The story
A misspelling of spooky, originating from a 2009 photograph of a Halloween sign with the misspelled word spoopy originally uploaded to the website Flickr. It was reposted on Tumblr in 2011, upon which the word become an Internet meme and developed its current senses.
First known use, by meaning
- from early 21st c. Synonym of spooky.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.