Slender Man does not even exist. Yet the urban legend created from whole cloth is making headlines still.

It’s been over a year since Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser were charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the stabbing of classmate Payton Leutner.

At the time, all three girls were only 12 years old. Weier and Geyser told police that they stabbed their classmate 19 times to “appease Slender Man.” They said they wanted to be “proxies of Slender Man” and stabbed the girl and left her for him to find. They said they had been planning the deed for months. Miraculously, Leutner survived.

After rounds of psychiatric testing and testimony, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren decided that the girls remain in adult court to face the charges against them. If found guilty of all the charges they face, and if sentenced to the maximum they could receive, they girls could be nearly 80 years old before they are released.

Those 2 girls that stabbed their friend to please slender man are the reason we can't have nice things

— Cark (@juanybeats) August 11, 2015

Morgan Geyser had previously been found incompetent to stand trial because a state psychologist testified that she sees other fictional characters, including some of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as well as Harry Potter villain Voldemort.

For anyone not familiar with the character, Slender Man was created when a contest was held on an Internet forum to see which forum members could come up with the best photo edits that might take on a life of their own outside the site. One member Photoshopped a tall, thin figure into pictures of kids on a playground, then later made up a story to go along with the picture.

The meme of Slender Man was born. The character did indeed take on a larger life outside the original forum. There are Slender Man costumes or Halloween, lots of fan fiction stories, some poorly written Kindle books, and some movie ideas. The original creator trademarked the name, but does not own all the rights necessary to have complete control of the character creatively. Therefore, no real films have yet been produced, but that may just be a matter of time.

#TerribleExcusesForBeingLate I was waiting for the Slenderman.

— Marty Rudoy (@gomartyman) August 11, 2015