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"One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze, taken one week earlier. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as The Slender Man. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence."

"We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..."

There is a figure that does not hide or lurk in the shadows, but stands tall and unseen in the light of day — visible only to its prey as it stalks them. It appears as an extremely tall, thin humanoid in a formal suit with impossibly long limbs and no face to speak of. Its origins are as much a mystery as what — if anything — it wants. Its presence is associated with paranoia, delusions, and even physical illness. Those who see it are often driven to scrawling strange messages and scribbling sketches of a dark, faceless figure — prior to their going utterly insane, or disappearing entirely. The less you know the better, for knowing too much may make you the subject of its interest. You have been warned.

The Slender Man is an internet born character-entity based on the Bogeyman and originating in his present form on Something Awful, created by user Victor Surge in the "Let's Create Paranormal Images" thread. (Slender Man posts start here, though most of the images are now gone). It soon reached memetic status, spreading through several blogs and videos, and quickly became the horror we know and fear today.

The three most famous entries in the mythos, also known as "The Big Three", are:

    Other associated videos 

In addition, there is many a strange story from people who appear to have seen him, as well as photographs by people who have not been heard from since. A more-or-less full list can be found at here; the TV Tropes articles for the works can be found in The Slender Man Mythos.

The Alternate Reality Game site Unfiction has a whole forum dedicated to the mythos, as well as a dedicated stand alone forum at Slender Nation. Reviews of stories can be found at The Slendy Review blog. Non-story information can be found at Encyclopedia Slenderia. compileTRUTH also summarizes some series. An extensive fan site is in the works, created by one of our tropers.

And now he even has his own video game titled Slender, available for free. Another video game, which is an expansion of the original with a story and more levels, was released in collaboration with Blue Isle Studios. It is called Slender: The Arrival, and is available to buy on Blue Isle Studio's site.

Unfortunately, in 2014, two mentally ill twelve-year-old girls, Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, stabbed their twelve-year-old friend, Peyton Leutner, nineteen times in an effort to please the fictional character. Leutner, thankfully, survived, and the girls were committed to mental institutions. This incident led to the cancellation of the film ''Entity''.

Another film, titled Slender Man, was released on August 10th, 2018 to overwhelmingly negative reviews.

Not to be confused with The Thin Man or either "Tall Man" from the Chzo Mythos and Phantasm.


These stories provide examples of:

