Review of "The Slenderman Mysteries" by Nick Redfern

3/6/2018

In 2009 a man named Eric Knudsen created photo art of a thin, mysterious supernatural man in a suit, and he posted these photo illustrations to Something Awful, where they became the fodder for countless online stories of a creature soon known as Slender Man, sometimes stylized as Slenderman. In this, it was not entirely different from the fictitious Blair Witch of 1999, or the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft’s fiction. In each case, a fictitious creation came to be embraced as “real” by fans who should have known better. The story of Slender Man is important, however, because in 2014 two 12-year-old girls lured a third into the woods in Waukesha, Wisconsin and stabbed her 19 times in an effort to impress the Slender Man. The victim survived, but the perpetrators were found not guilty by reason of insanity. Each was sentenced to decades in a mental health facility. The incident undercuts the collective “fun” to be had from pretending a fictitious thing was real.

This dark chapter in the otherwise mostly unremarkable history of the Slender Man character hangs over Nick Redfern’s new book, The Slenderman Mysteries (New Page, 2018), and it cuts against his usual tone of slightly uninterested good humor. Redfern dutifully but briefly reports the story in his introduction before reveling rather obscenely in its gory details in chapter 6 and letting the story shape the second half of the book in unsettling ways. Here, though, he merely calls it “extremely disturbing,” and lets the incident pass mostly as a curiosity on the road to the “fun,” which for him is the question of whether Slender Man, like the incorporeal thought entities called egregores in Victorian magician Éliphas Lévi’s (fake) occult mythology, is really some sort of sentience called into being from human desire, the internet’s growing consciousness, or a supernatural realm:

More and more people are following, and arguably even worshiping and devoting their lives to, the Slenderman as he becomes ever stronger and more physical in our world. Where did he come from? What does he want from us? What are the many witnesses to the Slenderman telling us? Is there just one creature, or are we looking at multiple Slendermen? How can we stop him from terrorizing and torturing us? Can we stop him? Or has he become an unstoppable, unbeatable nightmare?

These questions are inappropriate, both because the fiction has had terrible real-world consequences and because by any objective measure the Slender Man has no physical reality, and no will or desire. To lay the issue out at the most basic level, the Slender Man’s influence is no different than, say, an Islamic State suicide bombing manual. The Islamic State may have goals and desires, but the manual does not, even though its readers are inspired to kill from reading it. The manual is just a piece of media; it did not make them do it, nor does it have any independent power of action beyond that of the authors who wrote it and the readers who consume it. Slender Man is little different, except that he has a vaguely anthropoid form, which allows his consumers to attribute to him motives and desires that simply are not there.

This is why Redfern’s first chapter, tracing the well-established chronology of the Slender Man’s early history, from the first photo illustrations to the earliest fiction written about him. But near the end of this chronology, Redfern notes than in November 2009, irresponsible Coast to Coast AM host George Noory (a colleague of Redfern’s on Ancient Aliens) played host to a number of callers who claimed to have encountered the Slender Man. But Redfern is uninterested in establishing the truth of these claims, perhaps because Coast to Coast is such an important station of the cross on the fringe publishing circuit:

Some might suggest that the people who phoned in to Coast to Coast AM were hoaxers. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. But it doesn't really matter. If enough of the Coast to Coast AM audience believed what they were hearing, then that collective and combined belief would have gone a significant way toward ensuring that the Tulpa version of the Slenderman would soon be up and running.

A tulpa? Yes, of course. The author has a habit of dropping in people and concepts without explanation before reversing course at a later point and circling back to explain them. Redfern devotes the next chapter to discussing the term, which he introduces at first as a Buddhist concept. The tulpa as we know it today, and as he is using it, is a theosophical concept from the 1920s—not even a century old!—in which thoughts can manifest in forms that influence the physical world. It is a garbling of the Tibetan Buddhist concept of sprulpa and/or tulku, whereby celestial beings and some humans can create astral bodies or spiritual manifestations. Theosophists applied this to the generation of three types of “thought-form,” an astral projection of the thinker, the embodiment of a spirit or deceased soul, or the manifestation of an emotion. But Hollywood misunderstood even this, and episodes of shows like The X-Files (“Arcadia,” Mar. 7, 1999 and “Home Again,” Feb. 8, 2016) and Supernatural (“Hell House,” Mar. 30, 2006 and “#thinman, Mar. 4, 2016) expanded the tulpa concept to include the involuntary manifestation of a monstrous being, basically by necromancy.

In the case of Supernatural’s “Hell House,” which is most directly relevant here, the imaginary action involved a fake internet legend of the fictitious killer Mordechai Murdoch coming to life as a ghostlike and violent monster simply because enough people believed in him, and some magic squiggles were painted on the walls, since in the show’s world symbols have power regardless of whether the writer understands them. While Supernatural did not invent the claim of involuntary tulpa creation--authors as diverse as Sylvia Browne and Michael Grosso used it in the 1990s and early 2000s, though not with the mass media angle--it surely popularized it. Here, Sam and Dean Winchester, the monster hunters, discuss tulpas:

Sam: So there was an incident in Tibet in 1950. A group of monks visualized a golem in their heads, then meditate on it so hard, they bring the thing to life out of thin air.

