After waking up with a jolt, the girl laid in bed a few seconds longer. Reaching over to switch on her bedside lamp, she tried to remember exactly what had stolen her sweet slumber away. When she couldn’t, the brunette swung her legs over the side of the bed and heaved herself up. Checking the time on her phone, she snorted when she saw it was three in the morning, the witching hour. Knowing that sleep would only evade her, she left her bedroom for the kitchen, a good cup of coffee on her mind.
As she passed by her front door, a chill spread like liquid fire down her spine. It’s only Winter, she told herself, focusing again on the coffee plan. Measuring out scoops, water, and preparing her cup kept her occupied, but as the dark liquid boiled, she had nothing left to keep her mind from wandering off. The chill returned and she couldn’t help but glance behind her to the front door. It stood there innocently enough, just like always. The deadbolt was still in place and she could see nothing amiss with it. Turning back to her coffee, she did her best to forget about the feeling.
With her cup in hand, she started back towards her bedroom. As she walked by the front door, she decided that a quick glance out of the peep hole would help calm her restless thoughts. The chill worsened with each step she took towards the door and further away from the safety and warmth of her blankets. She pressed her empty hand against the cold, metal door and took a deep breath before leading her eye to the peep hole.
At first, she could only see an inky blackness and somehow seemed to swirl in itself. When she blinked in surprise, the void melted away. She wished it hadn’t. In its place, there stood what she could only guess was once a man. The limbs were long and inhumanly awkward, with bulky joints branching off into several arms, not unlike the branches of a tree. The creature was draped in a black suit, somehow making the thing more nightmarish to her. The icing on the proverbial cake, however, was what passed as the hellish thing’s face. It was as though her mind blurred the ghastly visage to spare itself further shock and horror.
She shoved herself away from the door with the hand still pressed against it. The scalding mug of coffee fell, the liquid burning her bare legs as she fell backwards and tried to crawl away from the door. She knew, somehow, that her mind hadn’t been playing tricks on her. As she crab walked away from the door, she watched as tendrils as black as the void itself snaked around through the cracks. The girl was trapped between the instinct to flee and the gut feeling to not turn her back on the door. When the door jolted, the urge to flee overcame her and she slipped in the burning liquid as she tried to make it back to her room.
She knew deep down that she was trapping herself in a corner, but she had to get away from the door. The girl was halfway down the hallway when she heard the previously locked door creak open. She screamed and slipped into a wall, cracking her chin on it and stunning her.
After that, there was only blackness.
“Nicole?” a warm, male voice snapped the woman out of her trance. As she turned around, she was met by one of her sister’s doctors. She nodded, not sure if she should say anything, or even if she could find her voice if she did have something to say. That morning, she had gotten an urgent phone call from the hospital, saying that her sister, Lindsay, was there. Before they had even let her see her, the doctors had pulled her off to the side and insisted that they talk to her about what might have happened. Phrases like ‘self-inflected’ and ‘assault’ had been thrown around and Nicole felt her mind reel.
She still hadn’t fully understood what they had been saying until she saw Lindsay with her own eyes. Her little sister had a bandage wrapped around her head, covering both of her ears as well as her eyes. They said it was to keep her now deadened eyes from drying out and to try to keep infection out of the wounds Lindsay had made to her ears. The doctors had guessed that either she, or someone else had jammed a pencil into them to keep her off balance or to deafen herself against something. There was the mix of first and second degree burns on her hands, legs, and feet, from what was assumed to be the coffee her neighbors found spilled all over the entry to her apartment.
As Nicole walked into her sister’s hospital room the first time, she thought she had spied the silhouette of a man in the window. That, she knew, was impossible. Her sister’s room was on the third story of the hospital.
It was a tall man wearing a black suit, with a blank face.
The Slender Man is a supernatural creature with nebulously defined characteristics and abilities. In almost every description of the Slender Man, his attributes will vary, sometimes greatly. However, his basic appearance and traits are relatively consistent across different accounts. He generally appears (in modern times) as a tall humanoid creature in a black or grey suit, red or black tie, and white shirt. His face is totally white, completely devoid of facial features. He has no hair, and generally has normal-looking bare hands, albeit with fingers longer and bonier than a typical human. Slender Man has been depicted in imagery and literature at anywhere between 6 and 10 feet tall, depending on the situation, though in a video he is usually only around 6-7 feet tall.
He behaves in what might be seen as a passive-aggressive manner, often stalking targets for years at a time before ever attacking. It’s understood that he tends to torture his targets mentally, over long periods of time, using fear and paranoia to drive them to insanity. No one has ever satisfactorily explained the reasoning behind his tactics or the way he chooses his victims, and his purposes and/or motivations have yet to be fully ascertained. He is rarely if ever, portrayed in a good or benign light and is generally understood to be a malevolent force.
