December 10, 2009

            She finally called. The nurse. She finally called. She said her name is Tammy. She didn’t call sooner because she had ‘an emergency’ in her family. I’m sitting here thinking I’m losing my damn mind and my husband won’t talk to me unless he has to anymore, and she couldn’t call because it was ‘inconvenient’ … fuck that. Fuck her. I’m holed up in my library and I haven’t slept in days. Bits and pieces here and there when my eyes simply wouldn’t stay open anymore; that’s it. But she was ‘busy.’ Whatever. I got what I needed.

            Tammy said these people she mentioned are online. They actually post their experiences on a website. I suppose, like me talking to my computer, it gives them a way to talk to each other. The best part is even though they can talk about it, right there in the open, no one thinks they’re crazy for it, because those who don’t believe simply don’t take it seriously. And those who know better; well, those who know better get validation that they aren’t the only ones.

            Anyway, Tammy said she gave one of these people parts of my file from Thanksgiving but not to worry because she had taken out the identifiers. She said this guy was interested in my story and wanted to talk to me, so she gave me the web address for this site and an e-mail address. I sent an e-mail right away and the guy got back  to me even as I began my diary entry about it. I’m going to send him my diary entries so I don’t have to waste time telling everything again.

            Maybe … maybe everything’s going to be okay. Maybe they can help. Maybe it’ll stop now. I can’t wait to go look at the website after I send all this.

            -J

December 6, 2009

            Can’t stop crying. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Trying to cry quiet. In the library. Can’t let him hear. He’ll bring me in again. Can’t let him hear. Can’t go back. Not crazy. Too real. Too, too real. Why haven’t I heard from the fucking nurse?! What the fuck?!

            Breathe. Have to calm down. Need to talk. Need to be coherent. Breathe. Calm. Calm.

            Okay. We were in bed. Everyone was sleeping. I got up to go to the bathroom. This sounds crazy even to me, but it was too real not to be. Too real. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. I was standing in front of the sink, looking in the mirror. I look like hell. I’ve always had insomnia, but it’s gone from bad to worse.

            As I stood there, I started to get the creeps. I don’t know what else to call it. Like I wasn’t alone, but I could clearly see that I was. The light was on, and it’s just a small half bath. Toilet. Sink. Mirror. Shelf. That’s it. I felt like I was being watched, and my bare feet were starting to sweat on the tile from my nerves. And I felt a cold hand on my left shoulder.

            All of a sudden the hand was gone and I was in a deep cave. It had a circular tunnel like a hobbit hole. I have no idea how I got there. I was just looking in the mirror a second before. It was cold. The rock was mostly brown with some white marbling to it, and it was very wet. At the end of the tunnel was a wider space, with a strange sound coming from it. It was almost like a small room, except where there should have been a wall opposite the tunnel there was a large opening in the rock, like a window, barred with stalagmites and stalactites. The sound was coming from the other side of the window and was much louder here. It sounded like water.

            I became aware of other people with me, but … not. I don’t know how else to say it. It was more like I had a vague knowledge of faceless shadowy forms rather than actually seeing people directly. And when I looked, it was as if they dimmed. I was terrified, but I couldn’t go back to the tunnel because they were behind me too. Just standing there. Not moving.

            I went to the window to see if I could get out that way. Pressing my face between the rocky bars, I was looking down into a larger opening with more stalagmites and stalactites all over the other side of it but only smaller ones in the middle of the ceiling. Glancing behind me, the shadowy figures still hadn’t moved. God, they were creepy. I looked through the window again. The larger room was deep. I had to look way down to see an underground lake with a small but powerful underground river to the left flowing into it, although the lake water wasn’t rising.

            Wiping tears from my eyes, I notice that what I first thought was large rocks in the river weren’t stationary. It was carrying … I still can’t believe it. People; bodies; corpses, floating like logs in a log-jam into the lake, where they simply ceased to exist. Into my mind came a close-up picture of the face of one of the corpses. It was a man. His short brown hair was wet and plastered onto his pale, slightly bloated face. His face was crudely made up and rouged like they used to do in the old west, yet I could plainly see that there were odd circular red spots scattered over his skin. Each spot was about the size of a dime, and the skin of each spot looked raw and sore, almost like cigarette lighter burns, though I’m not sure what they were. The image flew from my mind like a photograph thrown Frisbee-style, down to the river and attached itself to a body.

            And I was standing in my bathroom again, blinking from the harsh suddenness of the light bulbs overhead. I wondered if I’d dozed off standing there, but I realized the vinyl tile under my feet was ice cold. I couldn’t have been standing there long. Shaking, I opened the door to the bedroom and peered over to the clock on my nightstand. There’s just no way. It was five minutes earlier than it was when I got up to go to the bathroom. Five minutes earlier. There’s just no way.

            -J

There's a bubbling sound. I don't know where it's coming from. It's dark in here and the ground is rough. I can't see anything but I can feel a breeze on my skin and I know I'm naked. The sound is coming from somewhere ahead of me. I reach out to either side of myself and my right hand touches a wall, rougher than the floor. Feels like stone. Granite maybe. Impossible to tell in the dark. The dark. It was oppressive.

The last thing I remember for sure is lying in bed. I had kissed The Wife goodnight as I went to lay down and she headed off for work. The light in the closet was on because even at this age, the darkness worries me. More so in the last few months than in the last twenty years combined. I see things in the half light, shapes in the corners. Like a child, my mind makes monsters of the mundane.

I slide my feet slowly along the rough floor. A sweeping forward step, my feet never truly leaving the ground, to ensure I step on nothing sharp or trip over something in my path. I do not rush, though the blood in my veins is doing so. Pounding in ears. I'm terrified of this dark, of not knowing, of finding out. I don't really want to move forward, but I see little good in standing here, alone in the black. So forward I move, towards the bubbling sound and further into the unknown.

The ground slopes downward slightly. That much I can tell. It occurs to me that I ought to be moving up instead of down. Up usually denotes out when you are underground, which I think I am. Still, there's that sound and afraid or not, it's the only real landmark I have in this place. If you can call it that.

