Haven’t decided what to do to scare yourself for Halloween this year? Haunted house? Corn maze? Maybe even just a scary movie montage? If you have done all that, or if you’re just bored of it all, how about you get into this frightening time of year with a little game called Slender.

Slender is a computer game that can be easily downloaded free of charge right off the Internet onto either a PC or Mac. The game is relatively easy: you find yourself in a forest and you have to walk around collecting notes that give you vague details on what is actually going on. The notes include messages like “don’t look or it takes you” or “can’t run.” These messages are all crudely scribbled on notebook paper and they can be found in a variety of locations. You only have a flashlight to guide you and no defense, and after a while you begin to notice a sound pulsing in the background. Every once in a while you catch a glimpse of a strange figure—you’re being stalked by the Slender Man.

The Slender Man has been seen both in games and widely across the Internet, exploding into one of the most recognizable characters ever to venture into the world of mass media. The Slender Man has an interesting history. It first appeared on the Something Awful forums under a thread called “create paranormal images.” This obviously inspired the artist who took the initial photographs. The photographs are old black and white but if you look closely a very tall man clad in a black suit with what looks like tentacles coming out of his back is standing somewhere, and the kicker is he doesn’t have a face. These images are believed to have been made specifically for the forum and edited to create horror photographs that look, for the most part, shockingly realistic.

Many have tried to match the Slender Man to old legend and folk lore but most have been unsuccessful. The inspiration seems to either be total imagination or a spinoff of the folk lore–not the movie—the tall man.

The game itself is quite scary, but you have to play it to understand the fear factor. Spikes in music make encounters all the worse because if the Slender Man gets close enough, static will fill your screen and you are never seen again… that is, until you hit the replay option. Many games have been made by other ambitious horror video game creators like “Slender Asylum” where you are in an insane asylum trying to accomplish the same goal and avoid the same monster. Keep in mind the original game creator has not made any other games, any others that you find are fan based.

News has been released and confirmed that there will be a commercial version of the game released for P.C. known as “Slender: The Arrival”.

The download for the original game can be found at http://parsecproductions.com/slender/.