The blurred figure caught on camera moments before disaster, a modern bogeyman with unfathomable motives... Slenderman (sometimes Slender Man or Slendy) is an urban legend that sprung from collaborative fiction on web forums.
Nobody could have predicted that this work of shared writing would lead to attempted murder one Wisconsin spring morning...
 |
| Slenderman started as a couple of manipulated photos... (Darkmoon_Art) |
Creating a Monster
The Slenderman story begins with a trend on the Something Awful forums. Posters would create "paranormal images" by modifying photos, adding or warping figures and sometimes providing a short horror story.
Nestled amongst the other entries were a couple of black and white photos of children, each containing an indistinct figure in the background. This pale figure seemed to wear a black business suit, have indistinct features and have elongated proportions - to the point that it didn't quite appear human. The accompanying snippets of fiction suggested that the children and the photographer themselves went missing shortly after the image was taken.
Something about the images and fiction struck a cord with the online community - possibly due to pre-existing characters like "The Gentlemen" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the "men in black" said to menace conspiracy theorists and even ancient depictions of spirits and fairies. It also helped that stories of mysterious disappearances (especially with some kind of "moments before disaster" image) are a classic in urban legends.
Because almost any disappearance could be twisted into the story, other writers were able to add to the body of Slenderman fiction with ease. The evolving tale would eventually become something of a collaborative effort between online authors.
 |
| The simple concept was easy to work into existing stories. (Vidar Nordli-Mathisen) |
Slenderman Goes Viral
The newly minted urban legend didn't go unnoticed by the internet at large - before long, the character started to appear in other media.
Slenderman (and characters based on him) started appearing as an antagonist in videogames - the "Endermen" found in Minecraft are an unsubtle reference to the story! The character also turned up in a number of paranormal-themed TV shows, including the "Thinman" episode of Supernatural and as a Pied Piper figure in Lost Girl.
There was also the simple reality that Slenderman had a broad appeal across the internet, especially in communities with an interest in the paranormal. With such a wide audience, it was only a matter of time before the wrong person encountered the meme...
 |
| Not where you'd expect a horror-inspired attack... (Anonymous) |
A Walk in the Woods
One spring morning in 2014 Wisconsin, Payton Leutner (also known as Bella) was stabbed 19 times and left to die by her "friends" Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier. They were twelve years old at the time.
The three girls had celebrated Morgan's birthday with a sleepover before heading out to play in a nearby park... but unbeknownst to Bella, Morgan was carrying a blade beneath her jacket. Free from supervision, Anissa suggested the group play hide-and-seek using the woods bordering the park.
Bella had no idea what was in store for her - until Morgan plunged a knife into her chest. At Anissa's urging, Morgan struck Bella a total of nineteen times. Her erstwhile friends then dragged the wounded girl deeper into the woods, told her that they would get her help and left her to bleed out on the forest floor.
Defying the odds, Bella managed to pull herself out of the woods where she was discovered by a cyclist - and now the authorities were on the hunt. The would-be killers were arrested as they attempted to reach the Nicolet National Forest, where they believed that "Slenderman" made his home.
 |
| Plenty of places to hide in that kind of terrain. (Frank Thiemonge) |
Fiction and Reality
Interviews by the police revealed some very strange things about the mental state of the girls. Both claimed that they had planned the murder to appease Slenderman - a character they had come across thanks to a shared interest in fiction and horror.
Like many people, they had encountered the character in internet fiction - but unlike other people, they had become obsessed with the entity and even believed they had seen him. Apparently they had decided that offering their classmate as a sacrifice would guarantee the safety of their families - and that carrying out the gory act would apprentice them to this shadowy entity.
Psychiatric evaluations of the pair revealed that Morgan was suffering from early onset schizophrenia, a disorder that can produce delusions or hallucinations and likely fueled her obsession with the Slenderman mythos. Anissa was diagnosed with shared delusional belief (sometimes known as Folie à deux.) Sufferers of this incredibly rare condition become so connected to another person that they can "catch" a delusion from them.
.jpg) |
| Depictions of the character changed in the wake of the attack. (Karina Karina) |
The Legacy of Slenderman
Belle would survive her brush with death, going on to make a full recovery (albeit bearing scars both physical and mental from her ordeal.)
Morgan and Anissa were separated and placed in mental institutions, having been absolved of criminal responsibility due to their psychological issues. Despite being sentenced to twenty-five years in an institution, Anissa was approved for early release in 2021. An appeal by Morgan against her forty-year sentence was denied.
The character of Slenderman himself seemed to evolve in response to the attack, with many fans and creators expressing horror that this work of collaborative fiction had led to harm. More recent portrayals of the character tend to be much more morally ambiguous, even depicting him as an antihero that (admittedly violently) defends children against those that would harm them - quite a departure from the original work of horror!
Thanks for reading - you might also be interested in...