WI middle-schoolers say bizarre Internet meme made them stab 12-year-old friend 19 times

Two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls were charged as adults with attempted first-degree homicide for allegedly stabbing a friend 19 times because they wanted to prove that an Internet-based character really exists, WTMJ-TV reported on Monday.

Police in Waukesha said Morgan Geyser (pictured above) and Anissa Weier lured the victim, who is also 12 years old, into a field Saturday morning following a May 30 sleepover celebrating Geyser's birthday. Geyser and Weier allegedly ambushed the victim, with one suspect holding her down while another stabbed her in the arms, legs and torso before leaving the scene. They were arrested Saturday afternoon.

The victim, who attends the same school as Geyser and Weier, managed to crawl away from the scene later and drew the attention of someone riding a bicycle nearby. She is currently listed in stable condition at a local hospital. The two suspects are being held in jail on $500,000 bail each.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that, according to authorities, the suspects attacked their schoolmate in order to "prove the skeptics wrong" about Slenderman, a fictional character created in 2009.

The pop culture site WhatCulture traced the character's origins back to the forums of another website, Something Awful. But Slenderman is also featured in the open-sourced horror site CreepyPasta Wiki.

Police said that Weier told them she introduced Geyser to CreepyPasta in December 2013. Weier allegedly believed that "Slender," as she called him, lived in a mansion in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, which is located near Waukesha County. Their plan was allegedly for Geyser to host the sleepover in order to put the victim in position for them to kill her and, in their eyes, become "proxies" for the character and demonstrating their devotion towards him.

The Creepypasta page for Slenderman, however, does not contain any references to "proxies" or rituals connected to him. The site's rules also state that, "As the content here is not suitable for all ages, it is requested that users who sign up for accounts and intend to edit on this wiki be THIRTEEN (13) years of age or older. This is the minimum age for signing up for an account on wikia and users who claim to be younger than thirteen may be banned until such time that they would conceivably be 13."

Watch WTMJ's report on the incident, as aired on Monday, below.