Perceptive Reality: How Belief in Legends Can Sometimes Make Them Real!

Can belief in something – individual or collective – make something real? Essentially, is belief in something enough to bring it to life, to allow it to manifest and exist in our physical world? Could perception, quite literally, even become reality? While conventional thought says no to such questions, as we will examine, such contemplations are not at all so clean-cut as being able to answer yes or no.

We know, for example, that belief in the Devil and his influence has led many people to carry out all manner of actions either in his name or against it. Indeed, the Inquisitions that lasted hundreds of years in the Middle Ages resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands (at least) of so-called “heretics” in the name of stopping the work of the Devil. We might also highlight several serial killers who have claimed that “voices” told them to kill. For them, the voices were all too real, as was the consequence of their instructions for the respective victims. With this in mind, then, given how little we know about the human mind, especially the subconscious human mind, could it really be possible that sheer belief alone could cause the focus of that belief to manifest in the real world?

Perhaps a great example of how legends can sometimes become all too real for the wider world as a consequence of belief in them is those of the Slender Man. And rather than being a legend of ancient times, the origins of the Slender Man legends can be traced back to a specific date in our contemporary era – June 10th, 2009, on the Internet forum Something Awful. On this forum, users were asked to submit a “paranormal image” with a backstory that could be presented as authentic and genuine. As detailed in the book Slender Man Is Coming: Creepypasta and Contemporary Legends on the Internet by Trevor J Blank, one such user did exactly that.

Eric Knudsen – using the name Victor Surge – submitted two such photographs, both black and white, which were unsettling and disturbing, not least because of the captions that accompanied them. The first of these pictures shows a group of children, all of whom look scared as if something terrible has just happened. Behind them, not immediately apparent to the viewer, a tall, slim, dark figure can be seen. The caption to this picture reads:

“’We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…’

-1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead”

The second picture shows another group of children, much happier and carefree, playing in a park. However, as the person studies the picture, the same tall, slim man is visible in the background, as if watching over the children. What was explained as “film defects” even appeared to be tentacles stretching out from the figure towards the group of children. The caption to this second picture reads:

“’One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for is referred to as The Slender Man. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.’

-1986, photographer, Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th 1986”

The pictures were viewed by thousands of people, ultimately, giving birth to what would become the legends of the Slender Man. And while this was merely a bit of fun for fans of horror and the macabre, interest and, eventually, belief in the Slender Man would have near-fatal consequences.

For his part, Knudsen claimed to have drawn inspiration from several well-known horror characters and plots for the Slender Man. Speaking in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2016, he stated that he wanted to create something “whose motivations can barely be comprehended, and (which caused) unease and terror in a general population!” He would, it would turn out, achieve exactly that. And as more and more people learned of and contributed to the legend, the Slender Man grew and grew.

Generally speaking, Slender Man is described as being unusually tall and thin, with arms that are slightly too long for his body. Some descriptions even offer that these arms turn into tentacles or that tentacles protrude from his back. Most disturbing, though, is the lack of an apparent face, with descriptions and depictions showing either a blurred face or simply a completely white space, something which only adds to the menacing nature of his appearance.

What further darkened Slender Man’s unsettling nature, borrowing heavily from legends and myths throughout the ages, was his association with abandoned houses and even caves deep in the forest. Adding a touch of the supernatural to the legends, it is said that Slender Man can transport himself to any location he chooses, meaning a person can never be safe or free of him if he has them in his sights.

As the legend grew, so did the apparent signs that he was nearby or even watching you. A person would suddenly feel a sense of paranoia as well as suffering from intense nightmares. Perhaps even worse, a person who is being watched by Slender Man, at least according to the legends, will also experience the sudden onset of nosebleeds (something, incidentally, experienced by many people who go on to discover they have been abducted by aliens).

Ultimately, the Slenderman became incredibly popular incredibly quickly. And while the Internet undoubtedly played a part in this, this modern urban legend was about to make the leap from imaginary online character to real-world menace.

On May 31st, 2014, just short of five years after legends of Slender Man had first appeared on the Something Awful forum, two 12-year-old girls – Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser - led their friend, 12-year-old Payton Leutner, into the woods near their homes in Waukesha, Wisconsin. There, they would stab her 19 times and leave her for dead. As well as defensive wounds to her arms and legs, Peyton had several stab wounds to her torso, two of which were to major organs, with another only narrowly missing her heart, which almost certainly would have proven fatal.

