Another Slenderman in the making?

Double Nought Spy said:

Oh great, more BEK type bullshit.

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Double Nought Spy said:

Says who? The guy who reported it? Did you look into his actual details? I did.

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Double Nought Spy said:

I looked hard for the publication the "journalist" supposedly worked for. Found no sign of it anywhere. What I did find was some sci-fi/horror type stuff he had actually gotten published, if memory serves. The "report" is written like that sort of stuff. I was dismayed when people like the Mysterious Universe crew seemed to swallow it whole. If anyone like that did any actual investigation, like say find the fellow and interview him, I never saw any sign of it. That was when I re-assessed the investigations and investigators I knew about, and I was not impressed.

If you have something solid, I'd like to see it.

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humanoidlord said:

not this crap again, i swear "creepy and spooky" people are killing serious paranormal research

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nivek said:

Well remember too, this thread is posted in the "Around the Campfire" creative writing and fiction forum...I wouldn't take it too seriously...

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Double Nought Spy said:

It was a long time ago. I don't know what, if anything, is out there about the original report. I thought it sounded like a creative writing project, and went looking for details about the guy. I don't recall his name. He was apparently a self-proclaimed journalist, and everyone seemed to just parrot that without giving it a thought. Checking out a journalist's credentials is the first and easiest step in any investigation of a claim made by a journalist.

What I found when I started looking at other, contemporary, investigations into paranormal matters was that no one seemed to be doing any actual investigating. I say no one, but there are still people out there like Kevin Randle, who actually speak to witnesses, go to libraries, newspapers, archives, the homes of people involved, visit the sites of events. Most modern "investigation" seems to be the sort of thing you get at Mysterious Universe. Every bit of what goes into producing those stories appears to have been done in front of computer monitor. Usually when I see something interesting on MU, I'll just do a search on the key words and find the stuff they copied and pasted from. Generally that's more complete and often has sources referenced. MU generally doesn't reference sources unless most of the article is copied and pasted from a singles source.

I don't mean to pick on MU. It's better than most of its competition, not that that says much. I know the same sort of thing was done with books back in the day, and is still going on, but it's so much easier now to be just a rehash artist. Nobody seems to care. Most people just think it's entertainment anyway.

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humanoidlord said:

what on the original account made you suspicious?

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Double Nought Spy said:

I don't recall, exactly. That was years ago. I'm really not keen on digging into it again. I found enough information to be reasonably sure the BEK was imaginary. When the Slenderman nonsense came to my attention, I thought "Here we go again."

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Double Nought Spy said:

Both are imaginary. I disagree the BEK has none. It's different than the documentation for Slenderman, but it exists or at least it did. It's what my last few posts were about.

Anyway, the word meme used to have a different meaning than an internet photo with a clever (or stupid) caption attached, and the BEK was an example of that. It is interesting, if pretty disgusting, to look at how that story developed. It's really a lot like an urban legend, but we know who started it. I don't recall the name of the "journalist" and don't know if it was even his real name. I suspect he was a "reporter" for some kind of publication that lasted a matter of weeks, and he may even have been the publisher.

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Double Nought Spy said:

There were other reports of BEK that sounded a bit too familiar to me. These were in the months after the original report was made. People seemed to take those at face value, too, and considered them corroboration of the original. I notice writing style, vocabulary, punctuation habits, an author's "voice" more than most people do. I quickly developed a mental image of the originator carefully nurturing his creation on various sites, in comments at blogs, and such. Maybe I'm wrong, but I consider the whole thing a hoax, a very successful one, and an important lesson.

Think about the creation: Demonic, menacing children carrying the treat of death (determined how, exactly?) causing otherwise sensible people to lap it up and consider it valid. On what evidence? It's madness.

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