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[originalmythos]

...we came in?

The Slender Man mythos. Ever since its inception in 2009, this series of stories, videos, and blogs has been the perfect example of how a bunch of amateur writers on the internet can combine their collective insanity to produce a chilling piece of modern folklore much scarier than most recent popular horror. (This would have been proven inevitably, of course.) Perhaps the most relevant and well-known adaptation is the web video production Marble Hornets, which was influential as the first Slender Man series. However, it was not the Slender Man's origin.

The Slender Man first came from a Something Awful thread called "Create Paranormal Images". Ever since user Victor Surge posted images to the third page, everyone ran with creating all sorts of different images and stories surrounding the Slender Man until the forty sixth page. And as I found, they still hold up to this day despite how much the common idea of the Slender Man has changed. The only problem...

...most of the thread's pictures went missing. As tempting as it is to say they vanished out of conspiracy, the truth is that image host sites failed. In order to alleviate confusion towards the missing images and provide a convenient re-host, I have created this blog.

I took a few weeks to track down as many images as I could (mostly through wild goose chase Google searches) to re-apply to their corresponding stories. Where the missing images have no context I replace them with ones I can only assume came from the original thread based on their style... and I cannot completely re-create the original order because of it.

Still, I managed include almost all of it with several varieties of posts: the ontological, defining ones, the criminally underrated ones, some thoughtful meta-commentary that still manages to be relevant... even the lowest-quality ones and ones with ideas that would never be considered today, because all of it is a nutty experiment that paid off in the end.

So here, posted in backwards order so you can read it forwards from the front page, is the original Slender Man mythos.

Mythos by Tag

Lone Images

Culture and History

Childhood and Adult Fears

Violent Incidents

Mental Illness

Confidential Information

Witness Reports

Stirling City

Optic Nerve

Metafiction

6/20/15 EDIT: The last tags at the end of post display their original authors by username.

[originalmythos]

"we didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..." 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.

One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as "The Slender Man". Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.

[originalmythos]

5/24/95** 1994: Wilks Estate. One subject reported nothing out of the ordinary before taking photograph. Lower stairs area was said to be very dark. Subject states that after the camera flash she heard a sound like a watermelon being *unable to understand subject*.  5/25/93** Subject unable to recall events after manor power failure. Unable to question other two identified subjects. Camera and film acquired from Gloria Cready, current resident of Woodview Mental Hospital and Psychological Rehabilitation Clinic. Film mostly uncontaminated despite mass of 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 thirty-three patients and staff of Woodview Mental Hospital and Psychological Rehabilitation Clinic south wing.  6/18/93** Further inquiry to cease immediately. (see report No.3339-2)

[originalmythos]

[originalmythos]

I’ve been seriously debating sharing these, but after Victor Surge’s posts I feel I have to.

This first photo was given to me by my uncle, a police officer who was part of the investigation trying to find nine missing teens who had gone camping in the local mountains six years ago. It was developed from a disposable camera found at the campsite. None of the missing teens have ever been found, and all their possessions were still at the campsite. He was pretty drunk and shaken up when he gave me this, and made me promise I’d never show anyone else.

The second photo is of an elementary school fire in 1978. No official cause was ever found. Seven students and a teacher became trapped and died before firefighters could respond. Many of the students and teachers from the time have a history of anxiety disorders and panic attacks, even those who weren’t at the school on that day. At least one has since committed suicide, and several others legally changed their names once they reached adulthood and have disappeared.

[originalmythos]

**Alert**Alert**Deployment Request**

ANTI-S WALKER UNIT to deploy to —Wichita—Kansas—

[originalmythos]

Steinmen Woods

Both subjects were hunting in the Steinmen woods four hours before sundown. Surviving subject states that while hunting both men grew uneasy as fog levels rapidly increased. A constant murmuring sound accompanied by a low hum eventually became apparent to the two men an hour after the fog increased. An object falling out of tree stuck one of the men in the left shoulder causing him to discharge his weapon. Object said to be the body of a man of unknown age. It was very precisely dissected, with major internal organs still contained within the rib cage in what looked to be clear bags. Surviving subject placed organ bag within backpack. Attack followed several minutes later after a "low children's laugh, like a giggle". Surviving subject ran until he reached his vehicle. Subject then drove to assumed safety.

