The Slender Man as a Tulpa | Ep. 3
Since we can pinpoint the exact origin of The Slender Man lore that took the internet by storm about 5-10 years ago, we can simply put a pin in it and call this urban legend unbelievable, right? Maybe not.
We investigate the idea that with so many people putting thoughts and energy into The Slenderman is it possible that, like a Tulpa, The Slenderman could have become a conscious being. This episode ends the launching day binge-a-thon of Believing the Bizarre.
Thank you to everyone who has jumped on board and we look forward to providing you another paranormal episode next Tuesday!
Below is a computer-automated transcription… there are likely to be errors haha
Charlie: what is the slender man? Is a thought more than a thought? Can your imagination change reality? Today we test the believability of the slender man as a Tulpa
Tyler: Okay, Welcome to believing the bizarre where
Charlie: we dive into the unknown and the
Tyler: unusual and tell you whether or not it’s believable.
Charlie: So that being said, we all know the slender man.
Tyler: I like how you’re getting right to business.
Charlie: The Slenderman is not really know the
Tyler: Slenderman. Is that what does he go by? The slender man?
Charlie: Yes, she does.
Tyler: Okay. He does
Charlie: that. It’s not just lender man. No, it’s like a title of the slender, I am these slender man. So we all know it’s bullshit.
Tyler: Yeah, right. Um
Charlie: I’m just getting straight to the end. It’s a bullshit
Tyler: marble hornets. That’s the end of the episode. Have a great day.
Charlie: No, there’s more to this episode.
Tyler: I was hoping when you pitched it, there
Charlie: might be there’s more to this episode than just slender man because we know we know where it came from. We can
Tyler: Pinpoint It. It’s interesting if this was like the first ever like 32nd podcast. Not real. See you
Charlie: next week. Next time believing the bizarre. So we all know he’s made up. But what if that does not matter? So, I have sectioned these out into you. I want to hit four points. Okay, This is a complex.
Tyler: Get your note pads out. People don’t be afraid to take.
Charlie: An intervention is going to be a test. The section is who is slender man. I’m going to jump to this point real quick first. I’m just gonna hit on it first. So something terrible happened in 2014. The first thing we’ll think about Slenderman is the stabbing where 3 12 year old girls were in the forest, Two of them stab Peyton Frontier, Anissa were and morgan Grazer. The Lord Peyton out of her home into the woods. And the tune to the crime Peyton actually survived. She did not die. She got said 19 times are tough cookie where was found not guilty due to mental illness and she was sentenced to 25 years in the psychiatric clinic. And Grace sir, pleaded guilty of attempted first degree murder and she got 40 years and mental health unit. So that being said, I just want to cover the stabbing really quick because that’s the thing that comes up a lot is that
Tyler: doing so is that separate from what we’re gonna be talking about?
Charlie: Kind of it’s gonna play into it a little bit,
Tyler: but it’s kind of like if this is our third episode now, so you can tell there’s kind of a lighter tone. I’m putting this on you because this is your episode. But I’m projecting that to separate. That is kind of like, well there are serious things that
Charlie: is not funny. That is deadly
Tyler: serious. Yeah, we’re not gonna we’re not gonna poke light at that. We’ll bug light at these Slenderman versus just being called slender man. But you know, when there’s serious people’s lives being um affected for the worse,
Charlie: I just wanted to address it really quick. That’s a stabbing and we all think about understood she did not die. So that’s great. It’s terrible what happened, but she didn’t die. Uh huh. So to start something awful is a form on the internet where people talk about creepy stuff. It’s called something off. It’s called something awful. I looked it up, it’s still there, still going eric johnson. I only have said K N U D S E N johnson I think aka is victor serge. He is a man that is fairly talented with Photoshop. Did you hear that? Ohio a there.
Tyler: Talent talent
Charlie: Anyway, so he’s the one that originally made the slender man Photoshop Like 2009. Either June eight or June 10. Somewhere early June of 2000
Tyler: And 9. 1 might say mid
Charlie: june. Okay, I’ll give you
Tyler: that. So wait, what is the first Photoshop photo? Because there’s a bunch of them where he’s creeping in the background. The first
Charlie: one I believe is the one where he’s holding the girl’s hand and that’s the first one. So he posts that to something awful and like let’s make a creepy monetary contest.
