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    Crossover theories, Doctor Who 

The Slender Man is one of the Whispermen from Doctor Who
They have blank, white faces, sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere, and they drove at least one person mad(and that person was in prison awaiting execution for murder. Could the Whispermen have ordered him to murder that person, like Slendy supposedly does?). Also, there is this creepy poem about the Whispermen:
"Do you hear the Whispermen? The Whispermen are near.
If you hear the Whispermen, then turn away your ear.
Do not hear the Whispermen, whatever else they do.
For once you've heard the Whispermen, they'll stop and look at you."
If you see Slendy, or think about him, he could hunt you down. Sounds a bit like the Whispermen's stopping to look at you if you hear them. Slendy could either be one of the Whispermen, who broke away from the Great Intelligence, or he could still be working for the Great Intelligence, but just a different type of Whisperman. If he was still working for the Great Intelligence it would explain why he appears when he does, and why he targets specific people. The Great Intelligence split itself into lots of copies of itself spread through the Doctor's timeline, to try and undo all of his victories. Slendy could be targeting people who the Doctor saved, thus preventing him from saving them, or people without whom the Doctor could not have won. This could also be why Slendy appears in multiple places at once: it is multiple versions of him spread through time.

Compare Slender Man to the Minotaur from the Series Six episode "The God Complex".
  • He is capable of bending space to His will, and feeds not off a victim's fear but faith, which leaves them hopeless, and puts them into such a state of madness that they welcome the death He will bring unto them.
    • Praise Him.

The Slender Man is one of the Silence
  • He's gone rogue and isn't following the larger agenda of their race anymore.
  • It's also possible that he's just a juvenile, hence not having mastered some of the more advanced abilities of his species.
  • He's shy and avoids people he's not planning on killing. If he got up close and personal, he'd look like this.

Correction: "The Slender Man" is actually not a single entity, but simply juvenile Silence whose powers have not completely developed yet.

  • This explains why "he" can be seen in multiple places at the same time: it's like if some other species had a legend about "the Hu-Man". We're addressing an entire species as though it was one individual.

    • If Slender Man is a Silent that means A) he's been around for almost half a century (or more, if the woodcut in the original "Create Paranormal Images" thread is part of whatever passes for Slender Man's canon), B) he survived the "shoot on sight" subliminal message hidden in the moonlanding footage, and C) he's not a creation, he's a memory and now that memory has been inflicted on millions of Doctor Who fans.

  • He's Steve.

    • GOD DAMN IT STEVE!!!

The Slender Man is related to the Weeping Angels.
Here's something to chew on- the Angels have the weakness of only being able to move when you can't see them. Slendy seems to have a more powerful version of this ability- he can warp all over the place when not observed, but when you can see him, he slows to a much more normal speed. They both seem to have the ability to send people through time, but are also willing to outright kill them as well. They seem to be immortal, and impervious to normal forms of harm. They are both seen to have strange effects on video. Both Slendy and the Angels also clearly love inflicting as much fear and trauma on people as possible just because they like it. The Weeping Angels cover their faces to avoid seeing and paralyzing one another. Slendy has no face, perhaps so he can avoid seeing himself in a mirror and affecting his own movement as well. It almost seems like Slendy's a far more powerful Angel... but didn't the Doctor say they were perfectly evolved killing machines? Well, obviously not, since he's beaten them at least twice by now.
  • Also (at least as shown in the game Slender), staring at the Slender Man for more than a few seconds can drive you insane. Looking at a weeping angel straight in the eyes literally puts an angel into your head- perhaps he does something similar?

So they evolved further.

The result of this should be obvious.

On the other hand, this does mean that if we can get hold of the Doctor, we might just have a chance of putting the bastard down once and for all.

  • Maybe. It's a nice hope.
    • Hey, we already know that the Doctor > Satan and the Doctor > the combined might of Dalek and Cybermen armies, so it's not that huge of a stretch.
  • If this is true all the pictures and videos of him on the internet are becoming him.
    • Which makes sense, considering where the Slender Man mythos originated.
  • Alternatively (and I'm mostly putting this forward so I can sleep at night) he might just be starving. Just like the angels in Flesh and Stone, he's lost his form because he hasn't been feeding enough lately, and is even malnourished enough that his quantum lock is degenerating, so he just slows down rather than becoming stone. . After all, with all of the Slenderbloggers defending themselves so effectively, he can't have been getting many victims lately.

  • This also explains why there's never any trace of the people Slender Man attacks- because they get sent back in time.

The Slender Man is the offspring of a Weeping Angel and a Silent.
There's been theories of him being either one of these alien races; it isn't the biggest leap in logic to assume that he's a hybrid of both. (Of course, that begs the question of how exactly the two reproduce...)

