... Now that I have made all the Marble Hornets fans in the audience collectively wet themselves, on to the actual discussion.
But first, I have a brief addendum. I previously stated some incorrect facts concerning Slendy's origin and creation at SomethingAwful, as well as some incorrect information concerning its appearance. Those mistakes have since been corrected and I apologize for that. No really, I'm sorry about the mistakes. It's not because I have a creepy guy in a mask holding me at knifepoint or anything...
So guys, let's talk about the Slenderman Mythos. Anonymous, creepy, and absolutely everywhere, there is not a single more genuinely symbolic entity of what the internet is than the tall, skinny, faceless humanoid abomination for which this series of blogs, vlogs, fanfics, creepypasta entries, and various other tales (including a video game now, called Slender, and several spinoff games of it) are named. And there is probably nothing more frightening than a being created online that some people are now convinced is real.
What is the Slenderman? Simply put, an eldritch abomination older than humankind, known mostly for spiriting away young children and causing horrific tragedy to follow in its wake. It stands anywhere from 9-12 feet tall, and is impossibly skinny (which is where its moniker comes from). It has many names - the Tall Man, The Operator, The Thin Man, etc. It commonly is seen to be wearing a gentleman's business suit, complete with a usually black or red tie, its arms are far too long for its body's proportions, and it is completely faceless. It has no eyes, no mouth, no ears, and only a vague concept of what we'd consider a nose to be - and sometimes, not even that. It is commonly shown to have tentacle-like appendages which it can expand and retract at will, used for snagging hapless victims. It dwells in forests mostly, moving through the trees with supernatural speed and agility when you can't see it, and standing eerily still or slowly closing in when you can. It can teleport and be in multiple places at once. It seems to have some form of psionic ability, and some say it can even induce madness and hallucinatory images. Some say it kills its victims and leaves their organs replaced haphazardly in their body cavities or the bodies horribly mutilated. Others say if it captures you, it warps your mind and body until you become a being fully willing to work for its own agenda. What is this agenda? Nobody knows.
If you think about it too long, it will find and begin to haunt you. If you research it, it begins to follow you, and the more you research it, the more it will appear to you... and you will be the only one able to see it. You will be stalked and eventually disappear... unless you can avoid it. If you believe too strongly in it, or become too obsessed with figuring out this enigmatic being that tails you, then you slowly go insane. If you stare at it for too long, it will pull you into some sort of trance, leaving you entirely helpless to its attack. Encountering it is said to cause sickness, including headaches, nausea, vomiting, coughing, and other indicators of illness. If captured on film, either motion or still, it causes strange distortions, including static, audiovisual problems, and other issues. Its true nature is shrouded in mystery and fear, and seems to see humans as something foreign to observe... or possibly destroy. It seems to be connected to a strange symbol, pictured above - a circle with an X drawn through it, known as the Operator symbol - and it is unknown if this symbol protects a person from its influence... or summons the being. Some say it is waging war against humanity, taking some of our kind and turning them into servents called Proxies. Some say it is neutral, and the tragedy attributed to it is merely coincidental. Some say it is a magical being or a fae. Some believe it is an alien or other foreign being. All agree that it is most certainly not human, and it is very, very dangerous...
How did it come to be? The Slenderman was born from a forum competition back in 2009 on the infamous and always interesting SomethingAwful forums, in a contest meant to involve creating a photograph of a monster or manufactured urban legend. It was here that the first few images of the Slenderman were formed, painting it as distinctly malevolent. These images won the competition, and soon became memetic, spreading throughout the internet. Eventually, the manufactured legend outgrew its home territorry when two SA forum Goons created the Youtube series Marble Hornets (presumably a reference to the black and white static caused by the entity and the buzzing noise associated with said static). This video series, now up to 60 episodes and counting, essentially codified and confirmed much of the canon surrounding the Slenderman, and now is considered the codifier of many aspects of the Mythos. From it sprang two other video series called EverymanHYBRID and TribeTwelve, the other two of the "Big Three" Slenderman Mythos web series, and from them have sprung blogs, vlogs, video series, films, and more, and the legend shows no signs of dying yet. The series that began all this madness even has a spinoff series called totheark, which focuses on a recurring and mysterious character that is present in several of the Marble Hornets videos. Today, the Slenderman and its mythos continue to flourish and thrive, generating paranoia and fear in generations of internet users and inspiring horror afficionados everywhere.
