Nick Redfern - The Slenderman Mysteries: An Internet Urban Legend Comes to Life

This edition first published in 2017 by New Page Books,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

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Copyright 2017 by Nick Redfern

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-63265-112-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available upon request

Cover design by Howard Grossman/12E Design
Forest image by photocosma/depositphotos
Interior by Gina Schenck
Typeset in Minion Pro and Nollanaama

Printed in Canada
MAR

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.

Robert Browning,

The Pied Piper of Hamelin: A Child's Story, 1842

I would like to give my sincere thanks to all of the following people, without whom this book would not exist: my good friend and tireless literary agent, Lisa Hagan, for all of her hard and dedicated work; everyone at Career Press, including Michael Pye, Laurie Kelly-Pye, Jeff Piasky, Lauren Manoy, Gina Schenck, and Adam Schwartz; Allison Jornlin, for sharing with me her insights into aspects of the Slenderman phenomenon; Tea Krulos, for a thought-provoking and revealing interview; Robin Swope, who went beyond the call of duty in terms of giving me his views on the Slenderman; Ian Vincent, for nailing the connections between the Slenderman and the field of Chaos Magic; Jenny and Loren Coleman, whose work in the field of the Slenderman has proved to be invaluable; David Weatherly, for kindly sharing with me several cases from his files; Mike Huberty, who demonstrated to me that Waukesha, Wisconsin, is a place filled with paranormal activity; close friend Kimberly Rackley, who generously agreed to be interviewed on the issue of her personal encounters; Olav Phliips, of Paranoia Magazine, for an eye-opening insight into the Slenderman phenomenon; and, finally, my good mate Simon Wyatt for his phenomenal artwork of the Internet's most infamous monster.

CHAPTER 1
THE BEST, NEW MYTHOLOGICAL CREATURE

CHAPTER 2
IT TENDS TO FREE ITSELF FROM ITS MAKERS' CONTROL

CHAPTER 3
MAGIC AND FICTION WERE STARTING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION

CHAPTER 4
IS ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM BUT A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM?

CHAPTER 5
FEAR OF THE GAS MAN

CHAPTER 6
CONSUMED BY THE SLENDERMAN

CHAPTER 7
WAUKESHA REMINDS ME OF A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

CHAPTER 8
THERE WILL BE NO SAFETY IN THIS HOUSE

CHAPTER 9
DEMON-POSSESSED

CHAPTER 10
EVIL LIES IN WAIT FOR AN EXCUSE TO BLOOM

CHAPTER 11
SLENDERMAN IS A PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF OUR FEAR OF DEATH

CHAPTER 12
AND IN DID COME THE STRANGEST FIGURE

CHAPTER 13
A SLIM MAN IN A DARK SUIT

CHAPTER 14
I KNEW IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO KILL HER

CHAPTER 15
A TALL, DARK, AND TERRIFYING ENTITY

CHAPTER 16
HIS ARMS ARE IMPOSSIBLY LONG

CHAPTER 17
THERE'S NO STRUCTURE TO THE FACE

I magine the scene: It's the dead of night and you are fast asleep. Suddenly, things change radically and you find yourself far from asleep; you are now wide awake but unable to move. You are completely paralyzed. You try to cry out but it's no use. Your heart pounds and your head spins chaotically. Worse still, you see hunched over in the shadows of the bedroom an eight-to-nine-foot-tall skinny and emaciated creature. It is dressed in an old-style black suit, and has a pale face that lacks eyes, a nose, ears, and a mouth. As for its arms and legs, they are almost like those of a spider: long, thin, and spindly. Rubbery, octopus-like tentacles protrude from its torso; they wave and flicker ominously in your direction. To your horror, the night-fiend slowly moves toward you and leans over. Its foul breath makes you wretch. It whispers that you are about to die or that it is coming to take your soul. Maybe you will be its eternal slave in its forested, ancient abode. Now in a state of complete terror, you finally manage to cry out and wake up in a cold sweat. The terrible thing is suddenly gone. You have just had a trauma- and fear-filled encounter with the Slenderman. But, mark my word, he will be back. He always comes back eventually.

The Slenderman has curious origins. He began life purely as an Internet creation, specifically the work of a man named Eric Knudsen. In June 2009, Knudsen, via the pseudonym of Victor Surge, uploaded a couple of doctored photos of the Slenderman to the Something Awful website forum. In no time at all, others began writing and posting their very own tales of the Slenderman. Short stories, blogs, novels, online games, chat-rooms, and more soon followed. Then, something menacing and sinister happened: People all across the world began to see the Slenderman. Not just on the Internet, not in novels or in the pages of comic-books, but in their homes. In their bedrooms. In mysterious woods. In dreams that rapidly escalated into full-blown nightmares.

The Slenderman had come to life.

Since 2009, countless numbers of people claim to have seen, and been attacked, plagued, and terrified by this skeletal, pale giant in black. But how could such a thing have happened? Is the creature a Tulpa, a Buddhist word that means thought-form? When enough people believe in something, the theory goes, that same something can stride out of our darkest imaginations and right into the heart of our own reality. By accepting without question the idea that the Slenderman is more than just a piece of Internet fiction are we also giving him some degree of life? Maybe even independent life? If so, can we extinguish that life? If not, does that mean the Slenderman is here to stay?

Another theory suggests that the Internet is slowly becoming self-aware. Could the online world into which all of us are hooked be the culprit? In September 2012, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article titled A self-aware Internet not so far-fetched and asked, Could the internet wake up? And if so, what sorts of thoughts would it have? Would it be friend or foe? They are important and integral questions, and particularly so when it comes to the matters of the Slenderman and what it really is (Falk, 2012).

Is the Internet turning against usin a situation not unlike the vast Skynet system in the Terminator moviesand attacking us with digital equivalents of our very own online nightmares? Could those same digital equivalents take a running leap out of the Internet and into our very homes? And, particularly so, the Slenderman?

There is no doubt that the saga of the Slenderman has reached extremely disturbing proportions both on the Net and in our world. In 2014, Newsweek reported, In late May, in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls allegedly lured a friend into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. The terrible attack was undertaken all in the name ofyes, you guessed itthe Slenderman. It was an affair that shocked the people of Waukesha to their very core and gave the Slenderman the widespread infamy he was surely craving (Jones, 2014).

In a January 24, 2015 article that appeared in the U.K.-based Birmingham Mail newspaper (titled Spooky Slender Men spotted in Cannock), the editor Mike Lockley wrote that an investigation