Note: this is not meant to be a serious article proposal; this is to core an article and will make too many conclusions for this to ever be the work of one person. Such an article will need to be a community work; this is simply meant for me to jot down a decade’s worth of notes and sources regarding confic. Anyways, onward to the “article”

Collaborative, decentralized storytelling is as old as human history itself. Such stories take the form of mythology, folklore, camp fire tales, tall tales, fearsome critters, and urban legends.

Horror fiction has been present on the Internet and its predecessors since at least 1990, when horror stories were being posted in Usenet groups such as alt.folklore.urban, alt.horror, and alt.horror.creative. Some of these early internet horror stories were pre-existing urban legends such as Bloody Mary while others were written by authors who wanted to break into the publishing business. Regardless of source though, these stories were being shared and re-distributed across the early internet throughout the 1990s.^[1]Crawford, pages 72-73 Quite possibly the most significant horror tale of the era was the Black Eye Kids (or BEKs for short).^[2]Crawford, page 73 The Black Eyed Kids are strange children with black eyes who attempt to gain entry to people’s cars or houses.^[3]Wayback Machine (archive.org) The oldest extant tale regarding the Black Eyed Kids was shared on a ghost discussion mailing list in 1998 and was later reposted to alt.folklore.ghost-stories.^[4]Wayback Machine (archive.org); Crawford, page 73 Probably the first significant online horror fiction of the 21st century was Ted the Caver, the online blog of a caving enthusiast named Ted.^[5]Ted’s Caving Page, with the story of his discovery in a local cave. (angelfire.com) (archive) Hosted on Angelfire, the blog described Ted’s exploration of a mysterious cave system complete with strange winds, screaming, and mysterious hieroglyphics. The blog ran from March 23, 2001 to May 19, 2001. The final blog post consisted of Ted stating he would be exploring the cave system one final time and that he would provide answers once he got back.^[6]https://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page10.html (archive) Another major internet horror story of the era was the “The Dionaea House.” The story, about an Eldrich abomination type-house, was spread across blogs, a Livejournal, and a website; the story was published from 2004-2006.^[7]Crawford, page 76

4chan was created in 2003.^[9]Modest Web Site Is Behind a Bevy of Memes – WSJ.com (archive.org) By the spring of 2006, so-called “creepy threads” starting appearing on /b/;^[10]/b/ – Random » Thread #7265365 (sage.moe) (archive) these increased in frequency and by June it was not uncommon for multiple “creepy threads” to be posted in a single day.^[11]see, for example, /b/ – Random » Searching for posts that contain ‘creepy thread’ and that are only OP posts. (sage.moe) (archive) Within these creepy threads, an anon would usually post something along the lines of “creepy thread go!” and there would be discussions about horror related topics. These topics ranged from horror media, disturbing Wikipedia articles, bizarre paintings and images, and existing Internet horror (including Ted the Caver and The Dionaea House).^[12]See, for example, https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/9825922/ (archive) and https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/10477898/ (archive) )) Scary stories started to appear in these creepy threads. One of the earliest stories I’ve been able to locate is a July 11 story involving shadow people,^[13]see, for example, https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/10141860/#10142156 (archive) but these stories quickly spread off to other subjects.^[14]See, for example, https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/12377899/ (archive) As the year came to a close, it became common for entire threads of these creepy stories to be posted.^[15]See, for example, /b/ – Random » Thread #17046286 (sage.moe) (archive) By far the most common type of horror story being shared on /b/ were ritual pastas.^[16]For an archive of many notable ritual pastas, see the archived King of Wolves website. These ritual pastas were essentially instructions and descriptions about extraordinary locations and steps and rituals that could be performed at that location to either see something extraordinary or even get some benefit. These pastas generally lacked a protagonist beyond the reader themselves; second person was common. Some of the ritual pastas involved entities that were little more than curiosities. Others could be life-threatening and required the reader to follow specific instructions to stay alive. These ritual pastas would gain a new name by August 2006: creepypasta.^[17]https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/12294957, post # 12301955 (archive) Google Trends logged the term first in January 2007 and then again in March 2007; the term would be consistently and increasingly searched for from July 2007 onwards.^[18]creepypasta – Explore – Google Trends (archive) The paranormal /x/ board of 4chan was created on February 15, 2007; /x/ would go on to take the mantel of creepypasta from /b/.

The Holders are a set of creepypastas about 538 cursed Objects that must never be brought together for fear of some horrific but unspecified event occuring. In a typical Holders creepypasta, the reader (or Seeker) would be instructed to go to a mental hospital or other institution, ask to see the “Holder of [insert noun here], and then complete the trials of a so-called Holder. Failure would usually result in a fate worse than death; success or failure could potentially come down to random chance. If the reader successfully completed the Holder’s trial, they would win the Holder’s Object.

The original Holders creepypasta was entitled “The Holder of the End.” The oldest known post of this creepypasta was made on August 31, 2006 at 8:25 PM in the middle of a creepy thread on /b/.^[19]/b/ – Random » Thread #12344620 (sage.moe) (archive), post # 12351846 Whether this was the original post of the Holder of the End is unknown and essentially impossible to verify. Over the next several months, the Holder of the End would be routinely reposted on /b/. On October 3, 2006, the first known posting of a Holder’s Object other than the End (specifically, the Holder of the Beginning) occurred on /b/.^[20]https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/13737884/ (archive), post # 13746526 Following this point, the Holder of the End would be heavily reposted, but no evidence survives of either the Holder of the Beginning or any other Holders being posted or re-posted.  On December 19, 2006, a creepypasta entitled the “Holder of the Dark” was posted to /b/.^[21]https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/17529846/, post # 17530500 (archive) While this creepypasta was plainly modeled off of the Holder of the End, it was not a true Holder’s Object as the prize for completing the ritual was forbidden knowledge rather than an Object. On January 2, 2007, the Holder of the Beginning was re-posted in the middle of a creepy thread.^[22]https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/18293951/#18298279 (archive) On January 5, 2007, the Holder of the End, the Holder of the Beginning, and six new Holders were posted in a creepy thread.^[23]https://old.sage.moe/b/thread/18525751/ (archive) From thereon out, reposts and new Holders Objects were posted with increasingly frequency on /b/.

On January 7, 2007 at 5:21 PM, an anon posted the following:^[24]/b/ – Random » Thread #18632177 (sage.moe) (archive)

I’m writing the holders series into wikichan, it’ll be wikichan.org/wiki/Holders_series

Thus would be created the very first Confic community.

By mid-January, Holders Objects were drowning out other creepypasta on the /b/ creepy threads. During one such creepy thread on January 14, 2007, an anon asked if the Holders Objects were being saved to Wikichan; in response, multiple Anons posted links to a section of the Wikichan website dedicated to the Holders series. One poster commented with isntructions for contributing:^[25]/b/ – Random » Thread #19051352 (sage.moe) (archive)

Just find a number that isn’t taken, and write the next part of the story. If you can’t write, spell, or have bad ideas/grammar, don’t add one. We can finish them all eventually.

• Crawford, Joseph (2019). “Chapter 5: Gothic Digital Technologies.” In Wester, Maisha & Reyes, Xavier Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh University Press, pages 72-86.