Chances are, you`ve heard of the Slender Man. Whether you`re a seasoned internet citizen or just someone who pays attention to major news stories, the internet`s favorite urban legend is anything but underground anymore--especially not now, considering he`s starring in his very own feature film called--surprise!--Slender Man. But even if you`re acquainted with the concept, there`s a lot more to the Slender Man myth than you might expect.The basics aren`t so tough to warp your head around. It started as a post on the SomethingAwful forums back in 2009 by a user named Victor Surge, in a paranormal photoshopping contest. Surge contributed two black-and-white photos where he`d added a tall, faceless man with outstretched arms in the background, alongside ominous Lovecraftian-flavored captions. From there, the internet began taking over. In the popular style of semi-anonymous horror and paranormal fiction forums, users began `corroborating` Surge`s stories and images with similar stories and photos, building the fiction out from a vague idea to a fully developed character with a name and signature look. He became a fixture of niche corners of the internet; places dedicated to creepy stories (colloquially called `creepypasta`) and unsettling photoshops designed to spook anyone looking for a little adrenaline rush.After that, however, things get a little tricky. Thanks to the unofficial, mostly anonymous and completely collaborative nature of his early development, changes to the character came and went at random. Some users pictured him as a man in a suit with tentacles sprouting out of his back, others saw him as a creature with multiple arms that made him look like a dead or dying tree. Layers were added about child abductions, murders, and mysterious disappearances that were sometimes well defined and other times exceedingly vague. There was no unified voice and therefore, no real rules--anything could happen at anytime, and bits and pieces of the mythology were fo ...
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