Two 12-year old girls stab friend for "Slender Man"

[DrEvil]

Despite the horrible subject matter I have to admit to a degree of fascination. The internet is getting its own mythology.

[brainpanhandler]

Vivid nightmare:

I'm traveling alone and staying at motel on the ground floor. It's night and I'm in bed. I'm awakened by the sound of something wrestling with the doorlock. I can see two shadows cast on the curtains by the streetlamps outside. Terrified, I lay still, hoping whoever it is will realize they can't get in and will leave. The door swings open and two silhouetted figures soundlessly slip into the room; one I'll call bouncing man is short and round and bounces lightly along on two little legs as though filled with helium and the other impossibly tall and thin has to stoop to enter the room and glides along like a stick figure fred astaire. I call him stick figure man.They are black and seem to reflect no light. Frozen in horror I cannot make out any other details in the dark gloom of my room except for the glint of light off the long curved daggers they each carry. I finally leap out of bed and manage to slip past them and out the still open door. They follow. A chase ensues. Stick figure man makes enormous, loping strides. Bouncing man keeps up with him, bounding along as though on the surface of the moon. They chase me down a deserted street. As they pass under streetlamps I catch a glimpse of my pursuers, their knives flash in the light, they each have grins filled with sharp teeth, dead eyes and otherwise expressionless faces. Neither makes a sound. Each streetlamp we pass they get closer and closer. Finally I reach a dead end lit by a streetlamp with nowhere to go. My pursuers are nearly upon me and in sheer terror I levitate straight up. I am hanging in the air looking down and bouncing man and stick figure man enter the pool of light cast by the lamp I am hovering next to. They both turn their grinning faces up toward me. I am levitating with great effort. It's not an effort I can sustain and somehow they know it. Like lions that have treed prey they wait, knowing I will eventually have to descend. It's like trying to hold your breath as long as possible. I start to slowly sink, still straining to remain aloft. Finally the terror is too much and I force myself awake, dripping in sweat, exhausted.

[Luther Blissett]

This was last night?

[brainpanhandler]

No. This was years ago, but still burned vividly into my brain. I had a series of these nightmares with these two characters. In retrospect it was almost as if the structure of the nightmares was intended to maximize the terror; as if stick figure man and bouncing man fed off my terror or whatever introduced them into my brain fed off the terror and wanted to sustain it.

It makes me wonder if "slender man" is not an archetype of some sort. I did some digging and ran across accounts of native American folklore about a "stick indian". Some information in this thread: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/fo ... opic=82492

[Luther Blissett]

Stick Indians are precisely one of those pieces of mythology I was considering, along with the men in black, flatwoods monster (a pack of which once infected a nightmare of mine), Indrid Cold, some 90's North Jersey encounter tales, etc.

[82_28]

Stick Indians. Wow, that takes me back -- totally forgot about it. Back in school crafts class or whatever, I remember making "stick Indians". You'd decorate a stick to make it look like an Indian.

Name: Stick Indians
Tribal affiliation: Salish, Lummi
Type: Antagonists, monsters, bigfeet

In the traditions of many Salish and other Northwest Indian tribes, Stick Indians are malevolent and extremely dangerous forest spirits. Details about Stick Indians vary from tribe to tribe (they are described as large, hairy bigfoot-like creatures by the Salish, and as forest dwarves by the Cayuse and Yakama.) In some traditions Stick Indians have powers to paralyze, hypnotize, or cause insanity in hapless humans, while in others, they merely lead people astray by making eerie sounds of whistling or laughter in the woods at night. In some stories Stick Indians may eat people who fall prey to them, kidnap children, or molest women. They also take aggressive revenge against people who injure or disrespect them, no matter how unintentionally.

Not too many traditional legends regarding Stick Indians have been recorded, in part due to taboos related to these deadly creatures. "Stick Indians" is an English euphemism; saying the actual Salish names of these beings in public is considered to be provoking their attacks in some tribes, a belief many Native people still adhere to today, choosing to refer to them only in English (if at all.)

http://www.native-languages.org/moreleg ... ndians.htm

[elfismiles]

Hamilton Co. mom: Daughter's knife attack influenced by Slender Man (Video)
Mother says her daughter dressed up for attack
Published 5:21 PM EDT Jun 06, 2014

http://www.wlwt.com/news/hamilton-co-mo ... n/26370588

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/07/ohio-mother-blames-knife-attack-by-13-year-old-daughter-on-slenderman-obsession/

An Ohio woman, who was recently attacked by 13-year-old daughter with a knife, said she believes he daughter was inspired by internet horror meme Slenderman.

