Let's cook some creepy pasta.
Let's start off with the facts, and not the fake facts seen on other articles trying to make as if Slender Man could/might be real.
Slender Man is, and started out as a creepypasta series of photoshop creations by Eric Knudsen on the Somethingawful forum in June 2009.
According to Urbanlegends.about.com, The Daily Dot, and KnowYourMeme.com, Slender Man was spawned by alias Victor Surge, real name Eric Knudsen, on the Somethingawful site on June 8, or 10, 2009, as part of a photoshop contest. Loathed as I am to post a Somethingawful link, here's the proof via original thread.
FYI: The chain-origination, otaku and troll site 4chan was spawned out of Somethingawful, though SA claims to be troll-free.
Killing Slender Man My kind of post, loaded with details, and does not promote belief in the hoax.
Some people are either so scared of him or just want to troll and keep the scare going, that they ask if he's real.
The answer is a resounding NO, and not just from me.
"the answer, of course, is no. We're talking about a faceless supernatural monster eight to ten feet tall, with tentacles for arms, who can make himself invisible and "teleport" from place to place, stalking — some say eating — human victims, particularly children. No such entity exists in the real world. It would be headline news if it did.
If you're asking whether this character springs, as is often claimed, from a corpus of myths and legends dating as far back as the Middle Ages, the answer to that, too, is no.
Simply put, the so-called Slender Man "mythos" is a crowdsourced fiction, and quite a recent one at that. Though it has many features in common with traditional boogeyman legends (which is no accident), what sets it apart are the unique circumstances of its origin, which have been so well documented we can pinpoint the exact date and place of Slender Man's creation.
Birth of a boogeyman
Slender Man was born in an online forum on the website SomethingAwful.com, in a discussion titled "Create Paranormal Images," on June 10, 2009. (Knowyourmeme dates it back to June 8, 2009.) Someone had cooked up a contest in which participants were invited to create "strange photos," specifically "images for bogus stories" with the potential to go viral. A pseudonymous forum member known as "Victor Surge" (real name Eric Knudsen,) entered the fray with a pair of Photoshopped images depicting a gaunt, faceless specter with half-a-dozen writhing tentacles instead of arms chasing a hapless group of children on a playground.
Eric [Victor Surge] Knudsen took full credit for inventing him."
Knudsen explains as the UL article goes on:
"The Slender Man as an idea was made up off the top of my head," Knudsen [Surge] explained in a subsequent post. "The name I thought up on the fly when I wrote that first bit. The asset I used for a couple of the pictures was the creepy tall guy from Phantasm, which sadly I have not seen, and the others various guys in suits."
UL goes on to talk about the faked up images and the fake captions that went along with them:
"This was the caption under the first photo:
"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..."
This was followed by more fictitious documentation:
"1"983, photographer unknown, presumed dead. [view photo]"
UL goes on:
"This was the caption under the second, just more fictional documentation:
"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. [view photo]"
Those images and hint of a backstory were an instant hit among forum members. More "found photos" and "documentation" would follow, but there was never any confusion as to Slender Man's fictive status."
So there you have it, Slender Man is not real.
Some people believe, or pretend to believe, that Slender Man fits into many mythologies in legends from around the world, I.E. Germanic or Celtic folklore, which they claim, brings up the possibility that he could be real.
Wrong. Whether Germanic or Celtic in origin, of which slender Man is neither, does not make it possible for any fairy-tale to be real. Think of this and all other such legends as fairy-tale horror. Slender Man, Laughing Jack, Smile Dog, Jeff The Kiler etc. are no more real than Rumple Stiltskin. Slender Man is just photo-shopped and is featured in some fictional stories and games, he will not teleport to your house and give you Slender sickness directly or in the form of coughing fits, memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, and he won't wreck your videos or photos. He also won't steal little children away with his attempted hypnotism, nor get into your dreams and harm you for real.
Slender Man is nothing but a boogyman. Wikipedia and the far less credible Wikia.com.
