Not one but two horror stories from Reddit’s NoSleep subreddit are getting adaptations from streaming services. A couple of months ago, Amazon won the screen rights to the ten-part story, Has Anyone Heard of the Left/Right Game. Amazon beat out over ten studios for the screenplay rights to the creepypasta. Not to be outdone, just last month Netflix bought the rights to the six-part horror story My Wife and I Bought a Ranch. Each story originated on NoSleep, and both Amazon and Netflix paid a seven-figure amount for the rights to their respective story, Deadline reports.
But what is each story about? Has Anyone Heard of the Left/Right Game chronicles an NPR journalist named Alice Sharma who decides to write a piece about an urban legend called the Left/Right Game. The game involves driving in a car and taking the first available left, followed by the first available right, and so on and so forth until you “get to somewhere new.” It doesn’t take long for her and the convoy of game-players she’s observing to get somewhere new, as the road trip takes them into a horrifying and surreal alternate reality. If you’d like to read the story for yourself, here’s a link to part one. You can also listen to an audio drama adaptation produced by and starring Tessa Thompson. Thompson will also produce the Amazon series alongside Jack Anderson, the author of the story.
My Wife and I Bought a Ranch tells the story of an ex-Marine and his wife who move to a ranch in rural Idaho with their dog. Once they get there, the new neighbors great them warmly, but warn of a vengeful spirit that lives in the adjacent mountains. Each season the spirit manifests in a different way, and the new tenants of the ranch must take certain precautions in order to keep the spirit away. The neighbors help them with these rituals, warning the couple that they must not anger the spirit along the way. You can start reading the story here. Matt Query wrote the original version on Reddit, and his brother Harrison Query will adapt it for Netflix.
Having read both of the stories, they’re worth reading before the adaptations come out. Since Amazon and Netflix have only just bought the rights to each, it’ll likely be a while until the screen adaptations get released anyways. Creepypastas like the short horror stories on NoSleep don’t get adapted very often, so it’s nice to see that not only one but two of them will get major adaptations. For those looking for more televised creepypastas, Syfy recently adapted four of them into the anthology series Channel Zero. While that series ended last year, creepypastas seem set on haunting the airwaves for at least a little longer.
