Original Mythos Meta

The following posts were made on the "Create Paranormal Images" thread on Something Awful in the midst of all the Original Mythos stories. All of them are insight into the nature of the Slender Man; some discuss how the urban legend could develop while others speculate that writing about the monster may have set it free. Either way, these are a perfect demonstration of why the Slender Man mythos strikes a distinct chord of horror in many people.

Content

Maybe I'll do some more research. I've heard there may be a couple more legit "Slender Man" photographs out there. I'll post them if I find them.



Slender Man would make a pretty nice horror novel in the lines of "House of Leaves".

Essentially, make the novel a collection of witness statements, newspaper clippings, pictures, drawings, articles discussing evidence for an against the slender man and, to tie it all neatly together, a few stories of people who want to track the slender man, unravel the mystery,

And the kicker would be the last 20 or so pages would be missing, with only scraps of paper left, arranged as logically as possible, just excerpts, words, rips, ink stains, etc.



It's The Rake all over again!



I LOVE this type of thing. Something just feels satisfying about causing mass hysteria. I think we could roll with this slender man thing. Maybe if we make enough images and maybe if some talents can make fake videos, it could grow to ARG proportions (minus the advertising).



The Slender Man.

He exists because you thought of him.

Now try and not think of him.



I like that the Slender Man closely resembles a tree or creeper. He's a forest kind of thing. You can imagine warning children not to go and get lost in the forest because eventually one of the trees you walk past won't be a tree but just a very tall thin person standing very still and then you get your coat caught on a branch and it isn't a branch because it's one of his fingers.



I'm suddenly imagining a Slender Man "documentary," done in a style similar to The Last Broadcast or that old Alien Abduction TV special. Interviews with witnesses of various encounters through the years, investigation into the different events brought up in this thread, and specialists analyzing photographs, intercut around home video footage taken by a missing family, showing them being picked off by the Slender Man. As we get further into the film, we also start to see behind the scenes footage of the making of the documentary, with crew members not showing for work and not answering calls, various production problems… then finally ending with a note that the director disappeared immediately after completion of the film.



Every time I walk past the window at the top of the stairs, I always look out it, even if just for a moment. It's a habit I've had since I was tall enough to peek over the sill. But tonight, as I stepped out into the hall, my head refused to turn; even my eyes remained fixed on the other end of the corridor.

It was as if my body was trying to tell me something… Not the frantic 'Don't look, don't look, dear god please walk faster,' but instead the eerily calm 'There's no need to look. You already know he's there.'



I'm loving the Slenderman. That's just an awesome name to start with. The minimal backstory to the image was just perfect. Victor, you have a gift for horror it seems.

You posted one image and a tiny backstory. Planting a small seed of an idea into the internet, without even knowing (or planning) for others to run with it, and make it grow.

Then, people saw your idea, and started expanding on it. The Slenderman went from an isolated incident to a full mythos, with woodcuttings, incident reports, coverups and multiple killings to it's name in just a few pages of collaborative effort.

Somebody compared it the Special Containment Procedures files.

I'm officially taking credit for creating SCP173, the original, and dropping it into 4chan's /x/ board. Pretty much the same thing happened there that happened here.

Anonymous ran with it after I set it loose, and the results have been phenomenal.

The folks at http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ have done an awesome job with this simple format. There is some very nice creepypasta to be had there.

What I'm trying to say with both of these, is that I am continualy amazed with how a single idea on the internet can sprout and grow into something more incredible than you ever expected, simply through a small amount of creative effort on the part of many individuals. I won't be getting to sleep anytime soon thanks to you all.

(I'll try to add something to the SM mythos later)



Men, it's Slendermen, there are multiple of them. As seen from the photos, some are more concealed with the only distinct features being height and lack of features. Others have changed, reverted into a more primal or advanced to a different form, with the increase of strange features, tentacles and the like. I hope there are multiples, or the one there is can change, and he may be able to change into a more human form, and infiltrate human society.



I like the idea of just one Slender Man. Multiple worldwide sightings are due to his ability to travel ethereally; he exists inter-dimensionally and is not subject to restrictions of our space-time.

Differing appearances are the result of multiple factors. One, nobody ever sees all of him, just whatever portion that the entity has 'phased' into their proximity. Two, most Slender Man 'sightings' are indistinct glances or unclear photos; if anyone has gotten a good view of him, they're not around to describe him.

"Some say that the worst monsters reside in the imagination, drawn from the greatest fears of those who imagine them. I say there are horrors beyond mortal imagining, and they are far worse. And I have looked on both."



Awesome.

I like how the images start out "mundane" enough, and then the wrongness in his body becomes more and more apparent as more pictures are shown.

Also, that's a creepy looking area to be living in regardless.



nockturne posted:

So do we agree that The Slender Man has something to do with trees? Because I'm wondering if I should be freaked out by the ancient peppermint tree that is growing not a dozen feet from my window.

Put it this way. Sometimes when you get up in the night for a glass of water, and you look out the window, it'll look like your tree has one or two too many branches.

When that happens, stop looking, turn off the light and go back to bed.

I like the tree/plant connection because you could cast him/it as a strange creeper or vine or spider thing which is just trying to look like a person as a form of camouflage. The impersonation is imperfect, though, so he falls right in the uncanny valley. He can be killed, and what's left just looks like rotten wood, but… well, another one grows to take his place. This means he can be seen anywhere plants grow, especially forests and jungles, and anywhere in time because he can live to be very old and the spores are very old and travel on the wind and stuff, and a bullet will snap off a thin branch but nothing else, and an axe to the neck will just get lodged and make him irritable and shriek at you, and if he touches you you get a rash or sting like poison ivy, and he appears in old nursery rhymes to frighten children out of running away from home, and there's only one or two Walking Men at any given time, but maybe there's a whole grove of Still Men planted somewhere, and fire is your best weapon which is why he only comes out when it's foggy or stormy…

E: oh, and don't ask how I know all of this



JossiRossi:

I think it should be said that the closer you think you are to understanding the Slender Man, the more incorrect you really are.

TheRiffie:

This. Slender Man is beyond our comprehension.



