Tag: wisconisn

Slender Man supposedly stalks you for a while before he attacks. The scary-as-hell character is said to observe from a distance, driving his planned victims into a “slender sickness” before he attacks.

Slender Man moves a little closer each day. You think he is gone, only to look up from what you are doing and see him again. Out there waiting.

Payton Leutner never saw Slender Man coming. She only saw her friends Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier. All three girls were 12 years old at the time and living in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Slender Man supposedly lures or takes his victims into the woods to finish them off. And that is where Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier allegedly took Payton that day in May of 2014.

Police say they stabbed her 19 times and left her to die in the woods. Payton did almost die. But she survived. That’s another big difference between this case and Slender Man. With Slender Man, no one ever lives to tell the tale.

Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier are both now 13, as is Payton. The two were arrested on May, 31, 2014. They told police that they were doing the bidding of Slender Man. Morgan Geyser told police that Slender Man “watches you.” She also said, “I’ve never seen him. He’s everywhere.”

Since then, the world has waited to find out whether the girls would be tried in court as adults or as juveniles. Now they have some news from a judge, though it may not be the final word on the matter.

Judge Michael Bohren ruled that there is enough probable cause for the first-degree attempted homicide charges against Geyser and Weier. Their attorneys were hoping to have the charges lessened. With less severe charges, the case could have been automatically moved to juvenile court. But with the judge’s decision, it stays in adult court for now, but can be moved to juvenile later.

The next step is something called a “reverse-waiver hearing.” This will allow the defense teams a chance to argue before the judge about whether the case should be heard in juvenile court. Those hearings are scheduled for mid-May and mid-July for each of the accused girls separately.

The Slender Man phenomenon has been a harmless bit of fictional horror for most people. The character was created when a contest was held on an Internet forum to see which forum members could come up with the best photo edits that might take on a life of their own outside the site. One member Photoshopped a tall, thin figure into pictures of kids on a playground, then later made up a story to go along with the picture.

The meme of Slender Man was born. The character did indeed take on a larger life outside the original forum. There are Slender Man costumes or Halloween, lots of fan fiction stories, some poorly written Kindle books, and some movie ideas. The original creator trademarked the name, but does not own all the rights necessary to have complete control of the character creatively. Therefore, no real films have yet been produced, but that may just be a matter of time.

What has happened, though, are a few odd crimes that relate to the character. Specifically, two Wisconsin girls — Anissa E. Weier, 13, and Morgan Geyser, 12 — are accused of stabbing another teen 19 times and leaving her for dead back in June. At the time, all three girls were only 12 years old. Weier and Geyser told police that they stabbed their classmate to “appease Slender Man.” They said they wanted to be “proxies of Slender Man” and stabbed the girl and left her for him to find. They said they had been planning the deed for months.

Geyser had previously been found incompetent to stand trial because a state psychologist testified that she sees other fictional characters, including some of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as Harry Potter villain Voldemort.

More recently, both girls have been found competent to stand trial. They will be charged as adults under Wisconsin law.