You might remember the ghostly Slender Man from back last year, when he allegedly told a 12 year old girl to stab her friend 19 times in the woods.

Since then the ghostly meme has been decidedly quiet in the mainstream, but it seems like he may have been spending most of his time in a small countryside town called Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. That’s where a number of eye witnesses claim to have encountered him recently.

One resident of a town called Pye Green says that she was visited by the Slender Man on December 14th:

I was awoken just before 2am by an odd scratching noise in my bedroom.

To my astonishment, there was what seemed like a sphere-shaped shadow by the edge of my wardrobe.

As I tried to get out of bed and investigate further, the shadow began to stretch towards the ceiling. It was at that point I found myself faced with the most disgusting and horrific creature imaginable.

It was about eight feet tall and had a white face with razor-sharp fangs.

She didn’t say how she managed to get out of that situation, but we can assume that the Slender Man probably just scared the life out of her before going on his merry way. Another resident from another town called Rugeley had the following story about Slender Man:

As my eyes opened, I saw a man floating over me.

I could see into his eyes, they were a fierce red colour that shook me to my very core.

The ordeal ended when the man, who was completely dressed in black with a hat to match, floated higher and higher until he hit my ceiling and disappeared.

Phew. Sounds terrifying. Luckily, a 28 year old paranormal investigator named Lee Brickley – who definitely doesn’t look like the kind of guy you would call if you actually had a problem with the Slender Man judging by the above picture – has taken it upon himself to try and figure out why Slender Man seems to be targeting Cannock Chase. Unfortunately his explanation is a little less spooky than you might expect from someone who describes himself as an expert on the occult:

To get so many sightings at roughly the same time is unusual.

One theory is that this has nothing to do with the supernatural and eye-witnesses are experiencing sleep paralysis, where individuals’ eyes are open but they are still in a state of sleep, and therefore unable to move.

There are reports of Slender Men seemingly pinning victims down, as if sitting on their chest. That could well be down to sleep paralysis.

Hmm. Although sleep paralysis definitely isn’t as spooky as the Slender Man, it’s still pretty scary. It’s kind of crazy people would confuse it with the Slender Man though, and that there would be a lot of instances of it in such a small area as well. Maybe something is going on there – we just don’t know what yet. In the meantime check out the dark art of sleep paralysis victims.