It's because he lives in our primal, ancient, subconscious mind that he appears more often when people begin to think of him. He changes because he plays on our fears. He lives in a nebulous, timeless twilight that constantly shifts. And the more stories you post, the more images you find, the more you think about him, the more he feeds and the stronger he grows.

He isn't coming. He is already here, and he always has been, and always will be.



Facts so far about the Slender Man:

-It's a shape-shifter, and varies between 9 and 16 feet in height.
-Its face is terribly deformed and he has two glowing orbs for eyes, it is also suspected that it wears a fake face.
-It has tentacles which it can conceal, these tentacles vary in appearance.
- It frequently stalks children for reasons unknown, and impales adults on trees after ritualistically removing and replacing their organs.
- It hates being photographed but is absolutely terrible at avoiding it or destroying the evidence.



Agreed on the whole one Slender Man being creepier. It's like he's some sort of personification of primal fears that way. I have to say, the woodcarvings have been my favourite images of him. But in them, he isn't wearing a suit, and yet in the more modern images, he is. Does that mean he's trying harder to blend in now?

I also prefer the idea of spidery arms that he can multiply and lengthen to walk on or grab things or whatever to the idea of tentacles, but the tentacles seem more popular so that might just be a me thing. I am arachnaphobic, so that might be why it scares me more. Like some horrible spider man.



The tapping hasn't stopped. I live in a secluded place and this building is the only one for maybe a mile. It's very quiet here even on busy days. There's no one out there who can help me. I haven't left my room ever since got back home. The tapping hasn't stopped.



Perhaps he's normally got the two (or more) arms/two legs configuration, but when he's hunting, or just arriving, he sprouts the giant legs to ease into his physical form from whatever he might have Otherwise.



The scariest ones for me were the series where it looked like a normal if creepily elongated man at first, but as he got closer he got more and more elongated and wrong looking.

Perhaps some sort of mobile vegetable life which can mimic a person quite successfully whilst stalking but once it is sure of its prey the true horror of its form gradually reveals itself as it closes in for the kill?

It strikes me as a super intelligent and telepathic hunting tree thing, also able to start fires in order to conceal its actions, or at least hypnotise witnesses into starting fires and/or destroying evidence.

It's probably not alien either. I like to think of it as having preyed upon humans since the dawn of time, mimicking the changing forms of clothing through history in order to best blend in, the black suit and tie version being the most current but not the only form of camouflage it has taken. Being a tree there are no remains in the fossil record, but it's been preying on us since we were in caves, hiding itself by wiping the traumatic experience from the memories of witnesses so it can safely continue to prey without reprisal. And yet some hideous Lovecraftian horror lurks in the back of our minds still on dark misty nights out walking in the forest…

… gdi now you've got me doing it too.



There goes my fucking sleep.
Seriously. Slender man is about everything I find creepy about creepy things.
He is human and inhuman at the same time. I'm not going in the fucking woods ever again.



I just can't get over how great the name "The SM" is. It's… just perfect. I like that different people have their own favorite interpretations of the slender man. I personally like the far away pictures where you can see a person who is… wrong.


I think I'm going to edit my earlier post to say SM. I heard that SM can find you if you write his name out completely. I think we all know who we're talking about when we talk about SM.



So many people struggle to understand the Slender Man. They wish to categorize it, compartmentalize it. If it exists, it can be understood. If it can be understood, it can be controlled. If it can be controlled, then it is not scary. You are but fools to do this. The Slender Man is not what you want him to be, not how you want him to be. Do you truly think that it is man? You think because you give it a name that all of a sudden you are somehow anywhere near what it really is?

This can not be named, can not be controlled. Just because you want it to be something does not mean it is. He is uncontrollable. He is unstoppable. He is what scares you. He is hate. He is pain beyond death. He is in your nightmares. He is in the corners of your vision.

He is right behind you.



You don't understand. You don't understand! He's not transforming, or coming out of his shell. What we see is changing as we're exposed to something we should never see.

He is what our minds do not want to conceive. We cannot conceive of him, or truly perceive him, but he delights in showing us the very limit of what we can handle. Enough to horrify us.

First, you see a man. He is wrong in some way. Impossibly tall, extremely thin, but a man. Wearing a very plain black suit, just a little bit too small. A bit too pale. Skin not fitting quite right.

As you become more aware of him, he asserts himself more fully on your reality. A truer picture of him imposes itself on your mind. He gets taller. The suit becomes less like a suit and more like another ill-fitting skin. His hands aren’t quite hands. Fingers have no bones, bend in the wrong direction. You come to realise that it’s not just his hands. His arms are not arms. The smile is too wide. The rest of his face is all but gone. There is only a grin.

As he comes to take the full attention of your mind, his invasion on your reality is nearly complete. He is not tall, he is towering, a colossus. The not-arms are all that supports him now, a many-tendriled spider of impossible size. There is no pretense of a suit now, just loose, shriveled black skin. There is no face, but the inhuman grin remains, opening wide just for you.

And then he has taken you. He owns your reality, and you don’t even know what you see because you’ve gone entirely mad, and will soon surely die. The more you see him, the more you know, and the more you're doomed. Three times, and this is what I know. Four times, and I will know all I can know. And I'll never be able to tell, not in words that can be understood.

I can hear him. I can always hear him, every day. Far, far away, but getting closer with each scratching step. Only a matter of time until he comes back, and I learn everything.



Look out the window.



What comes naturally from this thread, is actually one of the greatest things about Slender Man; that is the fact that there is no true, definitive interpretation of what he looks like. Slender Man is vague, unclear, and this probably is the most important thing about him that needs to be preserved.



Daniel K:

GyverMac these are fantastic. I love the reappearance of the hourglass in each. I think this is meant to symbolize the timelessness of S.MAN?

GyverMac:

In the danse macabre woodcuts i use as a source, hourglasses are always present, since the danse macabre woodcuts was made to remind people of the inevitability of death and that time was running out. (Like medieval/Renaissance people didnt have ENOUGH to worry about :S)

pr0digal:

Knowing the slenderman…he wouldn't even strike for weeks, months, even years…he is just letting you know that your time is running out and that he is holding the hourglass



ark093.jpg

Viet Timh:

"Speedy deletion", my ass. It's just the government trying to cover it up.

