This Paranormal Life - #022 The Truth Behind the Slenderman

Episode Date: August 15, 2017

Everyone knows that Slenderman isn't real... Right? WRONG. Join us as we explore the worlds most infamous creepypasta and discover that even fictional creatures can cause real world horror. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do wizards come from the moon? When babies are born, is that actually a baby dying in another dimension and then they're born into this world, which is actually hell? Maybe some of the answers to, maybe some questions like those you could find the answers to on this paranormal life. But not that question. Not that one. Because that's unintelligible, sir. I think it's very intelligible, actually. And intelligent. Welcome to the podcast.

I'm your host for today, Rory Powers, joined by my paranormal pal, Kit Greer. That's right. Tell us about your day, Kit. Oh, it's going good. In five words. Jesus Christ. I'm in pain. I have a headache folks i never get a headache but maybe it's like you know like a dog that can predict a tsunami i can predict a paranormal podcast i woke up today

with a screaming headache and i'm none the better you're like mothman you're showing up to my house because you know that some bad shit is about to go down. But much like Mothman, I don't bother to actually communicate that. If you've never listened to this podcast before, every single week we investigate a new paranormal creature, tale, story. And as

professional, very professional paranormal investigators, we come to a conclusion as to whether or not it is the truth last week we did vampires and we came to the conclusion that vampires are real that's right you're gonna question our professionalism huh we just said some shit's real have you been to transylvania have you been to transylvania oh they have oh we just got an email here from derrick oh crap and he's doing an exchange there he says he says they're not real oh um

shit derek we i'm sorry i'm looking at the song cloud analytics i mean our entire listener base is transylvania holy shit not only that but things things have dropped massively oh christ so we were on uh 28 000 downloads last month this now we're in debt minus 28 000 downloads soundcloud are billing you by the second they're billing us for the gigabytes i don't believe it um this week we have another listener submission uh this is from monica johnson thanks monica monica emailed into us she emailed into this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com nice plug too thanks man seamless seamless i feel like we kind of ruined it a bit because we're talking now about the plug 30 minutes if you could just let it go and just let

me do it that's what i thought monica emailed in to the email address which is this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com our feedback email address yeah if is thisparanormallifepodcastatgmail.com, our feedback email address. Yeah. If you want to email in. Did you say it was at Gmail? Stop getting hung up on the email address, Kate. You're hurting me.

She emailed in and she said, you should talk about Slenderman on a podcast. There's cases of people seeing him and claiming that if you believe in him, he becomes real. So you know what, Monica? I did just that that i looked into the case of the slender man and it led me down a dark road into a dark forest where there's a tall man in that forest who looks like a tree it's slender man but not a tree yeah yeah i know i could see the confusion in your eyes big foot it's like, no. You're such an old school investigator. Yeah.

So you went to a forest and you didn't see the Sasquatch. Is that what you're telling me? I love that. You're talking to like the old school paranormal investigators. You're like, so I was walking home

and it must have been like 3, 3.30 a.m. Uh-huh. And I just saw this bright light appear above me, like a beacon in the skies. Yep, they'll do that. I heard this, I heard this calling. And all of a sudden, this beam just shot down around me. Hairy bastards. I don't know if they were hairy.

I didn't get, I didn't quite see these creatures. Uh-huh, they are. Well, okay. Well, they beamed me up into the ship. Yeah, they'll do that too. And they just took me away to this, this, this foreign planet. Yeah, they'll do that too. And they just took me away to this foreign planet. Yeah, yeah, planet Sasquatch. They have big eyes. Yes, they do.

And round heads. Seven foot tall hairy beasts. Well, not hairy, really focusing on the hairy. I don't see how they could not be hairy. Intellectually, they were years beyond us. I agree. I agree. For i agree i agree for apes for giant apes they are intellectually no it sounds like you're really hiring it on the apes thing and i'm trying to tell you more of a more reptile yes yeah uh-huh sorry that's a small tick

of mine can i change my answer yeah sure i think it was bigfoot bigfoot is sasquatch no we're talking we're talking about slenderman okay okay slenderman is the theme for this podcast today and it's quite a unique story because a lot of the times the structure of this podcast is we do a little hunting we do a little investigating yeah we look at the little as possible ideally we look at the the backstory and the lore um and then we come to a conclusion as to whether or not it is true slender man is not true it's not real what you know it's you i mean you must have known this you write back to our listener and you tell them do you think they're just writing in lies do you think our listeners are liars why do you think they're

taking time out of their day to write in these emails i think you're disconnected from the people roy i mean i think you have been sitting in your ivory tire looking at your paranormal books for too goddamn long we're going on the field right now i mean get your shit let's go let's go all right i'm gonna okay fine i will grab it i grabbed the stuff but i'm telling you now, I'm reading the email and Monica is saying it started on the internet. So I'm just going to say... I've got the gear. Liar.

