Creepypasta: Little Pink Backpack

Kids tell the creepiest stories

Today I am writing to you about the Creepypasta Little Pink Backpack.

The writer of this pasta has done interviews previously where she describes how when she was 19 years old, she came across a blank children’s notebook and had an urge to create something ‘creepy’ with it, hence the format of this Creepypasta.

I’d say she did a pretty damn good job.

Due to the visual nature of this pasta, I have included a link to a YouTube video covering it below.

As always spoilers below.

Little Pink Backpack is a story designed to look like it was written by a very young child, complete with drawings and spelling mistakes

The story is about a little girl with an imaginary friend called Lisa. Lisa immediately racks up the creepy points by talking about how her dead dad is buried by the sandbox.

There’s a slightly odd incident with a birthday party where people don’t come to the party but do leave presents on the porch.

There is a suspiciously missing teacher, aka was mean to Lisa and then went missing. This also seems to happen with the narrator’s father. The story ends with Lisa telling the narrator that the teacher and her father are sleeping (like her own dad whose sleeping under the sandbox) and the narrator wishing that they’d wake up soon.

My Thoughts

Little Pink Backpack is effective because of its short nature. It’s a little window into the child narrator’s world. Not even a window really, more a snapshot viewed from the perspective of a child.

You could interpret this story in two ways.

The first, Lisa is real, this little girl has a murderous imaginary friend who no one else can see yet can very clearly affect the ‘real’ world. The second is that Lisa is only an imaginary friend and is a construct created by the narrator to explain loss.

Personally, I find both interpretations to be pretty creepy, through in different ways and for different reasons.

Looking at the first interpretation, Lisa is some kind of ‘monster’ perhaps a ghost, that has attached itself to the narrator and is possessively killing those who could potentially come between her and the narrator. As I’ve said in other blogs, I am always keen on intangible threats, it’s why I liked the first Paranormal Activity film. The idea of something that cannot be seen, touched, or perceived with any of the senses but still has the power to affect the physical world is bloody terrifying. How do you stop something like that? You can’t even see it coming. It plays into a feeling of vulnerability and helplessness, as well as the mystery element of what the hell is it? Why is it acting the way it is? What can be done, if anything, to stop it?

The second interpretation is that Lisa is a construct, created by the narrator, a very young child, to deal with loss and a broken home. The fact that she was able to stay out walking until after dark, the lack of people at her birthday party and the pudding for lunch all hint at a level of neglect. Even the slew of gifts received for her birthday support this theory, aka the narrator’s birthday was forgotten, so no party was arranged, gifts were bought by the parents in a last moment panic, hence why there were several barbies. The fact that her father leaves and mother is angry could be that he was murdered by an infant’s imaginary friend or its more likely that the relationship has broken down and he is staying late at work to avoid coming home, or he’s having an affair.

The narrator being very young could imply that she simply doesn’t understand this type of loss. She interoperates everyone who leaves as being ‘sleeping under the ground’.

Overall, this is a very interesting story told in a very simple way, highlighting the fact that stories don’t have to be Game of Thrones length/detail in order to be effective. With horror, often less is more.