The Birth of the Blogs: Marble Hornets

So its only right that this "study" I'm doing be kicked off with the most pertinant element of the slendymythos.
(P.s., have I said how much I love prefacing everything slenderman related with the word "slendy"?)

When the slenderman stories really started getting really big, the first thing that started happening were the hundreds and hundreds of fanworks based off Slenderman. From the first mention of the fellow on the Something Awful, to the multitudes of offshoot stories involving some college age guy looking for someone who has gone missing and left behind a seemingly 'innoculous' HEAP of film.

Seriously. That's every single one of them. But they do contribute a lot to our understanding of what Slenderman is sooo, lets take gander.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
So none of that "you ruined the ending!!!" whining, ok douchecanoes?


Lets talk MarbleHornets

MH is probably the birthplace of the true Slendymeme as it is today. Starting only a short while after Slenderman started getting big on the forums, Marble Hornets was the first to take the idea of Slenderman and run with it. Every Slenderblog thats followed usually has influences from (if not a total  frakking copy of) MH.

The basic plot is this:
Jay, our lovably pug-faced, unreliable narrator; is friends with the enigmatic Alex Kralie. Both are film students. Alex is entrenched in working on his classically self-impressed, hoity-toity film student film "MarbleHornets" when somebody decides its time to make a break for hollywood and starts interupting the shoots. Of course, Jay, at the time, is blissfully unaware. All he knows is that his friend seems to be going a little off his rocker. Alex begins to behave strangely, then begins to obsessively film himself, eventually giving up his film altogether in favour of isolation and self-documentation. Eventually Jay confronts him about this strange behavior. He discovers that Alex has heaps of tapes lying around, which he plans to burn. Jay eventually talks him out of burning them and takes them home with him, planning to watch them. Which he promptly forgets to do.

Years pass.
Alex transferred schools shortly after giving away the tapes and Jay hasn't seen him for about three years. For some unknown reason, suddenly the tapes, which have been stored in Jay's closet collecting dust, pique his interest, and he creates a youtube account to document his findings.

(Point of note: There are some theories that what piqued his interest was actually finding the Something Awful Forum that started Slenderman. I don't know why this would grab his attention despite ironically not knowing that the monster he was looking at was the one that he would shortly discover himself, irregardless, it's nicely full circle.)

Because the tapes are somewhat old and unmarked, Jay has no way of knowing what order they go in and begins watching them at random. What he discovers is more than a little disturbing. Alex was being hunted by something.

Jay watches (out of order) Alex's seeming first encounter with long-tall-and-faceless, and Alex's downspiral of first trying to discover what Slenderman is, to being completely overtaken by paranoia and fear. Jay becomes increasingly concerned about what happened to his friend. Even more so when another YouTuber begins leaving cryptic and threatening video responses to Jay's account.

Of course, the inevitable happens, and Jay begins seeing Slenderman himself. In fact, the more Jay tries to find out about what happened, the worse things seem to get. From Slendy-sickness, to a masked man lurking in his room while he sleeps. Hell, Slendy even burns down the poor sucker's apartment building just to be nearer to him.

Oh yes.

The major players:

Jay: Poor sad-sack who gets wrapped up in hell just because he tried to be a good friend. Usually behind the camera, and usually quiet, we typically see the world through his eyes, and let me tell you, it's not always awesomesauce. If he's not getting slendystalked, he's waking up in the woods somewhere after portal-ing through a house for hours in pursuit of that masked man. Everything bad that happened to Alex, (coughing, stalking, paranoia, self-filming) all begins to happen to Jay.

Who said ignorence wasn't bliss???

Alex: Quiet, sometimes brooding film student # 2. Alex was a pretty normal film student, nice guy, kinda quiet. Then someone had to come along and start giving him a mindscrew. From the moment Slendy started getting involved Alex went from normal guy, to insane whackjob seen furiously scribbling pictures of slenderman all over the walls and yelling angrily at anyone who got in his way. Then he vanished.

Years later, after much desperate searching for his friend Jay recieved a video of Alex, seemingly happy and well adjusted. That is until his stupid girlfriend found the damn camera, and everything started all over again.

We've since met up with Alex again. He just appears and everyone seems to act like nothing is wrong. Granted, at the time, they're a little more occupied with an armed masky. Also, according to the newest video, Alex seems to know more about SM than he's letting on.


Totheark: Strange, enigma of a S.O.B. who turns-coat so many times it's impossible to tell whose side he's on, albiet, I find his videos distinctly menacing and they rarely seem to bring about any good. Usually utalizing distorted footage and audio, sometimes from Alex's videos that were missing scenes and sound. Sometimes video of Jay taking video (shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit).  His responses always leave the viewer with a cryptic puzzle and the tingly sensation that this dude is up to no good. On the other hand, he tends to be the one to drive the story along, coaxing Jay back into the fray.
Then again, one has to wonder, would Jay have still been looking for Alex of Totheark wasn't the one driving him on towards Slendy?

