Geyser and Weier discussed the crime for months before committing it. They planned to then walk together into the wilds of Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, where they believed the Slender Man lived in a mansion and would be waiting to welcome them. The two hatched a plan to become “proxies,” or servants, of the Slender Man by proving themselves worthy through a brutal act: murdering Geyser’s best friend, Leutner. Weier reveals that she became obsessed with the Slender Man legend, and that when she told Geyser about it, Geyser was convinced she had been seeing the Slender Man all her life. Weier and Geyser spent weeks planning their crimeīeware the Slenderman uses extensive footage of the girls’ interrogation sessions with police, taped after their arrests, in which they describe their crime and the events leading up to it freely and in detail. almost exclusively” - and it was there that Anissa Weier first learned about the Slender Man. The Creepypasta Wiki, for example, claims that he “preys on children. Thus, the myth of Slender Man was born, featuring both a strange connection to childhood and a weird mix of comfort and terror. From there, the character spread to several online forums dedicated to urban legends and horror writing - always appearing as an eerie, terrifying figure who often came for, or was only seen by, children who disappeared with him into the woods. On the Something Awful thread, others began expanding the concept of Slender Man, using him in their own stories and making more artwork. These two little snippets of text seemed to immediately inspire many of the people who read them. "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." Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.īeneath the other photo, he included a “quote” from the fictional photographer: Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as "The Slender Man". One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. The caption Knudsen used beneath one of the photos presented the images as if they had surfaced after a mysterious fire corresponding to the disappearance of several children: One of Knudsen’s two original “photos” of Slender Man, seen in the background (left) beside a group of children. In the second, the figure stands in the background of a playground with a group of little girls playing in his shadow. In the first, the figure seems to be corralling the kids toward something ominous it is part Pied Piper, part Blair Witch. Knudsen, who was participating in a paranormal Photoshop contest on the forum, posted two now-famous images of a very tall, eerily thin figure with tentacled arms looming over groups of children. He was created in 2009 on the web forum Something Awful by a user known as Victor Surge, real name Eric Knudsen. Slender Man - often written Slenderman, or even Slendy, as he is known to his masses of fans - is a fictional character. In so doing, she raises a number of unexpectedly timely questions about the role of the internet in shaping systems of belief.ģ.5 The story of Slender Man is a famous internet urban legend Through a broad lens encompassing everything from mental illness to internet culture and the impact it can have on kids steeped in an online fantasy world, director Irene Taylor Brodsky explores the two people and the myth behind the case. Their crime is now the subject of a new HBO documentary, Beware the Slenderman, that goes deeper than a typical true crime doc in fascinating ways. What happened next became international news and launched a piece of internet lore into real-world conversation: Geyser and Weier stabbed Leutner 19 times, then left her to die, in hopes that her death would make them worthy of becoming servants to a dark urban legend known as the Slender Man. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier were each 12 years old in the summer of 2014, when they lured their friend, fellow sixth-grader Payton “Bella” Leutner, into the woods near their Waukesha, Wisconsin, suburb.