The Cult of Slender Man

It's something of a modern mystery why so many weird crimes seem to happen in the state of Wisconsin. Both Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer committed serial murders there, and recently two twelve-year-old girls nearly murdered a friend in order to appease "Slender Man," a fictional character appearing in "creepypasta" online horror stories.

Creepypasta, contrary to the name, has nothing to do with noodles. It's a generic term for horror short stories that are posted on particular Internet forums. Just like with fanfiction, I find most kind of dumb, but some are genuinely well-written and spooky. For example, a few months ago the "Russian Sleep Experiment" story, originally from a creepypasta forum, went viral on Facebook. Some posters even believed it to be true.

A significant number of creepypasta stories concern Slender Man, a meme that has become so popular it was even alluded to as "Thinman" in a recent episode of the television series Supernatural. The actual name could not be used because the Slender Man meme is copyrighted by its creator, Eric Knudsen, who has shut down several projects related to the character.

According to police reports, the two Wisconsin girls were obsessed with the character, to the point where they decided to murder one of their friends as a sort of sacrifice. One of the girls explained they did it so that they would be able to run away and live with Slender Man in his Nicolet National Forest mansion - which, of course, does not exist anywhere outside the collective imagination of Slender Man's fans.

"It's extremely disturbing as a parent and as chief of police," Waukesha Police Chief Russell Jack said at a news conference ahead of the court appearances Monday.

The girls invited their friend to a slumber party on Friday evening, the complaint said. They planned to kill her during the night so they wouldn't have to look into her eyes, one girl told police, and then run away. They decided to put it off, but the next day, during a hide-and-seek game in a wooded park, they attacked their friend with a knife. One girl told the other to "go ballistic, go crazy," according to the complaint.

The victim began to scream that she hated them and started stumbling away, one of the girls told police. The girls left the victim lying in the woods. She crawled to a road where a bicyclist found her lying on the sidewalk. Police arrived and she gave them the name of one of the girls who attacked her. She was rushed into surgery, police said.

Elf Sex?

The top Augoeides article of all time is this debunking of a fake news story about a woman in Iceland who was kidnapped by elves and held for seven years. The original story built on the fact that in Iceland, the existence of elves is taken quite seriously by the local population. For example, in a number of cases roads have been rerouted in order to keep from upsetting the creatures. But as Vice reports, blogger Hallgerdur Hallgrímsdóttir takes it one step further. She claims to have had sex with elves on many occasions, and even describes herself on her blog as an "expert on how to have sex with elves."

Hallgerdur claims many Icelanders have been doing elves in secret for centuries. There’s even a myth covering the inter-hominid couplings. Hallgerdur receives a lot of flack from her countrymen for spilling the beans on elf sex, so we hope you appreciate her act of smutty treason. Although Hallgerdur has a boyfriend now, she recently claimed that “sex with humans is boring”. In her blog she goes into great detail about her experience sexing it up with elves.

I seriously have no idea what's going on here, but all of the possibilities strike me as pretty interesting. Are these elves actually flesh-and-blood beings? Is this some sort of astral experience, like my "ghost sex" article from last month might be referring to? Or does Hallgerdur suffer from some very specific mental illness that produces this one particular delusion but otherwise leaves her clear-minded and lucid? Whatever the case, something strange is going on here and and I would really like to know more about it. Someday I'd like to go to Iceland anyway just to see the volcanic landscape, and if I ever do I'll have to see about doing some paranormal investigation of the elf phenomenon.

Frankly, Hallgerdur's story is hard to debunk unless it's totally made up. She's awake and out in the wilderness when the encounters happen, so it's not sleep paralysis. She also seems far too generally lucid to be mentally ill, though I suppose there are cases of people whose delusions are oddly specific. It also doesn't sound like an astral or spirit encounter, since she describes the elves doing all sorts of physical things that an astral entity shouldn't be able to do. So as I see it, this case is either legitimately paranormal or completely imaginary. And given the folklore, I will say that if elves can be found anywhere, Iceland seems like the best place to look.

That Guru's Not Dead!

In a story oddly reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, followers and heirs of an Indian guru are now in a legal battle over whether the guru is dead or in a deep state of meditation. Shri Ashutosh Maharaj was - or is, depending on whose side you're on - one of the wealthiest gurus in India with assets valued around £100 million. According to his family, he died in January and his followers placed his body in a freezer. His followers, on the other hand, believe he is simply meditating and claim that they froze his body in order to preserve it for when he eventually awakens.

While he is thought to have died from a heart attack, his devotees believe he has simply drifted into a deeper form of the meditation he promotes as a pathway to self-realisation. A statement on the group's website reads: "His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj ji has been in deep meditative state (Samadhi) since 29th January 2014."

According to one of his aides, who asked not to be named, "Maharaj has been in deep meditation. He has spent many years meditating in sub-zero temperatures in the Himalayas, there is nothing unusual in it. He will return to life as soon as he feels and we will ensure his body is preserved until then", he said.

His body is held in a guarded room in a deep freezer on his 100 acre retreat in Nurmahal, Jalandhar, where only a few elders and sect doctors are allowed to enter.

