Aylin Baykal is a Turkish-Russian filmmaker, producer, writer and actress, born on 15 June 1988 in Istanbul and working primarily in independent horror. She began making films in 2004, when she co-founded CreepTV with James Dean Castiglione.
CreepTV began with a group of friends who wanted to make films together and have the freedom to follow their own ideas. Using equipment from her father’s television station, Baykal and her collaborators shared responsibilities across the cast and crew. They launched their YouTube channel in 2006, choosing the platform for the independence it offered. Over the next thirteen years, it became the home for their short films and an ongoing collaboration that continues to shape her work.
Baykal’s interest in horror reaches back to childhood viewings of the original The Twilight Zone. She is drawn to stories about desire, choices and consequences—particularly the unsettling possibilities of someone getting exactly what they wished for. Scandinavian and Japanese folklore also inform her writing, alongside a longstanding fascination with the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. Oregon provides the setting for much of CreepTV’s shared fictional universe.
For Baykal, that world continues to develop even after a film is finished. Stories return to familiar places and build on an expanding mythology, with each project adding something to the next. Many of the people making those stories have worked together for more than twenty years. That familiarity is an important part of how she works, whether directing a production herself or acting under a longtime collaborator’s direction.
Following Castiglione’s death in 2019, Baykal closed the original CreepTV YouTube channel, and the team took an extended break from the project. The idea of returning with a platform of their own emerged through conversations with collaborators Harley Coleman and Matthew Gordon. In 2026, she began working with members of the original team to develop CreepTV into a dedicated horror streaming platform.
Biography by Gaardian Media.