  • Abandoned Area: A common setting for stories in the Mythos.
  • The Adjectival Man: Guess.
  • Affectionate Parody: Splendor Man! Yaaaay!
  • Alternate Reality Game: Most (if not all) of the projects within the mythos.
  • Apocalyptic Log: A good number of reports on this creature are found in this format.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: This disclaimer on the first Encyclopedia Slenderia post.
    DISCLAIMER: Reading about Slender Man has been known to result in paranoia, loss of sleep, and the death of you and everyone you hold dear. Anyone who continues to read on is fully accepting the risk that a man in a suit may rip out their favorite organs as a result. I don't want to wind up with any lawsuits from people claiming that it's my fault they were killed. Because then we'd need to figure out how a dead person hires a lawyer, and how to transmit funds to the afterlife, and it would just get really messy legally.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Some series hide the fact that they even include the Slender Man, most famous of which being Everyman HYBRID, but The Dead Are Watching wins out for not even hinting at Slendy for five months of the series run.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Although there's been some question as to whether he's even wearing a suit.
  • Batman Gambit: Zero and several others put themselves in harms way intentionally in combat against Slendy, in the hope of evoking enough emotion from the remaining slenderbloggers that they could agree upon a 'canon' story in which he is injured. It didn't work
  • Battle Theme Music: Hosozukuri from Breeze in Monochrome NIGHT has made several songs based on other bloggers, including her song Resolve which is meant to be a battle theme for people fighting against Slendy.
  • Being Watched: He's watching you, always watching! He doesn't have a face, but he's always watching!
    ALWAYS WATCHES...NO EYES.
  • Berserk Button: Shelby calling out the mainstream and a few less but still fairly popular blogs. The shit storm was magnificent and if you really want to see it, well one Blogger took screen caps. Ask him for them anytime ANYTIME
  • The Blank: The most common depiction of the Slender Man involves no actual facial features on its face- just blank whiteness. Among his original attributes was that his face would appear different to every viewer, however; considering this, it's likely that his facelessness on the original photoshops was meant to be some sort of Glamour Failure, but everyone decided to run with him actually being faceless. Variations include a wrinkled, alien-ish head that couldn't possibly have facial features and a writhing, twisted ball of flesh.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Across the different facets of the mythos, it's difficult to say whether the Slender Man can be consistently considered totally evil, to be working toward a discernible goal, or to even be intelligent by our standards. For example, The Tutorial asserts that staying on the third story or up of a building is probably a safe bet, since based on the author's experience Slendy can't comprehend the concept of a human taller than him and will simply ignore said human.
  • Botanical Abomination: Given his strange appearance and his habit of appearing in forests, the Slender Man is sometimes implied to be some kind of plant creature - either a forest that evolved sentience and created an avatar to hunt humans, or something born from the ghosts of criminals who were executed by hanging them from trees.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Slender Man's proxies are mind controlled people that he forces to do his bidding.
  • Breakout Character: This is how Slendy started off in the original thread. Another character, the Masked Man (AKA "Masky") has branched off of the Slender Man mythos, primarily from the Marble Hornet videos.
  • Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: After people in the original thread started giving themselves nightmares with their own stories, this comment was left:
    The cure to the phobia you guys have given yourselves should be a sequel series of images showing the Slender Man going through everyday activities, such as mowing his lawn, walking the dog, sitting down to breakfast with the family and eating fried human flesh.
  • By the Eyes of the Blind: Slendy is often portrayed as invisible to the naked eye unless you are his target, although he can usually be picked up on video.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: He likes doing this to people, as Jay, Noah and the HYBRID guys can attest.
  • Child Eater: At least, he seems to prefer them in his initial incarnation. Most blog and vlog iterations of the mythos, however, seem to imply that he's indifferent as to who he hunts/eats.
    • That said, even though most b/vlog iterations seem to limit him to victims in their mid-twenties, it's not uncommon for one or more members of the group to have a childhood connection to Slendy, returning his focus to children somewhat (albeit, now grown-up). For example:
      • Marble Hornets has Tim, who was not only seemingly committed for paranoia, suicidal tendencies, and seizures, but was trapped in a hospital fire, yet miraculously survived. All of these are Slender Man calling cards.
