Two girls are accused of luring their friend into the woods and stabbing her 19 times, to prove their loyalty to a fictional character made popular by an online urban legends forum:
The 12-year-old girls had been plotting the murder for months, police say.
Morgan E. Geyser was allowed to have two friends over each year for her birthday. This year, she'd celebrate on May 30. That is the day she and Anissa E. Weier would try to kill their friend during a sleepover.
On Monday, the two Waukesha girls were charged in Waukesha County Circuit Court as adults with attempted first-degree intentional homicide, each facing up to 65 years in prison. Their victim, another 12-year-old from Waukesha, was stabbed 19 times by either Geyser or Weier or both, according to a criminal complaint. All three attend Horning Middle School in Waukesha.
Geyser and Weier are being held on $500,000 bail each. The pre-teens attempted murder, they told police, to pay homage to a fictional character who they believed was real after reading about him on a website devoted to horror stories.
On Saturday, a bicyclist found the victim, lying on the sidewalk and covered in blood, with injuries to her arms, legs and torso. She had managed to crawl out of the woods, where the suspects had left her. She was rushed to a hospital, where she was in stable condition Monday evening, but fighting for her life.
A Waukesha County sheriff's deputy found Geyser and Weier hours later, walking near I-94 in Waukesha. A knife with a five-inch blade was in Weier's backpack.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel normally does not name juveniles involved in crimes, but is naming the suspects because they are in adult court and because of the severity of the charges. A criminal complaint filed Monday detailed the allegations.
Both suspects explained the stabbing to police referencing their dedication to Slender Man, the character they discovered on a website called Creepypasta Wiki, which is devoted to horror stories.
Weier told police that Slender Man is the "leader" of Creepypasta, and in the hierarchy of that world, one must kill to show dedication. Weier said that Geyser told her they should become "proxies" of Slender Man — a paranormal figure known for his ability to create tendrils from his fingers and back — and kill their friend to prove themselves worthy of him. Weier said she was surprised by Geyser's suggestion, but also excited to prove skeptics wrong and show that Slender Man really did exist.
The suspects believed that "Slender," as Weier called him, lived in a mansion in the Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin. The plan was to kill the victim and walk to Slender's mansion.
After school on Friday, Weier told police, she and Geyser went to Weier's house, where she packed a backpack with clothes, granola bars, water bottles and a picture of her mother, father and siblings. She didn't want to forget what her family looked like after leaving for Slender's mansion.
The girls then went to Geyser's house. With Geyser's father, they picked up the victim and all went to Skateland.
They came home around 9:30 p.m. and went to sleep in Geyser's room.
Geyser and Weier originally had planned to commit the murder at 2 a.m. Saturday, according to the criminal complaint. They'd duct tape their victim's mouth, stab her in the neck and pull the covers up to make it look like she was sleeping. Then they'd run.
But the plans changed after they'd been out rollerskating Friday night. Instead, they'd try to kill her in a bathroom at a nearby park the next morning. Weier knew there was a drain in the floor for the blood to go down, she told police.
'This was really happening'
The next morning, Geyser's mom said they could go and play in David's Park, on S. East Ave., just north of Les Paul Parkway. As they left, Geyser lifted up the left side of her white jacket; the knife was tucked in her waistband. Weier told police she gave Geyser a look with "wide eyes." When asked by police what that meant, Weier said, "I thought, dear God, this was really happening."
Weier said they eventually ended up in the park bathroom where Weier planned stab her friend. Once in the bathroom, Geyser handed Weier the knife, and Weier indicated that Geyser tried to restrain the victim, but Geyser had a "nervous breakdown" and Weier had to calm her down.
Weier then suggested they go for a walk, pointing out a wooded area near Rivera Drive and Big Bend Road. They could play hide and seek, distract the victim, then kill her. Geyser was the first "seeker," and Weier and the victim hid. Weier told the victim where to hide and told her to lie facedown in the dirt. The girl refused. Weier then pushed the victim and sat on her, thinking Geyser could stab her. But the victim began to yell and complain that she couldn't breathe. She was attracting attention, so Weier got off her.
Geyser gave Weier the knife, but Weier said she told Geyser she was too squeamish and gave it back.