A hundred feet further on (I think though it's hard to say) my feet reach liquid. Cool, and lapping gently at my toes as I stand stock still. Water in the dark. Another small terror. Black inky water full of who knows what ready to swim up and take interest in me. Underground, in the dark, at the water's edge. This place seems tailor made for me to be afraid of. I'm paralyzed here. Unable to move forward. Back the way I came and up is my only option. I turn and begin to shuffle back carefully.

There's a whisper in the dark up ahead. I'm not even sure I heard it at first over the bubbling sound coming behind me, but the second time it happens I'm sure. It's a papery sound. Cloth sliding against itself. I stop. This sound is somehow worse than the water. It's an insectile sound and if there is one thing that makes me shake more than water in the dark, it's the idea of being set upon by... doesn't bear thinking about. The sound is individual, a single thing. Certainly not the horrible swarm of crunchy brown bodies my mind wants to conjure up.

When the hands close around my shoulders I scream. I can't help it. It is so sudden, so quiet. I never knew there was someone else in here with me. When a second set of hands close on my thighs I realize that the word someone may not actually apply here.  They're strong. So strong. I struggle and scream but they just lift me up. I'm in the air shaking, writhing, screaming to get away when suddenly the arms holding me heave me back, then forward again. I sail through the air, the strength behind those arms throwing my weight easily a hundred feet through the air where I splash bodily into the blackness behind me. The water is deep where I land. Too deep to reach the bottom and I am swallowed up by it. Disoriented. Flailing. I don't know which way is up and I suddenly realize that I may be swimming deeper instead up towards the surface. My air is running out. I force myself to stop and let the air in my lungs do what it does naturally. Rise.

But there isn't enough in me. I'm not going up and what I have isn't enough to sustain me down here in the dark. I'm not rising, not falling. Neutral buoyancy. My body is screaming at me to breathe, my mind is screaming at me to move...

And I am screaming in my bed. The wetness on my body is not water, but sweat. I am not drowning, not suffocating. I am... fine. I rise shaking and stumbling and make my way to the bathroom where I vomit in the tub because it is the first thing I reach before I can hold back my rising gorge no longer. I stand there, heaving. When the urge passes I wipe my mouth and stumble to the mirror. My hair is askew, my eyes are bloodshot. Honestly no news there. I turn on the faucet and cup my hands, drinking the water to rinse away the taste of bile. It's then that I really notice them. The marks on my arms. They're on my legs as well. I step back to see them better. Finger marks as though something grabbed me, squeezed as tight as it could. What ought to be bruises, but aren't exactly. They aren't black or blue or even that greenish yellow that you get after they've begun to heal a bit. No.

They're livid white.

The following is one of three of patient 4077212's journal entries made shortly after release from Northwest Medical Center. Given to us by 4077212 herself after contact was made between her and us thanks to the nurse that sent us the original case file excerpt. The entries cover 4077212's stay at NMC during her observation period as well as events leading her to contact us. We here at the Slender Man Chronicles have only made changes to any names in order to protect the identities of those involved. In the interest of brevity, we will be posting them one at a time. Read about her first night in the NMC after the jump.

The copper taste of fear in the back of my throat is the first sign that something is wrong. It rises up in my gorge suddenly. So suddenly it takes me a moment to realize what it is. I didn't even realize I was afraid until I tasted it. It's a bitter taste that makes me want to cough and it's very presence makes me suddenly paranoid. The taste, the vomitous horror of it, plagues me on my walk home and I know he must be there. Watching and waiting just around the corner, just out of sight.

It's cold out tonight. One of the coldest nights in some time, though not quite as bad as last night. Last night it snowed, which I know isn't a big deal to a good portion of you. It's normal to my brother in Minneapolis or my cousin in New York or a half Mexican dude in Philly or a little red haired girl in Colorado but on the Gulf of Mexico it's relatively rare. The white flakes fell and I didn't for a moment think of the watcher in the dark though he certainly must have thought of me.

Today, though, things were different. Today I decorated the tree. Today I watched The Godfather. Today I walked to a friend's house and on the way home a few hours later, I felt it again. That sense of being hunted that leaves me feeling half blind. Halfway home I looked at the pool as it glowed a quiet blue-green and I knew. He was behind me. It or him or whatever. It was there somehow and though when I spun around I saw nothing but the normalcy of the buildings behind me at 3AM, I still knew. I ran, ran for home and I slammed the door behind me and I shuddered.

I flipped the deadbolt, I made a drink and I made a sandwich and I began to watch some television but I knew. If the curtains hadn't been there, I would see him. I know he's out there. I know he's watching. I'm too terrified to open the blinds to check but I know he's there, waiting. Watching. Hungry.

I need a drink.

I'm just getting to bed. I've been here a couple of hours now. Lying in the forced darkness of my room the black curtains provide. The house is empty but for myself and the cat, who does not care to be near me and so stays in my daughter's room. It is almost quiet. Almost but not quite. A vague tapping sound from somewhere in the house keeps making my nervous system jump. All is quiet and calm and then every synapse is lit up like Times Square. Just... tapping.

I've got that feeling again. Watched. Seeing that shadow shape from the corner of my eye. I haven't slept properly for days and though I'm tired now I still cannot drift off without feeling as though something may be waiting. That if I close my eyes for too long it will just be a matter of time till I feel bone thin fingers scraping along my skin in the dark.

There is little I can do, of course. As a wise man once said, "you don't fuck with the infinite, man." And if it is waiting for me, let's face it... it can wait forever.

So to pass the time I lie here and I type on the tiny keys of my phone. I lie here and hope that this time isn't my time. I hope that if it is, I simply don't wake up.

Sometimes I think I should hope for madness to take me. Other times... I fear it already has.


-- Posted From Somewhere in Time and Space

Northwest Medical Center
Subject: [REDACTED]
Case No.: 4077212

Patient's distress is evident. Physical appearance indicates lack of sleep but there is no outward indication of psychosis. Patient was brought in by husband after what he described as possible night terrors. Patient was hysterical at time of admission but seems to have calmed since then.

