The Woman in the Oven - Creepypasta

While I may not be the creepypasta connoisseur my sister is, I do have my favorites.  Short and sweet, The Woman in the Oven leverages some of my absolute favorite horror elements: realism, media, and ambiguity.

It's just sparse enough to be believable, detailed enough to be true.  The relationship we have with recorded media lends further credibility to the supposed facts of the story.  And yet, the ending is confusing.  It swerves left just at the last moment, and as the mind reels to make sense of all the facts, it quickly finds itself in deeply disturbing territory.

I think the rendition by Youtuber thelittlefears is BY FAR the best, so watch away.  Full text will be relayed below.

"During the summer of 1983, in a quiet town near Minneapolis, Minnesota, the charred body of a woman was found inside the kitchen stove of a small farmhouse.  A video camera was also found in the kitchen, standing on a tripod, pointing at the oven.  No tape was found inside the camera at the time.

"Although the scene was originally labeled as a homicide by police, an unmarked VHS tape was later discovered at the bottom of the farm's well, which had apparently dried up earlier that year.

"Despite its worn condition, and the fact that it contained no audio, police were still able to view the contents of the tape.  It depicted a woman recording herself in front of a video camera, seemingly using the same camera that the police found in the kitchen.  After positioning the camera to include both her and her kitchen stove in its view, she turned on the oven, opened the door, crawled inside, and then closed the door behind her.  After eight minutes into the video, the oven could be seen shaking violently.  At this point thick, black smoke emanated from it.  For the remaining forty-five minutes of video, until the batteries in the camera died, it remained in its stationary position.  

"To avoid disturbing the local community, the police never released any information about the tape, or even the fact that it was found.  Police were also not able to determine who put the tape in the well, or why the height and stature of the woman in the video did not come close to matching the body that they had found in the oven."

-Joanna 

White With Red

Sometimes I make the mistake of just assuming that people know what creepypasta is.  I feel if you were to stumble across our blog and invest any amount of time in it, you have some interest in the creepy, horrific, odd, and disturbing, BUT why should I assume you know what creepypasta is?

Creepypasta, as defined by Google, is "the name given to all kinds of weird, urban legend-type things going on in the Internet.  Some are stories, some are images, some are videos, and all of them are potential making-you-crap-your-pants material."  Long before the days of the internet, horror lovers were left to rely on film, literature, and music in order to experience the creepiness they craved, but with the advent of the world wide web, we now have infinite creepiness at our fingertips, just a click away.  The accessibility of creepiness on the internet can have a mixed reaction.  On one hand, it's amazing to be able to explore various websites (Reddit being a large contributor) and find new and innovative creepy stories to pore through on a lazy Sunday.  On the other hand, there is a plethora of complete crap out there probably written in a span of ten minutes that is generic and grammatical error-laden, whipped up with the hopes of becoming the next big viral creepy superstar.

However, to give creepypasta the respect it is somewhat due, I would be remiss if I did not mention White With Red, one of the very first creepypastas I was exposed to probably more than five years ago.  White With Red reads as follows:

A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. She explained that it was a storeroom, and that it was out of bounds. She reminded him of this several times before allowing him upstairs. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed.

However, the insistence of the woman had piqued his curiosity, so the next night he walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye. What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was incredibly pale. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. Was this a celebrity? The owner's daughter? He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity but decided not to.

As he was still looking, the woman turned sharply and he jumped back from the door, hoping she would not suspect he had been spying on her. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn't make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red. He felt embarrassed that he had made the woman so uncomfortable, and hoped she had not made a complaint with the woman on the front desk.

At this point he decided to consult her for more information. She sighed and said, "Did you look through the keyhole?"

The man told her that he had and she said, "Well, I might as well tell you the story of what happened in that room. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in there, and we find that even now, whoever stays there gets very uncomfortable. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red."


Simple, straight to the point, and if this is the first time you've ever read this story, I hope it elicited at least some sort of response - a slight case of the chill bumps, a tingle up your spine, an inward uncomfortable chuckle.  One thing I can appreciate about kindred spirits across the world, creepy-lovers such as ourselves, is they take it upon themselves to recreate creepypastas in video format and post them on YouTube for all to see.  Brandon Christensen is the producer, director, and editor of the White With Red adaptation linked above and Matthew Greene is the director of photography, producer, and post-production.  Published in August of 2013, not even two years old, Christensen's video has gotten nearly 100,000 views on YouTube, on a channel with only seven videos, the rest receiving only 39-1,500 views.  Yes, to all you doubters, creepypasta has quite a devout following.

Judge for yourself how you feel Christensen and Greene were able to capture the creepiness of White With Red.  Also, please enjoy this link to the site, The Floor is Now Lava, featuring a cartoon version of the White With Red story.