The Slender Man is a hybrid between a Weeping Angel and a Silent.
Because it isn't scary enough yet.
  • Impossible, he moves when people are looking at him.
    • Yes, that's because of his Silent genes. Basically, he got the best of both his parents (The reality-warping ability, creepy facelessness, and speed of the Angel, the pure menace of the Silent's form (and maybe its lightning bolts) and the ability to move when seen). So yeah, we're all screwed.
    • However, the tale of how he came to be is a heartwarming story of forbidden love between a Silent boy and an Angel girl. Think like Romeo and Juliet, except with aliens and less death at the end. Well, less death of the protagonists.
    • Unfortunately, his parents were killed, and he was seen as an abomination. Because of his Angel genes, he became completely evil, and because of his Silent genes, he decided to come to Earth.
  • An alternative and somewhat disturbing prospect- staring at an angel for too long right in the eyes causes one to form in your head, but you can stop it from completely taking you over by closing your eyes. Perhaps one of the Silence had an encounter with an angel and was affected in this manner but refused to let the angel take over completely- so he sealed his eyes shut. The angel still has limited control- but since you can't actually see it the angel is unable to get into anyone's head, it is merely able to drive you insane. The result is that the personalities of both species eventually fused together into some form of messed up creature. This is also why The Slender Man remains perfectly still when observed, as he doesn't actually turn to stone but is unable to move as he hallucinates that he is.

The Slender Man is a time lord and the ark is his TARDIS.
Come on, how has this one not been posted yet?
  • Because A, that would go on the Marble Hornets page, and B, it's really not very funny?
  • Minus the ark part, it does sort of make sense. It's been implied that regenerations can sometimes result in a heavily disfigured form. A Time Lord regenerating from screaming hitting the earth after the Time War, and less lucky than The Doctor, probably wouldn't come out of it very well mentally OR physically. Gave him some pretty cool powers though.
  • As for which specific Time Lord? I'm going to have to guess- taptaptapTAP, taptaptapTAP...
    • The Master may or may not be involved with Dare 2 Die(see an above wmg), but I was thinking Slendy was a different one. "The Operator" sounds like a pretty good name for a Time Lord.
      • This would work out well, though, given The Master's penchant for controlling people. Just thinking about Slendy and The Master's famous line..."I am The Master, and you WILL OBEY ME!" Brr.

The Slender Man is a Time Lord and his suit is his TARDIS.
The suit's the reason he can appear and disappear instantly.
  • Either that or part of the botched regeneration mentioned in the last WMG merged him with his TARDIS, or at least part of it. ... or he IS a TARDIS, as it's quite possible to disguise a TARDIS as something humanoid. In which case, he's either a TARDIS driven mad by the Time War/the loss of its pilot, or "The Operator" isn't him, but the name of the Time Lord that pilots him. Whatever the case, this would all explain his TARDIS-like abilities: His teleportation, his time travel, and the Perception Filter. Problem is, he can't seem to teleport while being observed, and this typically isn't an issue for TARDISes.

The Slender Man is the Watcher, a form of the Doctor, and no longer needs the TARDIS.

The Watcher[1] is an apparition of the Doctor that appeared prior to his regeneration into Five with creepy similarities to The Slender Man: faceless, the ability to time travel sans capsule, and prone to stalking people on Earth (typically only related to the Doctor, but who knows?). One of his future regenerations is similar to when he regenerated into Five: violent, and subsequently difficult for him, causing him to spawn the Watcher again, but this time in the form of The Slender Man, and totally independent of the Doctor. Troper suggests that the regeneration is due to the Silence: you forget them when you see them, but The Slender Man is (apparently) blind and "sees" through telepathy and touch. Also works for the "perfectly evolved" Weeping Angels mentioned several spots above - Slendy is ALWAYS watching. Works because the Doctor's regenerations (at least as of late) appear to be a direct result of all the character development he SHOULD have had over the last season (or two, or three) suddenly happening at once. Two seasons of the Silence, and BAM, he regenerates - into the perfect weapon for fighting the Silence.

Slender Man is a Chameleon trying to imitate a Silent
  • From the Doctor Who story The Faceless Ones, the Chameleons have lost their forms so are using humans. Perhaps they used Silents.


    Crossover theories, Harry Potter 

Slender Man is a creature from the Harry Potter universe
Slendy is some creature which only hunts (or tries to make friends with) Muggles, and a lot of the crap that's going is being done by wizards attempting to preserve the Masquerade.

