The Slender Man



The Slender Man is an enigmatic supernatural entity with nebulously defined motives. It appears as a thin, unnaturally tall humanoid creature in a dark business suit with a blank, featureless face. It is also capable of sprouting black, wispy tentacles, which it uses for capturing or intimidating prey. In the original stories, it had a different face to anyone who saw it and it was only faceless when photographed or caught on tape.

The Slender Man's most common targets are children or adults who saw it as a child. It generally behaves in a very passive aggressive manner, preferring to mentally torture its victims by stalking them from afar as they slowly delve into madness. Once a victim is reduced to irreversible psychosis, it will either abduct them to parts unknown or deliver the killing blow. An encounter with the Slender Man often triggers paranoia, nightmares, delusions, nausea, nosebleeds and insomnia.

The Slender Man's most common servants are called Proxies and vary in rank, such as "Hallowed" or "Agents."

The Slender Man's domain is The Path of Black Leaves.

Creation

 * The Slender Man was created on June 10, 2009 as part of a photoshop contest on the Something Awful Internet forum where users were challenged to edit photographs to appear paranormal. The forum poster "Victor Surge" (real name Eric Knudsen) contributed two black and white images of groups of children with a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit. Whereas other submissions only featured photographs, Surge added short stories underneath the pictures about the groups of children who were abducted by the Slender Man. During an interview with KnowYourMeme, Surge stated his intention was "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which caused] unease and terror in a general population."
 * Knudsen stated in an interview with KnowYourMeme that he was inspired to create Slender Man by legends of shadow people, the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Zack Parsons (another user of Something Awful), and Stephen King (particularly The Mist), and the surrealism of William S. Burroughs. He also cited the Tall Man from the Phantasm horror film series as another inspiration in an interview on the Slender Nation podcast.

Pop Culture

 * In 2011, Markus "Notch" Persson, the creator of the indie game Minecraft, added a new hostile mob to the game with multiple similarities to Slender Man, namely its abnormal height and lanky arms. Notch stated the mob's name would be Enderman after Reddit user drodeznop noted the parallels between both characters.
 * Minecraft's Halloween texture pack features Slender Man as a palette swap for Enderman.
 * In 2013, Slender Man appeared as the antagonist of an episode of the Canadian television series Lost Girl, making him the first creepypasta character to appear on television. The episode portrayed him as a corrupt Light Fae who served as the basis for the Pied Piper legend through his use of mesmerizing music to hypnotize humans and other Fae in order to feed off them.

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