Backpack destroyed. Surviving subject is classified as a B7 witness. B7 witness to be placed in quarantine "Blind Box" until resolution. 

2007:Investigation team discovered twenty-two bodies of both genders and various ages impaled on broken tree branches in a radiating circle pattern with chest mutilation as often noted with Slender Man. Upon confirmation, lead investigator ********* called for an immediate evacuation of investigation team at 1700 hours. Bodies first discovered at 1100 hours. Deadline for safe evacuation of team with only viewed physical evidence of Slender Man approximately 1730. Lost contact of team at 1725. Safety procedures fell well within established protocols. Reason for abnormality is unknown. Second team recovered camera equipment one week later. Slender Man safety procedures require this incident's physical photographic evidence to be disposed of by no later than 10/20. I honestly don't get what half this shit means. I'm done with this Slender Man stuff. It's starting to make me uneasy. It's like reading the GBS ghost story threads before I go to bed. Why do I have to look at this stuff while it's super late?  Luckily, my friend is coming over.

[originalmythos]

My friend is herejus camein barely made up staairs got pictur locked door but it s right there inthe hall dont look at its pictures it dosent want to be known about dont loo

[originalmythos]

Slender Man would make a pretty nice horror novel in the lines of "House of Leaves". Essentially, make the novel a collection of witness statements, newspaper clippings, pictures, drawings, articles discussing evidence for an against the slender man and, to tie it all neatly together, a few stories of people who want to track the slender man, unravel the mystery, And the kicker would be the last 20 or so pages would be missing, with only scraps of paper left, arranged as logically as possible, just excerpts, words, rips, ink stains, etc.

[originalmythos]

When you posted the part about the chest injuries it reminded me of the Dyatlov Pass incident that was posted in the Unsolved Mysteries thread:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_pass_accident

Wikipedia posted:

and both Dubunina and Zolotarev had major chest fractures. The force required to cause such damage would have been extremely high, with one expert comparing it to the force of a car crash.Notably, the bodies had no external wounds, as if they were crippled by a high level of pressure. One woman was found to be missing her tongue.[1]

After looking a little further, I found this picture - taken a day before the incident.

[originalmythos]

