Slender Man: Using Real Crime as Inspiration for a Novel

 

By Gary Braver

Like other crime novelists, I keep a file of real cases. Not only do these serve as ideas to draw from, but they give authentic grounding while inspiring me to learn more about the perpetrators and their victims. What caught my attention at the onset of my latest novel, RUMOR OF EVIL, was a disturbing 2014 news story from Wisconsin: Two 12-year-old girls were arrested for the brutal knife attack of a 12-year old female friend.

Their reason: They wanted to appease Slender Man, an Internet cartoon character — a long, thin, black-suited featureless male rumored to stalk, kidnap and terrorize kids. According to police, the two girls had convinced themselves that Slender Man would kill their families if they didn’t murder their friend. Fortunately, their victim survived; and the two attackers are still in a psychiatric institution.

Using Real Crime for Backstory

This horrific crime gave me the backstory idea for RUMOR OF EVIL — a cold case that would lurk behind a current murder that Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are tapped to investigate two decades later.  But I needed character profiles and clear motives. And that’s where research paid off.

There is no Slender-Man-like creature in RUMOR OF EVIL nor is there a supernatural presence. But there is adolescent bullying, a very real scourge that threatens the emotional health of school-age children.

According to studies, the most common characteristic of bullied victims is that they’re “different.” In physical appearance, they might be overweight, small, gangly, disfigured, or unattractive.  Also their behavior is “odd”—they talk with a lisp or accent, they’re shy, insecure and appear weak.  Sometimes they’re from a different social, ethnic, religious or economic background or status; or they were kids who were considered bad luck and friendless. In short, they’re outsiders to the accepted adolescent “norm.”

The Bully as Muse

My research also helped define what motivates young bullies to attack others. Patterns show that they’re kids who want to demonstrate that they’re superior, that they are the Alpha kids, that they have power.

They’re kids who want to impress their peers; who are aggressive and have hot temperaments. Kids who often have family problems that make them jealous of their victims, envious of their appearance, personality, skills, and stable family lives. And to get even, bullies convince others to dislike those victims, turning revenge into a complicitous activity effectively spreading the guilt.

The Bullied as Victim

Drawing from victim characteristics, I designed the bully-victim for RUMOR OF EVIL: a dark-skinned 16-year-old Romany exchange student.  Although attractive, she arrives in upscale Lexington, MA from a rural Slovakian pig farm in traditional Eastern European garments and braids, speaking English with an accent. She also has strange customs—like taking off her shoes when entering a home or standing up when the teacher enters a classroom.

At first, the kids in her host family and classmates have fun Americanizing Vadima Lupescu — taking her to the mall to get her cool clothes, introducing her to peanut butter and jelly, Mexican food, backyard barbeques, and ridding her of those braids. They also give her a cool nickname — Lulu.

But things needed to turn dark, so I exploited some sadly degrading myths about Romany people.  At a pizza-party, Lulu does some palm-reading which starts off as fun but suddenly turns weird. Then bad things happen to her friends and their families — things that get rumors flying: Romany people are “gypsies” who put curses on people; in olden times they spread diseases like the Black Plague; they drink the blood of Christian babies; they worship Satan. And, aren’t they really witches in disguise?

Scapegoating–Part of the Adolescent Mindset

Yes, all damning racial myths, but I was trying to reflect the superstitious adolescent mindset, reminiscent of the paranoid girls who triggered the 1692 Salem witch trials.  Centuries later, the dangerous phenomenon of bullying and scapegoating persists today. You can see it in some attitudes regarding outsiders, particularly immigrants.

As for the actual crime, I didn’t have to strain my imagination.  The history of witches during the Middle Ages had one brutal punishment — being burned at the stake. And therein lay my “cold case.”

So the Slender Man case not only provided me with a plotline for RUMOR OF EVIL, but also the reasons why kids commit such horrific deeds. This backstory of the mysterious death of Vadima two decades ago connects to the staged suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree in her backyard in the opening chapter.

Truth, at times, is stranger than fiction.

Real Crime in Famous Crime Novels

I’m not alone in drawing material from true crimes.  Some of the most compelling mysteries ever written were based on real events.  Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express was inspired by the 1932 kidnapping and death of the young son of Charles Lindbergh. Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace dramatized the 1843 double murder by Grace Marks and James McDermott, servants to their master and his lover. And my favorite — Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, which introduced two famously horrifying characters drawn from true-life monsters.

According to sources, the character of Jame Gumb, aka “Buffalo Bill,” was a composite of serial killers — Ed Gein who kept “trophy” skins from women he had murdered; Ted Bundy who wore his arm in a cast as a ploy to enlist females before kidnapping and killing them; and Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped and tortured a number of women in his cellar.

The Real Crime Inspiration for Hannibal Lecter

As for the notorious Hannibal Lecter, Harris’s inspiration was a real-life death-row surgeon named Alfredo Ballí Treviño. As Harris reported, Treviño was a small and charismatic man whom Harris transformed into the cannibalistic psychiatrist and serial killer.  In short, Harris took real-life monsters and fleshed them out into creations beyond who they were.

Sometimes, you just can’t make up this stuff.  However, Clarice Starling, the bright and brave hero of the novel was a product of Harris’ imagination. But without the real–life models for his killers, Harris may not have imagined such a rich, complex, and troubled heroine, whom even Lecter comes to respect.

Of course, few of us can create such stunningly memorable villains and heroes. But lurid crimes are staples in the headlines. However, such notorious cases can be springboards for those of us hankering for an inspiration to craft a compelling piece of fiction.

 by Gary Braver, October 8, 2023

What about you, scriveners? Have you ever used a real crime as inspiration for your fiction? What problems did you run into? Do you have any questions for Gary?

For more on real crime that inspired fiction, here’s an interview Anne did with the award-winning screenwriter who wrote a film about the same real crime that inspired her novel, The Gatsby Game.

 About Gary Braver

Gary Braver (pen name of Gary Goshgarian) is the award-winning and international bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed medical thrillers and mysteries.  His novel FLASHBACK (starred review in Publishers Weekly) is the only thriller to have won a Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction.

His latest book, CHOOSE ME, (co-authored with Tess Gerritsen) was a #1 bestseller on Amazon and a bestseller in several foreign countries.

The next book, RUMOR OF EVIL, launches on October 10, 2023 with Oceanview Publishing.

Gary’s novels have been translated into 16 languages, and three have been optioned for movies, including ELIXIR by director Ridley Scott.

Under his own name, Gary Goshgarian, he is an award-winning Professor Emeritus of English at Northeastern University where he taught Fiction Writing, Science Fiction, Horror Fiction, and Bestsellers.  He has also taught fiction-writing workshops throughout the United States and Europe and was founder of the London Writers Workshop. He is the author of six popular college writing textbooks and lives in Arlington, MA with his family. Website: www.garybraver.com.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

COMING OCTOBER 10TH

Rumor of Evil

“New and excellent—a fine piece of work. Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are up there with the best. Very impressive.”
–Lee Child, #1 bestselling author of the Jack Reacher thriller series.

“Gary Braver is one of the best thriller writers in America.” —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times best-selling author

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Featured image Wikicommons fan art: Slenderman Historia Internetowego Mitu Legenda Miejska