#Best nosleep stories of all time for free

For a while, he said, it even killed his love of writing. And as Lea saw more and more people narrating, sharing and adapting The Expressionless, he started growing more and more frustrated. Some took it without credit, while others said they couldn't afford to pay him. The outcome, Lea explained, was a lot of people trying to profit off his work. I was naive, as so many bright-eyed writers and performers are when they get thrust into such a bright spotlight.' 'Even when they asked permission, I just agreed and thought exposure was better.

#Best nosleep stories of all time for free

'YouTube culture was different in those days and attributing works for free was just a given, nobody thought about the consequences,' he explained. Lea described the fallout as immediate and everlasting. 'I mean *exploded* to the point that Twitter was freaking out over it, Snopes had to run a debunking article on it and YouTube influencers left, right and centre were jumping on it to react.' 'Within 24 hours it had exploded,' Lea told Mashable. How Reddit is helping horror writers find success At the encouragement of a friend, he decided to upload it to the CreepyPasta Wikia. Back in 2012, during a creative writing lesson at university, Lea wrote a short horror story called The Expressionless. Like many NoSleep writers, Lea has firsthand experience with this issue.

The fight for fair compensation.Īlthough the closure of NoSleep was only announced a week ago, its roots go back further.Īt the start of February, British horror writer and NoSleep contributor T-Jay Lea created something called The Writers Blackout – a 'movement designed to help authors receive fair compensation from YouTube narrators via direct mediation and/or advice from experienced writers,' according to the pinned FAQ at the top of the subreddit's page. So what is the closure all about, and how did it start? As a horror writer and regular NoSleep poster myself, I've been following the situation as it's unfolded. Thousands of readers across the world, many of whom check in for their nightly dose of scares, will be met with the above message. The stories posted there regularly receive thousands of upvotes (the all-time most upvoted story has around 38,000), and a huge number of new stories are posted each day. It's no exaggeration to say that a huge number of people will be affected by this closure.Īccording to the tracking tool Reddit Metrics, Reddit is currently home to almost two million subreddits – and in terms of subscriber count, NoSleep is in the top 50 overall. NoSleep has gone private in support of its authors.