"It’s a nice idea but it reeks of hope. False hope. Not all complex problems have easy solutions; so says Science."
- House of Leaves


This Slender Man thing is looking to be a dead end. I've been reading all day, and it's going to be very difficult finding any accounts of the Slender Man which are real. Some are so fantastical that, to be honest, it's drawing doubt onto the more convincing ones just by their being there. I don't know. It seems to fit but until I've figured out some kind of Litmus test, I'm putting the Slender Man theory on hold.

In the meantime, I've got another lead. I've been reading up on the "crackpot book" the article in the paper mentioned. Informed with the supernatural element, it seems more up the right alley. It's called "The Walking Willow; A Legacy of Murder Throughout the Ages" and was written by a H.R. Bleakley. It was apparently called this because of an old British folk tale that willows were sinister beings, that they would stalk travellers. It's supposedly about a long spate of murders spanning four hundred years around this area. And, interestingly, only forty copies were ever made. It was going to be properly published, but the publishing house withdrew after a spate of...you guessed it, headaches. They immediately sent round a message to other publishing houses that the book was "cursed". As a result, the author had to have it self-published, sinking every penny he could spare into getting those forty books published. Before he could order another printing, Bleakley disappeared, the "curse" having gotten to him. This...was in 1999. That should give you an idea of just how weird this case was. A "curse" in that well-known time of enlightenment, the Nineties?

I'm going to get the book rented tomorrow. They have a few copies in the library, apparently after feeling sorry for the author, not least for having the name Bleakley in this day and age.

That's all for now.