When You’re Alone: Out of Mind, Out of Sight

 

In “Modus Operandi,” I mentioned that you should stay around people as much as possible, because the Slender Man tends to avoid going after people in crowds.  Well, as I believe I mentioned in a recent post, I’m completely alone now.  I’m one of maybe ten people still on campus.  I haven’t seen anyone in my dorm all day.  To make things worse, my car is broken down, it’s cold outside, and there’s a break, so I can’t get far, it’s unpleasant to go anywhere in the first place, and whenever I go out, it’s difficult to get back in.  So staying in the dorm is the simplest option.  Unfortunately, it also means that I’m completely alone.  I’m sure that everyone has times when they’re completely alone, whether they want to be or not.  They’re unavoidable.  So I’m posting to tell you how to get past them.

The most important thing to do is to avoid thinking about the Slender Man.  For those of you who missed Robert’s White Elephant story (I had to look up the cached pages myself), the magic carpet wouldn’t fly if anyone thought about White Elephants.  Of course, everyone thought about White Elephants when they heard this, and it never flew again.  It was all an elaborate analogy for the Slender Man, of course.  Thinking about him draws him to you, and you can’t permanently forget about him anymore.  You can forget about him temporarily, though. 

The best way to do that is to read a book.  Books are a bit harder to immediately get lost in, but once you do get lost in them, they really, really suck you in.  It’s because your mind has to do so much more to create a picture of what’s going on.

Watching movies is next best thing, and TV shows after that.  These are harder to get fully drawn into, though, just because you can listen without watching, which takes you out of it just a bit.  Make sure you get something that’s upbeat, to lift your spirits and engross you.  Thinky series are good, but they tend to be incredibly depressing.  When given the choice between Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Neon Genesis Evangelion, for the love of God, go for the former!  Being distracted is a bit less important than being happy.

Being productive is also good.  If you have homework or some hands-on creative project to work on, it’s good to do that.  Homework is best, as creative endeavors usually require abstract thinking, and what starts as a simple sketch of a scantily-clad animesque catgirl can easily turn into a scrawling mess of a faceless guy when you let your mind wander.  Something like a model kit or papercraft is better, as you’re concentrating on a particular task instead of going where your mind lets you.

Most importantly, know what to avoid.  Avoid, at all costs, anything that will remind you of the Slender Man.  It’s hard to know which works will, but you should avoid anything that has a character even vaguely reminiscent of the Slender Man.  The Nightmare Before Christmas is definitely out.  The Harry Potter movies are out, too, due to Voldemort’s appearance (in one of the movies, I could swear there was a dream sequence where he’s standing in a suit and doing some sort of Slendy-esque headjerk).  And…well, Jekyll and Hyde is also out, for reasons that will become clear soon (and not just because of me).  There are a lot of other things that are bad choices, and there are a lot of other things that are good choices.  I’m not about to provide a list, since there are infinite possibilities, but it might be a good idea to briefly look something up before you start, and hope that there’s nothing that might trigger an association.

Well, that’s how to keep your thoughts off of him while you’re alone.  Of course, that’s only half the battle.  I’ll cover the other half in another post in the near future.

Sorry, Robert

I doubted.  I thought you would break.  I thought you had already broken.  Well, you proved me wrong.  I guess I just didn't have enough faith in you.  I was ready to let them mercy kill you, just because I thought you'd be of more use as a martyr than as an insane, raving madman.  And I guess I'm gonna pay the price for it, aren't I?  Nobody's going to trust me now.  It'd be nice if you did.  I'm not sure you should, though.  Like I said, trust isn't something you want to have too much of when you're being followed by the Slender Man.

Two people.  Two people were willing to sacrifice him, either to ease his pain or to allow him to see our comments.  A's been forgiven.  I personally don't trust her.  After all, the last blogger I knew called "A" gave The Lexiconal quite a few problems.  This evidently isn't the same A, though.  Evidently.  But anyway, A's been forgiven.  Me?  Heh.  Not so much.  I doubted, and I'm probably gonna pay the price for it.  Who's gonna forgive me?  Maybe everyone.  Maybe no one.  But now I've gotta find a way to atone.

