Revisiting the Slender Man stabbings

Two young girls stabbed their friend 19 times. Their reasoning? To please Slender Man. That was the motive of two 12-year-olds who became infatuated with the story of Slender Man, and the tragic story of a girl who was deeply traumatized by this obsession.

Was this a case of the internet affecting young people’s minds? Or was it the fault of two murder hungry 12-year-old girls who were ready to kill?

May 30, 2014. It was the day before the attack. Three girls had gathered for a slumber party. This was nothing out of the ordinary for them, as Anissa Weiler, Payton Luetner and Morgan Geyser had all spent time together in the past doing activities such as playing outside, drawing and having slumber parties. “Something was different about this though,” Luetner described, feeling that something wasn’t right.

A fascination Geyser would often bring up with her friends was an internet story known as Slender Man, Eric Knudsen being the original author of the creepypasta in 2009. (Creepypasta is a genre of user-generated horror stories distributed via internet forums.) Slender Man was described as thin and unnaturally tall with no facial features such as a mouth or eyes. He was often portrayed with tentacles rising from his lower body. Stories about Slender Man circulated around the internet of him stalking, abducting and traumatizing children, stemming from the original creepypasta with different spins on the character added over the years. The first portrayals of Slender Man were in black and white pictures of groups of children with the tall thin man standing off in the distance.

Later, the story was also exposed to a much wider audience with the release of the game “Slender: The Eight Pages” in 2012. Knowing the story of Slender Man, it seems a bit concerning how obsessed both Geyser and Weier had become with it. Luetner noticed their fascination, but dismissed any worry she had over it.

“I thought it was odd. It kind of frightened me a little bit,” she said.

Though she felt wary, she was accepting of it because they were her friends.

On the night of the slumber party, the girls headed to a large wooded area. Leutner was told that they would play hide and seek, and they lured her into a pile of leaves. She covered herself in sticks and leaves, when sud- denly Geyser stabbed her 19 times in the arms, legs and torso. Luetner was brutally attacked by the two girls: Morgan Geyser who committed the stabbing, and Anissa Weier who watched the whole thing happen and helped plan the attack.

After the girls fled from what they thought to be Luetner’s dead body, they traveled back expecting to “find Slender Man” but they were instead picked up by police. When the police questioned them, both were disturbingly calm, claiming that Slender Man told them that they had to kill someone in order to be worthy of living alongside him and that he had threatened their families.

Back inside the forest, Luetner had miraculously survived the brutal attack. She crawled all the way back to a road after the girls had left, where she was eventually found. After six days in the hospital she had physically recovered, but the mental effects would haunt her for life.

August of 2014, the judge of the trial ruled Geyser incompetent to take place in the trial, meaning the charges tried against her were suspended until December of 2014. She was diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia, leaving the girls unable to qualify to be sent to juvenile court. As they were tried as adults, Weier had been declared not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute where she was sentenced to 25 years instead of jail time. Geyser was committed to 40 years of treatment and monitoring.

Luetner is still living with deep-rooted trauma relating to the incident. In interviews she’s spoken about her story, saying she has issues trusting others and still sleeps with scissors under her pillow at night due to paranoia following the attack.

Now given the context, were the girls insane? Or was it the internet’s influence?

Maybe it wasn’t entirely either. Though the story of Slender Man contributed to the stabbing, a large part of the story that doesn’t get told is the lack of mental help and awareness that could have prevented this from happening. If it was noticed beforehand that the girls were struggling with serious mental disorders and showing concerning behavior, getting the mental help they needed could have prevented Luetner’s trauma. For generations, mental health has often been neglected and though awareness is becoming greater, the suppression of mental illness and societal pressure not to talk about it has left longlasting negative effects. As long as we continue to dismiss this issue, not only will the people coping with these mental illnesses be harmed, but the people around them in their communities as well. H