Slender Man

Artistic depiction of the Slender Man

The Slender Man (also known as Slenderman) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as an Internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Eric Knudsen (a.k.a. "Victor Surge") in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and usually featureless face, wearing a black suit.

Stories of the Slender Man commonly feature him stalking, abducting or traumatizing people, particularly children.[1] The Slender Man is not confined to a single narrative, but appears in many disparate works of fiction, mostly composed online.[2] Fiction relating to the Slender Man encompasses many media, including literature, art and video series such as Marble Hornets. Outside of online fiction, the Slender Man has had impact on popular culture, having been referenced in the video game Minecraft and generated video games of his own, such as Slender: The Eight Pages and Slender: The Arrival.

Beginning in 2014, a minor moral panic occurred over the Slender Man after readers of his fiction were connected to several violent acts, particularly a near-fatal stabbing in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Origin

The Slender Man was created on June 10, 2009 on a thread in the Something Awful Internet forum. The thread was a photoshop contest in which users were challenged to edit everyday photographs to appear paranormal. A forum poster with the user name "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.[3][4] 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:

We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…
— 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.[4]

The quote under the second photograph read:

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.[4]

These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.[3][4]

Victor Surge (real name Eric Knudsen)[5] claimed that he was inspired to create the Slender Man by 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 claimed, "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which caused] unease and terror in a general population."[6] In an interview with the Slender Nation podcast, Knudsen cited the Tall Man from the film series Phantasm as an inspiration for the Slender Man.[7]

Other pre-existing fictional or legendary creatures often thought to have inspired 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".[7]

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, 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 calls the woods and wild places his home and kidnaps children.[7]

Development

The Slender Man soon went viral,[8] spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay, and online fiction known as "creepypasta": scary 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.[2]

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 implied to be an early reference to the Slender Man.[7] 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".[1][9] As of 2013, Marble Hornets now has over 250,000 subscribers around the world, and 55 million views.[10] Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve.[1]

In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; within its first month of release, the game was downloaded over 2 million times.[11] Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow[12] and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download.[13] The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013.[14] Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity[15] and The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.[16] In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a theatrical film.[10] In 2015, the film adaptation, Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, was released on VOD.[17]

Description

The "Slender Man symbol" introduced by Marble Hornets

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.[18] He is most commonly described as very tall and thin with unnaturally long, tentacle-like arms (or merely tentacles),[2] 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.[18] 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.[19][20] Proximity to the Slender Man is often said to trigger a "Slender sickness"; a rapid onset of paranoia, nightmares and delusions accompanied by nosebleeds.[21]

Early stories featured him targeting children or young adults. Some featured young adults driven insane or to act on his behalf, while others did not, and others claim that investigating the Slender Man will draw his attention.[7] The web series Marble Hornets established the idea of proxies (humans who fall under the Slender Man's influence) though initially they were simply violently insane, rather than 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.[7] Graphic violence and body horror are uncommon in the Slender Man mythos, with many narratives choosing to leave the fate of his victims obscure.[7] 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 are- these points all remain mysteriously and usefully vague."[18]

As folklore

Several scholars have argued that, despite being a fictional work with an identifiable origin point, the Slender Man represents a form of digital folklore. Shira Chess argues that the Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open source ethos of the Internet, and that, unlike those of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, the fact that the Slender Man's mythos can be tracked and signposted offers a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form.[3] Chess identifies three aspects of the Slender Man mythos that tie it to folklore: collectivity (meaning that it is created by a collective, rather than a single individual), variability (meaning that the story changes depending on the teller), and performance (meaning that the storyteller's narrative changes to reflect the responses of his/her audience).[7]

Andrew Peck also considers the Slender Man to be an authentic form of folklore and notes its similarity to emergent forms of offline legend performance. Peck suggests that digital folklore performance extends the dynamics of face-to-face performance in several notable ways, such as by occurring asynchronously, encouraging imitation and personalization while also allowing perfect replication, combining elements of oral, written, and visual communication, and generating shared expectations for performance that enact group identity despite the lack of a physically present group. He concludes that the Slender Man represents a digital legend cycle that combines the generic conventions and emergent qualities of oral and visual performance with the collaborative potential of networked communication.[22]