But why is the Slenderman such a potent source of fear? What about it jangles us to the core? Even someone unaware of what Slenderman is would no doubt be frightened by it, but why? That is what I set out to discuss and hopefully answer here today. For those Slenderfans in the audience, no, this won't become another Slenderblog (hopefully) - I don't think I could even begin to keep up with half of the blogs because they're so damn tangled together and every single one out there has crossed over with at least five other blogs at some point, some of them doing so multiple times. Plus, I just don't have the time to sit down and construct the kind of elaborate tale that so many of those blogs weave, and I'm not sure what, if any, new ideas I could contribute to the Slenderman Mythos. If you did come here looking for another Testing123 or Just Another Fool, I'm sorry to disappoint you. If you came here looking for another Marble Hornets, then I'm really sorry to disappoint you. This is just an out-of-canon look at the entity this Mythos is based around, and nothing more. Hopefully it will give some insight into those looking for a more basic interpretation or just some interesting discussion - you know me, I love horror, and I love talking about horror even more.
I was recently engaged in conversation with a relatively newish author on FFN named Zaikia, who has apparently become interested in the Slenderman Mythos. She is currently working on a Slenderman Mythos fic based in the same universe as the series Marble Hornets (many Slendy stories depict this series as genuinely fictional in their own in-story universe, although many still borrow elements from it), and I've been giving her a little bit of feedback on improving the story from a characterization and writing standpoint. Admittedly, it's difficult to pin a personality on a character that isn't human and literally is a blank slate, but that is ultimately the beauty of it - because the Slenderman has no one interpretation, any interpretation is correct. Its story is ongoing and its origin is multiple choice, somewhat like how the Joker's origin is multiple choice. This increases author flexibility and has resulted in myriad discriptions of the being's motives, personality, abilities, powers, and even some slight variations in its appearance. It's the reason some people, when drawing the being, give it a mouth with teeth, and others leave it blank. As new ideas fall into place from various blogs, vlogs, films, and other sources, old ideas fall away. It used to be commonly thought in the fandom that the being's face appeared differently for every person that saw it. Now, it is believed that it has no face and never did, always appearing blank to every person that sees it. During the course of the conversation I had with Zaikia about her story, the discussion turned to theorization on the being's abilities and powers as well as why he watched humans so much. Later, the discussion turned to the topic of why the Slenderman is such a frightening figure in general, without any of the trimmings of legend attached to it. Below is an excerpt from this discussion. As always, it's been edited only where necessary to clarify things and add in more information. Notably, the masuline pronoun (He/His/Him) is used to refer to this being, although it should be noted that this being is more properly an it, and generally considered to be genderless. The masculine pronoun is used for clarification only.
"I think it is very likely that he (Slendy) is an observer. The same way we observe animals at a zoo with interest, he observes us. It is likely he has existed since the beginning of time and will continue to exist for as long as humanity does. My theory is that he so happens to feed upon human fear, and that is why simply being around him when he's in the area causes such paranoia - something about whatever he is, I think. I don't know if he intentionally causes it for his amusement/sustainance, or if it's an aftereffect - but I do agree that belief in him makes him real, and the more you believe in him (sort of like the boogeyman) the more power he has and the more he could potentially come after you. Perhaps he is a protector of the forests or a forest spirit of some sort; perhaps he simply adapts whenever humans do and is highly evolved to be some sort of predator to the apex predator - man. Whatever he actually is, I'm not exactly convinced that he's completely evil - or if he is, then he is only evil by human standards of evil and might not even think of himself as evil. We believe him to be evil because he hunts us - what prey does not think of their predator as an evil pursuer? And think about it - when have we ever seen Slendy, in any tale about him, physically harming a human being with clearly malicious intent? It's just too blurred a line to say for certain what side of the fence he is on.
