Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 48 - Slenderman: A Modern Monster is Born

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

In 2014, two twelve year old Wisconsin girls believed in monsters. They believed in one, Slenderman, so completely, they decided to kill their friend to prove their worth to Slenderman so they could become his "proxies" and live with him in his woodland mansion. Luckily, their friend survived, despite being stabbed 19 times. Who is Slenderman? And why do some people still believe in him? And what exactly happened the day this girl was stabbed? Find out in a spooky, how-to-create-a-monster edition of Timesuck.  Check out today's sponsors: This episode of Timesuck is brought to you by the Fantasy Footballers podcast. https://www.thefantasyfootballers.com/ The best fantasy football advice you can find and the most fun you'll have listening to it. Check 'em out and subscribe!  Bombfell.com - the best clothes in men's on-line shopping. Your very own stylist and a fast, easy-to-understand on-line shopping experience. Get $25 off YOUR FIRST purchase when you go to www.bombfell.com/TIMESUCK  Chubbies.com - top quality, stylish swim and beachwear for men and women. Go to www.chubbies.com/timesuck to get FREE two-day shipping on your order! And head to the Hollywood Improv, October 5th, 7:30PM for the FIRST EVER live recording of Timesuck! Part of the LA Podcast Festival. Tickets only $15. Click here for tickets/more details.

On Saturday, May 31, 2014, 12-year-old girl, Peyton Letner, was playing hide and seek with two other 12-year-old girls, Anisa Weir and Morgan Geyser in a suburban park in Wakesha, Wisconsin, the morning after his sleepover. That all went to escape parks and I have a four-stay-up play talking, play dress-up, eat donuts and strawberries for breakfast, having a good day so far. And then suddenly, Morton, following Anisa's command, stabs Peyton 19 times with a steak knife, she'd snuck out of her mom's kitchen. She and Anisa have been planning on killing Peyton, known as Bella, for roughly 6 months.

Why? Because they believe they made a sacrifice to Slenderman, not only would this monster not kill them or kill their families, he would also allow them to become his proxies and live with him in the forest. Leaving Bella for dead, the girls set out to find Slenderman's mansion. With an hour's, Bella would be recovering in a local hospital, Morgan and Anisa would be confessing in a local jail, and the Slenderman stabbing story would be national news. And now over three years later, Morgan and Anisa are finally set to go to trial for what they did, and you're set to understand who the

hell Slenderman is, and look at why these girls may have done what they did. Digital folklore, 21st century superstition, a myth, a monster and an almost murder today on TimeSuck. Happy Monday and Hail Nimrod, time suckers. Welcome to the suck. I'm Dan Cummins, and thanks for listening to another episode of the best project I have ever worked on. I truly hope you enjoy today's excursion and curiosity. Time suckers brought to us once again today by the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Did you check them out this past week?

You should have. They're awesome and they're easy to find. Now that the football season is coming up, they're cranking out quality episodes Monday through Friday. You can watch them on YouTube, subscribe on iTunes, listen on I Heart Radio, Google Play, everywhere podcast can be listened to, go to thefantasyfootballers.com, pick up a draft kit.

Good dudes, great football experts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, Mike Wright. They have a great show and you're going to love it. Even if you just have a passing interest in sports, they're number one on iTunes in the fantasy football category day in and day out. They won the 2016 People's Choice Award for Best Podcasts from Academy of Podcasts, Podcasts, awards, and they love time suck. So check them out. Fantasy Footballers is a year round fantasy podcast that kicks it up from two shows a week to five shows a week,

Monday through Friday, August through December. My son Kyler and I have been listening so we can kick the living shit out of the other members of our family lake, all right? Grandma's, aunts, my wife, cousins, in-laws, all getting kicked right in their nuts. This season, thanks to the Fantasy Footballers' expert advice. So listen, download and subscribe.

Link to the Fantasy Footballers podcast will be in today's episode description. And thanks for all the new iTunes reviews this past week. I mean, lots of new subscriptions. Thanks to the Fantasy Footballers listeners for giving this suck a shot, love welcoming the foot clan into the suck family. I appreciate recent emails, let me know. The rest of you suckers still spread the suck, sharing some ear joy. A little bit of

new merch in the time suck store today. I'm excited to time some stickers. Some time suck stickers finally here. Five of them. Finally got that done. Three are variations of the new logo. One is the design from the flat earth tee. The fifth is the design from the bow jangles tee. All five look awesome. The first generation sticker pack. And here's the best part. You get a free sticker pack.

You get all five stickers free with every order over 10 bucks, which right now is everything else in the store. So you know, you order a shirt. Yeah, you get a free sticker pack, order a book, sticker pack free, sign down, free sticker pack. And if you just want stickers, you don't want to buy anything else. That's fine. You get one sticker pack for three bucks plus shipping, five bucks for two sticker packs plus shipping. And for ten bucks, you get five sticker packs plus shipping. So

how many stickers? And, you know, please, send in pics of you sticking these stickers in some fun places or anywhere you see fit Set them into bow jangles at timesoappodcast.com or just tag Instagram or Instagram at timesoappodcast Tag the handle or send it in and we'll blast them out on the social media spread the suck with some stickers Represent hats still be manufactured for generation t-shirt still being designed The 800 review bonus episode will not be this Friday, MK Ultra, the CIA Mind Control Experiments, it's gonna drop Friday, August 25th. Not sure if we're gonna hit 800 reviews

by Monday as of this recording, but we'll definitely hit that many before the following Monday, very close. And I just need a little more time to get totally ready. So crazy shit I'm looking into. Thanks to DaBerino, Josh DeCruz, Casey Locke, and Darth Ratchet on Twitter for asking for some slender man suck and special shout out. You suck, Corey Collinson, you son of a bitch, your time sucking Arizona son, double girlfriend, Tyler Raidelang, hit me

up to let me know you're completing your service in the Marine Corps in August 23rd and you guys won't have to suck long distance after three years, us in long distance sucking. So now you can suck with each other in person. Long distance dating. Suck hasn't been around for three years. You know, long distance for three years, and now you can have some face to face suck. And I'm sure some face to face.

Other stuff as well. It'll be fun. So congrats. And thank you for eight and a half years of service. Thank you very much. Bojangles and I salute you. That's amazing. And now let's check in with the rest of the. Thank you very much. Bojangles and I salute you. That's amazing. And now let's check in with the rest of the cult

of the curious whosome time sucker updates. Updates, get your time sucker updates. Okay, first time in this segment, I wanna share an update and I can't remember who the hell set it in. So if I can, I look for like an hour. Part of the problem is I got too many social media handles and email addresses, you know what I'm something I'm checking shit on the fly.

Sometimes in the car, I shouldn't do that. I'm working on stopping doing that. But I try like it stop lights, you know, that's why sometimes you'll see that I've checked messages, but I don't respond. It's because I'm being a dumb shit. I have red light checking it's fucking messages. But anyway, if you be kind, help me. My volunteers out, send in the updates to bowjanglesatatimesuckpodcast.com or one of the time-subsocial media sites, as opposed to mine. At Time-Sub podcast on Twitter and Instagram, slash Time-Sub podcast on Facebook, just makes it easier to dig them back up.

And whoever sent this in, if you want to hit me back up, I will acknowledge it this next week, because it's an awesome update. This goes back to the very first episode of Time-Sub. It's about the lizard illuminati. You know I'm fascinated with him. I've referenced space lizards many times on this show. It's the topic I first thought of when I first thought of this podcast.

There are people who believe that a race of predatory lizards from space settled on Earth millennia ago and made it with a few select humans. And these reptilian human hybrids have been ruling the earth ever since. Obama lizard, all right ever since Obama lizard. All right. Fucking Putin lizard. So so many l-Trump not a lizard for some reason. But you know most people, most leaders lizards, Hillary lizard, almost full lizard.

And these reptilian human hybrids, yeah, they just, they fucking rule us. And most world leaders have reptilian blood and the answer to the space lizards who live in tunnels, you know, the full, the full lizards. And they live in cities under the earth where the harvest mono atomic gold, whatever that bullshit is, doesn't seem real. They can shape shift, they use, they eat the mono atomic gold so they can shape shift and they shape shift so they can trick us into fucking start and wars and stuff and then feed quite literally on our fear. Fear that they create, yeah, through like manipulating people

into war and causing famines and atrocities. It's just, it's a crazy shit ever. I'm gonna do another episode about it someday because it was the first episode when I wasn't, suckin' as deep as I do now and I just, I can't stop thinking about God damn space lizards. And you know, these shape shifters they can appear as human to the untrained eye.

And it makes them hard to figure out who's real, who's real, who's lizard. These people make flatters, believers, look like members of men's set. So here's your update. 42-year-old Barbara Rogers of Cool Ball Township, Pennsylvania, shot her 32-year-old boyfriend, Steven Manayo, the morning of this July 22, excuse, or July 22nd, excuse me, in the head. Killing him instantly, she claims he had asked her to kill him because he couldn't stand the thought of the space lizards enslaving the human race any longer. He was tired of this shit.

Two of them belonged to an online cult to believe the space lizards are controlling our minds, and it's some sort of lizard directed on Mcgeton is at hand. It's coming up. What in the fuck? Listen, if you become so convinced in some conspiracy that you'd rather die than see its conclusion, see a counselor before you have yourself executed. And when you're thinking about the end of the world stuff,

listen to the Dostonomous Time Suck episode, where I explain how Doomsday predictions have been going on like every generation, every couple of years really, for thousands of years, and they've always, I repeat, always been wrong. They're batten zero percent. And look, I know the story is terribly tragic. Someone died, but, but I do wish. I do wish I could have spied on their private conversations months before the killing. I know that's dark, but I still, I believe it. I feel it. You know, it would have been the most ridiculous entertaining shit they were

saying, just the paranoia over lizards. Just, Just a lot of, of course they fired you, Barbara. Of course they fired, it's part of their plan. They fired you, they fired, they've been firing me from every job I've ever had. And it didn't, you know, they didn't let me complete college. They, you know, they keep making us have to reset the Wi-Fi because it never consistently works. And my watch just died.

My watch just died, Barb, even though I had a new battery put in two months ago. Well, you think that's a fucking coincidence? You think that's all just what happens in life? It's the fucking space lizards. There's so many space lizards ruining everything. Oh my God. Ugh.

