'Slenderman' by Kathleen Hale
In 2014, a pair of middle-school girls from Waukesha tried to kill a classmate by stabbing her multiple times. The reason given? They were told to do it by Slenderman, a murky internet fiction, and they feared his wrath if they disobeyed. The lurid case drew media attention to Milwaukee’s sleepy, “idyllic,” Republican-leaning suburb and now, a more in-depth, book-length account.
Author Kathleen Hale claims the Waukesha authorities provided little assistance as she tried to assemble hard facts. The cost of copying and even tracking down court records was high. However, Hale gained access to many transcripts and had conversations with one of the girls, Morgan Geyser, and her family. She reviewed previous coverage of the case and spoke to experts in juvenile justice and psychology. The Slenderman stabbings were, after all, psychologically motivated. Morgan and her companion, Anissa Weir, really believed in the existence of the malign entity they discovered online.
Hale’s narrative becomes a study in nature and nurture. Morgan inherited a tendency toward schizophrenia from her house husband dad. Mom was usually away at work, ironically, perhaps, as a neuro-diagnostician. They were concerned parents who never put the clues together about their daughter’s frail hold on reality. Anissa’s situation seems more commonplace. Her parents were separating, mom’s new boyfriend was indifferent, depression followed. According to Hale, she had “a desperate need for other people to accept her, a need driven partly by her own unshakable belief that no one ever had.”
Enter Slenderman. He was a character on a horror-oriented website, creepypasta.com, whose content was written by young amateurs, a kind of digital pulp fiction fanzine whose editors that any submissions containing “racism, bigotry, excessive sexual content, profanity, gore or offensive slurs would be automatically rejected.”
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Anissa discovered Slenderman and, unfortunately, both girls lacked the ability to sort fact from fiction. The problem isn’t confined to the young but is widespread among alleged grownups addicted to conspiracy theories. From Slenderman, it’s a short walk to Q.
Throughout the book, Hale is critical of Wisconsin’s justice system for trying the girls as adults, the healthcare system for their victim’s staggering hospital bills and the sloppy media frenzy, followed by the inevitable digital lynch mob in pursuit of the girls’ parents. It’s a sad, sordid story.
