a look at pure terror: a few notes on the slender man.

There are only three things in life that scare (and I mean, viscerally, truly scare me): needles, mannequins, and the slender man.

Now, let me preface the rest of this entry by saying YES, I know where the slender man mythos originated, YES I know it's all fiction, YES I know that the last Marble Hornets entry was (41810ohgod) last month and in terms of the internet that means I'm way way later than fashionably. I would really appreciate it if everyone and their brother would refrain from mentioning any of these three things in their comments, because honestly, I've already heard it and I don't care.

If you're slow at everything forever like I am (or have a life beyond the internet, which is also plausible), you probably don't know what I'm talking about. What you need to do is click this link, go down to "Suggested Viewing Order", and stop reading this entry until you've successfully seen all of the Marble Hornets and totheark videos.

I know that the pictures and stories surrounding the Slender Man are all just as terrifying as the videos, but the videos... are definitely easier to connect to, for all people, that's for sure. I personally used to live surrounded by forests so this has a bit more of a personal visceral fear to it, especially where pictures are involved. There's no way I can possibly ever post all the good pictures and their matching stories (or horrifying lack-thereof, in some cases), so I'll give you a few links to start you off (there's nothing gory or anything): this post on Facepunch has a few of the more terrifying ones (especially the Steinmen forest pics ohgod - also, the missing images, just click on the box that says not to hotlink and it'll show you anyways); and here's the page specifically for the slender man (or, in MH canon, the Operator, but I'm using slender man throughout this post), including the Stirling Libraries pic.

Now that we've gotten all the obligatory links, it's time to get to the real heart of the matter: the slender man himself.

First, the pictures themselves. Each one is generally just a picture that someone subtly shooped the slender man into that is immediately rendered terrifying, provided you can find him. He's got tentacles, see, when he's not just looming around as an impossibly tall, faceless man(?) in a suit, and these tentacles generally make him look like a tree, so he's usually shooped into pictures of trees, making him nigh impossible to find - unless you're looking. As TV Tropes put it, it's a High Octane Nightmare Fuel version of Where's Waldo. (Guess what: he's in the pic up there, as well as the Operator symbol from Marble Hornets. Find the symbol first. Thanks to cazrolime on Twitter "finding it" on Getty.) Sometimes he's blatant, purely to make the cold fear of realization wash over the viewer, but sometimes... sometimes it's much, much more sinister than that.

The videos don't really need any explaining - watch them. I'm serious. If you ignored me before, I swear to god I will backhand you stop ignoring me now and go watch them. There's a certain ingenius beauty to the videos, with subtle little things here and there, while being the High Octane Nightmare Version: Hell Edition of Where's Waldo (that's the original game turned Up To Eleven, if you're playing the aptly-named "How Many TV Tropes Hints or Nods Fox Can Cram Into One Post" game at home - okay I'm done now seriously fuck), purely because every time the slender man appears, there's a visual tear in the film. This elevates the level of fear, simply by ensuring you begin thinking "oh fuck oh fuck oh no shit fuck" every time the tear appears. This gets even worse when the audio on the video is missing, and that happens a LOT in Marble Hornets (something, I think, really makes the entire thing as scary as it is).

Even without the videos, the slender man is still horrifying. What could possibly make something so obviously (at least, once you really begin searching for him on the internet) fictional so viscerally terrifying? This, which effectively sums up the next paragraph or two of this blog: "He only exists if you're thinking about him. Now try not to think about him."

That's right, ladies and gentlemen: THE POWER OF THE MIND. Normally all works of fiction rely on a certain amount of (at least) willing disbelief to get it to work, but the slender man takes this and amps it up to the point of being the exact reason the whole thing's so terrifying. To put it into perspective, this is a creature with tentacles/branch-like appendages that he(it) can pull out of fucking nowhere at will. This is a creature who is completely silent, but might be able to control your thoughts with its own - is at least capable of imprinting its demands on you. This is a creature who moves so fast that it usually isn't seen unless it wants to be -- not to mention, it may be capable of teleportation, and is quite capable of fucking around with everything near you, including the house you're exploring (check Entry #23 out for maximum understanding of that last bit). This is a creature who is only slowed/stopped/possibly seen through the lens of a camera/on film, and every single photographer/cameraman either turns up dead, disappears or is on the run. This is a creature who shows up around children, trees, fire, or an insidious mix of the three. It takes the guise of a man in a business suit with a bald, completely faceless head, and can at will grow and shrink in length, but he's always insidiously tall and slender. (And for the people where psychological has to meet physical horror somewhere: It has a penchant for stealing your organs, wrapping them in plastic bags, replacing them in your body and sticking it in the trees in a horrifying fashion. If he does at all.)

The slender man has no weakness. The slender man has no face. The slender man is always watching.

Now think about all of that, and, when coupled with the thought that purely by thinking about him you could create him, try not to cry when you wake up tonight in a cold sweat.

Yes, the slender man is fiction. Yes, he was created on the internet. That doesn't come to mind (or, if it does, it does weakly and never ends up helping) at night - in the dead of night, too, when it's the very epitome of pitch black outside -, when you're trying to tell yourself that the light is safe (it isn't), when you're all alone in the house (or are you?), when you're seriously giving thought to buying a camera just to make sure he doesn't come into the room when you're sleeping (record everything, or you won't remember).

This is where fear begins to cross from the fun into the very real -- the idea that thought alone can make the Slender Man a reality (and I cannot underline this enough). He exists the second someone starts thinking about him, and, rest assured, someone is always going to be thinking about him. And here's the real kicker: if he came into your room, late at night, you might not even remember the encounter (he has a nasty habit of erasing memories), or he's gone the second you turn on the light (see Hornets entry #14). He could be looming over you in a totally dark room and be gone the very second the light turns on and you wouldn't be the wiser.

This is what the horror industry should have more of (and I mean all across the board - games, movies, etc etc). Two dudes, a suit, 500$ and a camera is all it takes. They used visual tears, distortion, utter silence and the willingness of the audience to make the very critical horrifying realizations. Sure, the whole needlessly gory stuff can stay around. There are tons of people who like Saw purely for the gore, for example. But we need more of this sort of stuff around - psychological horror that is actually psychological and not just horror.

(Bonus points to anyone who caught both the pics in that last sentence of the pictures paragraph.)
((Also, to those counting, the final TV Tropes count was 4, only because I had to physically begin stopping myself from fetching the correct links.))
(((Also also, I'm so sorry this is so long, but I hope you enjoyed it.)))

Edit:
Have some more slender pics.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

And here's a slender tumblr.