  • The distortion/static on videos and audio is caused by the presence of magical energy. Slendy himself occasionally enters into a "high magical emissions" mode, but some of it is caused by the spells from wizards trying to catch/contain Slendy.
  • Blackouts and missing memories are caused by the wizards Obliviating the muggle victims.
  • The pages torn of out notebooks were taken by wizards because the pages contained something that might break the Masquerade (further then it's already broken by seeing Slendy), plus some of the hints meant for the victims are removed entirely. The wizards don't just simply confiscate all of the clues in the hopes that the muggle victims will be able to puzzle something out from what's left and lead them to Slendy. This is why the clues given to the victims are often so puzzling and unsolvable: the information needed to completely solve them has been removed.
  • The coughing is caused by a special "don't see Slendy" potion that's being slipped to some of the victims. In certain locations this is vaporized into a gas so that anyone entering the area will be exposed to it.
  • Any instances of Alien Geometries are traps the wizards laid for Slendy.
  • Masky from Marble Hornets is actually one of the wizards trying to catch Slendy. The department trying to catch him doesn't have enough money for an invisibility cloak, and Masky is terrible with the disillusionment charm, but they know that muggles have recording devices that a wizard might not recognize. So when Masky has to break into a victim's house he dresses as a muggle and puts on a mask.
  • Huh? I thought people would be talking about him being a higher level Dementor or something... remember in one of the Marble Hornets videos someone is wearing a Jacket and talking about how cold it is, and the other people don't seem to notice, he has other similarities to Dementors also.

Slender Man is some sort of Hybrid Dementor, or simply a deformed Dementor with weakened powers
Look at an image of a dementor. Any one will do. It doesn't have a face, besides the one gaping hole where the mouth should be. And he dresses all in black, except for the undershirt. As mentioned in the above statement, Dementors make you cold, as well as drain away your positive emotions. They will make you sad, or afraid, perhaps even paranoid. The Slender Man does pretty much the same stuff to his victims. the only difference between Slendy and a Dementor is that Slendy can be seen by muggles, but only when he wants to be seen. We've never seen Slendy flying, and we've never seen a dementor wearing anything besides black rags, so perhaps Slender Man is some sort of human-dementor hybrid?


    Crossover theories, Men in Black 

The Slender Man is a Men in Black field agent
However, he is a rookie and is a threat to MIB's secrecy. His shape shifting abilities are powered by mass stored in a pocket dimension (so he doesn't violate the law of conservation of mass) and his teleportation... Well, he works for MIB.
  • Damn the memory loss all makes sense now, he's neuralizing people.

Slendy is an alien Man in Black sent to rally humanity against a different, malevolent Eldritch Abomination.
Building on previous WMG's, we've never actually seen Slendy hurt anyone. The people we know for sure he's abducted may very well have been rescued from other dangers, like the school fire. The Slender Man was not ''created'' by our fear, he was summoned by it because Earth is being targeted by another, far more malevolent Eldritch Abomination (possibly Zalgo). The evil quislings who really do all the damage/assault/arson/murder, such as Maskie and the Rake, are not being controlled by Slendy but by the evil entity. They claim to be working for Slendy in order to breed dissension and fear against him, and it's working because his planet's social norms are vastly removed from our own. All the same, with his great resourcefulness and snazzy uniform, Slendy is our best, last, and only line of defense against the worst scum of the universe.
  • Best. Theory. EVER! Also, he could've been sent to fight Candle Jack or something... Hey, I'm still here! This confirms it!
    • No, wait. I was wrong again, tropers. Slender Man, you idiot!


    Crossover theories, The Nightmare Before Christmas 

Slendy is Jack Skellington
It all makes sense now.
  • or relatives.

Jack Skellington is the Disney Version of The Slender Man.
Jack is a Slender Man of the Slender species, and this is Disney's way of immortalizing him in film. He can't kill anybody cuz it's Disney, and he can't kidnap children BECAUSE IT'S DISNEY! The only way they could express his want for children is through Christmas.

Following the above theory, The Slender Man is just a new form of Jack Skelington
Realizing people nowadays are harder to scare, Jack Skelington decides to do some field research. After learning about what people are scared of nowadays, he comes out for a fresh new idea for scaring people in the form of The Slender Man. Notice how both Slendy and Jack are really tall and really, well, slender. He does what he does because scaring is what he does best.


    Crossover theories, RWBY 

Slenderman is a humanoid Creature of Grimm.
To emphasize the "Grimm" part of "humanoid Grimm", let's look at what Slenderman and Creatures of Grimm have in common...
  • Color scheme: Grimm are mostly black with some white and a little bit of red. Slenderman's black suit and black Combat Tentacles account for the majority of his color, his skin is white, and his tie has been varyingly depicted as black or red.
  • Reaction to negative emotions: Grimm are explicitly stated to be drawn towards negative emotions. Slenderman's typical hunting pattern involves way more stalking and chasing than is strictly necessary for capture, which implies that he's deliberately provoking fear for as long as he can get away with doing so.

To emphasize the "humanoid" part of "humanoid Grimm," most RWBY characters tend to have their own personal symbol - for example Lie Ren has a lily, Nora has a heart... Slenderman has a circle with an X through it.

Furthermore, Slenderman is capable of having kids with Salem.
The most powerful kids will inherit both parents' mental prowessnote  and Determinator tendencies, Salem's ability to speak, Slenderman's Combat Tentacles, and Slenderman's Brown Note, Offscreen Teleportation and Walking Techbane powers. The less powerful kids will be missing one or more of the items on the list. Body build and facial features (or lack thereof) would be a wild card.