The following is a transcript of patient's description of events leading to admission, quoted on this page for quick reference.

"Last night, I lay in bed alone. As I was curled beneath my blankets, thinking about the next day's dinner, I suddenly felt I wasn't as alone as I'd thought. Sure it must be my imagination, I rolled onto my left side. I burrowed further under my blankets and began to contemplate whether or not I would make Christmas cards this year and if so, for how many. 

That's when I felt it. A cold, thin hand resting lightly on my bare leg, just above the back of my left knee. Under my blanket. I screamed and sat up, flinging my blanket off my legs and pulling it up under my chin and clutching it to my chest all at once. The bottom half made a dull thud as it fell to the bed next to me. I was alone. 

Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement near my dresser. A shadow stepped away from it and moved silently across the room. Dear God, was it fast! But how could it be so quiet on those ancient hardwood floors? I reached for the lamp on my bedside table and pushed the thumb knob just as it reached for the doorknob. 

That's when I saw it. There was no one there, but there was still a shadow! I could barely believe my eyes, but I know what I saw! In an instant, it slipped quickly down the wall and out under the door. I ran to the door, then down the stairs, screaming and flipping light switches as I ran through the house. My terrified shrieks and the sudden bursts of light woke the kids in their rooms and my husband, who was asleep in a living room recliner, but I found nothing else. All the doors and windows were locked. 

Honestly, I don't even know what I was looking for. Where can shadows not hide? What flimsy lock or thin pane of glass could keep it in or out? 

And that ... That's why I'm here. So you see, this is all just a misunderstanding. Can I go home now, Dr. Lee? I'd really ... I'd really like to spend Thanksgiving with my family."

Patient, while possibly delusional, does not appear to pose a danger to either herself or others, but an observation period of no less than three days is recommended. Anti-psychotics to be prescribed for hallucinations.

It can be safely assumed (as much as things of the nature of “The Slender Man” can ever be safe, or for that matter, assumed) that what we are dealing with is a multi-dimensional entity. If the Slender Man is capable of appearing to simultaneous witness, vanishing and appearing at will, trans-mutating his bodily shape (notably his limbs) and dragging his victims into another dimension, it is abundantly clear that he is not obeying the laws of physics. Hence, a “safe assumption” (there’s that sticky phrase again) would be that The Slender Man comes from a place outside what we define as “consensus reality.”

Or does he?

One of the strangest categories of unexplained phenomenon (as well as theoretical physics, for that matter) concern “time slippage.” Although skeptics will have you believe that it’s an “alleged” phenomenon (“alleged” being another dirty word) it’s important to remember that science is making confounding discoveries every day, including the fact that the mere THOUGHT of looking at an atom will alter it’s behavior. If modern science has proven, under laboratory conditions, that the mind can alter, or perhaps even create matter and control it’s behavior, who’s to say that the Slender Man isn’t merely exploiting an area of physics that we have no understanding of? More importantly, what exactly is a time slip? And how would the Slender Man use it to his advantage?

The concept of time suddenly becoming fluid, and ending with baffling (or oftentimes, fatal consequences) goes back as far as recorded human history. One of the earliest (although sadly unverifiable) reports come from Mexico City. On October 25, 1593, A Spanish soldier who had been assigned to a regiment in the Philippines was arrested and taken before the Most Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition, (a frightening enough prospect in and of itself.) Explaining that he thought he was still in Manila, he was confounded by his presence in Mexico, as the journey had taken him, in his own words, “Less time than it takes a cock to crow.” Explaining that he had merely been walking to the palace garrison in Manila, only to find himself in Mexico, his interlocutors demanded to know why he had been walking to the garrison. He explained that he was reporting for guard duty after the assassination of Don Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, the Governor of the Philippines. Thinking him a deserter, and having heard no such news, he was imprisoned. News traveled slowly in 1593, and almost two months later, it was revealed that Dasmarinas had indeed been murdered on the night of October 24, 1593…mere hours before the soldier appeared with no way to explain his sudden arrival in Mexico. Further investigation revealed that his fellow soldiers had indeed seen him that night, marching off to the garrison, as ordered. The Tribunal concluded that he had merely “gotten lost,” and was sent back to the Philippines.

If this seems impossible, or perhaps an anecdote from centuries past, be aware that the occurrences have happened recently, as recently as 1901 (for the sake of brevity, see wiki on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moberly-Jourdain_incident.

Or, if Wikipedia seems suspect, dip into the archives of Oxford University and judge for yourself: http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/caemoberly.html

We here at The Slender Man Chronicles always urge you to do your own research, make your own decisions, and act accordingly. The only thing we can do is speculate, specifically, on the origins of the Slender Man, and question what nefarious purpose he might have in mind for us. And what better place to start speculating than by looking at a little theoretical physics? Before you groan, know that understanding as much as we can about this mystifying shadow world of physical properties may help shed some light on the Slender Man. After all, an entity who can shapeshift, open and travel through dimensional gateways, become invisible, and drag people into alternate realities clearly has a few tricks up his long, black sleeve. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. So what can science tell us about the capabilities of the Slender Man?

I am not Stephen Hawking, and this is not a forum to engage in semantic arguments regarding what time “is” or “isn’t.” For our purpose, we shall have to agree that time, as it is viewed by the average working stiff, is a fixed constant. One day containing twenty four hours, each hour containing sixty minutes, and so on. As we understand time thusly, we accordingly plan our actions around it. Thus, a loose conclusion can be made regarding what time “is.”