"It is possible that the tendrils are there as feelers of sorts - they sense motion, currents of air, the presence of other beings, etc. They are basically his means of gathering information about his surroundings. Since he doesn't have any visible eyes that we know of, he may "see" in heat vision or some form of inaudible-to-humans echolocation, or perhaps he hunts by sound waves or vibrations, which could also be felt not only through the ground but also through his tendrils. He may even hunt telepathically, pinpointing his prey by reading where they mentally are or tracking them through their growing paranoia, which would lend credence to the idea that he is a phobovore (fear-eater). If he does have actual vision, it is probably nothing like our vision. For example, he may see in fuzzy, black-and-white vision, and he probably can see incredibly well in the dark. It is even likely that he is blind, but not completely, and can sense changes in light and darkness only. Or he could have some sort of vision that is even more foreign to humans than this. It would seem as though, if he does actually eat humans, he may do it to scare them even more and said human is actually warped somewhere, not devoured, since in recent interpretations, no bodies from any of Slendy's victims are ever found. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he was somewhat like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who - those creatures are motionless when you look at them, incredibly fast if you turn your back, and if they catch you, they will warp you to another time entirely and feed upon the time-space that you left unoccupied. Maybe Slendy does something like that to his victims, with the exception that he certainly can move if you can see him, and is incredibly fast if you can't. We may never know, and as long as this character is speculated on and written/drawn/has videos made of him, we'll have lots of possibilities to discuss."
At this point, Zaikia pointed out that she believed the paranoia surrounding the Slenderman came from its lack of any visible facial features. I agreed, bringing up the idea of the Uncanny Valley as well as some interesting implications behind why the Mythos is so frightening:
"I agree. Nothing is scarier than nothingness, and what is Slenderman but the ultimate example of anonymity? He lives in forests. It is unknown what his mission is or where his victims are taken. He has no face. He wears a suit, and anyone who wears a suit is clearly very serious or on business duty, and is either untrustworthy or considered to be less approachable. Anonymous, an internet trolling group, uses the image of a faceless man in a business suit as their mascot, and for very good reason - they do not have any set identity, which makes them rather frightening and unknowable. There being a concept of nothing there in the woods while you're wandering about at night is far scarier than the idea of there being something there, because at least you know there is something out there. You can pin a name and face to a monster like the Rake, another Creepypasta entity (or Creepybeast as I collectively refer to them). No so with Slendy.
"Why is this? Because the Slenderman is literally unknowable and unknown, precisely because he lacks the one thing humans use to understand who and what a person is - a face. Humans attach a LOT of identity, personality, and knowability to a face, to the point that we even see faces in inanimate objects like clouds, cars, chairs, and more. This effect, when taken to the extreme, is called Pareidolia, and is a type of psychological phenomenon called apophina, the seeing of meaningful patterns in meaningless information. That is why we see faces where there aren't any, and why we give personalities to inanimate objects. Now, think about what this means in terms of a human being or humanoid that lacks these features. If someone or something lacks a face, we become instantly uneasy and frightened, because there is nothing to attribute any sort of personality or familiarity to. We don't know what the person is thinking, we don't even know if they're human. So really, Slendy having no face is playing to our fears of the uncanny and unfamiliar. Slenderman came from the internet, from collective speculation that willed him into being, and he sprung from our subconscious fears of strangers, foreign things, being lost, loneliness, etc. He continues to exist in our minds because all humans, to some degree, exhibit fears of those things, even if we will not admit it. If given a phobia to represent, Slenderman would represent xenophobia, the fear of strangers or foreign things, things we don't and can't understand. He operates on the same fear that most eldritch abominations, from Lovecraft's Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep to the alien geometries of the house in House of Leaves, operate on. In other words, Slenderman is literally the embodiment of a very common human fear, one passed down from ancient ages innumerable. And that fear is the fear of the unknown.
