In northern california a small community is shocked by a devastating inferno that consumes
its local library.
As firefighters fight to contain the blaze, distraught parents rush to try and locate
their children.
When the flames die down, fourteen children are missing and presumed dead.
Yet in the weeks that follow skeletons from the rubble are discovered and identified,
but not one belongs to any of the fourteen missing children.
Even stranger, months after the blaze a strange photograph is delivered to the local police,
showing a group of children- some identified as the missing children- playing with a freakishly
tall unidentified individual standing in their midst.
The individual appears to be wearing a black suit but has disproportionately long and slender
limbs- the police immediately begin referencing the unknown figure as 'Slender Man'.
Seized as police evidence, the photo disappears until it finds its way online decades later,
to be met by hosts of people claiming to have seen the terrifying figure.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Infographics Show- today we're taking a look
at the horrifying story of slender man.
Slenderman was originally created on June 10th, 2009 as part of a photoshop contest
where users were challenged to create paranormal images using pre-existing photos.
Forum poster Eric Knudsen edited two black and white images of children to which he added
a tall, thin figure in a black suit.
To supplement his entries, Knudsen also included pieces of text along with the photos, alleging
them to be eyewitness testimony of the monster and its effects on people.
Having planted the seeds of a great, and very creepy story, the legend of Slenderman only
grew, and more and more people began to add to the character's backstory.
Slenderman's design is purposefully simple, taking the typical human body and distorting
it just enough so it appears monstrous.
The character has no face, and instead has a head with no facial features, eyes, nose,
or ears, and is always seen wearing what appears to be a black suit and tie.
His limbs are also extremely long, very disproportionate when compared to a normal person.
He is also extremely tall, standing as tall as seven feet, but sometimes even eight feet,
with a very gaunt body-hence the name slenderman.
Knudsen commented that originally he was inspired by Zack Parsons' story That Insidious Beast,
and by Stephen King's The Mist, as well as reports from ghost hunters and eyewitnesses
of shadow people.
Typically described as humanoid figures with no features that often appear in the background
or distance, shadow people have a startling similarity to the slenderman character.
Mothman and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon- a figure blamed for several gas attacks in the US in
the 1940s- and the massive paranoia they caused in real life also influenced Knudsen's imagination
when creating the character.
As Slenderman's popularity grew, so did his mythos, which was being added to daily by
fans on various online forums.
One of the earliest and best established piece of slenderman mythos was a folklore story
set in 16th century Germany were a character called Der Grossman stalked a terrified village.
This was supposed to be an original iteration of slenderman, proving that the figure has
been stalking humanity for centuries- possibly longer.
Slenderman also inspired various youtube video series though, with the most famous being
Marble Hornets which tells the story of a film school student stumbling upon the character
while shooting his first feature-length film project.
Hitting well over 250,000 subscribers and 55 million views by 2013, Marble Hornets inspired
other series to include EverymanHYBRID and Tribe Twelve.
A video game developed by a computer design student named Slender: The Eight Pages was
released in 2012, and met with rave reviews.
A very simplistic project, the game consisted of nothing more than a character with a limited
life flashlight collecting eight pages of art scattered around a forest, while being
pursued by Slenderman.
The more pages the character collects, the thicker the fog outside grows, and the faster
Slenderman becomes.
The game was such an unexpected indie smash hit that it would go on to inspire the creation
of a sequel, slender: The Arrival, one year later which was released to mild, but mostly
positive reviews.
In 2018 Sony Pictures released Slender Man, a feature length movie featuring the titular
character.
Yet part of the mythos about slenderman is a constant reference, and real world fear,
of the Tulpa Effect.
Taken from Buddhist ideology, the Tulpa Effect simply states that if enough people believe
something is real, then it can manifest as real in the world.
Basically, our belief is what gives the world its substance- because we believe water is
wet, it is, and if enough of us stop believing that then water will cease to be wet.
As the popularity of Slender Man grew online, many people feared that a real life tulpa
effect may eventually reach critical mass, giving birth to the very real and very terrifying
entity that so far had only haunted internet forums and youtube videos.
Horrifyingly, these people may have been right.
In 2014 three twelve year old girls had a sleep over, during which they found stories
of the slender man online.
Becoming engrossed with the myth, two of the girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, began
to believe that slender man really existed, and that the only way to prevent him from
harming their families were to become his proxies.
The concept of a proxy, or a mortal under the influence of Slenderman, had been a part
of the growing mythos, and the two teens believed that only by becoming proxies themselves could
they keep their loved ones safe.
In order to do so they lured their friend, Payton Leutner out into the forest for a game
of hide and seek.
Once far enough away from any prying eyes, Weier and Geyser pinned Leutner down on the
ground and began to viciously stab her nineteen times.
She was stabbed in the arms, legs, and torso with a five inch kitchen knife, with two wounds
directly to major organs, one missing her heart by a millimeter, and another plunging
through her diaphragm and cutting into her liver and stomach.
Weier and Geyser then told the dying Leutner that they were going to go get help, but instead
left her there to die.
Incredibly, Leutner dragged herself to a nearby road where a passing cyclist found her and
called for an ambulance.
Weier and Geyser were apprehended shortly after, and displayed guilt over the attack
but believed that it was necessary in order to appease the slender man.
The two girls were sentenced to 25 years to life, and 40 years to life, with forced and
involuntary admission to a state psychiatric institute and mental health screening to last
for decades.
Both girls will have a chance to appeal their sentences, but only after a thorough psychological
screening.
If you thought that this was an isolated incident though, think again.
In 2014 a fourteen year old girl in Florida set her house on fire after becoming obsessed
with slender man, leaving her sleeping mother and nine year old brother inside.
The girl had become obsessed with slender man online, but had also allegedly been upset
at feeling bullied at home and at school.
Her ultimate motives remain unknown.
In Hamilton County, Ohio, a 13 year old girl attacked her mother with a knife in 2014.
The Mother returned home from work and found her daughter in the kitchen with a knife,
wearing a white mask over her face.
Without warning the girl viciously attacked her, though without causing serious injuries.
She would later tell police that she was trying to please slenderman, and entries in her personal
journal would reference both slender man, killing, and demons.
Thankfully since then slender man inspired incidents have stopped, though curiously they
seem to have declined in line with the popularity of the character online.
Even a major feature film just last year failed to truly resuscitate the decade old mythological
figure, though it remains worrying that at the height of its popularity, slenderman was
in fact inspiring real killing.
Was the Tulpa Effect at play, did enough people really begin to believe in slenderman so as
to allow the fictitious being to achieve a critical mass that let it step from the world
of make believe into our reality?
It's curious that the attacks were all carried out by young teens, who all wanted to please
slender man- frighteningly similar to the powers so often ascribed to the creature,
namely those to influence and manipulate children to do his will.