Payton managed to drag herself out of the woods and to the road where she was discovered by a passing cyclist. After they notified the authorities, Payton was taken to hospital, where she named her two attackers. Weier and Geyser were arrested a short time later. The knife they had used in the attack was still in their possession. They were interviewed separately, and some of the answers to investigators’ questions were stunning.

They claimed they had attacked their friend for Slender Man, offering that he would have been displeased with them had they not done so. Weier even offered that Slender Man was not only very real but was “the leader” of the Creepypasta world and that killing their friend would have shown him that she and Geyser were dedicated to him. She elaborated further that Slender Man was a “supernatural figure” who resided deep in the Nicolet National Forest in a creepy, abandoned mansion, a location, incidentally, that the two girls were preparing to locate and travel to immediately following their attack on Payton.

As the trial of the two girls unfolded, it became clear that not only did they truly believe what they were saying (that the Slender Man was real) but that a great deal of planning had gone into the frenzied attack.

All three girls had spent the previous evening at Skateland before a sleepover at Geyser’s home. It came to light that Weier and Geyser had initially planned to kill Payton that night in Geyser’s bedroom before setting out to Slender Man’s mansion. However, during the night, Weier changed the plan, noting that a bathroom at a park near their home would be better suited for their attack, not least as the drains would allow the blood to drain away.

The following day, the three girls made their way to the park, eventually making their way to the bathroom. Geyser did make an attempt to restrain Payton there, but ultimately she failed, and after having calmed Payton down, they suggested they should go to the woods to play hide-and-seek. They did so, and shortly after, the two girls launched their vicious attack.

Both of the girls entered into guilty pleas at the trial, and both were given lengthy prison sentences. Weier was sentenced to 25 years to life, three of which were served in a mental health facility. She was released from prison in the summer of 2021 and will be subject to regular supervision until she is 37. Geyser, on the other hand, who was seen as the main instigator behind the attack and who showed no remorse following her arrest or during the trial, was sentenced to 40 years to life and remains incarcerated in a mental health facility at the time of writing.

As we might imagine, there was considerable fallout regarding the Slender Man legends and just how big a role they had played in the attempted murder of Payton Leutner. The belief in Slender Man was real enough for Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser that they attempted to kill in honor of him, and the consequences of that belief were certainly real enough for Payton Leutner and her family.  

This attack in the name of Slender Man, however, would prove not to be an isolated incident. Only weeks after the attack in Waukesha, in June 2014 in Hamilton County, Ohio, a 13-year-old girl, who was known to have an obsession with Slender Man, attacked her mother with a knife at their home after lying in wait for her. Fortunately, the woman survived the attack and offered later that her daughter was suffering from mental health issues. She also offered that her daughter wrote about “demons” plaguing her, as well as several writings about Slender Man.

Interestingly enough, almost on the same day, on June 9th, 2014, in Las Vegas, Nevada, a local man was suspected of killing a member of the public and two police officers, as well as his wife, before taking his own life. According to a neighbor, the man in question was obsessed with Slender Man, and was even seen dressed up in attire similar to that of the legendary figure.

Several months later, in September 2014, another case of apparent attempted murder with connections to Slender Man hit the headlines when a 14-year-old girl set fire to her family home with her family inside in Port Richey, Florida. The home was almost completely lost to the flames; however, all those inside made it out alive. The teenager fled the scene, eventually being arrested in a public bathroom in a nearby park the following day. When she was asked why she had attempted to murder her family, she responded that Slender Man had told her to do so. She continued that she had ”been reading a lot” about him online, something which the police’s search of her Internet history also attested to.

Were these the actions of mentally disturbed individuals who had seen something in the legends of the Slender Man that resonated with them, or was widespread belief in Slender Man causing him to manifest in the minds of individuals around the United States? While conventional wisdom tells us it is most likely the former of those possibilities, the influence of Slender Man continued over the following years.

Taking place between the end of 2014 and the early summer of 2015, according to a report by the New York Times, a spate of suicides had taken place at Pine Ridge Reservation, an Oglala Lakota reservation in South Dakota. The article claimed that over 100 people had taken their own lives during this period, and that “several officials with knowledge of the cases said that at least one of the youths who committed suicide was influenced (to do so) by Slender Man!”

