Monster #2—Slender Man

See him? No? Look closer... he's watching...

Back in the summer of 2009, something awesome happened over at Something Awful: the Slender Man! The challenge was to create creepy pictures and then pass them off as "real" photographs and images of paranormal events or creatures caught on film. There were a lot of really bad photos as a result... but one set of photos (see the image to the right for one of them) and the accompanying notes about a sinister creature who stalked children took off with a life of its own.

Today, the Slender Man is all over the internet. Its creator succeeded beyond the expectations of the original thread, and variants of the Slender Man mythology have been popping up all over the place. Pictures and videos purporting to show the Slender Man, or something very similar, are something of a horrifying version of "Where's Waldo?"

Only instead of looking for a silly dude in a striped shirt, you're looking for a looming, slender figure in what looks like a black undertaker's suit, with what might just be tentacles for arms and a head with no face at all.

My personal favorite of the Slender Man inspired monsters is the "Marble Hornets Project" over on You Tube... the third season of this serialized found-footage story just started up. Watch from the start, though... it really benefits from building on itself!

Recommended Reading

• Slender Man, over on Know Your Meme
• The original thread that started it all, over at Something Awful (Slender Man first shows up on page 3 of the thread—and watch out, there's some coarse language there if you look closely!)

Recommended Viewing

• Marble Hornets (again... start at entry #0!)