"Why does the Slenderman inspire this fear of the unknown, exactly? Because of the Uncanny Valley effect. This term comes from the world of robotics and engineering, and was coined by a Japanese robotics professor named Masahiro Mori. In layman's terms, the Uncanny Valley is a theoretical graph of familiarity versus how human-like something is, usually a robot. When a human being comes into contact with something human or human-like, they feel a sense of familiarity with that thing. If something is clearly not human, like a teddy bear, we feel alright with it in the room so long as it is clearly not supposed to be human-like. However, the more human that thing acts and the less human-like it looks, the more uncomfortable the person becomes with it. Our brains think it should be a person, but it's just... not, because it doesn't act like a normal, healthy human. It's a person to our brains, but it is a person that isn't quite right. In a graph of familiarity and how human-like something is, as we get more towards something looking like a human but not acting quite like a real human, the more uncomfortable we get, creating a dip in the graph. This dip is the "uncanny valley", where the human-like thing seems human but we know it isn't human - it's not human enough, or it's too human for what we know it should be. This creates strong revulsion, fear, nervousness, and general dislike of something, and the valley is deeper if an entity is moving rather than if it is still. At the bottom of the valley is the zombie, or a human corpse. This is likely why so many people dislike dolls, clowns, and very human-like robots - they act human, but don't look it, or they act human, but not quite human enough. Here is a graph of the Uncanny Valley to help explain my point:
"I believe the Uncanny Valley is something that the Slenderman, as a concept, deliberately invokes. He looks human. But he's not human. He acts almost human, but he's not human. He moves, but his motions aren't human. That creates a strong feeling of wrongness and results in paranoia, and that is where the frightening aspect of the Slenderman comes in. He doesn't look quite human, doesn't act quite human, and doesn't have a face. He's too tall to be human. His proportions are wrong for a human being. He watches people constantly, and that spooks people. Think of any very human-like robot - gives you a weird feeling seeing it move, right? That's the Uncanny Valley in effect, sending chills down your spine and making you shiver until you get a bad case of the goosebumps. In other words, the Slenderman is just human-like enough as to make us feel like he looks uncannily familiar to a human... but he is not human. And that is why this being is such a potent example of nightmare fuel, and why he induces paranoia in those who read, watch, or discuss tales about him."
So, there you have it, a little bit of discourse concerning one of the most fascinating, quickly growing, and downright terrifying memes the internet has ever spawned. Now, do be careful out in the woods on those last-minute camping trips, I've heard there's been some unexplained disappearances reported recently. And for those currently blogging about their encounters with this entity, those still running from it, I will say this:
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That's where the original article I wrote ends, made up of discussion about how Slendy invokes the Uncanny Valley to great effect, and why so many find him frightening even if they aren't aware of any of the stories within the mythos. However, that's not the end of the discussion, as I've since talked with some other Slenderfans about the topic of horror tropes, the psychology of horror, and Mr. Tall-And-Faceless in general. What follows is a series of excerpts from those discussions, speaking a bit more about the subject of horror in the Slenderman Mythos. As always, the discussions are edited for brevity, clarity, and better readability.
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- On Lovecraft and the idea of Slendy's seemingly sliding scale of neutral vs. evil:
"It is highly unusual in Lovecraft-style stories, and even seen as Jumping the Shark to some, to go into the idea of the abomination in the story (whatever it is) having some sort of sentience. Usually they are mindless beings that don't even know humanity's there, really, although a few are sentient and do purposefully toy with humans, such as with the Lovecraftian being Nyarlathotep. Slendy is different in this regard. It offers human beings odds, odds stacked in its favor, and if it feels you are not worth the gamble, it can either kill you, or let you go. The idea of Slendy being sentient and purposefully choosing its victims like a human serial killer would is, to me, far scarier than the characterization some have of him as being an aimless, hungry hunter, because it implies that Slendy is purposefully tormenting humanity and actively enjoys messing with his targets. It makes it less of a passive abomination and more of something that will chase you down relentlessly and torment you without any sort of remorse whatsoever. And that very idea is chilling enough to send shivers all through your spinal cord.