      • Everyman HYBRID, at the very least, has Steph, whose immediate family were murdered by him, leading her to feel stalked by him ever since. It's also been hinted at, however, that all of the main characters have a childhood connection.
      • Tribe Twelve has practically every major character. Both Mary Asher and Milo had regular, or semi-regular, contact with Slender Man during childhood. Additionally, Noah was revealed not only to have been observed by the collective as a child, but to have survived a house fire when he was younger. Whilst the house fire is suspicious enough on it's own, Noah's parents mention seeing someone suspiciously Slender-like walking through the rubble. Noah's grandfather, Karl, also grew up in a German community near the Black Forest that used folktales of the "Great Man", who supposedly lived in the woods, to frighten their children into obedience. It should be noted, however, that Karl did not have a direct encounter with Mr. Tall, Dark and Faceless until adulthood.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe (a.k.a "Tulpa") (actually, more of a Thought Form):
    • Some of the ARGs, such as The Tutorial, claim this is the cause the Slender Man existing in the first place.
    • Meta-example too. Some forumgoers began wondering if their collective imagination could manifest Slender Man to reality.
    • Some characters believe this is the way to kill him.
    • This is actually how The Slender Man appeared in the setting of Glimpse The Beyond RPG. Magi theorize that all appearances of The Slender Man are actually Tulpas, paranormal creatures that are invisible and incorporeal in their basic form, but can become visible and corporeal by taking the form of legendary creatures, The Slender Man being one of them. If a player does some metagaming, he or she can see that game mechanics definitely make this possible, since A) a legendary creature must have between 150 and 200 General Points for a Tulpa to take its form, and B) The Slender Man has 170 General Points.
  • Combat Tentacles: Slendy is sometimes depicted with tentacles supplementing or replacing his arms.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Frequently the narrator of the ARG will disappear or meet a bad end, leaving another to figure out the first blogger's password to pick up the torch. Sometimes it's a family member or a close friend, or someone that had been leaving a lot of posts in the comments section. Occasionally the new protagonist is a former antagonist.
  • Depending on the Artist: The tentacles. Slender Man is always tall and thin, with pale skin, no face, no hair, a black suit, and usually freakishly long arms. But Depending on the Artist he may have tentacles for arms, groups of tentacles for arms, or tentacles attached to his arms.
  • Depending on the Writer: The details concerning the Slender Man's powers, personality, and modus operandi change from story to story. This posting and this one gives us a theory on the matter.
    • Potentially lampshaded with the second one - within its series, that theory is reiterated here and another character in the same series provides a very different theory shortly after. Even within the writer's canon, the explanations vary wildly, leaving us ultimately with no real answers at all and showing this trope at work even as the characters are discussing the Slender Man in-universe (the prominence of the theme of the Slender Man as a nihilistic metaphor within this particular mini-canon suggests that this is a deliberate attempt to show explanation of the Slender Man as futile).
  • Derivative Differentiation: Early works were known for aping Marble Hornets and Just Another Fool, but the Mythos gradually grew to include a wide variety of stories (as well as the Core Theory).
  • Devil, but No God: As of 2013, Slender Man has had no "good" counterpart (this is, unless you count Splendor Man). This is likely due to the H. P. Lovecraft influence.
    • He may have a (still-evil) opposite in The Rake, however. It's not yet clear whether or not they are enemies though.
    • See the aforementioned "Masky" under Breakout Character...he could be a good or at least less evil counterpart to Slendy, as he seemingly hasn't caused anyone real harm yet, and has in fact removed them from dangerous situations.
    • Then there's the other theory that Slender Man isn't evil at all, but working off Blue-and-Orange Morality.
    • Certain blogs have mentioned that, when you look at it from a certain angle, Santa Claus of all things seems a lot like a good Slender Man.
  • Disguised Horror Story: A popular method for developing Slender series is starting out the series in question a a normal (and generally boring) blog or vlog. After a few entries (sometimes foreshadowed by the presence of mythos elements or not), slendy will make his grand entrance and things will go downhill from there.
  • Disney Owns This Trope: Eric Knudsen — the original creator of Slenderman — has claimed ownership of the character and blocked others from using it. While he has given permission to various fan projects, the issue was complicated by an undisclosed third party owning the rights to media adaptations of Slender Man up until 2016, when they were sold to Mythology Entertainment.
