Introduction:
Over the last few days, I have been searching for answer to this
question. It started with some news I heard recently, the Russian Sleep
Experiment was published as a novella by Holly Ice in October of 2015. At the
time of this post, there's even a movie coming out soon.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit this, I do not think there’s
anything shady going on. I also don’t necessarily know if everything I’ve found
up to this point is common-knowledge. If it is and this entire hunt is for
nothing, I will be the first to admit to my mistake.
Evidence:
I have found a few pieces of
circumstantial evidence to connect the original story to an online user that
goes by the name "Orange.Soda".
This link is shows the earliest revision of the story on the
Creepypasta Wiki. Guess who posted it? Orange.Soda. Date: August 16, 2010.
An old user talk page about the story. User
StabbyStab claims that the story was originally called “Russian Sleep Experiment
Orange Soda”. Clearly this was a mistake and the person who corrected him on this
was Orange.Soda himself:
“Yo, it got the
name "Russian Sleep Experiment Orange Soda" because last summer, one
of the times I reposted it while tripfagging on /x/, someone decided to make a
paint of it and never removed my trip name from the post. The actual name is
"The Russian Sleep Experiment"
/x/ is the link Orange.Soda
is referring to is this link:
-
http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Classics:The_Russian_Sleep_Experiment
(copy and paste it in your url, it works!)
And he/she is right about that. However, the link itself can be
questioned. It’s is a very old 4chan page
I can’t find a date for. However, the author credited in “Classics: The Russian
Sleep Experiment” is OrangeSoda.
So there you go, I can’t say for certain that this is the
mysterious writer of the well-known creepypasta – no one but Orange Soda can
prove this. The last time the username, Orange.Soda, made a comment on the Creepypasta
Wiki was on November 19, 2010 and I can’t find him/her anywhere else.
The adaptations:
In light of the recent novella published more than 5 years later,
I wanted to know more about this new work. I haven’t read the novella myself
but based on reviews it looks like a longer more detailed version of the
original creepypasta. It’s kind of like the novel based on the creepypasta, Penpal,
except that novel was published by the original creepypasta author. Here are
some reviews I found on the novella:
I also don’t know much about the apparent movie coming out. But
there are news articles and even a trailer about it so here you go:
My Thoughts:
I get it. It’s an adaptation of a short online horror story that
isn’t even credited. It’s under fair use and if the novella really does nothing
less than attempt to adapt the original than that’s okay. I can respect a
person that sees this story and attempts to put their own spin on it. At the
time of this post, I searched but found no trademarks on anything that had to
do with the story’s title.
But nobody outside the creepypasta community who finds this book will
ever know that “The Russian Sleep Experiment” was a creepypasta first.I have very little proof, but there is a wiki page that exists
that clearly shows the Russian Sleep Experiment being credited to an author
named OrangeSoda. Even if it’s not true, the fact that most people brush this off
as something that doesn’t exist is really mind boggling to me. There is still an
author’s name attached to a popular story.
I want to end this post by saying outright that I have nothing
against Holly Ice. In fact, I know very little about her and if I find her book
in stores I will probably be picking it up. It’s a great concept to be expanded
on and I think it can be really good. Just to prove this point, this her
website: http://www.hollyice.co.uk/ Go check it out.
At the end of the day, I want more people to be aware of this. Do
your own research, find your own conclusions to this, and even tell me if I was
wrong about anything. I’m not perfect but will stand by this point because I want to
give this story the attention it deserves. Because that’s how this story should
be known - as a creepypasta first.
UPDATE: I found this YouTube Video which credits the story to "Project Orange Soda"
UPDATE 2: The novella credits the original story twice:
http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Sleep-Experiment-Holly-Ice-ebook/dp/B013S6IHI4
http://www.russiansleepexperiment.net/
Most of my points still stand but its clear that they at least try to give some credit.
UPDATE 3: The Russian Sleep Experiment - Orange Soda, page 1: A post made by username YJLTG on June 13th 2010 for a story called "The Russian Sleep Experiment Orange Soda". The linked story has a date on it: "05/28/09(Thu) 15:46 No. 2052748"
This original link to the 2009 version of this story is an old nosleep post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/f21my/russian_sleep_experiment_aka_the_orange_soda/c1d0qcp
If you read the two lines under the title however, the post claims to have been reposting this story "several times before". So even this is not the oldest version of the story.
