Many of the fan stories have ended up on the Creepypasta website, where paranormal stories are shared, delivered as if they are true, rather in the fashion of campfire tales. But mainstream media attention for the phenomenon has been scant up until now. There was a brief spike of interest in the summer of , according to Google Trends, possibly related to a video game. But the latest flurry of stories centre on a number of alleged violent crimes with links to the character.
HP Lovecraft: The man who haunted horror fans. It was reported last week that two year-old girls in Wisconsin had allegedly stabbed their friend 19 times in an effort to show their dedication to Slender Man.
They apparently learned about the character on Creepypasta. Meanwhile, a mother who was stabbed by her daughter in a second incident in Ohio has also blamed an obsession with Slender Man. Creator Eric Knudsen has already said he is "deeply saddened" by what happened in Wisconsin.
The operator of Creepypasta issued a statement, extending condolences to the families involved but adding it was not "the fault of Slenderman or horror writing in general that this happened". Clearly there are people who are trying to blame this figure. It's becoming a moral panic, with people suggesting Slender Man is inspiring people to murder. It's definitely a mistake to target Slender Man or any of these creations. It's important for all of us to be aware of what children are doing and try to provide a context for interpretation.
But it's perhaps easy to see why parents might be concerned. The rapid permeation of the meme, and the fundamentally innocuous nature of it, are not immediately apparent. McKean likens Slender Man to an urban myth about an unknown person who goes around daubing people's garden gates with red paint and returns to steal their children, pets or even household appliances. Yet unlike most such tales, developed and adapted over long periods, the origins of Slender Man are absolutely clear and very recent.
The character's very design, with its inscrutable blank face, was explicitly designed with a vagueness associated with stories of the past, like the universal bogeyman, blamed for mischief of all sorts. With massive mainstream media attention, the way the meme is used could change rapidly.
It is no longer just a thing of forums and blogs. The Slender Man movie played in theaters last year, fully ready to terrify you, so what are you waiting for? Slender Man was created back in by Eric Knudsen who goes by Victor Surge on the internet for a contest on the website Something Awful ; specifically, Knudsen designed Slender Man for the Create Paranormal Images thread, which was calling for participants to photoshop existing photographs.
The Slender Man started off as a tall, creepy, slim, spider-like figure photoshopped into two seemingly benign pictures of kids playing. In short, Slender Man entered the realm of urban legend , morphing from an internet concoction into a wood-dwelling boogeyman who preys on children. In May , two Wisconsin girls named Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier were accused of stabbing their classmate Payton Leutner because they believed that doing so would please the fictional Slender Man and prevent him from harming their families.
The girls, who said they learned of Slender Man on the website Creepy Pasta , were just 12 years old at the time of the crime. Payton was stabbed 19 times and barely survived the attack.
In October , Payton spoke out for the first time about the attack. They will probably go away and fade eventually. In , Slenderman is now Slendy, a quasi-comical, quasi-serious figure that has taken on a life of its own. The feed is full of game walkthroughs and links to creepypasta — essentially fan fiction — as well as bits of doggerel that sound like early Eminem lyrics passed through Hogwarts:.
Slendy is a sort of goblin that posters use to scare themselves. On May 31, two year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin stabbed a third girl nearly to death. Authorities are trying the pair as adults pending a mental evaluation. The girls believed Slendy would appear to them if they killed in his name.
They also believed he had threatened them and their families and could read their minds. Children have always had fanciful flights of imagination. These claims sound much like the Salem witch hunts of the s when young girls accused each other of riding with the devil.
The resulting panics led to countless false confessions and over 20 executions. The same could probably happen here. The teen, who had a history of mental illness, was obsessed with the character. The lack of detail in this and the previous case points more towards mental illness than anything else. Slenderman, then, became the a focus for a mania that forced these girls to act out violently.
Thus far, no more reports of Slenderman-related violence have surfaced. The creators and maintainers of the mythos are adamant about their disapproval. I attempted to contact him for this story, to no avail. He is a new villain, a new scapegoat, and a new demon. Thankfully, no one has yet been killed in his honor. The year-old Wisconsin victim is recovering and doing well. We simply cannot put into words how grateful we are for the prayers, packages and heartfelt messages.
We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support. It also included after much persistence a stop for a much-deserved treat in the snack area. Knudsen, for his part, stopped development of the character a few years ago. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later.
Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. The Slender Man is a supernatural creature that is described as appearing as a normal human being but he is described as being 8 feet tall and he has vectors or extra appendages that are described to be as sharp as swords.
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