  • Do Not Adjust Your Set / Hostile Show Take Over: Frequently both blogs and vlogs get hijacked for an episode or two by an antagonist or a Trickster Mentor, although rarely by Slender Man himself.
  • Don't Go in the Woods: Honestly, half the time he doesn't even bother with the woods. So good luck avoiding everywhere you ever go.
    • Early backstory suggests his first known sighting was in the Black Forest in Germany.
    • Other images show him depicted in Lower Egyptian hieroglyphics, so this may not be the case.
  • The Dragon: Slender Man typically has one per work, sometimes more.
  • Driven to Madness: Quite a few protagonists descend into insanity over time.
  • Driven to Suicide: Occasionally happens to people in the mythos, usually as a way of escaping from Slender Man's grasp.
  • Eldritch Abomination: A fairly small-scale one, as abominations go, but that doesn't really help. It varies from blog to blog.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: For some reason, animals aren't crazy about this guy.
  • Evil Laugh: In some stories he occasionally let out a low giggle. It was pretty much decided it was more disturbing for him to be silent, but he did chuckle briefly in entry 23 of Marble Hornets...
  • Expanded Universe: Every single "side-story" counts as this: they all draw off different bits of mythology and references, and his powers (when actually shown) are not totally consistent. But that might make it scarier...
  • Expy: Nearly every blog/vlog nowadays seems to have some character equivalent to totheark or the Masked Man. This is one of the way key concepts in the Mythos developed.
  • The Fair Folk: One of the earliest stories of what Slendy may be; that he's a malevolent fairy that lives in the forest and preys on naughty children. Several theories presented during FearPlay also speculate on the subject, including the possibility that The Slender Man may, in fact, be an entire forest.
  • Faux Affably Evil: One could argue that his penchant for dressing in suits qualifies him. Of course, he can be genuinely Affably Evil Depending on the Writer.
  • Filler: Frequent in all the video series and blogs, but also justified: the bloggers are putting up all the mundane stuff from their lives or of their projects, except Slender Man just so happened to get involved. This is becoming less common now that more blogs are starting with the protagonist already aware that they're being stalked by The Slender Man.
  • Foil:
    • The Slender Man is often considered to be the foil to the standard Haunted House. While the Haunted House is usually in a more rural setting as something stationary and traps its victims, The Slender Man is often found in an urban environment and stalks his victims. Further analysis here.
    • He's also one to The Rake; Slender Man is a Humanoid Abomination that prefers to let teleporting and tentacle summoning do the killing for him, wears a suit, stands tall and silent at all times and has no clear motive to speak of. The Rake is an Animalistic Abomination that uses fearsome claws as weapons, is nude, has a mangled, hunched over appearance mixed with a savage persona and has the very clear motive of killing whatever it comes into contact with.
  • Foreshadowing: If any character gives a brief blurb about childhood fears or skeletons in the closet, expect Slendy to be directly connected to all of them.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You
  • Free-Range Children: In Marble Hornets and Dark Harvest, the protagonists are in their teens to early 20s. Parents are only mentioned, and are seldom seen. Note: Both Chris and Alex's (from Dark Harvest) parents are deceased as of Log Entry #30.
  • Fridge Horror:
    • This is an invoked given, what with Slender Man's behind-the-scenes style making it where both the characters and readers don't realize that he's involved in certain situations until much later.
    • There's also the frightening implications that come up in blogs with an Unreliable Narrator, namely, that the protagonist that we've gotten so attached to has been manipulating us into viewing things from his or her warped perspective.
    • The sheer number of monsters in unrelated works that are reminiscent of Slendy is just a bit unsettling. This includes the Stranger in the Pallid Mask, The "Thin Man" in Metropolis (some translations have him as "The Slender Man"), the Terrible Trivium, the Gentlemen, the Tall Man, the other Tall Man, the Harrowing, the Silence, The Shape — hell, go far enough back and you get the noppera-bo of Japanese myth.
    • Go back really far, and you get the gurumuka of the Australian Aborigines on Groote Eylandt, sort of a cross between Slendy and a vampire... which is unnerving when you consider the number of Slenderblogs set in Australia, as well as the purported Australian origins of the first two photos.
    • There's been several Slender Man inspired crimes recently. One of them would, in an ordinary blog or vlog, imply the attacker is turning into a Proxy. Slender Man is theorized to have been created through the Tulpa Effect, AKA the 'Make Lots of Stories and Think About It A Lot' Effect.
