The rural-centric, luddite, hedonist "Creeps Movement" apparently began in Kentucky around the end of the 19th century and came to full bloom during the 20s and 30s in the United States. The term originally refers to the awareness that we are surrounded by other-dimensional beings, a la Lovecraft, that are creeping around us. The slang term "gives me the Creeps", still in use today, is a vestige of this. Both as an intransitive verb or a noun, it refers either to subtle motion, or to the physical sensations caused by that subtle motion.

Though the term "The Blues", as a musical genre and a state of mind, has been watered down to mean merely world-weary sadness and defeatedness (in a sense similar to what Kerouac meant by "Beat"), it originally had a deeper, harder-to-define mystical quality that dovetails with The Creeps. Refer to Robert Johnson's "Malted Milk", Blind Boy Fuller's "Funny Feeling Blues", Willie Lofton's "Dark Road Blues" or Bessie Smith's "Cemetery Blues".

The Creeps, like The Blues, is not just a musical genre, it's a feeling, a state of mind. It's that indefinable something that passes ghostly and Neutrino-like between the cracks of your very perception; a satori of quantum proportions. You had the Creeps when you were a kid. Maybe you still have it now. Maybe it'll come back to haunt you later like a resurrected zombie of your former childhood, returning to check up on you.

Confusing the historical picture somewhat is that a number of groups over the years have identified themselves as Creeps organizations, movements, and societies. The exact nature of the turn-of-the-century Creeps movement is unclear, and is steeped in myth and mystery. What we do know is that Native Americans played a large part in it, as did the Melungeons and early incarnations of the roving "Irish Travelers". In the 1910s it dovetailed with the Anarchist movement, and several religious cults including Appalachian Voodoo.

One that we know a great deal more about is Belle Brezing. She was a Lexington prostitute whose reputation as an early feminist, hedonist, poet, and shrewd businesswoman was known nationwide. The character of Belle Watling in "Gone With The Wind" was based on Brezing. Today her grave is frequently pilgrimaged to by members of various Creeps societies, as well as Appalachian Voodooists, for whom Brezing's grave has become Kentucky's equivalent of Marie Laveau's tomb.

In the months to come, we hope to present all that is known here of these early Creeps pioneers.

In recent decades there has been a resurgence of the Creeps meme, starting with Jeffrey Scott Holland and Retrovirus & Opportunistic Infection 's early primitive first recordings made in the 1970s, and continuing with similar street-busking groups like Cheeseburger & Fries, Staph & Strep, and Toast & Coffee. The common thread in much of so-called 'Creeps music' is that it is played in an ultra-primitive, atonal and low-fidelity manner, and most importantly, it is usually completely spontaneously composed on the spot, which is one of several ways that Creeps music is closely connected to Jazz. Other modern Creeps (or quasi-Creeps) musicians include JLK;etc., The Smacks and The Crunchies. The majority of this activity seems to be in the central portion of Kentucky, especially the area around Richmond and Lexington.