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Slender Man

LazarusMP

LazarusMP

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Mar 11, 2008
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Tried searching and surprisingly didn't see a thread about this so thought I'd make one.

A thread on the Something Awful forums inviting users to create faux 'paranormal' images resulted in an interesting concept - The Slender Man - that seemed to resonate strongly with many.

The Myth

The Slender Man was created at the Something Awful Forums in a thread entitled "Create Paranormal Images." He is described as wearing a black suit strikingly similar to the visage of the notorious Men In Black, and as the name suggests, appears very thin and able to stretch his limbs and torso to inhuman lengths in order to induce fear and ensnare his prey. Once his arms are outstretched, his victims are put into something of a hypnotized state, where they are utterly helpless to stop themselves from walking into them.

Not much is known, as no specific information has been found about origins, but his objective and habitat are made very clear. He has the need to kidnap children, and is seen right before the disappearance of a child or multiple children. He seems to prefer fog enshrouded streets and wooded areas as a way to conceal himself from being noticed. It should also be noted that children have been able to see him when no other adults in the vicinity could. Children also have dreams or nightmares concerning The Slender Man before their disappearance. Confiding these stories to their parents are met with the usual parental admonition: overactive imaginations.
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Original Thread:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Mythical Creatures Wiki:
http://www.mythicalcreaturesguide.com/page/Slender+Man

And now someone has created a first-person game around the concept:
http://www.slendergame.com/game.php

I think the situation provides several avenues of interest to us here. First is the similarity to many existing and resonant myths/reported experiences MIB, Stick Men and others) present on our forums. Second is the widespread resonance of the concept with many people, possibly due to the above similarity. Third is the observation of what may grow into it's own urban legend that may possibly become disassociated from it's true 'created' origin as time passes. Or perhaps it's true origins AREN'T Something Awful but something older that 'resurfaced'? :shock: ;) Fourth is a possible discussion about the creation of myths and urban legends (intentionally as in this case or not) and and motives behind such creation. I'm certain there are many other possibilities as well.

Anyway, I hope some of you find it interesting.
 
Sounds like a rip-off of the stretchy Tooms character from The X-Files.
 
In Prague in the winter, my dear Snailets enjoyed posing me in a hall of mirrors with the Slender Man. :shock:
 
And there was, last year, and discussed on these boards, MarbleHornets who kept a video diary claiming to be terrorised by the Slender Man amongst other weird things he claimed was happening.

Wonder which came first?

MarbleHornets was posting in 2009 around the same time as the thread started.
 
Also first thought of Toombs. Jack the Ripper - fog shrouded streets. Freddy Kreuger - stealing children. It's an interesting amalgamation of ideas.
 
Then there is, of course, ...

childcatcher-431x300.jpg
 
Freddie Mercury's role in the video for I'm Going Slightly Mad reminds me of the Child Catcher. Brrr.
 
Spudrick68 said:
Also first thought of Toombs. Jack the Ripper - fog shrouded streets. Freddy Kreuger - stealing children. It's an interesting amalgamation of ideas.
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I first thought of the thin man from 'Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle'.
 
I know there must be a thread about slenderman on this board because that's where I found out about him some time back, though heaven knows where it is now.

Those slenderman photos are spooky, even if they are fake. Seems like reports of stick figure-like creatures have turned up in the IHTM section, too, possibly preceding the creation of slenderman.
 
Wasn't there some sort of cartoon on TV with a tall, thin man in black clothes and top hat. He could stretch his arms and body etc to get up to all sorts of mischief.
 
bunnymousekitt said:
I know there must be a thread about slenderman on this board because that's where I found out about him some time back, though heaven knows where it is now.
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He's cropped up in the context of various threads, most recently in the Cut-out man Silhouette thread, also, in the quite lengthy Black Stick Man one.
 
Ringo_ said:
Wasn't there some sort of cartoon on TV with a tall, thin man in black clothes and top hat. He could stretch his arms and body etc to get up to all sorts of mischief.
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Psst! Hes behind you!
 
