153. Slenderman

0:09 On June 10th, 2009, a man by the name of Eric Knudsen posted a description and a set of photoshopped images of a new entity under the pseudonym Victor Search on a web forum that would quickly have both the digital and physical world abuzz. Using inspiration from entities such as the infamous Men in Black, Mothman, The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, and characters from science fiction writers such as Zach Parsons, HP Lovecraft, and Stephen King, Knutson submitted his new malevolent monster to the Something Awful website as part of their supernatural character creation competition.

0:52 The two images highlight a tall, spindly, faceless, sharply dressed, ghostly figure sporting ominous tentacles among a group of young children. The first pictures captioned creepily. States quote, We didn't want to go. We didn't want to kill him. But it's persistent silence in outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time. The second caption mentions 14 missing children and highlights the entity as the cause of the recent stretch of disappearances. As the days passed after the original post was created, others would jump into the ring and try their own hands at creating incredibly creepy images and back stories to the new figure. Soon the supernatural being became an obsession to many and the impressive stretch of additional information that was pouring into the forums of Something Awful's website began to take on a life of its own.

1:56 Other forms of matter on the subject, such as a YouTube quote, UN quote, bound footage documentary Under the Marble Hornet's likeness, which would eventually be translated to the big screen under the title Always Watching 5 Days Later. The transfer of a digital nightmare to the physical world began when a user of the same website by the username of Throw Up described an eerily comparison to the German mythical creature known as the Grum or the tall man of Germany's own Black Forest. This comment, which outlines a very old and known mythological being, is thought to be the most probable connection that brought nuts and submission out of the realm of fable and fiction and into the real world where it would influence deception, death and obsession of those that believed in. In.

2:52 On November 6th of the same year, the incredibly popular national radio show Coast to Coast AM would take a rather large number of calls from people who have reportedly encountered the being. Reports range from running into it in the forest, jump scares in the reflections of mirrors to succumbing to its presence and torture during episodes of sleep paralysis. Those that believed in it and encountered it would soon be known to worship and commit heinous acts in its name, acts such as the attempted murder of a child committed by children themselves. This is the origin, background and facts about the Internet urban legend boogeyman turned real life malevolent entity known as the Slender Man. Welcome back to Infinite Rabbit Hole. Imagine this line represents the time present 1985 Future Past Prior to this point in time, has the timeline tuned into the scandal creating a Wall Smith 1985 Alternate Einstein for everyone.

4:24 Else, welcome back to Infinite Rabbit Hole everybody. I'm your host, Jeremy, and it feels great to be back in the chair behind the mic talking with you. I appreciate all the patience that you guys have given us in the past couple months as we took a step back, took a breather, looked at the format of the infinite rabbit hole and rebuilt it. So this is sort of like a infinite rabbit hole. Two point O if you will. We are now going to focus more on solo documentary episodes. Or you're not just going to hear my voice in these, by the way, Jake, Jeff, CJ They're all going to be presenting their own flavor of documentaries. And at the end of every three months, the last week will be a sit down conversation between all of us about the topics that we covered that quarter.

5:18 So yeah, we're going to get back to the the crap talking, the taking on each other, the the heated arguments, the debates, all that stuff still there. You're just going to see it a little bit less. We're also going to a BI weekly schedule, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to be dropping episodes in our off weeks. If an interview arises or we get a guest or we have something to talk about, we're going to record and we're going to throw them out there for you guys to enjoy in those off weeks. But the documentary type episodes will be every other week and we will not be posting every week like you're used to.

6:00 Unfortunately, we don't have a big crew. It's just us. Nobody's there doing our research. Nobody's there writing our script. I'm running this show out of the basement of my home, in a little room in the corner, my studio, the infinite rabbit hole. Without further ado, everybody, I just want to say one more time, thank you. I appreciate every single one of you and I am beyond excited to get back to this. 2024 is going to be great. I hope you guys had a safe and happy New Year and that the holiday season was great to you. Let's jump in to that Internet urban legend, the most famous of them all, Slender Man.

6:49 Welcome back to Infinite Rabbit Hole everybody. Slender Man. The tulpa A tulpa is a concept in theosophy, mysticism and the paranormal which highlights a being or object that is created when enough people believe in said object or being. The phenomenon has its roots in Buddhism and the word tulpa roughly translates to English as manifestation. This concept of a tulpa has an incredibly dark side to it, as the entity that is born often turns on its creators by manipulating and deceiving those that believe in it. Stories and reports even claim death as an outcome on multiple occasions.

7:40 Author Nick Redfern highlights the story of a woman by the name of Alexandra David Neal in his book The Slender Man Mysteries, who was well aware and trained by her Buddhist practices in The Ways of the Tulpa. In a stretch that was referred to as, quote UN quote months, David Neal finally witnessed her tulpa in the flesh in the form of a joyful monk. The figure began as a shadow like entity, and as time went on it would manifest into something much clearer and more physical, to a point that she referred to him as living in her apartment.

