Cannock Chase Slenderman
By Cole Herrold
Sometimes there are moments in Fortean
history that are completely confounding. Perhaps the most perplexing is cases
where individuals encounter characters that are seemingly fictional. One of the
most famous cases of this variety is when comic book writer Alan Moore saw his
occult antihero John Constantine walking down the street in broad daylight. The
encounter was relatively uneventful and more mundane than some of the other
cases, which seemingly have been growing more and more frequent in the reoccurring
years. The most alarming and horrifying of these seemingly real representations
of fictional characters is a malevolent, extremely tall shadowy figure dressed
in dark-colored clothing. This figure, however, has one haunting feature, or
should I say lack thereof, that leads an eternal impression in all those who
see it the entity has no facial features or hair.
This entity which is known as The Slender
Man or Slenderman, was originally created in June of 2009 by Eric Knudson, aka
Victor Surge, on the Something Awful forum later being collected and
elaborated on in various Creepypasta websites. The figure has since been
embraced by a generation and has appeared in films and video games. Yet while
there has been a general spooky nature to this internet meme, it does have a
dark side as the character's stories were taken as authentic by several
children around the country. One child attempted to burn down his home, and in
Waukesha, there was an unfortunate incident when two schoolgirls proceeded to
stab their friend to appease the dark entity. While there is no doubting that
Victor Surge created the Slender Man, there are interestingly enough reports of
a creature similar in appearance much earlier than 2009. One of the most
interesting of these accounts came out two years earlier, in 2007 from Cannock
Chase, England.
In June 2001, Mike Johnson, an ecologist
from Wolverhampton who worked for the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and the
University of Wolverhampton, was in Cannock Chase to work on a project revolving
around the Midland Hawthorn, a plant that can grow to 25ft in height. Mike had
entered the Cannock Chase area near the old German Military Cemetery and parked
his car around there. It was 2:00 pm, and it was a warm, bright day with barely
a cloud in the sky, and he was headed towards an area that was at one point a
plantation forest that was cleared sometime earlier. He noticed that the woods
were extra quiet today, and there was a strong looming silence over the forest
that Mike thought was rather odd. There were no sounds of bird songs or
insects, and even the sound of vehicles passing the area was practically
nonexistent. Mike, however, did not think too much of this at this current
moment and simply proceeded to head further on down the path. As he was heading
down the path towards where the plantation used to be, he noticed a herd of 50
or so deer suddenly appearing on top of a nearby ridge. He smiled, seeing this
as he had only ever a few deer occasionally, and watched as the herd seemingly
ran towards a large plantation that was positioned on Mike's right. It was
almost as if they were running away from someone.
As Mike headed further down the path, an
eerie thought arose in his head. This area seemed wrong. Sure enough, as he
looked around, he could not tell where he was the path that he took from the
cemetery was seemingly now on the west of him when it was currently on the
east, and as he looked up into the sky, even the sun was seemingly in the wrong
direction as while it should have been high in the west it was now currently
directly north. Even some of the landmarks were off while the ridge was in its
original position, the entire area to the south was now in the west. It was
almost as if someone had taken a chunk of the area away and moved the sun. The
fact that he was seemingly lost was bizarre to him as he had traversed these
paths many times before. So taking the position of the sun, he proceeded to get
his map out to try to figure out his position.
As he looked at the map that he brought to
try to determine if he could find the path he was on, he soon realized that the
path that he should have been on that was only 700 meters from his car was not
the path that he was on. The landmarks were gone, and the path's overall shape
did not match that of his map. He then reached down and attempted to find his
way back by use of his compass, but as he waited for the needle to spin towards
magnetic north, he watched only in confusion as his compass needle stayed dead
still. As he looked in the area, he also had a growing sense that something
more was wrong as the area had grown to be uncomfortably silent, and an
oppressive feeling seemed to permeate through the air.
He noticed that while his environment had
seemingly changed around him, he was not alone as he could see three elderly
hikers coming his way in the distance. Seeing this potential aid, he decided
that he would wait for the group to approach him so he could get directions
from them. He waited ten minutes for the couple to approach, and when they got
within about 500 meters away, he was able to get a good look at them and could
hear everything they were saying. The trio of nature enthusiasts were about in
their 50s or 60s and comprised of a man who was tall and wore cream-colored
trousers and a shirt with a rucksack; the other two were women who wore
waterproof coats tied around their waists. He watched them as they approached
when something peculiar happened; they seemed to disappear. Mike could not
believe what he had just witnessed; he stared at the spot and could only think
that they had popped out of existence. However, as he did this, he attempted to
rationalize what he just saw and felt that perhaps they had descended into the
gully and disappeared from sight naturally. So, Mike began watching the area
for several minutes, waiting to see their heads rise out of some grassy decline,
but they did not appear from the direction he had thought. Instead, the group
proceeded to reappear approximately 200 meters from his left, but as he looked,
he noticed that there was something different about the party.