I think I'll do that by continuing to do what I'm doing.  Giving people advice on how to get by.  It's going to be harder now, considering that you're not going to trust my advice.  You should, though.  I'm not planting any bad information.  At least, not intentionally.  But hey, you have no way of knowing how truthful I am.

So, who am I?  Am I Jekyll, admitting that you can't trust me because you don't know when I might become Hyde?  Or am I already the wily Hyde, using my honesty to trick you into thinking I'm Jekyll?

Well, let's be honest.  No matter which answer I give you, you're not going to completely trust it.  If I say I'm Jekyll, you'll think I'm Hyde lying to you.  If I say I'm Hyde, I'd have no reason to lie.  Neither answer is going to make you trust me.  So I guess you'll just have to decide for yourself, won't you?

So I leave you with two questions.  First of all, am I a Jekyll, or am I a Hyde?  And just as importantly...am I forgiven?

Gah, sorry!

Couldn't sleep all night.  Fell asleep during the day and just woke up now.  Sorry I'm late, and I apologize if I've worried any of you.  I assure you that I'm fine, and I'll let you know what happened eventually.

A break from flashbacks

 

Gah, so tired.  Can’t think straight.  We’ve got an interim break now, and I have to stay up here because there’s appointments I’ve got to keep and stuff, but my roommate is gone.  All my friends are gone.  Campus is more or less empty.

I can’t sleep.  If you read “Modus Operandi,” you’ll know why: because I don’t have anyone around to monitor me while I sleep.  I don’t know what’s going to happen now that I’m here alone.  I’m not taping myself.  I don’t trust cameras enough for that.

It’s well after midnight.  I’m so tired.  It takes so long to type.  But I can’t fall asleep.  I don’t know what will happen.  After that incident last time I slept alone in the room—I can’t do this.  I can’t stay awake, and I can’t fall asleep.

I’m kind of disappointed with how idiotic most of you guys are.  There’s some stuff going on on White Elephants with redlight and his deal.  Cliff notes version: redlight and the Slender Man can’t, for some reason, kill Robert directly.  So they’re torturing him.  redlight is offering Robert an out—he’ll be able to kill him if fifteen people allow him to.  He’ll allow Robert see the comments on his blog again (since they’re being hidden and he feels isolated) if five people start towards that fifteen. Now, I know that we can’t trust redlight.  But Robert’s already a dead man in a lot of ways.  Why are you holding on to your hope in some old influential blogger who has lost everything about himself that makes him so influential?  He’s much better as a martyr than a contributor.  You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.  In Robert’s case, maybe not a villain, but a pitiful, hopeless shell of a man.  He’s over halfway there already.  And if you can’t stand the thought of him as a martyr?  Why the hell wouldn’t you let him see us again?  He’s not gonna get through this.  He’s not that strong man he was.

But I’m ranting now.  I don’t know.  I don’t have much else to do.  Keeps my mind off the tired

FUCK.  Lights just burned out.  Shitshitfuck.  Now I’m in fucking darkness fuck shit what do I do now oh fuck.

Shitshitshit, starting to feel cold.  Could be paranoia, but…no, no, that’s not it.  Fuck.  I can feel him.  Uploading this now, if I don’t post tomorrow, consider me dead.

Oh, also?

Forgot to add something in that last post: don't trust anybody.  At all.  I thought this needed to be brought up, considering that Ava (from The London Librarian) was attacked by a ten-year-old proxy.  If anything, that's proof that you cannot get close to anyone.  Anyone.  Old ladies, little kids, friends you've known for years...even your own family.  No matter how long you've known them, you can't fully trust them anymore.  I'll admit that I don't fully trust any of you.  Hell, we're all so deeply entrenched in this that I trust you guys the least.  Ava started off her entire blog by lying to us.  Many bloggers have completely lost their marble hornets and gone crazy.  Sometimes, we find that the blogger isn't even writing the blog for the majority of the story.  Hell, there are even rumors flying around now that the reason we haven't seen Amelia for so long is because zero killed her.  I've seen his photobucket account, and those rumors aren't really that hard to believe.  So forgive me for trusting you guys least of all.