She's a liar too. Listen, you people in your ivory tars, just so disconnected. You have no idea what the people in the streets are saying about the Slender Man. I'm sorry. Continue. Continue, please.

We'll keep the trip on hold for now alright I'm gonna suspend disbelief literally okay so as I said unlike many paranormal creatures whose origin lay in mystery

yes we know exactly when Slenderman was created this date was June 10th 2009 and on that date a photoshop contest

appeared on a Something Awful internet thread. Oh yeah, remember that site? Jesus. That was like the worst place on the internet. No, no, that was Rotten.com. Oh, what's Something Awful? Rotten.com was really Something Awful. It was Something Awful? No, Rotten.com.

Yeah. They showed these mini clips of Something Awful. What? What did? Something awful? No, rotten.com. Keep up. Please.

Come on, get LinkedIn to what I'm talking about. Now, the competition on this site was to edit everyday photographs and make them appear paranormal. Ooh. Which as paranormal investigators, we obviously frown upon. Yeah, because you're muddying the waters bitches you're making our job actually freaking like hard and i'm not gonna lie the waters are muddy as hell the fish are dead i can't drink canoeing is sad now it's borderline sand it's it's transition from water to mud through the straight sand. You're muddying the sand, people.

Please stop. Now, for this competition, forum poster, Eric Knudsen, I don't know how to pronounce your second name, Eric. I apologize. Under the name of Victor Surge. Wow. He submitted two black and white images of groups of children that were edited to include a tall, dark figure in the background. Yeah, edited, I'm sure, I'm sure. Wearing a dark black suit. Now, most of the submissions for the competition were just standalone photographs. went a step further and added text, allegedly from people describing abductions

that had taken place and addressing the figure as the Slenderman. God, I'm going to add such a scary sound effect there. Hell yeah, dude. It's going to be amazing. So I actually have the two photographs that he quote-unquote edited, a.k.a. dug up from underground archives,

probably from the Sovietviet union i mean for sure so folks for uh for those of you that haven't i've actually seen this in many years um i saw this in uh god at the beginning of my slenderman i haven't heard that name in years take a drag from a cigarette saxophone plays in the background I haven't seen this since my early professional paranormal investigating career we have what appears to be kids

walking away from something in the background this is extremely high contrast black and white image in the background I mean it's extremely vague you can just about make out a sort of shadowy High contrast black and white image in the background. You can, I mean, it's extremely vague. You can just about make out a sort of shadowy figure. I mean, kudos to Eric.

The thing looks very authentic. Yeah, it does. I mean, it is very blurry and obstructed, but that almost kind of validates its authenticity. You know, it looks like a half motion shot from an old retro camera years and years ago like it looks pretty legit and it's one of those it's that kind of trope from movies like ghost movies in particular where gms for short continue uh sorry that just really threw me for some reason

where you know they take a picture of a scenario and it's not it's not they take a p and it's not until the photo develops these right so just if you could just abbreviate to just speed speed this up we got a lot of shit to get through today i have so much three pages of abbreviation i have at least seven p's here to get to gt so if you could please uh h you is that hurry up h the f up d what is the f f up d head so concerned is saving time It's so obtrusive. I'm taking so much longer. You have to teach me every single abbreviation.

Yeah, in these movies, they try to take a photo. It's not until the photo develops that then the spooky reveal is that there was something in the background. And you don't know whether it was there at the time or whether it was just captured on camera. And this is exactly what this looks like. It's like, we don't know whether it was there at the time or whether it was just captured on camera and this is exactly what this looks like it's like we don't know if those kids even there actually looks to be a kid in the background looking in the slender man's direction but i don't know if he actually saw him or if the slender man was only captured on film now as i said these photos both came with quotations so the one that came with this photo was a passage that just says we We didn't want to go.

We didn't want to kill them. But its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comfort us at the same time. Hmm. Wow. The picture was allegedly taken in 1983. The photographer is unknown and presumed dead. Hmm. Now, there's the second photograph in the competition.

Okay. I'm going to hand to you here, which is actually even creepier than the first one. It actually really scares the shit out of me. I actually have nerves of a rock. Jesus Christ. Oh, my God. Your nose is bleeding. Okay. This one is substantially creepier, I admit.