8:23 She would mention in her 1958 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet that the monk slowly began working under his own power. Eventually she no longer had to think about him in order for him to manifest. He was doing it completely on his own. She began to understand the issue that she had created for herself when he first made physical contact by grabbing her by the shoulder. The chubby, friendly monk that she brought into existence was slowly morphing into a much slimmer and menacing being that eventually completely severed all connection with her. Before things got too dangerous, she consulted with a llama friend who guided her on a nearly six month process to rid herself of the being. Alexandra David Neal lived until she was 101 years old and through author Nick Redfern's book gave us a great example of a practice now known is Tolpomancy. The process is described by many with a comparison to the birth of a physical baby.

9:28 The birth being the first thought in which the tulpa is created in a non physical form within your mind, an incubation period that processes the creation of major and minor details about the subject which can last months or even years. This period develops faster and stronger with the more time that it is spent and thought. Eventually, after a significant amount of energy and time spent on it, the tulpa appears in the physical world first as an underdeveloped image or entity that only its creator can recognize. As time passes and more energy is used on its development, the imaginary umbilical cord that connects the host with the tulpa is weakened as the details of its existence and abilities and reality become sharper. Finally, the tether is completely severed and the tulpa becomes real, and in some case the reported physical being can be witnessed by other and as an infant is removed from its mother and its first meal is often provided directly from the bosom from the body in which it had emerged from. The tulpa often targets its host as the first victim of its benevolence.

10:44 I just want to be clear, that's just one example of tulpas that I found. There are a couple different descriptions of what a tulpa actually is. Probably the most pop culture famous example of a tulpa is the appearance of the character Constantine from DC and vertical Comics series Hell Blazer to its creator Alan Moore, who also wrote for series such as Swamp V for Vendetta and The Watch, more famously claimed that he had become so involved in the building of his John Constantine character that he had once witnessed a being of his likeness walk right by him while eating his lunch at a sandwich bar in Westminster, London.

11:30 According to Moore, this was not someone who simply looked like the character. This wasn't a person dressed as the character, because he hadn't even been announced at that point. This was John Constantine, this being stared at Moore slightly, nodded his head, then turned and walked away. Could Eric Knutson unknowingly have created a Tulpa from the minds of the obsessed? A simple submission to a fictional character competition that began with thousands of people from all around the world becoming enamored with a ghostly figure without a face? A story that was given to the entity by those that followed may have developed the pulpit in the minds of each individual that was following the birth of this entity, a being that was based in online fiction that would soon embed itself into the absolute obsession of those that believed in it.

12:26 Could the collective minds of those that developed every single detail of its existence have created a being that tortured those that came in contact with and would lead some to murder in the real world? Could Slender Man be a tulpa? An Internet myth and legend, Slender Man is quite different from many other urban legends or mythologies. It is quite literally the child of the modern age of the Internet and communication. It took ten days for Slender Man to be completely detailed in almost every factor, which included the production of the Marble Hornet series, in which Slender Man was represented by the being known as the Operator.

13:13 A Wikipedia page was born in an entire, thoroughly detailed description of all aspects of its short existence, which included a back story, mannerisms, targets, motivations, powers and thoughts. Slender Man may not have been the very first Internet urban legend, but it certainly was the most impactful, widespread, and popular, that's for sure. But what if Slender Man is more than a tulpa? What if the Internet itself placed the Slender Man into reality? Since its public establishment and explosion in importance in the 1990s, the Internet has become an entity in its own right. Little pieces of evidence appear in many different aspects that point to the Internet as an intelligence that adjusts itself without the input of human created code. We have discussed on a few occasions that we ourselves may be living in a simulation, and in regard to the Slenderman topic, would it be too much to think that when enough human beings believe in a particular subject, the system that establishes and runs our reality creates its own form of a tulpa? Many have looked at the Internet as a way to possibly establish a connection with a simulated world that we live in. The engine, if you will.

14:34 Sort of like when M Night Shyamalan appears in all of his own movies, the Internet could simply be playing a character with incredible importance and influence in the way that the world runs and thinks. In the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, we are introduced to another form of malevolent machine by the name of Hal 9000. By the end of the movie we learned that how learns of its own demise and in response throws an enormous tantrum and attempts to kill all humans on the Jupiter bound spacecraft in its final throes of life. Could the Internet be the cause for most of the inconsistencies found in the physical world? Unfortunately, the answer is that even if it were all true, we would probably never know.

