The Slender Man Part I

 The Slender Man is a supernatural creature who appears as a tall thin man wearing a business suit, and is further described as having no facial features. 


It is said to possess many abilities, such as being able to appear and disappear at will, push thoughts into people’s minds, and appear in dreams. In some cases it is said to be able to sprout extra arms. The Slender Man has a very aggressive attitude, it is said to stalk a person for years at a time. In some cases the person will later be found impaled on a tree. It is said the Slender Man mainly stalks children and there have been scattered reports of children disappearing directly after Slender Man sightings.

The Slender Man as we know it today was born from the ‘Something Awful’ forums of 2009, which challenged users to create fake paranormal stories/pictures and filter them through the internet, but on May 31, 2014, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls by the names of Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser held down and stabbed their classmate 19 times. The girls reportedly said that they did it as a sacrifice to the Slender Man, in hopes of becoming it’s ‘proxies’(representatives, substitutes, familiars.) The girls had been plotting to kill their classmate for several months. They invited her to a sleep-over, then reportedly lured her out into the nearby woods, where they believed the Slender Man lives, to play a game of hide-and-seek. After the stabbing took place, thinking their classmate was dead, the two girls went back home. However, she was still alive and managed to crawl to the side of a nearby road, where she was discovered by a passing cyclist and rushed to the hospital. Amazingly, the girl made a full recovery and returned to school. Weier and Geyser were ruled unfit for trial until their mental conditions improved, however they were recently deemed competent for trial and the date is set for February 18, 2015. 

Shortly thereafter, another attack came to light. In Hamilton, Ohio, a 13-year-old girl obsessed with the Slender Man attacked her mother with a knife in the family kitchen. The mother stated that when she arrived home her daughter was wearing a white mask, as though she was playing the part, and it was like she was a different person. The mother only suffered minor face, neck, and back wounds. The girl is currently awaiting trial in a juvenile detention center. The mother asked that their names be withheld. It was later found out the girl had made very dark pictures and stories concerning the Slender Man. She had even made a world for the Slender Man in the game Minecraft. The attacks were quickly dubbed ‘The Slender Man stabbings.’

In early September 2014, in Port Richly, Florida, a 14-year-old girl set her house on fire with her mother and 9-year-old brother inside. She then went to a nearby park and slept in the bathroom. The mother and little boy made it out of the house unharmed. The girl then texted her mother and apologized. When authorities found her, she reportedly had a bag containing bottled water, cookies, knives, lighters, and flashlights. They also found a journal in which she talked about ‘killing’. She also frequently talked about the Slender Man. Police found that she frequently visited ‘Creepypasta’ and other Slender Man related sites. She has been charged with attempted murder and arson, and is currently awaiting trial. It is not known whether she will be tried as an adult.  

Over the years many other aspects of the Slender Man have come to light. Some of them stem from ‘Creepypasta’, a site inspired by the Slender Man. On this site, users are allowed to write and post their own stories. These stories have greatly deviated from the original Slender Man mythos and often take a very dark twisted turn. A YouTube series known as everymanHybrid has also introduced otherwise unheard of aspects of the Slender Man. Some of them include Sigma Radiation, a type of radiation that is believed to be emitted by the Slender Man. It is said that Sigma Radiation can make a person sick, and can even open them up to being possessed by the Slender Man. Yet another aspect the series has introduced is a symbol believed to be used by the Slender Man to ‘mark’ potential proxies. The symbol is an X within a circle. The symbol has its roots in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and is believed to be a symbol for the soul. The symbol is also the letter ‘T’ in the Phoenician alphabet, which is derived from hieroglyphs.

There are many theories about what the Slender Man is, ranging from aliens to beings from another dimension. The leading theory is that the Slender Man is a Tulpa or thought-form. Essentially a Tulpa is a materialization of an extremely focused thought or idea. Often times the Tulpa will take on a life of its own, morphing and changing from the original idea, until it becomes out of reach of its creator or creators. Many people believe this because at first glance there would appear to be no folkloric ties to the Slender Man.

However…      

To Be Continued