Thursday, July 21, 2011

Slenderman Is Coming For The Kiddies!!

"the haunting detail that the photographs were taken on a day on which fourteen children disappeared. He then further explains that the library where the photo was found burned down a week after the pictures were taken. This Slenderman entity was a shadow creature, overly tall and thin. It had long arms that stretch to inhuman lengths to ensnare its prey"

The Paranormal Pastor exorcises the truth from a manufactured legend that took on a life of its own in cyberspace. Read here as he breaks down the anatomy of Slenderman, but be warned: our would-be skeptic soon starts to believe that somehow it could be true.

To me? I'm more likely to believe that every story traces back to its advent on the Internet and that anyone who claims he or she saw this entity back when is simply confusing new information with old memories--or full of it.

What starts as a fascinating article exposing an urban legend in the making becomes a gullible what-if scenario filled with mention of Tulpas and collective consciousness. Sometimes, people's stories--shared or not--are just crap. Not everything is the gospel truth. There are plenty of fantasy-prone individuals out there who have a hard time distinguishing reality from their imagination, especially when fed ready-made motifs from which to elaborate with eerie detail. To discount this, is to discount the very real need for better medical treatment in the country. Especially when faced with overwhelming evidence that the Slenderman legend is nothing more than a concoction for an online contest.

I'm reminded quite simply of The Bowmen and how it, too, took on a life of its own. Read about The Bowmen

9 comments:

Sharon Day said...

These online legends are pretty interesting. It's changing our community folklore now. Remember on 9-11, the supposed photograph from a camera retrieved from tourists atop the building showing a man posing and an airplane over his shoulder? People still believe that today.

Pastor Swope said...

Actually I leave the story open ended, though full of personal accounts of "Slenderman". You can draw your own conclusions, and I think in no way is it gullible. Like many folktales and legends they grow larger than life and people begin to assign archtypes to individual legends.

I only lay out the truth and present the supposed encounters. I think your assesment is a bit misleading...

Cullan Hudson said...

Perhaps. But you did more than lay out the truth. In fact, had that been all you did, I would have lauded your report. Instead, you leave the door open for doubt. . . .

"I responded to “JoAnne” and gave her some simple prayers and commands for the entity to leave her alone. I have tried to contact her numerous times, but I never get a reply. One part of me feels it might be a psychotic incident with prolonged effects on her mental state, but when I started to receive other similar letters, I began to think twice."

It's either a known hoax or not. It would seem from your reporting that Slenderman is this fictional monster fashioned for this hoax contest--and a clever one at that. But by saying it's somehow possible, you give people like this a crutch upon which to lean; you validate their fantasies. Or perhaps she did see something--but it wasn't Slenderman. That's not good either, because people like this can escape into a fear that's somehow more acceptable than face whatever may have happened.

Pastor Swope said...

Cullen,

I continue to receive letters of encounters with beings like Slenderman. It may not be in your worldview but sometimes people see things that cannot be explained. I myself have had many encounters with entities and supernatural events. I am not crazy or under the influence of any drug. When encountering these things I try to rationalize or discount it for any explainable reason and there are some times that it is just supernatural. That is why I give credence to letters and stories like those I featured in this article. If you want to think these stories are bunk or psychological reactions to normal happenings, that is your choice. Having dealt with many people who think they are possessed or have a malevolent haunting, I always try to find a psychological reason for the incidents. 99% of all 'possessions' or 'oppressions' from demonic entities are psychological issues. But then there is the 1%. I can't say for sure what "JoAnne"'s fundamental issue was, but the number of letters with similar phenomenon made me write the article. It is a report on possible paranormal phenomenon. After all the blog is called "The Paranormal Pastor" not "Know your Meme".

Cullan Hudson said...

In a Holmesian approach, I prefer to eliminate the possible before entertaining the impossible. In this case, there is obviously a known hoax afoot. I'm simply asking that these individuals prove the encounters they related to you--after the hoax arose-- happened the when and how they explain them to you. Did they write it in a diary? Did they send an e-mail to someone dated prior to the hoax. See, once the hoax is know, it taints everything that comes after it. You can't expect someone to say they saw "Slenderman" before he was known if they only tell you after the meme went viral. It's like me saying that in 1982, I read the 7th Harry Potter book. As proof, I'll tell you all the details. Well, of course I have all the details and can construct an elaborate story; it's well know now. And, as I've said, I don't discount these individuals (barring those who might be considered paranoid delusional) had experiences; I'm simply saying they're misremembering them, combining new information with old. Memory is a very flawed thing. And a bunch of e-mails--informed by this well-known meme--hardly amount to proof. Sometimes a hoax is just a hoax and encouraging otherwise is counterproductive and, in the case of some mentally ill individuals, detrimental. And I should clarify, I NEVER accused you of being mentally ill or on drugs or whatever. I simply said that feeding these delusions (again, when there's a known hoax at work) isn't very helpful. The paranormal field is replete with very real enigmas that don't require paranoia and conspiracy theories and 3 am calls to Coast to Coast.

Pastor Swope said...

I didn't mean to insinuate that you thought I was mentally ill or on drugs, I was referring to common assumptions when someone encounters the unknown.