Whatever the truth of the spate of suicides documented by the New York Times, there is a local belief among the residents of the reservations (and ones similar to them) of a “suicide spirit”, sometimes referred to as the “Tall Man”, the “Big Man”, or “Walking Sam”, and whose descriptions are remarkably similar to Slender Man.

What makes the report by the New York Times even more chilling is a report of mass suicide that was avoided on the same reservation. According to the report, a large group of teenagers ventured into the woods one afternoon with the intent of hanging themselves at the same time. Word somehow got back to a local pastor – John Two Bulls – who managed to make his way into the woods and intervene in the potential tragedy. According to rumors that swirled around the reservation in the days that followed, the group of teenagers were led to the woods by none other than Walking Sam (or perhaps Slender Man!).

Without a doubt, one of the most remarkable and disturbing encounters with Slender Man comes to us from the files of veteran paranormal researcher and writer, Nick Redfern, not least as rather than a person merely being influenced by their belief in Slender Man, the account suggests some kind of manifestation by the creepy entity. According to Redfern’s account, a trainee flight attendant – “Lacy” - from Erie, Pennsylvania, had begun to have encounters with Slender Man in early 2016, shortly after reading the book Slender Man: From Fiction to Fact by Robin Swope, after which, she developed on obsession with the character. Several months later, it appeared that obsession quite literally took on a life of its own.

While watching television one evening in the summer of 2016, Lacy’s laptop – which was in sleep mode nearby – suddenly came to life of its own accord. What really concerned Lacy, though, was for a second or two, on the laptop screen, she claimed to have seen something that was somewhere “between a man and a long-legged bug!” She told herself that it was simply her brain playing tricks on her and seeing things that weren’t there, and she did her best to put the curious incident out of her mind. Two nights later, however, another inexplicable event unfolded.

On this evening, just like two nights previously, Lacy’s laptop suddenly burst to life on its own. This time, though, instead of seeing her usual laptop screen, or even the blurry figure, she could see a clear-as-day image of Slender Man’s face, or more specifically, the lack of a face, with Lacy recalling that “the eyes, the nose, and the ears were all missing!”

At this point, realizing she was somehow caught up in the middle of something truly out of the ordinary, Lacy slammed her laptop shut and rushed out of the apartment. She made her way to her mother’s house, where she stayed the night.

She returned home the following day, and while nervous at first, with no further incidents happening, she began to forget about the unsettling events. However, at around 11 pm one evening several weeks later, as she was wrapping presents on her living room floor, the familiar sound of her laptop coming on brought her to attention. She turned around, expecting to see the monstrous, blank face on the screen. However, instead, she heard a voice coming from the laptop which stated simply, “We are friends!” The device then switched itself back to sleep mode.

To say Lacy was terrified by this latest encounter is an understatement. She immediately decided to cease reading or writing about Slender Man, fearing she was, perhaps subconsciously, giving life to the legend. She even deleted all of her research files on the subject and burned the previously mentioned book in a metal bin outside. Coincidentally or not, the bizarre and unsettling events suddenly stopped after she had done so.

Had Lacy’s intense interest caused Slender Man to manifest, if not physically in the real world, in some kind of digital form via her laptop? It is perhaps interesting to note that many paranormal researchers suggest that all manifestations (ghosts, poltergeists etc.) are the result of electromagnetic energies, so communication between this manifestation through the laptop perhaps makes sense. We will return to the idea that intense belief, in this case, in Slender Man could have caused some kind of supernatural manifestation in its own form a little later. First, though, we will turn our attention to another grisly example of the blurring together of the paranormal and deadly events in the real world.

Another case of a paranormal legend tripping over into violence and, in this case, murder in the real world is that of the Bunny Man from Fairfax County in Virginia, who it would appear has been terrorizing inhabitants of Virginia for some time.

It is widely agreed that the first reported encounter with the Bunny Man occurred on October 19th, 1970, when a United States Air Force Cadet, Robert Bennett, was driving home from a local football game with his fiancé. On the way, he decided to call in on his uncle, and so parked his car near a field opposite his home. However, before he could exit the vehicle, Robert and his fiancé saw something zip past the car windscreen. Before they could take in any more details, the passenger window suddenly shattered. A moment later, Robert managed to get a good look outside the car. He saw a strange man standing a short distance away, who shouted at him, “You’re on private property – I have your tag number!”

