Praise for Slenderman:
Named a Best Book of the Year by Audible and CrimeReads
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Rumpus
“Hale spent seven years poring over thousands of pages of court documents, police reports and other public records . . . The lesson of Slenderman is not about tracking your kids’ internet usage, evolving friendships, or enthusiasms and aversions. It’s that serious mental illness can manifest in people who seem far too young to have such adult problems.”—Lisa Levy, New York Times Book Review
“Hale’s compassionate look at the case is a compelling yet harrowing read that reveals how a seemingly innocent childhood friendship could lead to such a devastating outcome.”—Mae Anderson, AP News
“With clear-eyed prose and deep legal research . . . Slenderman is a skilled and detailed retelling of a story that still mystifies many years later . . . Hale’s intervention into this recent saga of American moral panic is a fulsome, if sobering, story of misdirected pre-teen social angst and cyberspace obsession. Slenderman may have been debunked in the popular imagination but he lives on as an enduring metaphor for the shadowy corners of the internet and the corrupting danger that our online existences can have to our offline realities.”—Nathan Smith, New York Observer
“A gripping read about a true crime that could have been averted.”—People, “Best New Books”
“A balanced, well-researched, and thoughtful account of an extremely sensational case and its even more sensational aftermath . . . A must-read for anyone interested in this case.”—Jesyka Traynor, True Crime Index
“Searing . . . As the first researcher into the case to draw extensively from transcripts of vital records, Hale has produced what stands as the most accurate account to date of this horrifying episode. This is a must for true crime fans.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Slenderman case can seem impenetrably bizarre, but Hale nimbly documents the numerous contributing factors to the online legends, the crime and its judicial outcome . . . Moreover, Hale is originally from Wisconsin, providing her well-developed true-crime narrative with an insider's take on social and cultural norms that fostered the communication breakdown among authority figures who might have tuned into the suspicious circumstances before a crime could be committed . . . [Hale’s] steady narrative vision brings clarity to a thoroughly upsetting situation.”—Shelf Awareness
“A page-turning true-crime story as well as an eye-opening look at the treatment of convicts experiencing mental illness . . . An engrossing account that is sure to include new information even to those familiar with the shocking story.”—Booklist
“Kathleen Hale’s Hazlitt piece on the Slenderman story still stands out from the general sensationalist coverage of the case for its level of empathy for all involved. When two middle schoolers stabbed another middle schooler in the woods in 2012, they claimed to do it on behalf of a mysterious figure known as Slenderman. Hysterical parenting sites spread a moral panic about CreepyPasta, the website where stories of Slenderman originated and then became memes. However, undiagnosed schizophrenia, midwestern stoicism, and intense friendship dynamics are much more to blame for the attack, as Kathleen Hale illustrates here.”—CrimeReads
“Hale breathlessly recounts this unspeakable tragedy but holds her focus on the courtroom and society’s failures in treating the mentally ill. Her message is resonant: We must do better for those in need . . . Beyond the horrific incident at its center, the book expands into a searing criticism of how society treats (and mistreats) the mentally ill. A relevant true-crime cautionary tale as well as an urgent plea for mental health awareness.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Inside this intimate, plain-spoken masterpiece lies a haunted secret garden of feverish childhood fears and fantasies. It’s a shadow world for which nothing can prepare you, and one which I doubt you’ll ever be able to shake.”—Walter Kirn, author of Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
“A riveting and beautifully written exploration of a tragedy, powered by rigorous reporting and equally rigorous sense of empathy. The Slenderman story that briefly obsessed the tabloids turns out to be about so much more in Hale’s capable hands: Midwestern girlhood, early onset schizophrenia, the failures of our criminal justice system, and the uneasy power of childhood friendships.”—Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites
“Kathleen Hale’s Slenderman is a haunting, powerful, accomplished, and necessary book that is impossible to put down.”—Sonia Faleiro, author of The Good Girls
“Slenderman is a fluent and stylish account of a childhood folie à deux and its tragic aftermath. Through careful first-hand research and personal interviews, Kathleen Hale exposes the destructive force behind this case—not the fictional supernatural Slenderman, but the monstrous failure of the judicial system when it comes to forensic mental health. Slenderman is a work of wise sympathy.”—Mikita Brottman, author of Couple Found Slain
“Slenderman is a tour-de-force, a riveting and shocking read. On one level, it provides a remarkable reconstruction of a chilling crime, the stabbing of a twelve-year-old by two of her friends—a murderous assault that she somehow survived. And simultaneously, it is a frightful tale of how the state of Wisconsin dealt with the deeply disturbed young girls who committed the crime. The product of immense amounts of painstaking research, Slenderman is a gripping and utterly compelling account of two overlapping nightmares. You won’t soon forget this book.”—Andrew Scull, author of Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness
2022-05-16
An unsettling chronicle of the “Slenderman” stabbing and its subsequent courtroom debacle.
In 2014, two 12-year-old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin, planned the murder of their friend. They believed her death would appease Slenderman, a fictional character popularized by the website Creepypasta, an aggregator of user-submitted ghost stories. On May 31, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser lured Payton Leutner into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. The girls left her for dead, although miraculously, Leutner survived. Quickly apprehended, Weier and Geyser entered the inconceivably slow stream of Wisconsin’s criminal justice system. Hale breathlessly recounts this unspeakable tragedy but holds her focus on the courtroom and society’s failures in treating the mentally ill. Her message is resonant: We must do better for those in need. However, Leutner’s trauma often feels sidelined while Hale tries to promote awareness and dismantle the stigmas surrounding mental illness. Much of the book is Geyser’s story. She was dealing with schizophrenia with little understanding that her illness was something treatable. “They said I was trying to get attention,” she explained years after the incident. Her parents were in denial, and her “teachers had neither the time nor the training” to be supportive. Complicating things further, Wisconsin law allows children to be tried as adults in certain circumstances, a legal gray area that stuck Weier and Geyser in a dangerous three-year limbo between jail and a mental health institute before their judgment. The power of online media remains chillingly present throughout the narrative. During a “livestream of the trial on Facebook,” Hale writes, “internet commenters were offering their opinion of [Geyser’s] character,” some even calling her an “evil creature” that should be killed. Beyond the horrific incident at its center, the book expands into a searing criticism of how society treats (and mistreats) the mentally ill.
A relevant true-crime cautionary tale as well as an urgent plea for mental health awareness.