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Black Stick Man

SHAYBARSABE said:
filch said:
*bump*

Re-reading this thread again reminding me of this video (I'm sure most have seen).

And this also came up

Looks like someone walking in a cloak in a good wind. You can see the fabric billow at the hem across the entire figure.

I agree,I don't think it looks weird at all, it just looks like a person in a cloak or a loose coat. Are we both missing something? I don't get what the fuss is about.
 
I know this gets brought up constantly whenever a piece of footage turns up, but what is with the absolutely abysmal quality of the Fresno Nightwalker footage? I should think in the days of everyone and anyone having a Droid in their backpocket this sort of thing ought really to be a thing of the past, and yet. Does grainy low-light footage just somehow seem more authentic for this sort of thing or what?

Anyway, yeah, have to agree with the "it's someone in a cloak" sentiment. In fact, the first thing I thought was it was someone in a plain old sheet like an old school Halloween ghost.
 
I think the quality is to be expected - video cameras don't do well in low light, even modern phones that can record HD do so best in bright sunlight. I've got a recent HD camcorder at home which has an amazing picture in daylight, but is barely usable indoors. When they make TV shows, if you see the set you'll realise that a dark, dimly lit interior shot is actually quite bright, to counter the crappiness of the cameras. To record anything that's actually dark, you'll get lots of grain as seen in the Fresno Nightwalker footage, caused by electromagnetic noise on the sensor (caused by turning the gain from the input up to the max, as it strains to see)

In the case of Fresno Nightwalker specifically, it looks fairly convincingly like what an average security camera will film. Assuming it's older (not a new HD digital security camera, but an older analog, or cheaper digital, US one) the resolution is probably 720x480, which is pretty low. Combined with the low light causing a lot of grain, I think the picture is pretty acceptable. I've seen some expensive cameras with very good IR modes, and they'd produce a picture something like this without any surrounding lighting, albeit with less grain.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beX2aMws_qw

I hope this is fake, because i am scared. I don't have any more information other than its in Russia and this video scrolled by on my Facebook. 2nd video is same thing with some negative imaging. Please comfort me me by saying it's fake!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bikFjU499bk

And this picture i found on Godlikeproductions (yes i know they are nuts) supposedly pictures from a cell phone taken in Spain, i don't know anything else about them either.

im3gs.jpg
 
I find it so interesting that so many people seem to believe in Slenderman, a legend that we know was completely fabricated.
Is it because we want to believe because believing is more fun than not believing?
 
Calling fake on the video, the shadows don't seem to match up. Also a very dubious source. Still, it's a pretty good video.

liveinabin1 said:
I find it so interesting that so many people seem to believe in Slenderman, a legend that we know was completely fabricated.
Is it because we want to believe because believing is more fun than not believing?

In a weird way, I think slenderman is a bit like Santa. He's a fabricated myth, but people who know he's fake still act and treat him like he's real. People who don't know he's fabricated though are likely to think he's real, and the other people treating him as real only supports that.
 
The video is fake because the cameraman starts out pointing at the surface of the building where the creature is going to be walking before the creature arrives there. Which indicates that the cameraman knew where the creature was going to go ahead of time...because he/she was going to place it there with their software. If there were a real creature, the cameraman would start out focusing on the creature itself and then follow it wherever it went, with no apparent foreknowledge of its path.

The same mistake betrays many a fake UFO video. "Oh I was just videotaping nothing in particular for no reason whatsoever and suddenly this strange vehicle appeared!"
 
IamSundog said:
The video is fake because the cameraman starts out pointing at the surface of the building where the creature is going to be walking before the creature arrives there. Which indicates that the cameraman knew where the creature was going to go ahead of time...because he/she was going to place it there with their software. If there were a real creature, the cameraman would start out focusing on the creature itself and then follow it wherever it went, with no apparent foreknowledge of its path.

The same mistake betrays many a fake UFO video. "Oh I was just videotaping nothing in particular for no reason whatsoever and suddenly this strange vehicle appeared!"


Spot on! Well observed.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Already on a black stick man thread somewhere...

kamalktk said:
Here, along with some similar photos:
forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1374385#1374385
Link is obsolete. The current link is:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/black-stick-man.7411/

Vardoger said:
Black Stickman thread sounds like a good place. Forgot about this thread.

Owing to redundancy, these posts are being moved to the Black Stick Man thread.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
liveinabin1 said:
I find it so interesting that so many people seem to believe in Slenderman, a legend that we know was completely fabricated.
Is it because we want to believe because believing is more fun than not believing?

I thought Black Stick Man pre-dated the internet sensation that is Slenderman? I had just assumed that Slendie is an urban myth/meme that had some roots in Stick Man-like stories.

Got a real soft-spot for old Stick Man, just hope I never bump into one.
 
Nice of you to post the photo here. At the moment I'm banned from Godlikeproductions - because of nothing. :lol:
 
birdy said:
I thought Black Stick Man pre-dated the internet sensation that is Slenderman? I had just assumed that Slendie is an urban myth/meme that had some roots in Stick Man-like stories.

Yes, black stick men pre-date the Internet. They don't have to be tall: some are reported as average in height (for humans), and some are reported to be as small as 12 inches.

Slenderman is completely different, and made-up. He's not a black stick figure, just really, really tall.
 
SHAYBARSABE said:
Slenderman is completely different, and made-up. He's not a black stick figure, just really, really tall.

Yeah, I’m not sure why people are tagging that video and those photos as “Slenderman”, other than a lack of creativity and/or knowledge. Barring his origins as a photoshop challenge on Something Awful, Slenderman is definitely more in the urban legend/folklore category of things; He’s Bloody Mary for the internet age.

Stick men are more of a shadow figure/ultraterrestrial/thing-I-saw-in-the-headlights phenomenon.
 
I thought he also wears a black suit and has super long arms sometimes interpreted as tentacles ?
 
HenryFort said:
I thought he also wears a black suit and has super long arms sometimes interpreted as tentacles ?

Black suit, yes. Usually with a white shirt. The tentacles are a late development.
 
Saw this in a toy store last night. The perfect stocking stuffer for little Johnny.

 
Love the Donaldson/Scheffler series. My daughter has 5. Room On The Broom used to be our favourite. She just turned 7 a month ago, and, being all grown up now, won't have a bar of them. :(
 
Chatting to my 5-year-old granddaughter last night, we started playing a game where she said something and I had to repeat it. Completely from nowhere, she said "stickman is lonely", which was rather jarring, and I found it both sad and slightly sinister. Still, I repeated the phrase, and she went on to make up a little poem of sorts about sticks for the fire.

It was all said in fun (and her head didn't spin around, in case you're wondering...), and we quickly got on to messing about and calling each other silly names in the way we often do, but it got me thinking - was this some playground rhyme, or had she just made something up on the spot? Quite odd, either way.
 
Check her out with a kid bewitchment stick.

Some people at McD's call them fries, but they're actually bewitchment/bewizardment sticks.

If she eats them, she's just fine.

If she rejects them, and wants McD's carrot sticks instead, she's just fine as well. But too smart....
 
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