In June 2009, a thread on the forum SomethingAwful.com asked usersto participate in a Photoshop challenge involving the creation of imagesdisplaying a paranormal feature. One user named Victor Surge, whosereal name was later revealed to be Eric Knudsen, uploaded two grainyblack-and-white images in response to this call. These pictures showeda faceless and uncannily tall figure in a suit lurking in the backgroundof each photo; the creature was referred to as “Slender Man” by theuser. Slender Man became a highly successful Internet myth almost in-stantly; he was a figure of “crowd-sourced online mythology” (Crawford2015: 42). Numerous users added their own manipulated photographs,drawings,andshortstoriestoo;someevencreatedwebseriesandvideogames. A feature film entitledSlender Man(dir. Sylvain White) was evenreleased in 2018.1All of these creations have one thing in common: anobsession with the eerie Slender Man.Due to its origin, the Slender Man phenomenon has proven to behighly mutable and, thus, it cannot be pinned down to one specific plotor narrative scheme. Some documents depict the Slender Man as hav-ing tentacles, whereas others do not; the figure abducts children andyoung adults in many versions, but not in all of them; the diverse webseriesrevolvingaroundthisparticularmonsterhavefurthermoreaddedthe ideas that close proximity to the Slender Man causes interference with video and audio recordings, that this creature can induce mem-ory loss as well as violent behavior, and that becoming aware of themonster causes it to target that observer. The characters of these webshows film as much of their own lives as possible by means of videodiaries. Through this self-surveillance, they attempt to detect the mon-ster’s presence and account for gaps in their own recollection.However,the vast amount of footage created in this fashion poses a great dangerto other people: should they watch the videos, and thereby learn of themonster’s existence, they will become its next victims. As this exempli-fies, the Slender Man is essentially a modern reincarnation of the taleof the boogeyman,2adapted to new media technologies, and infusedwith an uncanny notion of contagion.