Dean: So?

Sam: That was 20 monks. Imagine what 10,000 web surfers can do. I mean, Craig starts the story about Mordechai, then it spreads, it goes online. Now there are countless people all believing in the bastard.

[…]

Sam: That’s a Tibetan spirit sigil. On the wall of the house. Craig said they were painting symbols from a theology textbook. I bet they painted this, not even knowing what it was. Now that sigil has been used for centuries, concentrating meditative thoughts like a magnifying glass. So people are on the HellHounds website, staring at the symbol, thinking about Mordechai ... I mean I don’t know, but it might be enough to bring a tulpa to life.

Compare this to Redfern’s words alleging that a May 2014 Coast to Coast AM broadcast mentioning Slenderman was responsible for the stabbing that occurred a few hours after the show ended:

That Coast to Coast AM has such a phenomenally massive number of listeners may also have had a bearing on how and why the Slenderman controversy reached its terrible peak only a handful of hours after the show aired. More listeners equals more believers. More believers equals a more powerful, dangerous, and corporeal Slenderman.

In the current book, Redfern has compressed the entire history of tulpas into an assumption of belief, even though his working thesis of the Slender Man is ripped almost verbatim from “Hell House.” However, in the first half of the book Redfern treats the modern myth of the tulpa as though it is a genuine and ancient form of sorcery, going so far as to say that “All too often they have a disturbing habit of running riot and turning against their creators.” This is less an ancient mystical tradition than a claim made by Alexandra David-Néel, a Belgian-French Buddhist in her 1929 book Magic and Mystery in Tibet, where basically the same claim appears (and which Redfern later quotes): “Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. … Sometimes the phantom becomes a rebellious son and one hears of uncanny struggles that have taken place between magicians and their creatures…” Tighter editing would have eliminated the redundancy of summarizing and then quoting the same material. Evaluating the accuracy of this report is problematic because there is so little information in English that isn’t written by New Agers. I searched several academic databases and found nothing. It’s interesting, though, that the information David-Néel gives is recounting rollicking legends—basically ghost stories—rather than pointing to articles of faith. That said, she claimed to have created her own evil tulpa, which haunted her for a long time. Given that no one else could confirm the existence of this supposedly partially corporeal creature, the most parsimonious explanation is that she had convinced herself of a fantasy. I’m also concerned that her account of the tulpas seems to stand behind every other, with little or no effort to replicate her research. Redfern accepts her claim at face value and suggests that Slender Man is also a creature called into being by internet belief.

Citing Vice.com as his source, Redfern wrongly concludes that the tulpa was largely unknown outside of occult circles until 2009, the same time that Slender Man emerged, a coincidence he sees as significant. However, as we saw, The X-Files and Supernatural had popularized the tulpa--Supernatural more than any other—among the same internet geeks who birthed Slender Man and who engaged in what Vice.com said was a group effort among 4chan members to create tulpas as imaginary friends. It’s important to note a very important difference: Before Hollywood took over, a tulpa was typically created intentionally through specific magical rituals and for specific purposes. (Redfern very briefly notes this in the conclusion.) Afterward, there was an explosion of books in which a tulpa became any kind of psychic projection, called into being by the will to believe. This seems more of a reflection of the postmodern view of religion as a collective construct (or the common science fiction/fantasy trope that ghosts and gods exist only because of those who believe in them) than a genuine Tibetan tradition.

Redfern tries to support the reality of manifesting spirit beings by citing people who claim to have encountered them. In one case he literally tells us that the encounter took place while the viewer was in a “state of semi-sleep,” making quite clear that the most likely explanation is a waking dream. I’ve had them myself, so I understand how they can seem quite real. Weirdly enough, Redfern later quotes occult researcher Ian Vincent to the effect that the tulpa is a modern, bastardized, misunderstood concept with little connection to Buddhism, but he lets this slide by without comment.

As with much of the Redfern oeuvre, the accounts are presented at face value, with little critical analysis, in service of a thesis—that Slender Man is something like a tulpa—that is stated in the conditional tense (“…may have…” “…might…”) so that the author never quite commits to the thesis, lest he be accused of making a claim his surface-level research can’t support. And yet, the reader is clearly meant to take this suggestion seriously, for as the book progresses, Redfern delves ever deeper into the opinion of occultists that the Slender Man has achieved sentience through the magical power of belief.

He moves away from tulpas to enter into the realm of ceremonial magic, particularly the strain of evidence-free magical thinking that claims H. P. Lovecraft was in subconscious contact with transdimensional supernatural entities and therefore the Cthulhu Mythos was in some sense “real.” This is, of course, the view of Kenneth Grant, but the fact remains that it is rank speculation born of a belief in the power and efficacy of magical rituals, even if Redfern declares chaos magic to be a “very plausible explanation” for how the Slender Man might become real.