It's a playful scene in a playground. Kids are playing on a... It's disturbing enough that these are all photos of kids. Because, you know, kids are sweet, innocent little creatures. In the movies, it's always little kids that get possessed. Because it's creepier. So in the background of these kids playing in a play park, one of them's on a slide,

there is just, I mean, what can only be described as an eight-foot man, very skinny, very tall, very slender, in a dark suit. So as I said, both of the pictures came with paragraphs. So this paragraph reads, one of two recovered photographs from the Sterling City Library blaze. As you can see, there's a print up in the top right hand corner notable for being taken the day of which 14 children vanished and for what is referred to as the slender man deformities meaning the deformities in the photo

which presumably is the slender man uh have been cited as film defects by officials fire at library occurred one week later actual photograph confiscated as evidence i actually didn't notice on first pass that slenderman sort of seems to have tentacles this time around yeah he'll do that all right yeah he's into some weird stuff yeah kids don't seem to be phased so i urge you folks at home if you haven't seen these photos before or if you have jog your memory and look up the Slender Man photos. The original. The OGs.

Yeah, the original Slender Man photos. They are creepy as hell. Two days later, another something awful user, LeechCode5. God bless that man. Old trustworthy LeechCode5. The things he's done for the paranormal community. Unparalleled, sir. The things he's done for the paranormal community.

Unparalleled, sir. Uploaded two images of Slenderman, inspired by the original post, with captions implying the creature is a predator of human children. But most interestingly, unlike many other paranormal creatures, there's actually not a lot of gory blood and violence involved with Slenderman. The fate of his victims are always left vague and mysterious. So like that photo you know you see him kind of like luring these children out from the park maybe like using like brain control powers just being like hey like come to me children but it's not like he doesn't bash brains in yeah like razor fangs or just he's he's subtle he's a

subtle beast yeah which almost makes it for me that makes it creepier that makes it way creepier 100 the boring part of the imagination is like he murders you in the woods yeah some people like he takes you off to like the nightmare dimension yeah where you live for eternity now which is worse than death i'm going on record to say oh man i was there last week dude it was like I was the border man I was flying back

from the Netherlands and we had a stopover in the nightmare dimension dude I swear to god there's nowhere to eat it's like it's insane I couldn't even find a bathroom

you're being tortured by the slender man psychologically for hours on end last time like I had to go there for like a layover I was on my way to LAX

like cheapest flight via the nightmare dimension yeah yeah yeah so I just stopped in for like a layover i was on my way to lax like cheapest flight via the nightmare dimension yeah yeah so i just stopped in for a little bit but it's one of those flights that because the bags are being shifted you have to go through customs again yeah i'm not even going in here like here's my ticket to lax i'm just passing by and it's like no i'm like i'm sorry we're not gonna have to get here unless you know someone in the nightmare dimension like it's a it's a nightmare this is a nightmare trying to get in here yeah and then i guess that click that's probably i mean it makes sense yeah it's like ah okay it works exactly they lost my bags as well extra little kick in the balls there as well as being scary they're also just really

incompetent that's kind of part of the deal which in itself is quite scary yeah because our pilot was from the nightmare dimension and we flew inverted for at least 75 minutes of that flight. The scariest bit about Stopover's Nightmare Dimension is like you're going through security and they're clearly letting lots of terrorists through. Like clear like bombs on their person. And they're like, whatever, it's Nightmare Dimension, anything goes. Welcome to the Nightmare Dimension, where the local time is stopped. Time doesn't flow here. If you need a car hire, this is a seven-dimensional universe.

There's actually no way of moving. You're just sort of in a purgatory, so don't bother with that, I guess. Thanks for flying with us, and enjoy staying in the Nightmare Dimension. Yeah, we're just park-sharing on the runway here. Because we're in the Nightmare Dimension, we'll probably never get off this plane. So I guess just sit tight, and thanks for flying. Hi, Sturtis. I was wondering if you had any loaded handguns so I could spray my brains over the roof of the plane, please.

Oh, no, we actually only have toy handguns with which to torture yourself with the idea of suicide. Right, a butter knife, please. Yeah, yes, we actually only have those little toy retractable knives that whenever you stab yourself, the knife goes inside the toy. Right. A noose, perhaps? Yeah, no, only spaghetti. Okay, cool. Passengers of this flight, I'm going to need you to gather up your shoelaces. I'm going to go off myself in the cubicles.

