Moral of the story: you can’t protect your child with lies. Tell them about the dangers of the world. About predators and stuff. As early as possible.
Poor Josh..

That might be the actual worst kindergarten assignment in the history of forever.

Penpal is one of those horror stories that gets worse the more you think about it

Penpal is a story I listened to when I was 17.  I thought it was disturbing back then.  As I got older, and listened to it over and over again, I realized just how shallow my initial understanding of the horror behind it was.  This and Borrasca are the scariest stories I've ever read/heard.

This story made me so fucking sick to the stomach, not even the comfort of vengeance was given, it was just pure sadness and despair.

Whats scary to me isnt just how monsterous the stalker was but how he can appear as a completely normal person

This isn’t even scary this is just hauntingly saddening the author is constantly going through it

I can't believe Veronica got put into the Family Guy death pose.

I'm such a penpalholic I will NEVER skip a reading of it. All it took was "and so they named the cat Boxes" and I was already crying.

If I remember correctly the drawing of two stick figures were inside the circle. Which indicates that this maniac had the idea of dying with author in a grave since the beginning and was just waiting for him to reach 15 years of age.

But I’m not completely sure why he gave up and kidnapped Josh. But then again he’s insane so why apply logic to this creep.

P.S. super mad at Josh’s dad for destroying the body. Should’ve called the police. Who knows how many more people that guy killed.

Things I noticed after listening that, after scrolling through the comments for a few minutes, I haven't seen anyone else bring up:

1. When the author and Josh are going through the forest to get to his old house during "Boxes" they mention a hole that was dug there but wasn't there when he was last there during "Footsteps". This was the grave. He'd had the grave there for years.

2. During "Screens" the stalker mangled Josh's sister. She was beautiful, he knew the author had gone to meet with her that night, he hated knowing that and decided to brutalize her, didn't even put her out of her misery. Honestly, I feel like the only reason he didn't do something similar to Josh was because of how similar he looked to the author. He was too attached to the author to harm him, so Josh was his backup, meaning he'd need him alive and well.

3. "Balloons" was clearly the first time the stalker and the author interacted, the balloon had found it's way to a sick man instead of someone kind like everyone else. And to think, this wouldn't have happened if he hadn't written down what school he went to. Maybe then the stalker never would have found him, never would've started taking those photos, never would have caused all the harm he did. If only that teacher had the common sense to make sure her students don't share any information like that.

this is the saddest creepypasta ever. by the end of it i don’t even feel horrified i just feel dread for these characters.

i see a lot of people asking why he killed josh instead of the author - and i’ve always took it as the stalker “loved” josh too much to go through with killing him and josh was the closest he could get to the real thing.

got mad when they named the cat boxes instead of soda

This story never stops being scary, even when told in a book report style

Screens is such a haunting chapter. Reading it as it was being released i was in shock once I got to THAT passage. But the end always ALWAYS makes me tear up. Makes me think of a friend I lost. Such a great story.

The mother sacrificed Josh. She traded him for the author. And her penance was to silently watch Josh's father break apart.
She knew and kept quiet, she saw the hair dyed to the author's color and said nothing. She let Josh newr the danger in the hope that he would be traded, and it worked.
Im so pissed i lost my copy of Penpal, its a fantastic work.

I remember reading this in middle school, not too much older than the protagonist. While some of the plot points might not hold up to the test of time, I still remember this as one of the most unsettling things I read as a young person. Especially the parts with boxes and Josh's older sister. I was excited to see you cover this and the other content on your channel. I'm always looking forward to what you cover next! ^^

you are unironically one of my favorite creators. All of the stories you find are so interesting and Intriguing.

I swear the Boxes chapter enraged me. I have 5 cats and the thought of a sick bastard kidnapping my cats and more than likely killing them just filled me with so much sorrow and rage. Really glad this was a fictional story

I really appreciate that PenPal never went in the direction that it seemed it was going in. A lot of creeypasta writers will use (to quote Wendigoon) “kith” content as an easy way to disturb readers, but in most cases it detracts from this sort of story more than it adds. When you really think about it, it doesn’t really matter what a person wants with you, if someone is so obsessed with you that they’d take away your free will, your future, and your very right to exist to get what they want from you…well, that’s just an inherently horrifying concept, no matter what it is the person might want from you. Aspiring horror writers, take note from PenPal: make your stories less explicit, not more. Just the basic concepts are more than enough to terrify people, let your readers fill in the blanks, they’ll do a better job at catering your story to their own personal fears than you ever could anyways