The best creepypastas that never made it into movies

Pen-pal

While many creepypastas are designed to take on the status of mythic urban legend and be remixed via the Internet, Pen-pal takes a clearly different approach. Originally posted on Reddit’s r/nosleep forum and then adapted into a novel, Pen-pal is the standalone work of a special author: Dathan Auerbach, also known as 1000Vultures. As such, it combines the usual creepy first-person narrative with some creative writing flair.

Told over six episodes (starting with “Footsteps” and ending with “Friends”), Pen-pal finds an anonymous author who remembers strange things that happened to him as a child and slowly comes to realize that he was followed in his youth by an obsessive stalker. Pen-pal isn’t the most obvious choice for a movie adaptation, as it’s less visual than its creepypasta peers. But it’s easy to imagine a world where the story of losing childhood innocence ends up as a thoughtful indie horror title.

Borrasca

Borrasca came as close to becoming a movie as a creepypasta can get without actually becoming one. That’s because this four-part series, originally written by Rebecca Klingel, aka The_Dalek_Emperor on r/nosleeplaunched the author into the world of both podcasting and television. Borrasca himself became one critically acclaimed narrative podcast starring Cole Sprouse. Meanwhile, Klingel caught the attention of horror maestro Mike Flanagan and joined the writers for several of his Netflix series.

Borrasca led to big things because Borrasca is just very good. Like Pen-pal to that end, the story is framed as memories of the writer, Sam Walker’s, childhood, in which his family moves to the small town of Drisking in the Ozark Mountains. He soon discovers that Drisking has many strange features, including a distant grinding noise that supposedly comes from ‘Borrasca’. Although Borrasca has already had its day in the podcast world, it deserves a chance to bring its creepy mountain vibes to the big screen as well.

The Dionaea House

The Dionaea House dates all the way back to the old internet from 2004, before the concept of a creepypasta even existed. Written as a series of emails, blogs, letters and other correspondence media, The Dionaea House told a series of connected stories about a haunted house with a hunger for souls that transcends time and space. The series, written by Eric Heisserer, wasn’t limited to a single web house (Reddit was in its infancy and r/nosleep wouldn’t arrive until years later) and as such, it can be difficult to get the full story. Happy the Creepypasta Archive maintains it as best it can.

Frankly, it’s shocking The Dionaea House hasn’t become a movie yet. Although it must be said that this did not happen for a lack of trying. Heisserer turned the story over to Warner Bros. in 2005. and almost certainly became the first creepypasta author to do so. The idea went through several iterations, name changes, and media before finally ending up in development hell, where it will likely spend the rest of its days. That’s a shame, because the story only becomes more impressive and creepy as time goes on. If anything, the experience certainly launched Heisserer’s impressive career. The writer continued with pen Final destination 5, Birdhouse, Shadow and boneAnd Arrivalwhich earned an Oscar nomination for the latter title.