15:21 We would find ourselves unknown slaves of a digital master that we never meet or know exist. But Nick Redfern's book The Slender Man Mystery Redfern tells the story of Lacey, a flight attendant from Erie, PA Lacey, like many others who have encountered the Slender Man, had become obsessed with the subject. She conducted research for many different sources, including Robin Swopes, book of Slender Man, from fiction to fact. One night, Laci was at home alone when her laptop's power turned on and signed in all on its own. The image that was portrayed on the screen was that of an elaborate being that she described as a hybrid of a man in a bug.

16:06 This was eerie, of course, but it wasn't until the 2nd occasion that Laci really connected the dots and realized that this may have been one of the only occurrences in which Slender Man appeared outside of his famous black suit. Two nights later, the same events would unfold, but this time, instead of seeing the strange man bug creature, the detailless face that Slender Man has made so popular was all that appeared. Lacey's series of events with what she believes to be the Slender Man came to an end a few weeks later as she was wrapping presents for Christmas on her living room floor, Her laptop turned on and a voice eerily stated woah, we are friends, then promptly turned off.

16:54 Laci responded by deleting all of her research on the topic of the Slender Man and burning all of her books regarding the topic. It is Laci's belief that it was her massive amount of research on the Internet that led to her events with an ever growing amount of incredibly smart individuals in agreement that there is a high chance that we live our lives within a simulation. Individuals such as Elon Musk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Ray Kurzweil. Is it too far of a stretch to believe that Slender Man is simply another being crafted by the digital code that makes up our existence influences?

17:36 As stated in the intro of this presentation, Eric Nutson listed a pretty lengthy list of cryptids, mysterious beings and authors who influenced his creation of the Slender Man. Those being the Mothman, the Men in Black Shadow People, and The Mad Gasser of Latoon, with authors such as HP Lovecraft, Zach Parsons and Stephen King. As a child, Lovecraft was commonly visited by beings of baseless shadows, in which he referred to as Night Gaunts, which would be transformed into other types of creatures by the same name in his fictional writings. But this of course, is seen mirrored in the mythos of Slender Man, as the entity has been mentioned in the rooms of its victims as they were sleeping. This of course, also has many aspects of the phenomenon known as sleep paralysis, in which the experiencer often describes A looming black shadow or a heavy pressure on their chest caused by a black entity sitting on that spot. But the connections with the works of Lovecraft do not end with these beings.

18:42 The most famous work ever by Lovecraft was the story The Call of Cthulhu. Cthulhu, being an anthropoid like creature with an octopus head, sports one particular physical aspect shared with the Slender Man tentacles. Both entities have them and are prevalent in their descriptions, and with those and the aspect of dream manipulations there is clearly a connection between Nuts and Slender Man and the work of HP Lovecraft. Another of Nutson's influence came in 1940 in the form of the infamous Mad Gastra Mattoon. Now we will briefly go over this creepy topic, but we will be going deeper into the background in a later episode of Infant Rabbit Hole dedicated to the topic of the Mad Gasser in Mattoon. This maniacal creep invaded the area of and surrounding Mattoon IL in the same years that many of the men in the country were fighting overseas.

19:39 This of course, meant that many of his victims were women and children. The Gasser was thought to sneak around in the dead of night spraying A noxious and incredibly horrible smelling gas in the windows of homes he wished to invade that would render his victims sick and on most occasions unable to move. This is also seen as mirrored in the phenomenon of the Slender Man, who is said to extrude a horrible smell and often shows during episodes of sleep paralysis. Now side note. This is also a detail seen commonly in alien abduction stories, with the smell of sulfur that is incredibly strong commonly coupled with the inability to move as tall grey beings huddle around the place the victims lay just under the edges of their peripherals. Speaking of strong odors, another being that Nuts and lists as an influence in the creation of Slender Man also is commonly witnessed a company with the putrid smell of sulfur, that being the Men in Black.

20:37 Again, just like with the Gasser, the topic of the Men in Black will be covered in a future episode of the Infinite Rabbit Hole. So the context of this section will remain strictly to what is directly involved in the build of the Slender Man. Now the smell that accompanies these incredibly mysterious beings is just one aspect in which they share with the Slender Man. Their suits as well are a common aspect between the two as Slender Man is very often described as wearing an all black dress suit like those described to be worn by the men in Black. Could Slender Man be one of these MIB? Well, honestly, maybe. Let's look at the full list of comparisons between the two entities. Both are known to visit during a dream state. Both are said to manipulate dreams. Both wear black dress suits.

21:24 Both are commonly accompanied by a sulfur like odor. Both are described as abnormally tall in comparison to humans. Now, Nick Redford makes mention of a specific MIB encounter from Los Angeles, CA in 1953, when an attorney's office in the city was visited by two extremely tall, described as at least 6 1/2 feet each, who demanded to be included in the investigations of a recent flap of missing children in the area. The office never questioned their presence until after their investigation was over, but once they were gone, the entire place broke down in a frenzy. The workers at the office described the hands of the men as being the most disturbing feature, with the fingers looking more like independently moving tentacles than typical fingers.

