Back in May 2014, two Wisconsin girls, 12-year-old Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weir lured their friend Payton Leutner into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. Leutner miraculously survived after crawling out of the woods where she was found by a passing cyclist.
Their reasoning behind the attack was to please the fictional Slender Man, a creature with octopus-like arms and a long white body with no face. The creature was created in 2009 by Eric Knudsen, who edited Slender Man into pictures of kids at play.
Slender Man is a cult phenomenon. After gaining a following on Creepypasta, Slender Man now has its own Halloween costume, Internet games and plenty of merchandise on Amazon.
Now Slender Man even has its own movie by Sony Pictures set to come out in theaters this May.
The premise is eerily similar to the stabbing since it revolves around four teenage girls who try to debunk the tale of Slender Man. Both Geyser and Weir committed their crime to prove the creature was real. In the movie, one of the girls goes missing and Slender Man comes for the rest of the gang.
Angie Geyser, Morgan’s mother, claims her daughter was diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia while in custody. Morgan’s father was hospitalized four times for his schizophrenia, but Geyser didn’t see the signs in her usually sweet and gentle daughter.
She thought Slender Man was something normal 12-year-olds could be interested in, likening it to her own interest in Stephen King novels at Morgan's age.
Anissa Weir did not have schizophrenia, but she did have depression and a delusional disorder linked to schizotypy, which makes her unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. Part of the reason she went through with the stabbing was to please her only friend Morgan Geyser, the mastermind behind the crime.
Nearly four years later, both girls are on trial for attempted homicide.
Morgan Geyser is now 15 and was sentenced to 40 years in a mental institution.
Both girls planned for Anissa to stab Payton, but Anissa decided she couldn’t do it and asked Morgan to go through with the act. Since she was under the influence of Geyser, Weir was sentenced to 25 years in a mental institution.
This infamous case wasn’t the only crime under the tentacles of Slender Man.
Just a week after the stabbing, a 13-year-old Ohio girl came after her mother after she came home from work with a knife and was wearing a mask. The girl previously struggled with mental illness and claimed she could see demons.
This new movie only gives more kids reason to believe Slender Man is real, whether they are mentally ill or not.
Bill Weir, Anissa’s father, spoke out about the movie. Weir says all the movie is doing is “popularizing a tragedy” and that is “extremely distasteful.”
Although the producers haven’t said whether the movie will include any elements from the case, the trailer features several drawings that resemble Geyser’s.
One girl in the trailer stabs herself with a scalpel while another girl, presumably the missing one, is pictured covered in blood.
Hollywood’s idea of capitalizing on the stabbings is not something to indulge in by spending $13 to sit in a musty theater for two hours.
The worst part of all is that Leutner will probably hear people at school talking about the movie, which will bring back the worst night of her life.
Payton’s near-death experience shouldn’t be someone’s night out.
If you really want to head to the theaters this summer, go see "Deadpool 2" or "Solo: A Star Wars Story." Get a large popcorn on me, but please skip "Slender Man."