Shit, they've got my IP address as well…
Really glad I didn't add the S:MAN reports now. If I don't post again you'll know they've got me…



Victor Surge:
Wilks Estate

Haha I spent the night at the Myrtles Plantation two months ago.. nothing was spooky about that mirror, but the entire night was full of violent banging and slamming from down stairs and I kept pushing the covers off only to feel them resting on my shoulder a few minutes later as I laid there listening to the demolition derby down stairs, hoping dearly that it was just staff paid to break shit all night.



Leperflesh:

Going with a wikipedia page up-front was probably a lot of fun… but not a good idea.

The right thing to do is establish web resources about the Slender Man first - conspiracy-theory web pages, etc. Then, after there's some cross-pollination and even interest from people outside SA, create a stub Wiki page that just links a source or two, and treats the subject from a skeptical/fact-based standpoint (use words like "myth", "alleged", and "conspiracy theory").

A page like that, that purports only to report on a fringe myth, would have been more likely to survive. An editing history with a lot of different editors, over a long period of time (rather than a goon rush), with multiple references added and removed and edited over time, would have made the page less likely to be deleted.

Now, of course, that's closed off; even if we did all of this, the history of the original page's creation and fast deletion as vandalism will serve as evidence against any future incarnation of the page.

…which is OK. I'm thinking we (me?) register slenderman.org, work on it (make it the typical disorganized, slightly unbalanced ranting style typical of the genre - just take a look at websites promoting HHO, 911 Truthers, crop circles, etc. for ideas), and then gradually over time add a selection of stuff from this thread, sticking to the top-quality examples (probably not the supposed secret texts from agencies we've never heard of - don't require someone to believe in an additional conspiracy theory just to accept this one, as that is an implausibility-multiplier). You could even address the subject from a skeptical-believer point of view, showing "obvious forgeries and fakes" on one page and "unable to discount" stuff on another, etc.

Do it very low-key for a while (a year or more) and eventually it'll creep into the 'net's culture, and even have a chance to attract the attention of lazy reporters who don't fact-check stuff.

Aleph Null:

This.

This is like work, but would be supremely awesome if carried out.

The birth of an urban legend…

Blaster of Justice:

I agree. I also KNOW it'll work. Google "shadow men" and "shadow beings". Hell, some "shadow men" pictures and drawings are obviously not "shadow men" but the Slender Man.

JossiRossi:

I think a big key to success would be generating things that don't explicitly mention our pal SM. Lots of people have avoided that, and they tend to sound slightly better. Just common descriptions or themes. When a witness describes the "person" as a SM then it's just a bit too overt. That might be the best way to go. Let the conspiracy aggregation attempts be the one to give it a label.

Someone else brought this up but a Coast to Coast AM call is a good idea. If spread out over the course of a few weeks it would be a great addition. Small calls about little odd things. "I was camping and thought I saw a tree moving." But not "I SAW SM HE'S REAL HERE'S A BIG COMPLICATED EASY TO REFUTE STORY".

Blaster of Justice:

This would be brilliant. Creating a "weird woods, please contribute" website with a lot of silly Elf and Capricorn sightings as a start would be optimal. Then slowly let it degenerate to a massive Slender Man site in a few month.

Subtlety is definitely the way to go. A few people will initially buy into the idea of Slender Man or at least consider the possibility of SM's existence. As more information and evidence of Slender Man is introduced, more and more people will look into the myth due to its increasing notoriety.

For the SM mythos to spread successfully however, we need to come to some general consensus on the appearance of SM. Some discrepancies are ok and add to the creepiness of the Slender Man and could be used as 'fakes' (The more popular myths will always attract imitators) to add to the authenticity. If not, at least some reasoning behind SM's fluctuating appearance should be decided.

I'd also be quite eager to see SM's history and M.O explored in more fiction, again I'm really tempted to work on something myself but I'm really not that creative so I'm sure someone could come up with something better.

Sorry for ranting on but this could go very far as its already popular within this thread and if handled right could spread like a proper urban legend.

EDIT: Just read Daniel K and ce gar's posts. I've had a similar experience where a friend videotape myself and other friends in the woods (I kid you not unfortunately) and took his video camera home. The next day he refused to let us see the footage. It could be for several innocent reasons but he was deadly serious when he refused and now either pretends that he doesn't remember what we're talking about whenever we bring it up. (Or maybe he genuinely doesn't remember, who knows.) But anyway ce gar your story sounds intriguing and I for one would be really interested to know what you find on those tapes.



The backstories have been working well so far because they talk about things without explaining them, it's sort of along the lines of House of Leaves in that way.



Has anyone thought about the possibility that we are creating a tulpa? It's a thought form that is realized through the efforts of a group of people. We might be creating the Slender Man, making him real.

The Toronto Society for Psychical Research did this with an entity called "Philip" in the mid-70's. There was a book written about it, called "Conjuring up Philip." "He" was a fictional person, knowingly created by the group. It was all fun and games until "Philip" started to take on a mind of his own. "Philip" became real, as far as any paranormal thing could be said to be real. So take all this with a big grain of salt.

How long until there is agreement about what the Slender Man looks like? When will he have a specific MO? Can the hidden superstitious heart of the SA goons give Slender Man an independent existence? Think about it, a few hundred or maybe even a thousand goons, all looking at the pictures and creating the stories. I find myself looking at the shadows, imagining how they might fall together to show a lurking Slender Man. TSM pulls so many primal strings: his wrongness to our eyes, the hair on the back of the neck rising, the subconscious "Nonononono" that bursts across the imagination. He drags the monsters out of the back of our modern minds. He is a satisfactory boogie man, pressing all the right buttons. Even if we don't really believe in the supernatural, even if our rational minds laugh at such an absurdity…we are cutting him out and sewing him together. We're stuffing him with nightmares and unspoken fears.

And what happens when the pictures are no longer photoshops?



Remember the statement I made earlier in the thread;

SLENDER MAN
THE MORE YOU THINK OF HIM THE MORE REAL HE BECOMES
NOW TRY AND NOT THINK OF HIM

Not a joke. Thought alters reality and the shadows keep moving in my peripheral vision.

Now go watch Aphex Twin's 'Come To Daddy' video. Take careful note of the inhumanly tall, emaciated figure the children gather around.



Stop it.

