The archetypes are universal, and further niches develop in internet subcultures.
Somewhere betweenAesops Fablesand YouTube ARGs,universalurban legendswith shifting details served as the most popular means of narrative warning.
In the 2009 true-crime documentary,Cropsey, filmmakersBarbara BrancaccioandJoshua Zemanrevisit the local story that shaped their upbringing.
Image by Nimesh Niyomal Perera
They might even come with a body count.
The initial premise is simple.
Take cameras onto Staten Island and attempt to trace the roots of the local lore.
Image via Breaking Glass Pictures
Let the community speak for itself and see what crops up.
And so the documentary cuts between various unnamed locals.
One man states that Cropsey was a former doctor turned sadist who carried a knife.
Image Via Cinema Purgatorio
Another describes Cropsey as a maniac who runs around with an ax.
Yet another man grew up with stories of Cropsey snatching kids around a nearby lake.
But soon,Cropseyoutgrows its original scope.
Image Via Cinema Purgatorio
More than documentarians, they become protagonists.
Both heard of Cropsey crawling through tunnels under abandoned psychiatric wards and hospitals.
As a teen, Zeman’s Cropsey lore became more specific.
His summer camp counselors believed he roamed the area between their campgrounds and a tuberculosis ward.
This is one of many variations on the Cropsey tale that will come to have a chilling truth attached.
For decades,Willowbrook was measurably cruel and neglectful to its patients.
A surprise visit from Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1965 revealed thousands of residents in extreme neglect.
The scandal of Willowbrook happened alongside several missing person cases, many of them children.
This would shape the urban legend and the community in disturbing ways.
Brancaccio and Zeman naturally connect these events to a sordid truth underneath the urban legend that defined their childhoods.
The more we tried to learn about him, the more bizarre the stories became.
It was becoming harder for us to tell the difference between the facts and the folklore.
Gather ‘round the campfire for these terrifying tales… D’Alessandro rejects this entirely.
Cropsey isnt pre-internet, but it is pre-creepypasta culture.
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