Redfern, however, feels that it is highly significant that Grant used Lovecraft for magic, while Slender Man’s creator, Eric Knudsen, claimed to have been partially inspired by the atmosphere of Lovecraftian horror in developing the first Slender Man photo illustrations and their accompanying captions. This is testimony not to channeled power from the spirit world but to the pervasiveness of Lovecraftian fiction among those inclined to the weird. Lovecraft, after all, turned to Éliphas Lévi’s work on the occult and magic in crafting his own tales of dark powers, so there is a perfectly material explanation for how egregores translated from Lévi to both Lovecraft and modern occultists and then to Slender Man, whose creator and advocates drew on both. But for Redfern this is not nearly as good a story as imagining that egregores or tulpas are real.

It is this defiant desire to absolve the actual human proponents of Slender Man’s ersatz mythology of responsibility for their own actions that leads Redfern to some inexcusable efforts to portray the stabbings committed by those preteen girls in Wisconsin as the result of supernatural forces. In the sixth and seventh chapters, Redfern dwells in almost prurient detail on the lives of the girls who stabbed their friend in Slender Man’s name, essentially exploiting the mental illness of the ringleader in order to promote an irresponsible allegation that the girls were involved with a real supernatural entity. The chapters are a condensation of Beware the Slenderman, a 2017 HBO documentary that dealt more seriously with the fallout and important lessons of this crime. Here, though, Redfern strip-mines to documentary for nuggets of sensationalist garbage he can spin into supernatural proof. For example, one girl claimed to have dreamed of Slender Man at the age of three, which was before the character’s creation. Rather than explain that as a child’s fantasy, or a faulty memory of visually similar characters like the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1999) or Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Redfern declares this to be “eye-opening” proof of Slender Man’s reality. He also does his math wrong. The girl was twelve in 2014, so she was three nine years earlier, in 2005 or 2006, not 2000 as Redfern alleges.

This becomes more maddening when Redfern acknowledges similar situations that have occurred in pop culture, such as Pan’s Labyrinth, but calls them “synchronicities” that suggest a supernatural reality rather than, as is much more likely, pop culture drawing on earlier weird and occult literature and in turn influencing those who consume it. Because he doesn’t give this serious consideration, a chapter devoted to scaremongering summaries of various teenagers’ acts of violence and vandalism in the name of Slender Man, violent videogames, and other media products rings both false and exploitative, a moral panic (an important phrase never once appearing in the book) that Redfern accepts as legitimate without interrogating the underlying meanings and motives. These aren’t bonkers money-grubbing adults like the cast of Ancient Aliens whose choices are ripe for exploitation because they chose to exploit themselves; these are disturbed children who ought not to be used to sell supernatural snake oil. When Redfern ends a description of alcoholism and suicide among Native American youths on the Pine Ridge Reservation with the gleeful words “You know what—or, rather, who—is coming” before trying to claim Slender Man (or its Native interpretation, Tall Man Spirit) as a cause rather than a symptom of the complex psychological and socioeconomic issues involved, it, frankly, angered me. What makes it worse is that Redfern’s many chapters giving litanies of similar stories are almost entirely summaries of newspaper articles and web chatter, with virtually no original analysis—or even much of a point—to justify exploiting damaged children. This is merely copy-and-paste rubbernecking.

To his credit, Redfern understands this, though he immediately chooses to discount the objection:

Blaming such tragic events on the actions of a supernatural entity that we cannot fully prove exists is as reckless as it is, for many, both unbelievable and inappropriate in the extreme. While it’s all too easy to see evil in every corner, more often than not that evil comes from us, not from murderous monsters. Others, though, and particularly those who have encountered the faceless beast close up, might disagree with that particular point of view. Given the sheer fear that such encounters generate, it’s easy to see why some might suggest that the Slenderman has indeed manipulated people to commit violent, murderous attacks. Maybe it has done exactly that.

Having his cake and eating it, too, Redfern wants credit for recognizing that his book is offensive and exploitative, while still engaging in that offensive exploitation. You can’t have both.

Near the end of the book, Redfern approaches Slender Man ass-backward, looking for older myths and legends that have some similarities to the ersatz story of Slender Man. Instead of understanding that the modern Slender Man fakelore draws on elements of older stories, he wrongly tries to argue that unrelated and largely different myths are actually Slender Man himself. Thus, the incongruity of arguing that the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who had a face and spoke, is also the silent, faceless Slender Man. Similarly, he falls into the trap of backward attribution, collecting ex post facto accounts from Waukesha, Wisconsin of people meeting dark shadows in the woods, Slavic immigrants’ imported tales of the vodyanoy (a frog-monster better known to me as the Polish wodnik), and stories of actual unsolved child murders from the area in order to claim that Slender Man is behind them, implicitly absolving the girls of their actions. Oddly, Redfern is happy to attribute any story, even those of UFO lore, involving tall men in black to Slender Man but seems ignorant of the American Puritan forms of Satan made famous as the Black Man of the woods in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and “Main Street” and in Lovecraft’s fiction. The allusions to the Black Man are, as should be obvious, an influence on the dark, tall, evil figures of pop culture. Perhaps the Black Man is too sophisticated for Redfern’s thesis. Here is Hawthorne describing him in The Scarlet Letter: “How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him, — a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood. And then he sets his mark on their bosoms!” But, really, isn’t that the Slender Man with an analog internet?