There is a real Slender Sickness, that is fangirls crushing on and worshipping Slender Man. It has got to the point where some have nearly killed another person because they actually believed in this meme. With the internet's trolls and jokers encouraging rather than discouraging belief in and adoration of things like Slender Man, sites like Quotev where Slender Man, other creepy pasta sadistic characters and all other extreme fandoms run rampant, indulging their fantasies to an unhealthy level, and people who personally know such fangirls perhaps dismissing their obsession as your average faze that would eventually pass, this was the result. At least one murder, and two attempted murders. One Slender fangirl even tried to kill her own mother to please her fictional master.
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Slender Man is this weird fictional character, described as a normal human but for all of these features.
He is a shadow creature that is unusually tall, anywhere from six to ten feet, capable of growing to different heights. He has a blank face with no features except perhaps a wide grin, no ears, and is completely bald.. He has long, thin limbs, crazy arms that shorten and lengthen at will, tentacle-like things growing out his back, and tendrils extending his fingers. these extra vectors or limbs and appendages are as sharp as swords and used for catching prey. His arms, legs, fingers, and toes stretch with a bone breaking sound until he is up to 34 feet tall/long. He takes over and controls the bodies of his living prey. He can distort electronic equipment and teleport and appear at multiple locations at the same time. Well, that makes sense, he is just a creepypasta/chain letter after all, and they're always doing that with the help of internet trolls and dupes.
Slender Man supposedly blends in with the shadows and the trees. Though how he'd manage that with a bald head, black suit, white shirt and red tie, defies logic, never mind the question of how on earth he could get in or out of any suit with all these extra limbs of his.
During the day, he shows up in open areas with trees to the side of an open, empty road, or in the woods or any area filled with trees, or playgrounds, as is the case with that first picture.
At night, he skulks about, lurking among trees and fog, awaiting his victims, whom he lures by pretending to be their imaginary friend if the children are very young. Or he shows up in open windows, dark open rooms, blank TV screens, and in large crowds of people. Though children are told that looking away is the best defence, once they see him, it's too late and they cannot turn away, they can't resist his outstretched arms.
Slender Man's favourite thing to do is stalk, terrorize, enslave, torture, and kill people, particularly children under sixteen years of age, but adults are not always off limits.
Some claim Slender Man wasn't exactly evil In mythology because he was actually trying to save children from a painful death by taking them to the under world early.
No, he wasn't, because "Slender Man" is not a part of ancient mythology, however many attempted creep-out backstories make this claim.
More to the point, what the heck kind of dumbbell excuse is this for killing children painfully? Killing them painfully to save them from a painful death, sort of like turning up the light to try making a room darker. And taking them to the underworld early, where torment goes on, and that's supposed to be saving them? From what? Living a long life and dying and going to heaven later? How altruistic. Not. What rot! Killers thinking they can play God are the most egocentric, arrogant, disgusting things there are, even when they are fictitious, whether from ancient myth or from photoshop jobs dating back only to June 2009.
Here's another heck of a good reason this excuse doesn't hold up.
One backstory says Slender Man was a child molester who was paid back by being strung about the trees, beat with a log, stabbed with a 2 foot stick, and hung from a tree with his arms, hands, legs, and feet all pulled out of their sockets. But he didn't die, he became dealive, and like some strain of superbug, got his shiny new tentacles/vectors/extra limbs, blank face, bald head, psychokinetic, electromagnetic powers, the whole chabang that made him Slender Man.
Since then, Slender Man clearly hasn't learned a thing and is the same vile beast he always was and could ever be.
Slender Man does not deliver mercy killing, painless death to his equally fictional victims. He puts them through prolonged terror and torture for his own gratitude.
Slender Man goes after people under the age of 16. Oh? Just how would he know? There are 20-year-olds who look 14, and 13-year-olds who can pass for 17. Case in point, Toby Rogers (given the bad nickname 'Ticci toby) whose story is all too typical, kid born to drunken beater of a bad dad and submissive mother who hadn't the spine to kick bad hubby to the curb. Toby lost sister in car accident and was made fun of in school. But he was already 17 years old when Slender Man started stalking him and messing with his mind.
Then there were Lauren, Kate, and CR on the Slender, The arrival game. These were adults. The child victim in that game was a proxy (Slender slave) named Charlie Matheson, and they all ended up horribly dead, some were turned into proxies to turn on and help slender Man kill their own friends first.At least one was burned alive.