Ringo_ said:
Wasn't there some sort of cartoon on TV with a tall, thin man in black clothes and top hat. He could stretch his arms and body etc to get up to all sorts of mischief.
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Are you sure it's not stuneville? :shock:

My first thought was Tooms too. A lot of the X-files's 'monsters of the week' have been lost in my mental clutter over the years, but Tooms was one of the very few things that has genuinely frightened me.
 
It's funny, I'm sure I started a thread about the Slender man on here a few months back - he's very similar to a character from my childhood nightmares. However, I must have dreamt it, as I can't find it! Unless "He" got to it first! :shock:

I've been told that the slender man was made up on that dark corner of the internet 4chan. But he seems to be a bit of a tulpa, in that many people seem to have known stories about such a person for years.

For my own sanity, I'll get this out here: As a little girl I lived on a lonely farm in the middle of no-where in Cornwall. I used to think that there was a man very thin and tall (as if on stilts) man who, at night, would stride across the fields & farmland to my bedroom window, and with a long spidley finger tap on my window or peep thru the slightly open curtains. He also followed me to visit my sister in a tower block in London when I was 8, but he had to grow taller to see into her windows. He was very like the Smirnoff judderman :( Ah, that's better! I might be able to get some sleep now!

8)
 
:shock: thanks Cherrybomb - I'll not be sleeping tonight! .:shudder:.

I really enjoyed Marble Hornets, although it did get a little silly after a while, but in its prime it was actually incredibly creepy. So much so, I used to have to read the transcripts before watching the videos (mind you, I am a bit of a wuss!). I seem to remember one where the main character had left his camera running while he slept, and in the darkness this impossibly long arm slowly reaches across the camera. That was one that stayed with me, and possibly started the transcript reading...
 
cherrybomb said:
He was very like the Smirnoff judderman :(

8)
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The Judderman advertised Metz, not Smirnoff. Interesting that most people remembering the Judderman think he was advertising Smirnoff, like a sort of collective false memory. I did until I got a wrong answer in a pub quiz :/
 
marionXXX you are right, isn't it funny how I can remember the ad so clearly, but not the product it was trying to sell!
 
One part of the slender man myth is that he/it/they can only exist when someone is thinking about him/it/them. Which then leads to the theory that the whole thing has become a kind of psychic experiment among some parts of the internet, trying to create a real monster out of nothing more than belief.
 
Not to derail the topic, but I think this tale is in a similar vein: Kris Straub's 'Candle Cove'.

I can't remember how I stumbled on it, but the first time I heard the story it was presented as true - as in, someone 'found' the exchange on a forum somewhere and reposted it (either intentionally or unintentionally).

Not as widespread as Slender Man, but just as creepy (if not more).
 
This is quite tragic...
WI middle-schoolers say bizarre Internet meme made them stab 12-year-old friend 19 times

Two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls were charged as adults with attempted first-degree homicide for allegedly stabbing a friend 19 times because they wanted to prove that an Internet-based character really exists, WTMJ-TV reported on Monday.

Police in Waukesha said Morgan Geyser (pictured above) and Anissa Weier lured the victim, who is also 12 years old, into a field Saturday morning following a May 30 sleepover celebrating Geyser’s birthday. Geyser and Weier allegedly ambushed the victim, with one suspect holding her down while another stabbed her in the arms, legs and torso before leaving the scene. They were arrested Saturday afternoon.

The victim, who attends the same school as Geyser and Weier, managed to crawl away from the scene later and drew the attention of someone riding a bicycle nearby. She is currently listed in stable condition at a local hospital. The two suspects are being held in jail on $500,000 bail each.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that, according to authorities, the suspects attacked their schoolmate in order to “prove the skeptics wrong” about Slenderman, a fictional character created in 2009.

The pop culture site WhatCulture traced the character’s origins back to the forums of another website, Something Awful. But Slenderman is also featured in the open-sourced horror site CreepyPasta Wiki.

Police said that Weier told them she introduced Geyser to CreepyPasta in December 2013. Weier allegedly believed that “Slender,” as she called him, lived in a mansion in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, which is located near Waukesha County. Their plan was allegedly for Geyser to host the sleepover in order to put the victim in position for them to kill her and, in their eyes, become “proxies” for the character and demonstrating their devotion towards him.

