Now is time for series about mythical creatures, beings and beasts. The most fascinating one of them is so called Slender Man or “Der Ritter”. I found this about half years ago and it has been in my mind since then. This case is interesting because there are different kind of tales from the past centuries that describe same kind of creature in different names. Here is one description of Slender:

The Slender Man is an alleged paranormal figure purported to have been in existence for centuries, covering a large geographic area. Believers in the Slender Man tie his appearances in with many other legends around the world, including; Fear Dubh (or, The Dark Man) in Scotland, the Dutch Takkenmann (Branch Man), and the German legend of Der Großmann or Der Grosse Mann (the Tall Man).

German Woodcuts

Renowned German woodcutter Hans Freckenberg created at least two woodcuts featuring a character.

He described as Der Ritter (The Knight) during the mid-sixteenth century that were discovered in Halstberg Castle in 1883. Whilst Freckenberg was well-known for his realistic depiction of human anatomy – something that was unusual among woodcuts of the time – these pictures featured a skeletal, multi-limbed character. Historians are unsure of the exact symbolic nature of the character, with some claiming that it is a personification of the religious wars that raged in Europe at the time, while others say it represents the mysterious plagues that have been believed to be the reason for the mysterious abandoning of the Hastlberg Castle and the nearby village in 1543.

However, many insist that Freckenberg was attempting to represent “Der Großmann” (the Tall Man). According to lgend, he was a fairy ho lived in the Black Forest. Bad children who crept into the woods at night would be relentlessly chased by Der Großmann, who wouldn’t leave them be until he either caught them or they were forced to tell their parents of their wrongdoing. Even then, there is a chillding account from an old journal, dating from about 1702:

“My child, my Lars… he is gone. Taken, from his bed. The only thing that we found was a scrap of black clothing. It feels like cotton, but it is softer… thicker. Lars came into my bedroom ysterday, screaming at the top of his lungs that “The angel is outside!” I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me some nonsense fairy story about Der Großmann. He said he went into the groves by our village and found one of my cows dead, hanging from a tree. I thought nothing of it at first… but now, he is gone. We must find Lars, and my family must leave before we are killed. I am sorry, my son… I should have listened. May God forgive me.”

Selected 20th Century Appearances

The number of Slender Man sightings has increased dramatically during the Twentieth Century. This is generally attributed to increased media coverage and access to news reports from around the globe.

Henderson Horse Farm Incident 1953

The Henderson Horse Farm, located outside Tryon in Polk County, NC, was situated on land owned by the Henderson family since the mid 1800s. By 1953, the farm was owned and run by Ted Wilcox Henderson (41 years old), Judi Henderson (wife, 36), and Tracy Henderson (daughter, 6). On the morning of June 15th, neighbors called local police complaining of hearing screams and the sounds of gun fire originating from the property.

Sherrif Clint Denterman and two deputies, Dan Parks and Chris Fine, arrived at the farm at 8:34 AM. They found that horses in the barn had been torn apart, “almost as if attacked by wild animals.” Inside the main house, reports stated the presence of fresh blood throughout the living room, kitchen, and hallway.

Ted Wilcox Henderson was found in the bedroom, barricaded behind furniture. Next to him was the body of his wife, killed by a shotgun blast to the chest. Ted still had the weapon in his hands. Dan Parks was quoted as reporting:

“Ted had a freaked out, far off look in his eyes. He seemed to not realize that we were in the room. We asked what happened. Where was his daughter. But he didn’t answer.”

Ted was charged with the murder of his wife. However, due to his catatonic state, he was admitted to Jenkins Mental Hospital in Sandy Plains, Polk County. Ted remained in a catatonic state for over three years. On the third anniversary of the murder, Dr Dauton on June 15th, 1956 refer to a “Skinny fella… suit… looking at me…” who had taken both Judi Henderson and her daughter Tracy. Ted claimed that Judi begged him to shoot her, and felt that he had “saved her” by doing so. However, after lamenting that he had been unable to stop the “skinny man” from absconding with his daughter, Ted commenced to “slam his face repeatedly” into the steel table at which he was seated, having to be restrained and sedated by hospital orderlies. Less than seven hours later, at approximately 3:00 am the 16th of July, Ted was found dead in his room after apparently escaping his restraints and chewing through his own wrist, severing the ulnar artery and bleeding to death. The body of Tracy Henderson was never found, however a photograph taken about a week before the Henderson Farm incident shows what appears to be a suited man standing in front of the stables, which some claim to be the Slender Man.

