Oh, yeah. Of sleeping in bed.
Starting point is 00:54:48 But there's something so creepy about, yeah, and this thing was spotted 400 years ago. 100%. It's just like. The ship. Yeah. Do not come back to England. We need to, we're leaving for England. Do not come back to England.
Starting point is 00:55:00 The rake told us to go back to England. We must go back and tell the prince or the king that we can't get the spices. My favorite stories are monsters. This is why I wanted to read the, I love the monsters one. It gives me, it like gives me that like nostalgic, like warm wrap sweater. It makes me feel like a little kid again. Cause I feel like we told a lot of monster stories where it's like sci-fi. I love, but it feels more like i'm older
Starting point is 00:55:25 sci-fi is more like oh what what could we as humans create yeah that we should or you know like yeah it's that type of thing and then ghosts and demons and stuff it's like what if there's these things that are all around the world but what's creepy to me about monsters is it's like no we're talking about one singular thing that could be out there. That's been alive forever. Yeah, just one, this one thing. Like, it's not like, oh, there's a bunch of these all over the world. It's like, no, there's this thing somewhere in this part of the United States called the rake.
Starting point is 00:55:54 And people have recounted seeing it over the past. I'm like, that to me is, that creeps me out. Cause I'm just like, ooh. And you know, there's a lot of those stories cause there is like the Jersey devil. There's, you know, things like that get brought up and i'm like like that's there's nothing scarier to me than feeling like the blankets are getting like ripped off of me or there's something beneath my feet yeah i don't know about you but i have to have my feet covered
Starting point is 00:56:20 like i don't just let my legs be i don't need to but wow i usually have like one leg out so that leg is for the i just get too hot that leg's like yeah they're like oh for me for free the rake's like oh i'll take this um i i also love monsters just in a storytelling sense because there's something poetic about monsters in that i think they are, if done right, monsters are like the representation of something real. Yes. Like a monster will represent fear or guilt or anxiety, but like in a physical form. And it brings that fear of what it really is in the real world, but it personifies it. Like that movie, A Monster Calls.
Starting point is 00:57:04 I love that movie so much. I think Liam Neeson is voicing over that monster. I don't know if I've seen A Monster Calls. It's so good. It is like, I think it's his grief and stuff like that. But I'm such a fan of monsters, and it's hard to do. There's not many monster movies, but it's what I like.
Starting point is 00:57:22 When I watched Stranger Things, I was like, oh, hell yeah, monsters? Loved. I'm into this. Give me monsters. I think monsters are tough because it's what I like. Like, when I watch Stranger Things, I was like, oh, hell yeah. Monsters? Loved. I'm into this. Like, give me monsters. I think monsters are tough because it's like, what do they look like? It can be really. I really think you could really mess it up.
Starting point is 00:57:33 Like, they either look really, really scary or they're like. I mean, I think it's best when you don't fully see them. Like, see their full scale. Of course. Yeah. That was a creepy story it was really creepy it's a popular one trevor when i was i was texting with like spencer and trevor and trevor was like oh the rake scared me as a kid and i was like okay well so he was reading creepypastas as a kid oh a lot
Starting point is 00:57:57 of people are reading these as kids where do you find them they're just all over the internet they end they end up everywhere like the reason. The whole idea with the pasta is that it gets copied and pasted everywhere. Right, right, right. So copypasta, creepypasta. And so these stories get told. What's copypasta? That's just copypasta is any story or phrase that gets copied and pasted all over the place. And so creepypastas are just a scary version of that.