The realities we create for ourselves, so much of life lies in our perception of it. It really does. Okay, another update. I keep forgetting to throw in this, it's a thrown a show from Time Sucker Matt who will horse echoed by many other Time Suckers. He wrote in saying, Hey Dan, in your Nostradamus episode, you said that A.D stands for After Death. It actually stands for Anodomini, which translates to in the year of our Lord in Latin. How would we explain the 30-something years between Before Christ and After Death?

Damn it! Damn it! Matt, you're right. BC stands for Before Christ. 80 does not stand for After Death. I thought that my whole life. I looked online. I found this a common misconception.

Couldn't find out where it came from. I blame Grotup and Rick and Zaidaho. If I would have went to a proper school with classes, they had, you know, shit like Latin. Instead of classes, you know, like Latin instead of classes run by Spanish teachers who just let us watch random fucking pop culture movies and gave up on trying to teach us because you hated living there.

Maybe I'd know some more stuff, but I know now. So thank you, Matt. A.D. is anodominy. That does make way more sense. I mean, how would you account for those random extra 30 years? So thanks for making me smarter time suckers. Hail Nimrod.

Final update, special update comes in today from Colin Reed, Colin writes in who types a Dan, even though I'm only 12, you have opened my mind before this podcast, I had no idea who Vlad the Impairter was or what it really was to be transgender. I know this is a little late, but transgender debate podcast was very eye opening for me. And your chat with Erica really gave me an inside view on what it is like to be transgender. You are a real eye opener

Keep up the suck master sucker. Well, thanks Colin. All right, just get this out of the way the dad and me thinks this is goddamn adorable I don't mean to be patronized buddy. I know you're your young man. I just happened to have an 11 year old son And I think about him and his friends. Well, I just make me feel good man. I think this is great I word early on that's too vulgar too raw, you, with my profanity and my presentation for listeners like you, but you know what, that's some silly old protective dad shit. That's some old, overly protective dad thought, I love the listen, you know, you're not hearing anymore from me

than you already hear at school. I know that for sure. And you know, you have listened to the Vlad, well, actually, if you listen to the Vlad episode, you probably have heard a little bit more from me. But you know what, but at least you're getting information that's, you know, as factual as I could make it be, I'm guessing way more factual than what you're probably getting from other 12 year olds. My friends and I at that age really thought we knew way

more than we did. We had a lot of crazy notions. So again, glad I can help shape a young mind. I actually do take that responsibility pretty seriously as a Reverend as I am. I fret more than you probably realize over how to present the information in these episodes and just keep going back to trying to be as honest and unbiased as possible in this world of spin we live in. I know we're all biased, but I do make a real effort to keep mine and check as much as possible. And on that note, thanks again to many of you Christian suckers out there for making

a non-religious sucker like myself, way less judgmental of religious people in general. Thanks for kicking me off my high horse. You've called me out several times, put me in much needed check, and I do appreciate it. Okay, let's talk about some more 12-year-olds. Today's episode is all about 12-year-olds, and what they believe. Let's get into some Slender Man's suck. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. You know, it's not always easy to trace the exact moment a boogie man started showing up in humanity's dreams.

Like we learned in the Vlad the Impaler episode that Vlad Dracula, partly inspired brand Stoker, centuries later to write Dracula, a novel published in 1897, that influenced the creation of the vampire monster we imagine today more than any other singular source. But we also learned that vampiric mythology existed in various bloods sucking forms long before the book's publication, long before the life of Vlad himself. Vampiric monsters living in the nightmares of children and adults alike in various places. The nightmare woven across the continents through various cultures for centuries. Wherewolves have existed in various half-beast, half-human form, at least as far back as

Greek antiquity, its original creator, if there was one, now completely lost to history. George Romero, often credited with launching the zombie mythology, with 1968's classic horror flick, Night of the Living Dead, but Zombies Go is leased as far back as 17th century Haiti, born out of the French slavery subculture. Who knows who first conjured up the image of the mindless corpse that refuses to stain its grave and is now made AMC a lot of money.

It's different with Slenderman. We know exactly when he was born. Slenderman was born in Elko Novata on March 14, 1923. He was born 31 inches long, only weighing one pound, one ounces. Very tall, very skinny baby. When Slenderman was first handed to his mother, Catherine Cat, Lee Slenderman, a petite woman who had made living selling Huckleberry muffins to silver miners. She reportedly screamed, no, where's my baby?

What the fuck is that? What is my boy have a face? Why was I so long? Why is he wearing that black suit? How was he wearing it inside of me? Are those fucking tentacles on his back? Yeah, she had a potty mouth. No, of course that's all nonsense.

Thunderman was born on June 10th, 2009, and he was born on the internet. June 9th, 2009, no, Slenderman. No boogie man, so real. Two young girls in Wisconsin, trying to sacrifice their young friends, earn entry into his mystical kingdom. And we know exactly who created Slenderman.

Even if we don't know much about him, some random dude from Chicago named Eric Newton on June 10th, 2009, submitted some pictures to an online Photoshop competition to see who could create the best methodological monster on a website called Something Awful. Now, something awful is a comedic message board based site and community hub

where it's users, can post comedic articles, pictures, gifts, create or add to various comedic threads, etc. There's sections for video games, places for people to post fan fiction, all kinds of stuff. Today when I checked out the site, there were popular threads titled, I got rejected as a potential roommate because of classism, advice, graphics cards, graphics card overheated because the fans stop working. How fucked am I? And vegan cafe, Chargers customer, 18% man tax to address the gender gap. I got rejected because of classism, seriously. I don't know this person. I don't know anything about their situation.

I didn't read the thread, but this sounds like some bullshit to me. I feel like they got rejected because their potential roommate realized they were the kind of super annoying person who would claim they would get rejected because of Classism. Anyway, there are onion types, satirical articles, gifts, memes, users are encouraged to download and spread. Almost all the content appears to be user generated. It looks like the site's creator or someone the creator has hired, whether their team probably curates the user generated content. And you have to be a paid member to have access to a lot of it. content and yet to be a paid member to have access to a lot of it. And for years, one popular section of the site has been Photoshop Friday. Every Friday, new topic is posted for users trying out, do each other for the best, you

know, Photoshopped picture regarding that topic. Like last week was a remorseful hitman kid back for one last hit. And you click on that link and you see a thread where various users have taken some pick of a kid two or three years old whose crying while looking down and holding his left hand above his eyes, it really is a pretty funny meme pick. It's odd in that it's how it's not how like a young kid usually cries. It's like how an adult in a movie cries, like a tough guy who just finally breaks down after the battle.

And then running junk with his images that this become a meme is that this little kid's a hitman and he feels terrible for what he's done and you know he's having some remorse. And people have Photoshopped the remorse for a little dude in various scenarios. He's being arrested by a SWAT team. He's on the Doom video game cover. His shadow pops up behind the woman who's famously killed in the shower in the movie Psycho. I like it. I love a good meme. And if you don't understand why young kid crying is funny, you need to spend more time around young kids. It's very funny.

And you're like, oh, it's so mean. Why are you laughing at this young kid crying? Two-year-olds cry approximately five to 20 times a day over some bullshit. Stuff like they wanted one piece of cheese. And when you gave them two pieces of cheese, and instead of just being cool and saying, oh, I'll need one.

Thank you. You can take this back. They start bawling and they tell you that you've ruined everything when you gave them that second piece of cheese. That second piece of cheese ruined their whole fucking life. After being around that for a few months or a few years, you stop feeling bad for them.

You know, when they cry, you stop feeling bad real quick. Kids in general constantly cry over some nonsense. It's hilarious. Just why are you so upset, buddy? Did your whole family just die? Did you just find out you have two months to live? No. Oh, you thought you wanted the happy meal toy that you got, but now you wish you would have

gotten a different toy. That's why your cheeks are red and puffy from crying. That's why snot is literally running down your lip into your mouth. Well, we can fix this in one or two ways. Plan A, you can quietly go lay down for a nap or Plan B, you can cry yourself to sleep. You're gonna go for Plan B? Okay, it sounds about right. You're lucky you're cute. It's quite literally your only redeeming quality. And I'll post some pictures of this little meme on the site if you're curious here.

Anyways, something awful, popular site. Popular enough to launch a viral new meme out into the rest of the web. It's had such a documented impact on digital culture that the Library of Congress, American Folk Life Center, maintains a digital archive of its contents. Well, back in 2009, there was a thread situation similar to remorseful Hitman kid going on,

where users were trying to outdo it one another and creating a new Photoshop boogie man. Basically, can you create a new monster? And some guy, this Eric Newtson, who from what little info I could find is around 35 now living in Florida with his wife and young kid, he created Slender Man, single handedly. I'm going to post a very first pick of Slender Man, the pick that gave him virtual life onto the episode description with the other picture I just said at timesugpodcast.com. And before we discuss that further, I want to say, time suck is brought to us today by

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Okay, so let's talk about that first slenderman pick, the birth of a monster. Eric posted a super creepy and a nerving picture of a group of young teenagers on the something awful thread there who looked to be at something like summer camp and based on their clothes and hair styles looks like a picture from early to mid 80s. They're on a dirt road with a dark spooky forest behind them. Got some sort of cabin back in the woods behind them. 10-12 kids in the photo all walking towards the camera. Some boy about 12-13. He's in the forefront of the picture.

I'll just chuck full a teen angst, looking into the camera. He's pissed. He's just whatever girl he likes probably has a crush on some. Jock, he can't stand. Some fucking whatever girl he likes probably has a crush on some jock. He can't stand some fucking cool guy named Chad or Chase or Todd. And his parents totally understand, or his parents don't understand anything he's in do.

You hate summer camp. You know, he never wanted to, you know, be there in the first place. He wanted to hang out with his buddy Steve and play ping pong and a Tory chopper command in the basement and check out his, Steve's, you know know dad's pen house dash and summer campus is ruining his whole fucking life. He can't take it anymore. He has that kind of expression that kind of you know teen angst expression. It's a black and white photo bit washed out heavy on contrast, white's too white, dark's too dark, focus isn't great, all in all. Perfect photo for a creepy photo contest. The rest of the kids don't

look terribly happy If you seem surprised maybe even alarmed Here's kind of a sense of alarm there in the photo You take away a slender man and the photo is just earied by itself You know, I'm guessing Eric adjusted the contrast and saturation levels play with it quite a bit to get it just right It makes you want to understand like where it was taken and who who are these kids? Where are they? Why is no one smiling? I guess another kid in the real photo, probably just took the photo.

