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Post by Salzmark on Feb 22, 2019 14:14:28 GMT -6
Oh, and the Isles of Shoals actually exist, off the New Hampshire coast and jointly shared between NH and Maine, and they’ve got a boatload (pun intended) of ghost stories. Fun stuff. I’ve been in the Oceanic Hotel, and that looks incredibly spooky, even with a (relative) lot of people staying there in the middle of summer. King would be proud of you. There’s something about New England that is fertile territory for ghost stories—maybe it’s the Puritan streak? The Puritans, for all of their sermons against it, were obsessed with the supernatural and/or devilish. Both Lovecraft and King pick up on this, I think. By the way, I once drove up the Maine coastline just as a fog was coming in. It’s unbelievably creepy, and, uh, yeah, you can tell why he sets so many stories there (in addition to the fact that he lives there, of course).
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 22, 2019 14:25:06 GMT -6
I don't know. A lot of feces with obvious plot beats hit the big times, like "Jeff the Killer" (though there IS a seedling of a good idea in there), but then you also have legitimately good stuff with several story elements that went over people's heads for years like "Marble Hornets," which hilariously plays like a deconstruction of the typical Slender Man story despite being the first. Honestly, what gets liked and disliked in the 'pasta community is as unpredictable as the wind's direction.Kinda like Slender Man himself, no? The great things about the original edited photographs is how vague they are and how compatible they are with existing mythology and urban legends, but there’s nothing about them that strikes me as inspiring everything that came in their wake. I heard about “Marble Hornets” the YouTube show, but is there a prose story too? “Jeff the Killer” just struck me as dumb. The best creepypasta stories I’ve read are probably “Search and Rescue,” which we’ve already mentioned, and “Candle Cove,” which is perhaps overdone with the TV show and all, but the original piece is just great. How it proceeds is so close to how actual half-remembered TV show discussions on forums go. (I was recently involved in one in the Mandela Effect subreddit—all these people swore they remembered an early 2000s TV show called Curious World on the Travel Channel, except that the Travel Channel had no record of it and there was hardly any mention anywhere on the Internet. After a bit of detective work I figured out that it did exist—but it was a bloc the channel created for pre-existing documentaries. It was fun to do, but it was really close to “Candle Cove.”)
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 22, 2019 14:27:18 GMT -6
King would be proud of you. There’s something about New England that is fertile territory for ghost stories—maybe it’s the Puritan streak? The Puritans, for all of their sermons against it, were obsessed with the supernatural and/or devilish. Both Lovecraft and King pick up on this, I think. By the way, I once drove up the Maine coastline just as a fog was coming in. It’s unbelievably creepy, and, uh, yeah, you can tell why he sets so many stories there (in addition to the fact that he lives there, of course). Well, it's the oldest part of America. It was where the "New World" at its rawest met with Western Civilization. It also happens to be the region where the Salon Witch Trials happened, Roanoke vanished, the Ray family "vampires" burnt to ash in the sunlight when exhumed, and a crap tone of ghost towns exist. Freaking Jamestown, which is a horror story of its own, too. Seriously, "Pocahontas" retellings are in the wrong genre. It's the place where many of our earliest, ugliest, and most isolated horrors happened before it became interconnected and became more of a clusterbomb of horrible-ness as we made our way westward. Pair that with the creepy Maine coastline you mentioned, and it's perfect for an American horror setting.
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 22, 2019 14:38:29 GMT -6
Well, Roanoke, Jamestown, et al., I’d consider “the South,” compared to New England. but yes, definitely. The original 13 colonies are filled with ghost stories as the old part of the U.S.
Speaking of the vampires in Connecticut, have you heard about Mercy Brown in RI and that whole New England vampire panic? It’s so bizarre.
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 22, 2019 14:48:31 GMT -6
I don't know. A lot of feces with obvious plot beats hit the big times, like "Jeff the Killer" (though there IS a seedling of a good idea in there), but then you also have legitimately good stuff with several story elements that went over people's heads for years like "Marble Hornets," which hilariously plays like a deconstruction of the typical Slender Man story despite being the first. Honestly, what gets liked and disliked in the 'pasta community is as unpredictable as the wind's direction.Kinda like Slender Man himself, no? The great things about the original edited photographs is how vague they are and how compatible they are with existing mythology and urban legends, but there’s nothing about them that strikes me as inspiring everything that came in their wake. I heard about “Marble Hornets” the YouTube show, but is there a prose story too? “Jeff the Killer” just struck me as dumb. The best creepypasta stories I’ve read are probably “Search and Rescue,” which we’ve already mentioned, and “Candle Cove,” which is perhaps overdone with the TV show and all, but the original piece is just great. How it proceeds is so close to how actual half-remembered TV show discussions on forums go. (I was recently involved in one in the Mandela Effect subreddit—all these people swore they remembered an early 2000s TV show called Curious World on the Travel Channel, except that the Travel Channel had no record of it and there was hardly any mention anywhere on the Internet. After a bit of detective work I figured out that it did exist—but it was a bloc the channel created for pre-existing documentaries. It was fun to do, but it was really close to “Candle Cove.”) You're right about the original edited photographs, actually. There is no reason for such an online phenomenon to spring from them. That would be because they were more of an indirect cause, in the end. The Slender Man craze didn't actually grow from them. It was "Marble Hornets" all the way. Yes, Troy Wagner, the creator of MH, WAS inspired by the Something Awful photomanips and used them as the basis of his web show. But it was the explosion in popularity OF "Marble Hornets" that created the Slender Man craze. Literally every Slender Man Show has been piggybacking off of what Wagner and his friends created ever since. You will find no trace of what the original photos portrayed in any Slender Man Show beyond mentions of children disappearing. That said, no other Slender Man Show has ever managed to be even half as good, because they were all created with a faulty understanding of what the "Wagner Crew" was actually doing or they just weren't the first. I'm sure you've probably heard about Slender Man's "proxies", AKA people he's mind-raped into being his obedient servants? Well, there is a band of masked people who never speak going around doing things for unknown purposes for much of "Marble Hornet's" run. People got it into their heads that they were being mind-controlled by Slender Man and were acting against the main protagonist, Jay. However, this theory soon started to fall apart when the masked "proxies" also started acting against another character who DID actually turn out to be unknowingly under Slender Man's sway. Unfortunately, by then, the idea of the "person-turned-mindless meatsack puppet for Slendy" had already infected the entire community and nearly no one caught the hint until the series was in its final episodes. The silent masked thugs were a third party acting against Slender Man, but also held no allegiance to the dumbass running around with a camera recording everything, which is why they would rough up Jay whenever he got in their way. There was never actually any direct mind control in the series, itself, anyway. It's more implied to be Slendy mentally "whispering" ideas in people's ears (read: brains) and then those people thinking those ideas were their own and sometimes acting on them in a manner they would. It was never about Slender Man hollowing people's minds out and turning them into mindless meat puppets. Well, there's a "Marble Hornets" comic in the making, but otherwise, no. No prose version. "Jeff the Killer" is dumb in its present form. I think it could be rescued and salvaged into something better, though. I think "Candle Cover" is what cause that missing episode/missing TV show trend to start, actually. Amazing how a great original piece can create so many duller imitators.