Redfern is suitably impressed that some people described “perfectly” (ha!) the Slender Man before its 2009 creation, though by “perfectly” he means three things: tall, wearing a suit or coat, and having no face. This, he feels, is beyond the realm of possibility if Slender Man were not real, since he has apparently forgotten pop culture characters like Charlton Comics’ (now DC’s) The Question (created 1967) or Dick Tracy’s The Blank (created 1937), both of whom answer to the same description.

The Blank

The Question

Slender Man

The remainder of the book recounts various modern individuals’ alleged encounters with creatures that resemble Slender Man, from the last few years when the meme was well-known. Even Redfern notes that many such encounters occur when the victim is falling asleep, though he discounts the fact that this is the time associated with waking dreams. He also compares the Slender Man to Lovecraft’s night-gaunts, which is strange since those creatures were basically flying stingrays and look nothing like a dark man in a suit hanging out in the woods, which was more Nyarlathotep’s thing. At the most basic level, Redfern is trying to force comparisons into a box that doesn’t quite fit since it is built on the shaky foundation of the Slender Man being the prototype of ancient evil rather than a modern fiction.

The book ends with a series of rhetorical questions designed to leave the reader with the impression that Redfern has said something about the Slender Man, when he has not. It is symptomatic of the failures of the book, which in the end is a superficial collection of other fringe writers’ views wrapped in salacious anecdotes and irresponsible speculation in the form of “just asking questions.” This reaches the heights of ridiculousness when Redfern speculates that Slender Man is actually an Agent Smith figure because we live in a simulated Matrix-like universe. If that is the case, he is a terrible secret agent of the Machines.

The Slenderman Mysteries suffers from the typical weaknesses of a Redfern effort. It is overwritten, with sentences spiced with redundancies and the same ideas repeated more than once. It is chock-a-block with block quotes, many of excessive length, held together with the thinnest of connecting thoughts. It relies nearly exclusively on other fringe books and websites, as well as selectively excerpted magazine and newspaper articles, with hardly a hint of research in scholarly sources. I’m sorry, but chaos magicians and Coast to Coast AM are not reliable sources, nor are their conclusions based on anything like verifiable evidence. In many cases, they don’t even understand the history of their own claims, and when we add Redfern summarizing and repeating these speculations, we merely add another layer of garbling and confusion. Even the original interviews Redfern conducted are less than illuminating, talking to chaos magician Ian “Cat” Williams and “paranormal pastor” Robin Swope, neither of whom contribute anything of value not already in the published literature on the subject. Redfern has not quite mastered the idea, laid out decades ago by Lawrence E. Spivak, that interviews are most illuminating when the interviewer challenges the subject with opposing views.

In the end, the book boils down to a bunch of fantasists trying to parse the hairline differences between egregores, transdimensional entities, tulpas, thought-forms, and archetypes without ever once bothering to discern whether there is reason to attribute any reality to the Slender Man beyond the universal human tendency to displace acts of evil onto outside forces and ritually purify the perpetrators of their sins. No one involved wants to admit that preteen girls are less than innocent, and so a tulpa becomes a more reasonable explanation than the idea that children can harbor serious mental illnesses and even amorality or evil.

68 Comments

Nick Redfern

3/6/2018 09:56:58 am

If I were to get into a debate on all this, I just know I would be doing it for the next week. Maybe more. And for various reasons I don't have time anymore to endlessly argue and debate here throughout the day as I could in the fun days of last year and earlier years. As much as I enjoy a good online argument/rant here at this blog for hours at a time, time's now against me. So, I'll sum things up like this:

I do fully believe in the thought-form concept. I do fully believe that some of the weirder things which went down in Waukesha deserve to be highlighted, such as Mike Huberty seeing a tall, thin, dark figure just a few miles from where the stabbing occurred, but which he saw in the 1990s. I do fully believe that what began as a piece of entertaining fiction has become something else.

We'll probably never agree on anything, Jason, and you may totally disagree with my views and conclusions and the weird shit I believe, but they are my honest views and conclusions.

And as to why I spent so much in-detail info on the girls and the attack, the reason is simple: it's the most significant part of the Slenderman story.

Whatever you, me, or anyone else thinks, the stabbing incident pushed the Slenderman controversy to a new level, with media coverage etc. Had I not told the story extensively, some would have likely said something like: "Why didn't you tell the story at length, with it being the most significant part of the whole saga?"

You can't please everyone...but I don't care if I don't please everyone. Nor do I try and please everyone. I tell it as I see it. And that's it.