This is, of course, assuming that Salem is (also) a humanoid Grimm and that Grimm reproduce in that manner.

(quotemining) Emerald: Spare us the thought of you procreating.
note 


    Crossover theories, SCP 

The Slender Man is actually an SCP object.
He is a Keter level SCP object that has been deemed impossible to contain by the SCP Foundation. Thus they just opt to register all cases of people interacting with Slendy and administer amnesiacs to all involved. The bouts of Laser-Guided Amnesia are not caused by Slendy, but rather by Foundation agents who regularily memory wipe all who interact with Slendy. To support this, they also keep up a disinformation campaign to paint all reports of Slendy as mere Alternate Reality Games. A percentage of all the Slender Man related sites are most likely fakes kept up by the Foundation to make the real reports seem unreliable.

The Slender Man is SCP-966.
The "faceless businessman" is simply a hallucination that has become widespread among victims due to the Slender Man's increasing popularity on the internet.


    Crossover theories, Star Wars 

Slenderman would make an excellent Sith Lord.

His Slender Sickness, Offscreen Teleportation and Walking Techbane powers would easily translate into using the dark side of the Force. And if any underling fails him, the Slender Sickness can conceivably intensify to lethal levels.

Slenderman can Curb Stomp Darth Vader easily.

In a nutshell, a Dark Lord on Life Support picking a fight with a Walking Techbane is Too Dumb to Live.

To go into more detail...

Assuming that all of Slenderman's powers and capabilities are him using the Dark Side of the Force, that means the Force is strong with him. He and Darth Vader could sense each other from across half the galaxy. We don't know the maximum range of Darth Vader's Force-Choke, but the success of that technique depends entirely on whether or not Slenderman has lungs. As they close the distance on each other, Slenderman can ruin Darth Vader's life support tech long before Darth Vader can get close enough to use his lightsaber.


    Crossover theories, unsorted 

Slenderman is Coach Z from Homestar Runner
Think about it. They're both tall, thin men with little to no face (Coach Z's eyes are barely visible, especially in the dark), with creepy styles and creepier behaviors. The teleportation could easily just be him going Behind the Black, the tentacles are made of the same oily substance he exudes when in the pool, and his camouflage ability is because his suit is literally a green screen. He hasn't turned anyone into Proxies yet because none of them are human; they're all the same type of abomination that he is.
Slendy has been to the South Park universe (and possibly others)
In episode 205 Conjoined Fetus Lady, after Kyle is taken to the nurses office the kids start talking about what they've heard about the school nurse. Bebe says she heard that the nurse "has tentacles and eats children for lunch". Now who do we know who has tentacles and a taste for children? Given all the crap that's happened in that podunk mountain town, it wouldn't take much to suppose hes been there at some point. (Remember the early days when an alien could be seen in every episode?)
  • Just had a thought: what if Comedy Central didn't bleep out Kyle's (and Jesus's and Santa's) monologue at the end of 201 but instead was caused by audio distortion?

The Slender Man is Nergal
Tentacles, likes children, it has to be it. His wife left him and took his son, so he grew angry with humans so he removed his face, never wanting to face the world with the shame, and turned pale from anger. Would also be an interesting episode.

The Slender Man is agent 47
They both wear the same suit, they are both sociopaths who can be homicidal maniacs. The no-face, tentacles, stretching powers, and teleporting are results of being a clone who suffers from this at old age.

The Slender Man is Missingno.
Yes, that Missingno. Think about it. Very little is known about it, why it exists, and what it wants. Both cause memory problems, as seen in Marble Hornets and the way Missingno. screws up your Hall of Fame. Both cause insanity and sickness, whether in the form of human physical or mental issues or a game getting seriously glitched. Both can even kill, whether it be the literal way, or deleting your game.
  • Then he'd be a different glitch, not Missingno. Missingno. is mostly harmless besides the who Hall of Fame thing.
  • Oh, yeah, that's right, thank you. I just got Misingno confused with the other glitches. I think I had M Block in mind when I wrote this.

The Slender Man is a product of the Other World
Created as the opposite of someone who was short, ugly, unsuccessful and too talkative, Slender Man escaped the clutches of the other world. Wanting to no longer be tied to it, he tore out his button eyes, reason for why he has no face.
  • Or he could still be working for the Other World, and that's why he takes kids. The facelessness is just a mask to hide his buttons.

The Slender Man is an Eldrazi.
Specifically, a brood lineage of Ulamog. Note the bifurcated arms, tentacles, and lack of a face in each example. His comparative lack of size could be attributed to him being a human forcibly or willingly conscripted.

