slender man

Posted 04 July 2009 - 06:15 PM

Slender Man just recently appeared on the net. For those of you that haven't heard of it, the whole thing started on somethingawful forums (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post361861415 Slender Man starts on Victor Surge's post and continues on to the last page) and has grabbed the attention of numerous people. Just last month this man (http://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets) posted a mini-series of Slender Man. Even though they're made by an amateur, they catch that creepy feeling that Slender Man offers. The whole thing seems to prey on your primordial fears. The very embodiment of what terrified you as a child, yet seemingly so normal it almost seems like it could be real. Read the entire thread in the somethingawful link, watch the videos by MH,and discuss. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've found the next big thing in horror.

(This is a made up story about Slender Man. I'm not the author but it should give you somewhat of an idea of who he is. I'll post more.)


Excerpt from the journal of Dorothy Birch(pt. 908-01)

April 12, 1923.

I suppose this is will be one of the last voluntary entries in my journal, even though Dr. Keating told me to write down everything that happened. But I'm going to tell the entire story, which is what I should have done in the first place; drat my pride.

It was a biting and windy fall day, I still remember the date. October 5, 1918. Lizzie and I were playing hide-and-go-peek amongst the trees on the land behind my uncle's farm. She was only twelve to my fifteen, so she got her way most all of the time. It was my turn to find her, as I had given in to her incessant begging. She loved to hide.

I hid my eyes in my hands and leaned into the sweet-smelling bark of a thick oak. I called out the numbers until I got to ...98...99...100...! and set off to find her.

Looking back, I should have noticed the signs immediately. The wind which had blown out of the east all day had ceased entirely and there were no sounds in the forest save for my own uncertain footsteps breaking the virgin, untouched carpet of dried and fallen leaves. I kept walking farther into the woods, occasionally calling out for Lizzie. I was not answered except for the greedy silence and the still trees all around. As I kept walking, the large and stout oaks gave way to thinner, taller trees.

It was then that I should have turned around, it was then that I should have run back to Uncle Ed's cabin. But I kept walking.

I stayed on my way, still calling out for my sister, a bit more panicked now, as I almost always found her within a few minutes of starting the search. The taller trees soon engulfed me and a slight mist began to drift through. Then, a sequence of events commenced that will be forever burned into my memory.

I suddenly heard a cry of my name, “Dorothy~!” in a high-pitched, breathy sort of call. It was unmistakably Lizzie. I began to run now, my breath coming in harsh gasps as the cold air stung my throat. The mist came in quicker now, and it was difficult to see. Then, I got the unexplainable urge to hide behind a thicker tree, which I quickly obeyed, looking into the fog in front of mefor evidence of Lizzie.

I can't tell you how long I sat there, shivering behind the tree. Then, a very very tall figure appeared faintly in the fog. It appeared to be aman wearing a suit like Daddy's friends from the bank, but it also looked like he was wearing stilts too, like the clowns at the Fourth of July parade we saw. He seemed to be so tall that his head grazed the leaves. What really didn't make sense was his arms. Oh, his arms. They looked like several hoses left unattendedand cranked up to full blast, but moving very slow. That's the best way I can describe it. This...man, I'll say, this man stood there in the fog for a good few minutes, his (arms?) waving very slow. I got this weird feeling from the tall man, like I was intruding upon something I was forbidden to see, namely his presence.

I got a strange feeling as I gazed upon him, as if I wasn't looking at him, he was looking at me. No, looking through me. Then I realized that his head didn't quite make sense, in a way. It looked like it was moving, like, like.....there was a swarm of bees where his faceshould have been. Kind of like he was in between places and his head had not caught up with his body yet. I was very scared at that point and all thoughts of Lizzie had vanished from my head.

Then, as quickly as he had appeared, the tall man was gone. He just faded away into the fog. It was then that I heard a whimpering sound close to where he was standing. I walked forward, propelled not by my feet but something else. I can'tremember much of this time, I can remember walking up to Lizzie, who was lying amongst the leaves, and then my hands closed on something hard and heavy and holding it above my head. Then there was blackness.

The next thing I remember is sitting in Uncle Ed's kitchen, surrounded by Daddy, Ma, Uncle Ed, and a policeman, they were asking me questions and looking at me like we look at the tigers at the zoo; like I was something dangerous. Apparently I had....killed Lizzie with a rock to her head. I don't remember any of the actual...act. I still have trouble thinking of it now, but that's why I'm at Sunnyhaven, I suppose. However, the tallman still visits me in my dreams. I hope that Dr. Keating can help me banish him forever.

(Another one but this is actually from a book)

So once the Slender Man began popping up in this thread, I could have sworn something about it seemed familiar. I'm an amateur folklorist, so I had a few source books lying around. It took me a while, but I finally found something in W.K. McNeil's Ghost Stories of the American South. Most of the tales collected are transcripts of recordings other folklorists made, but McNeil compiles themand offers notes. A really handy book. So anyway, this particular story appears in the book's seventh section, "Other Supernatural Creatures."

quote:

Well, I’ll you, when I was younger, a cousin of mine came to live with us. He was older than me and my sisters -- maybe sixteen or seventeen -- and we was the only folks he had left in the world, really. And he was the awfulest liar you’d ever know, anything he’d tell you was a lie, almost. I liked him all right. We slept in a loft during the summer because it was cooler up there, meand him, and in the winters we slept on the floor closer to the stove. My sisters had their own room.