Gunn at Risk

3/6/2018 10:15:47 am

I tell it as I see it, too. Let's not forget the very real Devil angle in all this, gentlemen...the evil twisting and lying and harm, which is his specialty:

"Slender Man" Stabber Wanted to Kill Friend to "Prove Skeptics Wrong" about the Supernatural
6/4/2014 23 Comments

A Buddhist

3/8/2018 08:56:15 pm

Satan is a better sort than YHVH your god in terms of not killing: http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.ca/2009/01/who-has-killed-more-satan-or-god.html

YHVH who orders his followers to kill babies: 1 Samuel 15

YHVH who sends lying spirits to his prophets and then punishes them for giving false prophecies: Ezekiel 14:9

YHVH who orders a man to do a census of a state and then punishes the man: 2 Samuel 24

YHVH who sends bears to tear children to shreds until they die for mocking a man's baldness: 2 Kings 2:23-24

E.P. Grondine

3/6/2018 11:38:31 am

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” ― Philip K. Dick

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%201.pdf

Oh yeah, Nick - its all a lot of fun until the bodies star piling up.

3/6/2018 02:02:57 pm

OK, I'm back for about 45 minutes, so a few quick replies:

E.P. - You clearly didn't read my words carefully enough. I specifically said that in relation to "fun" I was talking about getting into online fights at Jason's blog. It IS fun, I enjoy a good rant and a fight. And no need for you to bring matters relative to "bodies" into the issue, since that has nothing to do with what I said.

3/6/2018 11:18:25 pm

Like I said, Nick, it's all a lot of fun until the bodies start piling up:

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%201.pdf

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” ― Philip K. Dick

3/7/2018 10:18:10 am

Hi Nick -

easy links to part 2:

http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%202.pdf

and part 3:
http://www.danieljglenn.com/the_podcasts/Stelle/Documentation/He%20Walked%20Among%20Us%20Part%203.pdf

Bob Jase

3/6/2018 12:24:31 pm

Some people will believe anything.

I KNEW THE FAMILIES INVOLVED.

3/6/2018 01:47:45 pm

HOPE YOU ENJOY THE MONEY YOU MAKE OF THE TRAGIC GIRL'S STORY, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD.

3/6/2018 02:09:00 pm

Huh? What the fuck are you talking about??? I told the story of how the attack / stabbing by the girls occurred, the court case, the questioning by the police etc in a timeline style.

That's exactly what just about every newspaper in Wisconsin did. Or that CNN did, etc etc etc Are they heartless bastards for reporting on what turned out to be a major news story?

Money? In the field of writing paranormal books? Are you serious? Don't make me laugh. If there is only one thing me and Jason CAN agree on it's that if you want to earn good money do NOT write on the world of the paranormal!

Machala

3/6/2018 02:33:11 pm

Nick Redfern said:

Money? In the field of writing paranormal books? Are you serious? Don't make me laugh. If there is only one thing me and Jason CAN agree on it's that if you want to earn good money do NOT write on the world of the paranormal!

Nick, in this day and age writing books about ANYTHING is never going to make you rich. There was a day when publishers and public allowed their scribes to make a living. Not anymore !

And for anyone who thinks television pays....LOL !!

Pacal

3/6/2018 04:33:17 pm

"Money? In the field of writing paranormal books? Are you serious? Don't make me laugh. If there is only one thing me and Jason CAN agree on it's that if you want to earn good money do NOT write on the world of the paranormal!"

I work part-time in a book store and we have a sizable paranormal section in which you can find reams of crap written by woo merchants pushing their snake oil. Some of them write multiple volumes of woo, like Doreen Virtue. So obviously there is some money in publishing paranormal BS. And enough money to get some people to publish reams of the stuff.

Now there are probably areas of life were woo merchants could make more money off their marks, but writing and publishing woo spittle does make money. And that attracts woo pedlars who in in the pursuit of lucre do not hesitate to sensationalize, lie to sell their worthless vomitus wares.

And of course publishers rack in the dough selling woo nonsense, otherwise why would they publish it?

All in all I think Mr. Redfern is underestimating role filthy lucre has in generating woo goods.

3/6/2018 04:18:43 pm

"I do fully believe in the thought-form concept."

Really? Well it is nice to know that Mr. Redfern believes in nonsense, for which the evidence is close to zero.

BigNick

3/6/2018 04:38:08 pm

It's actually the biggest load of nonsense. I write Santa's name on gifts for my kids at christmas, but millions of kids believe in Santa. You can't completely disprove aliens, ancient or otherwise, but to me this is clear evidence that this whole Tulsa thing is b.s. disprovable b.s.

3/6/2018 06:36:21 pm

All I can tell u for sure is that me and my friends in the field of paranormal writing do not generate much of an income. We do it because we want to.

Now, there's absolutely no doubt that there is an assumption that if you write books you are pulling in a lot of money. It has come up here today, which exactly makes my point.

It mainly comes down how many copies sell - period. Several of my very early books in the late 1990s sold well, but for the most, they sell around 3,000 copies in their 'lifetime" and then stall, usually irreversibly.

A royalty payment of just a couple of dollars per book at a rate of two books a year and most of the other books have by then stalled, and do the math.

Add to that a few hundred dollars for a couple of TV shows per year, plus roughly the same amount for maybe 4 conferences a year, and add that up.

