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Creepypastas

Slender Man or The Slenderman is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face, wearing a black suit.

First apparition Something Awful Last appearance Slender Man: The Movie Created by Eric Knudsen

Slender Man stories typically depict his stalking, abducting, or traumatising people, particularly children. Slender Man has become a pop culture icon, though he is not confined to a single narrative, but instead appears in many disparate works of fiction, usually composed online. Slender Man-related fiction spans many media, including literature, art, and video series such as Marble Hornets (2009–2014), in which he is referred to as The Operator. The character has appeared in the video game Slender: The Eight Pages (2012) and its successor Slender: The Arrival (2013), as well as inspiring the Enderman in Minecraft. He has also appeared in a 2015 film adaptation of Marble Hornets, where he was voiced by Doug Jones, and a 2018 film of the same name, where he was voiced by Javier Botet. Beginning in 2014, a moral panic over Slender Man arose after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts, most notably a near-fatal stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Waukesha, Wisconsin.[1] The stabbing inspired the documentary Beware the Slender Man, which was released in 2016.

Slender Man was created in a thread on the Something Awful Internet forum (specifically on the forum called 4chan) started on June 8, 2009, with the goal of editing photographs to make them contain supernatural entities. On June 10, 2009, a user by the name of Victor Surge (real name Eric Knudsen) contributed two photos taken in 1926 of groups of children, to which he added a tall, thin, spectral figure dressed in a black suit and dark tie with no face. Previous entries consisted of photographs only; however, Surge supplemented his with text fragments from witnesses describing the abductions of the groups of children, and giving the character the name "Slender Man":

These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequently, other users expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions. In an interview with the website Know Your Meme, Victor Surge (real name Eric Knudsen) claims that he was inspired to create Slender Man by the legends of the "shadow people," the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Zack Parsons, and Stephen King (particularly The Mist), and the surrealism of William S. Burroughs. His intention was, he says, "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be understood, and that would trigger unease and terror in the general population." In a podcast interview, Knudsen cited the Tall Man from the Phantasm film series as an inspiration for Slender Man.

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Slender Man soon went viral, spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay, and online fiction known as creepypasta: scary stories told in short, easily copied pieces of text that are passed from site to site.[3] From his original creation, Slender Man became the subject of countless stories by various authors into a global myth. The first series of Slender Man videos arose from a post on the Something Awful thread written by user ce gars. It follows a fictional filmmaking student named Alex Kralie, who stumbled upon something disturbing while filming his first feature film, Marble Hornets. The video series, posted in the found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game depicting the short film creators' fictional experiences with Slender Man.[4][5] Marble Hornets is now one of the most popular Slender Man creations, with over 250,000 followers worldwide, and 55 million views. It now has its own song, the "Slenderman song".[6] Other series about the Slender Man legend and character exist, including Tribe Twelve, Croatian Files, and EverymanHYBRID. In 2012, Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; as of August 2012, the game has been downloaded over two million times.[7] Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow[8] and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most popular app.[9] The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013. Several standalone films about Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity and The Slender Man, released for free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign. In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would be made into a film.

As a fictional mythology, Slender Man has evolved without a "original canon" of reference; his appearance, motives, habits, and abilities are not fixed, but instead change depending on the narrator. He is commonly described as very tall and thin, with abnormally long arms and tentacles, which can extend to intimidate or capture his prey. He has a white, featureless face and appears to be dressed in a dark suit and tie. Slender Man is associated with the forest and has the ability to teleport.[10][11] Proximity to him is often said to trigger the "Slender Sickness"; a rapid onset of paranoia, nightmares, and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds.

The Slender Man was called "the first great myth of the web" by the BBC.[10] The success of the Slender Man legend has been attributed to the connective nature of the Internet. While nearly everyone involved understands that Slender Man is not real, the Internet allows others to build upon the foundations established, thus giving it an air of not being fake.[2] Victor Surge has commented that many people, despite understanding that Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that he might be real.[10] Tom Peddit, a professor at the University of Southern Denmark, has described The Slender Man as an example of the modern era closing in on the "Gutenberg Parenthesis", the period of time from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were encoded on discrete media, returning to older, more primitive forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire stories, in which the same story might be retold, reinterpreted, and retconned by different storytellers, expanding and evolving it over time.[10] Shira Chess, a professor at the University of Georgia, has noted that the Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open-source spirit of the Internet, and that unlike traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, Slender Man myths can be traced and pinpointed, giving powerful insight into how myths and folklore are formed. [12] Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm, has suggested that the Slender Man represents the modern fear of the unknown, in an age inundated with information where people have become so inured to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand. [13] Troy Wagner, creator of Marble Hornets, attributes the Slender Man's terror to his malleability - people can shape him into whatever scares them most.

On May 31, 2014, two twelve-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, held down and stabbed a female classmate of the same age nineteen times; when questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wanted to commit murder as a first step toward becoming a Slender Man acolyte (by proving themselves worthy of Slender Man), after having read about him online.[14] Thanks to the intervention of a passing bicyclist, the victim survived the attack. The attackers were charged as adults and each faced up to sixty-five years in prison. One of the girls said that Slender Man watched her, and could read minds, and teleport. Experts testified at the trial. On August 1, 2014, she was found unfit to stand trial and her prosecution was stayed until her condition had improved.[15] In a statement to the media, Eric Knudsen said, "I am deeply saddened by the tragedy in Wisconsin and my heart goes out to the families of those affected by this terrible act." Eric Knudsen said he would not be giving interviews on the matter.[16] After hearing the story, an unidentified woman from Hamilton, Ohio, told a WLWT television reporter that her thirteen-year-old daughter had attacked her with a knife, and had written macabre fiction, some involving Slender Man, who the mother claimed had motivated the attack.[17] In September 2014, a fourteen-year-old girl in Port Richey, Florida allegedly set fire to her family's home while her mother and nine-year-old brother were inside; police reported that the teen had been reading online stories about Slender Man, as well as an e-book called Soul Eater. Eddie Daniels of the sheriff's office said the girl "had visited the website that contains a large number of