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I Told You To Smile



Estimated reading time — 2 minutes

It was the 2nd of January, 2:04 AM. I woke up to a knocking on the door. One knock every 3 seconds. I slipped on my slippers and walked down the stairs. As I walked down, the knocking on the door got faster, almost like a heartbeat. When I got to the door, the knocking stopped, I looked outside and nobody was there.

I went back up to my room and went back to bed, thinking it was just some kids playing a prank. At 4:21 AM I woke up to the front door slamming shut. I jumped, terrified. I looked over at my frosted window to find “smile” written all over it in the frost. I grabbed my phone next to me, ready to call 911, only to find a message written on it saying “I told you to smile”. I cried and ran for my life running outside.

As soon as I got outside I knocked on my neighbors house across the road. They answered and held me while I sobbed. They phoned the police. At exactly 5:42, the police came to my neighbors house after an extensive search of my house. They told me there had been no evidence at all of anyone in my house other than me. The messages on the window were gone, same with my phone. They told me to get some sleep and advised me to see the doctor about stress and anxiety problems. Fuck that. I knew what happened to me was real.

The following evening, after spending the day at my neighbors, I went home. I went up to my bedroom and set up a camera. It was aimed at my bedroom door and my bed. I set it to record and went to sleep. Thankfully, I slept through the night. However, as I watched the footage, I couldn’t believe what I saw.

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At 3 in the morning, something crawled out from under my bed. It was a completely naked, anorexic man. He stood  up and looked at me on the bed. He did so for another hour, not moving at all. Then he moved. He walked over to the camera until his face took up the whole shot. He was extremely pale and had bulging veins all over his head. His eyes were completely black, with a huge smile on his face. He stared at the camera for another two hours, not blinking, just slightly twisting his head every now and again.

After two hours of him staring went past, he walked back over to my bed and crawled back under. I skipped the video forward until it showed me getting up and walking over to the camera. The video finished. I was frozen with fear. The video showed him going back under, but not leaving. Whatever it was, it was still there.

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Credit: Robert Cherry

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86 thoughts on “I Told You To Smile”

  1. This story definitely has the potential to be creepy…but it just plain doesn’t work out too well for me, and here’s why.

    Firstly, the second half of the story feels completely disconnected with the first half. What does the thing under his bed have to do with the knocking on his door and the message on his window and phone?

    Secondly, why didn’t the narrator call the police and show them the footage? This can be applied to a lot of creepypasta, but this one in particular actually acknowledges that the police exist, which makes it hard for me to suspend my disbelief. And don’t give me any of this “he was too scared to move” bullshit.

  2. RoseByAnyOtherName

    Scary stuff, but I couldn’t help but think this was either a Jeff the Killer story. Or maybe it was Jigsaw. No mention of red swirly cheeks though. Maybe Jigsaws Dad?

  3. Uh… and? The man was still under the bed and the narrator is simply contect to rely this information and leave it at that? Had there been an external narrator (read: third person instead of first) it might have made sense, but if I am telling something that happened to me, I don’t stop at a cliffhanger. Whoever was listening to me after “it was still there” would ask me what I did about it.

    1. I see what you mean, thanks alot for the feedback, makes alot of sense what youre saying, I’ll keep that kind of thing in my mind

    2. Protagonist wanted proof that someone was in his house, screwing with his mind. He got it in the form of a horrific revelation — that the “intruder” wasn’t human, and had been in his house all along. Story ends with a bang right there, regardless of the perspective: as the payoff was the revelation, everything that comes next is unnecessary. We don’t need to know what the protagonist does after the revelation any more than we need to know who he was talking to, nor why, nor what led to the topic of the intruder, etc. This author knew what he/she was doing: crafting a spooky campfire tale. I’m guessing you’ve never been camping.

  4. Yeeahh...about this story....

    Yeeaahh…could you add a little more to the story? That would be great…oh and im gonna need you to come in on Saturday…yeah.

  5. This was a really good read. I agree that the story could have been spread out. It was tasty, but left me wanting more. Still one of the better pastas.

  6. Dr. Marcus Donato

    It’s okay. I didn’t need to sleep tonight. Or for the rest of the week. FUCK, THE RUSSIAN SLEEP EXPERIMENT…!

  7. Seriously? Its exactly 3:00 in the morning right now… I was gonna get up and make myself some romen noodles. But now…. fuckkkkk thattt. Great story though… sure scared me :c

  8. Omg I have a notebook I wrote on the front but it says smile on the side its not even my handwriting it wasnt me that wrote it…

  9. It has potential but the writing was lazy. Especially the part where the man was described as anorexic. That doesn’t even make sense because anorexic isn’t a synonym for skinny, since there are more anorexic people out there who aren’t skinny than there are skinny ones. It would actually make it even more creepy if you actually described his thinness! Something like “He was so thin that his gray, paperlike skin clung to his bones in a sickening way, and he even seemed to lack muscles.” would have helped and amped up the creepiness at least a bit!
    I’ll give it a 6 because it could be decently creepy if written less blandly!