There are two main descriptions of the Slender Man’s behavior. Originally, he was portrayed as being not only malevolent but also extremely dangerous. He would stalk its targets, impale them on trees, and remove their organs. In comparison, contemporary depictions have turned him into a more passive-aggressive creature. Instead of an active chase, he is more likely to let his prey devolve slowly into madness until they are unable to cope with their situation, often watching from afar as this takes place. If angered, it will charge the aggressor and vanish with its victim to an unknown location. Modern interpretations also show that The Slender Man interacts oddly with electronic equipment and causes massive interference with audio and visual recording devices. Sometimes an individual can determine if the Slender Man is near simply by how certain electronics act. Radios, televisions, and cameras are especially susceptible. How powerful this effect seems to vary, which could be due either to The Slender Man’s state of aggression, or other outside factors that he may or may not be controlling (eg: weather, cell phone signals, etc.)
In almost every contemporary description, The Slender Man is associated with stalking, often for extremely long periods. It is not unusual for a person to be trailed by the Slender Man for hours, days, months, or even years. However, he usually appears when least expected and where the victim is alone and the most comfortable (home, school, work, outdoors, along trusted roads, etc), and often times he also strikes when the target’s defenses are down, sometimes to the point where they simply have no will to fight him off any further, making for an easier kill. One of the most common features of The Slender Man, generally accepted among both fans of the mythos and victims, is that he will target those who reach a certain level of understanding about it. These accounts vary from person to person, but it seems that being a victim of the Slender Man is almost contagious or memetic. One can become his prey by encountering someone he is already chasing. Basic research and even collecting images don’t appear to incur its notice, someone has to delve into the mythos in an almost obsessive way.
Originally he killed its victims by impaling them on the branches of very tall trees and allowing them to bleed to death. The victim’s organs would be individually removed and placed in plastic bags, which were then returned to their original positions in the body. The victims’ corpses did not show any sign of a struggle. However, as time has gone on, it would seem that Slender Man has abandoned this practice.
New accounts of the Slender Man’s powers, abilities, and attacks show some drastic differences from his original behaviors. Gone is the original desire to impale targets on trees, his overtly aggressive attitude, and the tendency to target mainly children. He now appears to target people who encountered him as children, often stalking them for years. It does so in such a way that the target is often unaware of his presence for months, years, or even decades. the Slender Man’s stalking behavior is remarkably passive. He torments an individual by repeatedly appearing and vanishing – usually without harming the victim in any physical way.
He invades the mental safety of his prey by appearing inside their house, outside their home, on roads they travel, at their place of work when they are alone or ensuring only the victim can see him, or while the target is sleeping. The sporadic and unexpected nature of these manifestations causes fear and unease, which eventually can grow into incredible paranoia. This period of stalking can last anywhere from several minutes to decades. The longer Slender Man stalks a victim, the greater strain on their mental health, which may be one of his goals.
Prolonged stalking causes what has been named “Slender Sickness,” which is both a mental and physical ailment and can cause paranoia, nightmares, coughing and difficulty swallowing, convulsions, exhaustion, vomiting, hallucinations, etc. The physical symptoms naturally affect an individual’s mental health, but it is believed that Slender Man exerts a direct effect on the mind as well. However, this phenomenon and Slender Man’s control over it have yet to be fully explained.
Slender Man’s general appearance consists of a tall figure standing from 6 to 14 feet tall wearing a black suit, white shirt, a black or red tie, black trousers, and black shoes. Slender Man’s skin is pale white, and he has no facial features of any kind, although some depict him as having somewhat empty visible eye sockets, nose, and mouth. Slender Man is also iconic for having long black tentacles (also seen as extra-long hands) which he usually uses to snag in victims. However, it is possible that this is not his real form, and that he is actually an eldritch being whose true form cannot be comprehended.
Due to Slender Man’s history being completely unknown, it is hard to determine just what he is thinking, although he is commonly seen as a cruel, sadistic, manipulative, predatory, misanthropic demon. It is entirely unknown if Slender Man actually cares for his proxies’ safety, or if he’s just using them in order to get what he wants, showing his controlling and tyrannical personality.
Due to Slender Man being such an enigmatic figure, it is entirely unknown if he is indeed malevolent, or if what he does is true, leading others to portray him in an anti-heroic and benevolent way, and is only taking children in and brainwashing people simply to show them his ways in trying to be better than the current state of humanity. This leads to another popular variation of the Slender Man, commonly used in AUs, headcanons, and fanfiction, portraying him as a fatherly and typically caring personality to other villainous Creepypasta characters, usually getting irritated by their antics and controlling what goes on, typically in a mansion.
Many stories seem to indicate that The Slender Man can control a person’s mind, which became the basis for the Proxies in the video ARG, a trend that later spread to Slenderblogs. The Slender Man also originally had stronger connections to children, and many of the original stories revolved around disappearing children or featured Slender Man sightings in photos with children. This was often attributed to the innocence and morbid curiosity of children, which could lead them down the path of discovering the creature.