The woman, who asked to not be identified, told WLWT that she made the connection after seeing reports of the two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who attempted to stab their friend to death, hoping to make the fictional Slenderman appear.

“I came home one night from work and she was in the kitchen waiting for me and she was wearing a mask — a white mask,” the woman said. “She had her hood up and had her hands covered with her sleeves and the mask.”

“She was someone else during that attack,” the mother added.

[elfismiles]

Mike Langguth

Slender Man Stabbing Suspect Ruled Incompetent to Stand Trial
By Elaine Aradillas
07/05/2014 at 05:30 PM EDT
http://www.people.com/article/slender-m ... or-trialti

‘Slender Man’ recedes in Wisconsin stabbing case as mental health becomes issue
By Lindsey Bever July 3
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morn ... mes-issue/


A tree with a canopy of heart-shaped cards sent from people from around the world decorate the bedroom of the 12-year-old Wisconsin stabbing victim. (AP Photo/Dana Hoffmann)

Don't Blame Slender Man for the Schoolgirl Stabbing
By Martin Robbins Jun 5 2014
...
Over time, the Slenderverse became something more than a meme, transforming into what the Slender Man Wiki describes as an "Alternate Reality Game." Where most games, movies, or novels take the reader into another world, ARGs blend fantasy into reality, building up a universe that’s just a step to the left of the participants’ own, influenced by their actions. YouTube channels and blogs provide the main entry points for these experiences, which can also involve email, live streams, and social media like Twitter.

Most importantly, Slender Man AR gamers treat the mythology as real in all community interaction. Most pose complete ignorance to the pop-culture or internet awareness of Slender Man, not even aware that such a being is so widely researched. As such, many ARG characters refer to Slender Man as simply "That Man" or "That Thing." Few ARGs reveal having previous knowledge of Slender Man. Those who do are usually aware because of pop-culture references and will refer to him as Slender Man accordingly.

The idea of "proxies" apparently came from the DarkHarvest00 ARG, a series featuring a character called Kind Von Der Ritter, who apparently worships the Slender Man and wants to become a proxy himself. According to the Slender Man Wiki, “The theory behind the name is that Proxies are entities or people who are under the influence or control of Slender Man (or the same force that influences Slender Man), and act based on its wants/needs. Hence, Proxies serve as an in-between—a proxy—for Slender Man. It is suspected that Proxies do the actual, physical work for Slender Man, such as creating and manipulating objects, destroying and leaving evidence, creating videos and responding on Twitter, and influencing victims as needed.”

ARGs are a new beast—complex multimedia experiences very different to a simple meme or the ghost stories we used to tell each other before the internet and the fact-checking, myth-busting brigade came along. With this in mind, it’s tempting to draw the obvious conclusion: Two vulnerable young children went onto the internet, got involved in something their under-developed brains couldn’t process, and tried to kill another child as a result of this corrupting influence.
...
http://www.vice.com/read/dont-blame-sle ... -stabbings

[elfismiles]

So last week me and a bunch of friends all got together at our friend Stephen Romano's house and watched the recent (utterly terrible) episode of CRIMINAL MINDS in which some of Stephen's faux-sploitation movie posters appeared on the walls of one of the show's suspects.

Well wouldn't you know that the episode was about a murder spree by someone called variously the Mirror-Man, Selfie-Killer, #Killer, etc. and focused around the idea of creepypasta / internet folklore come to life.

Kinda like saying "HughManateeWins" three times while staring at the RI forums on your computer screen.

Hashtag S10 Ep7 (41:20)
http://www.cbs.com/shows/criminal_minds ... s-hashtag/

https://twitter.com/StephenPRomano/stat ... 8324496385

We really had a great time hanging out and riffing over the show ala MST3K / RiffTrax style.

Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to watch that episode sober.

[elfismiles]

Mercy Black Menaces Netflix
Owen Egerton's latest for Blumhouse gets special local screenings
By Richard Whittaker, 1:15PM, Mon. Apr. 1, 2019
https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/s ... s-netflix/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvhcxbHl7pg