By
Viewed
225,893
Please choose the correct answer for each question below:
Questions: 0/148
Correct: 0
Translate:
- 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.
Welcome back to the show,
ladies and gentlemen.
As always, thank you for tuning in.
That's Matt behind the cameras,
say "welcome back," Matt.
- [Matt] Hello!
- I'm Ben, we have various
things floating in the abyss
behind us, but most
importantly, you're here.
We're all, I presume,
alive and that makes this
"Stuff They Don't Want you to Know."
This is our first episode in a
while, and if you're watching
this the day it comes out,
then you're watching it
right around Halloween of 2015.
And so Matt and I decided
to take a look at something
listeners have asked us about on YouTube,
on Facebook, on Twitter,
where conspiracy stuff,
listeners have asked us about
this for years, right, years.
And we're finally going to cover it.
Today we're going to talk
about the rise of Slender Man.
Now what is Slender Man?
It's one of the most
famous legends in the age
of the internet.
And Slender Man is typically depicted as a
very, very, very, very tall,
very skinny humanoid figure
dressed in a suit, maybe with
some tendrils and darkness
coming out behind it.
And most importantly, nothing on the face.
A no face.
It stalks people, and you
see it in the background
of photographs from across
times and across the world.
This is literally a legend,
and it 's a synthesis
of a couple of different kinds of legends.
There are the very,
very old myths, you know
about let's say a ghost
encountered at a cross roads,
or following someone in the woods.
And then on the other side,
there's a more recent urband
legend, the scary guy
with the hook hand who is
trolling people in their
Impalas at Makeout Point.
And they find the hook in
the car, in the car handle.
You know what I'm talking about.
What's interesting is that
Slender Man is a combination
of these things, it's one of
the first legends of its type
to exist in a world with the internet.
One other thing that's very
different about Slender Man
is that we can trace the
evolution of this legend
all the way back to its source.
In 2009 on the "Something Awful" forums
with someone identifying
themselves as "Victor Surge,"
in response to a "Photoshop
something creepy" challenge,
put out these different images
with a Photoshop difference
where there was a
person, very tall person,
suit, no face, just in the pictures.
So Slender Man was created
by this guy caling himself
Victor Surge, and we can
put Victor Surge's real name
on the screen, I think
enough time has gone by.
An from that origin point,
specifically June 8th, 2009,
the story of Slender Man
grew and grew and grew.
It was an open source legend.
Which means that people
would throw other things in
and some of the claims
might contradict themselves,
but one thing is for sure,
there were more and more claims,
they aggregated as time went on.
For a lot of people, this
would make Slender Man seem
less important, more like
just an interesting part of
folk lore or another viral
concept on the internet,
but there are some precedents
that are a little bit strange
when we look at this.
Because Slender Man is of
course, not the first faceless
humanoid monster in the human experience.
Not by a long shot, we're
talking about stuff that dates
back to ancient civilizations,
if we're talking about people
who were allegedly abducting
children, then through the
past few thousand years of
human civilization, we're full
of stories to explain
those kinds of occurrences.
You might remember the Goethe poem
wherein something called the Erl-King,
E-R-L K-I-N-G
is after a little boy, the
little boy is the only one
who can see it, and no
spoilers if you haven't read it
but it's a very similar monster.
And stories of similar
creatures exist in the Caribbean
for instance, the
pre-Columbian people known as
the Taino had a monster called the Op'a.
And in Hawaii on the other
side of the continent,
Well, if we're being honest,
way out in the Pacific Ocean,
there's a story with a
thing called a "Mujina"
and you can actually go and
read eyewitness anecdotal
sightings of these faceless
creatures from as recently
as the late 50's, early 60's.
Last, finally, and most
importantly, it doesn't matter
that Slender Man is a
fictional creation when we look
at the real world
consequences of this idea.
On May 31st, 2014 two 12 year old girls,
Morgan Geyser and Anissa
Weier stabbed a mutual friend
19 times in an attempt to murder her,
a sacrifice of sorts, to Slender
Man, in the hopes that they
would become its proxies on Earth.
Also in 2014, an unidentified
woman in Hamilton
County, Ohio accused her
daughter of attempted murder.
The daughter was wearing
a white mask, a hood,
and attempted to stab
her mother in an attack
that the mother believes
is tied into belief in the
Slender Man mythos.
So depsite the fact that
Slender Man has a known
origin point, a known creation
point, unlike many other
legends, what we see is that it does have
real world consequences.
And thanks so much to
everyone who's written to us
and asked about this, because
what we are seeing is the
genesis of a legend.
One of the most successful,
one of the most well-known
legends in the digital age.
How far will it go?
What else will happen?
Those are the questions that
are gonna be up to future
historians, and maybe if we
live long enough, you and I.
But in the meantime, thank
you so much for watching.
We're getting out of here,
we're working on a very special
episode for you this Halloween.
And as you know, Matt and
Noel and I always try to do
something a little bit different.
So check out our audio
podcast, we hope that you will
find it interesting.
In the meantime, we'd like
to hear your feedback.
What do you think about Slender Man?
Are there any other
internet urband legends
that we should look into?
Let us know in the comments
below, and if you'd like
to recommend a upcoming topic for us,
or feedback on something
we've already done,
or see the stories we
look at that don't always
make it to the air, for
one reason or another,
follow us on Facebook
and Twitter where we are
"Conspiracy Stuff."
If you want to write to
us directly, we'd love
to hear from you.
Our email address is
"[email protected]."
Good?
- [Matt] Yeah, it's great.
Do you mind if we get some coffee?
Then you can come back in?
- Yeah, I need some.
- [Matt] I'm just gonna leave
this like it is for now.
(static)
(crashing)
(static)
Related Songs