Welcome to The Attic, where Slender Man *may* be real.

“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 . . .”

I grew up in a pretty rough neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. In the early 1990s I had experienced witnessing a horrific crime, helicopters circling near our house on a regular basis, and, of course, the LA riots. That was all within a single year.  But despite the all-to-real threats that surrounded me on a daily basis, I still held onto that trivial fear: The Boogeyman. We lived in the back house of our property, so we were sort of tucked away from the street. Just behind our small backyard, and over the fading brick wall, was where the top of the ominous shack stuck out. The neighbors on the other side of your block are so close, and yet, as a young child, they feel light years away. I remember wondering what that house looked like from the front, and who lived there, but I was always too scared to venture down that street.  All I remember is that all of the kids in our area talked about that small, dark brown shack that stood at the back of their yard. We never saw anyone go in there, or come out (when we were brave enough to peek over our brick wall), but we knew that’s where the Boogeyman lived.

All across the world, this mythology of a man or creature coming to get you for various reasons is nothing new.  In every region, in every country, children are told by their parents that if they don’t behave, they will be punished by their own version of this predator of bad kids. From the Middle East, to North America, to Europe… on and on, each culture has at least some variance of the Boogeyman. For the most part they are all told by parents to keep their children in line.  It was children who took the idea of a faceless killer with no real motive and ran with it.  Every child has a Boogeyman story to tell.  Little kids scaring other little kids, it’s a classic tale.  In 2009, a new threat was about to emerge, and on the largest stage to date.

Victor Surge, a user on the Something Awful forum, posted a couple of old photographs that he had doctored for a photoshop contest.  They depicted young children in a school yard, with an ominous figure in the background. This figure was tall, thin, wearing a black suit, and had absolutely no features on his face whatsoever.  Black swirling tentacles sprouted out from his sides as if to reach out for the young kids.  The photos were accompanied by a couple of short paragraphs that morphed these simple photos into something that felt more real, and thus, Slender Man was born.

Since then, the myth has taken on a life of its own.  Thousands of other people have doctored photos, posted YouTube videos, and even written stories online, arguing that the tale is real or that they have actually seen Slender Man with their own eyes.  Many say this is a prime example of this new age where people just believe anything that is posted online.  But the belief in creepy urban legends was born long before the cyberspace age, and I see no end in sight. I don’t believe that the internet is to blame for Slender Man blowing up the way it has, I just think it’s a catalyst we didn’t have before.  Instead of whispering in our backyards with a few friends about the creepy neighbor’s shack, we are typing to each other on Facebook or on message boards for the whole world to see.

I think what makes this character so terrifying to so many people is that he truly is a faceless antagonist.  It allows countless creative minds to take him, and insert this killer into any story, twisting his motives as they see fit.  In some stories, he kidnaps children himself.  In others, he manipulates people into killing each other.  Perhaps the most effective form of storytelling that Slender has worked his way into is that of video games.  It is the perfect place for the character to terrify people. Slender: The Arrival, actually really scared the crap out of me, and I definitely recommend that game to anyone looking for a good scare.

Slender Man is not going anywhere any time soon, and that’s okay.  Maybe eventually he will be replaced with some other form of the Boogeyman, but until then, I wouldn’t scoff it off too much.  Slender Man is simply the classic folktale in a new, hip form. And many believe that all urban legends are started with some grain of truth…

Stay scared,
Dark Princess