31: Scary Stories of the Internet

Somehow I got onto this genre kick late last night and I haven't been able to quit: web-based "scary" stories.

What I mean here is a particular kind of scary story that tends to be in an epistolary format, sometimes with multiple interconnecting narrator/characters, who may have their own blogs, websites, or at least are distinct users on a common platform.

The idea is to have these stories seem real. In fact, I discovered this whole part of Reddit, No Sleep, where as a rule readers interact with the storyteller and each other as if the story is true.

Anyway, here are the ones I've found the most fun so far:

The Dionaea House, by Eric Heisserer
This one was put together by the author back in 2004-2006 while he was trying to shop a movie script. He never meant it for public consumption, more as a calling card, but word got around. It's good fun, but obvious from the host website that it's fiction.

Correspondence, by "bloodstains"
If this one doesn't give you the willies, you aren't paying attention. It's structured as if there is some "thing" at play in the internet that is able to intercept and transmit anything that may be online, from emails to text messages to 911 calls to news articles, into this compilation of "correspondence" detailing a complex story of hauntings, possession, and murder. The devil is in the details here: photos, video, the incorporation of real events and reader feedback into the story, and the cultivation of blogs and ostensibly "real" Reddit users as characters over the course of years. It started being told four years ago and was updated as recently as October.

I found a videotape on the beach a few weeks ago. by "hauntedtape"
Just go to Stinson Beach tomorrow. There's something you need to see.