Further back from them, there appeared to
be a fourth figure; it was a relatively short distance away but still undefined
compared to the three figures seen in front. The figure as he watched seemed to
move when the group moved and stopped when they stopped, and each time it did
this, the figure came closer and closer until Mike could tell that the person
behind them was not normal. As he looked, he could tell that the figure was
wearing gray-colored trousers and a tight long-sleeved shirt of the same color
and that the figure was incredibly tall with long thin arms. As he watched the group,
he noticed that the figure was now incredibly close to the trio and that it
towered over top of them. He realized that this was not a normal person as he
estimated the height of the figure to be well over 9ft tall. As he craned his
neck upward, staring at the colossal man, he realized that the man was deathly
pale and that on top of its shoulders was an incredibly long thin neck which
led to a top slightly elongated head. As he looked at the head, he noticed that
there was no hair and just a glistening slick skin that covered the dome, and
as he focused in on the head, he came to the shocking realization that the
figure bore no facial features; no eyes, mouth, nose, or even ears just
absolute blankness. As he looked at the body, he realized that while he
initially thought the arms were long, he now realized that the arms actually
hung down almost beyond the knees.
Seeing this well-dressed entity was
bizarre enough as well as the trio of vanishing hikers, but Mike soon felt that
this entity and the hikers were, interestingly enough, unaware of each other's
existence. Mike firmly felt this after one of these moments when the hikers
stopped. The figure was now a short distance behind them, and as one of the
women reached down to grab her bottle of water and proceeded to take a drink
that the creature stretched its long arms over the expanse of grass and
proceeded to grab the woman's shoulder. The woman simply continued to drink and
talk with her friends and was seemingly oblivious to the figure behind her.
Mike felt that the entity, however, was aware of him as the figure turned its head
to look at him and that this grab to the shoulder was the entity protecting the
woman and possibly the rest of the group from him.
It was around this time Mike felt an
extreme sense of disorientation and started to bend down to the rucksack that
was on the ground. He had full intention to go over and approach the group, but
when he looked up with his bag in hand, the environment was back to how it used
to be. The sun had returned to its position in the west, and all the landmarks
that he was familiar with in the past were back to their designated spots. The
overwhelming confusion and disorientation were gone, and so too was the
oppressive feeling. As the location seemed to shift to normal, so too did the
sounds of nature seemingly return birds were chirping, and the sound of zooming
cars too could be heard. In front of him was the path to the German Cemetery,
and he could see a large German shepherd running down it, followed by a group
of children and adults. As he could now find the way out, he began to run down
the path, hop in his car and drive away, never to return to the area again.
While Mike would never encounter the
sinister Slenderman type figure again, he would continue to have similar
bizarre emotions in the woods. A year later, in 2002, while up near Loch Garten
in Scotland, Johnson once more had an overwhelming bizarre sense that something
was wrong in the woodlands around the Loch. He felt a bizarre tingle that went
up to his back and a similar sense of disorientation and was unable to find a
clear direction, but this happened rather quickly, and he was able to get out
of the area with little issue. Johnson would tell of his experience in 2001 and
follow-up sensation in 2002 to British Fortean researcher Nick Redfern in 2007,
and his account would appear in Redfern's book There’s Something in the
Woods. Several years later, the Slenderman would pop up, and Redfern
couldn't help but notice that there is an uncanny similarity to the fictional
internet being and the entity Johnson saw. Redfern would later collect other
reports from all over the United States and England, which along with Mike's
encounter, would appear in one of the only books on the subject of the
Slenderman phenomenon, the Slenderman Mysteries.
Following Redfern, other paranormal
researchers would go to write about the entities, such as Pastor Robin Swope,
who is considered one of the primary paranormal investigators of Erie County,
Pennsylvania, and also wrote a book on the subject called Slender Man: From
Fiction to Fact. Another researcher who has put their hat into the Slender
Man ring is British paranormal investigator Lee Brickley. Lee Brickley,
interestingly enough, had spent a great deal of time investigating the Cannock
Chase area and had written several books on the subject, and it was during late
2014 to early 2015 that he came forward with several accounts that he felt were
Slender Man accounts. These sightings, however, were much different from what
Johnson experienced, as you shall see, and also that two did not occur in the
grassy ridges and tree-surrounded woodlands but inside the homes of those who
live in the forest.
