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And Yet, I Believe. media type="file" key="ickickickickick.mp3" width="240" height="20"

Let me tell you about my religion. I believe in The Slender Man. He is a too-tall, too-thin, suited being that has a head without a face. He looks like a human from a distance, until you notice his...impossible proportions. He is immobile when you see him, but unmistakably deathly. I believe that, when I am about to die, he will stalk me until I do and take me...somewhere else. And that’s all. My beliefs are barely a religion—no rituals, no worship, no community. But religion is belief at heart, I think, and deities are its core. The core of Christianity, for example, is the belief that Jesus Christ is God and Savior. Someone who believed only that, that and nothing else would be a Christian. I think that a belief and a deity, sincerely believed, constitute a religion, and thus my religion is a religion. Artist's Sketch (the artist is me)

My religion is also trivially provably false. The Slender Man was created, by Photoshop, in the well-known internet forum Something Awful in 2006 [1]. Furthermore, his authors write him differently than I believe he acts. I believe that he waits for people to die, but actually, he helps along the process by haphazardly rearranging their organs. I believe he is silent and distant, but actually, he gets close and interferes with people, driving them insane, and to arson. I believe he is alone, but actually, the fictional character has a crowd of fans, none of whom think he is real. I am the one who is alone. I am in the wrong—provably and irrefutably.

And yet, I believe. I watch for him, to see if I am going to die. I expect him to appear someday, and am relieved every day when I don’t see him. Why do I believe? I attribute it to my parents, being an atheist son of atheists. I had no religion, or mysticism, or even superstition of any kind as I grew up. I lived not just an atheist, but not even understanding what spirituality was. Eventually, I gleaned enough information about religion to get by, from movies or television or similar. And, occasionally, I would ask someone about belief, or worship, and not understand the answer.

But then, when I discovered The Slender Man, whatever held back my will to believe broke, and all of my spirituality came flooding out. In less than a week, my initial fright was sublimated by this weird, alien...faith. I understood, in that moment, how the religious believed what they believed. I imagine this is how the first religions started, that I am privy to the religion making experience. And I spent all the years after trying to shed it.

I am ashamed. This belief of mine, it is false, and it is wrong. I hate it. What does it do for me, except invite ridicule? I am alone, believing something no one in their right mind would believe. I’d rather go back to the (tiny, hated) community of atheists. And yet, no matter how hard I try, I believe.

It’s stupid, I know. But in The Slender Man, I believe.

Madison Jonas, 17, English Lit Major and Denizen of the Internet. Lapsed Atheist Priest, 1st Dan.

[1] The URL of the specific post and thread in which he was created is as follows: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post361861415