Slender Man (Urban Legend)

The Slender Man legend is one of the most popular urban legends of all time and that might be because the story plays into reality. Slender man was created on June 10, 2009 by a user on the Something Awful Internet Forum named Eric Knudsen. The specific thread it was posted on was a thread challenging its user to create paranormal images using photoshop. So that is exactly what Knudsen did but he also did more. He created two truly terrifying images that were inspired by a handful of horror genre creators and also included horrific captions from the fictional victims. A little after they were posted the images began to go viral, with his fans making fan art of the slender man and doing cosplays of the character and also making creepypastas giving the fictional character more background. Years later in 2014 the story was still thriving until a horrifying case made it surreal. On May 31, 2014 two young girls lured their friend Payton into the woods in Waukesha, Wisconsin and stabbed her 19 times and left her there thinking that she was dead. But thankfully Payton was not dead and was able to crawl out onto a nearby road where a passerby found her and alerted the authorities. After she had recovered and told the police what had really happened they brought the two young girls in for questioning and they said that they had done it in attempt to impress the slender man. After this case it left the media wondering if maybe there really was a slender man. This also influenced there to be made movies about the character. And as for the creator he said that he was “deeply saddened” by the events but that the slender man and its creepypastas had nothing to do with them doing the heinous acts.