Nothing about this thing is consistent. One minute he's passive, the next aggressive. Last night, he flung himself at my house trying to get in. Today, he simply appears inside. The bone warded him off previously. This time, he just casually inspected it. Watching him previously stopped him from pulling his disappearing act. I just saw him vanish before my eyes.
He's constantly changing. It's as though, with every encounter, he's never quite the same being twice. It's like there aren't any rules with him - he simply is.
How the hell do you fight that? How do you resist chaos?
A few days later, Damien posted his last update, a short, incoherent note that he couldn’t take it anymore. One week later, his brother, who apparently had found his blog, informed the readers of Damien’s suicide, and filled them in on the writings of a notebook Damien carried:
I don't know what is going on with this whole Slender Man nonsense, except it was something Damien became absolutely obsessed with, even before Ted died. After it happened, it only became worse. What rare moments I saw him, he was constantly glancing over his shoulder and making veiled reference to this "threat" to him from his "past". Which, by the way, is highly fictionalized. The drawings he supposedly found are all new.
(...)
There's a reference in here to ancient cave drawing. I can only presume he used it to create this weird horse bone that are among his things. There's talk of being captured by the "cult" and being put down on a slab and sacrificed because "I have turned myself into a door for the unseen, and they wish me to be opened." A few pages on the theory that he is his own demon, "Slender Man" being merely a projection to stay his conscience.
(...)
I'm sure there must be some symbolism or deeper meaning in this story that my brother invented to keep himself living after he lost nearly everything. Clearly, it meant something to him. It feels like this desparate cry for help hidden inside a fictional account of actual events.
Preceeding those final moments of the Dreams in Darkness-blog are a number of entries spanning five months, in which Damien is followed by a mythical, nameless entity, known to those familiar to him as Slenderman, The Operator or Großmann. The stories read like accounts in a gothic horror story, something Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft could have dreamed up. Yet, the story didn’t take place in the beginning of the 20th century, Damien didn’t roam the dark sreets of Arkham - he lived in clean and well kept suburbs. And he’s not the only one.
On June 20 2009, a then anonymous user posted the following video onto youtube:
It was the first in a series of videos of raw footage recorded by the film student Alex Kralie. According to the uploader (who’s only known as Jay to the audience), Kralie intended to burn the tapes in 2006 , but could be convinced to hand them over to the channel’s owner. With the uploader analyzing the tapes one by one, a disturbing picture slowly unfolds in front of the audience – during the making of a low budget film, Kralie was followeed and observed by what seems to be a featureless, tall man in a business suit. At first, the man seemed to observe the film’s shoot, lurking in the distance and watching patiently. As the crew moved to the house of the young director, the faceless features soon appeared in front of Kralie’s living room window – both at day and night.
The footage amounts to a mix of highly realistical cinema-veritée recordings in the vein of The Blair Witch project and short, surreal collages that seemingly gain quality from their own cinematic limiations.
People got hooked to the channel quickly – Marble Hornets youtube Channel counted 25.987 subscribers if the autumn of 2010, with some videos amounting to more than 400.000 viewers. There was something haunting, yet also comforting in this vision of haunted suburbs and distorted videotapes, that seemed to draw viewers in.
It was quickly revealed that the mythological creature at the core of the narrative was first seen on the internet in a forum post which also provided rare photographs and some scarce background information on the entity - yet not much more was to be found. Until a few weeks into Marble Hornets, when suddenly the blogs started to pop up out of nowhere.
The first one was called „Just another fool“: What started as a harmless diary of a young man slowly delved into madness and tragedy as the silent, faceless predator started stalking him.
And then others started to come forward witht heir own experiences – some of them on the run from the creature for years, others oblivious to the supernatural occurrences until they were beyond the point of return. Marble Hornets also attracted a wide variety of bandwagon jumpers, who seemingly copied their MO for a place in the spotlight.
This „first generation“ of Slenderman-blogs came to the halt with the sudden appearance of the „Monolith“ (as its writer Jeffrey Koval calls it) Everyman Hybrids.
Starting out as a health-exercise-series that parodied the genre tropes of Slenderman-lore, the three protagonists soon found themselves not only followed by the eldritch horror, but also by a creature calling itself HABIT – a raving, arrogant and overtly violent voice without a body that communicated over the internet and mysterious packages that some of the viewers who participated in mini-games received. Going for over a year now, the series is still ripe with twists and turns, as some of the „players“ of the mini games got sucked into the narrative themselves and the friends of the three protagonists – Jeff, Evan and Vince – are slowly picked off one by one.
It is a challenging watch, but also highly rewarding, with inspirations ranging as far as Vladimir Nabokov’s books and Heath Ledger’s Joker to the records of the avant-indie band Animal Collective (who seem to occupy a very curious spot in the meaning of mysterious, surreal videos the in-game protagonists cannot watch).
Another very relevant work was the video-series „Tribe Twelve“ – seemingly starting out as a Marble Hornets-rip off, the series slowly started to come into its own, broadening its own mythology as well as creating what may be the most striking SFX-work of all series, it’s creator one of the most mischievous and widely creative writers of the entire movement.
Thus, the second generation was born. The creators of the new blogs and videos were much more content to approach the meta-aspects of the Slender-Universe. Some writers had collected information on the supernatural being that connected the stories and created elongated guides on their adventures, others seemed to have given up the fight, becoming violent lunatics and created dozens of surreal, non-narrative short films to channel their obsessions.