Robert immediately started the vehicle and set it into motion, leaving as fast as possible. Upon arriving home, he discovered a small hatchet in the bay of the passenger side, leading him to conclude that this was what had been used to smash the window. He immediately reported the incident to the police, and his description of the apparent assailant was interesting, to say the least. He claimed that the man was wearing a strange white suit, but even stranger, that he was wearing “bunny ears” on his head. We should also note that Robert’s fiancé offered that rather than bunny ears, the man was wearing a white hood, which would perhaps make a certain amount of sense given the era. Had the pair had a run-in with a Klansman? The white suit (reported by Robert) and the white hood (reported by his fiancé) would certainly suggest so. However, the detail of the bunny ears was eagerly reported in the newspapers, and the legend of the Bunny Man was born. These legends would soon become intertwined with several grim and ominous deaths that would be reported nationwide.

According to an article in the Minneapolis Star, on the evening of October 29th, 1970, at around 10 pm, a security guard for the King’s Park West subdivision, Paul Phillips, was on patrol at a housing construction site when he suddenly noticed a strange figure standing near one of the partly built houses. Bizarrely, this figure, according to Phillips, was wearing a grey, white, and black bunny suit. Phillips watched the curious figure for several moments before it called out to him, stating that he was “trespassing” and that if he (Phillips) came any closer, he would “chop off his head!” The figure then swung a hatchet through the air several times. Phillips backed off slowly at first but then quickly made his way to his security office to retrieve his gun. When he returned to the location where he had seen the figure, however, it was no longer there.

Whether this was the same person who had confronted Robert 10 days earlier or not is not known. There would, though, be many more encounters with this inexplicable figure. In fact, over the following weeks, over 50 encounters with the so-called Bunny Man were reported, almost all of which were documented in various newspapers. However, it was in the 1990s, in part because of the arrival of the Internet, that it became clear just how rife legends of the Bunny Man actually were.

By the time reports were surfacing on the World Wide Web, the legends of the Bunny Man had now become inexplicably connected to several murders, some of which went back much further than the 1970s. Indeed, while these accounts and connections need to be treated with a pinch of salt, they are intriguing, nonetheless.

Perhaps one of the earliest of these encounters comes courtesy of the research of Timothy C. Forbes, who claimed encounters of the Bunny Man stretch all the way back to 1903. According to Forbes, the origins of the Bunny Man can be found in a criminal asylum that was “buried deep in the wilderness of Clifton”. However, as the twentieth century began to unfold, more and more people began to move to the region, and the population around the asylum increased dramatically. Eventually, as the population increased, a growing concern about the asylum grew, eventually resulting in a petition calling for the asylum to be moved to a location further from the growing city.

The following year, in 1904, this petition proved successful, and the prisoners were ready to be relocated to the newly constructed Lorton Prison. However, during the transportation of the prisoners, something happened. Out of nowhere, something appeared on the road causing the driver to swerve (it was likely a wild animal of some kind). The swerve, however, caused the bus to tip onto its side and crash. Most of those onboard were badly injured. Some, though, managed to free themselves from the mangled remains of the vehicle and fled into the surrounding wilderness. Over the following days, all but two of the prisoners were caught – Marcus Wallster and Dougles Grifon.

Wallster and Grifon remained on the run and free of the authorities. Coincidentally or not, shortly after their escape, the townsfolk began to discover half-eaten rabbits around the town. These dead bodies were usually mauled in some way, and it didn’t take long for people to make a connection between the suddenly appearing dead rabbits and the two escaped prisoners.

Several weeks later, Wallster was discovered dead under the Fairfax Station Bridge (now named the Colchester Overpass and sometimes referred to as Bunny Man’s Bridge). In his hand, at least according to local legend, was a small, crudely made hatchet. Reports of the find began to appear in newspapers, and it was soon accepted by the wider community that Wallster was the “Bunny Man” responsible for the dead rabbits. However, when further discoveries of dead rabbits were made around the town in the days that followed, attention turned to the prisoner still at large, Douglas Grifon. Despite an extensive search, Grifon was never found, and by spring 1905, he was declared presumed dead, and the search was officially brought to an end. However, by Halloween that year, the strange Bunny Man would return.

