Ted the Caver

Ted the Caver is a gothic hypertext fiction piece regarded as one of the earliest examples of 'creepypasta' or online horror legend. Published to the free Angelfire web hosting service in early 2001, it’s presented as the authentic hypertextual diary of a man called Ted and documents his exploration of a 'mystery' cave system. During publication, Ted the Caver gained broad popularity. Although this has since waned, it continues to be shared among those who discuss gothic experiences (Taylor, 2020).

Ted the Caver has been credited with pioneering two foundational aspects of online horror fiction—the use of real-time updates and the use of hyperlinks, the latter of which gave the work "a distinctive digital quality that could not have been reproduced on paper" (Crawford, 2019).

Works cited:

T. R. Taylor, "Horror Memes and Digital Culture," in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic, C. Bloom, Ed., Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 985-1003.

J. Crawford, "Gothic Digital Technologies," in Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion, M. Wester and X. A. Reyes, Ed., Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 73-86.