The Slender Man is the G-Man.
Think about it...
  • He's too tall, and too faceless to be the G-man. G-man may be of the same race, or perhaps Slendy is G-man's... employer.
    • Alternatively, he is another employee of G-Man's employers.

The Slender Man is Nyarlathotep.
Think about it: an Eldritch Abomination in human form, associated with disappearing children and unearthly noises, who fixates on a person and then torments them before finally driving them insane or making them disappear, who is also associated with Alien Geometries? It's just like "The Dreams in the Witch-House"! Clearly, the Slender Man is one Nyarlathotep's many, many undocumented forms.
  • For extra fun: in the Shin Megami Tensei series, Nyarlathotep tends to be pictured without a face, only a smooth surface. Atlus knows about him. They tried to warn us!
  • Well, in the story "Nyarlathotep", the crawling chaos is described as "swarthy, slender, and sinister." Two out of three's not bad. (Overuse of italics, go!)
  • One of nyarlathotep's forms is a pale faceless man and another is a shadowlike shape-shifter
    • Alternatively, Slendy is one of the Million Favored Ones.
  • Following from "Dreams in the Witch-House", maybe Brown Jenkin was the same race as The Rake? Either a younger specimen, a runt, or The Rake's a freakishly monstrous specimen? Other than the size difference, they share the same combination of a humanoid face and a beast like, rodent's body.
  • Dammit, got to this before me.

Slendy is the Blair Witch's relative.
Either they are siblings, friends, dating/married, or Slendy is the witch after getting a sex change, and is is a little sensitive about it and feels they won't be accepted.

Slendy is Candle Jack
That's why he No, but I'd like to meet him.

The Slender Man is this Earth's First Guardian.
Notice, he's both pale and faceless.
  • It explains the teleporting! And while the lightning may not be visible to the naked eye, who knows what it might do to electronic/magnetic media....
  • I was bored.
    • Congratulations. I cried.
  • And the kids he takes are actually the kids fated to play Sburb for this universe! He takes them away so he can train them how to work the game, so their session doesn't fail! It all makes sense now!

The Slender Man is a Gentleman Monster from the Tales Series.

Just look at this video and tell me you don't see the similarities. (Please note the game in question actually predates the Mythos by some years so it can't be the other way around).

  • Unless Slender Man was real to begin with, and the Something Awful thread was actually a way for those in the know to dump information on him under the guise of fakery.
    • But the game in question is set some thousands of years ago, even in its own realm. Who's to say when it occurred with respect to our dimension?

The Slender Man is somehow related to Valtiel
Both Valtiel and Slendy have blank faces, stalk people, get in areas that they shouldn't be able to, and Slendy's tentacles around the hands are exaggerated versions of Valtiel's hands. Slendy also has the classic Silent Hill monster trait of screwing with technology like cameras. Somehow, the Slender Man escaped the confines of Silent Hill's otherworld and entered the real world, possibly opening the way for the other monsters to escape or spread the Otherworld outside of the town.

In Everyman HYBRID episode "Joke's Over" Slendy caused a siren to blare and it seems like in Marble Hornets Entry #23 Jay wasn't sent to another building. The building he's in is the Otherworld, projecting an image Jay saw in the tapes against him

Slendy is a True Fae
Creepy, alien, disturbing, and prone to messing with people's heads... Sounds about right.
  • For what it's worth, he does have a strong connection to nature, being found mostly in the woods (well, until he starts making house calls) and having some sort of relationship with water.

Slendy is Mr. Popo's little brother
Seriously, watch this and tell me that they aren't related somehow. They're both creepy enough.
  • In "Vegeta Forces Krillin To Play: Slender: The Arrival" the very last shot when Krillin is attacked by Slendy is Popo's face. So maybe Popo went as a weird faceless guy for Halloween (Popo uses the day to be less scary) and sightings of him ended up being the first sightings of Slendy.

The Slender Man is the latest form of an ancient Eldritch Abomination.
Maybe it feeds on fear as stated above. Maybe it doesn't. This just occurred to me while watching Mysterion Rises and recalling a recent quote from Blizzcon, "Every artist wants to draw Cthulhu" before showing Cthulhu drawn as a happy janitor. Slender Man is becoming a real life "Wes Craven's New Nightmare". These things keep forming new identities. Humans being humans begin to become desensitized to the new form as time goes on. Destroying/sealing the Eldritch Abomination away in the collective subconscious, though it may take a few people into insanity with it.

Slender Man wasn't created.It is a sealed EA breaking free from its prison. A thing that 'time itself forgot and now it has returned. Maybe it wasn't always Slender Man, maybe it was, but Slender Man now is always have now that Slender Man has taken root. Exploding on the net. Gripping at the edges everywhere trying to merge itself into varying Mythos to prevent itself from being pulled back.