But what if someone, or more frighteningly, something, were able to disregard our carefully constructed edifice concerning “when” exactly an event has to happen? What if, through some manipulation of a substance greater than time, it is able to align itself precisely at a moment when it knows we will be most vulnerable? More horrifyingly, what if we have done this to ourselves? We’ve all heard the story of “The Grandfather Paradox,” regarding the man who travels back in time to murder his own Grandfather, yet finds he is incapable of doing so because to carry out said act would negate his own existence. Should the time traveler in this case indeed be able to kill his own grandfather, he himself would never have existed in the first place, an event which would have necessitated the death of his own grandfather in the second place, because he would, in effect, merely be fulfilling his role in history, and not changing anything. Does this seem contradictory? It isn’t, and this is the theory posited by the Novikov self consistency principle, which claims that “random” or “contradictory” casual/time loops cannot form, but repetitive, consistent ones can. Let’s look at it thusly: Appearances of the Slender Man often come with a foreboding that goes beyond the pedestrian fight or flight response. His presence awakens a horror in us so deeply rooted as to be nearly pathological. The concept of re-living the same even over and over, throughout time, regardless of the apparent “circumstance” in which it appears, was even said by Nietzsche to be: “Horrifying and paralyzing, the heaviest burden imaginable.” Suppose, then, that in some distant past (or perhaps even distant future) we invited the Slender Man into our own realities, by merely thinking of him, and he has been capitalizing on the self consistency principles inherent in time itself to appear again and again, like some sort of ghoulish whack-a-mole? And what if, warned by some type of “sense memory,” we are aware, if even on a cellular level, of the horror he represents? Many multi-dimensional entities make their most frequent appearances under similar circumstances. The Mothman, for example, has been known to manifest in areas where mass tragedies are about to occur. Does our suspicion and fear act as a beacon for the Slender Man, calling out to him throughout time itself?

But what if it’s not this easy? What if, instead of a repeating loop of repetitive circumstances, the appearance of the Slender Man, and our reaction to him, open hundreds, if not thousands or perhaps millions of new opportunities for him to terrify us? Calculations made by Kip S. Thorne and his study of the above mentioned Novikov principle indicate that simple masses traveling through “wormholes” would never contradict themselves, as there are no primary conditions that would lend themselves to paradox once the concept of time travel is introduced. This is to say that any situation in which time/dimension travel allows the conclusion of many consistent solutions. Which leads us to parallel universes.

The notion that our destiny is inescapable might only make our present difficulties seem all the more desperate. How are we to escape a foe that can manifest himself anywhere, at any time? If paradox is impossible, how do we escape? Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation could provide us with a trick of our own. This theory suggests that all quantum events can occur in mutually exclusive histories. These alternate histories would branch out, forming a maze of possibilities that symbolized all possible outcomes of any interaction. If this is true, than any paradoxes occurring in any reality could be explained by having the paradoxical events occurring in a different/parallel universe. If we “thought” the Slender Man into existence, it stands to reason that by merely “thinking him away” we should be able to introduce a paradox in this or perhaps another universe and render him powerless, right? Think again. Stephen Hawking has suggested that even if this theory is accurate, each individual time traveler would experience a single self consistent timeline, making it impossible to travel to a world other than your own, no matter how bizarre. So maybe the determinists were right.

This suggests another, theory, our last and perhaps most terrifying. Known as “The Theory of Eternal Return,” it is a concept familiar to most of us, if not intimately. Known to the ancient Egyptians, the Stoics, and a host of other, The Theory of Eternal Return states that time is cyclical and not linear. This philosophy fell into unpopularity as Christianity gained prominence, but it holds that every condition, no matter how seemingly random, is bound to repeat itself eventually. That a finite number of states must repeat themselves within an infinite amount of time is perhaps the key to the Slender Man’s power. What if the Slender Man knows every possible outcome, everywhere, in all our possible histories, throughout time? And what does this mean for us?

This all leads us back to time slippage, however hesitatingly. We must admit at the onset that the Slender Man has capacities to reach us that are beyond our ability to control. He is not summoned, nor is he beckoned. He appears as he wishes, and does with us as he will. Could “time slippage” be considered not a slippage of our own time, as we know it, but a condition of paradox created by the Slender Man, in his own reality, do disrupt the patterns in ours? The odious conclusion reached by these suggestions seems to be that, given the lengths this being will go to reach us, whatever waits for us along the byzantine corridors of time itself will be countless times more horrifying than a slim shadow at the window.

A screengrab of the original page before it was torn down by terrified Wikipedia editors.

Click for full size.

Seven people are dead in a massacre at a southeastern Texas mobile home

The county's police chief, Matt Darling, provided few other details Saturday evening in a news conference other than to say that his officers are actively pursuing leads but have no firm suspects

"This is a record for us. We've never had such an incident with so many victims," Darling told reporters. "It's not a scene that I would want anybody to see."

He said authorities discovered the victims when responding to a 911 call shortly after 8 a.m. Saturday.

Police said the probe was a homicide investigation. Some of the victims had been tentatively identified, but names and ages haven't been made public.

The mobile home park consists of about 100 spaces and is nestled among centuries-old live oak trees.

Most of the victims were found inside the mobile home with the exception of a single teenage girl found impaled in the upper branches of one of the nearby trees. Police have given no theory as to how she got there and would not disclose the nature of the wounds suffered by the other victims.

Local resident of the trailer park, James Tyler, told reporters that, while he didn't know exactly what happened, the word "disemboweled" had been overheard and he himself had witnessed police removing what appeared to be plastic bags full of internal organs.

More news as the story develops.

I can't leave the house anymore. Don't even like walking near the door. When I go to the fridge to get ice for a drink, I make myself lean over to reach the freezer. Anything to keep a little further from the blinds on the back door.

I haven't seen signs of him for three days now. That's how long it's been since I last looked outside. I don't know what to make of that. I'm starting to suspect he's not there if I'm not looking for him, like he only exists because I think about him.

Too bad I can't stop.

Even still, I can't stay in here forever. I'm running out of food. If I miss much more work I'll be fired. Tomorrow I'll have to go out and the thought terrifies me in a way that nothing in my life ever has before.

Knowing I have to go out is tormenting me. I feel an overwhelming need to look out the window.

The porch light is on and I'm pretty certain there's nothing out there. The blinds are closed as I force myself slowly towards them. My phone in my hand, I switch it to camera mode and point it at the blinds. I hold it up, and squeeze my eyes shut. If there's anything there I don't want to see it in person.