Please stop it, the more you think about him, the harder it is for us to forget him.

Don't give it ideas, don't give it shape. Don't make him more terrifying please.

I need sleep.



I'm loving this a lot. Also, what if I didn't spontaneously come up with Slender Man? What if that's what it wants you to think. Come to think of it, I don't really remember those days last week, or even making those posts.



pr0digal:

He can change his shape and size at will…possibly even able to blend in with his surroundings. Nobody knows for sure because nobody has lived long enough to say…

21stCentury:

Alright, this is so we can get facts straight as much as possible.

This is an estimation of the Slenderman's "Cycle".

Step 1: Finds suitable target
Step 2: Exposes itself to target?
Step 3: Target is aware of Slender Man's Existance, Slenderman moves in for the kill
Step 4: Witnesses become immediate targets, this often includes secondary witnesses?
Step 5: ???????
Step ????: Reproduce? Change? Hibernate?

Now, as for the factors for a target, seems the Slenderman likes: Fear, mental illness, high levels of stress. Therefore, he often strikes children. Also seems to strike people who are enfeebled mentally/psychically/psychiatrically?

His appearance changes. Is it so he can better scare targets? Is it linked to his lifecycle?

(Crappy chart)

ark224.png

We need to find why it does that… Organ bagging/People impaling and we also need to know what he does between kills.

BooDoug187:

You really want to know?

How would you feel if you found out he does it not to live… but for fun?

He doesn't need to do this… he wants to.

As for witnesses, some times they are targets, and some times, just being imprinted with the real image of the Slenderman or what he does is enough to drive a person to the deepest paths of despair.

I link it to some one who witness first hand a terrible crime (say for example a rape/murder at a young age) How some people, after awhile it goes away, where as others, if chews away at them, always popping up, as a reminder of seeing the horror again and again.

That's what he does, don't try to reason the whys and hows. Because there will never be an answer that will make you understand or happy… or make you sleep again.

GWBBQ:

One account seems to indicate that he took control of several mentally stable people and "forced" them to kill their schizophrenic friend, who he didn't or was unable to control. In another case, walking a witness down the hallway of a mental institution provoked multiple catatonic patients to start screaming and moving. Many bystanders and witnesses suffer severe PTSD and slender man encounters of increasing severity have been reported between the first experience and their disappearances or deaths.

Gravel Gravy:

The only thing that should be somewhat set in stone is the appearance and maybe behavior. I say maybe behavior because the Slender Man's purpose and reasons are largely unknown. He is chaos, and it largely depends on how his day was so far.

And maybe that he tends to stay in rural areas and wooded areas(cause woods are creepy), only venturing into urban areas to find the one who has seen him.



Every time you close your eyes just know that the Slender man could be in front of you, waiting for you to open your eyes.

Don't look at him.



creepy old man:

Some say he lives on the blood of the wicked… some say he feeds on the fear of the innocent… All we know is that anyone who knows how the Slender Man works or why, has never been allowed to share his secrets.

The Slender Man, to date, is the only thing to creep me out worse than the Black Eyed Kids… of course, not all the missing children were recovered… who knows what happens to them when the Slender Man is finished?



Soakie:

The Slender Man needs some weakness, some way to defend against him. An all-powerful creature leaves no hope, gives you no reason to even try to escape. If this fucking thing materializes, I want to know how to fight it or even defeat it.

I'm thinking fire. It's man's primordial achievement, and casts shadows of its own. Maybe the shadows from the fire can fight him. Maybe humans discovered fire because of him, the embodiment of darkness and fear.

I don't know, but this thing has got to have a weakness.

21stCentury:

His weakness is that he has no weakness, raising the amount of fear, raising the amount of potential targets. Therefore, there are TOO MANY PEOPLE he can kill to be able to kill them all.

TrenchMaul:

I'm sure he intends to test that theory.

21stCentury:

Tell me, then, if the Slender Man can kill as many people as there are people afraid of him, how can you explain humanity? It's been shown even primitive man was aware of it. It would have been a snap to destroy humanity right then and there.

No, the truth is, there will never be enough Slender man to kill everyone who know of him. That's his weakness and his strength, there will always be someone to spread fear of the Slender Man, yet always too many people for the Slender Man to exterminate them all.

Mr. 47

I was kind of trying to suggest that with the newspaper article I wrote about the two girls. He took the one, and wanted the other one to come outside, but something kept him from taking the older one. I made a point to avoid being specific about how he worked and what he did. That makes him scarier, I think, if he exists in the unknown.

After all, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

21stCentury:

No, the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he DID exist.

nopantsjack:

I think thats the point, there is no point in trying to escape.
If you get away its only because he lets you, hes the monster in your nightmare who always finds your hiding place.



I have to say this whole Slender Man thing has sent my imagination into overdrive. My vision of The Slender Man (and he's such a mysterious entity that I believe he's open to interpretation) is a bit pared down compared to others.

I don't really like the idea of evidence found in ancient cave drawings or wood carvings or anything like that because I picture him strictly as a creature of the "New World", not unlike something out of an old story by Washington Irving. I don't know why that seems to fit better for me but it does, maybe because only a few hundred years ago North America was a vast and mysterious wilderness, which the imagination of the early settlers filled with all sorts of paranormal phenomena (which were, admittedly, mostly based off of old tales they brought with them from the Old World). I like the idea of the white man first coming into contact with him/it upon arrival in the New World, perhaps first hearing tales about it from the Native Americans. Perhaps he's some variation of the Wendigo from Algonquin myth.

I also don't care for the idea of him showing up in photos/paintings of major historical events since that would make it impossible for him to stay under the radar so to speak. I prefer the idea of him being a wandering spirit, drifting from town to town. When the Slender Man comes to town all sorts of misfortunes and various inexplicable phenomena occur, including but not limited to: mysterious disappearances, electrical disturbances, fires, droughts, pestilence, strange weather phenomena, etc.



I:

I wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Can he be summoned?

Dark Voice:

Go stand in front of a mirror in the fog and say his name 5 times. See what happens.