As more stories came forth, however, the use of tentacles and tentacle-like appendages became less common, and the invisibility was limited or eliminated depending on the storyteller. (On the other hand, some stories took the invisibility even further and claimed it was entirely invisible without the use of electronic devices.)
EMH, TT, ML, and DH all contain some sort of video and/or audio distortion, indicating that The Slender Man has an effect on modern digital instruments. This does not appear in any of the original accounts, but these also mainly make use of photographs and lower-tech video. EMH has suggested that this distortion is the effect of Sigma Radiation, radiation said to be given off by Slender Man and the Rake. Sigma Radiation is also contagious, as it entered Evan’s blood-stream when his arm was brutally maimed by The Rake.
EMH and ML also describe the phenomenon known as “Slender Walking.” Slender Walking is a term created to describe Slender Man’s apparent teleportation and space-time warping/teleportation between locations. These abilities were seen in early Slender Man accounts and are one of the most recognizable elements of the mythos. Slender Man’s ability to appear – seemingly from nowhere – in a place where he wasn’t mere seconds before is one of his most terrifying traits and EMH mentions the effect of this on a person’s mental health.
Certain contemporary views see his movement as either extremely limited or impaired as if he is incapable of moving his body properly. It is rarely seen to actually move and goes from standing still to rapidly teleporting within the blink of an eye. There is no apparent coherency to his movements or position, and he is capable of teleporting several dozen times to various locations in a few seconds. He does not flee and can be just as dangerous standing still as when obviously teleporting. He is capable of – and often will – stay within several dozen feet of his target, no matter how they try to escape. It seems to be part of his psychological attack to stay just within visual range without actually attacking – the fact that he is there, no matter what, is often described as worse than actually being attacked, the psychological effects often deteriorating the mind of the victim as a result.
He appears to be able to follow any and all targets regardless of where they go, or where and how they hide. It isn’t certain how he does this, but he seems able to keep a perfect trace on its targets, often speculated to be a part of his supposed existence as a potentially omnipresent being.
The earliest argued reference to the legend is within the cave paintings found in the Serr da Capivara National Park in the Northeast of Brazil, which are believed to date from as far back as 9000 BC. These paintings show a strangely elongated character leading a child by the hand, but make no reference to the extra appendages.
The next known possible reference to the Slenderman comes from around 3100 BC in lower Egypt, with references to the “Thief of the Gods” or the “Thief of Kuk” becoming commonplace during the reign of Pharaoh Wazner. Hieroglyphic carvings representing the Thief were found in the pharaoh’s tomb, who was rumored to have had some kind of encounter with the entity. The carvings resemble a strange figure with multiple upper limbs, one that has never been found in any other hieroglyph language.
Renowned German woodcutter Hans Freckenberg created at least two woodcuts featuring a character he described as Der Ritter (The Knight) during the mid-sixteenth century that were discovered in Halstberg Castle in 1883. Whilst Freckenberg was well-known for his realistic depiction of human anatomy – something that was unusual among woodcuts of the time – these pictures featured a skeletal, multi-limbed character. Historians are unsure of the exact symbolic nature of the character, with some claiming that it is a personification of the religious wars that raged in Europe at the time, while others say it represents the mysterious plagues that have been believed to be the reason for the mysterious abandoning of the Hastlberg Castle and the nearby village in 1543. However, many insist that Freckenberg was attempting to represent “Der Großmann” (the Tall Man). According to legend, he was a fairy who lived in the Black Forest. Bad children who crept into the woods at night would be relentlessly chased by Der Großmann, who wouldn’t leave them be until he either caught them or they were forced to tell their parents of their wrongdoing. Even then, there is a chilling account from an old journal, dating from about 1702:
“My child, my Lars… he is gone. Taken, from his bed. The only thing that we found was a scrap of black clothing. It feels like cotton, but it is softer… thicker. Lars came into my bedroom yesterday, screaming at the top of his lungs that “The angel is outside!” I asked him what he was talking about, and he told me some nonsense fairy story about Der Großmann.
He said he went into the groves by our village and found one of my cows dead, hanging from a tree. I thought nothing of it at first… but now, he is gone. We must find Lars, and my family must leave before we are killed. I am sorry, my son… I should have listened. May God forgive me.”
There is also a Romanian fairytale which tells the legend of the Tall Man, featuring this description which may have taken to refer to the Slenderman “The tall man stood in a clearing, dressed as a nobleman, all in black. Shadows lay over him, dark as a cloudy midnight. He had many arms, all long and boneless as snakes, all sharp as swords, and they writhed like worms on nails. He did not speak, but made his intentions known,” In the fairytale, the Tall Man causes a mother to kill her husband and child before he slid from a fireplace and “clenched her in his burning embrace.”
There is also an English myth referring to the “Tree Man,” who is said to have a slim body with appendages that looks like tree branches. He is only known to be seen in the woods and was used as a story that parents told their children to thwart bad behavior. There have been quite a few disappearances of children that have been said to be linked to the “Tree Man.”