Two 12-year-old Milwaukee girls have been charged as adults with attempted murder after they stabbed another 12-year-old girl. According to reports, the two girls allegedly stabbed their friend 19 times to please a fictional demon, known as "Slenderman."
According to a criminal complaint, the Wisconsin girls said they wanted to murder their friend to show their dedication to Slenderman, a mythological creature they said they discovered on the site creepypasta.wikia.com, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
The website is known for user-written horror stories and Slenderman is one of the creepy characters used in the stories. Even though most people know that the tall, faceless creature is not real, the two girls reportedly thought killing their friend would prove that Slenderman does exist.
According to CNN, on Friday, May 30 the two preteens invited the victim over for a sleepover and stabbed her 19 times the following morning during a game of hide-and-go-seek in a park. The victim survived and was said to be in stable condition.
The girls, whose names have not been released, are currently being held in a juvenile facility on $500,000 bail each.
Here's everything you need to know about the creepy, mythological demon known as Slenderman:
- Slenderman appears mostly in online ghost and horror stories. The fictional character is described as a tall, thin man with no face and long tentacle-like arms
- The character was first introduced in June 2009 as part of a creepy Photoshop contest. Eric Knudsen submitted two black and white pictures of children playing with the Slenderman character Photoshopped in the background
- After the first photos of the character popped up online, writer began including Slenderman into their horror stories
- According to Know Your Meme, Slenderman preys on children and also has teleportation powers
- According to Hollywood Life, the TV show "Supernatural" based an entire episode on the mythological creature but called it "Thinman" instead. The episode was about a person desperately searching for proof that Thinman existed after discovering the character on the Internet
- There's an iPhone and Android game where players have to get through a creepy park without seeing Slenderman. If the player does spot the creature, their character dies