But don't say I didn't warn you

Hog Inspector:

First you must sacrifice a squirrel and put its heart in a plastic bag. Then you take a tree branch…



Cetaphobia:

ark120.jpg

She's an artist (read: weeaboo) who reads up on slender man and becomes obsessed with him. She decides that she wants to bring him into existence by making every human aware of him, as was discussed on this thread. She also wants to help propagate whatever the fuck he is, thus she looks pregnant in the image.

I'm seeing her as like until the Cthulhu cultists, I suppose.

BooDoug187:

"There are those who believe they can be "one" with those who are not of our world. These people often think that somehow they have some kind of mental or "spiritual" link. Oftentimes these people will go out into areas that have been reported to be the hunting grounds of said creatures. These individuals are often more dangerous than the creatures that they worship/are in love with. When faced with the choice between the reality of the creature not existing or staying in a fake world they will choose, sometimes to the bitter end, the made up world.

In a somewhat ironic way, those who believe themselves to be the worthy follower/lover of these beings are in fact far removed from the "ideal" being the creature would choose!"

Edvard Tobin "Humanity and the Supernatural: A Dangerous Combo"
Pub: 1994



My friends,

What have we done? What have we created?

It started off innocently enough, like telling ghost stories around the campfire. You wanted to give people a good scare, but a good laugh at the same time.

But it was something more than that, wasn’t it? It was taking your fears that lived on the edge of your psyche and pushing them out into the world, into the light of day. It was taking them and instead of putting them into words, you put them into pictures. You wanted to take your fear and place it into others so that you wouldn’t be scared anymore. That your deepest fears would be held bare to the world, to be laughed at and in some cases to embed themselves in others.

But then things started to change, Victor Surge posted a picture and a backstory so powerful that it dredged up memories and stories that you forgot even existed. It took the whispered tales that were meant to scare children into behaving, tales you pushed so far back into your mind you almost forgot and it forced them to the surface.

But these tales and fears couldn’t be excised by a simple picture, these tales were powerful. These tales held power; they held the power to create and create they did. The Slender Man began to take form and began to grow in our minds. Suddenly we looked back on past occurrences, began to put together the pieces and we began to remember.

We were scared. We wanted it to stop. We wanted the Slender Man to be nothing more than something we created.

But it didn’t stop. The power that the words and the stories held had finally broken free after being suppressed in the human psyche for so long. They took hold and they began to create reality. We began to see and hear things that we could not explain, the pictures and the videos bringing chills to our spine. We tried to laugh it off, just dismissing it as a fantasy. But it was already too late, the Slender Man had already taken hold.

We have created something we cannot control.

We have created the Slender Man. Brought him out of the shadows and back into the world.

We have created a monster and we cannot put it back in its cage.



Slender Man now has a post on the "mythical creatures & beasts wiki."

http://www.mythicalcreaturesguide.com/page/Slender+Man



So it looks like the best way to avoid being attacked by Slenderman is to avoid cameras. In the vast majority of attacks (outside of victims wandering into creepy forests) Slenderman seems to leave some sort of photographic evidence. Of course now with cellphones and security cameras everywhere, there's almost nowhere in the world you could go that would really be safe.



Goddamn all of you. Every night I take my dog out back to do his business and I freaked myself out pretty bad staring at the trees to make sure they were really trees and not something else.

I went a few days without worrying about Slender Man, but last night I swear he was in my room. I live on the second floor and I have two windows on both the north and south side of my room. Last night there was a storm and I kept seeing what looked like tree branch shadows on my window, but my house is not close enough to any trees to get tree branch on window action.

There was no logical way that tree branches could be waving outside my bedroom window. As I lay in my bed staring at the window the shadows looked more and more like tentacles. I was terrified. More terrified than I have been in years. I was frozen in my sheet and felt tingling in my legs as my fight or flight instinct kicked in, but I knew I couldn't move.

If I moved he'd know I was awake.

I couldn't see the shadows anymore and I had almost convinced myself to roll over and turn on the light despite the cold, paranoid someone-looking-at-me feeling all over my back and neck and head. Then I heard clicking. Fucking clicking on the other side of my room. He was there, tapping on my window or maybe in my room, tapping on the desk.

What I hope to god was wind from my fan or window unit moved my hair. It moved slightly and slowly until a lock fell to cover my wide-opened eyes. He didn't want me to see him. He doesn't like to be looked at.

I don't know how long he was there, but he left eventually because I was able to sit up and look around my room. I turned on the light and the tv and eventually fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

Goddammit, goddammit, I've read about Tulpas and thoughtforms and I've tried not to think about him and shadow people and the messed up pictures in my dining room and then he's in my fucking room. I come up the stairs at night and turn on my lamp and in the flicker of light before the bulb turns on completely I know he'll be there. Just for a moment. He's there.



The interest in SM is growing and with it so does his power. More are wondering and they want answers. They want pictures. They want the truth.

What have we created? It all started so innocently. Just a few stories to scare each other, maybe a few pictures. Then it grew, we have awakened something. And it is hungry.



Here's something I just thought of…

The "plastic bags"… are they really plastic or something that the slender man makes naturally from his body?



Reading this thread was a horrible idea right before I went to bed last night. All night the damned slender man kept showing up in the background of my dreams. Not doing anything, just there. Fucking creepy.

But those dreams made me start thinking. Everyone's been talking about how odd it is that SM shows up in the background of so many pictures.But, what if he wants to be there? What if he wants you to see him?

What if that's how he finds his next victim?

It's been said that he seemingly chooses a family/person at random and then removes the witnesses. But then the pictures surface, and everyone who looks at those pictures starts thinking about him.

And everyone knows thinking about him gets his attention.



I don't know why, but reading the Dorothy story, I got kind of a creepy idea of meeting Slenderman.

You'd accidentally walk toward him, hearing your friend/sister/loved one calling you and when you get to him, after the shock of the legs and the arms and the head, you realize they aren't calling you, he is. Just playing their voice, over and over again, because he can, because it'll draw you in. It's not malicious, though, more…curious.

"Dorothy. Come help me, Dorothy. Find me. Dorothy, I love you"

And that's when you realize you could be his puppet too. And then you kill your loved one to make the voice stop.



In reading this thread, I'm struck by one behaviour of Der Ritter in particular, that of its impaling its victims in a tree, while removing and reinserting their internal organs. It's remarkably akin to the feeding habits of shrikes, also known as butcherbirds.