Starting point is 00:58:24 And there's a lot of them. And that's why there's so many that are about things that like interest people of that age group. There's a very famous Minecraft horror story called Herobrine about a dude who's playing Minecraft, just a single player game. And but he kept seeing like an image of someone else playing the game, like very far off in the distance and just just stuff like that so it's like it's scary for people who are into the game they're going oh man what if what if i see it you know i kind of love those stories that stick in my mind like the last time we read creepypastas i'll never forget that creepy little thing that was in um that mr wide mouth there you go yeah yeah i'll never forget that if you haven't watched our previous creepypasta from last year go back one year from now there's there's a whole bunch and there is a subreddit called no sleep which is really popular nowadays
Starting point is 00:59:13 which is another story forum and uh there's a lot of stories there uh that we could pull from as well so you know we'll do this again this is a lot of fun god i love october yeah october's so fun it's it is a lot of fun halloween i like reading scary stories i couldn't do this all the time though no it's nice to have like a time when i do this and then i'm like let's move on to some happy stories some am i the asshole stories that's why i think about i think about true crime podcasters like i couldn't do that see that that yeah same does a different thing to me as opposed to scary stories have me going like my imagination gets riled up and i start thinking i'm like oh what's going on what what things but true crime has me feeling more dread and more like sadness because i'm just
Starting point is 01:00:03 like that's someone has to live with that forever i agree and i'm like i i personally can't get behind like i'm like you know what people do all sorts of things in different forms of jobs but i have a hard time like being like telling oh sorry my mom is calling me whoa she was like i heard your i heard. A voice told me that I heard you. But with true crime, I'm just like, I can't get over that. I'm like, that's someone's real life. And that to me is awful. I know.
Starting point is 01:00:33 I know. But I think I could do it because I get really obsessed with the small details. Well, and I guess I can handle it if um if it's been resolved if like oh they're locked away or whatever but so many are like no they're no and i'm like especially missing and yeah just that brings that makes me sad yeah knowing that it's like and honestly i don't even like a fictional story about like kind of real world horror yeah where it's people doing things i'm like let it be something that we don't know if it exists or not yeah so monsters and and in evil images and lost episodes
Starting point is 01:01:12 of tv shows i'm like oh it's easier to digest there's an element of unknowns but whereas with real like what's truly scary is stuff that it's like oh we know everything about this and it's awful like that's really scary. Whereas a little bit of unknown is like a fun scary to me. Because we don't know. So what does it say about me that I listen to all that real shit? So many people that are interested in it. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that.
Starting point is 01:01:41 I'm just saying for me personally on an entertainment level or just like yeah and and we we can be entertained sounds like the wrong word but you know captivated captivated things right like um storytelling than someone who's into reading histories of wars it's like that's not good so i'm not glad a war happened but who is reading histories of war i i'd been oh come on like ancient wars that stuff is crazy ancient rome let's go back to that trend like greece that shit's awesome oh well i love i'll read about the peloponnesian war but i i love like greek mythology see that's and that's that's like that's fun yeah that i'm having a blast and that's that's the thing this type of scary i have a i have a lot of fun.
Starting point is 01:02:26 It's just fun for my imagination. Yeah. Because then I cook up stories and I'm like thinking about things. Yeah. Wow. But this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for finding all those stories. Yeah, and I hope people enjoyed it.
Starting point is 01:02:36 Spooky time. Yeah, it's hard to find because a lot of creepypastas get really dark. A lot of them are really messed up. And some are just like, some are just like some are bad some are bad someone's like i was walking and flipped on the light anyone can write a creepypasta you can just post them online but um you know i i like the ones like i said that give me a sense
Starting point is 01:02:58 of eeriness or are scary but not not like dreadful. No, those were really good. I hope I did an okay job with pulling these. No, those were awesome. Just don't look at the link. Don't click the link, guys. Of smile.jpg. Yeah, don't click that. Great job, Shane.
Starting point is 01:03:18 Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. I am spooked. And for people listening, please comment down below your favorite creepypastas because we'll do this again. Yep.
Starting point is 01:03:25 And maybe next year, maybe sooner. I mean, I'm down to do creepy episodes. Christmas time. Yeah, Christmas creepy. Creepy Christmas. Let me know your favorite creepypastas down below. And we'll see you next week. Next week, we're telling some real ghost stories.
Starting point is 01:03:43 Yeah. That people have experienced here at Smosh. Yeah, we're bringing some people on stories that people have experienced here at Smosh. Yeah, we're bringing some people on, so stay tuned for that. All right. Thank you for watching. We'll see you later. See you later. Bye.
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