Although Punjab Police initially confirmed his death, the Punjab High Court later dismissed its status report and local governmental officials said it was a spiritual matter and that the guru's followers cannot be forced to believe he is dead.

While there may be a spiritual component to all of this, Maharaj's followers also seem motivated by financial concerns. According to his family, if it can be successfully argued that the guru still lives his followers will maintain control of his extensive financial resources. There's no mention in the story of whether or not Maharaj made a will, but it sounds like he didn't - so everything goes to his family by default once he is officially dead. There's a lesson for any would-be gurus out there - if you don't want anything this silly to go on once you pass away, make sure that you have a will specifying exactly how much of your estate is to remain with your followers and how much of it is to be distributed elsewhere.

Constructor Theory?

"Theories of Everything" have been a focus of theoretical physics ever since the two main theories that seem to govern the universe, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, were tested and worked out. Even though the two theories model physical events with great accuracy, their fundamental precepts seem incompatible at the surface level. Therefore, the basic concept behind a "Theory of Everything" is that it must in some way unite the two theories and resolve their apparent contradictions.

Since the late 1980's the most prominent such model has been string theory. By treating particles as vibrating line segments rather than point masses, many of the apparent contradictions can in fact be explained. However, string theory is also highly complex and unwieldy. It requires either 11 or 12 dimensions of spacetime, which immediately raises the question of why we only seem to experience 4. The answer string theorists give is that the additional dimensions are "compressed" and exist only at the quantum scale.

I have in the past proposed that it might be possible to treat the additional dimensions as fractional - that is, to model them using fractal mathematics. In nature, a fractional dimension is a dimension that, while infinite in length, still remains bounded within finite space. This would seem to be a good common-sense interpretation, but as I'm not a theoretical mathematician I'll freely admit that I'm not knowledgeable enough to determine whether or not such a thing will work. And part of me imagines that if it did work, somebody probably would have integrated it into the model by now.

Now what magick behaves like, more than anything else, is a way of using personal consciousness to move information back and forth between its own quantum information field and that of some external target. Where my concept of magick differs from a strict information model such as that outlined in Patrick Dunn's Postmodern Magic is that the concept of "energy" is relevant in terms of increasing the "signal strength" of information transmission, and that the existence of independent intelligences formed from quantum information structures (or, if you will, "spirits") is acknowledged.

Jack Chick: The Movie

Most comic artists look forward to inking their first movie deal, though a few like Alan Moore claim to hate film adaptations of their material and refuse to have anything to do with them. Now Jack Chick, known worldwide for his comic-style fundamentalist Christian tracts, will finally get to see his work on the big screen. A Portland filmmaker has produced a movie adaptation of Dark Dungeons, a Chick tract from the 1980's about the dangers to young people posed by (gasp) Dungeons and Dragons. Click on the video trailer above to behold its majesty.

Based on the trailer, Dark Dungeons plays it entirely straight, presenting Chick's earnest warning from the comic strip of the same name as it was written in 1984, and letting its unintentional comedic genius shine through, like light from heaven.

Yes, it's a little low budget, but only a little. The film is a Kickstarted project from Portland-based filmmaker JR Ralls, who said on his successful funding page that he started working on the project after winning a modest bounty in the lottery. Somehow, he also convinced Chick to give him the film rights to this pamphlet. Eventually, Zombie Orpheus Entertainment got involved, which brings us to today's trailer.

As Wired noted in its write-up of the film, Jack Chick was hardly the only person warning about the "dangers" of Dungeons and Dragons in the 1980s, or even today. Pat Robertson has echoed Chick's narrative, for instance, on his "700 Club" show, suggesting that Dungeons and Dragons contributes to teen suicide.

But Chick remains one of the most imaginative and fascinating marginal figures of the so-called "culture war." Chick, and I mean this lovingly, is so singular that he is beyond parody, as the filmmakers here seem to understand.

Hollywood tried this long ago, in the made for television movie Mazes and Monsters. Believe it or not, it starred Tom Hanks, who would go on to be nominated for five Academy Awards and win two of them, in his first acting role. Mazes has been giggled about for decades in the role-playing community, and from the trailer Dark Dungeons plays like its even more over-the-top long-lost cousin. Fundamentalist paranoia channeled through the lens of earnest satire usually means comedy gold.

I've mentioned previously how the "suicide statistics" given by 1980's fundamentalists demonstrated more their inability to do math than any actual threat from role-playing games. This looks to be more of the same, showing that the real danger lies not in pretending to be a warrior or wizard for the purposes of playing a game, but rather in seeing evil in every dark corner waiting to strike without warning whenever anyone has too much fun.

Because They're Going to Try

Here's where real Christian oppression happens. Note the enormous expanse of white that is North America

Poor Oppressed Christians often frame their imaginary persecution in terms that imply if only members of other religions would just leave them alone, everything would be fine. And you know, if they really meant it, I would agree with them. I'm not looking to drive religious expression from the public square, I just want to make sure that all religions including my own are represented there. The problem is that these folks lose sight of their own Golden Rule the moment they get even a little bit of power - like this.

