Fan fiction can be a weird thing. Authors can use it to create scenes that never happened, like a particularly raunchy Mulder/Scully roll in the hay, or just use characters from an existing product—Twilight, let’s say—to create something totally new, a la 50 Shades Of Grey.
And then there’s the really weird stuff. As The Daily Dot pointed out earlier this week, there are currently quite a few horror-based fan fiction stories being published involving beloved childhood icons. Take, for instance, Squidward’s Suicide, where “a Nickelodeon intern finds a discarded, cursed SpongeBob Squarepants episode spliced with images of childhood mutilation.” The story ends with the action its title suggests, with disturbing imagery about how “Squidward’s sobbing sounded real, as if the sound wasn’t coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holes the sound was coming through from the other side.”
Other stories, like Dead Bart—a Simpsons take with an act one that “ends with the shot of Bart’s corpse”—and Pokémon Black also exist, with more popping up every day on sites like 4chan and Reddit. The genre even has a name—Creepypasta—as well as an entire wiki. The whole phenomenon might sound a little Slender Man, but it’s well worth a deep dive into the darkness if the whole thing intrigues you. You’ll find some weird shit, but isn’t that what the internet is for?