See, what a shrike will do is capture a smaller animal - anything from a cricket to a smaller bird or mouse - and kill it. Shrikes are songbirds, and their musculature is pretty lacking compared to a straight-up raptor like a hawk or owl, so their kill is messy and inefficient, consisting of many pecks and bites to the head and neck. This continues until the prey animal is either dead or too tired to fight. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that as weak as their jaws are, their claws are weaker, and they wholly lack talons. They're built to perch. So, what a shrike will do, is it will take its prey to a thorny tree, or bush, or even barbed wire, and it will ram its prey down on a spike so that it won't move when the shrike tears it apart.

It's a songbird that's learned to kill, and it does so far more cruelly than any raptor.

Anyone ever hear the Slender Man sing?

e: Wikipedia on Lanius excubitor, the Great Gray Shrike: "This species will lure birds closer by mimicking their calls."



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Hey, if the cat's out of the bag, why try to put it back in? This whole thing is creepy as hell even as we see it put together piece by piece, by anyone. As much as I hate the whole web 2.0 thing, this has basically become a collaborative ARG and it is awesome. The only thing I would say is that it needs its own home, where people can still participate. Who cares if people know it comes from a forum and it isn't real. It is a ghost story, so of course it is fake. The thing about ghost stories that all those shaky green tv shows miss is that people like telling ghost stories as much as they like hearing them.



Cetaphobia:

I'm still REALLY seeing Slender Man as being related to Shadow People and, now, the hat man. http://www.thehatmanproject.com/

I have this vision of Slender Man coming up to you and Shadow People just… gurgling out of his shadow. As if he creates them.

Reverend Gnome:

Or worse; being menaced by Shadow People, only to have them flee in terror when Slenderman shows up.



I want so very much to call bullshit on the slender man. A trope created by goons who sit around the internet campfire circlejerking about scary monsters that lurk in the night. Every time I try though, the wind drives branches against my window, and the staccato rap tap of branches against glass won't let me. I wouldn't care about that, except for the fact that there are no trees near my windows, and there is no wind tonight.



I love this thread, although I am now scared to even look out my window or in my mirror for fear that there will be something there. The Slender Man has a special sort of fear to him like that. I think part of it is that most ghost stories and so on have a kind of comforting concept of justice, where it's the guy who disturbed the grave, or pissed on the scarecrow, or went off to do drugs, etc who dies brutally. But the Slender Man doesn't care. And he has no weakness. He doesn't fear the sun - he just likes to go after you at night. He doesn't bother to dodge bullets - they can't hurt him anyway. He doesn't even hide in pictures most of the time, because in the time it takes you to look at your camera and back up, he could be gone - or he could have you.



The tulpa is manifest. All it takes is that split second of fear when the tree outside your window casts a shadow just right, and he knows.



Slender Man is like that stupid game where you lose as soon as you think about it.

If you think about him, he knows. If you fear him, he comes. The only way to escape the Slender Man is to not know about the Slender Man.



qntm:

I like the idea that as well as branchy tentacles he has more than the usual number of hands. You know, you're walking through the woods and you see a human hand just lying there. Thanks to the camouflage, it looks disembodied. Then you spot two or three more dotted around the place. Then something starts messing with your hearing.

Millard Fillmore:

Then you wake up to the fact that you've murdered your entire family.

Or you don't wake up at all.



Sudden Guts Pill:
Conspiracies

I wonder perhaps if Slenderman's name is Zoso, but he would come for anybody who figured it out, which is perhaps why Jimmy Page has been so secretive about exactly where they got their symbols for their IV album.

Hang on guys, I think there's somebody standing in front of my house



FlashBewin:

I'm nobody special, just someone who's read through all (at this point, 33 pages) I have a few things to mention that apparently nobody else has thought of.
Wasn't there an artist who painted a picture—supposed to be really famous, its in all the big fancy art books. Isn't called "The Scream" or "The Screamer" ? It showed an elongated person with its hands besides its head or doing like the microphone around its mouth.
Could be that be related somehow?
Forgive the pun, but it might be a stretch.

Also, many of the articles and pictures that have been brought together all seem to paint SM in a suit. Now, bear with me.
It could be related, but hasn't there always been a urban legend about Men In Black? Granted, depending on who you ask, this is related to either the Government or Aliens, but what if….

Okay, And finally the last thing i do feel i have to bring to attention.
Hasn't ANYONE seen the movie "Mimic" ?
The Judas Bug. It EVOLVED to look like the prey that it hunted. Now, i understand that this doesn't fit every story (like the wood carvings, But it does rather fit the Woodcarving with the skeleton with the arm-spear, It looks human)
I'm babbling.
Someone had an article posted that said that SM looked like the most believable …whats the word… Rank? class? of people. The Knight. Everyone has seen a business suit, and thats pretty much ubiquitous worldwide. Everyone recognizes it. Someone else did bring up this point, but what if SM is evolving to suit the times ?

Be careful everyone. We're probably the only ones who recognize this threat for what it is.

Rambowjo:

The Scream by Edvard Munch comes off as more of a victim than an attacker. There is a striking resemblance though.



OddOne:

Sounds to me like the tulpa is indeed manifest…

Slender Man has taken form. Now he need only begin to acquire power.

Donkey Punch Champ, your writing is absolutely epic.

Donkey Punch Champ:

That story of mine was a dream. I've actually got little brothers and sisters, and I love them all very much, and that love, along with the lingering feeling that maybe we're making something we can't stop, is where the dream came from I think.

I think he's starting to realize that we've made him. I think he needs us.

And I think he will use us, but on his terms.

I for one am done being afraid of the slender man. There's got to be away to stop him. There's got to be a way to hold him back. And failing those, a way to kill him.

I just cant think of way how…

Rambowjo:

The Slenderman seems to be emitting some kind of interfering radiation, which most likely has something to do with the paralyzing fear that supposedly is induced in people during Slenderman encounters. If we identify and fend off this radiation, we might be able to actually do something.

Mogadishu:

That son of a bitch can scare a camera. You don't even need to be alive to know he's bad news. Don't shit him up with technobabble and fending off radiation. There is no doing something, no endgame but death. He is fear itself. This is what Roosevelt was scared of.

