What is slenderman

 I will start this off by saying that slenderman is not the operator, the operator is from marble hornets, a series that is completley fictional. Slenderman however, has a very real possibility to really exist, at least in my opinion. 

Appearance:

Slenderman is a humanoid male figure, dressed in a black suit and tie. It's face is debated to be either completley blank, or have slight traces of a human face. It can be anywhere from 7-12 feet tall, and is known to be able to change it's height, as well as possibly diguise itself as other beings such as regular humans. It is also known to be able to produce branching tendrils from it's back. 

But what is he?

Slenderman's exact species is unknown, but is thought to either be some form of demon, cryptid, or eldrich being that simply took an intrest in humans. Whatever he is, it's well known that slenderman feeds off fear; he is, as I call him, a creature of stories. He exists to get his word out and known by as many people as possible, and to do that, it goes to the extreme measures that it does, like spreading sickness and causing insanity in it's victims. It's possible that it would die if it wasn't known. 

How he came to be:

For a more grounded approach to this blog, I'll go over how slenderman was brought to the internet, though I belive he's existed long before then. Slenderman as we know him now, was first posted to the internet in 2009, on the humour forum SomethingAuful for a horror image contest, by a man named Eric Knudsen (known a Victor Surge on the forum at the time). His post very quickly gained alot of traction and spawned a variety of web series, blogs, and stories surrounding the creature in his image.

The original images of slenderman, created by Eric Knudsen in 2009. 

How slenderman could really exist: 

To explain how he could possibly exist in real life, I first need to go over a concept known as egregores; to simplify it, egregores are entities created by a group of people beliving them to be real, this concept exists in multiple cultures, and is sometimes also called a tulpa or thoughtform.
more on egregores more on tulpas more on thoughtforms

This said, the fact that in all stories and media about slenderman he was known to feed off of people's thoughts about him, and was drawn to the people who looked for him, creates the perfect recipie for slenderman to eventually be manifested as an egregore. 

I also know that beliving in slenderman and trying to summon him was rampant with younger horror fans in the 2010s. While these were mostly children, that could have actually lead to it's advantage. As an example: do you remember being a child, and seeing the tooth fairy in media, where all the characters said she was real, and the media itself acted as if she really existed, or maybe you belived in Santa, or your favourite character, either way, your belief couldn't be swayed, you fully belived these things were real, no matter how impossible it seemed; that is the recipie for a thoughtform, the fact that children belived in slenderman to this extent, could have been enough to create a thoughtform on it's own.

(a/n, let me know if  you want more informational posts or more journals about my own experiences, I do plan to do both but I still wanna know what you guys think.)