The Rake

During the summer of 2003, events in the northeastern United States involving a strange, humanlike creature sparked brief local media interest before an apparent blackout was enacted. Little or no information was left intact, as most online and written accounts of the creature were mysteriously destroyed. Primarily focused in rural New York state, self proclaimed witnesses told stories of thier enounters with a creature of unkown origin. Emotions ranged from extremely traumatic levels of fright and discomfort, to an almost childlike sense of playfulness and curiosity. While their published versions are no longer on record, the memories remained powerful. Several of the involved parties began looking for answers that year. In early 2006, the collaboration had accumulated nearly two dozen documents dating between the 12th century and present day, spanning 4 continents. In almost all cases, the stories were identical. I've been in contact with a member of this group and was able to get some exceprts from their upcoming book. A Suicide Note: 1964 As I prepare to take my life, I feel it necessary to assuage any guilt or pain I have introduced through this act. It is not the fault of anyone other than him. For once I awoke and felt his presence. And once I awoke and saw his form. Once again I awoke and heard his voice, and looked into his eyes. I cannot sleep without fear of what I might next awake to experience. I cannot ever wake. Goodbye. Found in the same wooden box were two empty envelopes addressed to William and Rose, and one loose personal letter with no envelope. Dearest Linnie, I have prayed for you. He spoke your name. A Journal Entry (translated from Spanish): 1880 I have experience the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I have experienced the greatest terror. I see his eyes when I close mine. They are hollow. Black. They saw me and pierced me. His wet hand. I will not sleep. His voice (unintelligible text). A Mariner's Log: 1691 He came to me in my sleep. From the foot of my bed I felt a sensation. He took everything. We must return to England. We shall not return here again at the request of the Rake. From a Witness: 2006 Three years ago, I had just returned from a trip from Niagara Falls with my family for the 4th of July. We were all very exhausted after a long day of driving, so my husband and I put the kids right to bed and called it a night. At about 4am, I woke up thinking my husband had gotten up to use the restroom. I used the moment to steal back the sheets, only to wake him in the process. I appologized and told him I though he got out of bed. When he turned to face me, he gasped and pulled his feet up from the end of the bed so quickly his knee almost knocked me out of the bed. He then grabbed me and said nothing. After adjusting to the dark for a half second, I was able to see what caused the strange reaction. At the foot of the bed, sitting and facing away from us, there was what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. It's body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something. For some reason, I was not instantly frightened by it, but more concerned as to its condition. At this point I was somewhat under the assumption that we were supposed to help him. My husband was peering over his arm and knee, tucked into the fetal position, occasionally glancing at me before returning to the creature. In a flurry of motion, the creature scrambled around the side of the bed, and then crawled quickly in a flailing sort of motion right along the bed until it was less than a foot from my husband's face. The creature was completely silent for about 30 seconds (or probably closer to 5, it just seemed like a while) just looking at my husband. The creature then placed its hand on his knee and ran into the hallway, leading to the kids' rooms. I screamed and ran for the lightswitch, planning to stop him before he hurt my children. When I got to the hallway, the light from the bedroom was enough to see it crouching and hunched over about 20 feet away. He turned around and looked directly at me, covered in blood. I flipped the switch on the wall and saw my daughter Clara. The creature ran down the stairs while my husband and I rushed to help our daughter. She was very badly injured and spoke only once more in her short life. She said "he is the Rake". My husband drove his car into a lake that night, while rushing our daughter to the hospital. He did not survive. Being a small town, news got around pretty quickly. The police were helpful at first, and the local newspaper took a lot of interest as well. However, the story was never published and the local television news never followed up either. For several months, my son Justin and I stayed in a hotel near my parent's house. After we decided to return home, I began looking for answers myself. I eventually located a man in the next town over who had a similar story. We got in contact and began talking about our experiences. He knew of two other people in New York who had seen the creature we now referred to as the Rake. It took the four of us about two solid years of hunting on the internet and writing letters to come up with a small collection of what we believe to be accounts of the Rake. None of them gave any details, history or follow up. One journal had an entry involving the creature in its first 3 pages, and never mentioned it again. A ship's log explained nothing of the encounter, saying only that they were told to leave by the Rake. That was the last entry in the log. There were, however, many instances where the creature's visit was one of a series of visits with the same person. Multiple people also mentioned being spoken to, my daughter included. This led us to wonder if the Rake had visited any of us before our last encounter. I set up a digital recorder near my bed and left it running all night, every night, for two weeks. I would tediously scan through the sounds of me rolling around in my bed each day when I woke up. By the end of the second week, I was quite used to the occasional sound of sleep while blurring through the recording at 8 times the normal speed. (This still took almost an hour every day) On the first day of the third week, I thought I heard something different. What I found was a shrill voice. It was the Rake. I can't listen to it long enough to even begin to transcribe it. I haven't let anyone listen to it yet. All I know is that I've heard it before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was sitting in front of my husband. I don't remember hearing anything at the time, but for some reason, the voice on the recorder immediately brings me back to that moment. The thoughts that must have gone through my daughter's head make me very upset. I have not seen the Rake since he ruined my life, but I know that he has been in my room while I slept. I know and fear that one night I'll wake up to see him staring at me.

[originalmythos]

I read this thread while in bed last night, and if you wanted to go off on a tangent about slender man haunting the dreams of those who research him, you'll be telling the truth. Not quite a nightmare as I didn't feel the usual fear that goes along with them, but very odd dreams that started with running from an apparition of him in the distance and ended with him catching up to me and ripping my chest open with his tentacles as I tried to fight back, at which point I woke up. I'd love to see the storyline extended and it would make a kickass movie or book if you promised it would end with the researcher being killed by Slender Man instead of a happy ending.

[originalmythos]

[originalmythos]

Oh kay... That is creepy. Where did the slender man come from? Did his idea spontaneously come to us on SAF?