Sixteen or under, or just a little over, or even adult, these victims become afflicted with a fictitious condition known as Slender Sickness, causing nosebleeds, coughing fits, dizziness, disorientation, insomnia, fear, nightmares, memory loss, paranoia, insanity, until his victims are incapable of thought outside the realm of his fear.
By the time his victims see him, Slender Man is already closely watching them, and all of their actions. Once Slender Man finds out that a victim has given him any thought, be it fear or trying to forget about him, Slender Man takes that as an opportunity to go in for the hunt to kill or enslave. He thrives on toying with his victims via psychological terror. Enough fear of slenderman manifests him into the reality of his fictitious victims, but will never, as a version of the hoax claims, create a bridge between real life fact and myth, making him become actually real.
Slender Man delights in weakening them this way, making them surrender to his domination, which always leads to their eventual violent and bloody death, whether or not he decides to let them live for a time to be his slaves, his mindless minions.
These Slender serfs perform such tasks as planting listening devices in people's homes, following people around without their being aware of it, and watching them while they sleep. (So Slender Man borrowed a page from Edward cullen here.) All of these are done for the purpose of luring, kidnapping, or recruiting more victims to Slender Man for his satisfaction.
Of course, any slaves he decides he no longer wants, due to their aging out of his sick racket or just because he's bored and wanting new blood, he dispatches them the same way he kills any other child.
Failed attempts to strike at him with a weapon only encourages Slender Man to obstruct their nervous system and disabling bodily functions-making it easier for him to finish them off.
And then when Slender Man gets his tendrils into his prey, this is what he does with them.
Slender Man lays out and ties up his victims beneath a 547 pound log hanging over their heads in the woods where he became dealive.
He asks them a question. If they get the answer right, does he let them go? Of course not! This is sadistic Slender Man after all. He breaks every one of their limbs… If victims get the answer wrong, Slender Man slowly sticks his extendable fingers (tendrils) down their throat, choking them, and/or puncturing them in the neck with those same tendrils to pull out their heart. Slender Man extends his fingers to great lengths, puncturing the bodies of victims, and destroying every major internal organ from within, tying them up from the inside into a horrible bloody slendery knot. these children are eaten by Slender Man, taken to another dimension, or the victims’ bodies are found impaled by Slender Man on tree limbs with their organs placed throughout their bodies in plastic bags. With multiple victims, Slender Man swaps out body parts, shoving one victim's remains into the body of the other. He also gets his kicks setting live victims ablaze. If he can force a proxy to aid him in the commission of such a crime and then have him take partial or full blame for it, the better he likes it.
So much for "the claim of saving them from a painful death later in life.
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Der Großmann is part of the Slender Man backstory. He is just another mutation of a faker pretending to be from ancient German mythology. Wikia doesn't cut it for info, since they like to imply monsters could be real. I found no Der Großmann on the real online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
The Urban Legends About.com page has a bit of interesting info, proving my point.
"Even Slender Man's supposed historical predecessor, Der Großmann, is a Photoshop creation (the "woodcuts" of him were created by altering original prints by famed 16th-century artist Hans Holbein)."
So Der Großmann is a fake ancient myth, a mere photoshop copy/modification of someone else's piece of art. Too bad Hans Holbein isn't around to say anything about his art being used in a hoax.
Here's an example of an article passing him off as an ancient myth tying into Slender Man, pun intended. My comments throughout.
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Article: Der Großmann is German for “The tall man”.
Miss Capri: The Tall Man is another recently created monster for some game. Check the Daily Dot article for more info. He may be similar to, but is technically not Slender Man, nor is he from German folklore.
Article: A series of woodcuts were found in in Germany. They date back to the 16th Century and feature a tall man with no face, named Der Großmann.
Miss Capri: More backstory bollox. There were no such woodcuts, they're as fake as the rest of this Der Grossmann tale.
Article: According to the inscriptions, he is a mythical creature who lives in the Black Forest and creeps out of the woods at night to spirit away bad children.