  • Genre-Busting: While the majority of stories in the Mythos follow the standard Cosmic Horror Story style, a growing number have begun to mash together genres which one wouldn't normally associate with Slender Man; for example:
  • Gratuitous Latin: As many a horror movie or story would suggest, Latin can be creepy!
  • Hazardous Water: The Slender Man often has some form of connection to water. Can You See the Words plays it the hardest by far—every reference to water is struck out (when asked about this by a reader, the protagonist simply replies with something vague about correcting mistakes) and the blog links to worldwide news reports on floods.
    • Tribe Twelve references this in the video where Noah flies to meet the Hybrids. On the plane, he shows that it is raining outside, and says it makes him nervous... then Slendy teleports into the plane. However, Noah does not recall this (which isn't shocking considering the nature of Slendy's doings) but what IS notable is that nobody else seems to remember, either. That part isn't as normal. We heard them all screaming and panicking, so they obviously saw him... assuming he was really there.
      • Could be Viewers Are Geniuses / Shout-Out. In the expanded Cthulhu Mythos, The Great Old One's element is water, so maybe one Eldritch Abomination tipping its hat to another?
      • There is a belief among many that the Slender Man actually has a negative connection with water. Usually, one couldn't hurt the Slender Man, but there have been cases in which people could attack him successfully. This has always been near a body of water.
  • Heroic BSoD: Main characters often suffer breakdowns due to particularly devastating encounters with the Slender Man.
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: Used in Tribe Twelve and X Mandelbrot. Both series protagonists are quite disturbed at what they missed.
  • Historical In-Joke: Being in the ARG scene, many blogs/vlogs invoke real-life places or urban legends (like The Rake; see Shout-Out). Often, this makes things much more effective.
  • Hollywood Atlas: Averted, as the authors of the mythos set their stories where they live and write it specifically to be as normal and real as possible. None of the Australian stories feature stereotypes of any kind, and the one set in England barely even acknowledges their location.
  • Horror Struck: Unsurprisingly, this happens quite a lot.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Provides the trope page image, for good reason.
  • I Have Many Names: The Slender Man is often given additional or new names, such as "The Operator" in Marble Hornets.
  • Invisible to Normals: More than one ARG has implied that only Slendy's targets can actually see him in real time; however, he will always appear on digital video unless he, say, breaks the camera like in Seeking Truth. This leads to protagonists reviewing video and wondering why they didn't notice the surprisingly obvious ten foot-tall faceless man when they actually shot said video.
    • A variation shows up in one of the earlier Marble Hornets (Entry #12): The crew filming near the Tower see Slendy standing in the open but none of them seem to notice how he's eight feet tall, the fact that he has no face, or the way his arms dangle in the most chilling fashion.
    • This could be a reference to earlier versions of the legend stating that his face is different to each person seeing him, but recordings only show a blank spot where his face should be, and occasionally that his height doesn't seem to register immediately. They didn't notice because he looked normal to them at the time.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Frequent.
  • Karma Houdini: Most stories that have actually finished either go for this or cast doubt on the Slender Man being present at all. Of course, one could consider it unfair to actually defeat a communal character with finality.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Slender Man's favorite shtick. Your life is going normal, then you come across, say, a Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book or a few ominous photographs and then all your loved ones are either killed or Brainwashed and Crazy and no one will believe you.
  • Land Down Under: The page picture was "taken" from the City of Stirling Library Collection. Stirling is in Perth, Western Australia.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Slender Man is capable of doing this to people.
  • Last Note Nightmare: Several videos end with these.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Newer works have an unfortunate tendency to detail major plot points from older works (especially Marble Hornets and Just Another Fool).
  • Lean and Mean: Very, very lean. Very, very mean.
  • Leitmotif: Audio distortion, although like anything else, usage in the stories varies.
  • Lighter and Softer: Even in the Slenderverse, it happens. Two sweet blogs about those stalked by a Tall Man in a reflection of the standard setting. http://lakereflections.wordpress.com and http://ishudderfromhope.blogspot.com
    • Word of God on both actually says the antagonists are anti-Slendies. This is more apparent in Lake Reflections, where the Tall Man is ultimately a benevolent influence on the protagonist's life.
