08/22/2026
🚨 SHE WAS STABBED 19 TIMES BY HER 12-YEAR-OLD BEST FRIENDS… BECAUSE THEY BELIEVED SLENDER MAN WAS REAL. THEN, 11 YEARS LATER, ONE OF THEM ESCAPED.
If you were online in 2014, you probably remember hearing about the “Slender Man stabbing.” But the actual details of what happened to 12-year-old Payton Leutner are so much crazier than the headline ever explained.
Payton was best friends with Morgan Geyser. Morgan later told police Payton had been her best friend since fourth grade and, for a long time, essentially her only friend. Morgan had also become close with another girl, Anissa Weier, and Morgan and Anissa shared an obsession with creepy internet stories—especially the fictional character known as Slender Man.
Except somewhere along the way, this apparently stopped being a scary internet story to them.
The girls became convinced Slender Man was real. They believed he watched people, could hurt their families, and that killing someone would prove their loyalty to him. Eventually, the person they chose to sacrifice was Morgan's own best friend.
And this wasn't some completely spontaneous decision made that morning.
Morgan and Anissa had reportedly discussed killing Payton for months. Different plans were considered, including killing her while she slept. Eventually they decided Morgan's birthday sleepover would give them the opportunity they needed.
On May 30, 2014, Payton went to Morgan's house in Waukesha, Wisconsin, for what she believed was a completely normal birthday sleepover with Morgan and Anissa.
The following morning, May 31, the three girls went to a nearby park. At one point, Payton was told to lie on the ground and cover herself with sticks and leaves as part of what she believed was a hide-and-seek game.
Morgan then attacked her with a knife. Payton was stabbed 19 times. Her arms. Her legs. Her torso. And then Morgan and Anissa left her there.
Payton was 12 years old, critically injured and alone in the woods after the two girls she trusted had just tried to kill her.
But somehow, she got up.
She used trees for support and fought her way out of those woods until she reached a path near a road where a bicyclist spotted her.
Morgan would later tell investigators that killing Payton had been “necessary.” She described Slender Man as a tall, faceless man who preyed on children and said she believed he was everywhere. She also told police she had been afraid of what would happen if they didn't go through with the plan.
Morgan was ultimately diagnosed with schizophrenia. Both girls eventually entered pleas connected to mental disease or defect rather than being sent through the system like typical convicted adult offenders.
Anissa was committed for up to 25 years and was conditionally released in 2021. Morgan received a much longer commitment—40 years in a psychiatric institution.
For years, Payton quietly rebuilt her life.
When she finally spoke publicly about what happened in 2019, she said she had learned to accept her scars as part of herself. But there were reminders of what that little girl endured that never completely disappeared. She revealed that she still slept with broken scissors nearby “just in case.”
She went back to school, took honors classes, attended college and talked about wanting a career helping other people. The little girl who wasn't supposed to make it out of those woods did exactly what her attackers never expected her to do. She grew up.
After years of treatment and several attempts at release, Morgan was finally granted conditional release in 2025 and placed in a supervised group home. On November 22, 2025, Morgan cut off her GPS monitoring bracelet and disappeared from the group home.
Authorities began searching for her.
By the following night, police found Morgan nearly 200 miles away in Posen, Illinois, with an adult acquaintance. They were reportedly sleeping outside near a truck stop.
When officers tried to identify Morgan, police said she initially gave them a false name. Eventually she reportedly told them she didn't want to reveal who she was because she'd done “something really bad” and suggested they Google her.
Imagine being Payton and her family when you receive THAT phone call.
In December 2025, a Wisconsin judge revoked her conditional release and ordered her back into a state psychiatric hospital.
Payton is now an adult. She survived, went to college and has tried to build a normal life outside the shadow of the crime that made her name known around the world.
And I think that's the part of this story people sometimes forget.
We remember Slender Man.
We remember the creepy drawings.
We remember the two 12-year-old girls.
But the most important name in this story is Payton Leutner.
Because a 12-year-old child was betrayed by people she trusted, stabbed 19 times, abandoned in the woods and somehow found enough strength to drag herself toward help.
Slender Man wasn't real.
But Payton's fight to survive absolutely was.
And parents—this case will forever make me think differently about sleepovers. We spend so much time warning our kids about strangers that sometimes we forget the people who hurt children aren't always strangers.
Sometimes they're the people our children trust enough to call their best friends.