Miss Capri: In the olden days, parents did use cruel methods of discipline, including scaring their kids straight. I've always had serious issues with lies of this sort used by parents to blackmail children into trying to behave better than the adults around them. But this wasn't done via this particular hoax.
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There. No need to fear the Slender Man.
I utterly fail to understand the first caption on one of the Somethingawful photos where Slender Man is described as horrifying and comforting all at the same time. Talk about contradictions. I have never been horrified and comforted by the same thing. One thing does the horrifying, something or someone else does the comforting. The whole thing doesn't make sense anyway. Who didn't want to kill them - who's them? Didn't want to go, - go where? Were the children running from the more killers other than Slender or were they themselves the killers? They were only running, not killing anyone. Slender Man was chasing them in a playground. So he appears to be the only predator there.
Oh, well,whatever. Maybe the caption with the picture was just a bit of foreshadowing to his not-so-spectacular backstory of enslaving kids to do his bidding.
There are slender games, the most popular one, that tends to supposedly creep everybody out except me, is the Slender, the Eight Pages.
In that game, you try to collect all eight notes before being killed by Slender Man.
Don't bother. There is no way to win that game, even after you get all the notes, so here are the notes written out by a couple of people. From the different ordering, it would seem the game doesn't have a set order in which the notes are generated/found..
First description:
1. Has a drawing of Slenderman
2. Says "no no no no no no," with a drawing of Slenderman
3. Says "can't run"
4. Says "follows" with an arrow and a drawing of Slenderman
5. Says "always watches" and "no eyes"
6. Says "leave me alone"
7. Says "help me"
8. Says "don't look...or it takes you!"
Second description
1. Don't look or it takes you
2. Leave me alone
3. "Says NO a bunch of times"
4. No Eyes, Sees all
5. Can't run
6. Follows
7. "Is a picture of the Slender man with a bunch of scribbles around him"
8. "I don't know what this one says, but it might say: No Escape"
Here is a complete play through of this game, yes, with all the notes being found.
Another game is Slender The arrival.
In that game, Slender Man kills all, naturally. Charlie is a dealive proxy who looks like a decaying zombie, and he is featured in a "Missing Child" poster near Kate's. She also goes missing, thanks to Slender and becomes another proxy, who turns on her friend and helps Slender kill Lauren, and Charlie is pressed into aiding Slender Man burn CR alive. Charlie himself, ends up burned in a Slendy-caused fire, because of the implication that he had started turning against his master. It doesn't matter which playable character you get assigned in the various stages of the game, you can't win, you never get away from, and certainly never get to kill slender Man. He always gets to kill you.
Yes, that's right. he gets to kill you, every time in almost every Slender Man Game that's out there. You don't even get to escape and win the game that way after you've found all eight notes or performed whatever tasks you are given in the vast majority of these games. In The Eight Pages, you just walk around until slender Man kills you.
In these games that feature creepy pasta and other chain letters and their characters, you are rarely allowed to win by escaping, much less to kill the pasta/chain letter character, these games are always rigged in their favour so that even if you get everything right, you still get killed by the pasta/chain letter creep in most of them.
I refuse to play that kind of game, even if it was accessible. In my game, Slender man and any other horror villain and chain letter dealive freak, would be killable. I am very sick of everything always being slanted or rigged in favour of Slender, Jeff and the like.
I have found one that sort of lets you kill Slender Man, sort of. It's called "Slender Must Die" and you are supposed to collect 8 pages, and are given a gun to shoot Slender Man on site, and he also gets to try killing you.
The problem with this game is that it is so confusing. You have to seemingly kill and re-kill Slender Man throughout the whole game. He just keeps disappearing and coming back, so that by the end of the game, you still get the feeling that there's more coming and you haven't really killed him this time. The text at the end even sounds uncertain as to whether or not you killed him.
The Daily Dot, The Daily Grail, Urbanlegends.about.com, Wikipedia, UrbanlegendsOnline, KnowYourMeme, Scary4Kids.com, Wikia.com. and a boilerplate text Urbanlegends.about.com included in their article.
For more fearless fun at Slendy's expense, see Slender Stories and A Night In The Creepy Pasta Manor and that's only the start.
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