Every now and then there’s something I discover that I just become absolutely fascinated with. This summer, that was creepypasta, and in particular, one called Candle Cove. I shared it on here and I think most of my followers saw it, and I tagged it, so it got several notes.

The thing is, I never realized until last night that it had an “extended universe” of sorts. With that in mind, I have this overwhelming urge to contribute to it. All the other stories are fan made and I really want to explore it. Excuse me, I’m just thinking out loud here, so if you wanted any sort of conclusion, you should probably just stop reading right now. But the thing is, there are several directions I could take it and I don’t know which would be best received, or (more importantly) which would create a more intriguing story.

There was one comment in particular that I found on “Lullaby Rock” that explained this idea that in 71 and 72, the years Candle Cove was supposedly aired, NASA was doing experiments on the way children receive low-frequency radio waves, and Candle Cove was simply that vessel. Now, that is a brilliant conclusion in my opinion, but it sort of takes away some of the sinister nature of the show. There’s another idea, though, that was received with much less enthusiasm, but which I think has a lot of merit.

In another spin-off I read, the guy was doing interviews with the cast and crew of the show, trying to learn more about it. The major beef is with this approach is that he didn’t address the idea that the show didn’t exist at all. There are some implications you can take away from that story, but still, it makes that whole element convoluted. However, if you do address the ambiguous existence of the show more directly, I think the idea of tracking down crew members and set pieces could yield really haunting results. 

The main problem I’ve noticed among these add-ons is that they’re simply not well-received. I still feel like I’m missing pieces of the story, though. People keep talking about other installments in the “Candle Cove mythos” but I haven’t found any past the 4 shared on the Creepypasta wiki. I’ve tried briefly to investigate Ichor Falls, the horror site CC was originally posted on, but that whole community has its own thing going on.

The last thing I wanted to share is that in the story in which the author is interviewing cast, crew, etc., he mentions 3 other fictional shows: Jumbo’s Circus, Fisherman Fred, and Sunshine City. These, in my professional, doctoral opinion, are absolutely seething with potential. Honestly, these might be the missing links to making that story better in the eyes of those who were too critical of his leaving out the psychological details of CC. Here’s the idea: these were all shows like Candle Cove- no one knows if they were real or not, but it’s a shared experience, possibly rooted in some bigger conspiracy with a vaguely sinister nature. I don’t know, I feel like that’s an idea I can run with, especially since the CC community is very critical and I’ve never written creepy pasta before.

All I know is that right now, I’m intrigued and I’m driven. I’m just daunted by my total lack of experience in this sub-genre of writing. We’ll just have to see. After all, if I want to find out anything,

I have… to go… INSIDE.