Jeff Tolbert also accepts the Slender Man as folkloric and suggests it represents a process he calls “reverse ostension.” Ostension in folkloristics is the process of acting out a folk narrative. According to Tolbert, the Slender Man does the opposite by creating a set of folklore-like narratives where none existed before. It is an iconic figure produced through a collective effort and deliberately modeled after an existing and familiar folklore genre. According to Tolbert, this represents two processes in one: it involves the creation of new objects and new disconnected examples of experience, and it involves the combination of these elements into a body of “traditional” narratives, modeled on existing folklore (but not wholly indebted to any specific tradition).[23]

Professor Thomas Pettitt of the University of Southern Denmark has described the Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age's closing of the "Gutenberg Parenthesis"; the time period from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were codified in discrete media, to a return to the older, more primal forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire tales, in which the same story can be retold, reinterpreted and recast by different tellers, expanding and evolving with time.[19]

Reasons for success

Media scholar and folklorist Andrew Peck attributes the success of the Slender Man to its highly collaborative nature. Because the character and its motives are shrouded in mystery, users can easily adapt existing Slender Man tropes and imagery to create new stories. This ability for users to tap into the ideas of others while also supplying their own helped inspire the collaborative culture that arose surrounding the Slender Man. Instead of privileging the choices of certain creators as canonical, this collaborative culture informally locates ownership of the creature across the community. In these respects, the Slender Man is similar to campfire stories or urban legends, and the character's success comes from enabling both social interaction and personal acts of creative expression.[22]

Although nearly all users understand that the Slender Man is not real, they suspend that disbelief in order to become more engrossed when telling or listening to stories.[23] This adds a sense of authenticity to Slender Man legend performances and blurs the lines between legend and reality, keeping the creature as an object of legend dialectic.[24] This ambiguity has led some to some confusion over the character's origin and purpose. Only five months after his creation, George Noory's Coast to Coast AM, a radio call-in show devoted to the paranormal and conspiracy theories, began receiving callers asking about the Slender Man.[25] Two years later, an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune described his origins as "difficult to pinpoint."[18] Eric Knudsen has commented that many people, despite understanding that the Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that he might be real.[19]

Shira Chess describes the Slender Man as a metaphor for "helplessness, power differentials, and anonymous forces."[18] Peck sees parallels between the Slender Man and common anxieties about the digital age, such as feelings of constant connectedness and unknown third-party observation.[22] Similarly, Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm, has suggested that the Slender Man represents modern fear of the unknown; in an age flooded with information, people have become so inured to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand.[26] Troy Wagner, the creator of Marble Hornets, ascribes the terror of the Slender Man to its malleability; people can shape it into whatever frightens them most.[19] Tina Marie Boyer noted that "The Slender man is a prohibitive monster, but the cultural boundaries he guards are not clear. Victims do not know when they have violated or crossed them."[7]

Copyright

Despite his folkloric qualities, the Slender Man is not in the public domain. Several for-profit ventures involving the Slender Man have unequivocally acknowledged Knudsen as the creator of this fictional character, while others were civilly blocked from distribution (including the Kickstarter-funded film) after legal complaints from Knudsen and other sources.[5] Though Knudsen himself has given his personal blessing to a number of Slender Man-related projects, the issue is complicated by the fact that, while he is the character's creator, a third party holds the options to any adaptations into other media, including film and television. The identity of this option holder has not been made public.[5] Knudsen himself has argued that his enforcement of copyright has less to do with money than with artistic integrity: "I just want something amazing to come off it... something that's scary and disturbing and kinda different. I would hate for something to come out and just be kinda conventional."[25]

Related attacks

On May 31, 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin allegedly 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.[27] The victim was able to crawl from the woods, where she had been left, to reach a roadside. A passing cyclist intervened, and the victim survived the attack. The purported attackers were charged as adults and are each facing up to 65 years in prison.[28] One of the girls reportedly said Slender Man watches her, can read minds, and could teleport.[27] Experts testified in court she also said she conversed with Lord Voldemort and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On August 1, 2014, she was found incompetent to stand trial and her prosecution was suspended until her condition improved.[29] On November 12, 2014, a doctor judged that her condition had improved enough for her to stand trial.[30] On December 19, 2014, the judge ruled that both girls were competent to stand trial.[31] In August 2015, the presiding judge ruled that the girls would be tried as adults.[32]

