#36 Beyond the Meme: Kathleen Hale and the Slenderman Stabbing

We Can Be Weirdos

Global

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality

4.9 • 736 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2024

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"They came to believe Slenderman was sending his army after them"

Kathleen Hale, originally from Wisconsin, writes about crime and social media. Her fourth book, SLENDERMAN, was nominated for an Edgar Prize and won the 2023 Midland Writers Award for Non Fiction. It tells the story behind the Slenderman stabbings in Wisconsin, USA, which shocked the local community and the world. The violence of Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weiser, the two twelve-year-old girls who attempted to stab their classmate to death, was extreme, but what seemed even more frightening was that they had done so under the influence of an internet meme, the so-called 'Slenderman'.

Warning: This episode contains strong language and descriptions of violence, which may not be suitable for all listeners, especially younger weirdos.

You can get in touch with Dan Schreiber on Twitter and Instagram (@Schreiberland). In his bio, you'll find the link to our Discord channel - a global community of likeminded weirdos!

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a Global Player original podcast.
0:07.0	Warning! The following episode contains strong language and depictions of violence which may not be suitable for all listeners, especially younger weirdos.
0:17.0	It also contains bizarre theories, unexplainable experiences, and a cursed mannequin.
0:23.6	I'm like, okay, so there was a ghost that was out in this apartment.
0:30.6	And now it's inside my dress form. Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of We Can Be Weirdos.
0:59.2	My name is Dan Shriver. I am coming to you today from my home at Roughway by Sea.
1:04.0	I hope you're all doing well. I've got a really interesting episode for you today.
1:07.6	And so I thought it was probably best to sort of lay out the facts of the story
1:11.7	before we begin. So my guest on the show today is an incredible journalist called Kathleen Hale.
1:18.6	It was October of last year when I was on my way back from Australia in one of the airport
1:23.5	book shops in Sydney that I spotted her book. Her book is called Slender Man, and it's a
1:29.2	tragic story of how a 12-year-old girl called Peyton was stabbed multiple times by two other 12-year-olds
1:35.5	from the school that she went to, and the subsequent trial that happened after that. So a quick
1:41.9	bit of background into the story, Slender Man, if you've not heard of the concept,
1:46.4	of the person, of the meme, was created in 2009 by someone who goes by the online name of Victor
1:52.8	Serge. Victor Surge was on a forum that was called Something Awful, and he just came up with this
1:59.8	idea. Slender Man, It was a paranormal character.
2:02.2	He was photoshopping him into the background of existing photos with a little bit of bump underneath
2:08.3	that would sort of suggest that not long after this photo was taken, something tragic happened to the
2:14.4	people in the photo. And so you would always see Slender Man in the background.
2:18.6	If you want to picture what he looks like, he's sort of, if you're a Doctor Who fan, he's like the
2:23.1	silence. He's got that look. He's super tall. He's sort of silver grayy in his face, which is
	...

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