As fast as I can, I roll the blinds open and snap a picture then roll them back closed. Only then do I open my eyes and look at the screen on my phone.

Oh.

Oh, god.

Considering that here at "The Slender Man Chronicles," we deal primarily with the unexplained, it might be easy to dismiss myself and the good Reverend as crackpots, shut-ins, or deluded sc-fi nerds who have seen too many movies. I think we'd both admit to being all of the above, but before you dismiss us entirely, let's look at a few quotes attributed to actual "authority figures," and see what they know, and have been keeping from us, all these years.

"The amazing phenomenon reported is something real, and not visionary or fictitious."

-Gen. Nathan Twinning, Chief of Staff, USAF, in his Air Materiel Command Report, September 23, 1947.

"I must insist upon full access to discs recovered. The Army grabbed one and would not let us have it for even a cursory examination."

-handwritten memo from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, dated July 15, 1947

"Pilots have revealed cases when a UFO would fly right off their plane's wing. Highly secret Government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about."

-Senator Barry Goldwater, who further claims he was denied access to "The Blue Room" at Wright-Patterson Air Force base, where UFO artifacts are allegedly stored under extremely tight security.

"The evidence is now so consistent and so overwhelming that no reasonably intelligent person can deny that something unexplained is going on in our atmosphere."

-Lord Hill-Norton, Admiral of the British Fleet, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, 1974-1977

"More than ten thousand sightings have been reported. I am convinced these objects do exist, and that they are not manufactured by any nation on earth."

-Air Chief Marshall Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of the RAF during the Battle of Britain, 1954

"UFO's are interplanetary in origin."

-Air Technical Intelligence Center, Situation Estimate Document, dated  august 5, 1948

(which USAF Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg ordered destroyed for fear it would "cause panic.")

"If you could see the reports coming in from the Airborne Gendarmerie, the Mobile Gendarmerie, and the Gendarmerie conducting investigations, then you would see it is all pretty disturbing."

-French Minister of Defense Robert Galley, 1974

"It is my view that the UFO situation has possible national security implications which transcend the interests of a single service."

-Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, CIA Director, 1950-53, in a memo to the National Security Council.

"For the last six months we have been working with a Congressional Committee investigating official secrecy concerning proof that UFO's are real machines under intelligent control."

-Major Donald Keyhoe, during a live CBS broadcast, although audio was cut off mid-statement for "Reasons of National security."

"Behind the scenes, high ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned, but through official secrecy and ridicule, citizens are led to believe that UFO's are nonsense."

-Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, CIA Director, 1947-50

"UFO's do exist, are very real, and are spaceships from another or more than one other solar system."

-Professor Herman Oberth, former German rocket scientist and "Father of American space travel."

"It seemed to move toward us, then partly away, then return, then depart. It was bluish, reddish, and luminous."

-UFO sighting report by then Governor Jimmy Carter, 1969

"If the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel it."

-President Ronald Reagan, speaking to UFO eyewitness Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit, 1985. Reagan repeated this statement three times.

"We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other galaxy."

-Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in his address to the Military Academy at West point, 1962

Convinced? The truth is ultimately more horrifying than our fantasies. What else are they keeping from us? 

He's waiting out there right now. It's just past dark and I can see him. A vague outline of shadow on the edge of the corona of light from the streetlamp across the road. I don't know how he got there. I was watching the street the whole time and as the sun sank low and the streetlight flickered to life, suddenly his presence was there.

When I saw it, my breath caught in my throat. How is that possible? How is he just suddenly there? Of course, the truth is that I can't really see him, even now, but I can feel him out there. A sort of air of menacing hunger.

The shadow shifts slightly and I know that he sees me. That he's looking right at me. I stifle a scream and yank my curtains closed.

I don't know what to do.

I stand there, heart pounding in my ears for almost ten minutes and when something slams into the front door to my left like a battering ram, the noise is so sudden that I simply pass out.

-- Posted From Somewhere in Time and Space

We've discussed, at some length, the possible origins of the Slender Man. Whether he be a thought-form "Tulpa," an extra-dimensional entity summoned from the aether through various ritual practices, or something much more nefarious, remains to be seen. What has not changed, however, are some startling similarities between the Slender man and another of our favorite denizens of the outer realm...the Men in Black.

Abandon everything you know about M.I.B. courtesy of the films of the same name. Avoid making tin-foil hat jokes and comments about kooks and crackpots. The Men in Black have been terrorizing U.F.O. eyewitnesses for well nigh fifty years, and if we take into account a few M.I.B. sightings that involved "time slippage" (a concept I'm sure most of our readers are familiar with, but will be covered at greater length in future posts) we just might have to consider that an entity similar to the M.I.B. has been with humanity since it became important enough to murder for the sake of secrecy.

Coming hot on the heels of the U.F.O. wave of the early 1950's, the Men in Black are often associated with unidentified flying objects, but have also been reported (with greater and greater frequency) alongside such phenomenon as the Mothman, Bigfoot, and psychic phenomenon. The only uniform feature of these beings is their ability to horrify the folks they are interrogating, and while many of the M.I.B. claim to be interlocutors on behalf of some unnamed "Intelligence Agency," no evidence exists to support that they are indeed HUMAN, let alone representatives of any federal agency.

The most notable characteristic of the M.I.B. is, of course, their appearance. Dressed in somber black suits and narrow black ties, often with snap-brim fedoras to complete the effect, they appear as a sort of sinister Ward Cleaver. Often described by eyewitnesses as looking "Oriental" or, as one startled eyewitness in West Virginia claimed, "Not white, not at all. He looked like one of those National Geographic fellers." M.I.B. are also reported to speak in a "stilted or robotic cadence" and frequently use outmoded slang terms, as if they have time-slipped into out present tense in a moments notice and have been unable to adapt to our unique, modern vernacular. When not acting like the sinister ghouls they are, M.I.B., say Doug Moench, author and conspiracy researcher; "Can be quite bizarre, either excessively furtive or open to the point of ghastly grins and unsettling giggles." Numerous eyewitnesses have claimed that M.I.B. are often baffled by commonplace objects, including pens, eating utensils, and even food. (One M.I.B. was reportedly offered a bowl of jell-o by a "victim," the M.I.B. attempted to drink it, and when this failed, set the bowl aside and ignored it in obvious frustration.)