Tyler: So he was pretty much like, it was like, it’s always fake. Like nobody ever bought this as like, hey guys, you know, in my town, there’s this legend of it was like, hey, this is fake. But it’s interesting.
Charlie: He posted as like, this is a fake thing I made and here’s the thing that people in the thread but buck wild. They started taking this photo and said, let’s make people believe it’s real. And they started posting at different places and that’s how it took off. They spread all over the internet, like with like captions like the Thunder
Tyler: Man. Yes. And all of this, all of this led up to an absolutely terrible movie a couple years institute, which was just
Charlie: Tell me I’m going to touch on the movie. Good. So that’s 2009 when that happened, one of the users in that thread even try to hook it back to 16th century German folklore there, Grossman. Yeah, it’s bullshit. I don’t know if the Grossman’s bullshit, but leaking Slenderman to that is bullshit. We all know it’s bullshit. And that’s okay, Slenderman is to quote the article, I was looking at A monster planted in the 21st century
Tyler: Got You.
Charlie: By 2011, Slenderman was implemented into the collective unconscious of society. However we all know it’s not real. Right?
Tyler: Right.
Charlie: Well maybe eric was influenced a lot by his original idea from H. P. Lovecraft. He wanted it to be plausible that Slenderman could show up anywhere, quote unquote anywhere. So I think that means like the forest urban environment. I think that’s why it’s such a plain thin guy in a suit. And also have you seen Lovecraft and stuff?
Tyler: Lovecraft. Ian
Charlie: yeah. Lovecraft. So you know the kind of like that
Tyler: era. So you wanted that? Yeah
Charlie: probably the most famous real content is marble hornets. The series on Youtube that only came out. I looked it up, only came out A couple days like 10 days after the original posting Slenderman
Tyler: In 2009, Wow they got on that fast, it was super fast
Charlie: and that kind of freaks me out, Slenderman is like saturated in pop culture like you said they made a terrible movie, it’s in video games, one of my funniest memories of college is when our friend Alex was playing the Slenderman game and he appeared out of nowhere right, and Alex literally flipped backwards out of his chair and ran to the end of the hallway. I
Tyler: yeah that was those were good times in college playing slender Yeah, you know you can download an app that would just give you information about slender man, that’s insane. Could you imagine creating an app about something? It’s just it’s interesting, could you
Charlie: imagine making that? Like you made that from a picture and just exploded
Tyler: around you, This dude probably is walking around like he’s king of the world like. Yeah, I made that. Oh my God. Yeah, he probably put the in front of his name, was his name,
Charlie: Victor serge.
Tyler: Yeah, the victor serge. That’s what he says now.
Charlie: So like even ours, including our podcast right now is feeding into this social consciousness. Society is aware of, right? And he’s become kind of a boogeyman of society in a sense. Yeah, yeah. But we all know it’s not real. So why is it scary? Well,
Tyler: we all know ghosts aren’t real too right.
Charlie: Well, okay, okay, but we can pinpoint the date that this was made,
Tyler: right? This isn’t ghost. I agree. Yeah, you can, yeah, explain
Charlie: being funny goes to real. So I’m going to move on to my next point now. So that’s 0.0.1. That’s 0.1. What is slender man? We pinpointed it. He’s a pop culture kind of not icon sons reward, but like
Tyler: he’s a supernatural pop diva pop star. Yes, he’s like a supernatural Justin Bieber, but you can see his timeline
Charlie: From 2009 to 2000, mid 14.
Tyler: It’s kinda around the time Justin Bieber came around. That’s
Charlie: true too. But you can see really how it like spikes culturally.
Tyler: It was very fast. Like most uh most creative endeavors take a little while and this thing just hit
Charlie: I think part of it was marble
Tyler: hornets. I agree. Which he didn’t even have a part in correct. Do I wish somebody else would take some, take some workload off for us. We’ll put this episode out and then you guys take it from here and just, you know, give us the credit, will be the believing the bizarre.
Charlie: Okay, so you’re here for the next section? Yes. Uh huh. What is a topa?
Tyler: I don’t know you
Charlie: do you have any idea what Oprah
Tyler: is? It sounds like some place in Oklahoma. Topa. I think it’s
Charlie: Tulsa. Yeah. A Topa comes from an Eastern religion kind of mental place. It comes from that kind of like realm of the world meditation. You kind of need your inner
Tyler: self, like a spiritual type thing. Yes.