You know, some candid photo that half the kids in the photo didn't realize was even being taken and the other half were mildly annoyed that was being taken. Like, dude, it's not taking pictures. And then the back of the photo, you notice Nimrod, his fiery eyes, birding bright, and he's eating one of the children.

He's eating Chad because Chad refused to stop that cockerspanical skull and pay tribute to the god of time, Zach. Lord of curiosity, master of pochangles. Weird, Sasquatch, Chuba-cover, Space Thingy, who has a strange hatred of cute little dogs that makes no sense to me whatsoever. Why puppies? Why is that his method of proving allegiance? Because even monsters generally love puppies. So it's arguably the hardest non human creature to kill and increase the magnitude of the sacrifice. No, you don't notice Nimrod. You notice a different strange creature, a slender humanoid shape. I found it pretty quick, but only because I knew what I was looking for. I could see it's surprising people. When you zoom in, it appears to be a faceless man, a night, not quite human man with a blank space where his face should be. A night, not quite human man with a blank space where his face should be. Arms way too long. He's very skinny. Maybe wearing kind of a black suit, very dark kind of body,

dark clothing, and some kind for sure. And again, intentionally unfocused, hard to define. And the photo was captioned with, we didn't want to go. We didn't want to kill them. But it's persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time. and silence, and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time. Yee! And it says 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead. Well there you go, that is creepy. Well done. Well done with creeps there, Jesus. We didn't want to, but we did. The strange hypnotic entity scared the hell out of us and made us think everyone would be okay if we just killed the kids. That's a solid monster. That's gonna keep a kid up at night. That's gonna keep some adults up at night.

In an online interview from October 20th, 2011, Eric said regarding Slenderman's creation that he was mostly influenced by HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, specifically his short stories, the surreal imaginings of William S. Burrows, and a couple games of the survival horror genre Silent Hill and Resident Evil. I feel the most direct influences were Zach Parsons, the insidious beast, the Stephen King short story The Mist, and a tale regarding the rake reports of so-called shadow people, moth man, and the mad glasser of Matoon. I use these to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended and causes general unease and terror in a general population.

Well Eric immediately uploaded a second photo, this one of kids on a playground. In this photo a picture that also is kind of a mid 80s vibe, the subject of the photo is a young girl roughly kindergarten age climbing up to the back of a slide. Two other little girls went underneath the slide and several other kids are in the background in the shade of a large tree. The ones in the background are gathered around Bill Cosby of all people. Sure, he looks like a harmless dead,

sweater hanging out, handing out some jello puttin' pops, but can you really trust him? No, now of course it wasn't Bill Cosby, I'll stop for a bit. And that same, it's that same unfocused slender man from the first pick. He's hanging out the background, got some kids gathered around him, same eerily faceless man.

Only this time you can see him a little bit better because where a slender man is located in the photo, there's a lighter sky behind him, he pops out a little more clearly from the background. Notice a little more details about him. He seems to have some sort of tentacles emanating from his back. He's still wearing something dark. Definitely appears to be a suit probably. And again, he's in the background and out of focus.

You know, you try and zoom in and everything gets real grainy real quick. And this photo is also stamped with a seal of sorts encircled with the words, city of Sterling Library's local studies collection. The caption reads, one of two recovered photographs from the Sterling City Library blaze,

notable for being taken the day in which 14 children vanished and for what is referred to as the Slenderman. Fire at Library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence, 1986. Photographer Mary Thomas missing since June 13, 1986. Creepy again. You know what, I know all this shit is fake

and I just got fucking goosebumps. What, what, that's so weird. I really did just get after reading that. Goosebumps. And I know it's fake. I mean, I'm reading about how he made it up. So two photos, two missing and presumed dead photographers, classic creepy stuff. And just like that, we have the origins of a monster. Well, Eric returns to the forum the next day with more, you know, quote unquote evidence of Slenderman. He's still single handedly building the mythology at this point. He posts a fictional doctor's note that recounts several alleged Slenderman victims from the

1990s. Fake doctor's note, brilliant touch. Here's where he says, 524.95 Wilkes estate, one subject reported nothing out of the ordinary before taking photograph. Lower stairs area was said to be very dark. Subject states that dark, that after, excuse me, the camera flash, she heard a sound like a watermelon being unable to understand subject.

Five, 25, 93 subject, unable to recall events after manner, power failure. Unable to question other two identified subjects. Camera and film acquired from Gloria Crete, current resident of Woodview, mental hospital, and psychological rehabilitation clinic. Film mostly uncontaminated despite massive blood and human tissue present on camera.

No positive ID on anomalous tall and slender subject. Facial blur caused by possible contamination. 6.7.93, early digital analysis indicates tall subject may have no eyes. Anomalies previously thought to be film errors and flash artifacts now thought to be appendages. 6.10.93 Final identified subject reported missing along with other 33 patients and staff of Woodview Mental Hospital and psychological rehabilitation clinic South Wing. 6, 18, 93, further inquiry to cease immediately. Yeah.

So Victor Surge, man, aka Eric Newtson, yeah, he fucked around with this message, June 11th. Ooh, around five o'clock, so the next day. Okay, so now Woodview Mental Hospital just be clear doesn't exist. Ooh, around five o'clock, so the next day. Okay, so now would you mental hospital just be clear doesn't exist? And for what I can find online, no library in a town called Sterling City. There is a Sterling City, California,

very small little town ever burned down and definitely didn't burn down with kids inside. But that doesn't stop a myth like this from growing. It adds to it. Of course you can't find info on these incidents. It's a big cover up. The vague details are a nice touch. Allows other people to add their own mental details,

fill in the blank spaces, take ownership. That's the monster, be slightly different things to different people. All you really know about this fucker is that he doesn't have a face. He's really thin. He wears a black suit. For some reason he has tentacles.

And when he shows up, kids go missing and people die. Yikes. June 12th, 2009, the monster really begins to take on some life of its own. Right now, other users start to build Slender Man's mythology. It's out of the box now. Out of user, you know, Eric Newtson, aka Victor Surge's hands, belongs to the internet. Another user adds a story to the thread kicking it off with, I've been seriously debating sharing these, but after Victor Surge's posts, I feel I have to.

The user then recounts a case of missing teens who vanished while camping, claiming he was given a photo of the slender man by his uncle. A police officer still vexed by the incident years later. The photo has since been removed, but it led the way for multiple users to formulacally add on to the mythos. Stories of elementary school fires, missing children continue to pour into the very same thread that housed Newtson's original meme. One user referenced his slender man having some sort of pet, some sort of hellhound, dark,

ominous, a beast who will mall and devour a child, as soon as it will protect one. Mysterious terrifying, strangely appealing. The name written on the thread is Bojangles, supernatural beast, able to mold itself to any and all narratives. And one photo Bojangles appears on a leash being taken out of walk by one man, the only man that Slender Man fears Michael

motherfucking McDonald, triple M, man, myth, musical goddamn Grammy winning genius. Okay, seriously, I really am done with that nonsense for a bit. Okay. So within 10 days, this slender man creature has already moved on to YouTube on June 20th, three college film students, Troy Wagner, Joseph D'Lang, Tim Sutton, released the first in a series of short videos depicting slender men in the style of kind of the Blair Witch project, which I definitely kind of get shit on now. I saw it when I came out of the theater because I'm a,

because I'm old with some of your listeners. And you know, like when it was novel, when the found footage movie was novel and you hadn't seen anything like it, and there was all this hype around it, like oh my, is this a real thing that happened? They really did find this footage. It was scary at the hell.

Scary at the hell. Okay, we had these short videos, further know, further shaping slendermans for voting legend and the films of supernatural monster, tall skinny faceless humanoid, with the ability to distort film footage, starts disrupting a student's attempt to film his class project titled Marvel Hornets. According to the series, a classmate later discovers that footage after a student becomes increasingly unwell, obsessed with the version of slenderman he calls the operator. The film's captions explain how the person who captured this footage is now seriously Unwell, obsessed with the version of Slender Man he calls the operator.

The film's captions explain how the person who captured this footage is now seriously mentally disturbed. Over the next year, Marvel Hornets released a total of 97 videos. That's a lot of Slender Man. Why didn't watch all 97? Because that's 96 too many Slender Man videos for me in this series. I did look up the first video though. It has over 6 million views.

Unfortunately, comments have been disabled. Or I would have dug through them for this week's Idiots on the internet, or other the internet, oh well, plenty of other comment sections and threats to suck on for that. The first letterman video, only 47 seconds long, starts with a black screen,

titled with entry number one. Then the text changes to, after viewing a couple tapes and finding nothing unusual, I came across a clip that doesn't fit in with the others. Then it changes again. To, from what I can tell, the following footage takes place inside Alex's house. Not the set for Marble's Hornets. And then it changes one more time too. The audio has been removed. Either the microphone was disabled at the time, or it was taken out afterwards. Finally, 21 seconds in, the video footage starts to play. It looks

like someone carrying a video camera around their house after forgetting to turn it off at first. Unintentional filming kind of vibe. It's frantic, you know, bouncing around quickly, pointed to floor, pointed to ceiling, that sort of thing. And then you realize someone's running with it to someone who starts to look outside a window with it, filming the front ports of the house, the filmmakers inside, one story below. StarCow, porch lights on. You don't see anything at first. For just a second, the camera looks out into the perfectly still figure of Slenderman.

He's on the porch, as you kind of pan to the right, you see him. The camera holds on him for a second. The faceless man in the black suit, the arms too long. Suddenly starts to turn just his face towards the camera after a little beat, and then the camera quickly shifts away. The cameraman hiding behind the curtain in the wall, then the video cuts back to black,

and text once again fills the center of the screen. This was the only thing that was out of ordinary on this particular tape, and then it shifts to, after seeing this clip, I'll keep an eye out for a currency similar to this one in the future. And that's it, just 14 seconds of actual footage. Just enough to make a bunch of kids go, what the fuck?