Stirling City Disappearances 1986 – 87

Stirling City, Butte County, CA has been an apparent hot spot for Slender Man activity during the mid 1980s. Following the 1986 Stirling City Library fire, a small number of photographs were recovered, including one that had been taken only a week earlier on June 1st, 1986. On this date 14 children disappeared, followed less than two weeks later by the disappearance of the photographer, Mary Thomas. Some theorists claim that the figure on the left in the photo is the Slender Man, although officials have stated that the apparent extra appendages on the character can be dismissed as film defects.

Five months later, the body of one of the children, four year old Joseph Pertman, was found in the Great Swamp Nature Preserve in Kingston Falls, NJ. Deputy Sherrif Jim Stolz told reporters from the Associated Press that the body was still in early stages of decay, indicating that he was alive for at least four months after his disappearance. It was also reported that the body was found in a state of “bizarre contortion,” although the cause of death was never officially established.

On April 21st, 1987 the Stirling City Post ran a story regarding a rash of animal mutilations in Stirling City, that the Butte County Animal Control Department were attributing to coyotes. As man as nine dogs and cat had gone missing since January, and had been found in various states of decay. many of the pets had been disemboweled, or otherwise seriously mutilated. Animal Control Officer Joel Driscol was quoted as saying that the wounds were “unusually precise” and that it was “rare that a wild animal would leave so much of the carcass uneaten.” Also quoted inn the story was a local man, David Elkins, who was the owner of the latest victim – a cat that had been disemboweled and mutilated.

On July 12th, 1987, police were called to the Elkins’ residence in Stirling by David Elkins, who had reported that his eight-year-old daughter Katrina had gone missing. The only possible witness to the disappearance was Katrina’s ten-year-old sister Alice, with whom she shared a bedroom. SCPD Sergeant William Hohne reported that the last time Alice saw her sister, she was outside the window “hugging the tall man.” According to further statements by Alice, over the previous weeks a man had been coming to the girls’ bedroom window at night, where he would tap on the glass, “make faces,” and watch the girls. However, police investigators initially dismisses the account as a dream, as the bedroom window was on their house’s second story with no support beneath it.

“[Alice] Elkins reported that, on the night of her sister’s disappearance, they were again awakened by a tapping on the glass,” Sergean Hohne explained, “she heard her sister get out of bed, and have a short conversation. When she didn’t hear her sister get back in bed after several minutes, he go up and went to the window, where she saw her sister in the side yard, “hugging the tall man.” According to the witness, the man looked at her, grinning, and indicated that she was to come down as well with a “snakey arm.” it was at this point that Miss Elkins became extremely frightened, and returned to bed. The tapping continued for several more minutes before it finally ceased.”

Alice Elkins’ body was never found, and no charges were ever brought regarding the case.

Jasper, Alberta Disappearances 2009

On January 10th 2009, three skiers – Amanda Fischer, Douglas Bellanger, and Natasha Pierce – disappeared leaving their cabin in Mica Mountains Resort of Jasper, Alberta. A day earlier, another friend, Thomas Chambers, left the party to return to Calgary, apparently due to health concerns. He was questioned by RCMP following the disappearances and allegedly informed them that he had left due to recurring nightmares featuring a tall man in black peering into the cabin windows at night.

Investigators confirmed they had ruled Chambers out as a possible suspect, but considered him a key witness. A source within RCMP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed to the Calgary Sun that officers had confiscated a digital camera and a camcorder at the time of the interview, which were never returned. RCMP were, however, unable to question Chambers further, as he vanished on January 21st. His home was found ransacked that morning, he was never found.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Park Officials commenced a month-long search, culminating in the discovery of Amanda Fischer’s remains high in a tree, in a severely contorted condition. The bodies of Bellanger and Pierce have yet to be recovered.

