Creepypasta Review: "1999"

I've had a long fascination with internet horror. It started when I was 11, when I got really into creepypastas. For most of my adolescence I was obsessed with them. Not obsessed as in I thought about them every day, moreso that I read them frequently and watched a lot of Creepypasta readings on YouTube. I have many fond memories of reading new stories that occasionally kept me awake and a little bit afraid come night.

Of course, I and many others have come to realize a lot of old creepypastas haven’t exactly held up well, and were never very good to begin with. I often hear people say things along the lines of “mascot horror ruined internet horror”. But let’s be real, internet horror had already ruined itself long before Five Nights at Freddy’s or even Slender: The Eight Pages came along. Most old creepypastas were really cheesy ghost stories that felt primarily aimed at 11-14 year olds looking to be edgy (so I was the exact right age when these stories were at their peak). Even the name “creepypasta” is kind of inherently stupid.

I don’t plan on making a series reviewing creepypastas nor can I guarantee I’ll ever do this again, but I felt like looking back on some of the ones I remember. And so this is a blog post of my review for the creepypasta “1999”. I can’t exactly remember the first time I read this one, but I don’t remember being particularly impressed with it.

And after reading it again all these years later, yeah I can see why. This isn’t a very good horror story, let alone a good story overall.

This should go without saying but this will include spoilers for the entire story so if you want to read it yourself first, here’s your chance to look it up.

“1999” is about a guy named Elliot, who grew up in the town of Caledon, Ontario in the 90s. He was five years old and in Kindergarten in 1999, and he remembers occasionally watching children’s shows on a certain local channel called “Caledon Local 21”. The channel could only be picked up through a local signal on an old television set, of which he had in his room. Only people in Caledon could watch this channel.

If there’s one thing I will give this story credit for, it's the use of a “local legend” in a “local setting”. Many creepypastas capitalized on this, and it’s not hard to see why. The idea of some messed up and unsolved mystery in a small town is a good way to induce fear. It taps into the idea of old folklore being passed down from generation to generation, something very few people would know about. The fear of the old, vague, and unknown can be very powerful.

The beginning of the story sees Elliot detail what he remembers from watching Caledon Local 21 as a kid. He mainly remembers a show called “Mr. Bear’s Cellar” in which a man in a large bear costume (lmao and I literally just talked about FNAF in an earlier paragraph) invites children into his home and then into his dark cellar, to play games. 

I’m pretty sure there exists different versions of this story, because I swear one of the shows in the story was about a pair of scissors cutting off a child’s fingers, which never came up in my most recent reading. Honestly though, after reading one version of this story, I don’t feel like reading another.

The point is, all these shows take place in the same house and are by the same man, “Mr. Bear”, whose true name and identity is never revealed.

I do think the beginning of this story is pretty solid, and I do like the way some of the episodes are described. You can tell the narrator is trying hard to remember all he can, and it’s understandable how a child wouldn’t realize how sketchy the show clearly is. The narrator specifically mentions how it was hard to hear what the people were saying, and how the camera was shaky with bad video quality. He also makes it a point to say how dark the cellar was, only lit by a single oil lamp on a table. It sets a very good scene.

One episode involves two children playing hide and seek with Mr. Bear, with it ending on him counting. The episode never sees the game end or the children being found, it just stops. Another episode involves a boy looking to be about 11 saying loudly that his little sister needs to come home, and that it’s late. Mr. Bear shouts “you’re not invited” in response, even swearing at one point. The narrator describes how he watched this one with his friend at the time, and being 5-6 year olds, they obviously find the swearing really funny. The episode ends with the kid saying he’ll call the police, then getting chased by Mr. Bear, who's running straight for him. The kid screams, running up the stairs out of the cellar before the episode stops.

I’ll admit, it makes for a pretty creepy scene. And obviously it leaves you wondering the obvious questions, what happened to this kid? And where is his sister?

The narrator describes a later episode as just being Mr. Bear telling children to send letters to his address, so they can come “play” with him in his cellar. The narrator does this and gets a response back from Mr. Bear, happily inviting him over. The narrator’s father, who surprisingly sees absolutely nothing sketchy about this, takes him to the address, only to find a police officer at the house, cringing when the narrator asks about Mr. Bear. His father tells him to go back to the car as the police officer recounts what happened. The narrator is then driven back home, where he and his father never speak of Caledon Local 21 again.

So yeah, like I said, I think the set up of the story is pretty solid. It creates a good atmosphere, but that’s the thing, this is just set up, and only like a third of the actual story. The rest of it is where my problems start to begin.

“1999” is told as a series of blog posts by Elliot, who is trying to piece together the mystery surrounding Caledon Local 21, and who exactly “Mr. Bear” was. The problem is that this mystery goes on for far too long and nothing substantial or really scary happens for most of the story. There’s hardly any build up or tension so it becomes boring.