Oh my God, is that real? I think that was real. That's so creepy, you guys, that's totally real. By the end of the month, this image of the man clad in the dark suit with the long arms has gone viral. Lands on popular paranormal message boards, you know, like 4chan,

another message board platform full of user generated content. The first 4chan mention of Slender Man reportedly occurred on June 24th, 2009. And a surge of user generated content. The first 4chan mention of Slenderman reportedly occurred on June 24th, 2009. And a surge of user-created photos in Slenderman fan art begins to dominate the forum. The tall, faceless monster has gone from it. It admittedly manipulated Photoshop and it's to a budding internet sensation.

His mythical light starts to appear quickly on other horror forms and meme generators, like a unifiction, fangoria, deviant art, mythical creatures guide. And then some users even began to suggest that Slenderman existed far before Newtson. Eric Newtson claimed to have made him up and insisted the story actually dates back to German folklore, like ancient folklore. By early 2010, other popular Slenderman-focused web series are being created. By 2011, Slenderman shows up in the enormously popular game Minecraft, especially popular at that time.

He arrives as Enderman, a dude with a very similar name, very similar and a very similar look. Enderman, just like Slender Man, is dark and mysterious with elongated arms, clearly not a coincidence. And in the web picks up on this. I'm sure the minecraft abilities just didn't want to be sued, and they just made the slightest tweak, but it's clearly Slender Man. I actually bought my son Kyler and Enderman's stuff toy.

He wanted when he was way into Minecraft, he slept with it for a while. I had no idea about his evil Slender Man origins if Kyler ever hears this episode. Guess an Enderman is gonna be a goner. He's gonna be kicked out of the room permanently if he's even still around now, you know, so far. By 2012, Slender Man is a star of his own

survival horror games, you know, games like Slender, the eight pages, a game that was downloaded so many times, millions and millions of times it crashed to create a web site. And so by this point, it's truly become a web phenomenon, lightning in a bottle. Because I'm reading this, I'm starting to wonder, you know, why, why this creature?

Why not some other creature? Why not some other monster from that thread that day? Why did Slender Mangle viral? Numerous other mythical monsters, you know, created and posted about it every day by somebody, something awful, and similar sites have numerous other user generated monsters being created all the time many monsters we know with their own backstories fans creating pictures and true tales why did slender man go so much more viral than the others well using google scholar a great

search engine for academic articles by the way that my sister actually tipped me off to you you just google google scholar is the easiest way to find it. And I found an interesting academic study on the creation of Slender Man on a site called commsoto.com and they explain how he was built to go viral, the interesting examination into why monsters scare us. And before we examine it, let's check in

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Okay, now back to why Slender Man is particularly scary. First, the blurriness and ambiguity of Slender Man is important to think about. A crisp focus completely defined image is gonna draw more criticism. It's easier to point out flaws if the details are very crisp. It's easier to say like, well now that looks a little Photoshop.

Now that face doesn't look real to me. Easier to kind of pick it apart. So the blurriness of Slender Man helps kind of make it scary and also draws us into the initial photos, especially, you know, Slender Man is not only blurry, he's virtually camouflaged by his surroundings, forcing the kind of the viewer photos, especially, you know, uh, Slender Man is not only blurry, he's virtually camouflaged by his surroundings, forcing the kind of the viewer into an uncomfortable, close examination of the

photo, leading to the start of defining him. One researcher suggests this visceral element of the Slender Man discovery experience engenders him to the human psyche in a way that is organic and primal, generating an unnamable fear that endures long past the cognition of his mundane origins. Right? We know he's been created for a contestant sort of. We know that. We've read that in the thread. We know that logically, but the picture still scares the shit out of us. The fear, very real. You know, it's kind of like a really well done horror film. You know it's fake. You know it's shot

on some studio lot, you know, or at least buy some Hollywood types. You know, you know, it's actors, a crew, but when it's done really well, you still walk out of that theater into the nighttime air, a little fucking unhinged, right? When you're walking in that poorly lit parking garage, you hear something out of the distance, you kind of wonder if it's one of the monsters. You just saw the movies, you know, back your mind. So while you may know that Sennerman is not real, the terror he has created very real. Other users of the initial something awful thread, then use the ambiguity of Slytherman to interpret their own Slytherman backstory, further cementing his mythic reality.

They start posting various facts to build his backstory. In folklore terms, the creation of facts to explain an existing artifact or proof is referred to as reverse ostension. Ostension defined as a noun, meaning an act or process of showing, pointing out, or exhibiting. So the slender man mythos exists almost entirely through this practice and rapid succession, following the original something awful.com postings. The slender man formed community, created a monster derivative of all monsters. They created ties to 16th century German and ancient Egypt even, legend dating back to

5,000 BC. So yeah, I've won't even back before the German folklore apparently. All these details and historical facts pointed out by so many different users create a feeling that the thing must somehow actually be real, or that at least people have thought it has been real for centuries. Pretty fucking genius, really, the way the user created this thing reminds me of a good game of improv. If you're unfamiliar with improv, the most important rule is the yes and. Essentially, whatever reality another player creates, you take it and you run with it. You add to it, you don't negate it. If someone is like,

hey, do you want to buy this apple? You know, you say something like, sure, that's the yes part. And then, do you mind giving me the part without the worm, picking out of it? The one looking at me there, that's the and part. You've added a worm to it. But the apple is, you know, you've affirmed, you know, it, you take what they've given you and you build on it. You know, you don't say something like, what are you talking about? You don't have an Apple. You know, you, you pilot shit. You think now stop talking to me. I don't know. You police. This, this assholes bothering me. That's a dick improv move. You know, you're either really, really bad at improv or you're really, really good working with a fellow improv genius who also knows how to play with broken rules.

Well, the users took Eric's initial slender man qualities of no face, long arms, slender body, dark suit, involved in the disappearance of children, strange tentacles emanating from its back. It's involved somehow in people's death, it's involved in a feeling of dread, but it's also a possible comforter of children, involved in psychological harm, you know, silent, and they went yes. They went yes to all that, and they decided to go and, and they let their thread become this monster incubator, you know, adding new stories to have new evidence of his reality, growing this monster feed us, getting it bigger and better and stronger before burthing it and

releasing it to the rest of the internet world. And then when it does get released to the world and begins to go viral, thanks partly to good old- fashioned, you know, luck and timing. Other people start to realize there's money to be made out of, Slender Man. Books are written, games developed, indie films made, costumes, clothes, toys, you can buy Slender Man, Ouija board on Amazon. Now it's a true cultural phenomenon, right? Kids can, you know, touch and hold Slender Man things, products further cement his reality. If you can buy Slender Man book and shirt and watch and movie, you know, you can play a game in addition to reading all this new folklore, so now it includes Slenderman's ancient origin. It must be real, right? And eventually this creature does become all

too real in many people's minds. Check out this definition someone threw up in 2010 and Yahoo answers in response to the question, who is Slenderman? This is what they say. The Slenderman is a supernatural creature that is described as appearing as a normal human being, but he is described as being 8 feet tall and he has vectors or extra appendages that are described to be as sharp as swords. The creature is known to stock humans and cause many disappearances. He is described as a shadow creature that is missing a face. The creature fits into many mythologies and legends from nations such as Germany and Keltz which bring up the possibility that he could be real. A man named Victor Surge found this legend and made his own version of it

Which he called Slenderman. The Slenderman is not exactly evil according to mythology But Victor Surge's version shows him as an evil creature that stocks humans to kill and mythology He was actually trying to save you from a painful death by taking you to the underworld early. Personally, I believe he is real, but not Victor's surges version. The problem is figuring out what came from mythology and what was made up for entertainment. The slender man has become an internet meme, and there have been many sightings of him watching people outside of their house. The Photoshopped images of the slender man kind of turned it into a game

like can you see him because he is hidden in the background of every picture. I believe in him, but you have to remember that Thunderman is Victor Serge's fake version. But the one I believe in is the one from mythology's in history, hoped has helped, and don't dismiss this as fake because he could be real. How crazy is that shit? We know for sure that this son of a bitch was invented. No one, I mean not one fucking single person ever talked about slender man before 2009. He is for sure not from ancient German mythology. He is not from ancient Egyptian mythology.

But this Yahoo user is clearly 100% convinced that he is. What a fascinating mental pivot, you know, because the mythology built around Eric's original creation, people now recognize Eric's photos as fake, but the monster's real, right? I mean, this makes me kind of wonder how real or nimrod and bojangles. Did I, did I make him up? Did I? Or did I conjure up the essence of a God and his three-legged, one-eyed pit bull servant? They were already in existence. Not even not sure I even know the answer to that one.

It's getting weird. All this slender man mythology is messing my brain up. You know, it's like that. That is such an interesting thought. Well, yeah, I mean, he said he made slender man up, but you know, that's not true. Slender man was already around. You know, he's been around since the beginning of time. Wake up, dude. It's all there in the ancient German books that Sunday Minute himself destroyed to prevent us from reading about how to get rid of him. This is all part of his plan.

Wow, never ceases to amaze me. How people are able to rationalize the factfulness of whatever random idea they want to believe in. You know, Colts, Flat Earth Theory, and same conspiracies, you know, we talked about the lizard one earlier today. It all comes from the same type of brain function, I think. You know, that line of thinking where, I think this is cool.

I've decided this is real. This makes my reality more intense or whatever. I'm getting something out of it. Believe it in this is very important to me. So I am going to disregard any facts you throw my way that don't correspond to this predetermined narrative I've subscribed to. I think people do that in a lot of ways, actually. You know, you know, oh, does that have a liberal association? Well, then I don't buy it because I've subscribed to. I think people do that in a lot of ways, actually.

Oh, does that have a liberal association? Well, then I don't buy it because I'm a conservative. That's who I am. Oh, is that some type of conservative line of thinking? Well, then I can't buy it because I'm so liberal. Is that conservative or liberal? Well, count me out, my friend, because I'm libertarian. Does that have any kind of meaning whatsoever?

