The story of the Slender Man stabbing was creepy enough before HBO got their hands on it, but it seems like the network has pulled out all of the spooky stops in their Slender Man-themed, true crime documentary.
The brand new trailer for Beware The Slender Man opens with a spooky, found footage-esque sequence akin to Blair Witch. A creepy-as-anything voice is reciting a poem about the imagined villain who — let’s be honest — is a thing nightmares (and real-life, we-wish-they-were nightmares) are made from. The Slender Man is anywhere from six to 14 feet tall, wearing a dapper suit with a faceless, lanky body and stark white skin. The meme, which is regarded as Creepypasta, a genre of horror web fiction that originated on 4Chan, is linked to a horrific stabbing among preteens.
The documentary explores how two preteens became obsessed with the idea of Slender Man and thought the only way to prove he was real was to actually kill someone. In 2014, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier brought their 11-year-old classmate Payton Leutner to the woods and stabbed her. Leutner survived the attack, and later that year, Geyser was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The two girls were tried as adults.
The trailer includes actual footage from interviews Weier and Geyser had with investigators, which is probably one of the creepiest parts of the whole thing. The idea that these kids so genuinely believed this could be real is unsettling, to say the least.
Beware The Slender Man debuted at SXSW earlier this year, but will air on HBO on January 23rd, 2017. We’re calling it now: this is going to be one of the creepiest crime documentaries of the year. Don’t watch it alone or the Slender Man might get you!