Weier said that once Geyser got the knife back, Geyser told Weier, "I'm not going to until you tell me to." Weier said she started walking away from Geyser and then told her, "Go ballistic, go crazy." Geyser said she would go ballistic, and Weier said, "Now."
Weier said Geyser then tackled the victim and started stabbing her. The victim was screaming. Weier said when Geyser got off the victim, the victim screamed, "I hate you. I trusted you."
Weier said the victim tried to walk toward the street but was stumbling. They didn't want anyone to see her, so Weier grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the street. The victim fell. Weier said the victim couldn't breathe, see or walk. Weier told the victim to lie down and be quiet — she would lose blood more slowly. Weier told police she gave the victim those instructions so she wouldn't draw attention to herself, and so she would die. Weier told the victim they were going to get her help; but they never planned on actually doing so. They hoped she would die, and they would see Slender and know he existed. With the victim lying on the ground, they began to back away.
When police asked Weier if she knew what it meant to kill someone, Weier said, "I believe it's ending a life and I regret it." Weier also said, "The bad part of me wanted her to die, the good part of me wanted her to live."
'I didn't feel remorse'
Geyser's report to police was much shorter.
She confirmed the details of Weier's interview with law enforcement officials, but said she thought that Weier stabbed the victim first.
"Weier put the knife in my hand and then I continued to stab her," the complaint quoted Geyser.
When asked how many times Geyser thought she stabbed the victim, Geyser said she did not know; all she heard was screaming.
At one point, when talking with police, Geyser said she was sorry. She said she had put the knife back into her bag and wiped it off on her jacket. She then told a detective, "It was weird that I didn't feel remorse."
Geyser said they had to do it or "he would kill our family." When asked who "he" was, Geyser said she didn't know him. When asked what she was trying to do when she stabbed her friend, Geyser said, "I may as well just say it: Kill her."
When asked about Slender Man, Geyser said she had never met him but said he watches her and he can read minds and teleport. Geyser said what she did was "probably wrong." She asked a detective if it is illegal to stab someone in self-defense. The detective said sometimes, and asked her if that was what happened in this instance.
No, she said.
In court on Monday, Geyser's family members broke into tears several times during her appearance.
"The family is very horrified at what has happened," attorney Donna Kuchler said.
Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel stressed the girls were innocent until proven guilty, but added he has never encountered allegations like this as a prosecutor.
"Most of the time in a crime like this, with such violence like this, there's spur of the moment, there's the heat of passion," he said.
This time, he said, it was calculated.
"It's troubling when a person lashes out in anger," he said. "It's more troubling when they lash out in cold blood. Isn't that the worst kind of killer, the cold-blooded killer?"
Schimel, a Republican running for state attorney general, said he had to bring the case in adult court because of the level of charges against the girls. He said he expected the girls' attorneys to attempt to "reverse waive" them into juvenile court, which he said he would resist.
If moved into juvenile court and convicted, the girls could be held at most until they were 25 years old, Schimel said.
"It's a very shocking incident. There's no two ways about it," Schimel said. - JSOline
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Legend and Legacy of the Slender Man
Dressed in a black suit and with no visible face the Slender Man is an apparition with arms that stretch wide to entrap his chosen prey. Towering high the Slender Man hunts children with a voracious appetite, stalking them through parks and play grounds, and has even been known to attack children within their dreams. Due to his attire the Slender Man has been linked to the notorious 'Men in Black', who are thought to be Government agents who harass and threaten UFO witnesses, and who some believe to be aliens themselves. The only problem is that the Slender Man is a fictional character.
The Slender Man was born within the 'Something Awful' forums in 2009, when a thread was created to challenge members to create fake photo-shopped paranormal photographs. The idea however was not just to create these images, but to also filter them through the internet, in a bid to convince those who sought out such things, that the images created were authentic 'real' ghost/alien photographs.
Despite the Slender Man being a complete fabrication his legend has spread like wild-fire throughout the internet as a successful 'Internet MEME', a phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the internet, much like an esoteric inside joke, that evolves with time.