Now, I'm not complaining as I enjoy my job. But, as the above shows, and I repeat, there is not much in the way of income - even though so many people definitely have that image.

3/6/2018 06:39:56 pm

Bignick: You say "this whole Tulsa thing is b.s.disprovable b.s." I doubt the people of Tulsa would agree. You mean Tulpa NOT Tulsa. Geeeeezzz...

You may think the Tulpa issue is BS. I don't, I fully 100 percent believe it.

3/6/2018 06:41:42 pm

But if we all believe you make lots of money, shouldn't that make it real? I'm not mocking your stupid theory, I'm trying to understand.

3/6/2018 06:56:00 pm

Autocorrect got me twice today.

And again, if Tulpas are real, then santa claus is believed in by way more people than slender man ever was or will be. In a decade of parenting I have not seen one extra gift or one gift that didn't have my handwriting on the tag.

3/6/2018 10:29:04 am

I have about 30 minutes before it really is time for me to move on, but here's the situation: (1) what you call "twisting" is actually me giving my honest views that others may significantly disagree with. (2) I don't lie. People may not agree with what I say and I may have some seriously weird beliefs (I certainly do), but that's not lying. (3) I don't do "harm."

PS: use a real name now and again, it looks like cowardice or fear when you hide behind an alias.

Jason Colavito link

3/6/2018 10:53:48 am

I believe that Gunn (Bob Voyles) was referring to the Devil, not you, as lying and twisting.

The issue isn't so much that you give your honest opinion, Nick, but that you don't provide adequate evidence and justification to demonstrate that it is true. If half of what you allege is actually true, we should be overrun with tulpas and thought-forms, and yet no one has ever produced a single one for inspection.

3/6/2018 03:49:18 pm

If thoughts created actual beings then wet-dreams would have caused the world to collapse under the weight of beautiful imaginary women centuries ago.

3/6/2018 06:39:45 pm

Thank you. Yes, I, was referring to Satan, the evil angel who revolted against his own Creator. Like millions of Christians worldwide, I believe in good angels and bad angels. God leads the good angels and Satan leads the bad angels. Spiritual warfare is constantly taking place all around us. These spirit beings either try to harm us, or they try to intervene on our behalf, depending on which master/Master they serve.

I don't think these girls were ever insane. I believe they were led astray from within a particularly wicked reality, from demon spirits. As young as these girls are, they somehow opened the wrong door. Some preachers talk about different kinds of spirits, such as lying spirits, murder spirits, etc. But motivating forces of hatred and murder are one thing...being prompted by fear (at the end of the thrill stage) is another, if that is what contributed to motivating these very young girls to act out in this horrific way. Yes, it is said that "fear is of the Devil." (Not you, Nick.)

3/8/2018 09:06:08 pm

Gunn at Risk:And yet according to your own scriptures, YHVH lying spirits, evil spirits, and killing spirits to people.

Why do you care about history at all? Why not dedicate yourself entirely to spiritual warfare for YHVH your god?

For my part, I would dedicate my every effort to Buddhism if I were not an ektroma of a very bad sort (never able to walk, hearing impaired). And if any Christian could make me walk as their scriptures say they should be able to, I would be more willing to trust the other Christian claims.

Nick Redfern link

3/6/2018 06:50:42 pm

BN: No, of course that won't work, that's the craziest thing I have heard in a long time! When people try and create a thought-form they are trying to create some form of "life," not to supernaturally print wads of cash!

Jane Smith

3/7/2018 11:38:40 am

Mr. Redfern, "...whatever you, me, or anyone else believes" should be "whatever you, I, or anyone else believes". "...me and Jason" should be "Jason and I". "...me and my friends" should be "my friends and I". "...me giving my honest reviews" should be "my giving my honest reviews". You are welcome.

3/7/2018 11:59:00 am

Who the hell cares how a few words appear in a comment box? No-one says "My friends and I." Maybe the cast of Downton Abbey.

Stickler

3/7/2018 12:08:42 pm

If you said that to I IRL me would punch you in your face.

3/7/2018 12:17:01 pm

Stickler: Have at it!

3/8/2018 09:09:36 pm

Jane Smith: Fellow lover of proper grammar, I salute thee.

Mr. Redfern: If you cannot even bring yourself to be bound by good grammar, then you seem likely to be bound to bad-writer status in all of the ways that Mr. Colavito points out.

3/9/2018 09:35:41 am

A Buddhist: My point is this:of course good grammar is required in a book or an article. But, when you're just responding to a blog post, it doesn't really matter if I write "u r" vs. "you are." Etc etc.

3/9/2018 07:40:53 pm

Mr. Redfern: That is certainly your right. But I, who find writing so difficult, strive never to have written something that is not grammatically perfect. To do otherwise would be to turn my effort into a travesty of virtuous striving.

3/9/2018 09:44:09 pm

Since you can't control the past, why don't you "strive never to write blah blah" instead? I understand that "to have written" takes place in the present, but The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

3/6/2018 11:06:05 am

Jason, maybe we are, but perhaps we just dont see them for what they are. Or most people don't.

