Bear told the Associated Press that he recently discovered a slew of recent Facebook posts of an ominous display of nooses hung from trees:

In February, Poor Bear said, a parent came to him with an alarming Facebook post: Nooses hanging in trees near Porcupine, a community of about 1,000 people. Tribal police later took down four nooses, apparently left there as an invitation, but could not determine who was responsible.

The New York Times elaborated on this incident, noting that local pastor John Two Bulls was “tipped off to a group suicide planned in a wooded area outside the town of Pine Ridge.” After racing to the location, he and other adults found and removed the nooses and counseled teenagers who had assembled at the spot before anyone couldalso part of a longstanding urban legend.

The most obvious source for the “tall man” is the bogeyman, who is often described as a spectral, lanky figure in black who steals bad children away. The bogeyman has found a popular recent revitalization in Slender Man, a creature so compelling that last year several teens committed assault, reportedly due to the influence of the Slender Man mythos.

When Slender Man, or Slendy, was created in 2008, his popularity immediately gave rise to a number of spin-off mythical figures, including the fabricated legend of the german “Der Großman” and variations of the “Tall Man,” who was first introduced in 1979’s Phantasm.

But long before any of this, the people of the Dakota and Lakota have exchanged stories about Walking Sam. In these tales,