Stories of fiction come to life in a frightening way with recent news

Entertainment media has integrated itself into our everyday lives. Hardly a day goes by where a conversation about the latest episode of a popular TV crime show or the newest gore-filled video game on the market doesn’t take place.

It’s when that TV show or video game becomes a reality that things can get truly horrifying.

It is clear there is a need for people, particularly parents, to know certain age groups cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Wisconsin Slender Man Stabbing

The video game character and Internet meme Slender Man was the source of motivation for two teenage girls to gang up on a third girl on May 31, 2014 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. They stabbed her 19 times and left her for dead.

The victim crawled through the forest to get help. She was found by a bicyclist and rushed to a local hospital. She has since made a recovery which the parents said was “miraculous,” according to NBC News.

The stabbing had been preconceived, according to CNN, and was carried out that morning during a game of hide-and-seek. The two girls, whose names are kept confidential due to age, will be tried in adult court for attempted first-degree intentional homicide.

Slender Man is an urban myth generated several years ago on the public forum of somethingaweful.com. He is generally described as being abnormally tall, inhumanly skinny, has no face and wears a black suit and tie, according to his wiki on creepypasta.wikia.com. He also has several tentacles, and can stretch his arms, legs and torso out to catch his prey, and has the ability to teleport and hypnotize victims.

Typically, stories of Slender Man include his “proxies,” or children who serve the Slender Man. The two girls had intended to kill the third girl to please the paranormal figure and become proxies themselves.

UK teen imitates a TV show

Seventeen-year-old Steven Miles murdered his girlfriend, Elizabeth Thomas, Jan. 24, 2014 in Oxted, Surrey, in the United Kingdom. Miles wanted to imitate the hit TV drama “Dexter,” according to theguardian.com. After killing her, Miles cut her up with his father’s tree-cutting tools and put the body parts in garbage bags.

“Dexter” is a story about a police forensics investigator who also is a serial killer who targets other criminals.

The article stated Miles had planned the murder, calling Thomas his “project.”

Miles was sentenced to 25 years in jail, although the judge, Christopher Critchlow, felt he should have deserved a life sentence.

“The killing was predetermined and he would have given a whole life term if the defendant had been an adult but, as Miles was a child, he was not allowed to pass that sentence,” the article said.

Miles had shown interest in the television show, as well as horror films. He said after the crime that an alter ego, named “Ed,” had told him to do it, but according to the The Guardian, psychiatrists found Miles to not be schizophrenic. His claim had no effect on reducing his punishment.