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 22, 2019 14:53:09 GMT -6
Well, Roanoke, Jamestown, et al., I’d consider “the South,” compared to New England. but yes, definitely. The original 13 colonies are filled with ghost stories as the old part of the U.S. Speaking of the vampires in Connecticut, have you heard about Mercy Brown in RI and that whole New England vampire panic? It’s so bizarre.Yes, I have. I'm shocked we don't hear more about in pop culture given that there was a vampire craze a while back.
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 22, 2019 15:16:35 GMT -6
Just re: my “The Caretaker” for a moment, it’s not getting all that many upvotes, but it is getting comments, which is nice.
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 22, 2019 15:17:58 GMT -6
Just re: my “The Caretaker” for a moment, it’s not getting all that many upvotes, but it is getting comments, which is nice. How long has it been up?
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 22, 2019 16:57:58 GMT -6
7 hrs. now, WeirdRaptor. By the way, I found a really good NoSleep story; have you read it?
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 22, 2019 17:52:45 GMT -6
7 hrs. now, WeirdRaptor . By the way, I found a really good NoSleep story; have you read it? It could pick up after a day or so. That was one heck of a good story. Very... I dunno… It's like something a child's imagination would conjure, in all the right ways. Except for the swearing.
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 22, 2019 19:07:22 GMT -6
I really liked it too, WeirdRaptor… That was the kind of thing I always wanted to discover as a kid, some secret room in the library. Without all the tragedy in the narrator’s life, of course. Aickman (not to keep bringing the guy up, but his stuff is great) has a story like that, “The Inner Room,” which is very well-done. Our conversation also inspired me to look through lists of recommended ones, trying to find which ones actually have decent writing and aren’t like “Jeff the Killer,” and I found “ The Left/Right Game,” which is long but very good. It reminded me a bit of “Search and Rescue,” a bit of “No End House.” You might have already read it, though.
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 22, 2019 19:09:02 GMT -6
I really liked it too, WeirdRaptor … That was the kind of thing I always wanted to discover as a kid, some secret room in the library. Without all the tragedy in the narrator’s life, of course. Aickman (not to keep bringing the guy up, but his stuff is great) has a story like that, “The Inner Room,” which is very well-done. Our conversation also inspired me to look through lists of recommended ones, trying to find which ones actually have decent writing and aren’t like “Jeff the Killer,” and I found “ The Left/Right Game,” which is long but very good. It reminded me a bit of “Search and Rescue,” a bit of “No End House.” You might have already read it, though. Thanks for digging another one up. I'll have to bookmark this one, since I can't read it just yet, but I'll let you know what I think by tomorrow.
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 24, 2019 16:37:39 GMT -6
Oy. I hope I don’t need that guy’s help every time I want to post there (he probably wouldn’t give it to me anymore, anyway). But my latest piece is doing as poorly as all the rest of them other than the one he helped me with:
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Post by WeirdRaptor on Feb 24, 2019 17:54:48 GMT -6
Oy. I hope I don’t need that guy’s help every time I want to post there (he probably wouldn’t give it to me anymore, anyway). But my latest piece is doing as poorly as all the rest of them other than the one he helped me with: Maybe he's just the advisor/editor you were meant to work with. The "Umbrella People" is well-written, but it's missing an overt creep factor. Perhaps if there was an actual implied... maybe not reason, but connection to something that was happening in the neighborhood, it might work better.
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Post by Salzmark on Feb 24, 2019 18:06:38 GMT -6
Oy. I hope I don’t need that guy’s help every time I want to post there (he probably wouldn’t give it to me anymore, anyway). But my latest piece is doing as poorly as all the rest of them other than the one he helped me with: Maybe he's just the advisor/editor you were meant to work with. The "Umbrella People" is well-written, but it's missing an overt creep factor. Perhaps if there was an actual implied... maybe not reason, but connection to something that was happening in the neighborhood, it might work better. You’re right. Thank you. Let me rework this a bit.
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