Slender Man

The Greatest of the Creepypastas (Art by Andrei Straliciuc)

> When Slenderman screams, the world will end.
>
> **Jack Goldstein**

The **Slender Man** was a mythical fairy or ghoul that is said to wander and roam the deep and dark corners of the woods around the globe.

## Overview

He was notorious for traumatizing and abducting his victims, who are mostly comprised of children. While his true motives are unknown, they are regarded as malevolent.

The Slender Man represents a child's fear of adults. To a child, an adult is seen as quite massive, imposing, and downright intimidating in their eyes, which makes sense as to why the Slender Man is described as being unnaturally tall even in the eyes of adults and teenagers. He also represents a child's fear of being taken away or abducted which is a common horrific act around the world where children are mysteriously abducted by strangers and never to be heard from again. The Slender Man also shares characteristics with the mythical bogeyman, where adults tell their children to behave or else the Slender Man will come abduct them during the night. This is evident in an old German tale where a mother's son was taken by the "Tall Man" for disobeying her and wandering through the woods.

The Slender Man's arrival is accompanied by a faint mist or fog which soon begins to thicken. Victims who survive the encounter describe the experience by feeling an overwhelming sense of dread and a weight of ancient evil pulling them down, paralyzing them. His description is made clear but to witnesses it is but a blur as they report seeing him as a hazy, ink-like black mist with his head giving off a rather brilliant light, accompanied by a high-pitched noise that causes the victim to experience nausea, nosebleeds, and delusions. He is also said to have minor reality warping abilities. This is evidenced with people saying that whenever they attempt to take different routes to escape while in the forest, or even on roads, they come across a completely different location while they themselves memorize where they have originally been. This is another method of psychological torment by the Slender Man.

## Physical Appearance

Thousands of witnesses describe him of being in a black suit, with abnormally long arms, deathly pale skin, unnaturally tall, and with no discernible facial features or characteristics. He was also depicted or described as having elongated appendages that can either install fear into his victim or abduct them. He can, however, assume other forms in order to lure unsuspecting humans away.

## History

While originally thought to be a real supernatural creature, the Slender Man is nothing more than a Tulpa. A tulpa is a theoretical entity in Tibetan mysticism, described as an artificial being or "thought form" through the use of deep meditation by Tibetan monks or the use of magic. Hunters believe that the Slender Man was created by this method, and it is highly possible that children were said to be the cause of the being's manifestation in our plane of existence. Because of this, he became an urban legend, a bogeyman used in a wide variety of Internet stories to spook online users.

According to a few hunters, it is believed that after the Slender Man manifested in this plane of reality, he became compatible with it in the process, meaning that the amount of fear that was being put into that welcomed the existence of the Slender Man was so potent that it found itself merging with the realm's thoughts and imagination to create it. Thus, the entity is classed as being extra-dimensional in nature. While he is dismissed as nothing more than an urban legend to scare children, sightings of him continue regardless, and to be witnessed by hunters is something of a rare event. The belief in him dates back all the way to ancient Egypt or Rome. Carvings in Brazilian cave paintings dating back to 9000 B.C. depict a strangely elongated character leading a child. Another carving found in the tombs of Egypt shows an odd figure with multiple upper limbs and something that has not been found in hieroglyph language. This creature is referenced to as the "Thief of the Gods".