  • Logic Bomb: According to Wild Mass Guessing, he only exists if you're thinking about him. Now try not to think about him. However, he can only be seen by those who already know him. So how did people get to know him in the first place? Before its apparent demise, A (of A Lack of Lexicon/Defining?) suggests that the creator of Slender Man made something similar to the Slender Man, which it decided to use as the source of its power, or that it was a coincidence.
    • If interprented with Carl Jung's theory of the collective subconcious, The Slender Man has always existed in our minds and the person who created the Slender Man drew from that subconcious unknowingly and unwittingly unleashed him!
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Characters that have been driven insane by Slender Man have started to post comments on other Slender-blogs, taunting both the protagonists and their attempts to stay alive in their struggles against Slendy. Also, M of The Tutorial has been giving the protagonists encouragement and words of advice.
    • Many Slenderblogs are so intertwined that readers have to follow at least nine or ten to have any idea what's going on.
    • This reached its logical conclusion with an actual crossover event between many blogs in late November, wherein Slender Man and his minions launched a series of attacks against the bloggers.
    • The Everyman HYBRID team seems to have stumbled upon the Rake in "Cops Checked, no Body"
    • Zeke and Noah guest-starred in the Everyman HYBRID chatroom on Sunday, March 20, along with EMH boys Jeff and Evan.
    • Ron from Drew's Box 'o' Stuff, Pete from Search and Reveal, Clarice from Unchained, Slice from Live in the Light, Yggdrasil Core/Hellfire from Copper and Crome, Black Leaf and Al(x)nw from The Land of Black Leaves and Casting Aside My Sins, and Liam and Johnny from Bordorline all teamed up for one hell of a crossover in Febuary and March.
    • Here's this diagram courtesy of an Unfiction forum member. Best part about that diagram? For all it's glory and complexity, it's still a SIMPLIFIED version of the crossover web. You'd need several pages to keep track of every single minor crossover that has occurred within the Mythos.
  • Meaningful Background Event: He IS one.
  • Mind Rape: One of the many tools the Slender Man has in his arsenal.
  • Most Writers Are Male / There Are No Girls on the Internet: Played straight in the early days of the mythos, but now mostly averted. There are many blogs and vlogs written by women or starring female characters. This article goes into considerable detail about the place of girls and young women in the occult world in general, and how they connect with the Slenderman belief system.
  • Motif: The tensor product symbol (generally called the "Operator symbol" in mythos-related contexts) is a calling card for the Mythos and is typically written as (X) in text. Some in-universe characters (such as M) theorize that it's a Slendy-repellent, while others think it calls him towards them.
  • The Movie: Several different attempts.
    • The first one released, Windigo. It's called that because everyone in the movie mistakes Slendy for the wendigo. It's legally available to watch for free.
    • Hylo, an upcoming movie. The website has a trailer and a bit of information, but not much else is known.
    • Slender Man, released in 2018 to lackluster reviews and viewership. Despite this, its relatively low budget of $10 million for production and promotion means the $48 million it earned worldwide actually made it a decent success financially.
    • The Tall Man has been rumored to be at least inspired by the mythos, due to the vague similarity in the synopsis, but there is too little information as of yet to jump to that conclusion.
      • As it turned out the film very effectively uses the mythos as a Red Herring; the first half leads you to believe a Slender Man-type figure is responsible for the missing children, but the real explanation is completely non-supernatural and much more rooted in realistic adult worries.
    • There's also Entity, which, as stated above, was cancelled due to the 2014 stabbing.
    • Marble Hornets itself had a movie in 2015, titled "Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story." With Doug Jones playing Tall, Dark, and Faceless itself.
    • Beware The Slenderman is a True Crime documentary about a 2014 stabbing incident committed by children who were convinced Slenderman was real. It's notable for devoting a significant amount of time to explain the various ways in which the myths spread and changed over time on the Internet, and how mythology in general is formed.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Some of the stories state that Slendy only goes multi-armed when he's about to go in for the kill. So basically, if you see him with more than two arms, you're screwed.
    • Although, he has been known to use his multiple appendages to scare his victims.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: There's no 'definitive' version of the creature or its back story, which the creators encourage.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: The users of the Something Awful forums, where Slender Man originates from, have expressed horror over some of the real-life repercussions of Slender Man becoming so popular, in particular the case where two young girls attempted to murder a friend to gain the fictional character's favour.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Even though Slender Man was made to be terrifying, he still has quite a fan base. In-universe, this can be how Slendy ensnares his victims. "Ooh, this is a pretty creepy meme, I'm going to read more..."