JTHM, Dr. Who, Freddy, instead of analogies... maybe those were Slender Man's equivalent of "Superboy Punch" against its prison. As I type this I am beginning to get scared. It feels like there is something watching me. Reaching over my body as I write this in bed, in the dark. I need to finish in a hurry. It's real, it's free. We need to forget it before it gets stronger. IT WILL GET STR

Slender Man is a fusion of Anonymous and Pedobear.
Both were born of the internet via the collective unconscious of it's users. Pedobear is self-explanatory... anonymous is a faceless man in a suit. Together they possess the required power to pass into our world.
  • For bonus points... they screwed up their Fusion Dance and that's why Slender Man is so disproportionate.

Slender Man is Indrid Cold.
They look identical, from what little we see of either of them. They both have a tendency to cause audio distortion. People who see them start bleeding from the eyes, ears or mouth. Their motivations are entirely unknown. People experience memory loss and spatial distortion around both of them.

The Slender Man is an Observer
He's always watching, seems to have powers over reality, bald, pale and appears in strange places. The facelessness effect is due to a phenomenon related to the Obervers' ability to cross realities.

The Slender Man is a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath
Most people have been trained by the Call of Cthulhu role playing game to think of the Dark Young as giant black tentacled horrors, but we only have limited information about them. They are associated with forests and have tentacles, just like the Slender Man.

The Slender Man is the Minotaur.
Sleep tight.

Following the above, he was imprisoned in the house.
It has been surmised that Slendy's powers don't work the same when he's being observed. So sometime between the 1500's and present day, in order to trap him, a runner lured him into the house, and had the door shut from outside, trapping him in there. The house was aware of his presence, and he was unable to slenderwalk out. Then Navidson came along, "defeated" the house, and set him free.
  • If this is the case, in order to defeat him, we have to find the house on Ash Tree Lane, lure him in there again, and (here's the kicker) get the Ghostbusters to come along, and Cross The Streams just inside the doorway, utterly destroying everything inside.

Slendy is, or will be inducted as, a member of the Sinestro Corps.
Given all the fear he induces, he'd be a perfect addition to Sinestro's army, and Sector 2814 doesn't seem to have a member right now. He probably isn't part of it yet since his suit seems to be all-black and no yellow. Perhaps his tie will change once he's inducted.

And yes, Sinestro promised him twenty dollars if he'd join up.

The Slender Man is related to the Gentlemen
Tall, thin, bald, impeccably dressed, creepy as all get-out? All checks on both accounts.
Some stories have Slendy dissecting his kills; the Gentlemen want to cut open your chest and take your heart.
Slendy has people of questionable sanity like Masky doing his bidding (possibly); the Gentlemen have straight-jacketed minions.
And to close I'll leave you with that creepy girl's song:

Can't even shout.
Can't even cry.
The Gentlemen are coming by.
Looking in windows,
knocking on doors...

They need to take seven
and they might take yours...
Can't call to mom.
Can't say a word.
You're gonna die screaming
but you won't be heard.

  • I had a similar idea a while back; my thinking is that he's their overlord. They're the Gentlemen, he's the CEO. This also means that it's going to be Buffy vs. Slendy eventually.

Slender Man is IT
Feeds on children? Check. Delights in causing fear and driving his victims insane before he kills them? Check. May be both fueled and weakened by Clap Your Hands If You Believe? Yep. IT decided to pick a more muted default form than a clown, though IT may still have the same sense of humor... he just doesn't talk much anymore.

And you'll float too.

Slender Man is an angel of death
He can disguise as a human, but it somehow works worse at people that heard about him. And of course someone that sees him is probably in some trouble, but he's not the threat himself.
  • This fits well with the reapers in Supernatural: they're well dressed, and only their next victims can see them.

As of Marble Hornets, we know that the Operator symbol, a circle with an X through it, is somehow connected to Slender Man, though it is unknown whether it summons him or keeps him away. In Constantine, we are shown the Mark of Mammon, which looks exactly like the Operator symbol.

Slendy is an Angel
That's why guns and other weapons don't work on him.
  • He could also be Adam, who was weakened after losing his soul. The Slender Man took Adolf Hitler's soul and uses it to create his weaker AT field. The reason he goes after children is because he's looking for Kaworu so he can get his soul back.

Slendy was created by Zimmy
Zimmy's nightmare world is populated mostly by creepy faceless people and spiders. Slendy would fit right in.

Slender Man is related to Noseybonk

Slender Man is a grey, one of The Men in Black, and the Silence.
  • Possible. The Greys and the MIB might actually be subconscious memories of the Silence. Slendy could probably be another imprint.

Slender Man is a failed Gear project
The Slender man is a gear that retained his/her/it's free will and is trying to summon an army of gears to kill That Man

The Slender Man is a No Face
The older descriptions of him having different faces is a result of people catching his face from different angles. Also, he feeds on others' emotions, which makes him only as harmful or as helpful as the people around him.

