Two girls, both 12 years old, believed in the online fictional character “Slenderman” so much that they tried to kill another girl to get his blessings. It may sound silly, but their crime is no joke. They’re being charged as adults for attempted murder.
If you’re over 20, you might be forgiven for not knowing who Slenderman is. The story has only been around for about five years. It started out as a picture uploaded to the website Something Awful, an online community where people just try to freak each other out. The original Slenderman image caught on and spread, with more pictures, stories, and videos coming out as the story went more and more viral.
Slenderman is essentially a boogieman with no face, who wears a dark suit, lives in the woods, and snatches children. Soon a whole legend was born, along with a growing group of people wondering if it might be real.
But other than the fact that this character was born on the Internet, there’s nothing new here. Every generation has grown up with spooky stories about some kind of boogieman. Like Bloody Mary who shows up in mirrors, or legends like the Jersey Devil… or pretty much any haunted house in the town where you grew up.
But most of us grow out of believing in them. And age is a key factor here, since these 12-year-olds are being charged as adults.
Which is why our Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, hit the streets of Charlotte to ask: When did you stop believing in a boogieman?
