Penpal

Penpal evolved from a series of “creepypasta” short stories. Although creepypasta can be categorized under the umbrella genre of horror, Penpal’s redevelopment as a suspense novel provides insight into the cultural impact of creepypasta.

Though the term originally referred to works of text-based fiction, creepypasta now generally refers to any horror content that computer users generate and post on the Internet for public consumption. Broad production conditions allow it to take on multimedia forms, including videos and images as well as creepypasta literature. As a result, creepypasta is often seen as a reliable source for popular horror content, and different users to work together to expand a piece of content. The most notable example of creepypasta is Slender Man, a character created in 2009 by Eric Knudsen for the Something Awful website forum. Since its creation, Slender Man has become the subject of videos, games, and other media. Other popular examples of creepypasta include some of the Backrooms and SCP Foundation content.

Central to the definition of creepypasta is the use of the Internet. Unlike traditionally published horror fiction, creepypasta relies on the interactive qualities of Internet platforms to underscore the mood and dread of a given work of horror and to encourage user engagement. In the case of Penpal, the story first appeared in 2011 as a series of posts on the Reddit forum entitled r/nosleep, where verisimilitude and role-playing are accepted as given conditions. Both Dathan Auerbach, who wrote under the username “1000Vultures,” and the first readers of Penpal on Reddit assumed that the story was true since the text was formally indistinguishable from all other types of posts on the platform. Likewise, readers’ ability to respond to the story provided the author with a real-time feedback loop. Auerbach cited the positive reaction to “Footsteps” (the content in Chapter 2 of the book) as the impetus to complete and post a follow-up within a week (Barone, Matt. “‘Penpal’ Author Dathan Auerbach: From Anonymous Reddit Poster to Published Novelist.” Complex, 2013).

Auerbach originally envisioned the stories as self-contained works, allowing new readers to enter the series without prior knowledge of the earlier parts. By February 2012, five months after posting the final part of the series, Auerbach announced that he would be redeveloping the series as a novel under the title Penpal. Some of the revisions to the original stories emphasize the formal gap between creepypasta and traditional horror fiction. In the original stories, Auerbach directly addresses readers, referencing previous entries in the series while also occasionally referring to the r/nosleep forum. In addition, the published novel includes a prologue of sorts as its first chapter, entitled “Memories,” which did not appear as part of the original series of stories. This chapter helps explain the text’s nonlinear structure and establishes some of the thematic undertones that the story explores. Other than that, the stories remain largely unchanged, preserving the material as it originally appeared in 2011.

The popular reception that catalyzed Penpal’s redevelopment as a novel demonstrates the impact of stories released via nontraditional publishing formats. While the novel primarily exists as a way for Auerbach to gain support as an author, the original Penpal posts remain accessible on Reddit as of this writing.