White With Red Comic

As a self-proclaimed creepy-lover, I sometimes feel I am desensitized to all the creepy, weird, and strange things I look up on a regular basis, but if I am able to put myself back into the headspace of when I first started discovering creepypasta and ran across stories such as White With Red, I remember the ingenuity that first drew me in all those years ago and I smile in reverie at the beginnings of creepypasta and look forward to the days ahead as the only way to go from here is up.

[Did I just get somewhat sappy on a post about a made-up ghost in a hotel room?]

-Amanda

The Expressionless

The Expressionless written by Tom Lever is one of my favorite creepypastas.  I feel it's pretty well-known and widespread in the creepypasta community.  I have copied and pasted the entire story below, as it is relatively short and packs a punch.
 
"In June 1972, a woman appeared in Cedar Senai hospital in nothing but a white, blood-covered gown.  Now this, in itself, should not be too surprising as people often have accidents nearby and come to the nearest hospital for medical attention, but there were two things that caused people who saw her to vomit and flee in terror.  The first being that she wasn't exactly human. She resembled something close to a mannequin, but had the dexterity and fluidity of a normal human being. Her face was as flawless as a mannequins, devoid of eyebrows and smeared in make-up.  There was a kitten clamped in her jaws so unnaturally tight that no teeth could be seen, and the blood was still squirting out over her gown and onto the floor. She then pulled it out of her mouth, tossed it aside and collapsed.

From the moment she stepped through the entrance to when she was taken to a hospital room and cleaned up before being prepped for sedation, she was completely calm, expressionless and motionless. The doctors thought it best to restrain her until the authorities could arrive and she did not protest. They were unable to get any kind of response from her and most staff members felt too uncomfortable to look directly at her for more than a few seconds.  But the second the staff tried to sedate her, she fought back with extreme force. Two members of staff had to hold her down as her body rose up on the bed with that same, blank expression.

She turned her emotionless eyes towards the male doctor and did something unusual. She smiled.  As she did, the female doctor screamed and let go out of shock. In the woman's mouth were not human teeth, but long, sharp spikes. Too long for her mouth to close fully without causing any damage…The male doctor stared back at her for a moment before asking "What in the hell are you?"  She cracked her neck down to her shoulder to observe him, still smiling.  There was a long pause, the security had been alerted and could be heard coming down the hallway.

As he heard them approach, she darted forward, sinking her teeth into the front of his throat, ripping out his jugular and letting him fall to the floor, gasping for air as he choked on his own blood.  She stood up and leaned over him, her face coming dangerously close to his as the life faded from his eyes.  She leaned closer and whispered in his ear.  "I... am... God..."  The doctor's eyes filled with fear as he watched her calmly walk away to greet the security men. His last ever sight would be watching her feast on them one by one.  The female doctor who survived the incident named her "The Expressionless".  There was never a sighting of her again."


The reason I particularly love this story is it really makes no sense and you are pretty much left to your own devices to conjure up the image of this woman in your mind and try to understand who the hell is she and what...just...happened?  The "I am God" line, I have to say, is a little cliche and I would've rather she said something else or say nothing at all.  Of course, there is no explanation provided as to who the hell this woman could be or why she is eating a cat, but I almost like that it's vague.  If there were too many details or backstory, your brain would maybe be able to process this easier and you'd be left with less of an unsettling creepy feeling.

An expressionless face can be quite horror-inducing.  A dead, empty, non-blinking stare can send a chill down anyone's spine.  I love the line in the story that the staff members were uncomfortable to look directly at her for more than a few seconds.  It's quite off-putting to picture someone so calm yet obviously unstable and dangerous and to imagine their expressionless gaze directed your way, eyebrow-less and covered in blood. [shudder]

Michael Gallagher of YouTube and crappy B horror movie fame took it up himself to write and direct a short film depicting the story of The Expressionless and posted it near Halloween of 2013, generating around 370,000 YouTube views.  I can appreciate his adaptation of the story as the actress is terribly creepy looking and the jarring sound at 0:47 made me jump the first time I watched it.  I did have to laugh that everyone ran away once she passed out, which one would assume would be the least dangerous moment since she's, you know, unconscious.

Hell, the thumbnail itself is pretty creepy.  Check it out for yourselves and leave a comment below on your opinion on this creepypasta and its adaptation.  Is it creepy?  Cliche?  Unsettling?  Confusing?  Should Joanna and I film our own version? [You hear that, sis? :)]

-Amanda

TOP FIVE TWO SENTENCE CREEPYPASTA

It is a large trend lately on YouTube for videos to have what they call "temporary art" or just simply "dry erase art" and though it is widely overused, I STILL LIKE IT!  So this video gets bonus points from me.

Thoughts on the effectiveness of short creepypasta?  Some are contrived, but some have just the right amount of ambiguity and succinctness to leave you wondering and intrigued.




My favorite from the video above is #2.

Another good one I have heard that is not featured in the video above is:
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room.  There was a knock on the door..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock_(short_story)

-Amanda

This post dragged from the archive by popular demand.  Enjoy!  More creepypasta posts on the horizon.

-Joanna 2/18/15