Well, fuck it then. I'm an eyelist. I never believe in value of anything, ever. Like, We drop these strange lines regarding who we think we are and then become terrified to step outside of them, you know, because maybe it'll make us reconsider who we are. Maybe we'll lose ourselves. Who am I? If I don't believe in paranormal creatures, who am I? If I don't believe in Slender Man, you know, if he's not real, what else isn't real? You know, what community will I be a part of? If this one rejects me, if I reject I reject it I don't know maybe I'm overthinking it but I don't think so anyway Let's jump ahead to the spring of 2014 when slender man has always existed for almost five years now

When may of 2014 began Morgan Geyser and Anisa Weir were two seemingly normal kids from what Keisha was constant Were they the most popular kids in school? No Were they carrying their soccer and softball teams on their future scholarship winning all star athletic shoulders and backs? No. No, they were pretty average 12 year olds. You know, they had social problems,

it quirks one had at the time and undiagnosed mental illness. They had somewhat atypical home lives. Morgan's parents have had an erratic pattern of employment. Her mom and she was laid off from her job at a hospital. Her dad received government assistance for mental illness. When Matt was a teenager, he was hospitalized for a schizophrenic break.

Morgan's dark imagination can seem disconcerting. It's a tour of the Facebook pages of both girls' parents is to find oneself immersed in metal music, fairy paintings. You know, Morgan's home does seem to have a, had an especially kind of gothic type flavor. One of her dad's alleged email use names was I love evil. At least according to English newspaper, the Daily Mail, his Instagram handle was Dead

Boy 420. He posted along the family pictures, brass knuckles, tip with skulls, skull and crossbones birthday card. He sent his wife just two months before the stabbing. Matt proudly posted a drawing Morgan made of Slender Man, only Mogo draws Slender Man and Crayon on an app game when we're out to dinner. So the year before meeting Morgan,

Anise's parents had gotten divorced. She was still really feeling depressed. She was having a hard time adjusting to her new reality, maybe a little more prone than the typical kid to immerse herself in some sort of escapist fantasy. Anise's mother, Christie worked a night shift, Anise told police and would pick her up at the bus stop after school, keep her until William,

and this is father came to get her after his work. Psychologists who have testified on Nisa's behalf, say her parents were well-meaning, but had no idea what kind of trouble she was in. They were kind of just off dealing with their own shit. So you know, more going to Nisa, weren't being raised in a non-divorce household where one parent stays home

and is always available to talk about feelings and the other parent has a great job and the family never worries about money and mommy and daddy never fight but how many kids are raised in that type of home? All right, Morgan's parents are a little goth, are a little weird shit. Okay, so we're about a million other parents

in the Pacific Northwest alone, all right? And those kids haven't tried sacrificing their friend to an internet boogie man. You could find some version of both Morgan and Anissa, you know Anissa at any school in America Maybe that's what's so scary about them. They could be anywhere They could be you could be your kid could be your kid's friend and like most kids They happen to be really into something and this thing happened to be online monitors one of which was slenderman Each girl was obsessed with the pantheon of imaginary creatures their friendship was built in part on a mutual love of tales of demons, supernatural evil.

Morgan in particular had a very rich fantasy life, Voldemort, Snape, villains from the Harry Potter, where especially real to her, Anisa loved a website called Creepypasta, where she found Slender Man, but also found Zalgo, a super evil entity, and Jeff the killer, an ever smiling ghoul, said to be based on an actual child murderer. It was Jeff's realness his news accounts on creepypasta establishing his bonafides. The main hurt thing the slender man might actually exist. You know, and I get it. I get I used to be a step as a kid. I always had a crazy imagination. I remember being really into baseball cards, you know, like really into him for several years constantly organizing reorganizing them reading and rereading the stats on the back of him, anxious that a careless friend might smudge one corner,

you know, slightly bend it, you know, taking my mint card down to to near mint or even the dreaded excellent or very good status ruining his value. I was super into basketball for a while, subscribed to Sports Illustrated, covered my walls with Michael Jordan, Carl Malone poster, shot hoops every day, worked on my jump shot, worked on my left hand, laying in bed, passing a basketball towards the ceiling, over and over, working on my two handed chest pass form. If I don't actually practice more with other people, instead of just practicing by myself

like a weird antisocial loner, my life's got a pretty good basketball. I see my own kids obsessed over stuff. My daughter only cared about shopkins for about six months. My son only cared about football cards last spring. I would talk to him, he wouldn't be less than I'm like, dude, are you thinking about football cards right now? Stop for a second, he'd be like, okay, yeah.

He knew us right. Before that I was Lego, it was always something, Pokemon cards, PlayStation 4, Minecraft, something. And for Morgan and Anissa, Anissa, that obsessive, sorry, I keep messing up her name, because it's pronounced Anissa, it's spelled Anissa. If I can hate that about people's names, when parents like, well, I'm gonna spell this name this way,

I'm gonna spell it as Kim, but I wanna pronounce Michelle, okay? Cause that's fucking my choice, cause I'm a shithead. For Morgan and Anissa, yeah, it became Slender Man. You know, they were way, way into Slender Man. You know, he was their favorite monster. Anissa first encountered Slender Man. You know, they were way, way into Slender Man. You know, he was their favorite monster. Anisa first encountered Slender Man as a secondary character

in a Minecraft video. And then another kid told her about the website, you know, Creepypasta, you found him there. Creepypasta, it's a site for paranormal creatures and folklore and the fans who love it. Fans who can write about their favorite creatures and have their work reviewed by their fans. And Anisa, by her own parents' mission, I learned a lot about these girls and their families watching the fantastic

HBO documentary, be where the slender man. She spent more time online than the average 12 year old. Again, her parents are off dealing with her own shit and she's just kind of on the iPad all the time. She wasn't well liked by her classmates. Her teacher said she was, you know, kind of alone in school, bullied quite a bit, cried weekly, did have any friends there. And then she met Morgan. Morgan lived in the same apartment complex. Anisa did. They met at a bus stop at the beginning of the new school year, fall 2013.

And then back to October, Anisa introduced her new friend Morgan to slender man. And the two bonded over their obsession with dark and scary creatures on the ride to and from school. Morgan also didn't have many friends. She was a bit socially odd or off. She was a bit of a loner outside of Anisa and her mom revealed during the documentary that while Morgan was good kid,

the parents had concerns about her. Like they were worried about her ability to empathize and have compassion. She didn't seem to experience normal emotions. They used this example of watching the movie, Bambi when she was real little. In the cartoon, if you haven't seen it, Bambi's mom gets shot by a hunter.

Bambi's running away. It's very sad seeing sad music, makes people a lot of people cry, well, not Morgan, she didn't get sad, she just kind of screamed, run, Bambi, it's too late for your mom, kind of thing. And Morgan's mom was a little worried by that, worried about some possible sociopathic type tendencies.

And it turns out she does not have sociopathic tendencies. She has been tested now that she's been arrested But she does have paranoid schizophrenia More on how that particular mental illness plays into this story in a bit So Anisa starts to believe based on everything she's been reading on Krivy pasta and other sites She's been visiting that's Thunderman is totally real Which may sound crazy, but I get it but I get it. I do get it when I was 12 I read Stephen King's It, and I started to actually believe

that Pennywise was real. It was like less fiction and more of a warning from Mr. King. And it was even easier for Anise to believe in the slender man than it was for me to believe in Stephen King and Pennywise because a lot of what she's reading is being labeled as true. And because technology is so much more advanced now,

Anise is also watching YouTube videos about how this, you know, son of a bitch operates and it looks very real in some of these, some of the, you know, the CGI type of fix are very impressive. And again, when I was 12, you know, I remember a buddy and me convinced each other that some toddler was possessed by demons, crazy stuff. You can think of it at age. I mean, I, we really believe this, seriously, my, uh, my buddy lived on this extreme Christian compound. Uh, we were talking a lot about the devil and demons and hell that day. Uh, he was on a real big kick at that stuff about that stuff at the time, about how demons, you know, were living amongst us and trying to tempt us into sin and send

our souls to hell and he made a lot of convincing arguments and I was sold on it that day. And I don't remember any of the arguments now, but I do remember just thinking he made up a lot of, you know, good points. And there were some other kids at the sleepover, and one was a little two year old running around, and he, just like a terrible twos type toddler, mean little kid, but like a normal mean little kid. Well, we interpreted his terrible tunas

as him being possessed, actually possessed by demon. We were convinced to the point that we warned my friend's mom, who is not half your about it. Me and the yellowist just knock it off and go to bed. I'm sure she was not excited about the possibility of her friend, you know, hearing her son and her son's friend talk about this, this little baby is being a demon on a separate occasion on that time. I became convinced that I saw demon and my mom's bathroom and the bathroom mirror

staring back at me scared scared me enough. And I thought it was real for so long that mirrors creep me out to this day. Like when I get up to use the bathroom in whatever hotel I'm staying alone at in the middle of the night, I make a conscious effort to this day to not look in the mirror ever. And a lot of times I feel like someone is fucking watching me. When I go to the bathroom, I feel like someone's watching me from the mirror. How creepy it's terrible. I know it's not real. I know it isn't, but there's some part of me at 40 years old that doesn't, isn't quite convinced that it's not real. You know, in the mirror. How creepy is that? It's terrible. I know it's not real. I know it isn't, but there's some part of me at 40's old, the dozen isn't quite convinced that it's not real.

You know, in the middle of the night, some of the shit seems possible. Well, at 12, even easier to get super worked up. You know, unlike, you know, how I hung out with my look at that demon, baby friend, for just kind of one sleepover, we were never actually consistently best buds. Anisa is hanging out with Morgan all the time.

They're talking about the shit every day for months and months. You months. When she's not being alone at school, she's reading about weird shit, about slender man on creepypasta and related sites, and she's talking to it with Morgan. And Morgan, as I said earlier, gets a frenic, but no one knows this yet. But she is literally seeing shit that is not there. And after hearing about a slender man, nonstop from Anisa all the time, she's seen slender man. In her mind, she has seen this thing around. And because in addition to being schizophrenic, she's also 12, and easily influenced by her new friend,

she convinced herself that she's been seen slender man in her whole life. He's been hanging around the background her whole life. And these two just go back and forth, feed each other, this slender man belief, reaffirming each other, they convince each other, this monster's absolutely real. And then Anisa becomes convinced, based on some of the, you know, quote unquote true stories

out there, about slender man, that if they kill somebody, a blood sacrifice, if they make a blood sacrifice, this slender man to prove their worth, that she and Morgan could become his proxies, which I guess is a type of minion, you know, in slender man mythology, you know, like the, some people believe that he's surrounded by these proxies, these former children who kind of are like his line of first defense or people trying to attack him. It's about to weird shit. But in Easton Morgan, they told officers that according to this logic, Bella's death would earn them slender man's protection.

