13 Terrifying True Stories Behind Hollywood’s Scariest Horror Movies

Published August 26, 2022
Updated March 12, 2024

Slender Man

Slender Man Looks Through A Window

CeronThe mythic Slender Man.

The Slender Man myth is a new addition to the world of horror folklore. It is also the first one to be born on the Internet. It was first conceived in 2009 and already has spawned a movie – as well as a bloody history.

One forum user created the Slender Man after he answered a call for creepy photographs. He combined photos of a tall, skinny man with no face with photos of children playing and thus the Slender Man myth was born.

Slender Man Picture

Highpants Paradnoid AndroidA photograph that allegedly features the Slender Man.

After the initial post, the Internet took the mysterious monster man and ran with it. The Slender Man is always depicted as a tall and skinny man with no face who wears a suit. His arms are abnormally long and sometimes are shown to be in multiples or like tentacles.

Even though the Slender Man is a fictional myth, real-life blood has been shed because of him. In 2014, a 12-year-old in Wisconsin was stabbed 19 times by her friends in an attempted murder. Their motive for the attack? To please the Slender Man.

The Slender Man stabbing survivor’s remarkable recovery.

The Washington Post reported that one of the girls behind the 2014 attack said, “Many people do not believe Slender Man is real. [We] wanted to prove the skeptics wrong.”

Other violent attacks carried out to please the Slender Man included a 2014 stabbing where a woman was attacked by her 13-year-old daughter dressed in a hoodie and wearing a blank, white, face mask. Then a 14-year-old girl in Florida started a fire in her house after she read a bunch of materials on the Slender Man.

author
Caroline Redmond
author
Caroline is a writer living in New York City who holds a Bachelor's in science from the University of Florida. Her work has appeared in People, Yahoo, Bustle, Entertainment Weekly, and The Boston Herald.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.