Penny Dreadfuls; The Original Creepypasta
Today when you imagine quick and cheap horror stories, you may think of the forums where people post creepypastas. Why are they called Creepypastas? Is it because they all revolve around evil Italian cuisines? No, it's just a portmanteau of creepy and copypasta which it itself is another portmanteau of copy and paste said in a funny way. That's not the point though. Creepypastas are the modern-day campfire stories we can get for no cost other than internet access.
Campfire stories have been enjoyed and told ever since man first developed language and would tell stories of their ancestors and the spirits of nature. As culture developed, many of these stories would take on a horrifying theme as a way to deter others from doing things against the village's values. Telling stories that warn against venturing out in the darkness, disobeying the elders, eating people even for survival, don't steal, don't cheat on your spouse, and don't be dishonest. Other such stories are born from problems of daily life. In Poland, we have the Poludnica or the Midday Lady.
A spirit who haunts farm fields in the middle of the day in the sunlight and would kill the farmers who lingered or worked for too long while she'd stalk her territory. Farmers would return home in the middle of the day to avoid being killed by this malicious spirit. Whether the adults really believed this or not, we know the story was told to children so they'd take shelter during the midday sun. The reason behind all of this? Heatstroke. There was no ghost killing farmers at noon, that was just when the sun was highest and the air dryest. Farmers would die of heatstroke in the middle of the fields out of nowhere and the villagers could not understand why. So it was attributed to the Midday Lady. Now, this is a scary story to hear for most people at the time. It wasn't just scary, it was a word of warning for everyone. This would not be the case forever though.
Eventually, people would begin to find entertainment in such tales. As civilization grew and life became safer and safer for the average individual, such stories would seem more fantastical and cut from their roots. People would begin to be more entertained by scary stories. And in the 1800s of Victorian England, such stories would become commercialized as the Penny Dreadfuls or Penny-Bloods as others would call them.
Penny Dreadfuls were short tales of true crime and horror that you could buy from local newspaper stands and bookstores. Some were even sold during public executions. An interesting time indeed. Filling your head with cheap horror while someone else loses theirs. Since public executions were also considered public and family events, it was a nice, wholesome time for everyone. Well, for everyone but the executed. Anyway, the first official Penny Dreadful was Lives of the most notorious highwaymen, footpads and murderers. It could be considered the first true-crime book and what set off the trend. It was an anthology of biographies of some of England's most notorious highwaymen and murderers at the time. Nothing fantastical, but interesting nonetheless. Later, the stories would begin to become more fictitious, deviating from real criminals to tales of vampires, the undead, and the monstrous. The Penny Dreadfuls would also be where everyone's favorite serial-killer barber would begin with The String of Pearls. While the name may seem strange for such a character, the reason for the title is that the story is about a sailor who got a pearl necklace for his lover and was last seen entering Sweeney Todd's establishment. Sweeney Todd was just the villain of that individual story and was so popular, he got many more stories after. So popular was the story that before the series even finished, it got its own stage production.
In 1959 while the Penny Dreadfuls were still at the height of popularity with over 100 publishers catering to the masses, the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 was passed by Parliament. This act was intended to outlaw obscene pieces of media and art. Penny Dreadfuls were relatively spared by this act despite all the graphic and terrible depictions in the stories with murder, blood, gore, nudity, and so on. It was still considered fringe media despite its popularity. That is until certain trends hit it as well. Throughout the life of Penny Dreadfuls, it would go through seasonal trends depending on what people were most into just like modern movies and video games. It started with true-crime stories to mockeries of the aristocracy to serial killers to detective crime. The stories slowly started to appeal to younger audiences, particularly young boys, and publishers catered to that. Started making stories of troubled youth making their way through an unforgiving world. The most infamous of these young boy stories is The Wild Boys of London which ran from 1864-1866.
Penny Dreadfuls would continue for a few more years into the late 1870s before totally falling out of popularity as public resentment grew towards the property. Today, we continue the Penny Dreadful spirit with the creepypasta boards. My favorite being
Sources Used...
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160502-the-shocking-tale-of-the-penny-dreadful
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/purchasing-power-of-a-penny-in-1870/284114
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepypasta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27512949
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/lives-of-the-most-notorious-highwaymen-footpads-and-murderers
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