
It’s a new take on an ancient, cross-cultural tradition of bogeymen, fictional characters used to scare kids into behaving. Slender Man’s victims are often portrayed as being plagued by a “Slender sickness”–paranoia, nosebleeds, and nightmares–before being taken to the woods to be murdered. He was created in 2009 by Internet user Eric Knudsen, who was participating in an online Photoshop contest. Slender Man is usually depicted as a tall, faceless figure who wears a dark suit and has tentacles for arms. “It was obvious this was a zeitgeist example of how we are adapting” to digital life, she says, while adding that Geyser and Weier “were clearly in a very distressed and disturbing state.” And director Irene Taylor Brodsky tries to rise above mere prurience by weaving in issues of mental health and child incarceration. Extensive interrogation footage of Geyser and Weier shows them at turns immature and vulnerable, at others disturbingly detached.
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(The girls pleaded not guilty on grounds of mental illness.) Even amid a true-crime renaissance–NPR’s Serial podcast, Making a Murderer on Netflix– Slenderman finds fresh ground. The case, which is headed to trial in adult court, is the subject of HBO’s new documentary Beware the Slenderman (Jan. More disturbing yet was the motive: the pair told police the attack, which their victim survived, was intended to placate a fictional Internet bogeyman known as Slender Man.

In 2014, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier lured a friend into the woods on the edge of Waukesha, Wis., and stabbed her 19 times.