The first sighting Lee mentioned occurred
on January 2, 2015, and occurred at the Castle Ring in the Cannock Chase. The
Castle Ring is an old Iron Age fort that has since been a frequent British
Bigfoot and ghost hotspot. It was late at night when the witness who was there
saw a strange figure on the fringes of the ring. He was unsure if it was
another visitor to the location but watched in abject terror as the figure
proceeded to rise up off the ground and begin to hover in the air. The sky was
perfectly clear and filled with stars, so he was able to make out the figure
more clearly; the figure wore an old black homburg style hat and bore a dark
coat. The figure's eyes glowed a vibrant red and had a mouth filled with sharp
fangs. As the witness watched this airborne anomaly, he saw that it turned
looked at him and proceeded at superhuman speed to fly towards him. Afraid that
the entity would hit him, the witness dropped down to the ground as the figure
flew by overhead. The figure then seemingly descended back down into the nearby
trees, and the witness high-tailed it out of there. In an interview with Lee,
the witness did mention one thing about the entity that brings it to a whole
new level of weirdness. The witness claimed that the figure to him best
resembled the infamous paranormal entity that belched blue flame and terrorized
England in the mid to late 1800s, namely Spring-Heeled Jack.
The next sighting Lee connects to the
Slenderman occurred at 2:00 am also in 2015. The witness to this sighting was
lying in bed asleep when she was suddenly awoken by strange scratching sounds
that seemingly were coming from her open closet. As she looked into the dark
abyss, she noticed a spherical shadow that was hovering off the ground. The
dark orb, seemingly aware that she noticed it began to change its form as it
began to shape into an eight-foot-tall pale humanoid. The witness would
describe this figure as being very similar to a vampire. In a complete state of
shock at the anomalous apparition in front of her, she fell back onto her bed,
her head hitting the pillow. Yet her eyes continued to watch the freaky fiend
she watched as the figure's arms continued to morph. They seemed to extend,
stretching out to twice the length of a traditional human's, and proceeded to
close in upon her. The creature's claws were running down her face, at which
point she screamed, and the entity, upon hearing the sound, seemingly retreated
back into the shadows from whence it came and disappeared.
The final case, which occurred at
similarly 2:30 am around the timespan of these sightings and also near the
Cannock Chase, involved a similar bedroom invader. The witness woke up that night
to a loud sound in his bedroom and, as he scanned the room, saw a floating
humanoid figure over his bed staring malevolently down at him with fiery red
eyes. The entity was dressed completely in black, and the witness claimed that
the entity spoke to him in a telepathic way (but what was said went
unreported). This haunting apparition, however, left the man shortly thereafter
floating upwards towards the ceiling and vanished. The witness then did not
sleep the rest of the night.
Now while I'm sure everyone else can
agree, none of these sightings are by any means a Slenderman sighting. They
have elements of that kind of phenomenon, from the ever-growing arms to even
the shadowy body type; however, these accounts are more akin to encounters with
entities like shadow people, Hatman, and Sleep paralysis demons than what we
would consider a Slenderman encounter. I chose to include them simply out of
completeness due to the fact that they are now interconnected with both the
location and the phenomenon.
Cannock Chase is just one of several areas
on our planet that seems to be either what John Keel would call a Window Area
or what would be classified as a haunted forest. The area is littered with
countless types of paranormal phenomena. Cryptids like the British Bigfoot to
giant snakes and black panthers to even Mothman, Pigman, and Dogman type
creatures are constantly reported in the area; there are also reports of
ghosts, anomalous lights and sounds, UFOs, and the nefarious Black-Eyed Children.
There are countless reasons as to why this could be from lay lines and magnetic
reasons or simply because of the isolation this location represents. I've
always been a proponent that these areas hold no true supernatural significance
and that they are just prime locations for such a phenomenon to occur.
Cryptids, seemingly if they are biological animals, have mandatory needs like
shelter, food, and water sources, and this is twofold since the species need a
larger area to remain elusive. UFOs might go to the area to conduct research
outside of our intrusive eyes, and the history of the area can explain why
ghosts occur there. All of these reasons for each separate phenomenon can
explain the reasons they are so frequently seen there. However, with the nature
of all the bizarre phenomena, there is the chance that a more supernatural
reason could occur.
While there are tons of reasons as to why
phenomena are drawn to the Cannock Chase region, it still does not explain what
this particular entity is. One of the big theories with the Slender Man
sightings is that the Slenderman is a tulpa, a kind of thoughtform that is
featured heavily in Tibetan Mysticism. Now the simplest explanation for this
phenomenon is that a person's belief and controlled thoughts can create a life
form. The idea behind this with Slenderman is that enough people who have read
his story online now believe in him, and so this collective belief resulted in
making the entity real. Now, this theory does not exactly work in the way most paranormal
researchers point to with these kinds of sightings as the Mike Johnson case
predates the appearance of the 2009 Slenderman creation, so that seems to go
against the direct connection therein. Now perhaps there's some archetypal
figure such as a child's stick figure drawing or something like that, that over
time, because of its rudimentary form became something similar to a tulpa, and
that could explain why there are sightings today, but this is just speculation.