  • No Ending: Some of the blogs/video-blogs end quite abruptly, occasionally with the implication that Slendy nabbed the blogger.
  • Noodle Implements: The vast majority of the time, we only see the aftermath of Slender Man's visitations. It's probably for the better, anyway.
  • Noodle People: But you already knew that.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: In many of the stories, we see the result of the Slender Man's presence instead of witnessing the events firsthand.
  • Numerological Motif: Strings of identical digits seem to hold some significance with Slender Man. For example, in Entry #26 of Marble Hornets, he appears on camera in Alex's house on April 4 (4/4), 44 seconds after the clock strikes 4:44, and in Entry #29, he appears at the 55 second mark in the 66 second long video. In Just Another Fool, its implied that he attacks Logan at 11:11 on November 11. In Tribe Twelve, in the 'Night Recording' entry, Noah wakes up coughing at 3:33 on the dot, and in the 'dot dash' video from Everyman HYBRID, the old woman that Jeff visits to obtain information lives in room 222, and in that same audio file Jeff discusses a fire that occurred on some day at 5:55.
  • Obscured Special Effects: Common in the video series and the various still images of Slender Man, by means of Ominous Visual Glitches and distant shots of him. Besides contributing to the Nothing Is Scarier effect, it also masks the low budget of the various stories.
  • Oh, Crap!: The feeling any character gets when they realize that Slender is watching or nearby (usually both).
  • Online Alias: Some of the characters use their "real names", but many of them stick to aliases. J, M and Zero come to mind the most.
  • Ominous Fog: In one of the early stories, Slender Man's touch could melt victims into a mist... and, in fact, was the source of the mist clinging to his home forest. Several of the initial pictures of SM have him partially hidden by fog.
  • Organ Theft: Well, actually, it's more like Organ Borrowing And Haphazardly Replacing.
  • Perception Filter: See By the Eyes of the Blind and Invisible to Normals. It's likely not that he's actually invisible, just those who aren't his targets have their minds tricked into ignoring him.
  • Pet the Dog: He supports the Haiti relief effort, apparently.
  • Plaguemaster: First seen in Tribe Twelve and then later in other blogs, people associated with Slendy tend to come under an odd Sickness, the symptoms of which include coughing, bleeding from the mouth, nose, or eyes, vomiting, disorientation, potential black outs, and potentially fevers.
    • The final few entries of Marble Hornets implies a very interesting inversion of this; that the Sickness comes first and that Slender Man is a symptom thereof.
  • Playing with Fire: Places that have to do with Slendy tend to inexplicably go up in flames.
  • Psycho Sidekick/Les Collaborateurs/Loony Fan/The Quisling: Occasionally in the stories the protagonist (or the antagonist) will gain the attention of a crazy person. The motives and goals of said crazy person vary, and will sometimes change as the story progresses.
  • Quizzical Tilt: A long standing trait of the Slender Man, usually occurs right before Missing Time or Combat Tentacles
  • Real After All: Or Is It? - There are quite a lot of similarities between the Slender Man and the "Smiling" or "Grinning" Man mythologies. Although the Grinning Man/Indrid Cold has his own mythology, it is possible that the post on Something Awful was inspired a bit by it.
    • There is quite a large variety of ghost stories you can find with varying levels of similarity to the Slender Man. It can get pretty unsettling the more you find.
  • Recounted by the Main Characters: Most versions of the Slender Man mythos are reported as if they were real.
  • Right Behind Me: Frequent in the video-blogs.
  • Room Full of Crazy: This is apparently what exposure to Slender Man will do to you, judging by some of the articles.
  • Rule of Scary: Beyond being a suit-wearing, too-tall, too-thin humanoid with enormously long arms, there's little consistency to what Slender Man is. For instance, the earliest incarnations had his face vary from viewer to viewer and depicted him forcibly amassing a cult. Neither are common now. Nobody really cares—if it's scary as hell, go with it!
  • Sanity Slippage: Happens to a couple bloggers. Kind of a given by now.
  • Seekers: If the characters don't start out as one of the variations on the list, they frequently will become one as the story progresses.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Pretty much every blog that has ended so far has ended like this.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Slice of Life: Due to the nature of journals and blogs, a good portion of the ARGs and stories lean toward this. Granted, the slice of life includes the occasional bit of weirdness or horror, but most of them still need to work, shop, and interact with people. It could be argued that part of the draw is watching how a regular person goes about his life with addition of the paranormal.