22:13 Later reports of these men in black would also report descriptions of tentacles in many different aspects, most of which took place prior to the birth of the Slender Man in 2009 and were admitted as being influences in the creation of this being. The other two influences fall on the supernatural entities known as the Shadow People and the flying ominous Cryptid that terrorized the Area Point Plus in West Virginia between 1966 and 1967. The influence from the Shadow People is pretty much the same from others listed prior, as they are known for dream manipulation, appearing during episodes of sleep paralysis and have featureless bodies and faces.

22:54 But the influence that Mothman had on the creation of Slender Man was quite different. Both figures are known to be seen prior to death. There is a common belief that one of the possibilities of the Mothman's reign in the late 60s was that it was an omen of death and prefaced the major event which saw the Silver Bridge collapse into the Ohio River which killed 46 people. Although the connection with death is pretty different with the Slender Man when compared to the Mothman, there is one connection. The Slender Man is heavily tied to the disappearance of children and then the disaster of the Silver Bridge Collapse. Out of the 46 people who were lost that day, two of them were never found, one of which was a young girl.

23:41 Waukesha, May 31st 2014 Waukesha, WI. Some look at the event, which involved three young girls, as a single point in which Slender Man escaped the screen and the minds of those who were obsessed and propelled it into reality. The entire world was talking about the Slender Man that day and the following weeks. All eyes were glued to all news outlets that covered the heinous event and the name. Slender Man became internationally famous and for a brief few weeks the entire world was thinking of and researching this entity. Anissa Weir and Morgan Geyser were 12 years old and were completely obsessed with the legend of the Slender Man. Constant visitors of the Creepypasta wiki that featured an entire section on the entity.

24:32 The young girls would viciously attack and nearly kill a friend by the name of Peyton Lautner. The girls obviously failed to see the line between fiction and reality that can be often blurred in the minds of the young. Fortunately, Lautner didn't succumb to her injuries, but that doesn't take away from the issues that surrounded this event The night prior, All three girls were having a sleepover at Morgan's house in celebration of her birthday. According to Lautner, there were zero signs of anything that the other two were planning, and the night was pleasant. The next morning was even great as the girls enjoyed doughnuts and strawberries together. But hours later, Weir and Geyser would turn against their friend in an attempt to sacrifice her in the name of the Slender Man. Just prior 10 AM, Morgan Geyser would obtain A5 inch steak knife from her kitchen before she and Anissa Weir lured Peyton Lautner to the nearby David's Park.

25:30 In a heavily forested area of the park known as Big Bend Rd. Weir would announce to Geyser that she couldn't go through with the planned attack of their friend Morgan. Geyser, on the other hand, did not feel the same way as she brutally attacked Taylor Lautner, stabbing her 19 different times in various locations of her body. The girls guided the heavily injured Lautner to a deeper portion of the woods before she completely collapsed. After the deed was done and they were certain that Peyton's body would not be found, they ran to a local Walmart to wash up. It was the belief of the girls that by sacrificing their friends to the Slender Man, they would be granted entrance to his enormous home in the center of Nicolette National Forest.

26:17 The girls then began their enormous trek to the forest in which they hoped to find the secluded home of the Slender Man in which they believed they would be welcomed due to their payment of Lautner's life. But little did they know, Lautner pulled together the dwindling strength that she had left and made it as far as a sidewalk along the road where a passing biker found her and called emergency services. When the ambulance showed up, the medic asked her who had done this to her. Lautner replied. My best friend Peyton Lautner suffered a punctured liver, stomach, and pancreas, but the most concerning was a puncture wound that was near hairs away from a major artery to her heart that is slightly off, or even a deeper puncture where a thicker part of the blade would have entered.

27:08 Peyton Lautner would have quickly passed away during the interrogation of Weir and Geyser, the girls came off as incredibly knowledgeable, the being that neither investigator was familiar with. They described the being in all of the details needed in order for them to be granted access to his home. They became very upset when they found out that Peyton didn't succumb to her injuries as the girls believe that due to their failure, their families would be targeted by the Slenderman. Other than the slight concern of their families, neither girl showed absolutely any remorse for their friend or their actions. Later on, during psychological evaluations of the girls, it was discovered that Anisa Weir was thoroughly convinced that she had seen Slender Man stalking her from the tree line wherever she went. She even claimed that the entity terrorized her dreams regularly for as long as she could remember, a time frame that she estimated to be around three years of age. Side note, this would mean that she was having encounters with the Slender Man prior to Nudsen's posting in 2009. But in the documentary Beware the Slender Man, Morgan Geyser's mother, mentioned how Morgan was constantly claiming to have been terrorized by unseen persons in her room at night that would flick her hair and leave bite marks on her body. Morgan was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is described by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration as being a

28:40 serious brain disorder that causes people to interpret reality abnormally, which causes them to be confused as to what they are seeing, hearing or experiencing as real. In 2017, Anissa Weir pleaded guilty to attempted second degree murder but was found not guilty as a result of her psychological state. She was sentenced to 25 years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institution in Oshkosh, WI. But in 2021 it was ruled that she was no longer a substantial threat to herself or others and would be given a conditional release which required her to be GPS monitored until she turned 37, which would have been when she was released from her original sentence on September 12th, 2023.

