Slender Man

**Slenderman** is a fictional creature from an internet meme. It appears as a tall and thin man, wearing a black suit and red tie. Slenderman's face is usually blank, without any features. It is said to stalk, abduct, or scare people, especially children.

Slenderman was originally created on the Internet forum Something Awful in 2009. It has grown into a kind of urban legend.

## Description

Slenderman is described as very fictional tall and thin white creature with unnaturally long arms. It can extend its arms to scare people or capture them. It seems to be bald or be wearing a featureless white mask covering its entire head, the mask gives an unsettling feeling due to lacking a face or other facial features. It appears to be wearing a black suit. In images, the figure is often out of focus and blurry. Slenderman is associated with the forest and has the ability to teleport.

## Origins

Slenderman was created during a contest on the Something Awful forums in June 2009. The goal was to change photographs using digital manipulation so that the pictures showed something supernatural. On 10 June, a forum poster with the user name "Victor Surge" uploaded two images in black and white. They were photographs of groups of children, to which had been added an obscured figure in the background: a tall, thin man with a blank face. Surge included short stories to go with the images, describing the disappearance of the children in the images. It gave the character the name, "Slenderman":

> One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “Slenderman”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.
> 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.

These stories made it a work of fiction. Other users on the forum developed the character further, adding their own images or stories about "Slenderman". However, is it possible to find supposed records of the monster dating back to the 14th century, a notable example is a medieval German folktale entitled _Der Ritter_ ("The Knight" in German), it tells the history of a brave knight appointed by the church to slay a great evil entity who had been stealing children from a local village from around the Black Forest, Württemberg, in Southern Germany, by which some people claim the existence of the entity.

## Development

Slenderman soon became very popular on the Internet. Many works of fanart, cosplay and fiction were created and spread from website to website. The first video series involving the Slender Man was published on YouTube. It is called _Marble Hornets_, and is now one of the most popular Slender Man creations. Other YouTube serials about the Slender Man followed, including EverymanHYBRID and Tribe Twelve. In 2011, Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of the sandbox indie game _Minecraft_, added a new character to the game. He named it the "Enderman" when many users on Reddit and Google+ commented on how similar it was to the Slender Man. A video game based on the Slender Man was released in 2012, named _Slender: The Eight Pages_. Several popular variants of the game followed, including _Slenderman's Shadow_ and _Slender Man_ for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download. The sequel to _Slender: The Eight Pages_, _Slender: The Arrival_, was released in 2013.

A horror movie about the Slender Man, _Entity_, was released in 2013. Another, _The Slender Man_, was released free online. On August 10, 2018, another movie about the character, _Slender Man_, directed by Sylvain White, was released. _Marble Hornets_ is also being made into a movie.

The Slender Man was called "the first great myth of the web" by the BBC. The success of the idea has been ascribed to the Internet's ability to connect people with one another. It has allowed anybody to build on the story and develop the character, and also shape it into whatever frightens them most.

## Related pages

- Ghost
- Siren Head, a character created by artist Trevor Henderson in 2018.

## Other websites

- The Something Awful forum thread in which the Slender Man was created
- Slender Man on KnowYourMeme.com