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Feb 17, 2020 Slender Man is a mythical creature often depicted as being tall and thin, wearing a black suit with a white shirt and necktie, and having a blank face. Since its first appearance on Something Awful in June 2009, the urban legend has inspired a prolific volume of fan artworks, fictional creepypastas and mockumentary web series.
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Questioning the Story:Is the character of Slender Man real or fake?Slender Man is often described as a thin, faceless, 8-foot-tall, semi-human monster with tentacles that stalks people, particularly children, who it abducts, murders, or deeply traumatizes. Some of its evil actions are carried out through 'proxies,' which are human servants that Slender Man communicates with telepathically. The two 12-year-old girls who carried out the 2014 Slender Man stabbing in Wisconsin claimed that they were acting as proxies. You can learn more about the murder they tried to carry out below.The reality is that the Slender Man character and legend is fictional.
It is nothing more than a boogeyman for the Internet age. Slender Man's origins can be traced back to a creepypasta Internet meme from 2009. The term creepypasta is a portmanteau of the words 'creepy' and 'copypasta,' with the latter being coined in 2006 on the imageboard website 4chan. A copypasta is a block of text that has been copied and pasted around the Internet. Therefore, a creepypasta is basically a scary version of a copypasta, or to be more precise, a short, readily available scary story that people copy and paste across the web.
The creepypasta Internet meme known as The Slender Man first appeared on June 10, 2009 on in the forums of the comedy website Something Awful. It was posted by user Eric Knudsen, then 28, who goes by the alias 'Victor Surge' in the forums. He was responding in a thread that challenged users to a Photoshop contest, asking them to 'create paranormal images.' Knudsen contributed two black-and-white images (displayed below).
The images show groups of children playing. Among the kids, Knudsen added a tall, thin, faceless figure outfitted in a black suit. Unlike most of the previous contributors to the thread, Knudsen included captions with his Slender Man pictures.Other members of the forum added their own fictional Slender Man photos and/or text, expanding on Knudsen's story. In a short time, the Slender Man legend went viral and gave birth to fanart, cosplay and more creepypasta. A myriad of short fiction emerged from various authors, all holding to the same narrative theme (or mythos).
By this point, Eric Knudsen's creation was out of his hands.What are the first Slender Man images?As explained above, the Slender Man origins can be traced back to Eric Knudsen, who created the supernatural figure in 2009 as part of a Photoshop contest in the forums of the Something Awful website. A thread challenged users to 'create paranormal images.' On June 10, 2009, Knudsen submitted his first two Slender Man images, which are displayed below, along with the accompanying captions. One of two original Slender Man images created by Eric Knudsen.
In a black and white photo that appears to have been taken during the 1980s, he inserted a faceless figure into the background under a tree. If you look closely, you can see the tentacles coming out of the figure's back.
Original Caption: One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as 'The Slender Man'. Deformities cited as film defects by officials.
Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.
– 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.Knudsen has said that he Photoshopped into the above image the Tall Man from the horror movie Phantasm. What inspired Slender Man's appearance?While exploring Slender Man's origins, we learned that creator Eric Knudsen cited several sources as being the inspiration for his supernatural character. 'I was mostly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King (specifically his short stories), the surreal imaginings of William S. Burroughs, and a couple games of the survival horror genre; Silent Hill and Resident Evil,' Knudsen told a blogger during an interview.
'I feel the most direct influences were Zack Parsons’ 'That Insidious Beast', the Stephen King short story 'The Mist', the SA tale regarding 'The Rake', reports of so-called shadow people, Mothman, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon.' Knudsen also admitted to using the Tall Man from the 1979 movie Phantasm in his original images.Who plays Slender Man in the 2018 movie? Actor Javier Botet lurks in the woods as Slender Man in the movie (left). The 6'7' actor is pictured in real life (right).Have there been any Slender Man-inspired murders?No. The Slender Man murders in the 2018 movie are fictional and are in no way tied to real events. However, there was an attempted murder that was linked to the Slender Man fiction.
It occured in Waukesha, Wisconsin on May 31, 2014. Two 12-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, stabbed their friend Payton Leutner 19 times after luring her into the woods and holding her down during a game of hide-and-seek.
They told police they did it to appease Slender Man.They used a five-inch-long kitchen knife, stabbing Payton in the legs, arms and torso. Two of the stab wounds hit major organs, with one penetrating her heart and missing an artery by less than a millimeter. “If the knife had gone the width of a human hair further, she wouldn't have lived,” said cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. John Keleman, who operated on Payton. The other strike punctured her diaphragm, slicing into her stomach and liver. To save her own life after Anissa and Morgan left her to die, Payton crawled from the woods to a narrow path where a cyclist found her. She was in surgery for six hours.
Keleman had to crack open her chest to save her life. 12-year-old Payton Leutner (left) was lured to the woods by her friends Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who stabbed her 19 times because they claimed they were trying to appease Slender Man.Police caught up to Anissa and Morgan near an interstate on-ramp. They told officers that they were on their way to find Slender Man's mansion to live there with him. They explained that they believed Slender Man was real, and that committing the murder was the only way to get in his good graces. Peyton spent six days in the hospital and it took weeks before she could breathe without struggling. By the start of the new school year, she had recovered physically. In 2017, Both Anissa and Morgan plead guilty.
Both were ultimately found to be not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and have been sentenced to confinement in a psychiatric institution for at least three years, followed by communal supervision for several decades. The attempted murder case was chronicled in the 2016 HBO documentary.ABC NewsHow did Slender Man's creator respond to the news of the stabbing? In a statement released to the media, Eric Knudsen responded by saying, 'I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act.' -NBC NewsEric Knudsen's real identity remains largely unknown. While researching the Slender Man legend, we learned that he was living in Nagasaki, Japan at the time he created Slender Man. Believed to be from the Chicago area, he got married in 2011.
As of 2014, he was living in Florida with his wife and toddler. You can browse some of his artwork on his and where he posts under the alias 'Victor Surge.' -Heavy.comAre there any other Slender Man movies?
The symbol often associated with Slender Man was introduced by the creators of the Marble Hornets video series. As we investigated whether Slender Man is in any way inspired by a true story, we learned that several other low-budget video series and movies about the supernatural character have been made.
The first video series embracing the character is a found footage style series called Marble Hornets, which was created by Troy Wagner and began on YouTube in June 2009. Wagner's series introduced the Slender Man symbol (pictured). Similar YouTube series followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribTwelve.A Slender Man video game arrived in 2012 titled Slender: The Eight Pages. It was downloaded 2 million times in its first month.
Various versions of the game followed, including a 2013 sequel.Several independent Slender Man movies have been released or are in development. These include Entity and the Kickstarter-funded The Slender Man, which was released free online following its $10,000 campaign. In 2015, the Marble Hornets YouTube serial evolved into a VOD movie titled.
The character of Slender Man was portrayed by Doug Jones, who also played Abe Sapien in Hellboy, the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth, and the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water. In 2016, a documentary titled Beware the Slenderman aired on HBO. It followed the real-life Slender Man-inspired stabbing and the two 12-year-old girls who carried out the crime to appease the long-limbed monster.
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