Post by Joanna on Jun 8, 2014 0:29:50 GMT -5
Slender Man myth connected to attempted murder
This may be a first. Slender Man has gotten out of hand – attempted murder connected to the mythological monster. Two young girls are charged as adults with first-degree attempted homicide of another girl.
Prosecutors say two 12-year-old southeastern Wisconsin girls stabbed their 12-year-old friend almost to death in the woods to please a mythological creature they learned about online. One of the girls told a detective they were trying to become “proxies” of Slender Man, a mythological demon-like character they learned about on creepypasta.wikia, a website about horror stories and legends. They planned to run away to the demon’s forest mansion after the slaying, the complaint said.
The girls seemed out of touch with reality and had been planning this for months. Slender Man is a fictional character with a complex history who was created online in a fiction forum. I wrote about Slender Man for Fortean Times magazine after interviewing folklore and monster experts including Benjamin Radford (hat tip to him for this story).
[The] Slender Man was born from a photo editing contest on the Something Awful web forums in 2009 when “Victor Surge” submitted two images – spooky portraits groups of children. Subtle, in the background, was a tall, thin faceless entity in a black suit – his arms like tentacles, his head smooth and pale. Within five days of the post, there existed a narrative of death and bad luck to go along with the photos. Since then, Slender Man has evolved via videos, YouTube series, alternate reality games (ARGs), fan art, online horror stories and even parodies that are less scary (such as Trenderman and Splendorman).
Radford (author of Tracking the Chupacabra and Hoaxes, Myths and Manias) described Slender Man as “a tall, thin, generally silent but menacing stranger in a prim suit,” Children are the victims of this bogeymen.
Author J. Scott Poole (Monsters in America) notes Slender Man “owes much to Nosferatu and Freddy Krueger. Both cross between the land of nightmare and reality, as looming forms in the distance.”
Even though we know Slender Man is not real but an imaginary monster, he seems to have crossed the line to reality for some people who say they actually see him in physical form. Did these girls think they saw him and could interact with him? Is there something seriously wrong when children (and adults) cannot differentiate fiction from factual life? This is very frightening indeed.
Rev. Robin Swope, pastor at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Erie, Penn., believes the Internet-generated monster is real. In his book Slender Man: From Fiction to Fact, Swope says that after years of reviewing stories sent to him by people who claim to have encountered the elusive monster, he has concluded that Slender Man is a literal demonic entity: “We can come to the conclusion that Slender Man is real. The archetype of death that Slender Man embodies is not an archetype at all. Slender Man is the archetype. He is indeed death personified, who from countless ages past, has hunted down humanity with a relentless determination. “If you see him as a child he will forever haunt your dreams and your waking nightmares … There is nothing you can do about it, it is inevitable. Begging and screaming are useless; Slender Man makes no bargains and takes no bribes. Slender Man is coming for you,” he concludes. According to Swope, Christian faith and prayer are the only defenses against Slender Man.
UPDATE (June 4, 2014): There has been discussion about blame in this case. A piece from Australian news suggests there may be a Slender Man cult.
The criminal complaint filed in the Milwaukee attack quotes one of the girls as saying: “Many people do not believe Slender Man is real. [We] wanted to prove the skeptics wrong.”
This is the crux of the problem.
The administrators of the CreepyPasta site – the forum where the Slender Man legend evolved – expressed concern, but were also attacked for promoting fan fiction and horror without age restrictions. Some people have called for censorship and the site to be shut down.
But according to a CreepyPasta spokesperson: “There is a line of between fiction and reality, and it is up to you to realise where the line is. We are a literature site, not a crazy satanic cult. So while I understand and accept that some people will blame us as a way to channel their anger and grief, I simply cannot agree. We live in a culture with a very unhealthy relationship with mental illness. People with mental health issues are frequently dismissed, shamed and, and often ignored or denied necessary treatment. The fact of the matter is it can’t be that simple. Most people don’t watch Hannibal and turn into serial killers … You can insert countless examples here of people enjoying popular culture without acting it out in real life, so I hope that you see my point.”
I was contacted by my local news station to talk about this story. Ben Radford noted he was contacted by media as well, mentioning Slendy has “legs” as well as tentacles.
The Slender Man stabbing also have an uncanny echo to a recent episode of Supernatural based on the same internet meme, in which two disturbed young men commit murder in the name of a fictitious “Thinman,” invented as a publicity stunt by the Ghostfacers. However, Thinman served as an intentionally false cover for the killers’ underlying psychopathy. So far, no one has blamed Supernatural for inducing anyone to kill.
Source: Sharon Hill, DoubtfulNews, June 2014.