"The Slender Man" is a Puella Magi style witch.
It explains virtually everything about Slendy: static has been used at least once in the anime in relation to witches; the world warps when Slendy is near because the viewer is caught within its labyrinth; many of the strange things that happen can be caused by a Witch's mark; Witches feed off of grief. It probably made a wish related to protecting children when it made the contract.
  • Also, many of slender man's victims disappear without a trace. It has been established that people killed inside of witches barriers suffer the same fate.
  • Likely a witch somewhere the scale of Walpurgis night. It is immune to human weaponry enough to survive getting hit with concentrated fire from an assault rifle, and can manifest outside a barrier seemingly at will. It just has a different, more personal modis operandi than Walpurgis night.

Slender Man is the same species as the Skinnies from Falling Skies
He's been sent ahead of the main fleet to scout out the planet. His facelessness is due to a malfunctioning hologram projector that was supposed to disguise him as a normal human.

All Slender Man's victims have one thing in common they didn't tell us about - they created at least one bad fanfiction
Slender Man is an agent of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum or Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society that decided the only way to get rid of badly written fanfictions full of Sues and Plot Holes that haunts The Multiverse was to eliminate their creators by driving them crazy or scaring them straight.

H(a)unting is his Start of Darkness, where he entered the world created by bad Mary Sue fanfiction of himself, worse, he has to fight his own copy, that had become local Sue's guardian. And he lost. This lead him to conclusion that his mission could never be acomplished, as every world he fixes was replaced with two more, each being even bigger mess that previous one. He found a way to travel beyond the Multiverse, to the world that, as he found out, is home of writers, who created all other world. To our world. He wanted to punish those mad demiurges, who dare to pollute his precious Multiverse with their crap, but thanks to some sort of Timey-Wimey Ball he appeared before H(a)unting was created, bringing creation to his own mythos. All those badly-written fanfictions that sudennly stopped updating and their creators dissapeared from the web? He scared them straight.

He allows getting caught on pictures and tapes, as well as being subject of blogs, so he can make people contemplate his motives more, as this makes his job easier and people respecting him. He is trying to go after people like Chris-chan or Tim Bukley, as their hatedoms would cheer for him scaring them straight, but he is planning to make the nightmares ironic. He, however, is The Entity stalking Linkara - defeating and breaking a popular reviewer will leave his fandom terrified of him and send a stright message - make good fanfiction or at least decent fanfiction, or else.

Fears are allies or other agents he brought to help his cause...or have an agenda or their own. HABIT might also come from The Multiverse and has some sort of plan, but Slendy finds it too crazy to thinks of him as more than a mere annoyance or at least a man trying to help.

Slender Man goes after kids, because they have wild imagination and often likes to create stories, that would come out as sueish, if written by older people. All the children he frightened? They had potential to create MS when they grow up. Of course, they have potential to actually learn and become skilled writers.

  • The Anti-Cliché and Mary-Sue Elimination Society apologizes for the antics of Agent Slendy.
    • On behalf of the The Sunflower Official, we also-Fuck, there goes the beeper again!
      • Buzz off, weed. We had him first.
      • Bite me, clicher. We've got the man's dossier. He's one of ours. You want the scumbag, you'll have to go through Internal Affairs. And we'll be bringing Security Dandelions as backup. We are the PPC. We handle our own. No matter the cost. So push off, if you know what's good for you.
      • Oh no. Not the dandelions. Please don't pollenate on us.
    • Now now, children!! We don't have time to bicker - and the Sues will be laughing at us.

Slender Man is K'ardiak.

Think about it. K'ardiak can shapeshift, or at least change the form of his tendrils, and those tendrils can branch into more tendrils. Like the Slender Man. K'ardiak also kidnaps children and carries them off to unknown fates. Sound familiar?

Slender Man and the Erlkönig are one and the same.
Fellow music buffs/Slenderfans, consider: Slendy is much, much older than the Internet, wears formal clothing, stalks and kidnaps children, causes illness, and adults tend to dismiss him as the child's overactive imagination.

The original poem, written by Goethe, was first published in 1782. Older Than They Think, check.

The Erlkönig is said to have a crown and a robe. The crown and robe are signs of kingship, of course, but could also be worn by any member of the upper-class elite. The raiment of choice of today's upper-class royalty? The suit. Check.

The Erlkönig tried to lure away the child by enticing him with games, toys, pretty girls, riches, anything. In the original image from the Something Awful forums, the children can be seen at Slendy's feet, dancing and playing. Check.

One interpretation of the poem is that the child is dying of a fever and hallucinating the Erlkönig. If you think of it this way, it is possible that both are true: that the child is hallucinating due to the fever, and that the Erlkönig is actually there. The child dies at the end of the piece, and depending on how you look at it, he could have been killed by either the fever, or by the Erlkönig himself. Check.

The father, carrying the child through the dark, foggy, windy woods (one can only imagine what might happen if the video camera had been invented yet), dismisses the Erlkönig as a figment of the child's imagination. That, or he too can see him and is fleeing for his own life as well as that of his son, and is merely telling the son this to keep him calm. Check.

