Slender Man Was Made Up in a Photoshop Contest

Slender Man—a tall, thin, faceless shadow in a suit—is everywhere now. His birth actually has a very specific date.

In June 2009, a long-running American trolling forum held a Photoshop contest with the theme "turn photos into something supernatural." A user named "Victor Surge," whose real name was Eric Knudsen, submitted two black-and-white photos showing a group of children with a tall, thin figure standing behind them, accompanied by a few lines of text styled like old archives, claiming they were rescued from a library fire, that the photographer disappeared, and that some of the children in the photos later went missing.

Those two images and those few lines were written with restraint: they only said the children were gone, and the photos were found in a burned library. No names, no story—only that figure.

Other users saw them and started adding to it: some wrote, some drew, some filmed videos, and the stories multiplied: he causes amnesia, drives people mad, chases people through the woods, has no face, and his arms can stretch very long. Within a few years, he went from a contest entry to an accepted "urban legend," with many people believing he was an old folk tale.

Later the legend caused something real: in 2014, two twelve-year-old girls in Wisconsin, USA, believed he was real and tried to sacrifice someone, stabbing a classmate. Afterward, Knudsen said he regretted it, and that he never expected this to happen. He was raised by internet users over a few years. Now when people see that shadow, they can no longer tell who first drew him.

#Paranormal #网络转载 #网络怪谈