Charlie: Okay, so it’s easy. It’s a thought form Energy ghost. That’s what I told the thought. Form Energy
Tyler: go energy goes. That’s a mouthful.
Charlie: You know, I used to think that too. And then I like started like repeating that to myself in my head. Thought form. Energy goes thought form energy ghost. It makes sense. Except
Tyler: he’s the platform Energy ghost. What does that? What does that acronym thought? Form Energy. T F E G to Africa. It’s almost like T G I F. But not quite.
Charlie: So what that means is with enough focus and energy and meditation dedicated to something we can in essence create an imaginary being into existence.
Tyler: I have a question but I don’t want to interrupt your flow.
Charlie: Alright, just wait if you know if you’re like a listener the world you if you’re listening this year like I know exactly we’re talking about just like go with it until I get let me get through the rest of the class. Okay, meditation is typically used in Eastern traditions to tap into the power of the human consciousness like an imaginary friend. At first the Topa exists only inside your imagination and is inside your control. However, after you start to feed it, a Topa start to become something more through concentration itself, it’s able to manipulate matter and it’s also develops its own consciousness and it’s own agenda. So in essence that
Tyler: is open. So you give it the power at first and then it collects. Is it is it almost like the exchange of energy where if you put enough energy into something, it has to go somewhere, so it goes into this thing?
Charlie: Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Like you are putting energy out there, it is there to take the energy.
Tyler: Okay, so is that your rap? Is that the wrap up of the topo?
Charlie: That topo? Is
Tyler: there a like if somebody, if you if you were to tell somebody that story, say me for example and I were to say is there an example now obviously I see how you’re trying to tie this, this lender man in, but like let’s say out of this context, if somebody is like, give me an example, is there is there a universally recognized example of that you said imaginary friend we’re talking about Slenderman, but is there like a more accepted or relevant example of this existing?
Charlie: Absolutely santa claus ah santa claus is the perfect example of a topa. Now maybe he doesn’t come in and leave presence, maybe he doesn’t eat your cookies, but
Tyler: he watches you when
Charlie: you’re sleeping. The idea could be that there is a present on impotent good force of santa claus now slender man, I don’t think would fall into the same category as Topaz Krampus. Yeah, he would kind of be a negative force but everything everything falls into like even this podcast falls into feeding that Topa, giving it more juice, which is why I’m not super excited to drive home from this recording.
Tyler: Okay, I know you’re gonna find a note like it’s gonna start raining and you’re gonna turn your wipers on and you’re going to find one of the eight notes that just got a stick figure on it. I’m gonna text Claire right now to plant that
Charlie: bro. I would go crash. I would I would I would I don’t know what I do. I drive to florida.
Tyler: Yeah. He doesn’t go to florida right? I got nothing. I don’t know where I do. He doesn’t like crocodiles.
Charlie: So in essence to end this TOBA section how you kill a thought. You can’t really it’s a
Tyler: thought repression, right?
Charlie: I don’t know if there’s really an answer to how to kill us.
Tyler: Well that would be my guess. It’s like it’s like and I think this is interesting because I think people do this when something really traumatic or scary happens. It’s kind of like your body’s own way of solving that issue is repression. Now the problem is if you are choosing to believe it, then you can’t really repress it. So I wonder if you could go into like some type of like what about like being hypnotized to forget. It may be eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, that shit.
Charlie: But here’s the thing with Slenderman. So what is meditation? Except to think about something very hard and from approximately 2009 to at least May of 2014, Slenderman was on the mind of the world. It wasn’t just the United States, it was the world. He was everywhere.
Tyler: But he kind of made those morph suits into what they are because people love those full body color. But then once he like Slenderman came out, people by the white one and then just you know, wear a suit and you have your Halloween costume.
