Fan art featuring multiple hand-drawn sketches of Slender Man in different poses with handwritten notes analyzing design.

Slender Man

1999creepypastadead

Published March 10, 2026 · Updated March 12, 2026

Also known as: Slenderman · Slender Guy · SM · Slender Man Meme

Slender Man is a fictional horror character created by Eric Knudsen on the Something Awful forums in June 2009, depicted as a tall, faceless figure in a black suit who stalks and abducts children. What started as two doctored photographs in a Photoshop contest became one of the internet's most significant pieces of collaborative fiction, spawning web series, video games, a feature film, and a real-world moral panic after two 12-year-old girls stabbed a classmate in 2014 to prove their devotion to the character.

creepypasta memes something awful memes collaborative fiction memes moral panic memes

Overview

Slender Man, typically shown as an unnaturally tall, thin humanoid wearing a black suit and tie, with a completely blank white face lacking any features. He has long, stretching arms and tentacle-like appendages that extend from his back1. According to the mythology built around him, he targets children and young adults, lurking in forests and abandoned locations4. Proximity to him supposedly causes "Slender sickness," a mix of paranoia, nightmares, nosebleeds, and electronic interference with cameras and screens3.

The character works because he's deliberately vague. His motives, origins, and the fate of his victims are left ambiguous, which made him the perfect canvas for thousands of contributors to build on1. As folklorist Jeff Tolbert put it, the character's development was "an open-sourcing of storytelling"1.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan/CreepyPasta.com
Creator
Eric Knudsen
Date
June 2009

On June 8, 2009, a thread titled "Create Paranormal Images" launched on the Something Awful forums, challenging users to digitally manipulate ordinary photographs into convincing paranormal scenes3. Two days later, on June 10, forum user Victor Surge (real name Eric Knudsen) posted two black-and-white photographs showing groups of children with a tall, spectral figure lurking in the background4.

The first image carried the caption: "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"4. The second described a recovered photograph from the "Stirling City Library blaze," noting that fourteen children had vanished the same day4.

Knudsen drew inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King's *The Mist*, reports of shadow people, the Mothman legend, and the Tall Man from the 1979 film *Phantasm*4. His goal was "to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and [which caused] unease and terror in a general population"4.

By June 11, Knudsen had added more images and a fake doctor's account. Other Something Awful users quickly jumped in. SA user LeechCode5 posted a photograph of a burning building with Slender Man backstory on June 12, and user TrenchMaul reused the character for his own story on June 143. The original thread extended to 46 pages3.

The creation may have also been influenced by the "Chzo Mythos" adventure games published by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw in 2003, which featured a villain called "Cabadath," sometimes referred to as the "Tall Man," a thin figure in a long black coat with a blank face3.

How It Spread

Slender Man jumped from Something Awful to 4chan's /x/ (paranormal) board almost immediately. The earliest known 4chan mention dates to June 24, 2009, just two weeks after the original post3. From there, it spread to the Unfiction Forums, DeviantArt, TVTropes, and dozens of other sites3.

The character's first major media adaptation came on June 20, 2009, when a YouTube channel called Marble Hornets released the first entry of a found-footage series about a film student stalked by a Slender Man-like figure called "The Operator"2. Created by Troy Wagner and Joseph Delage, the series ran until 2014 and pulled in over 250,000 subscribers with 55 million views across 65 episodes11. Marble Hornets introduced several key elements to the mythology, including "proxies" (humans under Slender Man's control) and the "⦻" circle-cross symbol4.

A wave of Slender Man web series followed, including TribeTwelve, EverymanHYBRID, and Dark Harvest, building what fans called "the Slenderverse"7. Creepypasta communities became the main hub for written fiction, where stories were shared as if they were true accounts, like digital campfire tales1.

The character hit mainstream gaming in 2012 with *Slender: The Eight Pages*, a free Unity-based horror game by Mark "AgentParsec" Hadley where players navigate a dark forest collecting notes while being stalked by Slender Man9. PC Gamer and Kotaku covered the game, which became a viral hit and spawned countless YouTube reaction videos12. Its sequel, *Slender: The Arrival*, developed by Blue Isle Studios with Knudsen as producer, launched in March 20135.

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson acknowledged Slender Man as the direct inspiration for Minecraft's Enderman mob, a tall, black, teleporting creature that attacks when players look at it12.

On Tumblr, the character spawned its own parody ecosystem. In July 2012, user Conjured Charisma posted a photo of a faceless mannequin in trendy clothes, which user I Lack Tact dubbed "Trender Man," Slender Man's "sassy gay brother"13. The joke character got its own meme generator page and fan art3.

Platforms

4chanCreepyPastaYouTubeRedditMedia

Timeline

2011-03-01

The blog Encyclopedia Slenderia revealed that the original woodcut of "Der Ritter" did not actually show additional limbs, debunking part of the in-universe mythology fans had built around Slender Man.

2012-07-01

Something Awful user Conjured Charisma posted a photo of a faceless mannequin in trendy clothes, which user I Lack Tact dubbed "Trender Man," Slender Man's "sassy gay brother."

2014-05-31

In Waukesha, Wisconsin, two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, stabbed their classmate Payton Leutner 19 times in an attempt to prove their dedication to the fictional Slender Man character.

2016-05-01

Sony Pictures began developing a Slender Man feature film, with David Birke writing the screenplay.

2023-10-01

The Slender Man video game franchise continued expanding with VR versions planned and a sequel, S: The Lost Chapters, scheduled for 2026.

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Frequently Asked Questions

References (45)

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