The Comforting Insanity of Creepypasta
How an online repository of horror fiction feels more real than ever in a post-Trump world
There’s something particularly — some might say obviously — horrific about the boogeymen of the real world. Everything they do, no matter how corrupt, vile, or sadistic, occurs within a realm of possibility, and no amount of reassurance changes that. Whispering “it’s only a story” doesn’t work. Every headline seems to bring us closer to the brink of something calamitous, a disaster that could easily be avoided by a more-competent group of degenerates. We’re watching franchises that will never stop churning out sequels because it’s too lucrative for their profiteers.
Framed against Capitol Hill’s B-movie villain contingent of greedy nihilists and backhanded cretins, I’ve come to find a strange kind of solace in an online horror project known as the Secure, Contain, Protect Foundation. Originally meant as a novice writer’s playground for creating new monsters, the SCP is entertaining not only for its oddities and creatures, but also for its ordered, clinical attempts to make sense of unpredictable, dangerous, and unchecked forces outside our comprehension.
The SCP Foundation is ostensibly the archive of a secretive, apolitical organization tasked with cataloging, guarding, and, if…
