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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.