He exists because you thought of him

I thought I could handle it. I swear, I did. But once I dipped my toe into the water I realized I was in way over my head.
Slenderman.


The Slenderman is a strange creature wearing a suit that appears in the background of photographs. He is abnormally tall, with arms that seem too long (sometimes he has tentacles), and has no face. He stalks children before kidnapping and killing them. He will also kill the adults trying to save them too. No one knows where he comes from or what he is or what exactly it is that he wants. Some believe that he is a being from another dimension, meanwhile others believe that he is a tulpa; a being created unintentionally by thought.

The truth is the Slenderman is an internet meme gone epically viral.

The first images of Slenderman appeared in a "Create Paranormal Images" thread in the Something Awful Forums in 2009 and were posted by Victor Surge who posted them with a story about a mysterious library fire that killed several children and the appearance of a strange creature that preceded it.

 

He then posted another image, this time of Slenderman being seen through a set of blinds and a copy of a police report with almost nonsensical writing and blood splatter on it. Soon afterwards other began posting images of the Slenderman with their own stories attached.

Quickly, the Slenderman began to appear on sites outside of the Something Awful forum and in time an entire Slenderman-universe was created consisting of several blogs and video blogs telling their own stories about the Slenderman. He even has his own video game in which the gamer is placed within one of these narratives and is stalked by Slendy.

What is interesting is that these narratives are not written in the form of short stories. The blogs are written as journal entries a la Bram Stoker's Dracula and the video blogs are primarily done in the 'found-footage' format. The most popular of these video blogs is Marble Hornets and as of this post the channel has 212,598 subscribers and 45,840,131 video views. These blogs and vlogs have gone on to construct an entire mythos around the Slenderman, one so complex and well-crafted that those who are not aware of the community believe him to be an actual mythological figure like the Mothman. Slenderman writers take elements from films, novels, comics, and mythology to construct the Slenderman mythos, they take things that the audience recognizes as being both familiar and unsettling and build on them to create something that becomes the subject of brand new nightmares.

There is theory out there, well, it's more like an anxiety. There are people who wonder if the tulpa theory can be validated, that if enough people continue to add to the mythos, if enough people start to believe in it, then maybe it can come true. It's a crazy theory, but it's creepy enough to keep some up at night. Ultimately, that's what where the fright in horror stories comes in. The scariest part doesn't happen when you're sitting in the theater or in the middle of the story; it's when you're lying in bed and start to wonder 'what if?'