Slender Man Is Real

## Slender Man Is Real by Unknown Author

*The following is a short-lived research project on Slender Man.*

[There are woodcuts dated back to the 16th century in Germany featuring a tall, disfigured man with only white spheres where his eyes should be. They called him "Der Großmann", the tall man. He was a fairy who lived in the Black Forest. Bad children who crept into the woods at night would be chased by the slender man, and he wouldn't leave them alone until he caught them, or the child told the parents what he or she had done. Even then, there is this chilling account from an old journal, dating around 1702:

(Translated from German, some words may be inaccurate)

"My child, my Lars...He is gone. Taken, from his bed. The only thing that we found was a scrap of black clothing. It feels like cotton, but it is softer...thicker. Lars came into my bedroom yesterday, screaming at the top of his lungs that "The angel is outside!", I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me some nonsense fairy story about Der Großmann. He said he went into the groves by our village and found one of my cows dead, hanging from a tree. I thought nothing of it at first...But now, he is gone. We must find Lars, and my family must leave before we are killed. I am sorry my son...I should have listened. May God forgive me."

(Another one but this is actually from a book)

So once the Slender Man began popping up online, I could have sworn something about it seemed familiar. I'm an amateur folklorist, so I had a few source books lying around. It took me a while, but I finally found something in W.K. McNeil's Ghost Stories of the American South. Most of the tales collected are transcripts of recordings other folklorists made, but McNeil compiles them and offers notes. A really handy book. So anyway, this particular story appears in the book's seventh section, "Other Supernatural Creatures."

quote:

*"Well I’ll tell you, when I was younger, a cousin of mine came to live with us. He was older than me and my sisters -- maybe sixteen or seventeen -- and we was the only folks he had left in the world, really. And he was the awfullest liar you’d ever know, anything he’d tell you was a lie, almost. I liked him all right. We slept in a loft during the summer because it was cooler up there, me and him, and in the winters, we slept on the floor closer to the stove. My sisters had their own room.*

*So, one night my cousin wakes me up by punching me in the shoulder, and it’s summer so we’re up in the loft, and my first thought when he wakes me up is to just push him out, because I’m not happy at being waked up, you know? But before I can say anything he puts his hand over my mouth and even though it’s dark I can hear that he’s scared. “Listen,” he says, and so I listen real careful. It’s this scratching, like something on the roof, and the roof is right over our heads, mind you, ‘cause we’re in the loft. I was a trifle rattled, but I wasn’t having none of it. “So?” I says to him. “It’s just some raccoon or a cat.”*

*“No,” says John, “I heard it before I waked you up, it’s like footsteps, like someone’s walking up there.” I wasn’t taking no truck with that; I told you he was the awfullest liar. So I went back to sleep, but the next day my cousin tried to tell Pap about it, and Pap wasn’t having no truck with it, either. But one night later on, while we was all having supper, Pap sent out my youngest sister to fetch water from the pump we had in the back. After a while we heard Lily scream, and it was Ma who got up first, and then Pap. The rest of us stayed at the table because we was like to get in trouble if Lily was hurt and we was there to gloat. Soon enough, though, we heard Pap and Ma shouting too, so me and John went out to see if they needed our help. All they had was the water pail Lily carried out, and there wasn’t no other sign of her. At first, I didn’t understand what was going on, with both Ma and Pap shouting, and by that time my other sisters come out and they started crying, and my cousin was just standing there in the yard looking off toward something.*

*“It’s the man walking yonder!” he yells, and he’s pointing out across the field. No one’s listening to him but me,* *and he keeps saying it: “It’s the man walking yonder! It’s the man walking yonder!”*

*You already know it was suppertime, so you know the sun was setting and it was hard to see. But when I looked out over that field at the back of the house, the whole thing was lit up orange, and there was a row of big black trees that was the edge of the woods, you know? And I swear to you that I saw one of them trees moving, like a man walking away. But it couldn’t have been a man, ‘cause there ain’t no man that tall and skinny.*

*Pap seen it, too, I think. He took us inside and locked all the doors, and he made us keep still while he got out his rifle. We waited like that all night, Ma crying the whole time. When the sun come up, we took a wagon into town and told folks what happened, though as I recall nothing much came of it. John ran off a few weeks later, and we got a new house closer to the mill where Pap worked. I still can’t manage to look at trees during sunset though, especially not on windy days when they all move back and forth, like a man walking away."*

From what I've read so far and, based on various sites debating Slender Man, he operates on the power of belief, and feeds on fear. As for the Operator symbol (for fear of my safety, I won't write it, or even draw it), there are many debates as to what it is and how it's connected to "slendy". Some say that when you're looking at him, Slender Man can teleport. So, the Operator symbol is a representation of him, bored into the minds of those haunted by him so that he can teleport to them wherever they are.

Some say it represents his face, the circle being his head, and the x representing its featureless face. One farfetched theory states that it's a window he uses to pear into our world. This is one of my favorite quotes: "There's another way of looking at it. Perhaps it doesn't actually mean anything - you ascribe the meaning to it. Since you are familiar with the mythos, seeing makes you think of Slender Man. And since Slender Man operates on the power of belief, it turns it into a sort of memetic thought weapon."

I'm done researching, I can't stand this feeling. I'm really paranoid and feel as if I'm being watched. This was a short-lived research project, but i don't want to know anymore. From what I've read he exists based on belief. If that's so, my research may provoke him. I started all of this because I was watching Marble Hornets videos after someone had mentioned them in a Facebook post and piqued my curiosity, and they made me remember something that happened a few years ago. Something I've tried so hard to forget. I was sleeping, and at the time, my bed faced parallel with my hallway. I awoke one night, after everyone was asleep in my house.

I was staring at the top of my bed (I had a bunk bed I shared with my little brother, and I was on the bottom) and I had this unnerving feeling in my stomach. I felt as if something was watching me. And it almost felt as if it was in my hallway. So, being an inquisitive little kid, I unwillingly turned my head to look. Thinking back, I wish I hadn't. There was something tall and dark standing there, staring at me. It was dark, so none of its features we're clear, but I could make out its silhouette. It was a tall, thin figure, that just stood there, staring at me. I tried to scream, but no noise came from my throat. Immediately afterwards the thing took a step forward and I blacked out.

When I came to again, it was still dark, so not much time could have passed, and after an unwilling glance down my hall, I saw that it was gone. I had no idea what Slender Man was at the time, so immediately dismissed it as a ghost of some sort. I know for a fact that it wasn't a dream, because everything was too real, the fear I felt, the choking sensation in my throat as I tried to scream, and blacking out, I can't describe what it felt like, other than that one second, I was petrified and trying to scream, and the next I was staring at the top of my bed again.

The next morning, I told my mom, and being a narrow-mined adult, she told me that it must have been a bad dream. But watching those videos brought back that memory, and after reading up on them, I want to bury that memory, because if what they say is true, then he lives on belief and fear. I wish I could say that this is just another creepypasta some sleep-deprived teen had sudden inspiration to write after downing a can of Monster and reading too many scary memes. I wish I could tell you that I'm making this all up to give some creepypasta lovers a good scare, but I can't. Everything I've written is true, and honestly, I don't care if anyone believes me. I just want to get this out there. Slender Man is real, I've seen him. And I give this one bit of advice to anyone else that has seen him or wants to be brave and go and find him.

DON'T.

I got lucky because I was able to get rid of that memory and not think about it. But others may not be that lucky.

So, I leave you with this: Slender Man is real.

Don't go looking for him, and if you do see him, forget you ever did.

*"Those who stare into the abyss eventually find the abyss staring back."*