An administrator of a horror website is responding to claims that two 12-year-old girls from Waukesha were inspired to stab one of their friends by materials it published online.
Prosecutors have charged the two middle school students with attempted murder, after they reportedly lured a friend into a wooded area on Saturday and stabbed another 12-year-old girl 19 times, leaving her for dead. According to the criminal complaint, the two girls claimed they carried out the stabbing as part of a tribute to Slenderman, a fictional online character who is featured among the stories published on the Creepypasta website.
In a blog entry posted to the site today, a user identified as an administrator of the Creepypasta wiki says the “incident shows what happens when the line of fiction and reality ceases to exist. When a person truly believes that Internet short stories are cold hard facts. When a person attempts to replicate works of fiction to the point others are harmed.” The post also stresses that the Slenderman stories, along with stories about many other characters posted to the site, are works of fiction.
The administrator, who goes by the username Sloshedtrain, calls the attempted murder an isolated incident and stresses that “this wiki does not endorse or advocate for killing, worship, and otherwise replication of rituals of fictional works. There is a line of between fiction and reality, and it is up to you to realize where the line is. We are a literature site, not a satanic cult.”