There's a looooot of theories as to who the hell Totheark is. Pretty much everyone from Jay himself to that girl we saw that one time in that one video is suspect. As for me? My money is that it's Alex, and he's not such a good guy anymore.

Masky/Tim: Once one of the cast of MarbleHornets, Tim seems to have gotten up to some real hijinks in the past couple years. Tim, for starters, was actually one of the first to show symptoms of Slendysickness (raising some eyebrows on this side of the computer moniter, let-me-tell-you). Then, years later when Jay tried to question him about Alex, his answers were dodgy and unhelpful to say the least.
Then he started getting in on the haunting act himself.

Although we didn't know it at the time (well, everyone who didn't recognize his signature bomber jacket and epic-sideburns) Tim was that creepy masked man that lurked in the shadows of Jay's research. He first appeared in Brian's house (a dark, creepy, abandoned place that Jay hoped would give him some clues to Alex's whereabouts), calmly sitting in the shadows, before tackling Jay, and then promptly having a seizure. Then he showed up on Jay's security footage. Then he he followed Jay to the motel after his aparment burned down.

Masky was only recently 'unmasked', and revealed to be Tim. After visiting a burned out building a second time, and then finding Alex (rather unceremoniously if you ask me) Masky popped out, bypassed Jay and then stabbed Alex with a knife. Afterwhich Alex got revenge by umasking Tim, and then crushing his leg with a rock. Don't worry, he got better.

Brian; The lead actor from MarbleHornets, he seems to have dissapeared off of the face of the map. He and Alex were good friends, and was the one that introduced Alex and Tim. Sounds like he and Tim were something of best-friends before Slenderman horned in. He hasn't been seen since. However, it was his house that Jay searched multiple times. From the bloody sink and bullet casings, to the portals through time and space, things weren't looking so good.

Jessica: Jay's next door neighbor in the Motel. At first she seems happy and carefree, but things slowly decline as she delves into paranoia. Mentioning that she's been haunted by something since she was a child, and mentioning several oddities in the motel, Jay almost teems up with her. However, masky intervines, and she hasn't been seen since.

The Operator: Known affectionately as Slenderman. Able to teleport from place to place, except perhaps when on film, Slenderman seems to really really want to be on fim. He's not usually seen moving, which adds to his mysterious and creepy air, but he's almost always somewhere, lurking. His presence is noted by the effects on the characters, as well as visual tears, and loud audio distortions that trumpet his presence or influence. So sometimes you hear him, without ever seeing him at all. What's worse? You know that the protagonists don't even know he's there.




My rating: A
MarbleHornets is where it all began. It practically defines Slenderblog. On the otherhand, it's not perfect. But few trailblazers are. It builds the background for us to explore just what slenderman is.

Origin Story

So, the point of this blog, as I stated last post, is to really look into this whole 'Slenderman' from every angle. I want to get into some of the creepier, more convincing evidence here. In fact, that's really what I'm looking forward to, but before I can do that we have to get the basics out of the way.

We have to go back to the beginning.

The first (known) overt discussion of Slenderman is on the Something Awful Forums, first brought up by one Mr. Victor Surge.

The forum was about creating paranormal images with photoshop; ostensibly with which to dupe paranormal websites. And for the most part it had all been in good fun, most of the images were hoaky, or humorous, with a few bordering on ligitmently scary. Then, on page 3, June 10, 2009 Mr. Surge posted this and everything changed.

"we didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..."
- From Victor Surge's Original Post

These pictures were cited as two surviving images from a small town library fire; taken the day before the dissapearance of the fourteen children.

There was immediate response.

"Film defects my rear end... (Excellent work good sir!)"  - Gyver Mac

"Some of these images are quite creepy. I wish "The Slender Man" one was legit." - Cowboythreespeech

"oh gently caress you when i finally saw the guy in the background i lost it this is going to give me nightmares" - Leyendecker

Victor Surge's response: "Maybe I'll do some more research. I've heard there may be a couple more legit "Slender Man" photographs out there. I'll post them if I find them."

This was followed by a photo of what appears to be an old man with no face and tenticle reflected in an overexposed photograph of a mirror in an estate sale. He stands with a child and two women who seem unaware of his presence. The Report describes a the photo being taken in a dark stairwell, afterwhich there was the sound of something large being dropped. The report indicates that the camera was found bloodied, with only one of the subjects still present (but a little looser in the brain-box, if you get my drift). Of course, she doesn't stay present and accounted for, for long.