Slenderman is a fictional character, I am not trying to suppose that it is not. I agree with you that it could be an after the fact assumption that the entity was slenderman. But most of these people never mentioned slenderman. My coworker told me their story as a possible demonic or alien encounter. It was only after many of these incidents had similarities to the slenderman mythos that I saw the connection and presented it as such. Personally, I have seen that malevolent entities can take the form of anything-fictional character or deceased person who caused one trauma in order to produce fear in the victim. That is my undeclared sub context for the story. Slenderman is fiction, but is something mimicing it to produce fear? Or are people framing their encounters with presuppositions based on their internet browsing? Or is this entity based on an archetype of death stalking its victim? Perhaps Victor Surge tapped into that dwells in our mass subconscious? Anyway, don't mean to be argumentative. I have to purchase your book, it looks very interesting!

Cullan Hudson said...

For my part, I'm going to say that these individuals are framing (or even manufacturing) their encounters based upon countless internet memes. Sadly, this field is rife with individuals suffering everything from mild fantasy prone personalities to full on paranoid schitzophrenia simply because so many of these topics touch on things that are fearful, which feeds that nebulous paranoia. I'm always skeptical of accounts that involve people being stalked or followed or shadowed or of evil entities. I've experienced events that I would call paranormal. While my reactions to them, at first, might have been informed by fear (fear of the unknown), objectively, I'm not afraid of the phenomena themselves. I've never seen any real evidence of all that great fodder for bad movies. But there are a lot of mentally ill individuals out there who would use such models as a way to give their fears form. I used to work for a government agency around the time of 9/11 and we we get plenty of my neighbor is in the Taliban kind of calls. They would go off into elaborate scenarios, filled with all sorts of details they had seen in the media. Never mind that our agency had no authority in this matter. These callers needed to vent that paranoia. We didn't coddle them and say, well ya know maybe... We told them that such issues were not in our purview, but if they truly felt something was amiss they needed to contact their local law enforcment or the FBI. I realize in the case of such unknowns as Slenderman (or some entity masquerading as such for argument's sake) that, for many, people like yourself are the go-to men. But even in the Catholic church, the first step of exorcism isn't belief. From what I've learned, it's quite the opposite: psychological evaluations, rigorous questioning of the experiencer's sanity, an evaluation of what medications or illegal drugs may be involved.... Once the known has been eliminated, only then does the church look to performing the ritual, which they themselves is will admit is often done more for ameliorative benefits than the true exorcising of demons. So, I'm a firm believer in Ockham's Razor and eliminating first the mundane. And if you're seeing a recurring motif in these stories, it's likely because it's full or archetypal expressions of humanity: the faceless man, dressed in black. Black is a powerful color that represents the night and the dangers lurking therein. People we can't see or don't know or can't recall or can't identify (represented by the faceless man) is fearful to us. We're visual creatures and we rely on visual cues to alert us to danger; if we can't identify something... Especially thin beings are often off-putting or frightening because how we associate such a state with illness and death, a wasting away of a plumper human form. Especially tall beings are equally off-putting because the evoke the child in us, when everything was large, looming, and scarier. In being masters of our universe, we always prefer things in scale to ourselves; we don't like to be dominated. And, of course, when he's out snatching children, snatching innocents... We can't feel the world is safe. Children represent us at our most vulnerable.

rockyw said...

since the slender man reminds me in a way of something i saw, only in that it was a dark figure, this may be off base, but maybe one should check out leflore oklahoma some time, there are some weird things that happen there, lets just leave it at i saw something i cannot explain, it was dark and i was coming back from checking on my friends cattle, and whatever it was, was not shy or afraid of a .22

Unknown said...

I agree with Cullan. I am a Christian and do verify the existence of demons, angels, and unclean spirits. But nurturing someone's fantasy to make them feel better is not at all biblical. The existence of human spirits is mainly mentioned in the old testament under the old covenant. not much is said in the new testament. In one of of your blogs you mentioned the discernment of spirits. That happens to be one of my gifts, and if we read the bible like it should be (where everything is not a parable, except where Christ teaches in parables) you are to discern if the spirit is evil, good, or unclean. Or, if it's demonic, angelic, or tormented. Don't forget that even the devil can appear as an Angel of Light, Pastor Swope. Oh and let's not forget that he prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour. I don't agree with your interpretations of the scriptures but it is your freedom to interpret as you see them as it is mine. God gave us free will to choose on our own but He also gave us gifts and the Holy Spirit to to know when somethings wrong. I died at the age of 2 but was revived and I distinctly remember rising upward from my body and not down into the earth. I have had some very severe paranormal experiences that led to my mother having me hold a gun on the door of our brand new enclosed patio and the police showing up and not finding a single track in the freshly leveled sand outside. I saw that door nearly come off the hinges and the dog running backward through the house and then charging the door like a trained attack dog, she was a 5 lbs poodle, and feeling the presence of evil even through all the fear. I was sixteen at that time. You've kind of taken the demon or Nephilim and made them kind of stupid. That's a dangerous thing to do, because they are intelligent and capable of all the things Angels are. Don't forget they are called the fallen because they were angels that followed satan and were cast out of heaven. And, the biggest thing to remember is the devil is called the Prince of the Power of the Air because he was given dominion on earth until the final days. I am rebuking you in love and praying that you will seek His face and think about these things before you do so serious harm. The slender man is an Internet legend, or is a demon or the devil himself. I don't have definitive proof but the Spirit tells me this is not something to be played with. God Bless.