And they would get to go live with slender man in his mansion in the Cheguamigan, Nicolay state forest, about a four or five-hour drive from O'Kisha. And they'd be more into these mini-monsters. It's kind of like the proxies, it's kind of like a master of empire can bite other humans and make additional vampires, but those vampires are kind of telepathically linked to him and a lot of vampiric mythology. It's similar to that. So you're like you're you're a mini

slender man basically I guess. So so why Bella? Why was Bella chosen to be killed? Well basically she was a third wheel. Bella was apparently primarily Morgan's friend. She'd known Morgan for a lot longer than she'd known Anisa and she was socially higher functioning than than either one of these girls and here's with the details get a little murky because Morgan and Anisa told slightly different stories to the police about Bella. Morgan told detectives that Anisa thought Bella was a bitch. Anisa told detectives that it was Morgan's idea to have Bella be the blood sacrifice. Anisa told detectives that Morgan stabbed Bella, which Morgan admitted she did, but Morgan said she did it only so she wouldn't lose Anisa as a friend

and she did it on Anisa's request. You know, it was Anisa who insisted Bella be killed. I think Bella was chosen because she wasn't a big slender man believer like the other two girls. And because, you know, Anisa and Bella both after watching her tape, please confessions really seemed to begin to believe that a blood sacrifice had to be made. And you know, Bella was there. She was the only, you know, only other kid who played with them regularly.

They had to do this. Bella happened to be the most convenient person to sacrifice. And they'd also be going to convince themselves that if they didn't, you know, present a blood sacrifice to Sunderman, not only would they not get to be his proxies, but Sunderman would also kill them and their families. And while it doesn't excuse what they did, I do believe these girls believed all of this nonsense, especially Morgan. I think she really thought the sacrifice in Bella would protect her and her family from Slender Man and allow her to be one of Slender Man's proxies, which I do realize is still super fucked up. I think Anisa believed it as well, but since she's not mentally ill, harder to excuse her actions, harder matter what to excuse either one of their actions.

Because here's the thing I kept struggling with in this story. It's not like they believe Stabbing Bella would also save Bella. And it's not like they believe sacrificing Bella would send Slender Man to hell or some shit to keep him away from other kids. Whether they really did believe in Slender Man to the degree they claim or not, their intentions were definitely terrible. You know, yes, they talked a little bit about the fear of Slender Man killing their families, but they seemed way more excited about the possibility to be a proxy. So that means they believed that this thing is a child killer, and they wanted to be on a child killer's team and help kill children as well. They wanted to be child killing minions.

Considering a niece that was bullied and socially isolated school, it's not hard to understand what may have been her real motivation. I think it's fucking revenge. She wanted just to hit back the world. She wanted to kill a kid. Kids remain to her. She wanted to kill one of them.

It's fucking Jesus. And the extreme in this case is having a daughter does make it a little easier to understand. I don't know if you've ever spent time around a group of young girls, but thanks to my daughter, Manreau, I have, and she can get lower to the flies real quick. Schemes are hatched, trouble makers are identified and labeled as enemies, even if they're not actually

trouble makers, evil plans are concocted on a regular basis. If I can, you know, it can get out of fast, out of hand real fast. If you don't check in from time to time and figure out what's going on. I mean, the things I hear about, you know, for my wife, when she's talking to like the other moms and stuff, for these girls in school, it's like, God, there's always some fucking scheme. And while I'm not saying either girl's parents, you know, were bad parents, in fact, they actually seem, you know, very caring and very normal in the documentary I watched. They also clearly weren't checking in with their kids like they probably should have been.

These girls have been planning on killing another kid to appease a monster for about six months. And yes, they were keeping it a secret, but they were also constantly on dark message boards. Morgan was constantly drawing some real dark shit. They were truly worried about a monster killing them and killing their families. But they also loved this monster. I mean, so many weird things going on. And the parents were just oblivious to this,

I guess, the whole time. In Morgan's case, the dad was shocked. His daughter was having delusions. Even though he himself had had delusions as a kid. And if I felt like if I had had mental illness when I was a kid, I would at least check in once or twice to see if my kid was having something similar. I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't have caught on to any of this similar, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't have caught on to any of this either, to be totally honest. I haven't walked in these parents' shoes. I don't know how hectic their lives were. I know the one side of these his parents were going through just come through divorce, working, you know, strange hours. And I don't know how open to talking these two girls were with their parents. I'm lucky that way.

My kids don't ever want to shut up about what's bothering them. They're very comfortable airing out any and all concerns. And they listen to a lot of these episodes, speaking of allowing your kids to listen to dark shit. So Kyler and Ro, if you two little suckers are listening, don't keep any secrets from me. Seriously, I joke about it, about you telling me everything, but I love it.

Nothing you can't tell me, love you guys. So now, you know, a little more about Sunriman, and you know, a little bit more about the girls, you know, that they attacked a friend to try and police Sunriman. So let's get into the actual crime. I say a alleged crime, you know. I should say a alleged crime,

because the trial has begun. It begins as fall, but let's not kid ourselves. This is what happened. You can literally watch the police interrogation footage of these girls admitting exactly what they did, describing what they did in great detail. And the victim slash eyewitness is alive and testifying. They're guilty. There were three girls at the sleepover at Morgan's house on May 30, 2014. Morgan and Bella

and Morgan's new friend Anisa. Anisa and Bella knew each other. Morgan was what they had in common. Each would have said that Morgan was their closest friend. That's the social arrangement. They all lived in Wakesha, Suburban, Milwaukee, Morgan and Nese lived in sunset apartment, 72 units on the wrong side of sunset drive. And you know, the neat but drab kind of two story subsidized housing where backyards are fenced, small curtain windows, closed doors, look over a parking lot, Wakesha's downtown, not exactly popping, lots of freight trains, couple biker bars, kind of town where unless your kids play sports or isn't a lot of obvious hangout spots for them to go to. I mean, way more than where I grew up in Wiggins, but, you know, still not a lot of compared to proper cities. But there is skateland. An indoor roller rink. It's got a DJ

playing those top 40 jams. It's got disco balls lighting up the dance floor, green and purple picnic tables. It's probably got a couple dudes. And the early to mid 20s sitting in those tables staring at 12 real girls in a way that would make any respectable father want to murder them. Just guessing on the dudes part, but I've been to a few roller rinks in my day and there's always a couple creepers hanging around for whatever reason. Well, that Friday, May 30th, Morgan, Bella, Anisa, your head of there around dinner time show for by Morgan's father, Matt, they stay there to about 930. Morgan wants to leave. Go back to Morgan's, girls goof around on their laptops, probably look up a queue,

view a creepy slender man post on, you know, creepy posture, whatever. And then go back to bed. Next morning, Dicking around in Morgan's room, like kids do in a Saturday morning, playing dress up each girls acting out her own avatar, Bella dresses up as a princess and pink. Morgan dresses up as data from Star Trek, next generation. Nisa dresses up as a prostitual,

interesting character of her own creation. Again, these girls are clearly a little weird, you know, the future stabbing victim dresses up like a princess, and then the future stabbers dress up like a Star Trek character and a troll slash prostitute. I gotta say, interesting. Then he donuts and strawberries for breakfast, which actually sounds fucking amazing right now,

because I'm trying to eat less carbs. I could do some serious damage to some donuts, especially maple bars. I could Which actually sounds fucking amazing right now. I'm trying to eat less carbs. I could do some serious damage to some donuts, especially maple bars. I could fuck up some maple bars right now. Still good. Especially early in the morning, when the fresh maple syrup, that are not syrup, icing,

just kind of melts in your mouth. Anyway, after the donuts, Morgan asked her mom that they could go outside and play and the girls head out to David's park and shit starts getting dark. As the girls walk to the park, Bella walks ahead and Morgan and Anisa lag behind. And then according to Anisa's confession,

Morgan pulls up to left side of her white and black plat, Jack had to show Anisa that she'd taken a steak knife from her mom's kitchen. A knife with a black handle and a gray stripe. I thought, dear God, this is really happening. Anisa later told police, all the months of fantasizing coming down to this day. Once they got to the park,

their girls go into a public restroom. And here's where Anisa and Morgan first attacked Bella. Morgan apparently tried to restrain Bella, Bella got away, then Anisa pushed Bella's head into a wall. And then according to what they said, Morgan zoned out, started pacing around and singing. And then Anisa told Bella to go outside and wait

while she calmed Morgan down. And even though these two girls had just attacked her in a public park restroom, Bella did go outside and wait for them. Why? Because she's 12. And these girls are supposed to be her friends. Kids are so weird.

If you don't have kids, and it's been a while, since you were a kid, you might think, why the fuck, with this girl stick around, after one of her friends just tried to restrain her in a bathroom, and another friend just smacked her head into a wall. And you'll be right to wonder that while I tell you why kids are animals who live outside of the boundaries of adult logic and reason almost every day of their lives. I had a barbecue this past 4 or 2 July and some kids were playing together and one kid

about this age, about 12 years old, you know, in that kind of 9 to 12 range. And then one kid just suddenly dumped his soda on top of another kid's head, laughed at him. And then that kid walked off and cried. And then two minutes later, he used playing with the group again. And if you're wondering why didn't I do some of that situation? And you know, why didn't I help that victim in some way?

Because I didn't. Well, because the kid who got dumped on had been fucking with the other kid and every other kid at the barbecue for about an hour. You know, shooting kids and trying to shoot them in the eye with a squirt gun, cutting in front of the line on the slip and slide, just being obnoxious. He got what was coming to him.

Same barbecue, I saw another kid, maybe around 12 himself, get thrown to the ground by a grown man after trying to fight that grown man after an argument during the game of a heads up seven up. And the kid deserved to be thrown to the ground by that grown man. The kid was a goddamn savage. And then he got up and he was fine 30 seconds later. And then it was all over. Kid social interactions make sense so little of the time. And they're

so mean to each other so often that Bella's behavior makes sense to me. Things shift so quickly, like they'll hate each other one minute and then five minutes later, it's like no one is even remembered that they were just in a huge fight. Just very tumultuous. It's like, yeah, she got tackled a bit and then her head got smacked into a wall, but that was like two minutes ago. Now that was a lifetime ago. It's just different now. A Nisa said, sorry, and everything's cool.