It's called the Zero Mile High Club. The Six Foot Deep Club. Good Lord. So that's an option. You might get dragged off to the nightmare dimension. good lord so that's an option you might get dragged off to the nightmare dimension they sometimes say that uh there's a cultural difference you know like japanese horror movies are very famous south korean horror movies very famous and supposedly the idea is that culturally they're quite different to let's say horror movies from the americas and from britain because in the

americas and britain in the colonial history what was the scariest thing that would happen it's like you would get like uh killed in like a war or um sort of colonial invasion something like that it was like physical yeah whereas in some other parts of the world let's say like in japan or maybe parts of korea their fears are more psychological because they were scared of let's say famine and the psychological terror that that would inflict. Right. And that's reflected in their folklore and tales and mythical beasts. And so in those places, you're much less likely to be like chainsaw massacred and you're more likely to be dragged into the nightmare dimension to spend an eternity. Where there is no rice and that's like you die. Yeah. Yeah. You're in the nightmare dimension

in like a really fancy restaurant and you're like i'll take the uh i'll take the mackie rule sushi they're like okay but it's been a bad harvest what just giggles you can have the rule but there's no rice it's a toy gun. No! So before we move on, let's look into what makes this lanky bastard a dick. So the Slender Man is described as being very tall and thin with unnaturally long arms. In some stories, like tentacles.

Yeah. As we saw in the photo. In most, not all, but most stories, his face is white and featureless. And he appears to be wearing a dark suit and tie. Now, he's typically associated with the forest and abandoned locations,

and simply being near the Slenderman is often said to trigger a quote-unquote slender sickness, which includes paranoia, nightmares, and nosebleeds. I don't know if I put this in my notes, but his presence alone as well is known to interfere with technological equipment. So, you know, anytime that you take a photo and there's distortion,

or you got a video and there's like feedback or static or weird noises that is often an indication that even if you didn't see him the slender man was somewhere in your vicinity wow active around you shit so at least we we understand a little bit about what he looks like yeah what his motivations are so now that we know all of that we can go back into a little bit about the story so the legend began to evolve from just a simple creepypasta and stories of Slenderman began to bleed into tons of different forms. One of the most notable being a video series called Marble Hornets. Okay. Now this was really cool. So this was one of the first times that Slenderman was popularized.

It was a video series called Marble Hornets and it was essentially on my way to that plane goes cool the plane crashes into your court somebody help me the next 30 minutes infinitely louder yeah it's like shit. Now, this was like a fictional video series where it was essentially recovered video footage from a short student film. They tried to make a movie in the woods and then people started going crazy. And this figure, is that a helicopter? Are you serious? I feel like someone has a soundboard outside. It's like playing tracks. Is that a spring?

Yeah. Oh, I think I hear some aliens coming. Now, Marble Hornets was basically like a fictional YouTube series that was based around someone recovering tapes and footage. Some found footage. Found footage, essentially, from a student film where the director and the actors started going a little bit crazy and weird things started happening, all revolving around the slender man okay but because it's that

found footage style it was like super convincing and it was the first time people had been watching this footage of what could be the slender man yeah uh it was really really interesting and i think this is one of the reasons why the case of Slenderman is so unique because we know who created him and we know when and why and how. Like we know everything about him. Well here's some advice from a professional paranormal investigator. You don't know shit.

And as soon as you think you know something, you're wrong. It's wrong. Everything's wrong. This is you lecturing to P1s in school, five year olds. I'm gonna get This is you lecturing to P1s in school, five-year-olds. I'm going to get real with you dicks for a second. How many of y'all think ghosts are real? How many of y'all have cried?

All right, get out. Everyone out. You don't have what it takes, clearly. Go cry in the halls. Like four kids are left. I'm left with the men now. We can talk. They're all girls.

I swivel my chair around i'm gonna be real with you gals for a second there's some weird shit out there and it is coming for you don't look back don't ever look back run run like the the teachers are trying to get in the door like bent the bar around it go now it don't ever look back Here's a hundred dollars and a loaded gun Don't listen to a thing these f***ers say in this school Okay Don't listen to your parents, don't listen to the TV, listen to me Go now

I can only hold them off for a second Pull the fire alarm Get out of here But the kids are just still sitting there Terrified Can only hold off formal education For so long But the kids are just still sitting there, terrified. Can only hold off formal education for so long. Basically, what we've established so far is that Slenderman isn't real.

But as I said, we're wrong. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Continue. In the UK, around January in 2015, a number of strange occurrences began to take place. That's not really enough to go on and continue. Well, that really wrapped up the podcast, actually. That was your sign off. Within a close time frame, four individuals had claimed to have had an encounter with the figure known as the slender man oh shit now one of the ideas behind him as a creature which uh we was touched upon from the actual email suggesting yes that we uh investigate him is that if you believe

in him it makes him real right so the more that you investigate him the more you believe in him, it makes him real. Right. So the more that you investigate him, the more you talk about him, the more you think about him, the more he seeps into your life. Now, the strange thing about these four individual real world Slenderman sightings. Okay. This is area of feudalism. This is stuff that's happened. Yeah. These have been reported. Crossed over into the real world.

