Sunday, August 1, 2010

Slenderman: A Love Story

He's tall and dark - 2/3 ain't bad.
But that's getting ahead of myself. I'll back up a bit.
I absolutely love the paranormal. Love it. Love any event I perceive as even vaguely odd. That’s not to say I’ll believe anything that comes my way. I’ve been dragged on enough bullshit “ghost hunts” that I’ve learned to be skeptical, too. I don’t scare myself, but I do go looking for the scary stuff – if that makes any sense. I’ll also admit to having a writer’s imagination and a tendency to read too much into occurrences.

For example: I took the arrival of two goats in my neighbor’s yard to be a Satanic sign, which I was thrilled over… until actually doing the research. Ancient pagans had many gods that were horned beings that looked like goats, rams, half humans with horns (run a quick search for Baphomet, and you’ll see the correlation). When Christianity took over, they took that symbol, which was a symbol of the god of the earth and a symbol of fertility, and said that it was ‘Satanic’.

Nothing in the Bible actually says that goats are demonic symbols. How, if my neighbor was looking after a couple ofpigs, that might be a cause to worry.

Pigs are friggin’ creepy.

Anyway, the point of that little anecdote was full disclosure – I’m not the most reliable narrator. I also wouldn’t say that I’m up to par with self-preservation instincts and the basic desire to avoid danger. Bear that in mind while reading, and take what I say with a grain of salt.

Now that that’s out of the way, back to Slendy.

For anyone who doesn’t know (I find it unlikely that you’re even here if you have no idea who he is, but still), Slenderman is a purely fictional entity (probably) invented in the forums of Something Awful. Over time, loads of blogs and stories have been written based off the Slenderman mythos. Marble Hornets(look it up on youtube) is my current favorite. Mother of crap. Watch one entry, you won’t sleep all night. Watch them all, and you won’t blink for a week.

I don’t scare easily. Marble Hornets is some freaky shit.

Anyway, Slenderman is an enigmatic figure, most often seen as a tall, extremely thin man (wonder where he got the name?) with long, strange arms, and a face that no two people see the same way. Where he comes from is as much a mystery as what he wants. All that is known is that there is evidence of him existing for far longer than one would expect. Those who see him often wind up missing—or worse—with their mutilated bodies impaled upon a tree, and their organs removed and then replaced systematically. His presence is associated with paranoia and sometimes a strange sickness, and those who see him are frequently found to be maniacally writing strange messages, and drawing mad scribbles of a dark, faceless figure.

I really like Slendy. Granted, I have no taste, but I like him. Maybe not romantically, as the title might hint. But in the way any adrenaline junkie likes a good campfire ghost story.
I have made either the worst or best decision of my life, depending on if you're so sort who enjoys adventure and astonishing revelations, or if you're the type who'd mostly be content with surviving long enough to have children.
I’m going to find him. I’m gonna track that little bitch down. 
Maybe I could leave a trail of twenty dollar bills to a beartrap… I promise, that will be the last mention of that running gag.
I'm not hunting him down because he killed everyone I love or because it's the only option now or something. I mean, if that happened to you, shit man, I'm sorry, but I'm not on the same page.
I'm not hunting him down because he's an unholy source of pure evil and I want to save humanity before it's too late. I have a malformed public duty gland and a natural deficiency of moral fiber. I'm not saving anyone in the foreseeable future.
I want to learn about him. How to avoid him, what 'summons' him, what kind of toppings he likes on his cheeseburger, you know, the works. And I'll blog about it, which is about as close as I'll ever come to helping people. Cheers.
I don’t know where to start looking, actually. I’m betting that Slenderman is kind of like Santa Claus in that he travels at unrealistic speeds and mostly likely doesn't have to take the subway to get from place to place. He could appear anywhere, so it’s not like I need to go to a very specific location or something. I’ve heard a lot of stories revolving around him being fond of the woods, so that’s where I’m going.

This is all speculative, of course. I’ll learn as I go.

A little sense of place: I live in a small, if not exactly remote town in the Rocky Mountains. The moment you go out of the residential areas, you’ll find yourself right in the middle of dead, mossy, tick-infested woods. Go a few miles past that, and you’ll find the reason why Washington is known as the Evergreen State. It’s beautiful, serene. Not the kind of haunted woods you’d expected for a Slenderman outpost. There are little streams and wildflowers everywhere, deer grazing… It’s like some sort of a Disney movie. The place where I spent my childhood. I’m not frightened by the woods, day or night.

That’s not to say it isn’t somewhat dangerous. I think, in my eighteen years, I’ve heard of four people who died in the mountains from exposure, all at different times. If memory serves me correctly, two were injured in stupid ways and unable to help themselves, while the other two were just ill-equipped. To summarize, being alert if not necessarily constantly vigilant is the way to go; confidence without stupidity, and you’ll be fine.

I’m not exploring those woods at the moment, though. My house is in one of the more deeply populated areas, with sparse forest nearby. I’ll be checking that out first, go on vacation for a couple of days, then resuming my search in the deep woods and mountains, cut off from any technology but my trusty video camera. Ought to be a blast. My first excursion will be tomorrow – I’ll be sure to post my findings.
Until next time.

1 comment:

  1. finally! its about time you did this! :)
    good luck finiding him. im always here if you need some help

    ReplyDelete