"I also find it fascinating that this particular entity, because it has seen so much fandom evolution, can be written as anything from almost neutral to pure evil, as sentient or aimless, as genuinely liking children in a friendly manner and not truly intending them any harm or as actively hating children and intending great harm to them indeed. It can be written as being fascinated by humanity, or disgusted by it. It can be written as being curious and therefore seeing us as specimens to dissect, experiment with, and observe. It can be written as hungry for our flesh and blood, or as merely hungering for our fear. That type of fluidity with a character is only possible through an amalgamation of many, many different traits and takes on them, and what's unique here is that Slendy is never explicitly given a canonical motive for what it does. That makes it unique from other mercurial characters like, for example, the Joker from Batman - he's also a fluid character with a great deal of interpretation to him, but he differs from Slendy as a villain because he does have a motive, and we sort of do know exactly why he does what he does, but we can still write him in several ways and several flavors because his whims literally change with the tides. The Joker can be anything from a prankster to a monster clown to a flat-out killer and anything in between, because that character's basic trait is that he changes his motives, methods, and ways to fit every particular scenario. Much like a real clown, the Joker puts on facades and acts to get what he wants - he does what gets under peoples' skin, but because people are different, the Joker must differ his methods. And he actively enjoys doing so, because everything is a joke to him.
"With Slendy, we don't get that kind of clear-cut motive and we don't get a resolution. We have a character that is literally without an identity, without a face even, and represents anonymity and the fear of the unknown. So in a way, all these stories are really our human attempts to "pin a face" on the Slenderman so we can either confirm or deny those fears of what it really wants. So really, Slendy is even more fluid than any other fluid character could ever be - not only does it not have a clearly set reason for existing or doing what it does, it doesn't even have its own identity, symbolized by its lack of any facial features. Humans attribute a LOT about identity and knowability to a face, and when something is literally devoid of that, not only do we panic, we also begin to wonder just what that faceless being's real plans are... and that anonymity and mystery often makes us spin a blank-faced being as malevolent. That's also why I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of some people giving Slendy a mouth with really sharp, awful teeth that he can conceal and reveal at will. That's a really cool, creepy concept, but I feel it somewhat ruins the horror of there being nothing there for a person to identify with on any level. It somewhat ruins his anonymous, unknown and unknowable feel, I think, even if it is really damn scary. And what is the Slenderman but the ultimate personification of anonymity and the unknown made real? What is it we can say is one of the most primary human fears but the unknown? There's so many ways you can spin that fear, so many things you can do with something that has no clear motive... it's very versatile for an author, because it leaves things open to interpretation.
"That's a good reason why I love the Slenderman Mythos actually - versatility. Because the antagonist's motive is not clear, you can pretty much tell whatever story you want to tell, and that's a level of flexibility not really reached with characters that have a specified goal. Even in fanfiction, which I also write, you're pretty much restricted to what and who the character is - for instance, it'd make no sense for someone like Batman, who is supposed to be the good guy, to suddenly start attacking random civilians, unless there was a specific reason he would do so (for example, the people we think are innocent civilians are actually criminals in hiding). With a character like Slenderman, you really don't have that problem, and I think that's why its mythos has grown so quickly. What, it's been like since 2004 since Slendy was first introduced on SomethingAwful as part of a random contest there? That's only about 8 years. It's not even a decade old in fandom terms, and Slenderman already has almost as many stories about it as any of Lovecraft's monsters and beasts. That's not just impressive, that's formidable, and it comes from a fandom that is very open about its main antagonist, which is why there ARE so many different interpretations. It's not really about how you happen to like your Slenderman. It's about how you feel it should act in a given situation, and what you feel is creepiest/worst/best/most unique about it.