Occasionally, (and horrifyingly) M.I.B. have been known to escort their subjects to the sites of U.F.O. encounters. Their vehicles have been almost universally reported to be "showroom new" Cadillacs or other luxury vehicles, all of 1950's vintage...and quite a number of these unfortunates even reported, frighteningly, that the interior of the vehicles smell new.

But what do they want? Obviously, as is most widely reported, the M.I.B. appear when people have seen, or been too vocal about, U.F.O. sightings. This, however, is not the easiest explanation, as is often the case when dealing with extra-dimensional entities. Often, the M.I.B. will confiscate film, photographs, or other evidence that the witness may have collected, all while pretending to operate under the jurisdiction of some unnamed Federal Authority. This has been recorded with enough frequency that the C.I.A. has become involved. Freedom of information act files exist which document the C.I.A.'s attempt to locate these imposters, which was of special importance when the U.S.A.F. was conducting "Project Bluebook," as the M.I.B., whoever (or whatever) they were were essentially stealing what amounted to sensitive intelligence data. To date, none of these "Intelligence Officers" have ever been located.

But is that why they're really here? M.I.B. have been known to present themselves as rigid, oppressive de-bunkers (U.F.O.'s DO NOT EXIST!) and sometimes, pry for information from eyewitnesses, as if they are researchers trying desperately to prove the existence of U.F.O.'s. (You REALLY saw it? Flying saucers are REAL???) Most bizarrely, teams of M.I.B. often make take these two contradictory positions while interrogating the same subject, a sort of interstellar good cop/bad cop routine.

All of these anecdotes are easy enough to dismiss, right? It was, after all, the 1950's, the "Atomic Age." and people's imaginations were running wild. The M.I.B. sightings died down, and apparently became just another bizarre, frightening footnote in the annals of unexplained phenomenon. Right? Wrong.

Beginning in 1990, terrified parents reported being visited by "social workers," operating under the authority of various (but never named) child protection agencies, or carrying warrants issued by judges who did not exist. This was happening on a national scale, a problem so large that 23 (!) police agencies nationwide formed a task force to locate these attempted kidnappers. A database was developed, and a stark, mortifying fact was revealed. Nationwide, the parents all reported the "social workers" as being "somewhat asian looking, with an unknown accent, wearing an older suit and driving a vintage Cadillac." This is not a spook story, kids. This really happened.

So what do they want? Who are they? We've talked about thought-form Tulpas in a previous post, and if you are unfamiliar with this concept, I invite you to investigate this phenomenon at you leisure. Let's assume that the M.I.B., and by proxy, the Slender Man, are projections of the same energy. Let's say they are created within the realms of our most deeply rooted fears and brought to life by "feeding" them with our phobias. We can establish, then, that having created them, we would be responsible for their continued existence, right? Wrong. It is popularly accepted that once brought to life, Tulpas have their own will, and once invited into our realm (to them, an "alternate reality") they cannot be uninvited. Not to beat a dead horse, but as is oft repeated around here..."Try NOT thinking about him."

So, how did the M.I.B. phase-shift into the Slender Man? Who knows? But I posit this:

The M.I.B. was a master stroke of Tulpa generating, combining the most foul elements of cold War paranoia, Eisenhower era bureaucracy, social pressures to conform, and the faceless, cold efficiency of the nuclear age. We have, collectively, given the Tulpa an identity. An identity which is mutable, fluid, and subject to only one law: It must represent what we fear the most, and, furthermore, the things we fear the most without being able to articulate WHY.

The suit and tie is simply an effective element of the Slender Man's primary vocation: Terror. We see in him all things beyond our control, beyond our ability to comprehend. It could be any other costume, really. Consider the reports of M.I.B. who appeared in fashions decades out of date, or wearing clothes that wouldn't come into fashion for decades hence. These energies obviously lack a precise control of their ability to "relocate" between multi-verses, eras, or specific points in time. This is their only weakness. What draws them?

Us. And our inability to stop thinking about them, no matter how we try. Our horror of this energy, this thing that we have created, reaches out through the dimensions like a grotesque beacon. And we cannot undo it. In fact, every time you nervously slide a finger between the blinds late at night, hoping for a glimpse, just a glimpse, mind you, lest our primal terror overwhelm us, we add to the Slender Mans arsenal of disguise, and provide him with a new tactic for inching closer, night by night, nightmare by nightmare, down through the ages and across the aether, relentless. Relentless.

I can't see. I don't know if that's because it's dark or not, but my cheeks feel sticky and I try not to think about that. I can hear the dripping but I try not to. It's not even that loud, it's just that it's so close. Julie's anguished moans turned to quiet sobbing a little while ago. Now I hear nothing but the dripping. I know it's her blood. I can feel it pooling underneath me, congealing into a sticky mess in my hair. The stump of my left knee stopped hurting almost as soon as the leg had been torn off. Shock, I guess. I don't know how long I was out afterward, but now I'm awake and I've been lying here, bleeding, too afraid to move. I don't know how I'm still alive or why.

I don't know if he's still here. If "he" is even the right word. It. I don't know if it is still here. I'm straining my ears to listen for signs of it when Julie screams again. Just once. Loud and piercing and full of so much pain it hurts me to listen to it. When it trails off she takes a single ragged breath and as it slowly leaks back out of her, I know she's dead.

The very next sound I hear is… oh god, is it eating her? I didn't even see a mouth. Didn't know it could eat. A rhythmic, wet, sucking sound. A blob of something I try not to think about falls on my face, splattering so liquidly I feel my stomach clench and my bile rise.