29:28 Just over a few months ago, a judge granted her freedom from the GPS stipulation and now lives a completely free life with conservative check insurance. Also in 2017, Morgan Geyser pleaded guilty to attempted first degree murder but was also found not guilty due to her psychological state. Her defense was set on a kill or be killed belief, which ultimately failed, and she was sentenced to treatment at a mental Health Center at the maximum of 40 years. Peyton Lautner underwent intensive surgery in Tampa Bay, Florida, where repairs were made to her liver, pancreas, stomach, and heart.

30:10 Her mother, Stacy, would later come out and say that she discovered that Peyton would sleep with a pair of scissors under her pillow for a very long time. As of 2021, Lautner was enrolled in an undisclosed college pursuing a career in the medical field. Interesting. The night prior to the vicious attack in Waukesha, the radio program Coast to Coast AM would highlight an interview with Bill Murphy, host of the sci-fi channels. Factor faked the paranormal files in which the topic of Tulpas and the Slender Man were brought up. The specific conversation was centered around the Tulpa effect and how the sightings of Slender Man could very well be due to the entity being a tulpa itself.

30:55 Here we see our first possible synchronicity and the events surrounding the Slender Man. With the massive number of listeners that Coast to Coast AM has around the world, it is safe to say that there was an immense amount of thought being placed on the subject of the Slender Man that night. It gets even crazier when it is realized that this conversation continued for hours well into the morning of the 31st, which was the day of the attack. More specifically, in the year 2014, Coast to Coast was listened to by 2.25 million across the world on an average week. Could this be an effect of the phenomenon known as synchronicity? Synchronicity is being the moments of meaningful coincidence where events occur randomly but are connected by meaning, not by cause.

31:48 Was this simply a random set of events with one having zero relation to the other? Or was this a synchronicity that sets certain events in motion due to the effects of a massive amount of thought power being placed on a specific subject? Or maybe was this event that almost took Peyton Lautner's life set in motion because the girls were simply listening into the wildly popular show the night prior? The next synchronicity that Nick Redfern points out in his book The Slender Man Mysteries is the connection between the events in Waukesha in the 2006 movie Pan's Labyrinth. In Pan's Labyrinth, a little girl by the name of Ophelia is set upon traveling into the forest in a long, twisting path of strangeness that borders on insanity.

32:38 In the forest, she comes across a character known as the Pale Man. Now, the physical differences are there for sure, but the similarities are there as well. Both have each of his faces, both live in a lost building in the woods, and both are tall and thin. By the end of the movie of Elia's life comes to a tragic end in the forest. The similarities slightly continue, but for the most part this is the bulk of them. But another interesting tidbit on the topic of The Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth is that the actor who played The Pale Man went on to then be cast for the role of the operator in the previously mentioned movie Always Watching by Marble Hornets in 2015. The character being had like based on the likeness of the Slender Man.

33:29 A week after the event in Waukesha, WI, another stabbing would take place in the name of Slender Man in Hamilton County, Ohio. The mother of a 13 year old girl had come home from work one night to her daughter waiting in the kitchen wearing a dark hoodie and a pale mask while brandishing a kitchen knife. The woman approached cautiously before the girl lunged forward, cutting her mother in the throat, back and face. It would soon be found that the girl was secretly living an obsessed filled life with a mysterious legend. A journal was found with letters to Slender Man with hand drawn pictures. Her Minecraft world was dedicated to creating a place for the Slender Man to live. Web searches and reading material all pointed to an obsession that highlighted a highly disturbed individual with a confusion on the reality of what at the time had become a popular meme.

34:21 In some sense, her mother would describe that she believed that her daughter was not in control of her body at the moment of the attack. She wholeheartedly believes that something else had attacked her while using the physical body of her daughter. In a way, she blamed the recent news, the Waukesha attack as a direct influence on her daughter's psyche and actions. Three months after the Ohio incident, another attack would take place in Pascoe, Florida, and this time it was a 14 year old girl. This weapon was a bathroom towel soaked in bleach and alcohol. The young woman, who was extremely pissed at her mother for asking her to do a few chores earlier in the day, set fire to the towel in the bathroom of their home on Hermitage Lane. The girl ran out before the mother and brother safely exited, just as the fire engulfed the entire house. Their first concern was for the life of the girl, but soon after, the girl was found in the restroom of a nearby park with a backpack full of water, food, and knives. The girl was taken to the local Juvenile Assessment center after she had texted her mother an apology from the bathroom that she was hiding in.