In the recent Town of Greece v. Galloway decision the Supreme Court ruled that legislative bodies could open with prayers given by a rotation of volunteer chaplains so long as those of minority religions were not excluded. The Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors in Virginia took that as a win, and went on doing exactly what the ruling precluded - excluding minority faiths. In fact, I wouldn't personally have a much of a problem with the Greece v. Galloway ruling if only the Poor Oppressed Christians weren't such assholes about the whole thing.

A state appeals court upheld the county’s policy in a 2005 ruling, and the board has invited local clergy whose names are drawn from an official county list. Almost all of those religious leaders have represented Christian denominations, and the county has denied a Wiccan’s request to be added to the list.

Officials defended that decision, saying the “neo-pagan” faith does not fall within the Judeo-Christian tradition and “invokes polytheistic, pre-Christian deities.” That claim led to a lawsuit by Americans United and the ACLU, but the groups say the board continues to exclude even some monotheistic faiths, such as the county’s Sikh congregation.

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision permits local municipalities to open meetings with Christian prayer, but the civil liberties groups want to clarify that the ruling does not permit exclusion of non-Christian faiths.

Now this is a case that needs to be won on behalf of minority religions. The town of Greece was actually responsive to criticism of its all-Christian roster of chaplains and reformed their policies back in 2007, inviting non-Christians to participate. So even though the majority of their chaplains were still Christian, they made an effort to do the right thing. Here there's no ambiguity, though - this is clearly a case of the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors establishing a religion, by only allowing the prayers of particular denominations, and they need to be stopped.

Seriously, they're so utterly not oppressed. Cases like this show that the Poor Oppressed Christian agenda isn't about being left alone, but rather about enshrining themselves as a superior class of people free to exclude and look down upon all others without any threat of legal sanction.

When Elves Attack

Elves are clearly a menace. They live for thousands of years and have incredible magical powers. Not only that, they're unbelievably effective in combat as well. In the second Hellboy film a single elf nearly defeats a demon several times his size and strength, and in the latest Hobbit movie a handful of them leap and bound their way down a river, slaying orcs left and right as they go and racking up an immense body count. Granted, they're fairly inept when it comes to capturing escaped dwarves, but I still would never want to face one in a dark alley. Or, for that matter, in traffic.

The last thing the woman from Northeast Portland probably expected when she got up Tuesday morning was that she would be attacked by a sword-wielding elf.

But that's what happened around 7 a.m. as she drove her red BMW by the intersection of Southeast 7th and Morrison.A man dressed in chain-mail with a helmet, shield and carrying a sword and staff ran into traffic and started attacking her car.

She called 911, reporting that "a pirate" was attacking her car. When police got there, they detained Konrad Bass of Glendale, Oregon. Bass told officers that he wasn't a pirate but a "high-elf engaged in battle with the evil Morgoth."

I suppose confusing a BMW with a Ringwraith steed could be an honest mistake. As we all know it's the ultimate driving machine, and a Ringwraith would cruise around in no less. Still, said elf must be pretty lacking in the smarts department to simply charge in and start hacking away. One thrust with a Morgul-blade and the battle would have been over, and let's face it, chain mail is primarily designed to stop slashing attacks. Hopefully now the Portland Police can call upon their vast resources and connections to aid in the battle against the evil Morgoth. Either that, or get this elf the psychiatric care and/or drug rehab that he clearly desperately needs.

UPDATE: Vocativ now has an exclusive interview up with the elf, who is currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation. He claims to be a simple live-action role-player, but of course that's precisely what a real out-of-control elf would say in order to allay suspicion.

Bad Psychic

One of the reasons that I bash debunker-type skeptics less than you might expect is that even though I don't agree with them on the existence of paranormal phenomena, I'm of the opinion that they perform a valuable service. They expose fraudulent psychics, preachers, and others who claim to have special powers but who really are nothing more than glorified confidence artists preying upon credulous marks.

Statistically speaking, psychics who show off their abilities - particularly for paying audiences - are more likely to be frauds than are those who keep said abilities to themselves. Here's an account of a particularly bad performance that happened in Middlesbrough, UK. British psychic Sally Morgan asked members of the audience to submit photographs of deceased loved ones with whom she would attempt to communicate as part of her show. However, one of these photos was not what it seemed.

Sally then became in direct contact with the woman in the photo who began to tell her that there was a lot of confusion around her death and that she felt it was very very quick. She later went on to say that the day Wednesday has a specific link to her death and that she either died on a Wednesday or was taken ill that day.

As the woman in the audience was not responding to any thing Sally was saying, she decided to ask how the woman in the photo was related to her. It turns out the woman in the audience got the whole concept of submitting a picture of someone you wanted to talk to from the afterlife completely wrong – and for some unknown reason submitted a younger picture of herself.

The hall erupted in laughter, which quickly changed into disapproving mumbles that lasted the rest of the night. No matter how hard Sally tried, she was unable to get the audience back, who were becoming increasingly disgruntled with the number of ‘misses’ she was getting. Not only that, but the audience seemed to become more restrained when Sally was asking them questions.