One of its hands closes over my face just as the vomit hits the back of my teeth. It spews out around the thing's fingers as I'm lifted bodily into the air. Hanging limply, cheeks and chin dripping with ichor, and bile, and God only know what else, I'm slung backwards. I feel it press itself up against the back of my head and have just enough time for my mind to wildly picture my head as a giant Granny Smith apple when I actually hear the crunch, so loud and sharp, and then…

You might know him as an internet phenomenon, and because of this you might dismiss him as just that, another viral boogeyman meant to elicit a few minutes of uncomfortable joking from your friends and co-workers. To give something a name is to take away it's power, but the paradox of the Slender Man is that with each utterance his power grows. Who is he? More importantly, WHAT is he? And what does he want from us? Having appeared seemingly out of nowhere, tracing him back to his roots will be difficult. By all accounts, he is as old as man himself, so it is necessary for us to start our search somewhere in the 17th century.

The human experience is one colored by the quest for dominion, and it was no different for our Renaissance forebears. With vast empires at stake, nobles and wealthy power players sought guidance from outside the realm of the seemingly possible, exploring the new disciplines of alchemy, spiritism, and codified systems of ritual magick (spelled with a "k" as a result of the popularization of this alternate spelling by Alestair Crowley, in an attempt to distinguish it from prestidigitation and stage-foolery) all in an attempt to gain control, by and for means foul or fair. Europe in the 17th Century was a hotbed for Occult lodges, and among them rose the Roscrucians, or "The order of the Rosy Cross." Says Wikipedia:

The term Rosicrucian (symbol: the Rose Cross) describes a secret society of mystics, allegedly formed in late medieval Germany, holding a doctrine "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe and the spiritual realm."[1]

Between 1607 and 1616, two anonymous manifestos were published, first in Germany and later throughout Europe.[2] These were Fama Fraternitatis RC (The Fame of the Brotherhood of RC) and Confessio Fraternitatis (The Confession of the Brotherhood of RC). The influence of these documents, presenting a "most laudable Order" of mystic-philosopher-doctors and promoting a "Universal Reformation of Mankind", gave rise to an enthusiasm called by its historian Dame Frances Yates the "Rosicrucian Enlightenment".[3]

In later centuries many esoteric societies have claimed to derive their doctrines, in whole or in part, from the original Rosicrucians. Several modern societies, which date the beginning of the Order to earlier centuries, have been formed for the study of Rosicrucianism and allied subjects.

But from whom does this esoteric discipline come? Certainly an organization with such lofty aims cannot merely spring into existence directly from the aether which it deigns to control? Enter The mysterious Count de St. Germain, an allegedly immortal being who was known across Europe and worldwide. He was personally associated (all anecdotally, in likelihood,) with Casanova, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, King Louis the XV, Catherine the Great, and Anton Mesmer. (Among others.)

Among other things (as if being an immortal occultist who influenced the decisions of the mightiest empires on earth weren't enough) our intrepid Count presumably made his way to the mysterious orient, becoming a member of an Occult lodge with ties to yogic and tantric practices rooted in Tibetan Buddhism and native Bon Shamanism. According to George C. Andrews, conspiracy researcher and author (and a man to whom I am greatly in debt for some of the info in this article) these practices (Roscrucianism, Tibetan Buddhism, and assorted mid-century European occult gobboldy-gook) all amalgamated to form "The Initiated Brothers of Asia," a Buddhist profaning sect whose initiation allegedly culminated in contact with an "extra-dimensional being" who was able, under certain circumstances, to manifest physically. 

Now it gets REALLY weird. Enter Adolf Hitler. Hitler, power-mad, syphilitic sociopath that he was, dabbled quite openly in the occult, despite professing to staunch Catholicism. As any child he grew up in the eighties knows, (and who saw the "Indiana Jones" films) Hitler truly DID send Nazi expeditions to North Africa and the middle east in search of the Ark of the Covenant, as well as making vain attempts to locate the Spear of Longinus, The Shroud of Turin, and the True Cross (or pieces of it.)  When not engaged in such global-scale activities as mass-murder and the location of ancient relics, Hitler was also a member of...you guessed it: The initiated Brothers of Asia. This should come as no surprise to any serious student of the occult, the SS themselves were deeply rooted in ancient Teutonic ritual practices, and Heinrich Himmler himself had a castle at Wewelsburg, designed and built to capitalize on the ley-line energy of the area. (It was reported that the castle itself, specifically the north tower, was used as a "magickal weapon," and that attempts by allied forces to destroy it after the war all failed, so great was it's power.) 

Sources close to Hitler claimed that he was tormented by an invisible entity only he could see, and while this could very well be due to his syphilis, his drug abuse, or his general madness, it remains that by the end of the war, the Nazi regime was desperate to turn the tide against the Allies by any means necessary. This is where Hitler's invisible friend comes in. Let's take a look at German saucer technology, shall we?

Ok, let's not. There is a wealth of information available on this subject, and the reader is invited to do his/her own research on this matter, as the Slender author is tired and badly in need of some sleep. But suffice it to say, when the Allies captured the whole of German occupied territories, saucer shaped craft were, indeed recovered. Whether these were extraterrestrial in origin is open to debate, but what doesn't change is this:

The American government was sufficiently interested in these "prototypes" that they took great pains to smuggle Nazi war-criminals into the United States. With the help of the Vatican.

This was called "Project Paperclip," and was sanctioned by the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence precursor to the C.I.A.

Thus the daisy chain between occult lodge/nazis/ and American intelligence services is complete. But what next? How would the U.S. Military utilize this technology? If it had been previously developed by an enemy combatant, countermeasures were obviously in place to render it's battlefield usefulness null. But at the end of the Second World War, Germany wasn't the enemy anymore. It was the Soviets.

Thus began the Cold War, and the classic American tale every schoolboy knows...the heroic race to space. But this technology didn't merely ride on the backs of it's Fascist predecessors. It required some good old fashioned American ingenuity. Enter John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons. Born in 1914, Parson was a self-educated rocket scientist. Seriously. While other boys were fishing and joining little league, Parsons was experimenting with solid rocket fuels, to enormous success. As well as co-founding the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (an agency that essentially became N.A.S.A.) Parsons was a vocal occultist, drawing no distinction between his work in rocketry and what he considered his "real" vocation: Ritual Magick. Oh yes, he was also a close friend of the Great Beast himself, Alestair Crowley, who personally appointed him head of the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templo Orientis, a Thelemic Occult lodge re-envisioned by Crowley and modeled after many of the same Lodges that inspired Johann Sebbotendorf's "Thule" lodge, the Initiated Brothers of Asia, and later, the O.T.O. in it's various incarnations. So great was Parson's belief in the efficacy of ritual magick, it is reported he invoked the Greek God Pan before each rocket launch.

