Slender Man creeps onto TV in chilling documentary

As television's appetite for true-crime stories soar in the wake of Making a Murderer and The Jinx, HBO has snapped up the rights to the documentary Beware the Slenderman.

The film, from Oscar-nominated director Irene Taylor Brodsky, explores the internet's most infamous "bogeyman" figure and how it allegedly influenced two schoolgirls to stab a classmate 19 times. According to Indie Wire, Beware the Slenderman looks at the effect internet lore has on real-life actions, as well as how the digital age is "saturating the imagination and actions of children".

Who is Slender Man?

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

He is a fictional figure that has featured on online communities for several years. Invented on the Something Awful comedy forums in 2009, Slender Man is usually depicted as a thin, unnaturally tall figure dressed in a black suit and with a blank and featureless face. According to the online myths, he stalks and abducts children, can cause memory loss, paranoia, coughing fits (known as "slendersickness") and can teleport at will.

But how is he involved in a crime?

The Slender Man myth grew darker in May 2014, when two young girls from Wisconsin allegedly lured their friend to the middle of the woods and stabbed her 19 times.

When the police questioned them, the suspects reportedly said they carried out the assault on the girl – who survived – to show "devotion to Slender Man" and "to prove he's real, and so he wouldn't kill their families".

According to New York Magazine, they believed a blood sacrifice would guarantee them Slender Man's protection and access to his palatial home, where they hoped to live as his proxies.

What is the latest in the investigation?

A hearing was held in February 2015 to determine whether the girls, who were 12 when the attack took place, should be tried as adults. A defence lawyer for the younger suspect argued she was convinced Slender Man posed a threat and clinical psychologist Dr Deborah Collins said she had an "enduring belief" in his reality, as well as in Vulcan mind control and Harry Potter characters. However, the decision was made to charge the pair as adults in August 2015. "This was an effort to kill someone," said the judge. The girls will face charges of attempted first-degree murder and could face up to 65 years in the state prison system if they are convicted. Their next court appearance is due in April.