On June 9, 2009 an internet forum dedicated to photoshopping creepy things into childhood pictures started an internet sensation. The forum, SomethingAwful, created The Slenderman, an eight foot tall humanoid creature with long hanging arms and no face.
It is often seen in a two-piece suit and it can have tendrils expanding from its back, depending on who created the picture.
The Slender Man was a monster that had been placed into black and white pictures with children, making it seem like a child snatching creep. The internet just about exploded with excitement with the new found boogeyman.
With the overzealous internet fanatics, it is no shock that no later than in eleven days the Slender Man had taken a prominent role on YouTube. June 20 birthed one of the most popular Slender Man series of all time.
Marble Hornets featured two college film students who were making a project for their film class. The first video explains that Jay, one of the students and a friend of the director of the project, was sifting through footage and discovered something odd.
In the footage, the audience is shown distorted camera shots, white noise and microphone issues, with the occasional heart attack inducing Slender Man sighting. Marble Hornets is in its third and final season.
With the ever popular video series on the rise, many people began to be just as creative as the makers of Marble Hornets.
Although the first YouTube Slender Man sensation has its large fan base, these next three series are by far, more superior.
In March of 2010, a group of three college-aged guys created small do-it-yourself fitness videos. The three worked hilariously as they cracked jokes and gave some tips to live a “Healthy lifestyle on a budget.”
In the first five videos, I remember laughing so hard because the ‘Slender Man’ was nothing but a man in a morph suit hiding in plain sight. Little did I know, it was just a joke that the EveryManHYBRID (EMH) boys came up with.
The sixth episode was a game changer. In a brief summary, the EMH guys returned home from a day of shooting. The camera distorts as it always should when the Slender Man is near, and you hear them saying to check the bedrooms.
While searching for what sounds like a prank, the camera turns around to see the real Slender Man standing in a bedroom before the door slams shut and locks. From there on, the series spun into something more dramatic and horrifying.
Later in the same year, DarkHarvest00 started its own series. What started as a simple ghost hunt turned into a fight for survival as the two main characters fought off everything from the paranormal Slender Man to a cult of homicidal maniacs.
The series focuses on Chris who started it all by recording the strange sounds emanating from his house and Alex, Chris’s best friend. The two are basically thrown into a mess of paranormal attacks, homicides, and assassination attempts.
I wish I could say more about this series, but I can’t without spoiling everything.
In June of 2010, Noah Maxwell uploaded his first entry of his TribeTwelve series. The first video is a tribute to his cousin Milo Asher who had recently been found dead in his bedroom.
It was ruled as a suicide due to the cause of death being an overdose of prescribed medication. Noah uploaded footage of Milo’s last visit to his house, and found odd things in almost every shot.
Not only was he dealing with the dangerous creature of nightmares, he was also being harassed by the Collective, a largely unknown group of humans who were collected by the Slender Man.
With all this going on, Noah stays strong although he sometimes cracks into a somewhat less sane man.
Although all these series all have different aspects, they do something that I’ve ever seen before. They collaborate and help each other out. They all have snarky and hilarious characters, but they all know when to make the audience scared.
Over the next couple of weeks, I will be interviewing some of my favorite Slender Man series. I believe these series to be highly entertaining as well as horrifying and I hope that you may find it interesting and watch them too. I advise to leave the lights on.
Kristen Mabry
Features Editor
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