The Cutprice Guignol

Friends, tuck yourself in, turn off the lights, and try not to think about that strange noise that just came from your bathroom – it’s time to get No Sleep.

Well, r/NoSleep, to be precise. NoSleep, created in 2010, is a forum on the site Reddit that’s populated by community of around eighteen million members, where writers can share their short horror fiction in the form of first-person Reddit posts. And, yes, you can find horror in pretty much every genre here, from killers to cosmic horror, ghosts to gore, puppets to putrescence – there are even some long-running series, like the iconic Correspondence or Penpal, which eventually got adapted into a book and has been since optioned for film.

Beyond just good writing, though, there’s an immersiveness to the horror of NoSleep that really separates it from other horror stories online. The house style of NoSleep, as defined by the guidelines of January 2025, call for fiction that is told as a personal experience from the point of view of the main character; the forum also enforces rules for authors and commenters to treat the story as real in forum discussions, essentially extending the storytelling into the comment section as a result. As with most other communities on Reddit, users are called on to engage with the posts as a matter of fact, not fiction, and it makes for one of the most effective aspects of the community.

This kind of immersion is what really makes this community so engaging to me, and such an effective horror delivery system. Social media has always been a prime place to explore horror because it naturally closes the gap between reader and story, in much the same way that found footage did a few decades ago – and there’s something profoundly unsettling about the feeling that horror is snaking its way into spaces that are meant to be limited to real life. While there’s obviously the tacit understanding that NoSleep is a community for horror fiction, these tales popping up amongst real-life stories and experiences ang being treated as such gives them a uniquely disquieting edge. Reading NoSleep gives me the same feeling I did when I was petrifying myself into a puddle of terror listening to my older brother’s friends tell me very true and real scary stories that happened to someone they knew right here but three years ago tonight, and that’s a fantastically effective side of horror to be able to tap into.

It’s part of the reason, I think, that the recent series focused on adapting some of these stories just didn’t quite work. Tales From the Void, a Screambox original that premiered last year with several adaptations of NoSleep stories, was something I’d been really looking forward to – with some great behind-the-camera talent like Joe Lynch and a small section at the end of each episode dedicated to discussing the story with the original writers, it seemed like they were genuinely trying to bring these stories to a new medium.

But, to be honest, most of the episodes fell pretty flat for me. Part of that was undoubtedly due to some of the liberties taken with the stories (let me tell you, that whistler story is one of my all-time favourites and what we got in Tales from the Void was just such a butchering of that) and some slight dodgery on the acting front, for sure. But I think a big part of it is because the NoSleep stories have the feel of the tale told by a campfire with a torch under the chin – you know, that “and I was that killer!” delivery that harkens back to classic oral tradition in horror. Delivered in more traditional formats like short film, they don’t have the same bite to them, and that’s a real disservice to how great these stories and the community that surrounds them are.

If you’re a fan of horror literature, it’s well worth putting aside a suitably stormy evening to go through some of the stories from this forum; there’s some genuinely brilliant stuff to sift through here, and, even when the stories aren’t up to an exceptional level of quality, there’s a sense of passion that permeates all of them in a way that I can’t help but enjoy. If you have any particular favourites, I would love to hear about them in the comments – and, if you enjoyed this article, check out my other writing on internet horror here and here!

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more stuff like it, check out my other blog, No But Listen, as well as my fiction work! You can also support me on Patreon to help keep my very demanding little cat in treaties, and me out of her clutches for another month yet.

(header image via Reddit)