The Digital Uncanny: Online Storytelling and the Spectral Logic of Creepypasta

Abstract The uncanny has long fascinated scholars across disciplines, and in the digital age, it finds new expression in Creepypasta, a genre of internet horror fiction that circulates through forums, social media, and image boards. This study attempts to explore the emergence of the "digital uncanny" as a defining affective and narrative mode within Creepypasta culture, focusing on how spectral logic shapes both its content and form. Drawing on theories of the uncanny and spectrality, the paper positions Creepypasta as a form of digital folklore that reimagines haunting for a networked era. These narratives, marked by liminal ontologies, absence of a stable authorial voice, and iterative circulation, blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, presence and absence. Rather than simply replicating traditional ghost stories, Creepypasta reconfigures haunting through mechanisms of anonymity, participatory storytelling, and mediated memory. This study argues that Creepypasta enacts a digital hauntology that channels contemporary anxieties surrounding memory, technology, and agency in a hypermediated world. Key Words: Uncanny, Spectrality, Digital Storytelling, Creepypasta