Stalked by a Slender Man

                A plethora of things can be achieved in five minutes.  A person can make a sandwich, run a mile, drive to work, or even get the pants scared off of them by a free horror game.  The next few posts will revolve around some of the best gaming scares I have experienced for free.  There are not many of them, but the few I have played granted me a great amount of unease.  And so, without further ado, I present to you Slender: The Eight Pages.

Simple, yet ominous.

                This whole game is built around the internet phenomenon known as the Slender Man.  Back in 2009, a “paranormal pictures” photoshop contest was launched on the Something Awful Forums.  The contest required participants to turn ordinary photographs into creepy-looking images by digital manipulation and then to pass them off as authentic photographs on a number of paranormal forums.  The users began creating sharing their paranormal creations usually with some kind of eyewitness account to accompany them.  On June 10^th, Victor Surge posted two black and white photo graphs of unnamed children with a short description of “Slender Man” as a mysterious creature who stalked children.  The Slender Man generally appears as an abnormally tall man in a black or grey suit, red or black tie, and white shirt, with no eyes, mouth or clearly defined facial features.  He can also be seen sprouting black tentacles from his body.  With these photographs, a great Internet Urban Legend was born.

The images that started it all.

                The popularity of Slender Man has skyrocketed over the past few years and that prompted this game into creation.  The game is possibly one of the simplest I have played in recent memory.  Sessions in the game can last from about 5-10 minutes depending on how long you stay alive or just how good your are at avoiding slendery death.  In Slender: The Eight Pages, the mission is straightforward: collect as many of the scattered pages as you can before Slendy catches you.  It sounds simple enough, but it can actually be quite terrifying.

Each pages looks as though a terrified child was the illustrator.

                The game starts you off in the middle of forest during the dead of night.  All you are given in order to accomplish your task is a trusty flashlight.  As you move around the forest you run across certain landmarks, like a building with tile floors, a truck, gasoline tanks, a large pipe, and more.  These are places that the pages will most likely appear at, but the location is randomized so each playthrough could be different.  This leads to a large amount of uncertainty about where you should head to first when the game begins.  After you find your first page is when things begin to get creepy.

As soon as you grab your first page, things turn bad.

                As soon as the first page is found a slow, yet steady bass beat begins to play like a bass note on the piano.  It continues throughout, slowly building tension.  When this music starts, the Slender Man begins to appear.  He doesn’t move when you look at him; he just appears.  Numerous times I would round a corner and there Slendy would be, just standing there watching me.  You cannot look at him for a prolonged amount of time.  Looking at him causes the screen to be overcome with static and you will die.  When he shows up, the best bet is to run away, but he will follow you slowly and silently.

Always watching... even in the bathroom.

                The more pages I found, the more the music picked up, and the more persistent Slendy became.  His stalking became fiercer.  I would see him off in the distance watching me from a tree, and the next time I looked he would have moved even closer with inexplicable speed.  It is an unsettling feeling knowing that someone is constantly watching you.  At 6 pages, things reach a chaos.  The music is loud and feverish, and Slendy can basically teleport.  Running away is a futile attempt.  To collect the remainder of the pages, luck has to be on your side.  It is during this stretch of the game that the best jump scares occur.  The moment Slendy leaves your eyesight, he can appear anywhere.  He will be around that corner waiting for you to run into his open arms, and this is exactly what happened to me every time I played.  My heart would be beating through my chest, and Slendy would appear just around a corner and make me jump out of my seat.

He may not look like much, but he disturbs my calm.

                For the fact that the game is free, it offers a great, albeit short, time.  The graphics and things may not be the best, but the atmosphere and tension the game produces is enough to be completely unsettling.  I have never actually managed to beat the game.  Once six pages are found, the best way to keep him from teleporting is to stare him down while he is behind a tree.  He can’t move when he is still within your sight, but something about staring towards that expressionless face is hard for me to do.  Slender: The Eight Pages is a great way to spend a night scaring the pee out of yourself.  It can be found for free download here: http://www.parsecproductions.net/slender/.  I highly recommend just sitting down, killing the lights, cranking the volume, and immersing yourself in this simple, frightful gem.

                Located below is a video of someone actually beating the game.  He did what I could not, but I feel no shame.  Drop me a line in the comment section and let me know how pitiful I am for not finding all of the pages.  You won’t hurt my feelings.