As of now, the Third Generation of Slenderman-lore is still going strong, with many interesting blogs and video series. Among the most interesting is the so called „TJ&Amy-Project“ – starting out as the making-of of a student film, two girls had to slowly realize they were stalked by the creature they meant to use for their story, but also by a masked being resembling a plague doctor. Seemingly inspired by real life issues, the series proved to be the darkest of all the video blogs so far, including symbolical representations of rape, domestic abuse and self-harm. The emergency brake was pulled when in one especially disturbing entry, the protagonists cut up their bodies with knives, admiring the self-inflicted wounds with a curious euphoria. Although the scene was – of course – faked, the video was removed from youtube, which led to the creators decision to end the series as of now (a spin-off is currently in the works and should start in the weeks following this article).
And there is the second season of Marble Hornets, which proved to be more complex, disturbing and visually more artistic than its predecessor.
So two years after its sudden apearance, the story of the Slenderman is still going strong, with no indicator as of where this creature came from or what it wants. Yet the question of interest here is not where this being came from, but why it attracts so much interest in its audience.One way of finding an answer to this question is further researching up in-game attempts of the so-called „Runners“, the victims who are content to escape the monster’s tentacles, to come up with an analysis of their pursuer, such as this one here: FOLLOW THE LINK
The idea that the Slenderman is a creature whose appearance is meant to induce respect and comfort in those who approach him rather than fear leads to the conclusion that this monster is sort of a modern „Ratcatcher“-phenomenon. This also fits with the original mythos, in which Slenderman’s appearances was connected to children, in some cases even to schools. Although the original mythos included various instances in which the monster would leave behind the empty bodies of its victims, their organs collected in plastic bags hung into trees (and wooden organs put into the bodies as replacement), there seems no real indicator as where these children are actually taken to, which leaves the possibility that the Slenderman has good intentions. Another early story states the creature would take those who would intend to do evil and cause others harm at an early age, making him a divine clean-up device.
But there are deeper connections that can be drawn. Interviewing some of the creators as well as fans, I actually encountered serious fear of this fictituous creature. The writer of one of the mythos most famous blogs wrote to me when I inquired if he feared the being:
„Since I was introduced to him back in January, whenever I come home from college, there has not been a single night where I have not had something wedged into the doorknob to prevent it from opening, because I don't have a lock on my door. This thing has me terrified to sleep in my own house at night. At college I'm fine, but when I go home, I am absolutely petrified, even now, eight or so months later.“
I was also reported some real-life instances, in which the creators and fans had experienced childhood trauma either on a bigger scale or just in one occasion, but that one connected to a fear of supernatural intervention.
Collecting these interviews was surprising in so far as it painted a broad picture of both the creators and the audience that made the Slenderman-fiction into a phenomenon. There was an overwhelming interest in a world that we ourselves only get glimpses of and that the adult mindset denies, a realm which decides our fate – and in the end, even comfort in a fictituous creature that both observes and induces fear.
So the Slenderman can be seen as a catharsis of both the hope and the fear of outer intervention into the lifes of its audience. The creature both carries these people away, but also gives them the opportunity to belong to something and find meaning in a more archaic lifestyle. While we are a generation used to getting everything we want, the writers seem to find comfort in writing themselves as anonymous entities roaming the streets, carrying with them only what they need to survive.
Observed from this angle, the Slenderman is an almost mephistophelic diety that, by fear, recruits new followers of an absurd religion that is as inspired by Zen Budhism as by the roots of christianity (this is especially vital once we realize the circular-X-symbol which the Runners have to scribble religuously wherever they go, further identifying their meaning of a newfound life).
And indeed, some of the more esoteric blogs speak of the Slenderman either as the center of the Universe or a means to „fix and guard its many gaps and holes“. So is the Slenderman just watching out that those who see the glitches in the Matrix don’t explore them? It would be an interesting turn of events if once a character would succeed in taking a look behind the scenery, yet also one that would reveal the Slenderman’s meaning (something that certainly would take from the individual’s story).
Another theory is based on the idea of „thoughts forming matter“ – that Slenderman was created by the dozens of minds of those who first encountered him, that reading or writing about him will call him. It is a modern twist of the Candyman and Ring-videotape mythos, in which the evil is so omnipresent it birthes itself, yet the creative ideas connected to this origin story seem to have gone stale.
But most likely, the explanation of the adolescent fascination with Slenderman can be found in what occupied the collective consciousness of the last decade. Following September 11, terror had become a faceless, autoritative threat that could seemingly strike everywhere at every time. This idea of a personal threat that could strike without a recognizable reason must have done its fare share on the minds of children and teenagers alike. The media – especially in america – further fed the individual impression that something unspeakably evil was out there waiting, leading to an almost religious fear of a faceless threat. The elongated arms and the business suit could even further lead the analyst down the road of a fear of capitalism, in which the atoritative system our life is based upon is content to decide our every move, a monster whose reach and grasp we can’t flee. Ironically, the runners seem to carry no possessions and seem to have no need to further acquire what may be seen as desired status-symbols, making Slenderman a mute, eldritch Patrick Bateman.
So now that the Slenderman is out there, he allows an entire generation to exorcize this abstract trauma of an unknown, omnipresent and autoritative creature that makes decisions based on rules only the creature seems to understand, finding comfort in a fictituous character and his illusion of leading a sober and conscious life.
So now that we have reached the third stage, where will the fourth stage take us? Going with a famous horror film cliché, the fourth chapter of our story might well take us into space – it might introduce the cosmic, socio-political and religious concepts that are the roots for the mythos. It could lead to further self-analyzation where previously the creators only exorcized their fears and defy the rules of space and time which the Slenderman himself doesn’t seem to know. If the first three stages have gone from introduction and curious genre exploration to individual, psychological adaptation, this next stage may introduce a messianic counterpart to the evil the protagonists face. And indeed – during the last few months of the third stage, the various characters and stories have, crossed over, some of them meeting each other on the streets, others openly collaborating on defeating their pursuer. The story of the Slenderman is, after all a combination of collective social trauma and religious quest. And we all know where that leads to.