Then these a day later:

From the original Victor Surge post on Something Awful Forums

From the original Victor Surge post on Something Awful Forums

LeechCode5 was the first to post a response. Expressing a fear to post the images he possessed, but feeling the need to; he cites a stories of missing children and burning schools. This takes Slenderman into the 1970's.

From the original LeechCode5 post on Something Awful Forums

This marks the first corroboration of the Slenderman story. And the beginning of Slenderman, doing what he does best, hijacking the blog into something else.




From the original Victor Surge post on Something Awful Forums



From the original Victor Surge post on Something Awful Forums

"I'm not usually one to get all bandwagony but Slender Man is honestly one of the most inspiring and sinister things I've seen lately. Something about it seems to strike some sort of primal 'wrong' chord." - TheRiffie

"My friend is herejus camein barely made up staairs got pictur locked door but it s right there inthe hall
dont look at its pictures it dosent want to be known about dont loo..." - Victor Surge

"I read this thread while in bed last night, and if you wanted to go off on a tangent about slender man haunting the dreams of those who research him, you'll be telling the truth. Not quite a nightmare as I didn't feel the usual fear that goes along with them, but very odd dreams that started with running from an apparition of him in the distance and ended with him catching up to me and ripping my chest open with his tentacles as I tried to fight back, at which point I woke up." - GWBBQ

It always starts with the dreams, doesn't it?

By Page 6 the forum became almost nothing but Slenderman. To date the forum is 46 pages long.

Can it really be that all that fascination came from one man with one idea? Maybe he named him, and maybe that's where he got popular but is that really the true original of Slenderman?
Maybe the idea came from Slenderman. Maybe he's been around a lot longer than anyone realizes. Maybe he looks how we imagine he's supposed to look, and thus Something Awful and Victor Surge truely did define him. I don't know.

Or maybe I'm a retard.

Eitherway, I'm gonna find out.

What is the Slenderman?

Well, if you're here you probably already know. Or at least have an idea. On the other hand, maybe you don't. That's kind of the whole point, now isn't it?

Enough of this philosophy-major B.S.

Ok. Slenderman. What is he?

Well, nobody is really sure. So, stupid answer. Basically, he's a monster. Granted, monster is a pretty primitive discription. I don't know about you but when I picture a monster I think of...like...Where the Wild Things Are, or...Grover. Something that might actually be kind of fun to chill with and ride around, provided it's well trained enough not to eat you.

Slenderman isn't really a monster. He's more like...a fear. A nightmare? Something suitably metaphorically terrifying.


DOWN TO BUSINESS
Slenderman: Tall, wears a business suit, black, sometimes red tie. Sometimes he has a hat, sometimes he doesn't. Abnormally skinny. No face.

Oh, did I mention tall and faceless??? Indeed I did. So this sucker likes to shluff around forests and playgrounds, eat children and haunt anyone with a webcam and a moderate degree of proficiency with Windows Movie Maker.
Subsiquently Slendy (as he's affectionantly known) has been cropping up on the internet lately and getting increasingly popular. Just check out the variety of Blogs, Vlogs, Webseries, and ARG's dedicated to our friendly neighboorhood businessman.

There's a bit of an origin story to the guy, and, like any good urban myth, there's a lot of debate regarding which on is true. Some people say he first cropped up in the Germany's Black Forest (of cake fame) during World War II (as if the German's didn't have enough to deal with); Other's think he's always been around. There's a trail that leads back to the whole thing being a hoax started on Something Awful Forums; and others still think that this whole thing is a coverup. There are schools of thought that think he is a monster, a curious alien, a being from another dimension, a fey, the embodiement of malice, an angry tree or something else all together.

What we do know, is that he tends to hang out in the woods. He has tenticles, which are usually rarely seen, and only utalized when he is alone or on the kill. However there are a few images of him hidden among the trees, suspended by his long dark spidery limbs.
He likes the kiddies.

Most people who are hunted by him into adulthood, and subsiquently share their stories are people who encountered him when they were just children (whether they remember it or not). Why does he steal children? Meh, not sure. Because he's a bogeyman and that's what they're supposed to do.

People who spend too much time around him suffer: Headaches, memory loss, violent (sometimes bloody) coughing fits, nose bleeds or otherwise dramatic minor blood-loss; paranoia, excessive self-filming, anxiety attacks, and mental break-downs.

And the best part? It would seem that the more time you spend with him. The more he wants to keep hanging with you. The less likely it is that he'll ever leave.



Awesomesauce.


So...Yeah. This blog is kind of my attempt to study the guy. To figure out what he's all about. I'm not being hunted by him (although time will tell whether or not this blog was a bad idea to begin with...). Maybe we'll call this an experiment into his motivations and what draws him closer.

I have to admit...This guy terrifies the hell outta me.

Maybe I like being scared.