Critical Introduction

Slender Man was “born” on June 10, 2009 in the forums of the website SomethingAwful.com for a photoshop contest. Victor Surge (the handle for Eric Knudsen) submitted the two following photo illustrations accompanied by cryptic and unsettling captions. Something about the images spoke to forum visitors, and they spread to further photo illustrations, creepypasta (internet fan fiction expressly created to scare or unsettle the reader), a YouTube video series, and video games. In 2018, a big-budget film about him was released as well.

A number of influences have been cited by Knudsen and identified by others, but Slender Man's raison d’être is his inscrutability. In the earliest versions of the canon, he is rarely the centre of the image or clearly seen, either has no facial features or they are obscured, always wears a dark suit, appears around children, never speaks, has tentacled appendages, and is associated with disaster. The audience knows his intentions are not good, but cannot understand just what those intentions are.

Like many of the selections in this volume, Slender Man has enjoyed a fan club of sorts—especially in the creepypasta, gaming, and cosplay (costume play) communities. Unlike most of the selections, however, Slender Man has been at least partially responsible for real-world violence. In 2014, two pre-teen girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin took a classmate into the woods and stabbed her multiple times. The victim survived, and when the two suspects were later questioned, they informed the police that they wanted to commit a murder in order to prove their loyalty to and become followers of Slender Man.

Viewing Questions

As you view the two images reproduced on the following page, it might be interesting to speculate about what caused Slender Man to “catch” and go viral when there are thousands of creepypasta creations on the internet. What elements (visible in the images or listed in the above introduction) seem to contribute to this monster's popularity?

Just a brief glance at each image might cause the viewer to miss Slender Man altogether. He is certainly not the ostensible subject of the image, and the eye must seek him out instead of being drawn to him. Look at the use of space and shading in these images, and ask yourself how they contribute (or do not) to the monstrousness of Slender Man.