The Suited Demon

Popular guro author Go Waita created almost 230 stories during his 40 year career, most of which featured his most renowned created, the Suited Demon; a tall, slim man in a dark suit who would kidnap, rape, and murder young girls in the woods. During an interview with Hiro Koga in the February 2009 issue Deadly Doom Delights magazine, Waita claimed that he did not create the Suited Demon, and that he was in fact a real creature that he had witnessed murder his seven year old sister as a child. Waita explained to the interviewer that the “real” Suited Demon was not interested in raping his victims, but his editors and publishers insisted on the graphic sex scenes being added.

Waita went on to say that “I tried to draw different things… normal pictures, portraits, even other types of stories… but it always comes comes up… for forty god damn years!” before becoming too agitated to continue and ending the interview. Hiro Koga stated in the printed article that he considered scrapping it completely before receiving a call from Waita insisting that he print the interview in full. Less than a week after publication, Waita burnt his studio to the ground, committing suicide in the process. Because of this, many understandably cast aspersion on the mental sate of Waita during the interview, and therefore dismissed his claims of the origins of the Suited Demon. Some theorists, however, are prepared to accept this as yet another case of a confirmed Slender Man sighting.

Source

There are also claims that the whole Slender Man is a hoax and here is this story:

The Slender Man (also known as Slender Man or Slenderman) is a fictionalcharacter that originated as an Internet meme created by user Victor Surge on the Something Awful forums in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and featureless face, and wearing a black suit. The Slender Man is commonly said to stalk, abduct, or traumatize people, particularly children.

One of the original photos of the Slender Man, created on the Something Awful forums

Origin

The Slender Man was created in a contest launched on the Something Awful forums on June 8, 2009, with the goal of editing photographs to contain supernatural entities. On June 10, a forum poster with the user name “Victor Surge” contributed two black and white images of groups of children, to which he added a tall, thin spectral figure wearing a black suit.Previous entries had consisted solely of photographs; however, Surge supplemented his submission with snatches of text, supposedly from witnesses, describing the abductions of the groups of children, and giving the character the name, “The Slender Man”:

We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time… 1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.

One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. 1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.

These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.

Development

The Slender Man soon went viral, spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay and online fiction known as “creepypasta“; scary stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site.The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user “ce gars”. It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets. The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game describing the filmers’ fictional experiences with the Slender Man.Marble Hornets is now one of the most popular Slender Man creations, with over 250,000 followers around the world, and 55 million views.The creator of the sandbox indie game Minecraft, Markus “Notch” Persson, added a new hostile mob to the game in 2011, which was named the “Enderman” when multiple users on Reddit and Google+ commented on the similarity to the Slender Man.In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; as of August, 2012, the game has been downloaded over 2 million times.Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman’s Shadow and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download.Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entityand The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a theatrical film.

Reaction

The Slender Man was called “the first great myth of the web” by BBC.The success of the Slender Man legend has been ascribed to the connective nature of the Internet. While nearly everyone involved understands that the Slender Man is not real, the Internet allows others to build on the established tropes, and thus lend an air of authenticity to the character.Victor Surge has commented that many people, despite understanding that the Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that it might be real.Professor Tom Peddit of the University of Southern Denmark has described Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age’s closing of the “Gutenberg Parenthesis”; the time period from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were codified in discrete media, to a return to the older, more primal forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire tales, in which the same story can be retold, reinterpreted and recast by different tellers, expanding and evolving with time.Shira Chess has noted that the Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open source ethos of the Internet, and that, unlike those of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, the Slender Man’s mythos can be tracked and signposted, giving a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form.Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm, has suggested that the Slender Man represents modern fear of the unknown; in an age flooded with information people have become so inured to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand.Troy Wagner, the creator of Marble Hornets, ascribes the terror of the Slender Man to its malleability; people can shape it into whatever frightens them most.

Source

One of the exciting audioclips is from YouTube and is called “Thomas Nealy interrogation (Slender Man attack)”:

And finally there is this documentary about Slender Man (5 parts):

So is Slender Man a real-deal? I think that in this case like others so called “campfire tales” partly it is true and one part of it is a hoax. But watch out for Slender… and stay tuned for more CREATURES FROM BEYOND!