I'm sorry if this sounds overly paranoid, but paranoia is what keeps me alive.  If you're upset that I can't trust you, that's fine.  I can totally understand that.  But it still won't make me trust you.  I won't be offended if you don't trust me.

Modus Operandi

 

Okay.  So.  The big important stuff.  I keep talking about how I keep surviving, but I haven’t given you anything about that yet.  That changes now.

How do I survive, exactly?  What do I do?  How do I keep him at bay?  This is all just the basics of that.

Well, the first thing I do is I make sure to have a social life.  This does several things.  The first is that it keeps you calm and happy.  No matter the situation, it’s always good to stay upbeat and level-headed.  More importantly, it provides a distraction from the Slender Man.  I can’t be positive, but from my experience, it’s almost confirmed that he appears most often when you’re thinking about him.  Keeping your mind off of him helps.

It’s also a good idea to hang out around in large groups.  In addition to being a good distraction, people usually can’t see him if they don’t know about him (there are some exceptions, of course).  The bigger the crowd, the less likely he is to appear.  If he does appear, he’s probably not likely to do anything.  He seems unable to physically affect things if those who don’t know about him can see.  I don’t know whether that’s because he doesn’t want to reveal his presence, or because it’s related to M’s Third Rule, but either way, he leaves me alone when I’m in crowds.  When he appears in a crowd, don’t run.  That’s what he wants you to do.  He wants to get you isolated.  Just remember—stay calm.  Stay with a group.  Trick them into coming home with you or even staying the night if he refuses to leave you alone.

When alone, stay busy, and try not to think about him.  Reading blogs are usually a bad idea when alone.  It’s best to read them in a crowded area, like a busy lab, or on a bus or something.  Of course, if you can’t help but think of him, you may as well help other people out.  I can’t keep him out of my mind for more than an hour because of the time logs, so I’m past that stage already.

That’s how I do things mentally.  Now, physically.  Remember that “decorative” katana I mentioned?  Well, I’d recommend having something like that around for any encounters you may have with proxies.  Something you can use to defend yourself from physical threats.

Do I use the Operator Symbol?  No, I don’t.  Personally, I don’t trust it.  I’ve heard from some sources that it’s a repellant, but I’ve heard from others that it’s his “calling card” or that it draws him.  I don’t like putting my faith in a symbol that could possibly do more harm than good.  It’s risky, but I’ll risk it until I can experiment with it some more.  I’m not quite brave enough to experiment with it yet, though.  All I know now, though, is that I feel uncomfortable when I see one, and I’m not going to wear something that makes me uncomfortable to walk past.  I am a Christian, though (even if I’m not a particularly devout one), and I wear a cross.  Prayer, incidentally, also seems to help, even if all it does is calm the nerves.

And finally, I want to cover sleep.  That’s the one time when you’re most vulnerable, because you don’t know if and when he’s coming, and he can mess with your subconscious while you’re asleep.  Hell, you don’t even know if he’s messed with you or not.  So what do you do?  Well, I’d recommend staying away from cameras.  Like the Operator Symbol, I’ve heard that cameras tend to draw him.  Unlike the Operator Symbol, though, no thinks that cameras repel him.  They just go wonky when he’s around them.  Because of that, I don’t trust cameras at all.  My solution is a roommate who’s a light sleeper.  If the Slender Man is in the room and messing with me, he’ll hear me (or maybe even the Slender Man), wake up, and moan at me to shut up or go back to sleep.  It’s happened twice already, so I know it works.  And no, my roommate doesn’t know about the Slender Man.  Not that I know of, at least, and I’m not about to bring the subject up.

When my roommate’s not around, I try to either find another light sleeper to spend the night with (I have a friend or two like that), or just stay awake all night.  It’s worked pretty well so far, and I don’t run the risk of using a camera.  I can’t be completely sure it works, since I’m not awake for it, but again, I’m not going to risk a camera for confirmation.