Take, for example, the story in the book of comic-book writer Alan Moore and Constantine. Moore viewed his encounter with Constantine as something akin to a Tulpa. Others around "it" may have just seen it as a man.

Granted, that adds even more controversy and speculation to an already controversial issue and complicates things more too. But, that's my view on at least a portion of the thought-form issue.

Now, I really do have to go.

Americanegro

3/6/2018 02:06:41 pm

Is Nick Redfern the guy who talks about hitting people? Anyway The Bunnyman could beat the Devil and Slenderman in a fight because The Bunnyman is real.

The Constantine guy was just a guy doing Kyle Reese from Terminator cosplay.

3/6/2018 03:36:21 pm

I think Nick Redfern is the guy that married Joanie Caucus.
Also goatman beats funnyman because goatman has an ax. Unless bunnyman has an ax were your from, then I'm willing to listen

3/6/2018 03:51:23 pm

"because goatman has an ax."

Paul Bunyan is goatman???

Clete

3/6/2018 12:10:38 pm

Jason, really, two Nick Redfern mentions in less than a week. I mean, it seems that a lot of the fringe community is no longer doing much, but surely someone out there is doing something more than publishing "The Slenderman Mysteries".

Only Me

3/6/2018 01:04:53 pm

The X-files episode, "X-Cops" (February 20, 2000), played on a similar theme to the tulpa.

Jesus Christ

3/6/2018 02:33:08 pm

God Bless You, Only Me
I have risen
Alleluyah

That's It

3/6/2018 02:34:33 pm

We have a believer in the pseudo history of the gospels attacking the pseudo-history of Nick Redfern

Such double-standards...

3/6/2018 02:35:41 pm

I am the King of the World
Bow and kneel down to me, you wretches and morons

Watch Out

3/6/2018 02:38:00 pm

Only Me is protected by the Blog Owner and will delete messages.

Jesus Christ fucking exists on this Blog

3/6/2018 02:51:17 pm

If I'm "protected" and your comments are going to be deleted, why are you wasting your time?

David Bradbury

3/6/2018 02:54:15 pm

The idea of supernatural beings created and fuelled by human belief goes back at least to A.E. van Vogt's "The Book of Ptath" (1943)- with Pterry's Gods being a later satirical variant.

3/6/2018 02:56:03 pm

Oops- the words "in fiction" should go after "beings" there.

Shane Sullivan

3/6/2018 01:26:37 pm

I remember tulpas being the subject matter in an episode of Disney Channel series So Weird when I was a kid. That was where I first heard the word.

3/6/2018 01:55:45 pm

As always, Jason, an interesting revue. This is one that I'm not forming any opinions on until I've had the opportunity to read Mr. Redfern's book en total, which I'm going to try to do, at first opportunity. In the mean time, I am enjoying reading the commentary.

I may consider myself as having an agnostic world view but one thing I never discount - the power of the mind ( particularly a distinctly disturbed one ) in conjuring up evil. There was always something unnerving about Grant's Slender Man character that gnawed the reader's psyche and had a certain malevolence that appealed to many people - particularly the vulnerable, and impressionable.

3/8/2018 09:14:44 pm

Dhammapada:
1.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
2.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

Tulpas "R" Us

3/6/2018 03:31:43 pm

Jason it would be cool to see a review of something you enjoyed or think is highly rated. Would be interesting along with your other critiques.

Jim

3/6/2018 03:59:45 pm

No worries, I have it on good authority, The Shadow has already taken care of the thin man.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!"

3/6/2018 04:23:46 pm

Wasn't this Tulsa thing the plot to Rise of The Gaurdians?

Kal

3/6/2018 04:29:09 pm

Tulpahs are an old concept from the 20s, possibly older, and tall evil figures have been around since at least then.

Twin Peaks first mentioned them in the 1990s, about the same time as X Files. They were brought up as the mysterious blank men 'men in black' in that, a variant of the film variety, Men in Black.

But there was a song in the 1980s, 'eyes without a face' or something.

Also the blank tall robotic forms of Metropolis.

3/6/2018 05:00:32 pm

The song was inspired by the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053459/?ref_=nv_sr_1

3/7/2018 05:23:38 pm

Mr. Redfern, You are a professional writer. Your grammar should be perfect.

3/7/2018 07:00:05 pm

Ms. Smith,
I believe that a late friend of mine,( also named Jane Smith), who was a librarian, editor, and also mentored many writers, would take umbrage with your comments. Not all writers are grammarians, nor necessarily good at self-editing.
There is a difference when writing for publication and writing commentary on someone's blog. ( Thank god for Spell Check ! ) We're not always as careful nor often have the time to triple check out work for spelling, grammar, and typos.
Novelist and non-fiction writers used to be able to rely on an editor to go though their work and find the errors that the writer's missed.
Good editors are fast becoming extinct in the publishing business and writer - no matter how skilled a wordsmiths they are - do not usually hold degrees in English Grammar. Shakespeare wrote in the vernacular of his day. American writers like Twain, Harte, and London were more concerned with telling the story - and selling it - than what a high school English teacher would think of it.