Interestingly enough, featureless or
faceless creatures are somewhat common; there is a phenomenon known as Stick
Men, which appear as black, white, or gray living stick figures that have
similar anomalous abilities like Slender Man. There was also a creature
reported in Georgia of a pale-skinned faceless entity known as the Faceless
Thing of Dahlonega. I also covered a bizarre extraterrestrial case involving a
faceless apparition that appeared with several jogging suit-wearing Hawkmen
aliens that occurred in Montvale, New Jersey (See The Jogging Suited Hawkmen
and the Faceless Woman of Montvale for more info). So, the existence of a
seemingly faceless creature is nothing new.
Now with all that being said, I have to
say I do not think the Cannock Chase Slenderman is a cryptid, tulpa, or ghost;
it just does not seem to fit those categories. If there was a light in the sky,
I would argue that the creature could be an extraterrestrial as there have been
cases of seemingly faceless ETs, but there's not, so it's not as likely. This
seems to leave three big categories: Demonic, Faerie, or Interdimensional. Now
the clearest and most likely of these categories is that this entity is from
another dimension. The fact that the whole area seems different seems to be
very reminiscent of countless other cases where people have stumbled into other
worlds or other times. Another interesting thing that sort of points to this is
that the three hikers seemed to be oblivious to the entity even after it
touched one of the women. There's almost like a mergence of several worlds at
once as though one was to put three different colors of tissue paper together,
and it makes a totally different color, yet all three are their own separate
planes. Perhaps the entity is much like something from Stan Gordon's
masterpiece From Beyond, a being that is around all the time and could
interact with us without us being aware only occasionally when some event
happens, we have the ability to see it. Again, all this mere speculation,
however.
One thing that really sticks in my head is
the Faerie possibility; many researchers have compared the Slenderman to the
Pied Piper of Hamelin, an elf or faerie type being, and this whole encounter
with the elderly and the assumed protectiveness of them from the creature seems
to match that kind of lore. In Faerie lore in general, there are stories of the
Fae taking humans away to fairyland, which could be interpreted as another
dimension or a subterranean or spiritual world. The fact that this encounter
took place in the wilderness and there was a bizarre feeling is also major
similarities to faerie encounters in general. Perhaps Slenderman is a
particularly rare variety of faerie that we currently have very little
information on aside from folktales and, for some reason, are just now seeing a
resurgence of encounters. Now with all that said, I will say there are, at
least to my knowledge, no faceless faeries, so linking Slenderman to a specific
kind like troll, dwarf, gnome, giant, etc., is currently difficult. Interestingly enough, while there are no
faceless fae, there is a faceless entity from Japan known as Noppera-bō. These
entities are described as spectral apparitions who have the uncanny ability to
impersonate friends, family members, or acquaintances for the sole purpose of
scaring people by dissolving its features to reveal a pale white slate of a
face. I have often wondered if there might be a connection between Yokai and
classical Faeries, as many of the entities reported in Japan do have striking
similarities to entities reported in Europe. If the Japanese Yokai are indeed
the Eastern equivalent of the Fae, then perhaps the Slenderman is a variation
of this kind of species.
The final possibility for this entity is
that it could be a demonic entity. Now typically, when people have encounters
with this entity, it is not a pleasant experience. People typically do not want
a reoccurring encounter like some bigfoot or lake monster witnesses do. The
creature's genuine surreal quality to some of the more religious-centered
researchers tend to imply a more diabolical origin to the beast. The fact that
the creature appears along bedsides and seems to cause oppressive feelings is
very indicative of what most would consider demonic behavior. Another reason
that this entity could potentially be an agent of the infernal one is that the
featureless guise, if intentional, could be a way to terrify any who encounter
it. Much like Ultraterrestrials, demonic entities are believed to feed on fear
and other negative emotions, so a haunting figure such as this could be the
perfect way to illicit such a response.
While one can argue that the whole current
wave of Slenderman sightings are a form of mass hysteria or a kind of cyber
folklore, its accounts like this that make me think there might be something
potentially real going on as faceless entities have seemingly been reported for
generations. Just what exactly they are, I can only speculate, and most
encounters, while downright terrifying and disorienting, these entities do not
seem to be particularly aggressive or violent, so what their motive is, we can
only guess. All I do know is that the next time you're out in the woods and
things seem off, keep an eye out for you just might encounter a creature
straight out of your worst nightmares.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Paranormal
Entity/ Interdimensional Entity
Location: Cannock Chase, England
Sighted: June of 2001
Works Cited:
There’s Something in the Woods By Nick
Redfern
The Monster Book By Nick Redfern
The Slenderman Mysteries By Nick Redfern
Sara C Nelson “Slender Man Now Said To Be
'Haunting British Beauty Spot Cannock Chase'” Huffington Post. January
30, 2015.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/26/slender-man-haunting-british-beauty-spot-cannock-chase_n_6545294.html.
Accessed November 28, 2021.
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