Slender Man
The Slender Man is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid with a featureless white head and face, wearing a black suit.
Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature his stalking, abducting, or traumatizing people, particularly children. The Slender Man has become a pop culture icon, although he is not confined to a single narrative but appears in many disparate works of fiction, typically composed online. Fiction relating to the Slender Man encompasses many media, including literature, art and video series such as Marble Hornets, wherein he is known as The Operator. The character has appeared in the video game Slender: The Eight Pages and its successor Slender: The Arrival, as well as inspiring the Enderman in Minecraft. He has also appeared in a 2015 film adaptation of Marble Hornets, where he was portrayed by Doug Jones, and an eponymous 2018 film, where he was portrayed by Javier Botet.
Beginning in 2014, a moral panic occurred over the Slender Man after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts, particularly a near-fatal stabbing of a 12-year-old girl in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The stabbing inspired the documentary Beware the Slenderman, which was released in 2016.
Description
Because the Slender Man's fictional "mythology" has evolved without an official "canon" for reference, his appearance, motives, habits, and abilities are not fixed but change depending on the storyteller. He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms, which he can extend to intimidate or capture prey. In most stories, his face is white and featureless, but occasionally his face appears differently to anyone who sees it. He appears to be wearing a dark suit and tie. The Slender Man is often associated with the forest and/or abandoned locations and has the ability to teleport. Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a "Slender sickness"; a rapid onset of paranoia, nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds.Early stories featured him targeting children or young adults. Some featured young adults driven insane or influenced to act on his behalf. Others included the idea that investigating the Slender Man will draw his attention. The web series Marble Hornets established the idea of proxies, who were humans who fall under the Slender Man's influence. Initially depicted as simply violently insane, they came to be portrayed as puppets of the Slender Man. Marble Hornets also introduced the idea that the Slender Man could interfere with video and audio recordings, as well as the "Slender Man symbol", ⦻, which became a common trope of Slender fiction. Graphic violence and body horror are uncommon in the Slender Man mythos, with many narratives choosing to leave the fate of his victims obscure. Shira Chess notes that: "It is important to note that few of the retellings identify exactly what kind of monster the Slender Man might be, and what his specific intentions these points all remain mysteriously and usefully vague."
History
Origin (2009)
The Slender Man was created on 10 June 2009, on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum. The thread was a Photoshop contest in which users were challenged to "create paranormal images". Forum poster Eric Knudsen, under the pseudonym "Victor Surge", contributed two black-and-white images of groups of children to which he added a tall, thin, spectral figure wearing a black suit. Although previous entries had consisted solely of photographs, Surge supplemented his submission with snatches of text—supposedly from witnesses—describing the abductions of the groups of children and giving the character the name "The Slender Man":The quote under the first photograph read:
The quote under the second photograph read:
These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.
Knudsen was inspired to create the Slender Man primarily by Zack Parsons' "That Insidious Beast", Stephen King's The Mist, reports of shadow people, Mothman and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. Other inspirations for the character were the Tall Man from the 1979 film Phantasm, H. P. Lovecraft, the surrealist work of William S. Burroughs, and the survival horror video games Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Knudsen's intention was "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and unease and terror in a general population". Other pre-existing fictional or legendary creatures which are similar to the Slender Man include: the Gentlemen, black-suited, pale, bald demons from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush"; men in black, many accounts of which grant them an uncanny appearance with an unnatural walk and "oriental" features; and The Question, a DC Comics superhero with a blank face, whose secret identity is "Victor Sage", a name similar to Knudsen's alias "Victor Surge".
In her book, Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology, Professor Shira Chess of the University of Georgia connected the Slender Man to ancient folklore about fairies. Like fairies, the Slender Man is otherworldly, with motives that are often difficult to grasp; like fairies, his appearance is vague and often shifts to reflect what the viewer wants or fears to see, and, like fairies, the Slender Man lives in the woods and wild places and kidnaps children.
Development (2009–2013)
The Slender Man soon went viral, spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay, and online fiction known as "creepypasta"—horror stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site. Divorced from its original creator, the Slender Man became the subject of myriad stories by multiple authors within an overarching mythos. Many aspects of the Slender Man mythos first appeared on the original Something Awful thread. One of the earliest additions was added by a forum user named "Thoreau-Up", who created a folklore story set in 16th-century Germany involving a character called Der Großman, which was, the writer implied, an early reference to the Slender Man.The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user "ce gars". It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets. The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game describing the filmers' fictional experiences with the Slender Man. The ARG also incorporates a Twitter feed and an alternate YouTube channel created by a user named "totheark". As of 2013, Marble Hornets had over 250,000 subscribers around the world and had received 55 million views. Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve.
In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; and the official website crashed after too many people tried to download the game. Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow, ''Slender: Source, and Slender Rising for iOS. The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013. Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity and The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign. In 2013, Variety announced that Marble Hornets would become a feature film. This would later become Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story''.
Waukesha stabbing (2014)
On 31 May 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin held down and stabbed a 12-year-old classmate 19 times. When questioned later by authorities, they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming proxies for the Slender Man, having read about it online. They also stated that they were afraid that Slender Man would kill their families if they did not commit the murder. After the perpetrators left the scene, the victim crawled out of the woods to a roadway. A passing cyclist alerted authorities, and the victim survived the attack. Both attackers were diagnosed with mental illnesses, but both 12-year-olds were charged as sane adults, and faced up to 65 years in prison. One of the girls reportedly said that Slender Man watched her, could read minds and could teleport.Experts testified in court that she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On 1 August 2014, she was found incompetent to stand trial and her prosecution was suspended until her condition improved. On 19 December 2014, the judge ruled that both girls were competent to stand trial. In August 2015, the presiding judge ruled that the girls would be tried as adults. They were tried separately. On 21 August 2017, one of the girls, now 15, pleaded guilty to being a party to attempted second-degree homicide, but claimed she was not responsible for her actions on grounds of insanity. Although prosecutors alleged that she knew what she was doing was wrong, the jury determined that she was mentally ill during the attack. On 21 December, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren sentenced Anissa Weier, then 16 years old, to be hospitalized for 25 years from the date of the crime—until age 37.
In a statement to the media on 4 June 2014, 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." He stated he would not be giving interviews on the matter.
On 25 September 2017, it was reported that Morgan Geyser, then 15, had agreed to plead guilty to attempting to commit first-degree homicide in an arrangement that would allow her to avoid jail. On 1 February 2018, the Associated Press reported that Geyser had been sentenced to 40 years in the Wisconsin mental hospital, the maximum sentence allowed.
Both women were later granted supervised release, Weier in 2021, and Geyser in 2025.