Made local news. Yeah. That they are unusually inside of houses. Huh. Okay. Yeah. So Slender Man, as we said, is like prone to the forest, woods, nature, abandoned locations. Most of, pretty much all of these have been inside of houses.

Now, I actually have testimonies from some of the people that- Go right for it. That suffered through these sightings. So first off, a resident of pie green claims that she was visited by the slender man on december 14th now she says i was awoken just before 2 a.m by an odd scratching noise in my bedroom oh that's not good to my astonishment there was what seemed like a sphere-shaped shadow by the edge of my wardrobe. Oh. As I tried to get out of bed and investigate further. Hashtag.

The shadow began to stretch towards the ceiling. Oh, no. It was at that point I found myself faced with the most disgusting and horrific creature imaginable. It was about eight feet tall and had a white face. Checks out so far. Yeah. But then she says, with razor-sharp f says with razor sharp fangs okay so we haven't seen him with his mouth open yet no but we've all these are all from a distance maybe he's like

not having a good time he's not showing those pearly whites well it's definitely not a mannequin which is the other thing that the slender man could be yes not in this case not in this case another person reported i saw a man floating over me i could see into his eyes they were a fierce red color that shook me to my very core the ordeal ended when the man who was completely dressed in black with a hat to match floated higher and higher until he hit my ceiling and disappeared something about that really freaks me out that's awful so yeah it's all people it's all nightmares whether or not that's part of it he's like um uh what's his chops who's the dude from the horror movie who jumps from nightmare to nightmare oh yeah freddy

cougar yeah yeah whether he's like that sort of his vibe that's possible maybe because like the woods are quite dark and mysterious much Yes. Much like dreams. Yes. So it's like he doesn't want to just exist out in the world and be like, hey, I'm the Slenderman. But like in the shadows of dreams. Yeah. On the brink. On the precipice of consciousness. Of reality.

And the nightmare zone. Hell yeah, dude. He can lure. He can float. He can haunt and torment. It's easy to say that the Slenderman is just a figment of your imagination right and that he was invented and posted online but what if the slender man exists as you say in the space between reality and dreams he exists on the internet in cyberspace in dreams in the shadows yeah like out

of the corner of your eye it's like that whole argument where people say like okay santa isn't real yes but when you think of the sentiment of santa and that symbol and that icon and what he represents yes and i mean he does exist in some capacity oh my god yeah you could literally ask anyone in the world and you're like who's's Santa? Yeah. Well, he's like the dude he brings. He's more real than me. Yeah. People know who Santa is more than they know who I am. It's true.

And I exist. Do I? Oh, shit. There's only one way to find out. I still have the shit on you. Please, the Lord slander. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm getting at.

It's like this Joseph Campbell idea, and he didn't invent it, but he talked about this idea of archetypes. He talked about this idea of Slenderman. This tall creature who would kill people. I just didn't listen to the first half of the podcast. But he would talk about archetypes and the idea being that this is what you know this is what hindu gods are based on this is what greek gods are based on it's that outside of actual physical reality there exist ideas and those ideas have existed you know long before you before we existed as people. And so that Santa Claus, the idea of Santa Claus has existed forever

and that humans manifest Santa Claus into reality, take that archetype and make it physical. So is Slenderman, has that idea of that creepy predator that lurks in the shadows and doesn't have a face, is that an archetype that humans are manifesting shadows and doesn't doesn't have a face is that an archetype that humans are manifesting as they tell each other yeah it's as if like the idea of that creature has been around since the dawn of time yes and this is just one iteration of it yeah just one name for it because there's no way that this is the only time people have thought

about i'd like scary tall creature with no face. Yeah, yeah. It's a really good way of looking at it. So for the record, we're saying Santa's real. I just want to make sure that we're on. Okay, yeah. All right, Santa's real. That was the point I was really getting at. I think we can all agree that, as Drew Scamble once said,

we all want presents at Christmas. Yes. And someone's got to give them to us. If they're delivered by Santa or Jack Skellington, I don't care. It's fine. So there was actually only one outdoor encounter from the whole bunch and this was from an old iron age hill fort which sounds haunted as shit anyway yeah so it makes sense uh but the eyewitness says while taking a midnight stroll around castle ring last friday morning i happened to notice a

strange figure in the distance. It appeared to rise out of the trees and hover over the path around 100 meters in front of me. Okay. If I were to compare it to anything, I would say it looked like a stereotypical Victorian gentleman, long, black overcoat with a Homburg hat. Homburg hat. Ooh, another one with a hat.

