Slender Man graffiti in Raleigh, North Carolina by unknown artist. Photo taken by Flickr user mdl70.
Slender Man is real. The product of a creative mind, cross-pollinated across the Internet, he is a fictional creation. But when two young girls tried to kill their friend as an offering to him last week, followed by two more attacks referencing him, he became a large enough part of our cultural conversation to make him reality.
Two 12-year-old girls in Wisconsin stabbed another girl 19 times to become "proxies" of Slender Man. A Cincinnati mother believes a Slender Man obsession is what led to her 13-year-old daughter attacking her. And a neighbor said the man who, along with his wife, killed two police officers and a civilian in Las Vegas on Sunday used to dress as Slender Man.
Much like violent video games, rock music, comic books and horror movies before him, Slender Man is on track to becoming the devil du jour, the newest "won't someone think of the children?" scapegoat.
Anyone who has been to a Halloween party in the last few years can tell you Slender Man costumes aren't unheard of, but this particular scapegoat is different. Especially because these attacks involve, not violent behavior supposedly stirred up by a medium, but by a literal monster. Also, this monster "lives" on the Internet, which some think of as an entirely scary place where bad things happen. So Slender Man is a Bogeyman from Bogeyman Land.
Still, while I don't know of a Slender Man story where he encourages sacrifices (which is not to say it doesn't exist on the big wide Web), there is more to this creature than just being an online creation. In fact, a contingent of the paranormal community believes this creature actually exists - either as a manifestation of our collective thoughts, or that he has been always been present in our world.