Creepypasta

Creepypastas are a form of copypasta (a meme, story or message with the purpose of being spread across the Internet and emails, the name of which referring to the act of copying-and-pasting) as urban legends or otherwise horror phenomena, usually uploaded anonymously to cultivate that effect although this is not always the case. Having its origins in chain emails, they have been known to exist in the early 2000s, and grew immensely popular around 2008 with the introduction of popular figures such as Jeff the Killer and Slenderman.

Starting around 2011, a few games based on a handful of well-known creepypastas including Sonic.exe and Slender started to become an Internet trend and many more titles followed in their wake with varying reception and parodies.