So, yeah.  Those are the basic things I do.  I guess that’s all I have to say.  I’m sorry I can’t be witty this time.  Oh, yeah, that’s another one!  Stay witty (falls under “keep calm and happy”) to keep your spirits up.  But either way, I’ll see you guys next time.

Moar Background!

 

So.  I know I still haven’t given you everything you probably want.  I’m not hiding anything.  I don’t plan to hide anything either.  It’s just that there’s a lot, and you don’t want to read it all at once.  I’m sure I’ve already been forgiven ten times over, and I’m sure nobody’s even too curious by this point.  So all’s good.

Anyway, I’m here today to give you the basics of what’s been going on.  The encounter I mentioned last post happened about a month ago.  I could give you the exact day, but I’m too lazy to look it up now.  Anyway, I got into the mythos in early November.  I didn’t have to wait long for the 2nd season of Marble Hornets because of that, which was pretty awesome.  Anyway, I dove on pretty quickly.  I just missed White Elephants, but there were a few places where I managed to get the gist of it, and then a while later I found a place where all the cached posts were.  So about two months where reading/watching/research was about all I did in my spare time.

I started the time logs in mid-December.  That encounter I mentioned happened in late December.  It’s currently late January.  I’ve filled about a notebook and a half of time logs.  Fortunately, I haven’t started frantically scribbling in them yet.  Still sane.

I started this blog, more or less, because I figured I’d be able to help people.  I’ve already helped Ava with the time log suggestion.  I can probably help people out some more with my random advice.  I may not experiment much like Ava or Maduin, but that’s because I don’t really need to.  I know what I’m doing, vain as that sounds.  I just hope you all trust me.

So, what do I have in store for next time…hmm, let’s see….  Well, I think that I’m going to sort of put up my M.O.  What exactly it is that I do, and how I stay alive.  What you can trust and what you can’t.  That sort of thing.

Close Encounters of the Thin Kind

So, obviously, I’m being stalked.  You’ve all figured that out already.  If not, go bitch at your English teacher for me for not teaching you how to read between the lines.  But either way, now that you know, I’m sure you’re curious as to how this all started in the first place.

Like I said, I kept a notebook where I wrote down hourly journals, noting anything odd.  Well, about a week in, there were a few entries I hadn’t remembered writing.  Then a few more.  Just enough that I was convinced that my mind wasn’t just blanking on them.  Between that and the hacking cough I had picked up (which I could have attributed to flu season otherwise), I was sure that I’d see the Slender Man soon.

As a result, I wasn’t really surprised when I did.  I go on a morning jog every Saturday.  It’s a habit I got into years ago, and it’s just part of my life now.  Anyways, that particular morning was foggy.  It put me on edge, but that was probably a good thing.  So I was tense, half-expecting to see the Slender Man.  And I did.

So I was running on a trail through some trees.  Dumb move, I know, but that’s where I’m used to running.  Force of HABIT, I guess.  Oh, look!  I made a pun!  But back to the point.  I was running through the trees in the fog.  Out of the corner of my eye, I kept thinking I saw something in the trees.  Whenever I turned to look, there was nothing.  You know how fog usually dissipates when the sun comes out?  Well, maybe it’s because the sun wasn’t coming out, but either way, the fog kept getting thicker.  Like, incredibly thick.  I could barely make out things 100 feet away.  I was only seeing my turns after I had already passed them and run off the trail.  The fog was absolutely suffocating.  I was completely lost, and that’s hard to do on a route you’ve taken about once a week for the past few years.

When I say the fog was suffocating, I’m not embellishing.  It was so dense that it was hard to inhale.  My clothes were drenched.  So much cold damp moisture closing in around me.  I froze up, trying to find m way and catch my breath.  That’s when I first saw him.  At first, I thought he was a tree.  He blended in with the rest in the fog.  But as I saw the strange unearthly motion of those unnaturally long limbs, I knew right away that it was the Slender Man.

Remember how I said I wasn’t surprised when I saw him?  Yeah, that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t completely terrified.  I can only describe the encounter as the worst feeling ever.  My body just completely locked up.  There was this tingling feeling, like a faint electric current running through my body, paralyzing it.  There was another strange feeling, but I don’t know whether to describe it as “so hot that it feels cold” or “so cold it burns.”  And then, the whispers.  I felt like someone was speaking directly into my brain, but I couldn't make anything out.