I've been following the signs for quite some time. There are woodcuts dated back to the 16th century in Germany featuring a tall, disfigured man with only white spheres where his eyes should be. They called him "Der Großmann"[Sic], the tall man. He was a fairy who lived in the Black Forest. Bad children who crept into the woods at night would be chased by the slender man, and he wouldn't leave them alone until he caught them, or the child told the parents what he or she had done. Even then, there is this chilling account from an old journal, dating around 1702: (Translated from German, some words may be innaccurate) "My child, my Lars...He is gone. Taken, from his bed. The only thing that we found was a scrap of black clothing. It feels like cotton, but it is softer...thicker. Lars came into my bedroom yesterday, screaming at the top of his lungs that "The angel is outside!", I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me some nonsense fairy story about Der Großmann. He said he went into the groves by our village and found one of my cows dead, hanging from a tree. I thought nothing of it at first...But now, he is gone. We must find Lars, and my family must leave before we are killed. I am sorry my son...I should have listened. May God forgive me." There is more evidence of the slender man, but this is one of the oldest translatable accounts. Anyone else in the thread found anything like this?

[originalmythos]

I know of an old Romanian fairy tale, highly unpopular even in its earliest iterations. It might be based on a particular event, or perhaps it is an extrapolation from existing Slender Man stories. The translation I'm most familiar with goes a bit like this: * * * Once upon a time there were twin girls, Stela and Sorina. They were brave little girls, and had no fear of the dark, nor of spiders and other crawling things. Where other young ladies and even young boys would cower, Stela and Sorina would walk with their heads held high. They were good girls, obedient to their mother and father and to the word of God. They were the best children a mother could ask for, and this was their undoing. One day, Stela and Sorina were out with their mother gathering berries from the forest. Their mother bid them stay close to her, and they listened, as they were good children. The day was bright and clear, and even as they walked closer to the center of the forest the light barely dimmed. It was nearly bright as noon when they found the tall man. The tall man stood in a clearing, dressed as a nobleman, all in black. Shadows lay over him, dark as a cloudy midnight. He had many arms, all long and boneless as snakes, all sharp as swords, and they writhed like worms on nails. He did not speak, but made his intentions known. Their mother tried not to listen, but she could no more disobey the tall man than she could forget how to breathe. She walked into the clearing, her daughters shortly behind her. "Stela," she said, "take my knife, and cut a circle on the ground big enough to lie in." Stela, who was not afraid of the tall man, nor afraid of the quiver in her mother's voice, obeyed what her mother said. "Sorina," the mother said, "take the berries and spread them in the circle, and crush them underfoot until the juice stains the earth." Though Sorina wondered why her mother asked her to do such a thing, she obeyed, because she was a good girl. "Stela," the mother said, "lie in the circle." Stela, though she worried she might stain her clothes, did as her mother asked. "Sorina," the mother said, and bid Sorina cut her sister open with the knife. Sorina could not; would not. "Please," her mother said. "If you don't, it will be worse. So much worse." But Sorina could not, and she threw the knife away and ran home, crying. She hid under her bed, afraid for the first time in her life. She waited until her father came home from the fields, and told him of the terrible thing she had found in the woods. Her father comforted her, and told her she would be safe. He went to the woods, his axe in hand, and as he commanded, she stayed by the hearth, waiting for his return. After some time she fell asleep. When she woke, it was to the sound of knocking on her door at the darkest hour of the night. "Who is there?" she said. "It is your father," the knocker said. "I don't believe you!" said Sorina. "It is your sister," the knocker said. "It cannot be!" said Sorina. "I am your mother," said the knocker, "and I told you it would be worse." And the door, locked tight before her father left, fell open as if it had been left ajar. And her mother stepped in, her sister's head clutched in one bloody hand, her father's in the other. "Why?" wept Sorina. "Because," said her mother, "there is no reward for goodness; there is no respite for faith; there is nothing but cold steel teeth and scourging fire for all of us. And it's coming for you now." And the tall man slid from the fire, and clenched Sorina in his burning embrace. And that was the end of her.

[originalmythos]

I LOVE this type of thing. Something just feels satisfying about causing mass hysteria. I think we could roll with this slender man thing. Maybe if we make enough images and maybe if some talents can make fake videos, it could grow to ARG proportions (minus the advertising). Consider me on board, I can do some sound design things.

[originalmythos]

The Slender Man. He exists because you thought of him. Now try and not think of him.