Slenderman/El Hombre Delgado y la Truco

	It was during my service that I found an outlet for my interest in myths and legends. Nicaragua is home to many legends like La Llorona ([http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Crying_Woman The Crying Woman]) and [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Downpour El Sisinique.] Every man in the community I lived in had a tale of their encounter with the crying woman and every child spoke of how they had at one time or another spoken to Duendes. So being a fan of horror and mythology, I decided to trade a few stories with them.
	I was disappointed when I realized how many analogue myths there are between American and Nicaraguan culture. (El Sisinique is a carbon-copy of Bigfoot, The Headless Horseman is similar to El Hombre Sin Cabeza, and the grim reaper finds a counter-part in [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/La_Carretanagua the Carretanagua.]) I decided that I needed to find some new tales for the kids. So the next time I was in the city (A weekly event so I could buy food/give a status update to my bosses.), I googled new urban legends and was redirected to creepypastas.
	Over the next few weeks, I would spend an hour every day copying stories onto my computer and reading them when I got back to my village. I read and memorized the Slenderman story and even downloaded the game “Slender” so I could more effectively tell the story. My house at the time didn’t have electricity and I relied on my neighbors as a means for charging my computer while we watched bootleg movies I acquired in Esteli. We sat down one rainy night in October and I told them the story and then we played the game.
	It was a complete success. I chose the Slenderman story due to its similarities to the duende mythos and it resonated with the kids. The first time the Slenderman appeared in the game, it scared the kids half-to-death. One shrieked and the other actually left the room to calm himself. Explaining the game was a little more difficult so I had to improvise and translate the messages on the pages. I decided to elaborate and say that he was stalking the main character because they had picked up the first page and he was drawn to them by their knowledge of him which was why he became more frequent after you collected more pages. (It was a groundless theory, but that little flourish served to make it a scarier experience.)
	I have been known to be a bit of a trickster, so I had one more thing planned for them that night, a trick/prank of sorts. I went outside and tacked eight pieces of paper with messages written from the game (in Spanish) around their house, knowing that the kids typically visited the latrines at night together. My maniacal machinations achieved, I snuck back to my house, which was about one hundred feet away from the neighbors I was visiting that night.
	I sat down and got back to reading the stories I had copied onto my computer from my visit to Esteli earlier that day. About fifteen minutes later, I heard the two boys scream bloody murder. They had found one of the pages that I had stuck on the wall of the community latrine, which probably eliminated the necessity for them to go to the latrine when they saw it. The next week, they told all their friends the story of the Hombre Delgado (“The thin/slender man”) and their ‘encounter’ with him.