That's interesting. I guess it's like a Victorian hat. I'll just say black over, another one with a hat. That's interesting. I guess it's like a Victorian hat. I'll just say, black overcoat with a hat. Yeah. That's probably easier. I know this was no flying human because it had blood red eyes

that shone into the night sky. It also had a mouth full of teeth that seemed to look like razors. Okay. We've seen some similarities here. Whatever it was, it stopped hovering and descended back into the trees whoa don't go near that tree for sure so obviously

after reading all these testimonies i was pretty freaked out because this is i mean it's 2015 this is borderline modern day stuff that we're dealing with here and i just thought someone has to do something about this hell yeah we need to do something about this kit then that's when i realized we were too late uh-huh i've not only because it's 2015 and well yeah it's years ago but because another paranormal investigator took on the case what's his name let's trash him on this goddamn podcast lee brickley oh you son of a bitch you better watch your back lee no i mean look friendly competition is okay but i was the same as you i was a little skeptical because i mean yes we're professional paranormal investigators we know we

know everyone in the bivs yeah in the in the heezy that's right it's basically us and trevor and lee and lee and trevor and trevor and mark and dave yeah there's a claire but claire's a nurse now so it's she's kind of giving it on yeah so i did a little research on lee just to make sure you know he wasn't you know half-assing it i want to make sure he's like a legit guy and it turns out that this wasn't the first time that he'd visited this same location to investigate the paranormal. And I was like, okay, that's a little bit strange. He's been to this location before. Just one year before, Lee was in the exact same place investigating the alleged appearance of Black Eyed Kids.

Oh! Seriously. That's pretty cool. I'm not f***'m not getting i don't know why all my stories involve black eyed kids yeah i need help i don't know why it's like i mean i can see your safari right now you have 23 tabs open black eyed kids background is black eyed you're listening to black eyed peas all right we talked about black eyed kids before on the podcast yes sir and who else pops up when we're talking about black eyed kids uh a little group called the men in black and what per se kit do the men in black look like yeah i mean they wear a suit tall figures yeah suits yeah slightly inhuman yeah exactly if you

will and then all of a sudden this slenderman type character starts popping up am i gonna say that's a coincidence possibly yes i mean it's possibly just all untrue just totally untrue but i thought that was really cool obviously lee's no stranger to the paranormal but we've got experience now with actual sightings of paranormal creatures with other paranormal investigators involved in this case. So it's a big deal. You know, this isn't just someone in the night seeing something. This is enough people to garner the attention of a paranormal investigator.

And, you know, we require a lot. We don't just go chasing any little cat tail. We need a big meaty fish. We are going chasing your cat's tail after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw like a ghost around there. So we're just go chase it and see if we if he can give us a secret grant me a wish you beast now like the relation to the men in black and slender man i think appearance is the only thing that i can really think of that matches up the men in black

are always preoccupied with um containing conspiracy theories and shutting down witnesses of paranormal events and i assure you we will get to them because i'm working on that that's going to be a meaty meaty episode that's right um so we've already seen about how people have seen the slender man in real life yes now let's get on to a little bit about how the slender man has affected people in real life okay so one thing that happens with the slender man is there's two types of interactions with people. He has victims, which as you assume are people that he kills or does horrible things too.

And then the other half of the people are called proxies. Oh, they're essentially brainwashed into doing the slender man's bidding lest he do horrible things to them right essentially um i just want to can i just make it known i mean i was trying to ignore it but i mean the slender man he's kind of been i mean he's been talking to my ear like this whole podcast the whole time the whole time dude what is he saying he's saying kill you me yeah why is he saying kill me i mean i've been saying i've been like

saying in my mind dude i don't want to do it man but i just gotta tell you dude he's been talking to me this whole time yeah well actually you know what now now i'm actually i'm getting a bit i'm getting a bit from the slenderman yeah he's talking to you too yeah he says he's like oh if kit touches you i'll i'll kill him harder. Oh, yeah. He actually says to me, he's saying, if I hear it correctly, try it, try it, bitch. I know, right? What is he saying?

Oh, he's laying into you big time. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's saying that, like, you have really bad breath, like, constantly. Really? He wouldn't even strangle you if anyone, like, paid him to. Is that right? Yeah, he's totally right. totally right whoa whoa he said the n-word jesus christ slender man jesus i mean he's not i mean why all right that's unnecessary yeah you know what just kill him

just kill him what yeah just go for it oh i agree with you oh christ we'll be honest with you here this is some bad shit that has happened in the real world relating to the slander. Okay, strap yourselves in. Somber faces, people. No jokes. We just did that bit. That bit ended real faces now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. First example, May 31st, 2014. Two 12-year-old girls in Wisconsin allegedly held down and stabbed a 12 year old classmate 19 times yeah they lured her out to the woods and did this i mean that is grisly when they were questioned later by authorities they reportedly claimed that they wished to commit a murder as a first step to becoming proxies for the slender man having read about him online. They also state that they were afraid that Slenderman would kill their families if they did not commit the murder. Okay.