He walks up to within ten feet of me.  He might have been close enough to reach out and touch me, but I’m not sure.  He just stared—yes, stared, even without a face—at me for a while.  I couldn’t completely tell what he was saying (I’m assuming that the whispers were his “voice”), but I could feel his message clearly.  He was toying with me.  He wanted to break my mentally before he broke me physically.  And you know what?  He almost did, right then and there.  But before I had a complete breakdown, he gave me this weird head-tilt before leaving.  I’m not sure how he left.  My vision was sort of swimming at that point, and the fog didn’t help.  One second he was there, overbearing and overwhelming, and the next, he was just gone.  I could move again.  The fog was even starting to clear a bit.

Naturally, I celebrated my newfound mobility by staggering off the path and throwing up for a minute or two.  It’s impossible to experience something like that and not feel sick.

I found my way back pretty quickly, armed with some new knowledge.  That knowledge was that it never hurts to be too prepared.  Make sure you’re ready before you encounter him.  I was expecting him, but I still wasn’t mentally prepared for my first encounter.  I had expected to glimpse him from a distance.  Some people get that lucky, I suppose.  Others (like me), don’t.  So don’t take stupid risks that bring you closer to danger (like running through a foggy forest), and be prepared for anything.

Well, I suppose that I’ve told you all there is to tell about how I met the Slender Man.  So now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.

24601

Who am I?  You’re probably wanting some background, aren’t you?  After all, I’m just some dude with a blog who’s being stalked by the Slender Man to you so far.  I suppose I should explain who I am and how this all came about.

I’m a college junior living somewhere in America (in a rural area).  Early twenties.  Yes, I’m being vague.  I don’t need you to know specifics.  But you don’t care, do you?  Of course you don’t.  We can still be friends.
So.  I’m sure you’re wondering how I came to be stalked by the Slender Man.  Well, I’m not gonna make up some crap about how I’ve been stalked by him for ten years or that I had dreams about him as a kid.  No, when I was a kid, my nightmares were about the Big Bad Wolf knocking on my door and saying “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.”  And fuck you, by the way.  I know you’re laughing.  It was scary as hell when I was four.

Anyway, it hasn’t been long since it all started.  A friend of mine showed me Marble Hornets, and I really liked it.  I had no clue what was going on, of course.  I asked him, and he told me about the Slender Man.  I did some research, found the original Something Awful thread, the TV Tropes thread, the list of works on Unfiction…one thing led to another, and I kept reading.  You know how addicting it is.  I sort of laughed at the whole Tulpa Effect thing when I came across it.  It was a nice theory, if a little improbable.  If there was one thing I learned from philosophy class, it’s that you can’t write off something off as completely impossible.  So possible, but highly improbable. but I personally thought it was full of crap.  Turns out I was a bit wrong.

So I started having dreams.  I thought nothing of them.  I figured that it was my subconscious screwing with me.  My subconscious screwed with me a bit more.  I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eye, started feeling sick, blah, blah, blah…well, it was enough to make me suspicious.  I panicked for a second.  But just a second.  That’s what saved me: quick thinking and a level head.  Once I thought he might be stalking me, I started planning.  What worked?  What didn’t?  If he came after me, what would I do?  How do I recognize his proxies/hallowed/agents/whatever.  I filled a whole notebook with plans for every situation.  That’s just me, though, overthinking things.  What’s more important is that I filled another notebook with a journal I updated hourly.  It was really short stuff, like “10:00-11:00 AM – In class” or “3:00-4:00 PM – Sat on my lazy ass in front of the computer,” but it helped me keep track of lost time.  I knew immediately if I had lost time because I couldn’t remember writing the last entry.