As Parsons toiled away on the American space program and his various and sundry occult interests, he began to draw the attention of some unusual characters, among them a former sailor and sci-fi author by the name of L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, THAT one, the founder of Scientology and object of scorn for generations to come. Hubbard was years away from developing Scientology, and in the meanwhile (in between stealing a sailboat from Jack Parsons and bilking him out of thousands of dollars in an ill concieved business plan involving the aforementioned boat) Hubbard took up residence in Parson's California mansion (the very one where Parsons would later die in a very, very mysterious explosion) and began to act as a "scribe" during the performance of various rituals. One of these, the "Babylon working" (alternately spelled as "The Babalon working) was written about by Alestair Crowley himself in "The Book of the Law," and was meant to open a sealed gateway between realities, granting the "Old ones full and unimpeded entry into our reality." This ritual was performed sometime between 1945-46, and in 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported an object "skipping over the mountains, shaped like a saucer" over the Cascade mountain range in Washington state. We all know the rest.

So, what happens now? Decades pass, accounts of mysterious craft and their occupants increase exponentially year by year, and psychologist Carl Jung famously calls these sightings "Products of our collective unconscious." But why? What are we trying, collectively, to express subconsciously? 

Consider the following: Having invited these entities into our reality, it is no where tacitly implied that they must behave according to the "accepted" norms of trans-dimensional beings, i.e., they need not appear as pedestrian spooks such as poltergeists and grey alien/zeta reticulans. If these entities, or "Tulpas" are drawing energy from the psychic fabric of which they are cut, why should they be anything BUT menacing, evil, and bent on our grievous harm? Having sprung from the work of at least one Fascist Dictator, one Megalomaniacal Shyster, The Holy Roman Catholic Church, and countless government agencies, not to mention hundreds, perhaps THOUSANDS of ethically dubious ritual magick cooperatives, how could these beings POSSIBLY be anything other than horrifying? 

I know. I hear what you're saying. Tulpa? What's that? Again, Wikipedia tells us:

A number of prima facie unrelated definitions have been suggested:

An image or images held in the mind of a practitioner which aids in the manifestation of intent. An agency of psychic effect which exists and takes form on the pre-physical realms of existence, which acts in accord with the Intent of its creator(s).[4]

A living spiritual being created by humans. It could be a magical person's helper, or a being created by the belief in it from masses of people.[5]

A homunculus of awareness: an instantaneous observer / observed duality. Homunculi appear in various theories of cognitive philosophy and psychology to account for different facets of conscious self. They are created by everyone every moment (in some formulations they are everyone every moment); and they possess wills of their own

If a Tulpa is, as suggested, "Created by humans" and "In possession of it's own will" as well as being "CREATED BY THE BELIEF IN IT FROM MASSES OF PEOPLE," Well, you can see where this is going...

So Jack Parsons, the possessor of some mighty powerful mojo, opens a "cosmic gateway" and something flies through. It (or they) manifest themselves according to local and personal belief, in varieties as great as "little green men," Bigfoot, Mothman, The Flatwoods Monster, ad infinitum. Remember, once these beings are invited into our reality, they have wills of their own. It can be safely assumed that they can also summarily change form (A common Belief among Tibetan Buddhists) to suit the occasion. Which brings us back, again, to the Slender Man.

He wears a conservative suit and tie, which seems appropriate given the time in which he has chosen to manifest himself. Nothing too fancy or outlandish, certainly nothing that will draw attention. No antennae. No bubble shaped helmet. Nothing particularly inhuman about him at all, really. Unless you count his ability to stretch his limbs to grotesque lengths, draw people into another dimension, never to be seen again, and come and go as he pleases without regard to time, distance, or the laws of physics. 

These energies, Tulpas, thoughforms, spirits...whatever you choose to call them, have been the "Secret Chiefs" of the human race for as long as we have deigned to possess extraordinary powers. By making a gentleman's agreement we allow these "raw energies" into our dimension, allow them free reign, and all for the asking price of being granted powers which, in a parallel universe, are probably as commonplace as speech or hearing are, here in "our" dimension. Such is the Slender Man.

You invited him here. As my esteemed colleague Rev. Don says: "Sure, you've never thought of that before. Now try NOT seeing him." 

The Slender Man is your guest, like it or not. Having opened the door, you best invite him in. Unless you want him standing outside your window all night, knuckles dragging on the ground and all, waiting, as he has for countless ages, in countless forms.

Try not seeing him.

 

Fog and smoke and liquid night roll over me and I feel that little electric twitch of being watched. That little tingling feeling on the ridge where the skull meets the spine. I don't know what is back there. I don't want to look. I hear a slight noise, like a small animal moving and breathing I know it's him but I won't look, I won't.

I see the shadow stretch up in front of me, impossibly long, too many limbs, too many angles and I won't look. I can't. Even if I wanted to. Instead I quicken my step. The shadow grows longer and I go faster and I'm running now and sweating, breathing heavy and dear god he's right behind me I can almost feel the fingers snatching at my collar and I run and run and I can see my front door and it's closer and closer and I hear the ragged sounds from behind me and I find a little more strength and I run.

When I hit the front door I turn around and look. The street is empty but at the edge of the light, I see a shadow move and I know.

I have merely bought myself a reprieve.

"The beast was allowed to make proud claims which were insulting to God, and it was permitted to have authority for forty-two months. It began to curse God, his name, the place where he lives, and all those who live in heaven. It was allowed to fight against God's people, and to defeat them, and it was given authority over every tribe, nation, language, and race..."

-Revelation, 13:5-7