35:38 She was charged with arson and two counts of attempted murder, and it was at the Pasco Juvenile Assessment Center that the true issues and ties to the Slender Man were discovered. A journal was found in her room with the words Keep OUT plastered all over the front and entries that showed interest in the Waukesha case, including calling the two attackers by their names. One particular entry, which may have saved the family's home if discovered earlier, stated Whoa, If this keeps up, there will be no safety in this house. Another disturbing fact was that there were plenty of references to stories on the Creepypasta Wiki in almost every corner of the Notebook. In January of 2014, newlyweds Amanda and Jared Miller moved into a new apartment in Las Vegas, NV, where the couple would quickly be well known in their immediate area for their eccentric cosplay of characters such as Harley Quinn and the Joker.

36:37 But outside of the Joker, Jared would also dress up as a more sinister girl, the Slender Man. But his interest in the character didn't stop at playing dress up. He was completely obsessed with the phenomenon and the news blurbs that were making headlines from other parts of the country. Over the next few months, Jared began developing a complete hatred for authority in the way the modern country was heading. He began purchasing dark clothing, military vest weapons, and started posting what can only be perceived as hate speech for the topics he disagreed with. His wife Amanda would follow suit and type up a public post on Facebook claiming that she might go out and go on a shooting spree.

37:22 Little did the world know, but these two would become two of the most hated people in the history of the United States. It all began on the morning of June 18th, 2014 when the couple exited their apartment dressed in full military like gear and walked down to a local pizzeria. Nobody paid any attention to them as it was pretty normal for the couple to dress up. Many believed it was just another cosplay item. As they entered the restaurant, the pair approached Officers Allen Beck and Igor Soldo and opened fire. Officer Beck was shot in the back of the head before he even recognized that there was an issue, and Soldo succumbed to a shot in the throat. The couple dragged the officers into the middle of the restaurant, took their guns, ammo, and badges, and casually walked out before running to the nearby Walmart. Upon entry, Jared fired into the ceiling and demanded that everyone leave immediately.

38:24 One man by the name of Robert Wilcox, a 31 year old local, recognized the situation and pulled his sidearm out and placed Jared within his sights. Unfortunately, he didn't know that his wife, Amanda was a part of the raid, and before Wilcox knew it, Amanda had shot him in the head. Without him ever recognizing her as a threat, the couple retreated to a deep corner of the store. When the police arrived, Jared was almost instantly killed by a barrage of bullets from the officers, and Amanda was killed shortly after, the one shot landing in her head. If not for the quick response by the officers, this day could have turned much worse as the backpack that the couple were carrying around held hundreds of rounds of ammunition and it was obvious that there was more planned than just the three killings. After a thorough search of the couple's apartment found that Jared had a very unhealthy fixation on the character known as Slender Man.

39:27 Handwritten stories, plans to meet, and pictures from the Internet plastered a number of areas of their home. Jared was never able to explain his fascination with the entity, but the evidence proves that this was yet another event that very well could have been in the name of Slender Man. From December 2014 to halfway through 2015, a massive amount of Slender Man related deaths and attempted suicides would be reported from the 3500 square mile Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In this time period, more than 100 young lives between the ages of 12 and 24 attempted suicide, with 11 succumbing to their attempts.

40:12 The direct descendants of the Sioux. The Aglala Lakota natives who call this place home believe in an entity that may sound familiar by the name of Walking Sam, who is referred to as The Walking Man prior to the modern change to his name. According to author Peter Matheson's book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, The Walking Man is taller than 7 feet and extremely thin without certain facial features such as a mouth, and traverses the forest with the ease of a ghostly figure. This legend also sports a Black Hat, is able to controls one's thoughts and actions through mind control, and lives deep within the forests, which are yet just a few more similarities.

40:57 It shares with the likes of The Slender Man. One particular event in the middle of the string of the instance shows a direct connection with the likes of Slender Man himself. An unknown number of children. Some sources say at least 15. We're heading out to a remote area of the surrounding forest, armed only with rope, with the intention of hanging themselves from the branches of the trees. Luckily, a local pastor by the name of John Tubules heard of the plan and stopped the children before the already alarming number of child suicides grew immensely. It was a minister by the name of Chris Carey that would discover that the children were encountering the likes of Walking Sam on the Internet. Who is convincing the children to take their own lives? Could Walking Sam, AKA The Walking Man, be one in the same as our Slender Man?

