Boo

October 31, 2015 6:15 AM

Jezebel ran a Scary Story contest this year, here's the wonderful (though sometimes badly edited) results. Need more? Then check out last year's winners, especially the one titled "Look at Me".
posted by Brandon Blatcher (19 comments total)

... especially the one titled "Look at Me".

HOLY SHIT
posted by magstheaxe at 7:44 AM on October 31, 2015 [11 favorites]

Dogs can have hooks for hands too.
posted by Artw at 7:48 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

Look at me would have been scarier ending with the Log and leaving out the "to this day ....shutter (sic) to think" stuff
posted by zutalors! at 8:15 AM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

Stupid misconfigured logging daemons.
posted by benzenedream at 8:57 AM on October 31, 2015 [6 favorites]

logging demons
posted by mjg123 at 9:04 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

He brought a lot of sharpies with him in his invisible backpack
posted by Hoopo at 9:16 AM on October 31, 2015

Stupid misconfigured logging daemons.


Software Development Horror Stories
posted by Artw at 9:28 AM on October 31, 2015

Does Jezebel rewrite these? They all sound exactly the same.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:52 AM on October 31, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Connie" was well done. Emphasis on the grandfather's perspective, without many objective details. Very sad, too.
posted by doctornemo at 10:28 AM on October 31, 2015

"Look at Me" is really good. Nice use of restricted sensory input.
posted by doctornemo at 10:32 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yes, I wish some cranky Victorian copyeditor would haunt the Jezebel (and many other publishing) offices.

I wonder what percentage of these are RL incidents, which are original short stories/adaptations of urban legends.

"When she got back, I was dead" has a good wtf factor.
posted by NorthernLite at 11:09 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

I guess I'm the only one that thought Look At Me wasn't very good? I dunno. even with headphones this person has meth-head-level focus, and...a log? What are they, on the clock or something?
posted by Hoopo at 11:58 AM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

I agree, Hoopo. It had no punch or tension. You knew from the first sentence what happened whereas the best creepypasta stories you really don't.

I tend to read the best month or year winners at NoSleep, and they're usually very good. I like Inaaace stories: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/27el9i/i_was_a_part_of_queens_guard_in_england_one_of/
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:31 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

11:10 check twitter on phone
11:30 wtf is this kid autistic
11:40 kid you are really pissing me off
11:50 legs cramping brb
12:00 took a dump in yr bathroom
12:10 turn around ffs
12:20 turn around
12:30 look at HES GOT NO FA
posted by benzenedream at 12:39 PM on October 31, 2015 [8 favorites]

I didn't love Look at Me either, I just thought it was better than the other ones I read which were basically all this:

WHEN I WAS LITTLE

THIS SKINNY GIRL TALKED TO ME

TURNS OUT SHE WAS A GHOST

WE MOVED

MIC DROP
posted by zutalors! at 12:42 PM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

What I liked about about Look at me was the log and it's repeating of "look at me" that sounded desperate with a hint that nothing bad might happy. After all, nothing did, the kid lived. But there was potential there for something incredibly bad to happen and that potential is delightfully scary.


I'm struck by the number of them which don't seem to be ghost stories per se, but close calls with actual murderers. We know longer fear the dark, but each other.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:03 PM on October 31, 2015 [5 favorites]

Well the repetition in Look at Me reminded me of some stalkery texts I've gotten from people in my life, so yeah real people are scary.
posted by zutalors! at 1:05 PM on October 31, 2015

Also haven't we always been scared of murderers? I remember the backseat killer urban legend from my childhood.
posted by zutalors! at 1:07 PM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm struck by the number of them which don't seem to be ghost stories per se, but close calls with actual murderers. We know longer fear the dark, but each other.

I think it's always been each other we fear, and that ghosts and monsters and malevolent entities are all just metaphors and physical manifestations of the things about others and ourselves that terrify us so much that we don't want to admit that they're like us. They're stylized poetic versions of psychopathy, rage, angst, loneliness, pain, and a whole bunch of other perfectly human, perfectly real horrors.

I kind of miss being afraid of monsters like monsters were some other thing, and seriously no shit, I wish I could be scared the way I could be scared when I was a kid, thinking that supernatural entities were after me instead of just the regular banal and human evils I worry about now. Weird uncanny horror is a dragon I'm always kind of chasing now that I'm a shitty grownup who knows stuff.

(I got a brief and wonderful flashback to that eerie childhood dread earlier today when I saw a full-on fucking clown with facepaint, nose, bright red wig, and clownsuit driving a late model economy sedan, making that sort of bored/annoyed face everyone makes when they're driving. And you know when you see one clown in a car, there are like fifty more you don't see. WoooOOOoooOOOOO.)
posted by ernielundquist at 3:03 PM on October 31, 2015 [6 favorites]