If you, like me, often have the inexplicable need to search for any kind of story or movie that creeps you out enough to never want to go to the bathroom alone in the dead of the night, ever again… then welcome, this is exactly for you.
After watching the most fantastic adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, on the big screen last year (that too all alone in the theatre, mind you), I was hungrily searching for my next scare-fest and voila! The internet rewarded me with the first sneak peek at the newest Slender Man trailer, and I. AM. Pumped! Slender Man has been one of my favourite stories for a really long time and I couldn’t be more excited that it’s finally getting its very own screen adaptation!
The Legend Of Slender Man
Unlike most stories that you come across while watching horror movies, that are largely inspired by true events (hello there, The Conjuring), the tale of Slender Man evolved purely as a short story entry of a competition on Creepypasta – a website dedicated to short fiction horror stories. Created in 2009, the character – Slender Man – first featured in a series of images put together by Eric Knudsen for a ‘paranormal pictures’ Photoshop contest. According to the web archive Know Your Meme, this is what Slender Man supposedly looks like:
“Slender Man (a.k.a Slenderman) is a mythical creature often depicted as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a blank face. According to the legend, he can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages protruding from his back.”
A well-dressed creature that has powers to control the length of his limbs – doesn’t seem too shabby for a horror figure, right? But based on the character sketch of Slender Man on wiki, the blank-faced being is much deadlier than you could probably imagine.
“He will do odd things such as removing organs and placing them in bags, impaling targets on trees, and aggressively stalking targets after a period of time. A contemporary depiction shows Slender Man as being extremely passive aggressive, often letting a person slowly delve into madness at their situation until being unable to cope. If invited to anger, he will typically charge a target down until caught and vanish with them to unknown locations.”
“This version also shows an odd response to electronic equipment and causes massive problems with audio, surveillance, camera, and other various electronic devices with displays or audio. Sometimes an individual can determine if he is near simply by how certain electronics react such as radios, televisions, or cameras.”
When Fiction Became Fact
It was all fun and games until 2014, when two 12-year-old girls from rural Wisconsin, obsessed with the fictional creature, allegedly stabbed a friend of theirs 19 times and left her to die in the woods “as a sacrifice to Slender Man”. And that, was when an internet horror story became all too real for the world, and the obsession has continued ever since. Including a PC game that came out in June 2012 called Slender: The Eight Pages – one that I can personally say, scared the bejeezus out of me when I first played it!
If you aren’t already creeped out by the lore and the consequences of a fictional creature almost taking the life of a human being, maybe the trailer will get the job done.
Images: Creepypasta