Charlie: Meditation does not have to be one person. Thinking very hard. It can be a consciousness, a collective consciousness. Thinking about one thing on and off for years. And in a sense we are meditating on cinnamon because of what victor surges or Eriks creation made. We’ve all been meditating on this photo for a long time now and I think that because of how the world is, we’ve tapped into something, maybe another universe, maybe just energy. We focused it enough to create some kind of boogie man. Now, maybe I’ll never see him. I can hope so, maybe you won’t. I hope I’m either. But the idea that it’s out that really freaks me out
Tyler: Well to aid in your argument like for the people that are listening and like this bullshit, there are a lot of people that truly believe you can summon a demon right? Like if you put a lot of people believe that if you do like ritualistic sacrifice, incest, you know, like the candle lighting, you know, whatever whatever it is, and I don’t know what it is because I’m not crazy, but if you if you like, like I feel like it’s generally accepted that you know, the at least the idea of being able to summon a demon or something, so if that is so easily acceptable in our culture, it shouldn’t be ridiculous what you’re talking about because it’s still putting energy into summoning or creating something,
Charlie: maybe it’s not a conscious effort.
Tyler: Yeah, I’m just I’m just trying to add context the people that might be listening and think that this is all book. I’m just losing them. Yeah. Not not that I believe it, I’m just saying I’m trying to like an analogy because most people like, oh they’re doing, you know, satanic cult stuff over there. Well, what does that mean? Why are you worried about it? Because if you don’t believe that they could summon something? Yeah, they might kill an animal or something, which I think is still terrible. But if you’re not worried or in the back of your mind, you’re not thinking about them creating a greater evil, then why, you know, why is it a problem where you know, a tie that to this situation?
Charlie: So let me hit ramifications really quick and then we can talk about the believability. Yes. So ramifications. So what if Anisa and morgan, what if they had something more than their imagination helping them lower Peyton to the forest? Like what if they had something they didn’t even realize they had the power of? And I think the ramifications of that blow my mind. It scares the shit out of me. Like the idea that there was actually something else in that forest on another podcast scared of the podcast. They have listeners calling and there’s a listener that told the story. Uh, they had a party where they had like a friend, dress up a slender man, but in that party, four slender man, they’re when they’re only supposed to be too slender men. Yes, there, but that’s done. Said, yeah, that the slender man is a title and there were more than you’re supposed to be there and multiple people saw them. And honestly, that is one of the scariest stories on that podcast for me. And uh, maybe it’s bullshit.
Tyler: Maybe like you’d be able to detect a costume versus the real thing, but maybe not. I don’t know. Could you tell? Well, if it’s somebody in a morph suit and then
Charlie: a suit, I mean it was dark outside.
Tyler: Oh, for some I was imagining inside inside. Well it punch bowl maybe. Spike. That’s what I was imagining. I wasn’t thinking of game
Charlie: outside. They’re actually recreating
Tyler: slender.
Charlie: Yeah. As it sounds like funny. Yeah. I would never do it. But it was a super scary story because they’re like, who were the other two people? And they were, there was like a text chain and they could not figure out how the other two people were. I’ve always heard that the more you speak of him, Slenderman. Yeah. The more likely he is to come find you. That’s yeah, that’s
Tyler: part of the myth which is interesting because he created victor. Yeah, the victor created the photo but he didn’t create the myth.
Charlie: That text chain kind developed that whole kind of thing. That’s crazy. Yeah, it’s insane. But my point is that sounds almost topa easy to me that the more you think about it, the more is likely to happen.
Tyler: I wonder what like if it is real and there is an energy out there. Like it’s starting to lose relevance. It probably was pissed. It probably went to the premier of that movie and when, when it was basically like the ring meets, when did you watch the movie? Dude? I’m spoiling, I don’t give a shit. It was like the ring you had, if you watch the movie, they had a VHS tape or maybe a deep, you know, I think it was a file. I think it was a digital file, but if you watched it then he would come from you. So it’s basically the ring and never in any lower that I read. Was it? If you watch a movie or a video slender man comes from you that I was so pissed off And that was the thing, it’s not about watching is that so much like some are in the ring. They did not need to do that. Um, that’s neither here nor there, but that’s, that’s my opinion on that. So he’s probably pissed off about that and he’s losing relevance and he needs now. It would be interesting if something big were to happen to get him back in the collective unconscious. Maybe. Maybe this episode, probably not.
Charlie: But the ramifications of this are frightening, but that’s kind of what I think he wants to be fed.
Tyler: He’s hungry. He’s hungry.
Charlie: We can move on to believing. So I don’t know, did I flip you will?