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." He stated he would not be giving interviews on the matter.[33]

After hearing the story, an unidentified woman from Cincinnati, Ohio told a WLWT TV reporter her 13-year-old daughter had attacked her with a knife, and had written macabre fiction, some involving the Slender Man, who the mother said motivated the attack.[34]

On September 4, 2014, a 14-year-old girl in Port Richey, Florida, allegedly set her family's house on fire while her mother and nine-year-old brother were inside. Police reported that the teenager had been reading online stories about Slender Man as well as Atsushi Ōkubo's manga Soul Eater.[35] Eddie Daniels of the Pasco Sheriff's Office said the girl "had visited the website that contains a lot of the Slender Man information and stories [...] It would be safe to say there is a connection to that."[36]

During an early 2015 epidemic of suicide attempts by young people ages 12 to 24 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Slender Man was cited as an influence; the Oglala Sioux tribe president noted that many Native Americans traditionally believe in a "suicide spirit" similar to the Slender Man.[37]

References in media

In 2011, Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of the sandbox indie game Minecraft, added a new hostile mob to the game, which he named the "Enderman" when multiple users on Reddit and Google+ commented on the similarity to the Slender Man.[38] Slender Man was the antagonist of the 2013 Lost Girl episode "SubterrFaenean", in which Slender Man was said to be the basis for the Pied Piper legend.[39] The TV series Supernatural parodied Slenderman as "Thinman" in the 2014 episode of the same name.[40] In 2016, American horror punk band Haunted Garage released an EP entitled Slenderman and Other Strange Tales, featuring a song and accompanying music video based on both the character and the 2014 stabbing case.[41] In January 2016, sources within the production company for the successful anthology series American Horror Story claimed that the sixth season story arc would centre on the Slender Man.[42] The sixteenth season of the crime drama TV series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit featured a story inspired by the Slender Man stabbings.[43]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gail Arlene De Vos (2012). What Happens Next?. ABC-CLIO. p. 162. ISBN 9781598846348.
  2. 1 2 3 Romano, Aja (October 31, 2012). "The definitive guide to creepypasta—the Internet’s urban legends". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  3. 1 2 3 Chess, Shira (2012). "Open-Sourcing Horror: The Slender Man, Marble Hornets, and genre negotiations". Information, Communication & Society 15 (3): 374–393. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2011.642889.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Dane, Patrick (October 31, 2012). "Why Slenderman Works: The Internet Meme That Proves Our Need To Believe". whatculture.com. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  5. 1 2 3 Klee, Miles (August 21, 2013). "How the Internet's creepiest meme mutated from thought experiment to Hollywood blockbuster". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
  6. ↑ "Slender Man stabbings: Who is Slender Man?". CBC News. June 3, 2014. Retrieved 2014-06-19.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Chess, Shira and Newsom, Eric (2015). Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology. Palgrave Pivot. ISBN 978-1137498526.
  8. ↑ There is some dispute over whether the Slender Man qualifies as a viral phenomenon, since under some definitions, viral phenomena must spread quickly, while the Slender Man initially spread rather slowly. Some therefore prefer the term "spreadable" to viral (see Chess and Newsom, 2015, "Folklore, Horror Stories, and the Slender Man: The Development of an Internet Mythology" p. 20
  9. ↑ Peters, Lucia (May 14, 2011). "Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren’t: The Marble Hornets Project". Crushable. Retrieved 2012-10-09.
  10. 1 2 McNary, Dave (February 25, 2013). "'Marble Hornets' flying to bigscreen". Variety. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  11. ↑ Marston, Gary (2012). "Slender review". explosion.com. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  12. ↑ Polansky, Lana (August 20, 2012). "Slenderman’s Shadow "Sanatorium" Map Released". Gameranx. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
