San Diego State journalism freshman Brittany Ordaz sits in a quiet, dark room, the focus of her entire world shrunk down to the events unfolding before her on the computer game she’s playing. Yet even as she tells herself it’s just a game and nothing can really hurt her, she can’t shake the uneasy feeling that someone’s there with her in the empty room. Ordaz tells herself not to be ridiculous and returns her full attention to the popular online game “Slender: The Eight Pages.”

Typically clad in a grey or black business suit, the Slender Man is tall and lanky with abnormally long arms and legs. Where a human face would normally belong is just a white void. In the game, he stalks his prey as they search for eight pieces of paper. Equipped with nothing but their flashlight, players must comb the woods in search of these sheets to ensure their survival while evading their predator.

The screen glowed softly in the dark room, casting a bluish light against her face and highlighting her features in a harsh way making her kind face look sharp and twisted. Her eyes narrowed and her fingers typed deftly across the keyboard, almost at their own disposition while she played.

The world unfolding before her on the screen was dark and dangerous. The only illumination was the circular beam of a weak flashlight. She commanded it to swing right, left, up or down, examining the woods surrounding her as dead leaves and twigs crunched beneath her virtual feet. A solitary cricket chirped and in the far-off distance, a lone drum beat in a slow and ominous tone.

Her breath came in quick, short gasps as the urge to look behind was overwhelming. She surged forward, though, forcing herself to keep the flashlight glow ahead of her. Instead of swinging the light behind her, she continued to search the ground and trees around her for the pieces of paper. She’d already found three; she just needed five more and she’d survive.

Suddenly, a double-breasted dark gray suit fills her screen and an involuntary scream escapes her throat as she realizes the Slender Man has caught her. Game over. She lost. A fit of nervous giggles follows immediately as she reaches for the light switch on the wall. It’s only a game, she tells herself, shaking off the shivers, instantly warmed by the light that now fills the room. She rises from her seat and turns to go and runs smack into a dark grey double-breasted suit. Her mind goes blank with terror as she lifts her eyes to what she already knows will be there. The white, faceless void of the Slender Man.

She feels abnormally long arms wrap around her in a death embrace but she is too frozen with terror to do anything but stand there. “It’s real,” she thinks. Game over. She lost.

“Cut!” Ordaz yells.

Despite the fact she is a one-woman film crew it still comforts her to call the phrase signaling end of the scene. She stops the camera from recording and immediately plays it back, examining every detail and planning out how she will edit the scene.

Ordaz is one of many students who participated in the short film competition last Friday. She originally intended on debuting her film “My Roommate is a Vampire,” unforeseen circumstances forced her to scrap her plan and come up with a new plan, enter the Slender Man.

“I had seen YouTube videos before of people playing the game and I thought, ‘Well what if I did something like that, but then made it real?’” Ordaz said. “I was going for a ‘The Blair Witch Project’ kind of thing with the video recordings.”

The film entitiled “Slender: The Game is Real” will be available for viewing on YouTube for those who were unable able to make it to the event.