Millard Fillmore:

There's something ethereal about him, not so much of an alien thing, but more of him not belonging in this world. 'World' may not be the best word, I think 'dimension' is a better surrogate. He is the finality of all our fears, the ultimate penultimate, if you will. Is there something beyond him? I pray to whatever deity that we don't unearth that.



Just came across this page with an eerie similarity to slenderman.

http://www.rense.com/general69/alien.htm

Earthly monster confused with spaceman? Who knows.



I kinda see the Slenderman itself as not necessarily being the actual thing that drives the killings. It seems like it's a misshapen representation of what something thinks a man should look like. Similar to how the Anglerfish has a lure that somewhat resembles a glow-worm, the Slenderman is merely the part of It that we are able (or allowed) to see. And when we're ensnared, It comes around the (non-euclidean) corner… and feeds.

On a lighter note, I've just read all 34 pages of this at night alone in a big house with wind and rain whipping up the branches outside. Fuck I'm dumb.



I like to think of ol' Skinny as being fairly open to interpretation, but my personal favorite is one of curiosity. He's curious about humanity, and knows better than to intrude too deeply and disrupt what he's trying to study… but being what he is, he can't examine mankind without hurting people, sometimes badly. By sometimes badly I mean sometimes they die in a quick and efficient manner, and other times he unintentionally stretches it out…

I think I mentioned this before--but the original Slender Man pics associated him with fire, as in preceding or instigating fire. Dissection and other means of destruction came later--not that I'm complaining. As Call of Cthulhu d20 once said, a beastie can have a thousand legs today and no legs next time, so long as it makes each encounter more horrifying.



In the story I'm writing with him I made his method of killing phycological, being able to show you the worst things you could ever possibly see to drive you to suicide. Thats the great thing about this, there isn't really a "right" answer, the character lends itself to so many really good ideas that you could basically have him do anything and make a story out of it.

Like TombsGrave just posted, he used fire in the start, but that changed and evolved depending who was writing/making a picture of him. Thats really why I like this monster, not only does it look unnerving and worrying, but it'd open and can be used in any way. This thread has really provided a really good monster.



rinski:

The SM is fascinating to me, because he's such an ideal horror figure for so many different reasons. I mean, there's the whole "fear of the unknown" thing, and the "twisting the familiar into something unfamiliar" thing. There's also the genius of his subtlety: we've trained ourselves to see his general shape in every photoshop, so now we see him everywhere.

These factors aren't really unique, though. I think one of SM's more unique attributes is that he's fake. Not only is he fake, but we know, for a fact, that he came from a thread on SA. No one is trying to convince us he's real.

We're not used to this. We're used to movies trying to bully us into suspending disbelief, which only leads to logical rationalization. SM freaks us out without even trying to convince us he's real. Now we're feeling a very real emotion from some internet photoshop meme, which is irrational. We start rationalizing our fear. "How could something that isn't real freak us out so much?" Rather than believe we're still capable of being scared of the dark, we start to feel like SM, despite all logic, could be real.

This is also likely the most interactive scary story we've been actively involved in. I mean, we are the ones giving the Slender Man life. He's something we created and control: we're the ones photoshopping him into images. Things you are in control of typically aren't frightening.

But there is no one person -- not the people making photoshops, not his original creator, and not the guys making the Marble Hornet videos -- who is solely in charge of this story any more. He's growing organically from our combined feedback and contributions. He's the larger organism and we are his cells. We're simultaneously in control and not in control. For all intents and purposes, the Slender Man is a living entity.

Further, he exists due to a cycle that's somewhat self-replicating. If you get freaked out by SM, you'll probably want to make your own photoshop. Maybe it's because you want to scare others, or maybe it's so you can take control of your fear. Regardless, the end result is more photoshops, which means he's growing.

Breetai:

I read a thread on another forum that had heard of the Slender Man and there was a good 2-page meltdown where a bunch of guys started freaking out and jabbering on about "Oh shit, what if we're creating a Tulpa?"

Success!

rinski:

Definitely, and the coolest part is the individual level on which this phenomena takes place. I mean, you read about SM, and you think, "man, I'd better go out and take some pics to photoshop him into." Now you're going to some place you are familiar with and purposefully interjecting something that frightens you. You'll never be able to look at that place again without feeling some sort of apprehension. You've essentially haunted a familiar place with a ghost only you can see, giving this location a nightmarish quality.

By participating, we're giving him places to live.



Mad Hamish:

Genesplicer, Did you get your class of kids to draw those, and if so, how did you get them to do it? It's pretty awesome.

genesplicer:

Yes, I did. We have a class every day called "Wolf time". It is time for the kids to read or participate in club activities. I have the science club. I told them I was working on a project with some other people to create the legend of the slenderman. I told them a very brief history and showed them a couple of pictures from the thread and a couple of examples I did. They took care of the rest.

Semi-Normal:

It's nice of you to try and keep everyone calm, but you and I both know that you never mentioned Slender Man to these kids.

He's coming.

genesplicer:

One of my students who drew the picture asked the following question.

"The Slender Man always looks different. Is it Slender Man, or Slender Men? Maybe that's what happens to the kids he kidnaps, he turns them into more of himself, to go and collect others…"

Error 404:

out of the mouths of children…comes unimaginable horror.

Isko:

This is great and fucking creepy. The children are brought to a horrible place where they slowly shed their humanity, losing their face, their emotions, only growing taller and taller as time passes until they look just like their abductor.

Although I admit, I like the idea of their just being one slenderman more.

Gutless Wonder:

Actually, I agree about the part of there being only one Slender man, but I thought a lot of the "accounts" and especially the Marble Hornets videos were implying this theory. That some (if not all) of Slender Man's victims become just like him. Or maybe it's more of a Dread Pirate Roberts thing

genesplicer:

We like the idea of there being only one Slender Man, but the kids kind of liked the idea of the "dreadful transformation", as one of my kids put it. To them, it's kind of like puberty (That they are all hitting like a brick wall) gone horribly wrong. Instead of becoming happy, productive adults, they become something unspeakable. I'm sure Freud would have a field day with this…

Maybe it's a franchise, you know, regional Slender Men…

I like the Dread Pirate Roberts thing. (or maybe it's more like Davey Jones and the Flying Dutchman) You are cursed to be the Slender Man until you catch your replacement.

