Creepypasta: Candle Cove

Creepy kids show is creepy

Today I am writing to you about the creepypasta Candle Cove.

This creepypasta is told through a series of forum posts, a unique way to convey a story. The writers in said forum are reminiscing abut a television show they watched as children but can find no reference to outside their conversation.

This creepypasta is highly effective in what it does. It is short and to the point, laying down a tense atmosphere despite it simply being people discussing a show they watched years ago.

Summary

The story opens with a post from user: Skyshale033 asking if anyone of the forum remembers a television show called Candle Cove which was a local children’s show in the early 1970’s. They assume it is a local show due to them not being able to find a reference to it anywhere.

User: mike_painter65 responds claiming to recall the show, querying if it involved pirates. The Pirate Percy character seemed to be cobbled together from other dolls and had a creepy a porcelain baby head.

They are joined by user: Jaren_2005 who remembers more details, the plot being that a little girl would visit Candle Cove in her imagination and befriend the pirates.

The three continue to reminisce, recalling the talking pirate ship saying, “you have…to go…INSIDE.” It would send Pirate Percy into places he was afraid to go. The recall the shows villain ‘The Skin-Taker’ a skeleton with a hat and cape, they describe the puppet, and it sounds terrible and would often make threats to the little girl, saying his jaw moved funny so he could grind her skin.

The three recall an episode which user: Skyshale033 believed to be a nightmare, where the show faded in from black, and the camera cut to each of the character’s faces but there was no dialogue, the characters were simply screaming. The little girl would be moaning and crying. This would terrify user: Skyshale033 who had wet the bed multiple times due to this. User: Skyshale033 is hesitant at first as they are convinced this was a nightmare, but the other two recall the exact same experience.

The story ends with user: mike_painter65 posts a message stating he visited his mother and brought up the tv show. She was confused at first, and then explains that it was a made-up show, it did not exist. User: mike_painter65 would announce that he was going to watch Candle Cove and then sit in front of the television for 30 minutes or so staring at static.

My thoughts

I really enjoyed this creepypasta, it is short but effective.

The description given to the aesthetic of the show is chilling, with its broken puppets made from other puppets and its ship that swallows the ocean. The villain, The Skin Taker sounds like absolute nightmare fuel.

I also think the use of puppets in the story is very deliberate, puppets can be creepy as all hell with some people having a natural aversion to them. That concept layered onto the description of these puppets in particular is enough to unsettle most audience members.

I have said before in my comments on 1999, that one of the reasons this type of story is so effective is because it has bits of truth in it. Many of us will recall stories and television shows we were told or watched as children, only when looking back on them know we find that they were a hell of a lot darker than we realised as children.

Admittedly, this story takes it a step further and has the show not actually exist, at least not outside of the minds of these the people. But that only raises the mystery element, if the show was just static then why do several people have such clear memories of it, clear identical memories. How many people watched this ‘unreal’ show? How the hell did the children watch it if all they were doing was looking at static? Was it supernatural or scientific?  What was its motivation? Why broadcast such a thing?

None of these questions are answered, the forum thread simply ends after the reveal and we are left unsettled and confused. Normally, leaving your audience without a satisfying ending would mean the story itself would not work, yet this story manages to pull it off in my opinion. We will never find out the answers to the questions but that is ok, the story is more effective as a creepy unsolved mystery than it would be if everything were explained.