A YouTube sensation of sorts the 'Marble Hornets Project' is a series of video clips that were supposedly recorded by a teenager named 'Alex'. The segments of video taken from Alex's camcorder tapes follow him as he becomes increasingly concerned by the fact that 'something' sinister, is apparently stalking him.
Whilst Alex himself has mysteriously vanished, the video clips he left behind him become increasingly disturbing, as the Slender Man peers from distant corners. The 'Marble Hornets Project' has greatly increased the range of the Slender Man myths reach, with some unfamiliar with the legends origin taking it at face-value, and they in turn spread the legends grip further still.
IS THE 'SLENDER MAN' REAL?
Like the Tulpa of Tibetan Buddhism and mysticism, thought-forms are brought into existence merely through power of will and strength of mind. A Tulpa is defined as ‘a humanoid thought-form’ and likened to a personal 'genie' that you create using thought energy. Once created, the Tulpa can be put to practical use to help you in all sorts of ways.
But, is it possible that if enough people believe in something, that this belief alone could give birth to its form?
In John Keel’s 1975-authored book, The Mothman Prophecies
The most famous tulpa story comes from Alexandra David-Neel’s Magic and Mystery in Tibet
“What becomes of these creations? May it not be that like children born of our flesh, these children of our mind separate their lives from ours, escape our control, and play parts of their own?”
Now, is it possible that a group or collective create the same phenomenon? Consider these familiar types of spiritual experiences:
* A group of teenagers gathered around a Ouija board receives mysterious messages from a person's spirit who claims to have died 40 years ago.
* A paranormal society conducts a séance where they contact a ghost that communicates though table rappings.
* The residents of a century-old home continually see the spirit of a young child playing in the hallway.
Are these manifestations truly the ghosts of departed people or are they creations of the minds of the people who see them?
Some researchers of the paranormal suspect that some ghostly manifestations and poltergeist phenomena are products of the human mind. To test that idea, an experiment was conducted in the early 1970s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR) to determine if they could create a spectre. The idea was to assemble a group of people who would make up a completely fictional character and then, through séances, see if they could contact him and receive messages and other physical phenomena - perhaps even an apparition.
The results of the experiment have been posted on several sites throughout the internet...the following is a condensed version:
The TSPR, under the guidance of Dr. A.R.G. Owen, assembled a group of eight people culled from its membership, none of whom claimed to have any psychic gifts. The group, which became known as the Owen group, consisted of Dr. Owen's wife, a woman who was the former chairperson of MENSA (an organization for high-IQ people), an industrial designer, an accountant, a housewife, a bookkeeper and a sociology student. A psychologist named Dr. Joel Whitton also attended many of the group's sessions as an observer.
The group's first task was to create their fictional historical character. Together they wrote a short biography of the person they named Philip Aylesford. Here, in part, is that biography:
Philip was an aristocratic Englishman, living in the middle 1600s at the time of Oliver Cromwell. He had been a supporter of the King, and was a Catholic. He was married to a beautiful but cold and frigid wife, Dorothea, the daughter of a neighboring nobleman.
One day when out riding on the boundaries of his estates Philip came across a gypsy encampment and saw there a beautiful dark-eyed girl raven-haired gypsy girl, Margo, and fell instantly in love with her. He brought her back secretly to live in the gatehouse, near the stables of Diddington Manor - his family home.
For some time he kept his love-nest secret, but eventually Dorothea, realizing he was keeping someone else there, found Margo, and accused her of witchcraft and stealing her husband. Philip was too scared of losing his reputation and his possessions to protest at the trial of Margo, and she was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
Philip was subsequently stricken with remorse that he had not tried to defend Margo and used to pace the battlements of Diddington in despair. Finally, one morning his body was found at the bottom of the battlements, whence he had cast himself in a fit of agony and remorse.
| One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as "The Slender Man". Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence. Photographer Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986. |
The Seances
In September 1972, the group began their "sittings" - informal gatherings in which they would discuss Philip and his life, meditate on him and try to visualize their "collective hallucination" in more detail. These sittings, conducted in a fully lit room, went on for about a year with no results. Some members of the group occasionally claimed they felt a presence in the room, but there was no result they could consider any kind of communication from Philip.