  13. ↑ Senior, Tom (July 26, 2012). "Slender Man Source mod will let you scare the hell out of yourself for free, with friends". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
  14. ↑ Matulef, Jeffrey (February 11, 2013). "Pre-orders for Slender: The Arrival are half-off, come with instant beta access". Eurogamer. Retrieved 2013-04-03.
  15. ↑ Standal, Jeanne (December 22, 2012). "First Trailer & Poster For The Jadallah Brothers’ Horror Movie ENTITY!". FilmoFilia. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  16. ↑ Gallagher, Danny (October 12, 2012). "Slender Man Movie Producer Steven Belcher Wants to Create True Terror with the Faceless Figure". GameTrailers. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  17. ↑ Clow, Mitchel. "‘Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story’ movie review: Tell, don’t show". Hypable. Retrieved 26 September 2015.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 Dewey, Caitlin (June 3, 2014). "Who is Slender Man?". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  19. 1 2 3 4 "Digital Human: Tales". BBC. 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  20. ↑ Tillotson, Kristin (April 27, 2011). "Tall, skinny, scary—and all in your head". startribune.com. Retrieved 2013-02-23.
  21. ↑ Stampler, Laura (June 3, 2014). "The Origins of Slender Man, the Meme That Allegedly Drove 12-Year-Olds to Kill". time.com. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  22. 1 2 3 Peck, Andrew (2015). "Tall, Dark, and Loathsome: The Emergence of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age". Journal of American Folklore 128 (509).
  23. 1 2 Tolbert, Jeffrey A. (2013). "The sort of story that has you covering your mirrors":The Case of Slender Man" (PDF). Semiotic Review (2). Retrieved 13 July 2015.
  24. ↑ Ellis, Bill (2001). Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
  25. 1 2 Vogt, PJ; Goldman, Alex (January 30, 2014). "#13 - Managing a Monster - On The Media". TLDR. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  26. ↑ Van Horn, Tye (February 15, 2013). "Behind You: The Cultural Relevance of Slender Man". Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  27. 1 2 Gabler, Ellen (June 2, 2014). "Charges detail Waukesha pre-teens' attempt to kill classmate". Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  28. ↑ Terry, Jermont; Kust, James (May 31, 2014). "Girls charged in Waukesha stabbing motivated by 'Slenderman' character". WTMJ. Retrieved 2014-06-03.
  29. ↑ Vielmetti, Bruce; Luthern, Ashley (2014-08-01). "Judge rules 12-year-old incompetent, for now, in Slender Man trial". Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, WI). Retrieved 2014-08-02.
  30. ↑ "Doctor claims girl, 12, 'who repeatedly stabbed classmate to impress Slender Man' has improved enough to stand trial". London: Mail Online. 2014-11-12. Retrieved 2014-11-14.
  31. ↑ Suman Varandani (2014). "Slender Man Stabbing Case: Wisconsin Girls Accused Of Attempted Homicide Are Mentally Fit To Stand Trial". International Business Times. Retrieved 2015-01-05.
  32. ↑ "Slender Man case: Young suspects to be tried as adults". BBC News. 2015-08-10. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
  33. ↑ Wagstaff, Keith (June 4, 2014). "'Slender Man' Creator Speaks on Stabbing: 'I Am Deeply Saddened'". nbc.com. Retrieved 2014-06-04.
  34. ↑ Brad Evans (June 6, 2014). "Hamilton Co. mom: Daughter's knife attack influenced by Slender Man". WLWT.
  35. ↑ Melrose, Kevin. "Teen claims ‘Soul Eater,’ Slender Man led her to set home on fire". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved 7 February 2015.
  36. ↑ Rheana Murray (2014-09-05). "Teen Inspired by 'Slender Man' Set House on Fire: Police". ABC News. Retrieved 2014-09-05.
  37. ↑ Julie Bosman, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Struggles With Suicides Among Its Young, The New York Times, May 1, 2015, accessed May 5, 2015.
  38. ↑ "Notch reveals new mob, dubs them Endermen in reference to Slender Man.". igx.com. 2011. Retrieved 2013-02-21.
  39. ↑ Lost Girl: SubterrFaenean Syfy. 2014. Accessed 2015-18-02.
  40. ↑ Supernatural: "Thinman" The A.V. Club. 2014. Accessed 2016-28-01.
  41. ↑ "Haunted Garage: 'Slenderman and Other Strange Tales'". Zombie Hamster. January 13, 2016.
  42. ↑ Megan Schaefer (2016). "‘American Horror Story’ Season 6 Theories: Who Is Slender Man? Season 5 Clues Point To Terrifying Legend". Retrieved 2016-01-29.
  43. ↑ Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy (2014). "Law & Order: SVU bends the conventions of the cop show". guardian.com. Retrieved 2016-01-29.

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