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Credibility: ★★★★★ 5/5
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Threat Level: MODERATE (MODERATE — officially unconfirmed, unofficially very confirmed)
A Pacific Northwest school district has quietly attributed four field trip cancellations to ‘the tall figure situation,’ and the public statement explaining this has been pending since February, assigned to a subcommittee that does not yet have members.
Somewhere in a Pacific Northwest school district — which I am not naming at this time because the district’s communications office sent me an email that said ‘please do not name the district at this time’ and I am, occasionally, a professional — four planned student field trips have been cancelled. Not due to weather. Not due to budget shortfalls. Not due to the chaperone situation, which is its own ongoing crisis in American public education. According to internal Risk Assessment Committee minutes obtained by WTC, the cancellations have been formally attributed to what the committee is calling ‘the tall figure situation.’ For clarity: they mean Slender Man. The minutes do not say Slender Man. The minutes are very careful not to say Slender Man. But there are only so many tall figures a district can be worried about, and I have 45 witnesses who have been remarkably consistent about the details.
The public statement addressing this is confirmed to be in preparation. It has been in preparation since February. It is currently held pending review by a subcommittee. The subcommittee does not yet have assigned members. I want to be fair to the district here, because bureaucratic processes are slow and cryptid-adjacent crises are genuinely novel governance territory. I also want to note that February was several months ago and the subcommittee still has no members, which is a sentence I have now typed and will be including in this article regardless of what the pending statement eventually says.
The 4 Cancelled Field Trips, In Order of How Much Documentation I Have
Trip #1: The Nature Reserve Visit (Most Documentation)
This was the first cancellation, and the paper trail is the thickest, possibly because no one had yet established that the paper trail was going to become a problem. The Risk Assessment Committee minutes from this meeting run to six pages. Three of those pages are redacted. Of the three remaining pages, one is a discussion of liability waivers and one is a map of the reserve with a section circled in red marker and labeled ‘do not take students here (tall figure).’ I have a photograph of this map. My editor has reviewed the photograph. We are in agreement that ‘do not take students here (tall figure)’ is a sentence that was written by a real person in a professional context and that this is significant.
Trip #2: The Historical Mill Tour (Solid Documentation)
The second cancellation came three weeks after the first, and by this point someone in the district had started being more careful about what went into the formal minutes. The official reason listed is ‘site safety concerns — structural,’ which is a phrase that covers a lot of ground. What I have additionally is a parent email chain — forwarded to me by a source who wishes to remain anonymous and who I will describe only as ‘a parent’ — in which a chaperone who had pre-visited the site wrote that she ‘saw something at the tree line that was too tall and too thin and stood completely still for the full twelve minutes I was watching it, and I don’t think we should bring the kids.’ The email chain has seventeen replies. Fifteen of them say ‘I agree.’ Two of them ask if it could have been a dead tree. The chaperone replied to those two separately, and I have that email also.
Trip #3: The Watershed Education Day (Witness-Heavy)
This is the cancellation with the most witnesses — forty-one of my forty-five total witnesses are connected to this one event, because the Watershed Education Day was cancelled after the advance teacher visit, during which the visiting teacher was accompanied by seven colleagues who came along ‘to see the site,’ which is a thing that happens when word has already gotten around. All eight teachers reported seeing a figure in the tree line. The figure was described consistently as extremely tall, extremely thin, and stationary. One teacher, who I spoke to directly, said: ‘I’ve been doing outdoor education for nineteen years. I know what trees look like. That wasn’t a tree.’ She has asked not to be identified by name and has also asked if I could tell her if we find out what it was. I told her that was what we do here. She seemed cautiously reassured.
Trip #4: The State Park Overnight (Least Documentation, Most Concerning)
The fourth cancellation has the thinnest paper trail of the four, which I find the most interesting, because the overnight trip was the most elaborate — multiple days, multiple sites, the most students. The Risk Assessment Committee minutes from the meeting where it was cancelled are three sentences long. The third sentence is: ‘Motion carried.’ That’s it. In my experience, the less a committee writes down, the more there was to discuss. My remaining four witnesses are all connected to this cancellation. Two are parents who attended a pre-trip information session and say the teacher running the session ‘went very quiet’ when someone asked about the forest sections of the route. One is a school board member who will say only that the decision was ‘unanimous and fast.’ The fourth asked me not to describe them in any way that could identify them, so I will simply note that they confirmed the overnight was cancelled and that the word they used, unprompted, when I asked why, was: ‘obvious.’
I’ve been doing outdoor education for nineteen years. I know what trees look like. That wasn’t a tree.
— Unnamed Teacher, Watershed Education Day Advance Visit
FAST FACTS
• Field trips cancelled: 4
• Total witnesses on record: 45
• Pages of redacted Risk Assessment Committee minutes: 3 (confirmed)
• Months the public statement has been ‘in preparation’: several
• Subcommittee members currently assigned to review the statement: 0
• Times the district’s internal documents use the phrase ‘tall figure’: at least 2 (visible, unredacted)
• Times the district’s internal documents use the name ‘Slender Man’: 0 (they are very careful about this)
I reached out to the district’s communications office for comment. I received an automated acknowledgment, followed by an email informing me that a statement was being prepared and would be available for review once it had completed the internal review process. I replied asking about the timeline. I received another automated acknowledgment. I asked specifically about the subcommittee membership status. The automated acknowledgment came back in four minutes, which is genuinely impressive response time for a question I don’t think they wanted to receive. I am including this correspondence in the REAL ACTUAL EVIDENCE folder. I am putting it in a subfolder so I can find it.
The decision was unanimous and fast.
— School Board Member, Identity Withheld Per Request
FIELD ALERT
WTC is actively seeking additional witnesses connected to any of the four cancelled field trips, the advance site visits, or the Risk Assessment Committee proceedings. If you attended, supervised, chaperoned, or received a permission slip for any of these events and have information to share, the tip line is open. If you are a member of the subcommittee that has not yet been assigned members, I have questions specifically for you and I promise they are not hostile, I am just genuinely curious about the timeline.
Here is where I am on this story: forty-five witnesses is a real number. Four cancelled field trips with consistent internal documentation attributing them to a single unexplained figure is a real pattern. A subcommittee with no members is, by definition, not a subcommittee yet, which means the statement is not close to being released, which means the district has decided that not saying anything remains the better option while they figure out what they want to say. I understand that impulse. I’ve sat at The Burrow with a dry-erase marker trying to figure out how to draw something I saw in a way that made sense to other people, and it’s hard. The difference is that the district has a formal communications infrastructure and I have a coffee shop whiteboard and a ginger cat to debrief with afterward. Both approaches are valid. Only one of them is transparent. We will be following this story as the statement continues its journey toward completion. I have set a calendar reminder. I have set several.
pennyhart@whatthecryptid.com
Penny Hart · Features Writer & Community Content Specialist — WTC
No face. No motive. Extremely consistent suit.
