I first met in person with Mary E. in the summer of 2007. I had arranged with her husband of fifteen years, Terence, 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 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 half an hour I sat with Terence as we camped outside the bedroom door, I 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 objections to speaking with me centered around an incoherent diatribe on her dreams — her nightmares. Terence apologized profusely when we ceased the exercise, and I did my best to take it in stride; recall that I wasn’t a reporter in search of a story, but merely a curious young man in search of information. Besides, I thought at the time, I could perhaps find another, similar case if I put my mind and resources to it.
Mary E. was the sysop for a small Chicago-based Bulletin Board System in 1992 when she first encountered smile.jpg and her life changed forever. She and Terence had been married for only five months. Mary was 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 tenth 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. What caught my interest (other than the obvious macabre elements of the cyber-legend and my proclivity toward 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 hoax. It is unique because, though the entire phenomenon centers on a picture file, that file is nowhere to be found on the internet; certainly many photomanipulated simulacra litter the web, showing up with the most frequency on sites such as the imageboard 4chan, particularly the /x/-focused paranormal subboard. 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.
Neither smile.jpg nor Smile.dog is mentioned anywhere on Wikipedia, though the website features articles on such other, perhaps more scandalous shocksites as ****** (hello.jpg) or 2girls1cup; any attempt to create a page pertaining to smile.jpg is 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.dog pictures, rendering almost half 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 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 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 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-looking teeth.
I read this while listening to epic music with what sounds like typing in the background. I almost pissed myself.
A TF2 creepypasta of a "texture error" I read on the Steam forums.
Excerpt from ending:
"I decided to watch some TF2 gameplay to recover from that traumatizing event, but all the classes would occasionally stop what they were doing and stare at me, with no pupils, of course."
My all time favorite is the one of the world ending the twenty-first.
Russian Sleep Experiment was actually pretty cool, but a bit gory. The one with the woman and the butcher in WWII was cool.
the one with the reflection of the killer was shocking.
I don't like shocker stories. It's bad for my heart.
Can anyone link me to some short stories like "Portraits & The Cabin" that make you go "Woah" at the end but not make you scared shitless? I'd appreciate you.
This one is similar to Portraits, and is my personal favourite creepypasta (with Portraits coming in second):
The Other Watcher
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 owners 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. After some gentle quizzing and the promise that the explanation would go no further than him she finally 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, we find that even now, people get uncomfortable staying there. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red."
I've heard that one before, but you get the idea of what I'm looking for. That was an awesome story.
Any more like it?
EDIT: I may as well just give you the link for the site that I'm getting all of these from. It's great, they've filtered all of the unfunny ones out, and put all of the best on one page in a huge list. Makes for a great read. Enjoy!
It was alright. More gory than actually creepy. Although I have to wonder, how do you call someone and insert smilies? The OP says his friend called him, then notes that it was strange because the friend didn't put any smilies into their conversation. What the crap?
Also, thank you for that link for the awesome Creepypasta. It's a thoroughly eerie page, and the stories are some of the best I've read, told in traditional ghost story fashion.
Edit: Although I have to admit I have never been so tempted to disable images on a page before. Gah.
"The war...has begun."
Want to know more? Check out the beginnings of my novel, Chronicles of Light, at Figment.com. Latest update: Chapter 1: Life of a Thief.
Can anyone link me to some short stories like "Portraits & The Cabin" that make you go "Woah" at the end but not make you scared shitless? I'd appreciate you.
Check the first page, I posted The Portraits there. (:
It was alright. More gory than actually creepy. Although I have to wonder, how do you call someone and insert smilies? The OP says his friend called him, then notes that it was strange because the friend didn't put any smilies into their conversation. What the crap?
Also, thank you for that link for the awesome Creepypasta. It's a thoroughly eerie page, and the stories are some of the best I've read, told in traditional ghost story fashion.
Edit: Although I have to admit I have never been so tempted to disable images on a page before. Gah.
I'm going to assume the author originally chose them to talk by phone but later forgot and made them chat in some sort of way on the Internet. When proofreading it (if he did) he skimmed it to check for grammar errors opposed to gaps in the story.
Can someone post the lavender(failspell) town music that goes with the pokemon creepy pasta? I searched it up but paused because the related videos where "girl gets attacked by a demon" and "SQUIDWARDS SUICIDE lost footage" you see I have a thing that if videos like that are related I ain't watching the video for crap.
Heyyyyyyyy.
My personal favorite is the " Artist's master piece " one. It's about the "golum" or demon that paints in blood during the night then during day it's like a pentagon ^^. I dunno name though.
I read this while listening to epic music with what sounds like typing in the background. I almost pissed myself.
It happens to everyone.
Excerpt from ending:
"I decided to watch some TF2 gameplay to recover from that traumatizing event, but all the classes would occasionally stop what they were doing and stare at me, with no pupils, of course."
My all time favorite is the one of the world ending the twenty-first.
Haha.
the one with the reflection of the killer was shocking.
I don't like shocker stories. It's bad for my heart.
Can anyone link me to some short stories like "Portraits & The Cabin" that make you go "Woah" at the end but not make you scared shitless? I'd appreciate you.
< My Steam Account (add me!)
< Dragon Cave! (aid)
I've heard that one before, but you get the idea of what I'm looking for. That was an awesome story.
Any more like it?
< My Steam Account (add me!)
< Dragon Cave! (aid)
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1561320
I went to that website, but the images discouraged me from reading more than one paragraph.
I read the TF2 one, and it was actually pretty cool, but it got a bit cheesy near the end.
HOWEVER, it inspired me to write my own creepypasta based on a VALVe game. Maybe a hidden area of Portal 2.
If anyone wants to help me write it, please toss me a PM, or add me on STEAM and start chatting! thanks you all.
< My Steam Account (add me!)
< Dragon Cave! (aid)
It was alright. More gory than actually creepy. Although I have to wonder, how do you call someone and insert smilies? The OP says his friend called him, then notes that it was strange because the friend didn't put any smilies into their conversation. What the crap?
Also, thank you for that link for the awesome Creepypasta. It's a thoroughly eerie page, and the stories are some of the best I've read, told in traditional ghost story fashion.
Edit: Although I have to admit I have never been so tempted to disable images on a page before. Gah.
Want to know more? Check out the beginnings of my novel, Chronicles of Light, at Figment.com. Latest update: Chapter 1: Life of a Thief.
Check the first page, I posted The Portraits there. (:
Always open to critique and suggestions. (:
I'm quite the shady customer.
I'm going to assume the author originally chose them to talk by phone but later forgot and made them chat in some sort of way on the Internet. When proofreading it (if he did) he skimmed it to check for grammar errors opposed to gaps in the story.
well OT I'd have to say that Dead Bart freaked me the **** out.
I saw the Smile Dog pic but I didn't go insane... Other than that my hands are shaking...
It doesn't bcome much of a problem until you go to sleep.
Heyyyyyyyy.
My personal favorite is the " Artist's master piece " one. It's about the "golum" or demon that paints in blood during the night then during day it's like a pentagon ^^. I dunno name though.