I'm Lauren Orton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we search the nation's

news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

Strangers, we assume that you, as lovers of the unusual and unexplainable have attained a comprehensive knowledge of the weird.

Alien terminology, cryptozoological details, every flavor of ghost imaginable.

And then there are the urban legends.

Our modern myths, with a strain of horror that are told like truth, you know, something that happened

years back, over in that one town.

Or maybe they happen to a friend of a friend, that story of the hook dangling

from the car door handle after a close call at a lover's lane, that fried rat in a bucket of chicken

from the fast food joint. The bloody woman summoned in the mirror, we bet that you could

name a dozen more. But there is another strain of spooky story, one that's unique to the 21st century,

that has a fully digital origin, the creepypasta.

The line between an urban legend and a creepypasta is admittedly a bit blurry, but creepy

pasta do tend to have some unique features.

They're horror stories that originate online, and they are meant to be fiction. Of course,

some do make it over to the other side, and they pass for real, and the lines, they do get blurred.

Sometimes they're connected with a specific image or video clip.

It's usually pretty easy to trace their origins if you do a little digging. You can find

when a story or meme first originated and began circulating on a board or site with just a little

effort. Plus, there are internet historians that have proven more than happy to create timelines

of how these legends have grown, and we do thank them for their service.

No doubt you have encountered many of the more famous examples.

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