"On that note, I do have to wonder just how many of the legends concerning Slendy are actually true in-canon, and how many of them are misunderstandings. If you dig deep enough into the Creepypasta lore behind this being, some of the first supposed "folklore" tales about it show it not so much as a child-killer, but as something that scares naughty kids straight in the most frightening possible way - by stalking them until they agree to obey their parents, and then kidnapping them if they refuse to behave. In some adaptations no bodies from its victims are ever found (this seems to be a recent thing; the implication is that the bodies are either somehow absorbed or eaten by Slendy, or the victims are made into Proxies). Of course, it doesn't help that it has freaking tentacles and moves so fast that it could be twenty feet away from you one second and right behind you the next. I am personally of the opinion (in-canon only, of course) that Slendy doesn't really care all that much about humanity (because it just isn't human and therefore we're just another animal to it), but does view us as a curiosity and something to test the limits of. That is, we're an experiment to it, although it's also equally likely that we could be a food source - but then again, nothing from the mainstream canon purposefully supports the theory that it eats humans, if it even has to eat at all. As for the organs in bags and mutilated bodies so prevalent in the original tales about the being, my theory still holds water - do you have any sort of attachment to or care for a frog you'd dissect in Biology? Probably not. Same case with Slendy, except there's no human dissection store that it can just go to and obtain dead humans for, and it really doesn't need to steal bodies when it can so easily capture them for itself. Then again, the canon for this mythos changes so much you have to be willing to accept different canonical interpretations, depending on which webshows you watch, which blogs you read, which fanfics, etc. It's why I like sticking outside of those tales and spinning my own interpretation, because that leaves things so, so much more open in terms of a story-telling viewpoint. And the nice thing is, since the canon is ever-changing and always open to new ideas about Slendy, there's really no right or wrong way to tell a Slenderman Mythos story."
- About why having Slenderman get a feature film or series of books about him is cool, but wouldn't feel quite right:
"I'd LOVE to see [Slenderman] and its mythos enter the mainstream; there's certainly an audience for it amongst those who like Lovecraftian Horror, Supernatural Horror, or even just a good monster story every now and again. Maybe some books, maybe some feature films... but to be honest, I almost want it to stay exclusively an internet thing, because really, the concept of this being is probably something best told in whispers and legends, best thought possibly real, best disseminated through the internet like an urban legend, since it is already a fabricated urban legend to begin with. That's part of where the horror with Slenderman comes from. It's an urban legend... so who knows? It could be real. People do really disappear in forests and end up dead. People have ended up being stalked by strangers - just look at any celebrity who's had an obsessed, crazy fan follow them to and from work, to their houses, even breaking in to get at them in some cases. People do indeed sometimes see things that look unearthly at night and think they're shadows. What if they're not? It appeals to the Little Us, that little kid who timidly believes there really is a monster under the bed - but now, that Little Us is in a big body, and all the Little Us wants is to be scared and have fun with it.
"I think ultimately, Slenderman and his mythos could NOT have been created anywhere other than on the internet. Not really, and even if he were, then he would not be the same being we know and love (to fear?). Note that Slenderman is at his core, a being that represents everything we do NOT know. In a word, anonymity. Now what is the greatest and worst thing about the internet? The fact that you are anonymous. You can have any identity you want. You can have hundreds of identities. You can throw away identities with things like throw-away email addresses. Or you could have no identity at all. Now what is your biggest fear as an internet user? That someone will harm you and you will never know who did it? That someone could disappear, or watch you, or take something from you, and you wouldn't even have a name, let alone a face, to go on? I'd say that's probably exactly it, if not for you, then for a lot of people online. The kind of fear borne of the concept of someone unknown harming us, someone we can't even read (because we can't see their face), is unique to an environment that cherishes anonymity and considers identities to be something that you can dispose of if the need arises. The internet IS that environment. So if that's the case, and it is, and Slendy was born on an internet forum, and he was, then doesn't it seem apt that a being that perfectly encapsulates the fear of the unknown, the fear of people and things we don't know wishing us ill, came from the internet? Something interesting to think about."