Now, the only slightly uplifting part of that is that the victim was actually able to escape the woods and was rescued by a passing cyclist. Oh, hell yeah. She's good. She's still alive. She's still kicking about. She's actually a proxy now. She killed the cyclist oh hell she's good she's still alive she's still kicking about she's actually a proxy now she killed the cyclist um but both of the girls were diagnosed with mental illnesses obviously and i think are like facing 65 years in prison jesus that's a long time to be what age

were they i thought they you got they were charged as adults oh but i don't know i don't know what age to do that because i think they were pretty young damn one of the girls reportedly said the slender man watches her can read minds and could teleport but then also she said that she conversed with lord voldemort and one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles so i don't know if we can take this one as evidence i mean we've taken less factual statements than that as evidence before that's fair but i'm gonna draw the line there next story an unidentified woman from ohio told a tv reporter that her 13 year old daughter had attacked her with a knife and had written a horrible fiction uh story involving the slender man who the mother claimed

had motivated the attack wow more creepy stuff more creepy stuff on september 4th 2014 a 14 year old girl in florida allegedly set her family's house on fire police reported that the teenager had been reading online stories about the slender man wow so we're hearing this crazy it's what we said the more you think about him the more you buy into it the more you read and dive into it you just become obsessed and he just appears and haunts you i guess it's such like he's such a kind of vague concept yeah it's like there's something and i mean you look at like wasn't charles manson the serial killer and he had like a crazy amount of fans like people were so drawn people still write him love letters oh my like it's crazy i think you know a lot of people today live pretty

vanilla lives yeah and maybe for kids especially don't have that that much like i don't know good parenting going on or like good role models and influences yeah you know the most exciting thing in their life is getting home and reading about the slender man that's why kids are so drawn to like all of that stuff like rock and roll and like so kids get into like gothic kind of music and stuff because it's they're like they've never come across that darkness before yeah totally slender man and he's telling you to burn down people's houses and stab people yeah it's gonna cool it's pretty badass actually pretty sick it like burrows its way into his little kids heads totally we've looked at a lot of evidence here yes and i wanted to get my final little nail in the paranormal coffin

please do so as we enjoy enjoy doing these days i decided to get a feel for how the public look at Slender Man. Do they think he's real? Do they just enjoy the creepy pasta? So I jumped on some internet forums and did a little investigating of my own. Let's see it. It's weird, man. It's so weird. It's not what I was expecting at all.

Imagine my eyes darting across the screen as it is 2 a.m and i frantically read through every single one of these forum posts january 7th 2014 i'm being stalked i may have to make a choice between being a proxy and dying soon please contact me on deviantart i warn you this is not something you want to get caught up in another entry january 20th 2014 be careful what you wish for he's out there more dangerous than we can comprehend i know someone that saw him as a child and he feels that he shall find him any day sadly it is the truth. Jesus Christ. These read like letters from the front line of World War I. This is crazy.

February 15th, 2014. My friends and I saw him. He appears now everywhere I go. What should I do? Jesus. There's nothing you can do. This is a response. Sadly, try to stay in large groups of people.

Stay away from older abandoned places. If you think someone's a proxy, arm yourself around them. Wow. And best of all, don't go into the woods at all. Even if it's a drive. Christ, this is crazy. It's weird, isn't it? I guess if you were being haunted by the Slenderman,

you would go on Slenderman forums and be like, yo, what up? Anyone dealt with this shit? You know, y'all know how to fix this yeah like i wonder is it also though like the kind of prepper phenomenon in the united states where it's kind of all these people that are convinced that you know the world's gonna end or the government's gonna come for us and they start building bunkers and like storing water and canned food and everything and they all talk together in forums. And I guess it's such a little bubble community that they're all so convinced this is going to happen. I presume if anyone comes in there and goes,

guys, you ever think we're going a little bit overboard? Slenderman, where? Where am I? In the bunkers now. I'll give it two days before the nukes start flying, boys. Get in the bunker. We need to do two days before the nuke start flying boys get in the bunker we need to cross over the two communities we need to get the slender man the slender people in bunkers in bunkers with all the apocalypse people yeah i know i like that idea of them like one of these like millennials with like dark circles around their eyes talking to like an old old guy like the

sasquatch hunter have you ever heard of slender man it to like an old, old guy, like the Sasquatch hunter. It's like, have you ever heard of Slenderman? It's like, Slenderman, they work for the government in a bunker. What are we going to do down here? Hope you like refried beans. Powdered milk. Forgot to bring any water so you can just chew the powdered milk. He's like, all right, so everything's kicking off.

