'Slender Man' trailer brings Creepy Pasta Internet legend to life

Slender Man is the most famous piece of Internet lore to emerge from the Something Awful forum, and certainly ranks as the top Bogeyman of the web.

The 2009 Creepypasta creation of Eric Knudsen (posting as Victor Surge, who gets a creator credit here, but I don't know if that involves real money) is an amalgam of so many tropes and myths that he immediately speaks to many collective fears. Knudsen himself has said he was inspired by the work of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Williams S. Burroughs.

But he also became a real-world Bogeyman about three years ago when two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls stabbed another to become "proxies" for Slender Man.

And today, Screen Gems dropped its trailer for Slender Man, a film directed by Sylvian White (The Losers) from a screenplay by David Birke (Elle). The plot:

"In a small town in Massachusetts, four high school girls perform a ritual in an attempt to debunk the lore of SLENDER MAN. When one of the girls goes mysteriously missing, they begin to suspect that she is, in fact, HIS latest victim."

As a horror fan, there isn't much for me to sink my teeth into with the trailer. It's a lot of disjointed fast cuts that tell nothing of the story, but include a few Ring-like images meant to unsettle the viewer. It also holds back on showing too much of Slendy.

It feels a little too generic at this point -- especially after 2017 saw the release of IT, and horror movies had a nice mainstream moment. We will see, and I will keep an eye on it.

More importantly, I am somewhat troubled by the filmmakers' choice to craft a story that seems to intentionally evoke the 2014 Wisconsin stabbing case. There is a treasure trove of interesting Slender Man materials to draw inspiration from without recalling such a recent case.

Slender Man opens May 18. Meanwhile, check out Tim Seeley's sci-fi/horror comic Imaginary Fiends, that borrows from Slender Man and spins the yarn of Polly Peachpit, and a realm of interdimensional fear-consuming monsters.

Let me know your thoughts on the Slender Man movie.

Plus: Read more about my thoughts on Slender Man's cultural significance, and his attempted successor.

-Aaron Sagers

Dear David returns from holiday break with photo evidence

So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he's trying to kill me. (thread)

— Adam Ellis (@moby_dickhead) August 7, 2017

This is how it all began just about five months ago when Buzzfeed cartoonist Adam Ellis began noticing something strange in his neighborhood. But asking who he was gonna call, Ellis took to Twitter to document the curious case in his Manhattan apartment.

Ellis' story kicked off like a classic-sounding urban legend of a Nightmare on Elm Street-meets-creepy Grudge kid sort. He dreamt of a boy with a misshapen head, who he came to learn -- through another dream, with a little girl -- is named Dear David. You can ask Dear David two questions, but if your curiosity gets the better of you (another great folkloric trope), he'll kill you. Ellis became afraid the ghost child had crossed over into the real world, and moved into the vacant apartment above him.

Problem solved, right? Not if you have ever read a good ghost story where you can never truly escape a pissed-off specter. Things have been escalating; increasingly disturbing dreams; aggravated cats sitting at his door; objects caught on a nanny cam falling from a wall, or a rocking chair moving on its own; finding a hidden crawlspace, and discovering a small, old shoe and a green marble (Dear David seems to like green) within it; a photo app capturing images of a boy with a malformed head standing above Ellis as he sleeps.

The story seems to be coming to a head as weird and bizarre as Dear David's.

Ellis has previously taken a few breaks away from his apartment (for the weekend, or a trip to Japan, or away for Thanksgiving). He left on December 20 on a holiday vacation to his family in Montana, thinking he could get away from the story. Not so much because, in Montana, Ellis said he captured small footprints in the snow, and even photos of Dear David once again above him as he slept.

When I caught my breath I retrieved my phone from the dresser. The photo roll showed nothing of note, save for the last photo, taken just a moment before.

— Adam Ellis (@moby_dickhead) January 3, 2018

pic.twitter.com/aMwCzCLOff

— Adam Ellis (@moby_dickhead) January 3, 2018

Dear David is officially now a stowaway ghost, and joining Ellis for family vacay's (and he probably also eats the last slice of pumpkin pie without asking who else may want it!).

I enjoy this story, and I like where it's going. Ellis is building to something here, and Dear David is a fairly savvy use of Twitter's creepy pasta potential to tell a traditional ghost story through episodic posts. Plus, since Ellis has a new book on the way, this has been a sustained publicity push for him, even though he's not been previously known for ghost stories (Check out his Google Trends stats for the last five years -- he's certainly been enjoying a spike since August 2017 when he began Dear David).



I do not for a moment believe it is real, but I find it entertaining. You should check it out because things are heating up in the Dear David saga.

Catch up via Ellis' Storify posts on Dear David.  And let me know what you think? Do you think the Dear David story is real? Is it an intentional hoax, or just a fun story?

-Aaron Sagers