The Creepypasta page for Slenderman, however, does not contain any references to “proxies” or rituals connected to him. The site’s rules also state that, “As the content here is not suitable for all ages, it is requested that users who sign up for accounts and intend to edit on this wiki be THIRTEEN (13) years of age or older. This is the minimum age for signing up for an account on wikia and users who claim to be younger than thirteen may be banned until such time that they would conceivably be 13.”
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/02/w ... -19-times/
 
Aside from the true (?) accounts of Stick Men, the Slender Man sounds suspiciously like he was based on the creatures from "The Thin People" by Brian Lumley.
 
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
What were they thinking?
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It's a confusing world, and in it kids often don't find answers that make sense of how they feel. The temptation to become dominated by an entirely mythical figure they can interpret in a way that suits their emotional needs can be overwhelming. But such, fantasies have a life of their own, and they need feeding. They need to have an exterior existence to continue to serve a purpose. These kids manifested Slender Man by committing a terrible act in his name.

My thoughts are with the families affected by these tragic events. :(
 
Pietro_Mercurios said:
More on the Slender Man stabbings and Slender Man, from the Indy.

Slenderman stabbings: The horror character may have led two teenage girls to brutally murder a classmate. But who - or what - is he?

Until this week, Slenderman was known only to internet horror fans who would write stories about him and share his legend. But his tale took a sinister turn after it was revealed that two Wisconsin schoolgirls had allegedly stabbed a classmate because they wanted to please the mythological character

What were they thinking?
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And the DA is trying them as adults. Why? Is he up for re-election or has he set his sights on a higher position? This will get him pkenty of publicity as he secures life sentences for thee girls. They might get out in 20 years time.

These girls need to be in a secure place where they are not a danger to others and they need therapy. They should not be fodder for someones electoral ambitions.
 
Is it me, or is that photo of the girls in that Independent article, and on the FT home page is depressingly bleak?
I trcked it down on that creepypasta website, and it says it was taken in 1986, but to me it has a bleak 70s aura about it.
 
I trcked it down on that creepypasta website, and it says it was taken in 1986, but to me it has a bleak 70s aura about it.
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Agreed - the clothes and hairstyles would certain date it to some time before 1986 IMO.
 
A thought...Jack Skellington, aka Jack the Pumpkin King?

We see him often enough. He even pops up time to time outside of Halloween season. In Mexico there are the Catarinas, mummies appear here and there.

Mummified corpses are very slender. You might even say skeletal?

Has anyone reported a plump zombie?

Slender Man is perhaps just a modern incarnation of the classic figure of Death, so often shown as a skeleton.

There are the Aztec Lord and Lady of Death(I'm not EVEN going to try to spell their names) who are depicted as skeletons-they seem to have evolved into Santa Muerte, the Outlaw Saint.

All very svelte indeed.

Slender man may be a modern form of the Grim Reaper.

Or, maybe? Nyerlathotep as the Black Man?

These things lurk in the back of our minds.
 
I forgot to mention, those film clips are really spooky.

I have no idea what this Metz stuff was-I see they don't make it any more-and a commercial that has the product forgotten is not a great one(for the sponsor), but for sinister, it gets a 12 out of 10. I'll bet it was a hit in Goth clubs.

As to those murdering kids, I'm not sure that a very long incarceration is not right. They are old enough that murdering someone to please an imaginary friend is not even close to normal.

I really liked that Masked Man bit, too.

Were these spots run around Halloween?
 
krakenten said:
I forgot to mention, those film clips are really spooky.

I have no idea what this Metz stuff was-I see they don't make it any more-and a commercial that has the product forgotten is not a great one(for the sponsor), but for sinister, it gets a 12 out of 10. I'll bet it was a hit in Goth clubs.

As to those murdering kids, I'm not sure that a very long incarceration is not right. They are old enough that murdering someone to please an imaginary friend is not even close to normal.

I really liked that Masked Man bit, too.

Were these spots run around Halloween?
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They were 12 years old, they need to be put somewhere so that they are not a danger to the public and get whatever treatment and therapy necessary. They shouldn't be tried as adults just to advance the political ambitions of a DA.
 
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