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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast, a m

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Speaker 1: on iHeart Radio. Nick Redfern is the author of more

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Speaker 1: than forty books on UFOs, aliens, big Foot, Lake Monsters,

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Speaker 1: The Abominable Snowman, Hollywood Scandals, and Immortality of the Gods,

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Speaker 1: Weapons of the Gods, Bloodlines of the Gods. He's appeared

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Speaker 1: on many TV shows, including the Travel Channels, Mysteries of

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Speaker 1: the Outdoors and the BBC's Out of This World sci

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Speaker 1: Fi Channels, Proof Positive and more. And he's back as

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Speaker 1: a regular contributor here on Coast to Coast am Nick Redfern, Nick,

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Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Hey, hey, it's going well. Thank

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Speaker 1: you for being on the show with us. Uh. Slender Man,

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Speaker 1: this is something man. They've They've got a new movie

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Speaker 1: coming out. There's been countless video games. They've made this

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Speaker 1: character in Easter Egg in regular video games. He's shown

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Speaker 1: up in some of the modern Warfare and Call of

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Speaker 1: Duty games in the background slinking around this creature. This

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Speaker 1: being has become something explosive in no time. Can you

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Speaker 1: give us a little background for listeners that are unfamiliar

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Speaker 1: with this being. What's kind of the genesis point for him? Well,

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Speaker 1: it basically began in the summer of two thousand and

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Speaker 1: nine June two thousand and nine where a website Something

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Speaker 1: Awful had a contest basically to see who could come

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Speaker 1: up with the creepiest creature for the Internet, and a

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Speaker 1: number of people submitted photographs and artwork and sort of

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Speaker 1: photoshop pictures of strange creatures inserted into regular situations. And

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Speaker 1: one of the people who did this was a guy

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Speaker 1: named Eric Nudson, and Eric Nudson is the guy who

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Speaker 1: created the slender Man and created the image of this tall,

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Speaker 1: spidery type human being. At least it looks a superficially

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Speaker 1: like a human being, a black suit, black tie shirt,

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Speaker 1: very long arms right down to the knees, and these

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Speaker 1: tentacle like, octopus like tentacles coming out of its back,

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Speaker 1: and so in other word, it looks very creepy. And

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Speaker 1: on top of that, it's face is completely face less,

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Speaker 1: no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no ears, just sort

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Speaker 1: of vague imprints where they should be. And of all

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Speaker 1: the various submissions that were made to this contest, the

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Speaker 1: slender Man created by Eric Knudson was the one that

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Speaker 1: really got everybody's attention and literally within days, it became arguably,

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Speaker 1: you know, a full blown phenomenon in the from the

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Speaker 1: perspective of people started blogging about it. There were forums

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Speaker 1: created in no time at all, chat rooms, Wikipedia pages.

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Speaker 1: There was also very popular online series called Marble Hornets,

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Speaker 1: which was kind of like a found footage fictional show

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Speaker 1: that went on for a lot, very long time and

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Speaker 1: had a huge audience. And so it really began to

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Speaker 1: take off massively almost immediately, and you had literally thousands

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Speaker 1: and thousands of kids, teenagers fixating and obsessing on the

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Speaker 1: slender Man and creating their own artwork and uploading it

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Speaker 1: and creating backstories for the slender Man as well. And

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Speaker 1: and it has really become you know, as you said,

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Speaker 1: it's here, there and everywhere, movies, TV shows, um, you

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Speaker 1: name it, even songs about the slender Man as well.

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Speaker 1: So it's it has really sort of gone literally through

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Speaker 1: the roof, you know, in terms of coverage and popularity.

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Speaker 1: One of the things I find interesting about this it

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Speaker 1: came to our attention just around the same time the

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Speaker 1: Black Eyed Kids phenomena seemed to be on the rise.

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Speaker 1: And I've always had children, spooky children like that are

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Speaker 1: are even more impactful and certainly we've had a good

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Speaker 1: run on our show Beyond the Darkness, talking as you

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Speaker 1: know about black Eyed kids and what's going on with

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Speaker 1: that phenomena. But Slenderman has taken on a totally different,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, more kind of an epic arc in

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Speaker 1: the way that people are responding to it. What do

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Speaker 1: you think the difference is between that? Yeah, you're right,

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Speaker 1: and it's not just in the US, you know, where

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Speaker 1: it was created. It's actually all around the world. Um.

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Speaker 1: And he has really become a global phenomenon. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you just type slenderman um into into Google, um,

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Speaker 1: there are seven million results, um. You know, which is

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Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive going for you know, a fictional character. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so in that sense, you know, we don't say

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Speaker 1: things light has happened too often. Now, you're right with

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Speaker 1: the black Eyed chi children, that did start off in

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Speaker 1: a similar way, you know, sort of these creepy entities

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Speaker 1: with the black eyes, and you know, people say, well,

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Speaker 1: is it real or is it an urban legend? Um?

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Speaker 1: And it certainly hasn't attained the same level of popularity

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Speaker 1: and coverage that the slender Man has, But there are

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Speaker 1: parallels for show, you know, in terms of the developments

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Speaker 1: and the escalating nature of the phenomenon. Listen to more

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m.

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Speaker 1: Eastern and go to Coast to coast am dot com

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Speaker 1: for more