Come on. Come on, Craig. Come on, Philip. You there. Nine foot man in the back back Come on into the bunker Would you like some powdered milk sir Not much of a talker is he He's like it's such a small bunker

His knees are like up by his ears Slenderman really enjoys Refried beans That was basically all of my investigation Into Slenderman It's pretty good I mean as I said it's a weird episode man really enjoys refried beans yeah that was basically all of my investigation into slender man it's pretty good i mean it's a weird as i said it's a weird episode because of i mean the origins of the creature and ultimately if we do our usual structure where we come to a conclusion we're both going to say it's not true because excuse you i have come to my own thoughts about

this but i mean i literally I told you, Eric. I mean, I showed you pictures. I think you're a proxy. I think that's what's happening, Rory. I think you're trying to throw me off the scent. I think you need to just calm down. I will calm down. When the Slender Man stops talking in my ears.

You get so tall. You float up to the ceiling and just disappear. I'm like, I guess that's the end of the podcast. Just roll the credits. Kit just floated up to the ceiling and bopped on it. I don't know if he'll be back next week. Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen. Kit, are you going to edit the podcast for tomorrow?

No. Oh, he just walked outside, actually. I can see him. He's in a bush. Slenderman says he's going to take me away so I won't be able to edit this week's podcast. I guess it's on you, buddy. Let me know if you actually want to do that Patreon.

I know. You're just a really bad excuse. Your parents are like, so you're still up for bad bad excuse your parents are like so you still up for coming go visit your granny this weekend the slender man speaking to me I can't go

wait no stop don't do the slender man voice oh no it's too late you're now speaking the slender man the car's running just get in the car

yeah so I mean I guess if we want to do a conclusion speaking with Slenderman. The car's running. Just get in the car. Yeah, so I mean, I guess if we want to do a conclusion, I feel like we should because it's tradition to come to a conclusion. It is tradition. I'm going to say it's not real.

It's not true. I really wish you would have responded quicker. I'm a little worried now. What are you thinking? I think... Am I talking to Slenderman or Kit right now? Ironically, Kit.

I have a cold. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say not real. Yeah. But there's something there. There's something to do with like people have... I guess it's that thing do you remember like the sistine chapel and they say like michelangelo painted the sistine chapel and that you know from the ground with his 16 foot arms with tentacles and he painted you know Adam touching hands with God. Yeah. And people say that, you know, isn't God like chilling in like an armchair?

Like a clam or something. A lazy boy. But he's a freaking lazy boy, dude. But God's chilling in this little like capsule. And the capsule supposedly is the same like anatomy as the human brain so people were saying michelangelo was trying to like do a little inception thing and say that god was actually created by the human mind wow and not that he wasn't real but that he was created by humans not the other way around that's cool so i think there's something there it's like you know it's like you say sender man's as real as santa people have brought him into existence yeah but was he out there

before like the year 2000 like causing havoc i don't think so that's a good way of wording it even the examples i saw people claiming they've seen slender man that's post the existence of slender man in popular culture yeah he's in people's minds yes so it's kind of you got to take that with a grain of salt i mean there's always sightings of monsters and creatures probably some of them look like this figure but none of them match the description to the point where you know it linked up as undeniable proof but essentially i will say it's got to be one of our spookiest stories yet that's it and you know what it's a fun one because even though it is based in fiction and creepypasta I like investigating those stories because seeing I mean we've seen not only

how it's spread and how stories like this can spread in folklore but also how they can affect people in the modern day you know it's creepy it's crazy yeah these stories and these creatures are you'd think they'd be gone from the modern world but actually people are inventing them

yeah and there's new ways to spread it as well. So thank you very much for that submission. If you have your own submissions that you'd like to send in to us, send them in to thisparanormallifepodcast at gmail.com. That's right. And make sure you check out our Twitter account, This Paralife, where we do polls every now and again to find out if people think things are real or not.

We post pictures just like our Facebook page, This Paranormal Life, right in. This podcast is a lot like Slender Man. That's right. It's a curse. It'll make you kill your family members if you keep listening. I think that about wraps it up for

today. I think so. Cool. Well, thank you very much for listening. We will be back next Tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale. Stay tuned.