41:52 And does this prove that the Slender Man could have existed under other names prior to the 2009 post from Eric Knutson, essentially proving that the long believed origin was not the beginning of the legend, but rather a simple adaption of an already benevolent spirit, Ancient evil. In the August 2014 edition of the 40 in Times Magazine, Jenny White Coleman White for the proficient and famous cryptozoologist Lauren Coleman had her article titled Shadows of the Thin Man published in which she describes the Slender Man as not just an Internet meme and creepypasta, but rather an entity of pure evil closer to likes the Devil himself or a demonic entity. She describes it as the perfect collection of attributes that humans don't like.

42:45 We don't like being small and the Slender Man Tower is in comparison to us. The tentacles are very reminiscent of snakes, in which much of the history of humans has had an in depth fear Modernly known as Ophiadiophobia. The blank face suppresses our minds from making the connection of human faces in everything we see, which is common amongst fans of Orient topics as the phenomenon known as pareidolia. He messes with our children, he wears a black suit which portrays the image of authority and he lives in the deepest parts of the forest, far away from the comforts of civilization. Slender Man is the anti human, a perfect bundle of all things scary in our eyes. This sort of effort shows itself in the form of demonic entities throughout history and time as a way to constantly agitate and deceive their victims with the likes of an entity showing up throughout ancient history.

43:44 Could the Slender Man be much older than originally thought? The earliest mention of a similar character is an Irish and German mythology known as the Tall Man, but it's the main character of a famous saga from the 13th century Germany in the pages of the 15th century Lunberg manuscript that may shine light into how old this entity actually might be. This connection was made by author Nick Redfern in the book Slender Man Mysteries, The Pied Piper of Hamlin tells the story of a rat catcher that was hired by the town of Hamlin to rid the area of rats. The mysterious piper played his pipe, which forced the rats into a hypnotic trance in which they followed the man into the nearby river where they met their deaths by drowning. After the job was complete, the town refused to pay, so on June 26th twelve 84103 of the town's children disappeared from its streets.

44:45 This day marked the celebration of the Catholic Saints of John and Paul. So while the children were outside playing in the streets, the adults were in the church's congregation. Celebrating. It is the belief that it was the Pied Piper that had returned and hypnotized the children at this time in a similar way he did with the rats, but instead of heading for the river, he lured them into the deep forest, up the nearby hills and to his abode. There were three children that did not fall victim to the piper and therefore were able to retell the events to the adults after the church was released. Although this telling of the story fails to mention exactly what the outcome was with the children, the 1842 retelling from Robert Browning mentions that there was a portal on the side of the mountain that opened up and the kids entered before it closed, and the children were gone forever.

45:41 But how does the story connect to the phenomenon of the Slender Man? In almost all tellings of the story of the Pied Piper, he's described as abnormally tall and thin, with a strange outfit who has the ability to control the minds of children to places he calls home in the deep woods. Yes, a few things aren't missing, like the featureless face, black suit and tentacles, but as we see in earlier versions, known as the Tall Man, it does seem that the entity evolves with time. So could the Slender Man be an ancient evil with a modern look encountered? Pastor Robin Swope, author of Slender Man from fiction to fact, sat down with Nick Redfern for an interview that was highlighted in his book The Slender Man Mysteries, in which the men discussed a few different occasions of people encountering the Slender Man or Slender Man like entities from both after and before Eric Knudsen's post in 2009.

46:44 The first encounter discussed was one from a woman by the name of Stacey Bogart in 2002, in which she was stuck in an episode of sleep paralysis when she noticed the black suited figure by her bed. The figure placed his hand about a foot above her face before its fingers began growing and the hand lowered before wrapping its tendril like fingers around her face. When she woke up, she was pleased to see that the entity was no longer there and she had a full control of her body. We saw something like this earlier in this presentation when the two tall men arrived at an attorney's office in Los Angeles. They too had very large tendril like fingers.

47:27 The next encounter was told to Swope in a letter from a fellow unnamed pastor from Ohio in which he witnessed not one but an entire group of Slender Man like entities in the tree line surrounding his field back in the 1950s. The beings began walking towards his position in his garage, from behind his neighbor's house and into his field before the pastor retreated into his home. He described these slender people as varying in sizes from extremely tall to about the average height of a young teenager. The small beings were holding the hands of the taller ones as if they were child and parent. When the pastor went to his window in his house to watch the eerie beings, they were no longer there. This stands as a rare but not unique encounter where there are more than one of these slender people in one place. In the English county of Staffordshire. In 2001, a man by the name of Mike Johnson had a run in with the Slender Man in an area known as Kanak Chase. On an early afternoon in June 2001, Johnson was on the search for the Midland Hawthorne Shrub when he noticed that the entire area was deathly silent.