No big whoop. Well, after sending Bella out of the bathroom, a Nisa comforts Morgan, pets her. She says later like a cat, weird. Again, I get out after spending time around girls. I mean, not totally crazy. You know, I guess sometimes you need to be petted like a cat when you're a 12 year old kid.

Nisa then has to go once you go play hide and seek in the woods. You know, the kind of the woods formed the far boundary of the park and the three girls had there. They walked to the end of Big Bend Road where the asphalt turns to gravel, dead ends in the woods. And they start playing hide and seek. Morgan counts first while Nisa and Bella hide. And Nisa now tries to tackle Bella, can't hold her down.

And then Morgan takes out the knife, but doesn't reveal it to Bella. Who according to the girls is now picking flowers. Again, because things change so quickly. Yeah, once I can get in tackled, but now you're not being tackled. So, hey, there's some flowers. Let's go pick those.

Morgan gives a knife to Nisa. Nisa hands it back saying she's too squeamish to stab Bella. I'm not going to until you tell me to, Morgan says. Nisa says that she then started to walk away and when she got about five feet, she stopped and said, Kitty now, go ballistic, go crazy. Anisa says she then heard Morgan say to Bella, don't be afraid. I'm only a little kitty cat. And then Morgan pushed Bella over and stabbed her 19 times.

She stabs her in a frenzy, cut in her arms and legs, also puncturing her stomach, liver, pancreas, barely missing a major artery near her heart, like a millimeter. Stabby stab stab stab stab is how Morgan recalled it later when she testified to detectives. It didn't feel like anything, she said during her interview with police, making a vague, loose stabbing gesture with her left hand. It was like air. Bella screamed and screamed, I hate you, I trusted you. She tried to get up and walk. Anise took her by the arm,

steered her deeper into the woods, told her to lie down, said she'd bleed slower if she did. Morgan then tried to dress Bella's wounds with a leaf and then they fled, washing up in the sinks in the Walmart bathroom, filling the water bottles there. They wanted around Wakisha for a couple hours crying sometimes,

sometimes singing, sometimes wilting in the heat Till finally they were picked up by police as they sat in the grass near and entered to the interstate Luckily while they were wandered around town Bella managed to crawl into the road where she was discovered by a passing cyclist and taken to a hospital Where she told police what had happened and that's how it all went down and Bella was treated for her substantial wounds Made a full recovery and now is biolacalyncy and a typical teenage life. And before we get into the current lives of Morgan and Anisa and their trial, kind of think about, you know, this episode.

Let's take a break from all the heaviness and let's get into some idiots at the internet. All right, let's forget for a second, they're getting caught up in Sunder in Thunder Man lore is what got a 12 year old girl stabbed. Let's remember that she's okay now. She's apparently doing great in school. And let's remember that Thunder Man lore did not get a young girl stabbed. Either two, not properly supervised, 12 year old girls letting their imagination get way out of control

is what got the poor girl stabbed. Or two girls blamed an internet monster for their own bloodlust that got another kid violently assaulted. So that said, let's take these slender man message boards for what they really are. Treasure troves of wonderfully entertaining unintentional comedy.

I don't wanna pick on actual kids for being idiots in the segment. So I tried finding what I believed to be an adult poster. And based on the technically well-written comments I'm about to share to you, I do about to share it. I do think I found one. I do think this is probably a young adult. I think we're dealing with an actual grown-up, which makes this so much better to me. For today's comments, I went to the slenderman.wikia.com website, slash message board, an online community for all things slender. And there are various awesome

threads going on, stuff like dreams of slender, a demon, father mentality theory, why does he go after kids? Slender man, myth or truth, etc. You can kick off a new Slender related topic and discuss it with others or join the discussion of a different Slender topic. I picked Observer Effect, why killing him is so hard and I struck idiot gold. There's gold in their message boards and chat rooms big thick nugget to idiot gold on August 22nd 2016 user electric fire 169 through some slender speculation out into the slenderverse I was reading in the forums theories on how to kill slender man It seems to me that the question is purely academic because even if you somehow get past his personal army of brainwashed Teleporting underage bodyguards

You have to somehow get close enough to him to actually do whatever it is you have to do to kill him, which is difficult because of both his telepathic powers and his ability to translocate himself to different points in space time. Holy fucking nerd. Wow. Talk about misdirected energy. This author appears to be very intelligent. Excellent grammar, sentence structure, knowledge is subject.

Imagine if this intellect was directed at curing some disease or climate change study or economic theory. No, it's directed on an extremely well thought to tale as you about to find out how to kill something that will never have to be killed because it's not real. I mock this despite having previously given a lot of thought as how to kill zombies when I was obsessed with reading the walking dead graphic novels.

So there is that. Anyway, back to electric Fire, 169. As someone observed previously, Thunder's actions are all consistent with current theories and physics, specifically that of an observer effect, which shows that particles can behave with identical properties to that of waves when not observed. We have already seen that he was sluggish when someone discovered him by accident. As neither was aware of the other, when he was noticed, he seemed unable to teleport, and his tentacles took time to extend.

Again, wow, why isn't this person running some Fortune 500 company, set a break down theoretical slender man homicide? Why isn't he helping me turn time suck into an empire? This person is a special kind of idiot, he is the rare genius idiot. Electric fire 169 continues. So this suggests that he either was an adormant or some other state akin to sleeping, or the subject's lack of awareness about Thunderman's presence made him essentially invisible to him. The latter theory sounds preferable, but may not take into account potential occurrences where he is hunted down people also unaware.

Therefore, reliance on this would be unwise. A third alternative would be that both of the above statements are correct, and any of those three cases the knowledge is essentially useless. As the footage showed, though his reaction was slower than otherwise, react he did. As soon as the subject noticed Slender, so Slender became active. So it would be useless to look for Slender knowing you plan to kill him. He would detect it almost instantly and you would undoubtedly become the prey rather than the hunter. So is there a way of killing Slender without being aware of it? Whether Slender Man can detect if a person is acting on subliminally planted instructions

is not currently known. Nor is it likely to become known in the foreseeable future. Using anything that uses electronics, on the other hand, is futile. Slender easily tracked down several subjects who are using video or audio recording devices, or even flashlights and torches. Not currently known. Won't be in the foreseeable future. Get the fuck out of here. I love the uber serious tone of all this. I love it so much. Knowing humor at all about breaking down potential slender man murder mythology, you know, methodology, approaching like a real detective assigned to a real case. I'm kind of in love with this idiot. Another option would be use someone capable of blocking

their thoughts from being red, red. They would essentially be invisible to him as long as they are separate. The likelihood is that slender would become aware of their presence as soon as they came into visual contact. This being the case or hypothetical assassin would have to act fast. Even with the element of surprise, slender and proxies, would be on them quickly. Again, speed is essential. A final possibility, and by far the least likely, though also the simplest, is that of equal and opposite force in accordance with the laws that energy cannot be created

or destroyed, but rather chained to an alternate state, and that any object in motion will remain in motion at the same velocity unless acted upon by an external force. Potentially something with an equal or opposite amount of power to slender would be at least able to fight him on a level playing field. Something even more powerful, on the other hand, could outright destroy him. However, the likelihood of another such with abilities even closer to slender never mind one such as that actively opposing slender is minimal at best, Breaking down the laws of physics to destroy Slender. Oh, this person must both dominate role-playing games

and be the worst person to enjoy playing them with. I bet they are so anal. Well, actually, you're supposed to roll your movement before your role for your attack. And while I understand your confusion, if you refer to page 17 of the players guide, it is clearly stated that under no circumstances, and now that replies, the priceless replies, user-implored types, as Pyro will gladly explain to you his name-made slender.

Nice, nerd-burn. That aside, those are as far as I can tell decent thoughts, wonderfully pseudo-scientific. Say, when you say someone whose mind cannot be read, how would this be possible? I mean, my mind is according to a professional mind reader, I drove into despair, illegible. That's a word, right? But how would one completely shelter his brain? Ah, according to a professional mind reader, as if that is a profession, a professional mind reader is about as legit as a professional slender man hunter

But seriously electric fire 169 how how does one shelter their mind? Electric fire 169 quick to answer. I there's the rub Someone once suggested using back of foil Bake a foil hat shielded your mind from being read this seems apocryphal at best as the foil is made of aluminum Which is a conductive metal. I can only think that someone would have to have telepathic powers of their own to be able to deflect or block another telepath. And even then, this would be difficult considering Sunderman's power, unless he can't read through

his bestest. Actually, that would also explain the whole taken by a surprise thing. Implor is an end of the whole fucking tinfoil hat argument, alright? Comedy. Well, I won't wear a tinfoil hat if one day I actually get to fight all of a sudden, if I die, I won't die looking utterly ridiculous. Huh. Electric fire 169 totally agrees with that point.

Good call. Any other suggestions as to how to hide your presence from the tall man long enough to in popular parlance make him dead. In popular parlance is electric fire is electric fire once it's not smoking from a pipe, wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat? Maybe maybe somehow typing into these comments into an old metal fucking typewriter and an addict somewhere, this pretentious motherfucker. Anyway, implored does have a suggestion. That really depends on how long that take to which electric fire once it's nine points out.

And that in turn depends on what method would be used. 2 Shea Electric Fire 169, a 2 Shea. Another user, Fobo Imperius, joins this meeting of the mines pointing out, this assumes a human appropriate method of hiding is possible. Electric Fire 169 totally rolls their virtualize at this but still plays nice. Sure there is. It just doesn't work if either one is aware of the author. You can almost hear the exasperation in Electric Fire 169's typing. Yes, obviously, Fubo, I'm curious. We've been through this. You can use human methods. Do dyslenders, human origins. Come on, add to the discussion. Please not detract from it.

Implored gently tells Electric Fire 169 to cool jets implored is all too familiar with electric fire being hot head typing Remember that's a theory not a not a concrete scientific fact Electric fire 169 to their credit Immediately calms down. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess that's back to the drawing board then I added the laughter and this civil back and forth continues for a long long time. It's surreal It's surreal. It's like two polite old men on a park bench discussing politics or current affairs, except they're talking about a monster that's not real.