On October 31st, 1905, a group of teenagers were at the bridge enjoying the odd beer and no doubt looking for a Halloween adventure. However, the evening was largely uneventful, to begin with, and as midnight approached, all but three of the teenagers had returned home. These three were more than shocked when a bright light suddenly appeared under the bridge. Before they knew what was happening, each of them was dead, their throats cut and left gaping open. Some reports claimed the three teenagers also sustained wounds from some kind of hatchet-like weapon. Even more harrowing, the killer left the three teenagers hanging by their necks from the top of the bridge. According to reports, later examination of the bodies suggested the hatchet wounds were made by a weapon almost identical to the hatchet Marcus Wallster had in his hand when he was discovered dead several months earlier.

Following the brutal murders, sightings of the Bunny Man suddenly stopped. However, by early October 1906, with Halloween only weeks away, reports of this menacing figure began to be made once more. When Halloween night finally arrived, teenagers once more gathered at Bunny Man’s Bridge and waited for the clock to strike midnight. This time, seven teenagers remained at the bridge. One of them was Adrian Hatala. As midnight approached, she moved away from the main group, standing a short distance from the bridge, giving her time to run if anything strange did happen.

Then, as she looked on, she could see what looked like a flashlight moving beneath the bridge. It then came to a sudden stop before a bright flash appeared. Suddenly, all Adrian could hear was screams and cries of terror. Seconds later, the night was completely silent. She remained completely still and watched in horror as she could see the now dead bodies of her friends being dragged to the top of the bridge which they were each hung from. She couldn’t see what was moving the bodies, stating later that they appeared to be being moved by something invisible.

At this point, she took her chance and ran, immediately alerting authorities as to what had happened. However, the police soon suspected Adrian herself of being the killer, and she was ultimately sent to the Lorton Asylum for the criminally insane. Once more, the murders ceased for several years. However, another nine teenagers were killed in an identical fashion on Halloween night 1913. Ultimately, this led to Adrian’s conviction being overturned. She was, however, still mentally affected by her ordeal, and remained in mental facilities for the rest of her life until her death in 1953.

Following this third set of murders, local authorities issued a ban on gatherings at the bridge, especially teenagers. To begin with, this was enforced, but as the years went on, this became less so. Over the decades, although far fewer, several seemingly random murders occurred near the bridge in the weeks leading up to Halloween. However, on two specific years – on Halloween 1943 and Halloween 1976 – groups of teenagers gathered at the bridge. On each occasion, all those present were killed, their bodies displayed in the same fashion as the murders at the start of the century. It was, though, an incident that occurred in the late 1980s that really captivated researchers into the Bunny Man.

On Halloween night 1987, Janet Charletier was driving with four friends around Fairfax County. By 11 pm, they neared Bunny Man’s Bridge, and Janet brought the car to a stop. Although they didn’t leave the car, they decided to stay near the bridge until midnight to see what happened. To begin with, all five of the friends were confident there was nothing at all to the legends. As midnight neared, however, Janet suddenly began to feel a sense of fear running through her and suggested to the group that they perhaps should leave. Her friends, though, wished to stay.

Janet left the car and began moving away from the bridge, certain that something bad was going to happen. Before she had time to contemplate anything else, though, she noticed a suddenly appearing flash of light in front of her. As she glanced down, she noticed slice marks appearing across her torso, as if she was being cut by an invisible assailant. On the verge of absolute terror, she ran as fast as she could out from under the bridge. A moment later, though, she struck something in front of her. It took her a second or two to realize it was a dead body hanging from the top of the bridge.

She eventually staggered out and took shelter nearby. She was discovered several hours later having lost a considerable amount of blood. More bizarre, though, her hair had turned completely white, seemingly with shock. Although she would recover physically from the encounter, she would refuse to speak of the incident ever again. Although it is said that teenagers still gather at Bunny Man’s Bridge on Halloween night today, it appears that all have enough sense to vacate the area well before midnight.

Much like the legends of Slender Man, when the Internet was rolled out around the world, legends and accounts of the Bunny Man only increased. And what’s more, sightings began to be reported much further afield than Fairfax County. Researcher, Brian Conley, documented and collected many of these reports. He noted that many of them involved a “figure clad in a white bunny suit” that would threaten children, and which often was encountered in “secluded locations”. What’s more, this figure usually had a small hatchet in its hand. Whether these sightings are of the same entity – perhaps even a supernatural being – or whether they are the result of copycat assailants remains open to debate. Similarly to the legends of Slender Man, should anyone decide to carry out such monstrous actions acting as the Bunny Man, the legend becomes all too real for the respective victims.

