Beware the Slenderman Page #6

None of us...

saw this coming.

Morgan recalls having

hallucinations

as early as three.

She remembers...

seeing ghosts at night,

as young as three,

that would bite her

and pull her hair.

But from what I understand,

for the most part

they were friendly, too.

She even said that she... she

tried to tell us about it once,

and that we just told her

to go back to bed,

but I don't have

any recollection of that.

And really,

how often do your children

tell you at bedtime that

they're seeing something

or hearing something

when they're that age?

"A monster's in my closet,"

or "something's under my bed,"

you know, just because

they don't want to go to bed.

It's hard

because I haven't been able

to discuss these things

with Morgan,

because she's

been incarcerated...

for the entire time

that I've... I've known...

that she's... that she's

had these symptoms.

She expressed the ability

to see and hear things

that other people are

not able to hear or see.

Things like unicorns.

She at one point digressed

into fairly rambling discussion

about a student in her class

being a pegasus.

When I saw her last week,

a few days before,

Snape had come to visit her

and kept her up

until 3:
00 in the morning,

by Morgan's report.

Snape?

Snape.

- Who is that?

- A "Harry Potter" character.

She also will say not just

that she's heard things,

but that since

as early as three,

she's had some

sensory-perceptual distortions.

She might see a person

change slightly or see colors.

She doesn't...

have much concern

about whether she gets

a long prison sentence,

because, wherever she is,

she will use Vulcan mind control

to make herself feel, to make

herself believe whatever she likes.

And so, even under

very stressful circumstances,

she doesn't feel

the stress because of this...

what she described

to be Vulcan mind control.

How about her... her cell?

I would consider

her cell disorganized.

She has papers scattered

about the floor.

Have you ever suggested

picking them up?

Yes, I have. And she stated

that she liked the papers there

because they made it feel

less empty.

- And she is in the room alone?

- Correct.

She said, "Seeing my friends",

"none of these things

are dangerous.

These friends can't disappear.

They're important to me."

Was she referring to real world

friends or fictional friends?

Fictional, I believe.

She's not allowed

to hug her family or touch them?

- Not in our facility.

- Right.

She made clear

that her primary concern

was with her relationship

with Slenderman,

and she felt like

if she says the wrong thing,

if she somehow

upsets Slenderman,

not only hers but her family's

lives could be in danger.

With childhood schizophrenia,

almost everyone

develops, eventually,

negative symptoms

and cognitive symptoms.

What's unique

about Morgan's circumstance

is that a severe course

is so predictable.

Well, we knew her diagnosis before we

went to meet them at the hospital.

We had a conference call

with two of the doctors,

so we were...

we were prepared.

And the reason that

we all went up there, actually,

was so that we could tell Morgan

what her diagnosis was.

And we thought that it would

be helpful for her to know

that her father also...

had the same mental illness,

because we had never told her

previously that Matt had schizophrenia.

We were very worried about

the way that she might react

to learning that

she has schizophrenia

because Morgan...

Morgan's a very smart girl,

and she's been reading... Which

makes me think that she knew.

Yeah. I think when they told

her, she was probably like...

Not surprised..."Well, that's

what I would've guessed...

if I had

to diagnose myself."

What I think is

that Morgan knows

that other people

don't see her hallucinations,

but they're still

very real to her.

Like, in her head they are real,

and they're there with her.

They're there. But I

think that she knows

that other people

don't see them.

Otherwise, why would

she make an attempt to...

- Cover it up. Mm-hmm.

- ...hide them from us, exactly.

It's because

she doesn't want to lose them.

She's afraid they would

be taken from her.

This is the doll house,

or the components

for a doll house,

that Morgan made

while she was housed

at Washington County

Juvenile Detention Center.

And she just put so much...

detail into it, it's amazing.

She's not allowed

to have scissors,

so all of these...

all of these tiny little

pieces she ripped by hand.

This is a television,

and these are

some of her little cartoon

characters that she likes to draw.

This actually, I think,

is a character

that's modeled after Spock.

When I watched her

do a couple of the dolls

and the...

and the clothing,

and she said what was surprising is

how few times she had to start over.

Like, she was able to just be

meticulous about... Here's some food.

I think this is salad and a piece of pizza.

A salad and a piece of pizza.

Here's a little laptop computer.

See there's even

detail on the screen.

Look at the cute little heart

on the front of the computer.

This looks like it's another TV.

Oh, and there's...

how appropriate.

There's a courtroom drama

playing in the background.

When I ask her what she wants

to watch on TV that night...

it's one of the things I usually ask

her when I talk to her on the phone...

she'll say that it depends

on whose turn it is to decide.

And she's in a cell by herself,

so she's the only person there.

I do a lot of stuff with

running numbers in my head.

I do...

I try to put up static,

almost, is how I describe it.

I wish that I could talk

to her about...

like, I have... right now,

there's like patterns

of light and geometric shapes

that's, like, always racing.

Like always, like right now.

Pshew, pshew, pshew,

pshew, pshew, pshew.

I always wanted to know

if she sees that stuff, too.

Everything seems normal to me,

because it's... it's my everything.

This is how

I've always seen things.

So, it doesn't seem weird

to me that like,

"Oh that's not how

you see street lights?"

or "Oh, that's weird."

I don't know if that was everyone that

had like a weird little visual...

thing going on...

like the glaring demon, devil.

Like that you're like, "Okay,

this is clearly not real."

But it doesn't matter.

Like, I've had where...

like you...

you can see it

and you know it's not real...

but it totally doesn't matter, because

you're still terrified of it.

Like, I know that there's...

I know the devil's

not in the backseat,

but the devil is in the backseat.

You know?

Yeah, sometimes

you know it's not real,

but it still smells, tastes,

and looks real, so it's real.

Could you just describe,

in general terms,

what you found in the bedroom

when you went through it?

There were...

numerous... notebooks

and pieces of paper

with drawings

and writings pertaining

to the Slenderman character.

Where was

all this stuff located?

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