Re: I and me... I have an unwritten a rule, not in my Strunk & White, or my Oxford English Rules of Grammar. The word that sounds best to my writer's ear, is the one that I'll use, at the time. I will confess that, since I write, for the most part, in Spanish, rather than English, I probably pay closer attention to my Spanish word construction, but in either language, getting the idea across in an interesting and readable way sometimes doesn't equate to perfect grammar.

3/8/2018 02:05:02 pm

Dear Machala, Thank you for your courteous and well thought-out email. I am concerned with the destruction of the English language. Why is using correct grammar such a huge and inconvenient task? Why isn't it second-nature? If it is a little more difficult, why aren't others worth it? Ideas gain credibility when expressed well, and lose credibility when they aren't. They are also easier to understand and a joy to read. I try to speak and write correctly as a courtesy to others. It shows that I value and respect them. I didn't expect to start a discussion, and am surprised at the reaction against good grammar. (But then, I was one of those oddballs who diagrammed sentences for fun)

3/8/2018 03:11:19 pm

Ms.Smith,
I hope that you did not take my comments amiss.I do for the most part agree with everything you said. At risk of sounded pedantic, I, too, find the deterioration of language appalling and blame part of that on social media, part of it on laziness, part on education, and finally, part on evolution.

Language is fluid and ever evolving. This means that grammar, whether we like it or not, is getting a 21st century liposuction procedure - sucking all the unwanted structure and stricture out and reshaping the way we speak and write into a more streamlined colloquial version that lends itself to modern media. I'm not advocating this change, merely observing it.

Finally, I have to say that I love words, and I love writing. I refuse to "dumb down" my vocabulary or style for anyone....but... my scribbles here, are an entirely 'different voice', from that one that I use, when I write fiction, satire, or dialogue. That voice is far rougher, more common, and ( depending on the character or situation,) less grammatically correct and more indicative of the discurso callejero.
Sometimes, I don't take time, to modulate that voice.

3/8/2018 09:36:57 am

No, not for when I'm quickly writing a few comments at a blog and juggling my day job. People can figure it out.

Joe Scales

3/8/2018 10:40:15 am

Day job? Oh right... ghost-busting is for nighttime.

3/8/2018 10:43:34 am

You finally have a day job, well good for you. As for your writing and research, I can now use a phrase that would apply. Don't quit your day job.

3/8/2018 10:50:43 am

No, not that kind of day job you mean. Writing is my day job. I strictly work 9-5 Monday to Friday writing the books, articles, etc. I don't work evenings or evenings. So that's what I mean by my day job: regular hours. I always call it my day job because for me that's exactly what it is.

3/8/2018 02:22:56 pm

Writing? If it were properly labeled as fiction, then certainly you could consider that sort of writing a job. Otherwise, it's better described as a number of other things. Scamming, swindling, misleading, cheating, faking, hoaxing, deceiving, fooling, lying... well, those are some that quickly come to mind.

Carry on.

3/8/2018 02:55:47 pm

Dead wrong. I don't lie. I don't fake. I don't hoax. I don't swindle. But I have been hoaxed myself and I have been lied to. I doubt there is anyone in paranormal research who hasn't been hoaxed or lied to on at least a couple of occasions.

The facts, though, are these: as I have said before here and elsewhere I believe in a lot of crazy shit, but it's crazy shit that I do really, genuinely believe in.

Writing about things that many people consider to be complete bullshit does not make me a liar. It makes me someone who has a lot of wild, alternative beliefs and puts them out for people to see. And that's all it makes me.

E.P. Grondinw

3/9/2018 04:56:02 pm

Hi Nick -

"I believe in a lot of crazy shit, but it's crazy shit that I do really, genuinely believe in."

The late Jerry E. Smith would believe in whatever kind of crazy shit they paid him to write about.

3/8/2018 10:52:15 am

I meant "evenings or weekends."

3/8/2018 10:56:27 am

And that's what I meant in this thread about me not bothering about my grammar being perfect in a blog comment. Writing is my day job, and as I work 9-5, Mon-Fri on the books etc it means I sometimes I have to race thru these comments so I'm not forced to work evenings etc.

3/8/2018 07:15:50 pm

Machala, I agree with you. Language certainly does change. I don't think I would like to plow through an original Chaucer. I, too, love words. Language is powerful because we use it to transmit ideas. It's also available to everyone. Helen Keller is a good example. Besides diagramming sentences for fun, I also devoured the thesaurus. My favorite word was sesquipedalian. Ah, was I ever that young?

Amanda

3/24/2018 10:12:31 pm

I hate to admit this, but I've been a member of Something Awful for years and was around for Slenderman's creation. He was created to troll a site that posted "real" paranormal photos. The Slenderman photos were by far the best submitted to the thread and other goons fleshed out the story beyond what the original poster had written. From there it spread to other sites.
The calls made to C2CAM were pranks. C2CAM is a favorite of the forums and there's an annual thread for their year end prediction shows, and several goons will call in and offer ridiculous predictions.

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Review of "The Slenderman Mysteries" by Nick Redfern

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