Aired Wednesday, 21 February 2018, 8:00 PM ET

Nick Redfern - The Slenderman Mysteries

Growing up in the fifties and sixties in Brooklyn, New York, I often heard stories…stories that today would be called “urban legends”…about evil beings and people. Often told by older kids, camp counselors and some adults, these stories were designed to frighten, perhaps intimidate and most definitely nurture nightmares. These were the pre-digital, pre-cyberspace days, and story-telling was a verbal art form. With the advent of the internet, apps and social media, the dissemination of these stories has become immediate, widespread, and sometimes with profound and tragic results.

Such is the story of The Slenderman, a character birthed as a “creepypasta” internet meme in 2009 that not only frightened young imaginations but resulted in the tragic stabbing of a 12 year old girl by two classmates in 2014. Is Slenderman a modern phenomenon or does it go much deeper historically and in our psyches?

My guest this week on Destination Unlimited is Nick Redfern. Nick is the author of more than 40 books on the strange, mysterious and unexplained. He has appeared on more than seventy television shows including Ancient Aliens, America’s Book of Secrets, The Unexplained Files and UFO Hunters. His website is http://nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com/ and he joins me this week to talk all things mysterious and discuss his new book, The Slenderman Mysteries: An Internet Urban Legend Comes to Life.