What is going on Truecrime fans, I'm your host Teeth and I'm your host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West.

Hello everybody, we have gotten some recommendations on our other podcast The Dark Parts, which sorry is still on hiatus.

For this underman himself, but weirdly, no recommendations came in on email about the Truecrime story that's associated with his lore, but this one actually has a good twist at the end that Going West has not yet seen, so I am, wow I mean this story is just like there's no words.

I'm always interested in, you know, something kind of spooky, especially again, now that we're in October, so this one definitely has all the elements between the Dark Parts and Going West, but a little bit more Truecrime.

Well, especially because we're going to dive into him and his lore first to give back stories, so yeah, this is this is a creepy one for sure.

Well, let's talk about this creepy story today.

Alright guys, this is episode 349 of Going West, so let's get into it.

In May of 2014, two girls lured their friend out into the woods during a game of hide and seek, before stabbing her 19 times, claiming a fictional character from the internet, ordered them to do so, but once a cyclist came across the victim, the other girls planned veered off course.

This is the story of Peyton Leitner, also known as the case of the Slender Man stabbing.

The origin of the Slender Man urban legend can be traced back to 2009 when a simple doctorate photo was posted online.

This seemingly innocuous act spawned an entire world of online lore that eventually expanded from jump scares on YouTube into real life horrors.

The legend of Slender Man first surfaced on June 10th, 2009, on the comedic website Something Awful, which hosts forums, debates, and discussions, so it's similar to Reddit.

Something Awful user Eric Nudson, who posted under the screen name Victor Surge, stumbled upon this photo contest that challenged users to turn like a seemingly regular photo into a photo with supernatural or paranormal elements.

So he posted two photos. One of them featured what looked like pre-teens and teenagers all walking in the same direction with kind of like puzzled or angry looks on their faces, and then looming in the background was an eerie, lanky creature.

The caption red quote, we didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified us and comforted us at the same time.

1983 photographer unknown presumed dead, and he let's take a second. I'm going to show you this picture you can kind of tell us what you think.

So it's a real picture. It's a black-and-white photo. It definitely looks like it's from the 80s, and then there's that in the back.

It just looks like a bowling pin flying.

It does. It looks like a flying fucking bowling pin.

I mean, not super creepy when you first take a look at it, but I don't know.

You can see there's something there. Yeah.

And especially with this caption, you're kind of like, what is that? What is it supposed to be?

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