  10. A lot of things irk me about this pasta. First of all, your usage of ‘anorexic’ is incorrect and borderline offensive, whether or not you intended it to be. You could have said “sickly thin”, “bone thin”, etc. The ‘monster’ you described reminded me a lot of The Rake; not original.
    The last point I’d like to make is in regards to your plot-holes and awkward sentences… things that could be corrected by proof-reading.

  11. I read this story yesterday, and it had me up til 6 AM this morning thinking that something was going to crawl out from under my bed. I guess not a lot of other people think this is very scary, but this is the only pasta that’s scared me so much. Good job.

  12. To answer some confusion going on in the comments, my interpretation was that the creature/man was knocking, then when the door slammed that was the creature/man entering. It told her to smile by writing “smile” in the frost on the window. The protagonist obviously did not smile, so then the text message was sent, “I told you to smile”. So I was not confused.

    I thought this was very creepy, especially the part after the camera was brought into play. What I wish, though, is that you would have slowed it WAY down. It felt incredibly rushed, and the random “fuck that” took me out of the story for a moment. More details, more drawn out scenes, and this would be a 10/10 for me. As is, I gave it 7/10 for creep factor at the end :)

    1. I actually like the “Fuck that”. It was sudden; at one point, the neighbors are holding the sobbing protagonist, and a couple of sentences later she’s all like “Fuck you, son’t tell me what to do, I know what’s happening to me is real”. I wasn’t really concentrating, and the “Fuck that” woke me up. :)

  13. It was really generic, if not a bit bland until the very last sentence. The last sentence changed my rating on this one XD Good story. *fist bump*

        1. My bed is one of those that you have to pull apart and lift the other part up in order to assemble it, and there is space below it for sheets ad stuff. When I was little, my brother and I took turns hiding in that space. I now imagine a corpse there, since I don’t have space under the bed that a monster can crawl out from underneath. However, I imagine the liftable side of the bed (because my bed is literally split in two parts; one that you pull and the other that you lift, under which is the coffin/place for bed sheets) being pushed be the corpse underneath, and since I sleep on the pull side of the bed, it can now do whatever the hell it wants to me.

          Wow, I just realized how much I (hypothetically) talk. Ever since I started posting comments, I have been posting too much. I even described my fucking bed to everyone!!!!
          But, hey, good idea for a pasta, right?? :P

        2. Devil's Advocate

          That, honestly sounds like a couch bed. The whole pull and lift thing. But my bed isn’t on the ground, and I’m this close to having my roommate check under the bed every night.
          This pasta preys on the fear of “the monster under the bed” or in the closet. A fear nearly all people have as kids. And I love it.

  14. You simply need to make the wording more serious sounding. Not using the phrase ‘ran for my life’ :3 really good story though. I think you should have made it longer though.

  15. You simply need to make the wording more serious sounding. Not using the phrase ‘ran for my life’ :3 really good story though. I think you should have made it longer though.

  16. I loved the 2nd half of this story. The overall idea was good, but the part before the camera was set up, and the part after feel like 2 different stories.
    Still, 8/10.

  17. Very cool idea. Only, if the creature was under his bed, why was it knocking on the narrator’s door? And if the police went to the house, why didn’t they find it? Where did this thing come from? Why is it emaciated? Why is it haunting the narrator? When did it tell the narrator to smile before the message? Now, even with all these questions, there were few, if any, typos and the mystery is nice :) obviously. xD please, continue to cook up some yummy pastas! i give it a 6/10

  18. Really good, really creepy! I think “anorexic” would have been better as “emaciated” or similar, though, as the former is an eating disorder and not a physical appearance.

  19. THEN WHO WAS....nevermind...

    This was pretty cool! I would be super freaked if that happened to me. But WHO WAS NAKEDNESS??? lol…seriously great story!

  20. I like this one! It leaves some to imagination and has decent descriptive power behind it. A very good pasta, I would eat again. Possibly even have thirds, at the risk of felling like a fatty haha.

      1. Desdinova salacious crum

        It is a shameful thing that this generation cannot speel correctly at all! “at the risk of ‘felling’ like a fatty’ and” about that ‘wierd’ have thirds more of pasta”. Such a shame, people. If you suspect that you don’t know how to corrrectly usse grammer, then pleaze at lest use yore auto corrrect functions on your phonez/computeres! Tsk tssk!

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