During this back and forth exchange, I had a sat down. I realized that I had just read a more pleasant and civil exchange between a few potential slender man believers on a strange message board than any exchange I've read about between our president and any other world leader. If Trump could talk to other politicians and world leaders like electric fire 169, communicates with implored. Imagine how much better we'd all feel about the current polarized social climate of our nation. I noticed that the tone of the wiki site for Slender in general is really positive. Nothing but positive actually. It kind of gave me a warm fuzzy feeling

until I started reading all these. This comment has been removed captioned and realized it's not some civil utopia, it's just sanitized. Mean comments have been stricken from the records. How am I supposed to find a real idiot then? Some mindless cruelty. And then I remembered YouTube was still around

and I went there for today's final exchange. This quick exchange made me laugh so hard, out loud by myself under under an ABC YouTube video reporting details of the stabbing user ice bear simply wrote white people dot dot dot. And then user gomrad went fucking off and typed and I quote, you could focus on an actual problem like newborns getting raped in the asshole in central Africa to cure AIDS, or type comment, idiotic comments on YouTube

about imaginary racial differences. It's your choice. What the fuck? How did those become the only two choices? How? That seems a TEDx dream. You know, in life, you can focus on imaginary racial differences.

Sure, you could do that. Or you could focus on the only other thing in the world there is to think about. Central African babies getting raped specifically in their assholes, specifically to curates. And this statement was so outrageous and specific, I actually googled, are Central African babies getting annually raped to curates?

And then an FBI SWAT team immediately kicked down my door and arrested me. And actually, insanely and horrifically, I'm, don't shoot the messenger. I'm sad to report this is a real thing. It is apparently a real thing that actually happens. My God, as if there wasn't already enough evil in the world. I still strongly don't think that focusing on it should be one's only other choice than making an issue race related. But yes, a survey of the University of South Africa

in South Africa found that 18% of laborers in sub-Saharan Africa thought that having sex with the Virgin cures you of AIDS. And then it goes to include infant rape when it's talking about this belief. My holy mother of all horrors. AIDS, in fact, the men raping infants. Oh my god, those pieces of shit.

Even though I strongly doubt they even know how to surf the web, if they are truly that ignorant, they are today's true monsters. My god, slash idiots of the internet. of the internet. Okay, so back to Slender Man, Peyton Lentner, aka Bella. Thankfully, from everything I've read and watched, today is doing fine. She's a well-adjusted 15-year-old undergoes regular counseling checkups. Make sure she's okay. She's in AP classes.

Lots of friends turn into a great young woman. 15-year-old Anisa Weir was charged with first degree intentional homicide and will be tried as an adult, her trial began on September 11th. 15-year-old Morgan Geyser will begin her trial for first degree intentional homicide on October 2nd. She's also been tried as an adult. Both have been declared by a judge as competent to stand trial based on what I've watched and read. Anisa does seem competent, she seems more fearful, seems to understand what she's done. Morgan, on the other hand,

allegedly still really believes in a slender man and believes she did what she did because it had to be done. That's terrifying. Allegedly, she still believes she could kill again and would kill again if slender man needed her too. She spent at least a few months of her incarceration in a psychiatric care facility.

You know, she needs to see her trial pans out. Seems lost in her own little world. And so wandering to her cell or considered as pets. She has conversations, thin air. She sketches various people and objects that she arranges around her cell to create another worldly atmosphere of being in another place. Anise socializes, other girls in her juvenile detention center, kind of tries to help them. Morgan has completely socially isolated herself.

I've convicted both girls who have already been incarcerated for over three years at this point, as they wait trial, could spend up to 65 years in prison, basically life sends. So what do we think of all this? Who do we blame? Well, I'll tell you right away who we don't blame. We don't blame the online community for creating a slender man.

If we blame them, we better go grab Stephen King and have him publicly executed for all the scary shit he's put out there. Horror fiction is an art form, and it's not the artist responsibility to make sure everyone interprets their art correctly. Right, that's up to the person looking at it, reading about it, admiring it, fearing it, et cetera.

And if you're unsure you're kicking a handle with the herbs or bean and might not interpret it correctly, then it's your job to do your best, to make sure they don't have access to it. And look, it's a busy parent, I know that's hard, but there's always a little time to check in, really check in, what have you been reading lately, buddy? What have you been watching? What do you end do? Have a school last week?

What kids have you been playing with? You know, what are they like? What is everyone in do right now? You seem a little strong. What's going on? Come on? Let's go for a walk Let's talk and you can check their internet search history and probably should from time to time I don't think in East's and Morgan's parents are bad people But after watching the HBO documentary reading a lot of articles I just think you know they didn't make enough effort to check in. And again, a lot of parents don't. They're just happy to have their kids out of their hair. When my kids get quiet, I get nervous.

What the fuck are they up to? What are they reading? That being said, again, maybe my kids will do something crazy. You can't watch monitor them all the time. It's impossible. You can't control what their friends tell them. Which is at the end of the day, the only two people, why there's only two people to blame in this situation.

And that's Morgan and Anisa. Yes, they were only 12 when they did it, but they did do it. How many other 12 year olds have been way into slender man and not stabbed anyone? Thousands, if not millions. So the real conclusion I guess I come to is this, don't stab anybody. If you're thinking about stabbing someone, see a counselor. And never forget just because you know, you read something online, it doesn't, you know, just because you watch something, it doesn't make it true.

I try to fact check important points I find in each of these sucks against numerous other sources because I trust no one and because information seems to be wrong so much the time. And even though despite, you know, doing my best, I still get, you know, the time's up or updates pointing out that I still miss things, you know? And maybe that's the lesson.

I don't know, trust no one. Trust no one, you guys, that's the way, except me. No, don't even trust me. Fact check me. Keep fact check me. Be critical. Just in general, be critical with the information you come across in life. Yeah, and keep pointing out my mistakes.

Keep me honest. Let's have this being honest place for us to go to. And all right, enough Slender Man speculation for today. It's time for some top five takeaways. Time suck. Top five takeaways. Number one, Eric Newtson created Slender Man on June 10th, 2009, submitting some pictures on the Something Awful website in an effort to create a new monster.

He succeeded. Holy shit did he ever. Number 2, on Saturday, May 31, 2014, 12-year-old girl, Peyton Lawner, was stabbed 19 times by two other 12-year-old girls, Anisa Weir and Morgan Geyser, because they thought they'd killing her would impress Slenderman and allow them to become his proxies. To this day, Morgan believes in the made-up monster that she may spend the rest of her life in prison for. Number three, there are many Slenderman believers out there who know that Eric's Slenderman

photos are fake, know they were the first slender man photos posted online and still believe in slender man. How strong is the will to believe in some people? Jim Jones would love these people. Number four, the slender man trial begins this fall in both Anisa and Morgan could spend an additional 65 years behind bars, all because they thought sacrificing Bella would please slender man enough to allow them to live with him

and become his proxies. Number five, some new info, the Slender Man mythology continues. Silvan White, whose previous film credits include The Losers and I'll always know what you did last summer will direct a Slender Man movie set for 2018 release. Supposedly filming should be underway now. Who is going to believe this movie is real? Is Slender Man still not done with this yet?

Time suck, top five takeaways. Another suck in the suck vault, everybody, we did it. We keep doing it, we keep on sucking, keep on growing. The suck actually hit the top 10 in the iTunes comedy podcast, charts this past week, a chart that measures podcast growth, and we're growing because of you. I can't thank you enough, and we're going to keep growing. I have some big plans this community.

I'll be revealing later this fall. Hope you're on board for all of them. Hope to see some upstate suckers this weekend in Syracuse. Excuse me, sorry, my voice gets so dry. It's been the driest summer like on record. Court of Lane, Robin, record this from. You just can't drink enough water to just ever have your throat stay moist.

I'll be the Syracuse funny bone, August 17 through 20. And then I hit Southern California. I'll be the Irvine improv, August 24 through 27. It's right off I five with the Spectrum Center be there. It's great club. Both of those great clubs. And then it's off to the Omaha Nebraska funny bone August 31 through September 3rd. Tickets on sale for all those dates. Dates in Portland, Oregon, Spokane, Washington, Madison, Wisconsin, Denver, Colorado, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and more coming up before the end of the year. And tickets on still on sale for the first ever live recording of time suck. Please come to that. If you're in the LA area, I'll

beat the Hollywood improv in the lab Thursday, October 5th, show starts at 7 30 PM, doors open to 7, tickets 15 bucks, snatch them up. Don't risk it and turn away to door. Please come support this event as you can ticket link in the episode description on your podcast player and a time suck podcast.com. Please follow the suck on social media for reminders about events like this, previews of upcoming episodes and more at timesugpodcast on Instagram, Twitter, slash timesugpodcast on Facebook.

Next week, we go rockin' and rollin' on the suck. Many of you have been asking for a while about some Kurt Cobain, right? Some grunge suckin' boy in my ever-in. I was in the Northwest during the grunge explosion. I got sucked up into it, and I can't wait to suck on it now. In the light of the recent suicides of Chris Cornell of Sound Garden Temple to Dog,

Audio Slave and Solar Work Fame, and then the suicide of Lincoln Park, Frontman, Chester Bennington, it just feels like the right time to talk about not only Kurt's life, but his own suicide as well in suicide in general. And was it murder? You know, I've heard the rumors

that Courtney Love had him killed for years, did she? Well, I doubt it, but I'm gonna look into it. I mean, if she did, why wasn't she seriously investigated? You know, but I'm gonna look into it. And I'm gonna look into what made a 27 year rock star a new father seemingly on top of the world choose to check out. You know, how did some scrawny punk from Aberdeen

watched and take over rock and roll in the first place? How did he change the course of popular music forever? You know, kick butt rock, that butt rock of the late 80s and early 90s, right off of MTV and right into the state circuit, you know, state fair circuit. How, how did all that happen? We'll find out next week. And until next week, stay curious, don't believe monsters are real. Super don't believe they want you to stab somebody. And just want to say, I had a great time this past week watching Michael motherfucking McDonald seeing his ass off in Spokane, Washington, triple M and boss gags,

yacht rocking the shit out of the inland northwest. Yamaha to be there. Oh, Yamaha to be there. Oh y'all mo' here to be there Picks on Instagram now. Keep on sucking.