Short Horror Stories

Slenderman

According to the legend, Slenderman can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages protruding from his back. His presence can cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, nosebleeds, and coughing fits.

Whenever the Slenderman appears, children are abducted. They say lures them into the woods, then controls their mind and forces them to walk into his outstretched arms. They are never seen again.

A series of woodcuts are found in Germany. They date back to the 16th century and feature a tall man with no face, named Der GroBmann. According to the inscriptions, he is a mythical creature who lives in the Black Forest and creeps out of the woods at night to spirit away bad children.

An old German journal, dated 1702, contains a chilling account:

" My child, my Lars... he is gone. Taken from his bed. All that was left was a scrap of black clothing. Lars came running into my bedroom yesterday, screaming at the top of his lungs. " The Tall Man is outside! ", he cried. When I asked him what he was talking about, he told me about Der GroBmann. He said he went into the Groves by our village and found one of my cows dead. It's carcass was hanging from a tree. I thought nothing of it at first... but now, my poor Lars is gone. We must find him and leave this place before we are killed. I am sorry my son... I should have listened to you. May God forgive me."

Another account was found in a book of collected folklore concerning supernatural creatures:

" When I was younger, a cousin of mine came to live with us. He was older than me and my sisters. Maybe 16 or 17. We were the only family he had left in the world. He was the worst liar you'd ever meet. Anything he'd tell you was a lie. I liked him all right. We slept in a loft during the summer because it was cooler up there, me and him, and in the winters we slept on the floor closer to the stove. My sisters had their own room.

So one night my cousin wakes me up by punching me in the shoulder, and it's summer so we're up in the loft, and my first thought when he wakes me up is to just push them out, because I'm not happy at being waked up, you know? But before I can say anything he put his hand over my mouth and even though it's dark I can hear that he's scared. " Listen, " he says, And so I listen real careful. It's this scratching, like something on the roof, and the roof is right over our heads, mind you, ' because we are in the loft. I was a trifle rattled, but I wasn't having any of it. " So?" I say to him. " it's just some raccoon or a cat. "

" No," says John " I heard it before I wake you up, it's like footsteps like someone's walking up there." I was taking no truck with that, I told you he was the awfulist liar. So I went back to sleep, but the next day my cousin tried to tell Pap about it, and Pap wasn't having no truck with it, either. But one night later on, while we were all having supper, pap sent out my youngest sister to fetch water from the pump we had in the back. After a while, we heard Lily scream, and it was Ma Who got up first, and then Pap. The rest of us stayed at the table because we were like to get in trouble if Lily was hurt and we were there to gloat. Soon enough, though, we heard  Pap and Ma Shouting too, so me and John went out to see if they need our help. All they had was the water pail Lily carried out, and there was no other sign of her. At first, I didn't understand what was going on, with both Ma and Pap shouting, and by that time my other sisters come out and they started crying, and my cousin was just standing there in the yard looking off toward something.

" it's the man walking yonder!" He yells, and he's pointing out across the field. No one's listening to him but me and he keeps saying it: " it's the man walking yonder! It's the man walking yonder!"

You already know it was suppertime, so you know the sun was setting and it was hard to see. But when I looked out over that field at the back of the house, the whole thing was lit up orange, and there was a roll of big black trees that was the edge of the woods, you know? And I swear to you I saw one of them trees moving, like a man walking away. But it couldn't have been a man, ' cause there ain't no man that tall and skinny. '

Papa seen it, too, I think. He took us inside and locked all the doors, and he made us keep still while he got out his rifle. We waited like that all night, Ma crying the whole time. When the sun come up we took a wagon into town and told folks what happened, though as I recall nothing much came of it. John ran off a few weeks later, and we got a new house closer to the mill where Papa worked. I still can't manage to look at trees during sunset though, specially not on windy days when they all move back and forth, like a man walking away."

The following is a witness account of an encounter with The Slenderman:

" After waking up with a jolt, the girl laid in bed a few seconds longer. Reaching over to switch on her bedside lamp, she tried to remember exactly what had stolen her sweet slumber away. When she couldn't, the Burnetts swung her legs over the side of the bed and he gives herself up. Checking the time on her phone, she snorted when she saw it was midnight; The witching hour, knowing that sleep would only evade her, she left her bedroom for the kitchen, a good cup of coffee on her mind.

As she passed by her front door, a chill ran down her spine. It's only winter, she told herself, focusing again on the coffee plan. Measuring out scoops, water, and preparing her cup kept her occupied, but as the dark liquid boiled, she had nothing left to keep her mind from wandering off. The chill returned and she couldn't help but glance behind her to the front door. It stood there innocently enough, just like always. The deadbolt was still in place and she could see nothing amiss with it. Turning back to her coffee, she did her best to forget about the feeling.

With her cup in hand, she started back towards her bedroom. As she walked by the front door, she decided that a quick glance out of the people would help calm her restless thoughts. The chill worsened with each step she took towards the door and further away from the safety and warmth of her blankets. She pressed her empty hand against the cold, metal door and took a deep breath before leading her eye to the peephole.

At first, she could only see an inky blackness and somehow seemed to swirl in its self. When she blinked and surprise, the void melted away. She wished it hadn't. In its place, there stood what she could only guess was once a man. The limbs were long and then humanly awkward, with pokey joints branching off into several arms, not unlike the branches of a tree. The creature was draped in a black suit, somehow making the thing more nightmarish to her. The icing on the proverbial cake, however, was what passed as the hellish things face. It was as though her mind blurred The ghastly visage to spare itself further shock and horror.

She sure loved her self away from the door with the hand still pressed against it. The scalding mug of coffee fell, the liquid burning her bare legs as she fell backwards and tried to crawl away from the door. She knew, somehow, that her mind hadn't been playing tricks on her. As she crab walked away from the door, she watched as tendrils as black as the board itself snake around through the cracks. The girl was trapped between the instinct to flee and the good feeling to not turn her back on the door. When the door jolted, the urge to flee overcame her and she slipped in the burning liquid as she tried to make it back to her room.

She knew deep down that she was trapping her self in a corner, but she had to get away from the door. The girls halfway down the hallway when she heard the previously locked door creaked open. She screamed and slipped into a wall cracking her chin on it and stunning her.

After that, there was only blackness.

" Nicole?" A warm, male voice snapped the woman out of her trance. As she turned around, she was met by one of her sisters' doctors. She nodded, not sure if she should say anything, or even if she could find her voice if she did have something to say. That morning she had gotten an urgent phone call from the hospital, saying that her sister Lindsay, was there. Before they had even let her see her, the doctors had pulled her off to the side and insisted that they talk to her about what might have happened, phrases like ' self-inflicted ' and ' assault ' had been thrown around and Nicole felt her mind reel.

She still hadn't fully understood what they had been saying until she saw Lindsay With her own eyes. Her little sister had a bandage wrapped around her head, covering both of her ears as well as her eyes. They said it was to keep her now dead-end eyes from drying out and to try to keep infection out of the wounds Lindsay had made to her ears. The doctors had guessed that either she or someone else had jammed a pencil into them to keep her off-balance or to deafen herself against something. There was the mix of first and 2nd° burns on her hands, legs, and feet, from what was assumed to be the coffee her neighbors found spilled all over the entry to her apartment.

As Nicole walked into her sisters hospital room the first time, she thought she had spotted the silhouette of a man in the window. That, she knew, was impossible. Her sisters room was on the third story of the hospital.