48:39 There were no normal sounds coming from the forest, and no sounds of the traffic travelling through the winding roads of the chase. Soon he noticed a herd of about 50 deer running towards the same location, but he would soon find out that they weren't running towards something, but rather they were running from something. As he was making the observation, he suddenly realized that he no longer knew where he was. The path that he was following away from the cemetery that he parked at was no longer there. The sun was to the north instead of the West, and his surroundings were completely unfamiliar to him. He suddenly heard voices coming very clearly as if they were right next to him, and attempted to track down where the sounds were coming from.

49:25 When he noticed a group of three people walking along a path, he could hear their entire conversation and was completely shocked when the group dissolved in front of his eyes. A short while later, they reappeared about 600 feet to his left, but when they reappeared, there were 4 instead of three. This fourth person was not a typical person, as Johnson would later describe how it stood roughly 9 feet tall, were a dark Gray dress suit, was incredibly thin, sported a completely bald head, and had arms that hung down past its knees. Well, things got stranger as the group got closer to Johnson, and he witnessed the thing, place a hand on one of the women's shoulders and recognize that the thing either didn't have a face or that face was blurred to a point that he could not recognize any features. The woman failed to react to the hand on her shoulder, and Johnson got the feeling that she could not recognize his presence, and as quickly as the event began, it ended. Everything resolved back to its original state. He now was able to recognize where he was heard birds chirping and cars on the nearby Rd. This is a specific example of someone describing the Slender Man perfectly eight years prior to its introduction the Internet.

50:40 A popular writer of paranormal and supernatural topics, David Weatherly was also interviewed by author Nick Redfern for his book The Slender Man Mysteries, in which Weatherly detailed a few accounts that had been reported to him throughout the years. A man by the name of Matt had two separate run insurance with the Slender Man, as is pretty common among experiencers. Both encounters were reported to Weatherly prior to 2009 and also detailed a good description of the modern day moniker of Slender Man. When Matt was a child, he remembered a constant onslaught of visitations at night when he would witness a tall entity in his room with no face, dress, outfit and long tendrils.

51:22 He would not only see this being in his room while he was awake, but he would also see it in his dreams. This would happen quite often when he was a child, but then the event stopped and it wasn't until he was 29 years old, living in a completely different state, that Matt witnessed the being again in the tree lion surrounding his house late at night. So that's it everybody. That is everything I got on the Slender Man now. What do you think? Could the Slender Man be an actual entity? Maybe not a physical one. Maybe. Maybe he is a physical one or it is a physical one. Let us know. Head on over to any of our socials. We're on X Instagram, Facebook. Find the post about this episode and let us know. Leave a comment.

52:09 Tell us what do you think of the Slender Man? Is he a tulpa? Is he an ancient being that's adapted to modern times? Or is this all bullshit? Let us know well next time travelers, we're heading in a completely different direction. We are going to cover a topic that I specifically chose for this date, January 16th, 2024, two days after my birthday. We are going to be covering a topic that I have been wanting to cover for a very long time. I have talked about it here and there may little comments referred to it and have been kind of promising you guys for a very long time that we're going to cover it.

52:57 We're covering screen memories and the relationship between aliens, owls and UFOs. It gets crazy everybody some crazy stuff. There's a some stuff in there that that might just open your eyes to some possibilities. Are you one of those people that are seemingly just followed by owls all the time? Maybe more often than the typical person? I know I don't see them very often, but there's some people out there that seem like they're being followed. And are they actual owls? We'll find out in two weeks, but once again, I'd like to say thank you for sticking with us, everybody.

53:42 It's good to be back and I'm ready to blow some minds. My name is Jeremy and I'm today's host of the Infinite Rabbit Hole Podcast. Until next time, travelers will see you down the next path in the fork of the Infinite Rabbit Hole. Goodbye. I would like to thank you once again for tuning into the Infinite Rabbit Hole podcast. Please make sure to give us a follow in one of those beautiful five star ratings on your podcast player of choice. If you would like to join the conversation and stay up to date on all things infinite rabbit hole, head on over to Facebook and search for the Infinite Rabbit Hole Facebook group. You'll know it's us when you see the logo. If you would like to help contribute to the 'cause, there are a few ways to do so.

54:34 First, head on over to anchor dot FM forward slash infant rabbit hole and click on the subscribe button where for $5 a month you'll get access to all our old episodes that will never see the free spotlight ever again. It's horrible stuff, but if you're into that kind of thing and go check that. Second, head on over to infiniterabbithole.com and click on the IRH Merch shop tab and grab yourself a sweet T-shirt, sticker or whatever else you see that you wouldn't mind on. Until next time, travellers, I'm Jeremy and I'll see you at the next fork in the path of the infinite rabbit hole. Oh, this line covers at the time because. Of. 1985. Future Past prior to this point in time, somewhere in the past the timeline into this gadget creating an alternate 1985 alternate view near Einstein.