  • Speak of the Devil: It's a common theory that you can only see the Slender Man if you know of him, or if he is captured with technology. So, before reading this page, he could have been standing right behind you. But don't turn around. He only exists if you're thinking about him. Now try not to think about him.
  • Spin-Off:
    • The Fear Mythos, which maintains that the Slender Man is only one of many different monsters that terrorize humanity.
    • The Willow Mythos which maintains that he actively creates beings such as himself.
  • invokedSpiritual Successor: Some fans consider it to be one of the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Stylistic Suck: The soap opera film project Alex comes up with in Marble Hornets, the mediocre health/workout routine from Everyman HYBRID, and Damien's crappy Slender-blog attempt from Dreams in Darkness, up until they get Hijacked By Slender Man.
  • Suddenly Speaking: Sort of. He's never audibly spoken, although he has written (or seemed to write) several blog entries. However, in the 'Deluge' entry of Marble Hornets, if the audio is reversed and the right channel removed, a low pitched voice can be heard to call 'Alex', the name of one of the main protagonists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRahdmGYQmo
    • Starting with Milo's Tape, Tribe Twelve has Slender Man making audible growling sounds, which culminates in a pretty terrifying Evil Laugh in Crawlspace. Exaggerated as later episodes have him transforming into a Giant Spider and making animalistic screeches.
  • Surreal Horror: The fact that the central figure of the Mythos is a tall faceless guy in a business suit is surreal as is, but the numerous works tend to get very weird once Slendy starts driving people insane.
  • Theme Naming: Both Robert Sagel and Thage do this to the other bloggers; the former with the archetypal roles he believes they possess, and the latter with a Chess Motif.
  • The Men in Black: Acording to the original posts by Victor Surge, an organisation known as "Optic Nerve" actively monitors The Slender Man.
  • Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Though technically, he doesn't make any bumping noises. Or any other noises for that matter. All he does is stand outside your window, in your living room, or by your bed, not making any sound. And not doing anything.
  • Tulpa: This is a fairly common theory about Slender Man's origin.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Very common. But did the Slender Man drive the narrator crazy, or was he already crazy and using Slendy as an excuse? And then come the cases where the narrator isn't so much crazy as just lying.
  • Urban Legend: Not deliberately manufactured so much as a creepypasta which took off so wildly (surprising even the original author) that many later listeners/readers would not know its origins despite full explanation being only a few Google searches away.
  • Villain-Based Franchise
  • Villain Protagonist: Several Slenderblogs are written from the point of view of Slendy's minions, such as Morningstar in The Morning Hunter.
    • Then there's I'll See You in Hell, which is written by a serial killer.
    • Compile Truth became the first video series to star one.
  • Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: a distressingly common Feature Of qUite a few of the sleNDer blogs is to have whoever is tYping Only capitalize the letters that can be Used to spell out whatever message they want readers to decipher.
    • A Rainbow Life actually has the blogger Lampshade this, stating something along the lines of "oh, sorry for the random capitalizations, my fingers keep slipping."
  • When Trees Attack: His tallness and multiple arms are reminiscent of a tree. In some interpretations, he actually is a tree impersonating a man, though the inverse is just as likely true since most of the photoshops have him in a forest surrounded by long spindly trees. In Marble Hornets, one of the characters tells a story about criminals being tied to trees and kept alive for years as the growing branches stretch their limbs out of their sockets, implied to have some connection to Slendy.
  • Word-Salad Horror: While the Slender Man himself is mute, totheark and many protagonists that get driven insane frequently speak with surreal, ominous gobbledygook.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: The Slender Man. The more you think about him, the more likely he'll appear. To you. And no one will know. Have fun!

you finished Reading the page? good for yoU. everythiNg is fiNe. just don't lOok out your windoW.
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Alternative Title(s): Slender Man

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Slender Man

Taking place within the perspective of a camera, the game interface would begin to distort into static the closer the Slender Man is to you. And should the Slender Man gets too close to you before you could even escape it, it's game over.

How well does it match the trope?

4.83 (6 votes)

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Main / StaticScrew

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