Ultimately, it would appear that the legends of Bunny Man are a mixture of legends, myths, and partial truths. Conley went over some of Timothy C. Forbes’ research and found much of it to be a little wide of the mark – such details as the location of the asylum, the date Lorton Prison was built, and there appeared to be no official records of the two missing prisoners, Marcus Wallster and Dougles Grifon. Is this simply sloppy record-keeping on the authorities’ part? Or might we suspect that Forbes overstated or even manufactured parts of his account? Ultimately, this is the nature of legends, and even Conley himself offers that such legends can’t simply be dismissed as they often “have some basis in factual events!”

During his research, Conley also discovered a paper written by a student at the University of Maryland, Patricia Johnson, titled The Bunny Man. In it, he discovered more details about the apparent origin and development of the Bunny Man legends. Johnson stated in the article that tales of the Bunny Man had “appeared in print as truth”, so qualifying it as an “urban belief tale”. She further claimed that during the course of her research, she had spoken to numerous people who claimed to have had encounters with the Bunny Man. In total, she had collected over 50 different versions of the Bunny Man legend. And despite the differences between them, many of them shared many matching details.

Johnson also highlighted 14 different locations where encounters with the Bunny Man had taken place. She also noticed that 18 of these accounts involved people, usually children, being chased by the Bunny Man, who was usually carrying a hatchet. She further noted that another 14 accounts documented people being approached by the Bunny Man while sitting in their cars, nine of which were parked at the time. Breaking these reports down even further, five of these encounters documented damage to the respective vehicles. Johnson also documented a specific account that unfolded in 1972.

On the afternoon in question, a 17-year-old girl – referred to only as “G. Taylor” in the report – was listening to the news, having just arrived home from high school. A news item came on about a couple who were sitting in a parked car when a “giant bunny” suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Of particular concern, this bunny-like figure was carrying a small hatchet. A moment later, the figure threw the hatchet at the vehicle and ran off, disappearing into the nearby woods.

The couple sat in the parked car in shock for a moment before the incident took a further strange turn. Out of nowhere, an elderly man appeared out of a nearby property, insistent that they should leave. They began to tell him of the strange encounter but he dismissed them, telling them once more they must leave his property. They did so, and made a report to the local authorities. The police accompanied the perplexed pair back to the location of the incident but found nothing out of the ordinary. They also spoke with many people who lived in the immediate vicinity, including the elderly gentleman who ordered them away from his property. All claimed they had seen nothing out of the ordinary. However, several days later, some of those people discreetly contacted the police to change their statements, offering that they had actually seen the strange bunny-like figure. We might ask why they were seemingly initially afraid to offer this information.

Taylor further offered that during their investigation, police discovered that three bunny costumes had been rented in the days leading to the sighting. However, not only had each of those costumes been returned, all three people had perfectly valid reasons for renting them and were not suspected of being the Bunny Man. According to Taylor, there were several more sightings of the Bunny Man in the weeks that followed before they suddenly ceased. It is also worth noting that the account offered by G. Taylor sounds very familiar to the account of Robert Bennett that we explored earlier and could very well be a retelling of that incident.

It is also worth recalling the encounter of Paul Phillips that occurred just over a week later, which was found to be backed up as fact by an official police report. In fact, this incident “appeared in print as truth”, as Johnson had highlighted, in a report in the Washington Post. W.L. Johnson of the Criminal Investigation Bureau also investigated Phillips’ account, which yet again confirms that whoever the Bunny Man might have been, something strange definitely happened which contributed to widespread rumors of the menacing figure. Who the Bunny Man might have been, if indeed it was one singular person or supernatural entity, remains a complete mystery.    

As we can see, the line between legends, fiction, fact, and reality sometimes becomes blurred beyond recognition. And, in the case of the Bunny Man and Slender Man, specifically, almost births the real influence and possible manifestation of such legends in our realm of existence. We might ask just how much mental power, perhaps the subconscious power of the human mind plays in all of this.

It is perhaps worth mentioning a plot twist in the movie Shadow People here, as it relates to the road we are venturing down. Towards the end of the movie, it is suggested that just by being aware of Shadow People and so, consequently, believing in them, this was enough for these menacing entities to appear to the person – essentially, these entities were only real for those who believed in them. While the movie is obviously nothing more than a work of fiction, could a similar notion be at play surrounding the legends of Slender Man, perhaps, particularly in the case of Lacy, who claimed to have encountered the being through her laptop?