So they changed their tactics. The group decided they might have better luck if they attempted to duplicate the atmosphere of a classic spiritualist séance. They dimmed the room's lights, sat around a table, sang songs and surrounded themselves with pictures of the type of castle they imagined Philip would have lived in, as well as objects from that time period.
It worked. During one evening's séance, the group received its first communication from Philip in the form of a distinct rap on the table. Soon Philip was answering questions asked by the group - one rap for yes, two for no. They knew it was Philip because, well, they asked him.
The sessions took off from there, producing a range of phenomena that could not be explained scientifically. Through the table-rapping communication, the group was able to learn finer details about Philip's life. He even seemed to exhibit a personality, conveying his likes and dislikes, and his strong views on various subjects, made plain by the enthusiasm or hesitancy of his knockings. His "spirit" was also able to move the table, sliding it from side to side despite the fact that the floor was covered with thick carpeting. At times it would even "dance" on one leg.
That Philip was a creation of the group's collective imagination was evident in his limitations. Although he could accurately answer questions about events and people of his time period, it did not appear to be information that the group was unaware of. In other words, Philip's responses were coming from their subconscious - their own minds. Some members thought they heard whispers in response to questions, but no voice was ever captured on tape.
Philip's psychokinetic powers, however, were amazing and completely unexplained. If the group asked Philip to dim the lights, they would dim instantly. When asked to restore the lights, he would oblige. The table around which the group sat was almost always the focal point of peculiar phenomena. After feeling a cool breeze blow across the table, they asked Philip if he could cause it to start and stop at will. He could and he did. The group noticed that the table itself felt different to the touch whenever Philip was present, having a subtle electric or "alive" quality. On a few occasions, a fine mist formed over the center of the table. Most astonishing, the group reported that the table would sometimes be so animated that it would rush over to meet latecomers to the session, or even trap members in the corner of the room.
The climax of the experiment was a séance conducted before a live audience of 50 people. The session was also filmed as part of a television documentary. Fortunately, Philip was not stage shy and performed above expectations. Besides table rappings, other noises around the room and making lights blink off and on, the group actually attained a full levitation of the table. It rose only a half inch above the floor, but this incredible feat was witnessed by the group and the film crew. Unfortunately, the dim lighting prevented the levitation from being captured on the film.
Although the Philip experiment gave the Owen group far more than they ever imagined possible, it was never able to attain one of their original goals - to have the spirit of Philip actually materialize.
The Philip experiment was so successful that the Toronto organization decided to try it again with a completely different group of people and a new fictional character. After just five weeks, the new group established "contact" with their new "ghost," Lilith, a French Canadian spy. Other similar experiments conjured up such entities as Sebastian, a medieval alchemist and even Axel, a man from the future. All of them were completely fictional, yet all produced unexplained communication through their unique raps.
Recently, a Sydney, Australia group attempted a similar test with "the Skippy Experiment." The six participants created the story of Skippy Cartman, a 14-year-old Australian girl. The group reports that Skippy communicated with them through raps and scratching sounds.
| "we didn't want to go, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..." Photographer unknown, 1983 |
Conclusions
What are we to make of these incredible experiments? While some would conclude that they prove that ghosts don't exist, that such things are in our minds only, others say that our unconscious could be responsible for this kind of the phenomena some of the time. They do not (in fact, cannot) prove that there are no ghosts.
Another point of view is that even though Philip was completely fictional, the Owen group really did contact the spirit world. A playful (or perhaps demonic, some would argue) spirit took the opportunity of these séances to "act" as Philip and produce the extraordinary psychokinetic phenomena recorded.
In any case, the experiments proved that paranormal phenomena are quite real. And like most such investigations, they leave us with more questions than answers about the world in which we live. The only certain conclusion is that there is much to our existence that is still unexplained.
In conventional thought, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be. Reality also includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible.
In the case of the Slender Man and other similar thought-form phenomenon, reality is basically perception.
Click for video - The Slender Man on C2C
You may want to read The Paranormal Pastor: Slender Man
Sources:
mythicalcreaturesguide.com
theslenderman.wikia.com
marblehornets.wikidot.com
ufosearchonline.com
urbanlegendsonline.com
theparanormalpastor.blogspot.com
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