So one night my cousin wakes me up by punching me in the shoulder, and it’s summer so we’re up in the loft, and my first thought when he wakes me up is to just push him out, because I’m not happy at being waked up, you know? But before I can say anything he puts his hand over my mouth and even though it’s dark I can hear that he’s scared. “Listen,” he says, and so I listen real careful. It’s this scratching, like something on the roof, and the roof is right over our heads, mind you, ‘cause we’re in the loft. I was a trifle rattled, but I wasn’t having none of it. “So?” I says to him. “It’sjust some raccoon or a cat.”

“No,” says John, “I heared it before I waked you up, it’s like footsteps, like someone’s walking up there.” I wasn’t taking no truck with that, I told you he was the awfulest liar. So I went back to sleep, but the next day my cousin tried to tell Pap about it,and Pap wasn’t having no truck with it, either. But one night later on, while we was all having supper, Pap sent out my youngest sister to fetch water from the pump we had in the back. After a while we heared Lily scream,and it was Ma who got up first, and then Pap. The rest of us stayed at the table because we was like to get in trouble if Lily was hurt and we was there to gloat. Soon enough, though, we heared Pap and Ma shouting too, so me and John went out to see if they needed our help. All they had was the water pail Lily carried out, and there wasn’t no other sign of her.

At first I didn’t understand what was going on, with both Ma and Pap shouting, and by that time my other sisters come out and they started crying, and my cousin was just standing there in the yard looking off toward something. “It’s the man walking yonder!” he yells, and he’s pointing out across the field. No one’s listening to him but me, and he keeps saying it: “It’s the man walking yonder! It’s the man walking yonder!”

You already know it was suppertime, so you know the sun was setting and it was hard to see. But when I looked out over that field at the back of the house, the whole thing was lit up orange, and there was a row of big black trees that was the edge of the woods, you know? And I swear to you that I saw one of them trees moving, like a man walking away. But it couldn’t have been a man, ‘cause there ain’t no man that tall and skinny.

Pap seen it, too, I think. He took us inside and locked all the doors, and he made us keep still while he got out his rifle. We waited like that all night, Ma crying the whole time. When the sun come up we took a wagon into town and told folks what happened, though as I recall nothing much came of it. John ran off a few weeks later, and we got a new house closer to the mill where Pap worked. I still can’t manage to look at trees during sunset though, especially not on windy days when they all move back and forth, like a man walking away.

The Slender Man was created at the Something Awful Forums in a thread entitled "Create Paranormal Images." He is described as wearing a black suit strikingly similar to the visage of the notorious Men In Black, and as the name suggests, appears very thin and able to stretch his limbs and torso to inhuman lengths in order to induce fear and ensnare his prey. Once his arms are outstretched, his victims are put into something of a hypnotized state, where they are utterly helpless to stop themselves from walking into them. He is also able to create tendrils from his fingers and back that he uses to walk on in a similar fashion to Doc Ock, the Spider-Man villain in the Marvel Universe. The superhuman stretching ability could also be seen as a similiarty between himself and Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. Whether he absorbs, kills, or mearly takes his victims to an undiclosed location or dimension is also unknown as there are never any bodys or evidence left behind in his wake to deduce a definite conclusion.

Not much is known, as no specific information is given within the thread about origins, but his objective and habitat are made very clear. He has the need to kidnap children, and is seen right before the disappearance of a child or multiple children. He seems to prefer fog enshrouded streets and wooded areas as a way to conceal himself from being noticed. It should also be noted that children have been able to see him when no other adults in the vicinity could. Children also have dreams or nightmares concerning The Slender Man before their disappearance. Confiding these stories to their parents are met with the usual parental admonition: overactive imaginations
Sightings

Even though The Slender Man is a total fabrication, people have already claimed sightings. He appears to the unwitting mostly at night, and most always peering out of wooded areas or near rivers. He has also been reported to peek inside left open windows and to walk out in front of lone motorists on long uninhabited roads. The Slender Man or men, have appeared everywhere from Japan, Norway, and America to name a growing few.
"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.

Police are looking man believed to have robbed the same Dunwoody bank twice in a week as part of a bank robbing spree that extended through the north Fulton County area.
Dunwoody police spokeswoman Det. Kelly Gobely said the two Dunwoody robberies "appear to involve the same suspect."
Around noon on Oct. 31, a man wearing a polo-style shirt, khaki pants and a dark baseball cap walked into the Wachovia Bank at 4570 Ashford Dunwoody Road and demanded money, police said.

"He had his hand in his pocket as if he was armed," said Gobely, who indicated that police don't believe the man had a weapon during either robbery.

He ran from the bank with an undisclosed amount of money and was seen getting into a burgundy Chevy Tahoe, police said.

Thursday around 5 p.m. a man walked into the same bank, wearing a maroon polo-style shirt, light-colored pants, sunglasses and a tan baseball cap with a black "G" on the front.

The man demanded money and left with an undisclosed amount of cash, police said. Video footage from a nearby building showed the man getting into a burgandy Tahoe.

Police description from the first robbery characterized the man as "slender." But a more detailed police profile from the second robbery describes the robber as a white man in his mid- to late 20s, about 5-feet-7 to 5-feet-9-inches tall and weighing between 175 and 185 pounds.

Gobely said the man police are seeking probably is linked to three other bank robberies last month.

On Oct. 22, at 9:30 a.m., she said police believe the man robbed the Suntrust bank at 993 Johnson ferry road in Sandy Springs.

The next day, at around 10:30 a.m., police believe the man robbed the Wachovia at 3465 Buckhead Loop in Atlanta.

Police believe the man's robbery spree next traveled to a Roswell Wachovia at 10825 Alpharetta Highway, on Oct. 26.

Wachovia is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Dunwoody police are asking anyone with information on these robberies to call Det. Andrew Thompson at 678-382-6921.