If this is true, though, we might also ask why this would be the case with Slender Man, specifically. Why, for example, do we not see “real-life” Freddy Kruggers popping up around the world or any other character from any number of horror movies? Is it possible that the subconscious human mind rejects such movie characters simply because it knows they are 100 percent fiction, but with legendary figures such as Slender Man or the Bunny Man, the mind can’t be so sure? That is perhaps a stretch, admittedly, but it is worth considering.

We might also recall the Tall Man or Walking Sam legends of the Native American reservations, and the remarkably similar details to the legends of the Slender Man. Researcher and writer, Miguel Romero, (also known as Red Pill Junkie) made some interesting comments regarding the Slender Man and the Tall Man entities of the reservations, stating that the Slender Man legend is a “cultural remix between the older myth of the Tall Man/Suicide Spirit, which already existed among Native Americans prior to the rise of the World Wide Web, and the newer, more potent icon of Slender Man!” Indeed, this newer, more potent legend made its way onto the reservations in the same way it did into every other house in America, and then, the world. Romero stops short of saying that Slender Man is physically real as we would understand it but offers that the legends are real enough in some peoples’ minds, particularly the young, to have very real consequences on society.

Could it be, though, that entities really are imagined into existence? We have explored before the Psychic Internet Theory, and what it might mean for how we view not only the paranormal world, but the essence of our very reality, and while we won’t go over it in full here, we will quickly go over the basics of it. Essentially, the Psychic Internet Theory suggests that the subconscious human mind could very well be responsible for many paranormal manifestations, from UFOs to Bigfoot-like creatures, and even ghosts.

The researcher who first suggested the theory is Peter McCue. He likened peoples’ subconscious minds to being linked – like computers on the Internet. Using a UFO hotspot as an example, when several UFO enthusiasts converge on such an area – each fully believing in UFOs and sharing an intense desire to see one – the power of the subconscious collective mind could cause such a manifestation. We might suspect, then, if there is indeed some truth in such suggestions, that the same could be said for other entities, in this case, the Slender Man. We might again recall the conclusions of Lacy, who offered that it was her obsessive belief in Slender Man that caused the entity to begin communicating with her via her laptop. We might also recall that as soon as she severed any ties to Slender Man by deleting her research, these communications ceased.

If Lacy was correct and her belief in Slender Man caused it to appear, albeit in a bizarre digital form, could this be the case for other members of the wider population? Could it be, for example, as the legends of Slenderman grew, that the collective subconscious beliefs of many people, who were connected by the Internet, grew to such a degree that actual manifestations began to appear? And could it be that the more people who believed in these real-life sightings, the stronger these manifestations, and their influence, became? Admittedly, this is all speculation and wild speculation at that, but it is certainly thought-provoking and intriguing. Just how powerful is the human mind, both individually and collectively?

Ultimately, in the case of Slender Man, arguments can be made that he is both fictional and very real at the same time, perhaps, in part, dependent on each person’s perception and point of view at any given time. For example, if we return to Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, the two 12-year-old girls who attempted to murder their friend, an argument could be made that they would not have done so had they not fully believed in Slender Man, who, to them, was very real. And this could very well be the case with other entities of the paranormal world.

Could this also be the case, for example, with the Bunny Man? Was there such a collective belief in this mysterious entity, one that had seemingly festered in the communities of the northeastern United States for decades, that it resulted in the manifestation of this strange creature? And if so, was this entity really somehow connected to the deaths and murders attributed to it? Or is it a case of different individuals using such legends and their belief in them to cover over their own unsavory acts? If this were true, then it makes such legends real but in an entirely different way.  

Although the Slender Man legends are still (relatively speaking) in their infancy, legends of the Bunny Man have had over a century to be twisted, retold, and added to. Indeed, like many similar legends, it is increasingly difficult to tell what elements are truth and what is pure folklore.

There is an old saying that is something like this: if a person perceives something a certain way, then until their mind is changed, it may as well be like that; their perception is their reality. There could be a lot more to that sentiment than we currently realize. Indeed, as Morpheus asked Neo in the movie The Matrix, “What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain!” Indeed, could those electrical signals somehow interact outside of the human body, and so bring our thoughts, our desires, and our fears to life, manifested into our physical world?