Tyler: I, I’m, when I add context to it and I think about it like, like the idea of energy, like that’s kind of how I personally cope because I’m not a religious person. So cope, but I believe in ghosts and it’s kind of hard, they’re like, you have to weave your way around certain things. And one of the ways that I do that is believing in energy and it’s like if you die, where does the energy go? That’s kind of a way for me to not really believe too much in an afterlife, but believe in ghosts. So the idea of energy is interesting because it’s like if you do, they say like, like inspiration, like if you’re starting a credit project, you’re starting a band, whatever you’re writing, you know, anything, they’re like, if you put enough effort out, you know, you have to, something will come out of it. If you put enough into it, something will come out. So yeah, that kind of is like a manatee on your wall inspiration photo, But at the same time, it’s like if everybody truly put enough energy into the idea of slender man, what could come out of it?
Charlie: I don’t know honestly. I don’t know. So I guess my question is, do you believe because we know it’s bullshit. We talked about that the creation of him is bullshit. But do you believe that what that energy created could be real being?
Tyler: No, no, no. I believe that it could inspire murders because it has, or attempted murders the same way. I gotta be honest. When the saw movies came out, I was kind of again, the back of my mind, I’m like, you’re giving creepy crazy people ideas. It
Charlie: sounds like a band, creepy crazy people,
Tyler: creepy crazy people. Sounds like a really good, but you know what I mean? It’s kind of, it’s like, um, I’m trying to, I don’t want to get too serious. It’s like, it’s it’s if you watch too much news and you see terrible, terrible things are happening, you are more likely to have a view of the world that most people are bad and most things. But you know what, you know, there’s a lot of statistics that show that actually like crime and murder is going down. But if you watch CNN, if you watch Fox, you would not believe that. So it’s kind of like, I believe if everybody talked about Slenderman, the Slenderman that it could create something inside people’s minds because just going back to our last episode, like I believe the way people think the way memory happens, the way people reconstruct things like if you kill somebody or you attempt to kill somebody and you have a hard time coping with that may be reconstructed and place blame elsewhere. I was told to do this. I was tricked into doing this. I mean, this isn’t this isn’t a podcast episode about possession, but you know how many people whether or not you believe somebody could be possessed, you’ve got to believe there’s a handful of people that did terrible things, regret it and say, oh, I was, you know, for sure. So I think that’s how it could come to life. I think people could adopt it. People that are maybe a little less sane than others might truly by in a little bit further. Some people might use it as a cop out. I think it could lead to harm and death that might have otherwise not happened. If nobody had ever created slender man. I think it’s a very good point. I think that’s how it could penetrate the real world if it hasn’t already. Which it has because we know it has, we know it has, I don’t believe in a conscious existing entity that has taken on slender man. So I will give you skeptical. No, actually, no, I’m going unbelievable. I I think the idea of an existing Slenderman because like you said, we can pinpoint where it came from that to me, the story of the now the legacy of slender man. What can make humans do believable, but the idea of slender man unbelievable.
Charlie: I give it a skeptical, honestly, personally, I I don’t think it could really happen, but in the back of my
Tyler: mind, dude, you know, you said you’re afraid to drive home. I mean that I mean that’s enough.
Charlie: That’s enough. You’re skeptical. My mind like a little like, like a little h like what if he’s there? Like, shut up. I know, but like I don’t want to think about
Tyler: that just that much enough is I think enough to justify your feeling skeptical because I could probably watch a slender man movie and drive home. Like I’m good. There are things that I could think about that would freak me out and cause me to be a little bit more alert driving slender man is not it. So I’m gonna say from with my unbelievable, but I totally understand now that you need my justification. But I think skeptical is fair. But it really like if it, if it, if it builds in people’s unconscious and it continues and people use it as a reason whether or not they truly believe it to kill or to harm people that is believable and that’s scary.
Charlie: So if you found that episode interesting and you have a tale from your hometown that you want to like us to cover, I would love it. If you could just email Believingthebizarre@gmail.com.
Tyler: we’ll read it. We’ll decide on it will be like it’s bullshit. We’ll delete it. But then you’ll try again and you’ll send us something else and that one will be a little bit better and we will talk about that on an upcoming episode. I would love to I am charlie. I am Tyler until then join us on our next episode of believing the bazaar.