The Slender Man "Mythos"

[Jcomp]

Or more like an internet meme turned into fabricated online mythology, I just heard about this and find it really intriguing. It's pretty recent, dating just back to June 2009.

Basically a "turn normal pictures into paranormal pictures" photoshop contest on the something awful forums got an entry from a member creating a story and image of a "slender man," a tall humanoid abomination who appears to be wearing a suit and walks on finger-like tendrils who kidnaps kids.

The story then just sort of grew organically in the forums and the rest of the web, with people taking the character and adapting him to fit their own online stories. There's this alt reality, false document style online youtube series called "Marble Hornets" that's supposed to be really creepy, though I haven't gotten around to it yet. The character already has a pretty healthy TV Tropes entry, has been brought up on a lot of horror forums, etc. A google search of "slender man" brings up nothing but character specific hits for the first several pages.

I find the idea of an accidentally created horror character that started off as a somewhat silly little internet contest entry rather fascinating. Anyone else heard of this?

 

[The Scip]

Pretty interesting jcomp. Thanks!

 

[cathyfreeze]

wow, cool! :ff to peruse::

cat

 

[zahra]

Never heard of it, so thanks. (For the nightmares).

 

[mdin]

There's a bunch of great stuff like this online. Before it became lame, the whole Blair Witch Project mythos was pretty cool, before it was revealed to be a movie.

Anybody remember Rubber Johnny?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3far9oHZOsI

That still gives me the heebies.

 

[Ellefire]

I read Marble Hornets and The Slender Man last year, both very very good.

The one I really liked was The Dionaea House which really creeped me out.

 

[icenine]

This slender man stuff reminds me of a story by Brian Lumley, called The Thin People or something like that.

 

[kaitie]

It reminds me of the black-eyed children. Granted, the original story behind that is supposed to be true so it's impossible to tell, but I'd be willing to bet oh...every story I've read about them sense was probably invented. It was a nifty story, though, if anyone's looking for a fun novel topic.

 

[thehairymob]

Interesting.