In two thousand fourteen, two young women decided to give a sacrifice of a close friend to the entity known as slender-man. This fictional character appeared on the creepypasta website in 2009 for a photoshop contest. Slender-man is depicted as a faceless man with unnaturally long arms standing between six and fifteen feet tall. Many tales following the posting of the picture to creepypasta have created backstories that turn into evil or designed to bring hope to those who feel isolated. While most of us recognize these tales of the slender man are nothing more than fiction intended to entice our imaginations. These two pre-teen girls believed that slender man was real.

Anissa and her best friend Morgan lured Payton, otherwise known as Bella by those who know her, to an isolated park in Waukesha, Wisconsin and stabbed her 19 times, leaving her for dead. All to appease the Slender-man.

Morgan was sentenced to forty years in a mental hospital after being diagnosed with schizophrenia and delusions. Her accomplice Anissa was recently released in twenty-twenty one with an ankle monitor and an order to never have contact with Bella or her family until twenty-thirty-nine.

The question that seems most important in my mind is why no one saw signs of these two young women and the obsession with, and what might be considered religious theology, this fictional character - the Slender-Man.

Pages spoken about in this Episode

Rollins School Building

5 News Article

Scholarship Information

Data Resource Center for Child & Adolescent Health

CDC Report

WHO Report

Autism Speaks

The Podcasts talked about in this episode

Morbid A True Crime Podcast

True Crime Garage

Sword and Scale

Find the Taro Cards used in this Episode on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Easy-Tarot-Learn-Read-Cards/dp/0738711500/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LUT4OCQSUQQ0&keywords=easy+tarot+josephine+ellershaw&qid=1658690014&sprefix=easy+tarot+josephine%2Caps%2C75&sr=8-1&author-follow=B001R1VRHG&