The big discussion was about perception. When I had the kids draw the Slender Man, they all did different things, as I expected. So the question was "Why do people who are all looking at the same thing see it differently?" Does the Slender Man have the ability to sense what might scare you more and so you perceive that? Or is it something else? My students had a great discussion about that, but never reached a conclusion.



Why's he creepy? It's gotta be the ease in which he can slide into any circumstance. Combined with his unsettling appearance and as-you-please list of horrible-things-he-does, it's a great psychological trap for people who get into the act.

I don't like the "government forces trying to deal with Skinny" bits. Organized response seems… well, sort of like that Blair Witch video game getting Let's Played over in the LP forums. It's taking a creepy, low-budget concept and filling it with shoot-first survival horror elements. Not creepy in the slightest. The Slender Man is small-scale horror, not a Cthulhu that threatens humanity, but a Colour Out Of Space that threatens you, specifically.

I do like the idea of "family permutations" and sub-legends of the Slender Man. After all, in nature wings have showed up in many different varieties in many different species to achieve the same function; it's possible freaky otherworldly weirdos might have similar mind-warping effects to Skinny, and people might make logical connections between them and Slender Man, without there necessarily being a literal line of descent, a Munsters of fire and child mutilation.

As for motives and abilities and such, that's up to the individual photoshopper. I'm fond of a relatively straightforward Skinny m'self. In my mind he's something of a scientist, curious about mankind. He'd like to better fit in, but he can never get the proportions right, and his manipulators like to revert to something closer to their real shape… so he stays off in the distance until he finds someone who draws his attention—a prime specimen, perhaps, or someone who seems to know he's there…



I know many have said the same thing, but I just can't get over how cool the whole Slenderman thing has become. From one small idea has come an outpouring of creativity and talent. Kudos to you all for your contributions! As for further Slenderman research, my father is a native German and before he retired was a professor of German and of European folktales and symbolism. I'm going to ask him if he has ever heard about a Slender man or something similar during his career. Also, my husband and I are moving into our first house and the house next door has a big old dead tree outside with twisty gnarled branches…which I am now afraid of. Damn you all, but keep it coming!



This was EXACTLY what I was thinking, and I was actually waiting until I'd read through the entire thread before posting the idea. I'd never heard of a 'tulpa', but I was going to suggest that perhaps this SM entity is really a memetic virus insinuating itself into the collective unconscious, as a prelude to an all-out invasion of some kind.

I know your comment is four months old, but it's uncanny how similar your post was to what I was thinking as I finally got around to reading this whole thread today.

This is it, then. This is how humanity ends. Not with a bang, nor a whimper, but rather screaming and kicking as it is dragged to hell by an anthropomorphic manifestation of our fears. How fitting that it take the shape of some kind of "tree monster", consider how we've treated our environment.



Not really a paranormal image, but definitely inspired by this thread… here's a "decoration" that I put up at my house. I wonder what it will look like when the sun goes down.

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Do you ever get that feeling? That feeling like you're being followed, but whenever you turn around there's no one there? I think that's him. That's what he does when he follows you—he gives you that feeling. If you notice him, he notices you.

I see him outside of my house, now. At the windows. I close all of the blinds, but I always look outside. He only comes at night, but I'm starting to see him in the daytime, too.

I don't think his eyes are darkened. I think they're just… gone.

He follows me wherever I go. I see him at work, so I don't go there anymore. I see him outside, not always but even when I don't, I always feel him there. I don't go outside anymore. I don't go anywhere.



Am I alone when I think of a monster, and get kind of disappointed that all it does to its victims is kill them? Yeah, sure, it's scary-looking, but a person can kill you, too. But something about monsters that I've always liked is that they evoke a deeper fear than just that of death. Like they just snatch you away, and nobody ever sees you again.

Nobody knows where it is you are taken to, but nobody ever comes backs, and everybody agrees it's generally a horrible place. And maybe in this place, you can't die. And maybe you also don't need organs or skin or even a body, really, and that's why yours has now been nicely wrapped up and hung in a tree.



I think he's a throwback to eerie childhood fantasies. Slederman's not necessarily a threatening entity but he is unsettling in his perceived omnipotence and inhuman qualities. When I see rinski's rendering I'm reminded of staying the night in my grandmother's house in the country. She used to tell us stories about hermits and demons that lived in the woods behind her fields. Sometimes we'd wander into the fields and look into the trees for hours, waiting for movement, wondering if we were watching something we couldn't see.

I really like rinski's drawing. It reminded me of the illustrations in the old book series "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark."



Theres a service you can pay for to access all of the Coast To Coast AM show archives. Here's a link to last night's show summary: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2009/11/06

"Nick, a 17-year-old from California, described the Slender Man — a shadow man-type figure, very thin, with unnaturally long limbs, and wearing a black suit. Nick likened his appearance to Jack Skellington from the animated movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and said his girlfriend had seen him once when she was young. According to legend, the Slender Man seeks to kidnap children."

If I remember correctly, another 2 or 3 people also called to explain encounters with the Slender Man as well.



I prefer the idea of him not actually wearing the clothes. He's more chameleon like. He's just trying to approximate the human form, but of course being as alien as he is to us, he doesn't understand what the "important" features are or how to get them right, really. Hence the lack of any real discernible facial features. And of course his motivations for attempting to blend in are of course incomprehensible to us. Our minds cannot comprehend his, and likewise his can't comprehend ours. His motivations are unknowable.

By far the greatest thing about Slenderman is that he is whatever he needs to be to whoever is thinking about him. There's not really any such thing as "canon" when it comes to Slenderman. He is what he must be.



I have making the commute to my school 200 times per year since 1991. My path takes me through Moreno Valley, California. Right where the 60 meets the 215 there was a huge nursery. When I first started working at the school the nursery was a nice going venture. I even bought some plants there.

It went out of business about 15 years ago, and has set abandoned ever since. I have watched it slowly decay over the intervening years. It has been a haven for the homeless and a hangout for goths. A few years ago somebody cut a hole in the fence that separates the property from the freeway.

Then somebody added an interesting quote:

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I've seen this for the past year. Today, I decided to add something more:

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And here's how it looks from the freeway:

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