- And finally, on a more meta note, I have this to say about the fears Slenderman evokes and how to be a great horror author:
"Slendy is just an amazing, beautiful, dangerous, deadly, and fascinating creature of self-made urban legend and Lovecraft-flavored lore. Leave it to the internet, a place where anonymity is praised and seen as a virtue, an ally, and a tool to be used and exploited, to create a boogeyman that is essentially a personification of the dark side and fear of too much anonymity. Plus, tentacles. The internet has seen enough hentai to know where that is going. Slenderman is essentially a boogeyman for what internet users fear - being found out, being watched, a lack of privacy, too MUCH privacy, the loss of identity, etc. It's also a strong symbol of things humans have feared for a very long time - anything uncanny valley, anything that hunts us, anything that we do not and cannot comprehend. There's a strong, strong existential terror aspect to the Slenderman mythos, not just because this being hunts us, but because everything about its behavior implies that we are far more insignificant and weak, far more vulnerable, than we ever want to know is possible. And should something come along that puts us in our place, something that takes us someplace where we're never seen again... we would never be able to deal with it. Not in a million years. Slenderman isn't scary because he's a Lovecraft-flavored monster that stalks people. Slenderman is scary because we only ever see him for short periods, get small glimpses of him, see him shrouded by static, see him in blurred camera shots, see little hints of him, etc. And when he does show up in the flesh, 100% visible? He doesn't really do much more than stand there and watch... unless he does so happen to feel like attacking you. And by then, it's far, far too late to run or even scream, because he's always watching...
"What people should realize when they're writing horror, be it a Slenderman Mythos tale, a Creepypasta, or even just a short ghost story or psychological thriller, is this: it's very important to not only feel what exactly a story's mood and tone is, but also to put yourself in a character's shoes to really, really understand them. Some authors never learn how to do that, and their work is sub-par as a result. You really need to be able to do this in order to have any chance of really drawing your audience in, especially in a horror story, because if you don't, then even your scariest scares will come off as cheesy, cliche, and cheap at worst, and merely creepy at best. By putting yourself into a character's shoes, you not only begin to understand the motives, methods to their madness, quirks, and personality better, but you also basically have put yourself into that scenario. It no longer is about what another person feels - it's now about what you feel, and you are a far better gauge of your own emotions than those of another person's, real or fictional. It's easier to do this with something like the Slenderman Mythos - who hasn't felt watched at night, or felt true terror at some point in their lives? In fact, if you have never been afraid of the dark, afraid of the unknown, paranoid you are being watched, or terrified of that monster in your closet, then check for circuitry and odd wires sticking out of your body, because you're clearly a robot of some sort. It's easy to take those fears and transplant them onto a character in the Slenderman Mythos in particular because you can actually understand what the character would be going through - the worst terror of their lives, constantly being tormented into mental instability by their own fear, their loneliness and paranoia eating at them so badly that they eventually can and do lose their mind.
"The goal of any author is to essentially act as though the events are real to them, because doing so helps translate just what those emotions are to the reader. Good authors do this so well that they can move their audience to tears, make them despise a certain character just as much as the author's protagonist does, and terrify them with nightmares that seem all too real to wake up from. This requires a very good understanding of your own emotions first, especially painful ones, because those are some of the strongest emotions a person can feel. I believe that out of strong emotion comes some of the world's greatest prose and poetry, because like with anything, the more energy you put into something, the more you get out of it as a result. Fear is a very powerful emotion, and any writer with a strong grasp on how to make it feel real and raw can really make their audience fear even things that they normally would not. That is, after all, how Slendy got to be the popular, infamous monster we know him as today - because a couple of people from SomethingAwful saw some scary pictures made by a fellow SA member, and decided to make a video series about the scariness of the unknown, the primal fear of being hunted and possibly killed, the horror of things that humans can't understand, and the idea that more often than not, what we don't see is oftentimes far, far scarier than what we actually do."