Anyone out there worried that you might be stalked?  I’m going on a short little discourse for you.  Got a notebook?  If not, get one.  Start doing an hourly journal right away.  If you’re not being stalked, you’re not going to have lost time, but if you are, you’ll know if you’re losing it right away, and you’ll know how much of it you’re losing.  On top of that, you’ll be able to tell how crazy you are by your handwriting.  If you’re being stalked, you’ll just feel more stressed.  Your handwriting will look more frantic if he’s following you.  And if you do flip your shit, you’ll also probably start scrawling pictures of trees and spiders and other creepy shit like that.

So yeah, that’s me.  I got a bit off-topic, but it was probably important.  I don’t want these posts to get too long.  I know how much long posts suck to read, and I don’t have the mental energy for much more anyway right now.  I’ll let you know about my first encounter with the Slender Man himself soon.

Anyone who gets the post title wins an internet, by the way.

Help Me Help You Help Us All

 

All right, chums, let’s do this….

What’s up, everyone? I’m Jekyll. Or at least that’s my pretentious handle, because you evidently need one of those. I’m not regretting this name decision at all. Cool-sounding. Symbolic. I personally think it suits me well: a mad scientist sort who willingly embraces the concept of a complete monster before growing to regret it. Okay, so maybe it’s not a perfect symbolism, but it sounds cool. That’s enough in my book. Either way, let’s just hope our stories don’t end the same way. Because as we all know (and I’m about to be a complete douche to anyone who is ignorant enough to know nothing about literature), the monster consumes Jekyll in the end.

Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, though, I’m not talking about my own personal Mr. Hyde. No, I’m talking about a monster without, not a monster within. I’m talking about the Slender Man.

Yeah, I said his name. Oh, no! Come on, guys, he’s not fucking Voldemort. What, is his name so scary now that we can’t bring ourselves to say it? And what’s up with the nicknames? Is it because of the Tulpa Effect? Believe me, if the Tulpa Effect is real, that’s hurting more than it’s helping. Now nobody’s going to be able to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas or eat a stick of jerky without thinking of him. Good job, guys. Real great going. */sarcasm*.

And don’t go into this shit about “protecting the Blind” either. Guess what? If you’re here, you probably already know about the Slender Man. If you don’t, he’s tall, wears a suit, is faceless, and stalks for a while before ripping out your organs and putting them back in plastic bags. Go look up Marble Hornets, and you’ll see why that’s scarier than it sounds. Oh, no! I’ve ruined you now! Yeah, whatever. Go whine to the idiot who gave you the fucking link and told you to check it out.

And if you did somehow manage to just accidentally stumble across this…I really am sorry. But you should probably keep reading, because this blog is probably gonna save your life.

See, this isn’t one of those “O NOEZ HE IZ TEH STALKING ME!!!!11!!1!eleven!!!” blogs. Well, technically, it is. But it’s not full of despair and stuff. Yeah, I know you can’t beat him. But you can survive him, easily. It’s been done. Hell, M (from The Tutorial…you’ve probably already read it if you’re here) has a whole blog dedicated to surviving.  Well, that’s what I’m going to be doing.  Only better.  Yeah, I know, I’m a cocky bastard.  Deal with it.

See, M was sort of thrust into this unexpectedly. I was thrust into it too, and I’ll admit that I didn’t really see it coming. But I was prepared anyway. See, I’m the sort of person who’s got a plan for when the zombies inevitably arrive (Call my family in the isolated countryside and tell them to prepare, then lock myself up in my dorm room with my “decorative” katana until the rush out of the city dies down. After that, it’s about an hour of driving, or 50 miles as the crow flies until I reach my home). I’m prepared. I’m, to use a term, genre savvy. I know what I’m doing. I can survive a zombie apocalypse. I can survive a horror movie. I can survive a Seltzer and Friedberg movie (step one: don’t watch it). I think I can survive the Slender Man.

“But Jekyll!” you say. “We thought we could, too!” Yeah, you did. But guess what? You didn’t. You’ve all screwed up somehow. Whether it’s letting your guard down or thinking you’re special or heading into an obvious trap, you’ve all stumbled once or twice. I’ve read your blogs. I’ve learned from your mistakes. And now you can all learn from mine.

But let’s just pray that I don’t make any, shall we?

…Leerooooooooooy…nnJenkiiiiiiiiiiiiins!