The narrator begins kindergarten at age five, and his teacher, in an attempt to teach her students about the geography of their town as well as foster nascent writing skills, created a pen pal project for her students. The first two chapters are golden, truly creepy and leaving the reader with the task of deciding the reality of the situations the author presents, especially in the first chapter, “Footsteps.” The first two chapters are not in chronological order – “Footsteps” takes place when the narrator is six, “Balloons” takes place when he is five – so I am going to discuss “Balloons” first because it will make this discussion easier to follow. Penpal is the story of a young man’s very disturbing childhood, and his attempts to make sense of what happened to him and his friends.
Luckily, Dathan’s stories didn’t fall victim to people unclear on the concept until the stories had enough traction that such nonsense didn’t affect them, but if you Google any element of this book, one of the autofill menu items will always be “is penpal based on a true story” or some variant.īut such is the risk of engaging in writing and theater online – if you do it well it will be indistinguishable from real life to those who never read the community guidelines.
Newcomers were analyzing exif data trying to disprove his story, doing their best to track him down on other social media sites and doxx him to prove it was a hoax and it all got quite ruined for those who understood what was going on. Natesw’s story got so barraged by people unclear on the concept of nosleep that he more or less abandoned it. The readers interact with the author of the story as if the author is the protagonist or in some manner part of the story, and the author responds in character when replying in comments. You see, nosleep operates as if all the stories posted there are true. Unfortunately going viral was probably the story’s undoing because it caused an influx of people into nosleep who had no idea how the community worked and didn’t read the sidebar rules. It was a creepy and well-executed story, and it went viral. For example during the summer of 2014, Reddit user natesw posted an account of how his dead girlfriend was talking to him via Facebook chat. But sometimes some excellent gems are posted to the subreddit. Some are so bad they are of the “then who was phone” variety. Nosleep and the phenomenon of “creepypasta” have expanded into YouTube serials wherein voice actors read the stories, but it has to be said that most of the stories that get posted and then turned into audio-videos are mediocre.
The book has had moderate success and has even been optioned for a film.
#Penpal reddit nosleep series#
Dathan posted a series of stories to “nosleep” that became so popular that he expanded them, eventually self-publishing the stories as Penpal, using his Reddit name, 1000Vultures, as the name of his publishing company. Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: Because it is both excellent and terrible.Īvailability: Published by 1000Vultures, you can get a copy here:Ĭomments: If you are a Redditor and subscribe to “nosleep” then chances are you are already aware of Penpal and Dathan Auerbach. Type of Book: Fiction, short story collection, horror
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