Creepypastas aren’t exactly known for being very long. After all, horror works best when it isn’t dragged on too much. That isn’t to say creepypastas can’t be longer, but “1999” is a good example of how NOT to do a long creepypasta, because the pacing here is pretty bad.

Hell, the mystery is already solved pretty early on, and there’s nothing left for the later parts to show that would be interesting. The narrator describes how his father would pretend Caledon Local 21 didn’t exist for most of his childhood, at least until he asked about it when he was 13. He’s told that the channel was created by a man to lure children into his cellar so he could kidnap them. The first assumption you might have is that this man is either a pedophile or child rapist, or that he just wanted to kill them, but that’s not fully the case.

Now, he DID kill the children, as revealed later on when the narrator says police found 16 charred corpses in the forest, but the reason why “Mr. Bear” did this is a bit more unique than in most creepypastas.

So why did he do it?

It was for a religious ritual, Mr. Bear was a satanist. This is revealed when Elliot’s blog gets multiple email responses from readers, some of whom grew up in Caledon and remember watching the channel, even remembering shows Elliot never watched. One of which was about a man going on about how we must all appease Satan before it’s too late.

I do like that the story throws this twist in there as again, it’s a bit more unique than the usual “he was a pedophile or murderer” angle most creepypastas go with. But once that’s revealed, there really isn’t any mystery left, and the story isn’t even HALF over.

Sure, we get some more info, like how Elliot gets in contact with someone who lived close to Mr. Bear’s house at the time, Anthony, who remembers “campfire ceremonies” and chanting happening at night when he lived there. One night Anthony went over to one and found an unkempt looking adult man who he described as looking like a crack addict, accompanied by many children, some as young as 4 and others as old as 17. Anthony asked what they were doing and the man replied they were just “going camping”, as they do a lot. Anthony told them to quiet down and left, never questioning them further. He says they didn’t quiet down.

Maybe another person to work together to solve the mystery with? Nope, nothing is ever done with this. Hell, it might even spoil later parts of the mysteries by making it abundantly clear “yes, this man killed the children through a religious ritual”. You could probably cut out this section and lose nothing.

As it goes, the rest of the story follows a very repetitive formula. Elliot says he’s surprised the blog has gotten as much attention as it has, apologizes for not updating in so long, then tells the reader about his current life situation. Multiple times he says he’s gone back to Caledon to try and “get closure” on this mystery.

A mystery which again, has pretty much already been solved. Mr. Bear was a satanist who lured kids to his cellar to kidnap them, then later went out to the woods with them to burn them to death in a religious ritual. What more could this story possibly give us? If there is an answer to that question, this story definitely doesn’t have it.

Like I said, Elliot says he went back to Caledon at multiple points, even running into some teenagers with a fort in the woods there, who know about the “Mr. Bear” legend. They even tell him the man has been spotted around a storm drain, likely a fake story, especially as the narrator finds nothing there. While writing the blog the narrator also gets multiple presumably fake emails from “Mr. Bear”, telling him to come and play with him. Nothing ever comes from any of this.

Elliot is also said to be working with the police department in these blogs, particularly with one man named Mitchell, his dad’s friend, and our pay off to this is three different scenes of him watching evidence tapes which are not nearly as shocking or disturbing as the story seems to think.

The first one shows the same boy who ran from Mr. Bear up the stairs in that one episode being made to drink a certain “juice” while Mr. Bear sings about how important Vitamin C is. The boy is accompanied with a bunch of other children who drink it with no hesitation, while he is clearly reluctant.

The second one shows a bunch of unconscious, living bodies of children being piled up in a large hole under a tarp, about to have gasoline poured on them. The third and final one shows the children actually burning to death, ending by showing the Mr. Bear costume nailed to a cross.

While these tapes might be shocking in theory, they’re not described in a particularly disturbing way. And again, they’re not telling us anything we don’t know. Finding out how exactly the children got burned is not that significant of a reveal, and certainly not worth all the time it took to get there. By the time we get to the tape, all I’m thinking is “is it over yet”.

The narrator keeps telling us throughout “I was almost one of those kids”. And he was, according to the story Mr. Bear’s house was raided by police literally the day before his father took him there, with “Mr. Bear” escaping before being found. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Elliot is never currently in any danger in the story. The stakes are very low, and the last three tapes are spaced too far apart.

“Mr. Bear” is still out there, according to the author. Which doesn’t mean much of anything because as long as Elliot isn’t living in Caledon (which he specifies he isn’t), he’ll be fine. It’s such a throwaway line too, it’s just kind of said and given no weight. 

After seeing the tape of all the children burning to death, the story ends on a pretty anticlimatic note. Overall, this story had a fairly strong beginning but just dragged on too much after the set up. Is it scary? Not really. It has its moments in the beginning but most of it is boring and uneventful. The story may have been cool for its time, but it has not held up well and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Rating: 5/10

I do hope you liked this blogpost. I can’t guarantee I’ll do something like this again, but I might if I feel like it. Anyway, have a nice day!