Other epileptic branches for this particular sapling: The Narrator could be a Slender proxy, probably a scribe in the pre-computer era. The horse, represented in the song by the rapid (and incredibly difficult-to-play) triplet figures in the piano part, could be this story's Evil-Detecting Dog.

A recording of the lied, set to music by Franz Schubert, for your listening pleasure

The Slender Man was originally Blacklight.
At some point he consumed a being with space/time manipulation powers, which enabled him to travel to alternate universes, including our own. The reason he's faceless is because he's consumed so many people his identity is no longer coherent. This would also explain the lack of consensus regarding his motivations: they keep changing.

The Slender Man is Old Man Willow
He's (presumably) evil. Related in someway to trees. Has hypnotic powers. It all adds up, Tolkien obviously had an encounter with The Slender Man and wrote about him.

The Slender Man is Randall Flagg.
In the first part of The Stand, Flagg is briefly sighted by a couple of individuals, and in a few people's dreams, but never really reveals himself until after the plague has run its course.

The Slender Man is Sephiroth.
That's why we never get a good look at him; the real Slender Man is buried in a glacier somewhere around the North Pole.

That WTTW Max Headroom weirdo is The Slender Man.
And the young girl at the end is one of his abductees.

The Slender Man and The Mothman are the same creature.
Similar appearance; similar M.O.

The Slender Man is also the same creature as the Blackbird of Chernobyl.

The Slender Man is related to Herobrine.
I think we've established the similarities already; Humanoid Abobmination, haunts you, creepy as hell... Oh, and don't get me STARTED on BEN.

The Slender Man is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.
In an episode of Angel, Wesley teleports and stares at Angel ominously. Granted it was a dream, but the purposeful ridiculousness of this entry renders that point moot. Need I say more?

The Slender Man is a Xul'kghmarhin agent
I mean just look at them. They look like slender men, with helmets no human head can fit into. Try imagining one of them in a black suit.

The Slender Man used to be a god
He was once the god of a tribe in the Black Forest like Hinzelmann, made from the body of a child killed for that purpose. He drew his power from the children that were sacrificed to him. Then he was almost forgotten, remembered as a boogieman that lived in the woods and killed children. Even then, his legend faded as time passed and people spread out. It was only remembered by an SA member, who turned that creepy story his grandma used to tell him into a picture. And then, people began to believe in him...

He has no face, because he was raised in darkness and silence, with no need for one. He became taller and thinner, with many arms, as the forest became part of the story as well. His potentially benign moments are actually his true nature, as he was created to be the luck of the tribe. But it's been so long, and he's grown so weak, that he needs a lot of sacrifices in order to survive. His followers and believers are growing, though, and so is the power of the Slender Man.

The Slender Man is a Death Note style shinigami or something
  • He's only noticed by the people he's stalking. Shinigami can only be seen by a person who has their Death Note.
  • Being around him tends to result in unfortunate occurences.
  • Black-and-white color palette.
  • Vaguely humanlike form note 
  • If anyone can think of more reasons, add them.

The Slender Man is Dr. Facilier's Nobody.
The Shadow Man obviously gave his heart to Darkness, and his body type and dress are similar to Slendy. And also compare one of the Dusk Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts II to how The Slender Man looks.

The Slender Man is related to Silas from The Graveyard Book

Both Silas and the Slender Man are tall, spindly pale men wearing impeccable black business suits, are immortal (Silas being neither quite living nor dead, and the Slender Man being...the Slender Man) and seem to have a fixation with little children.

The Slender Man is Mantarok
After arranging the deaths of Ulayoth, Zel'lotath, and Chtur'gha, Mantarok sets in motion his own machinations, reborn in his humanoid form and moving between time periods, feasting on human fear to recover his strength. Mantarok favored humans so much because their fear is so delicious.

Slendy is a larval form of the mothman
Think about it, strange, slightly eldritch appearance, tendency to appear before disasters... And the mystery that surrounds them both. The Slender Man will eventually metamorphosize into a moth man and foretell(or cause) the next great disaster

The Slender Man is a Counter Guardian
His victims are knowingly or unknowingly causing something that will kill thousands of Humans, and The Slender Man is trying to distract them. If they stop causing whatever disaster he's trying to prevent (either because they're too scared of him to do it or because they've been driven mad), he completes his job successfully. If they cross a certain threshold, he fails and one or more other Counter Guardians step in for the kill.

Slender Man is a Pokémon.
And he is a Dark/Fairy type.

Slender Man is a former employee of Monsters, Inc.
He falls under the general category of "monster", appears to wear a business suit, is primarily focused on children, is very stealthy, and is often seen hanging back and not full on attacking, as if he's afraid of direct contact. The secret level in Slender The Arrival has a habit of teleporting you to another room every other time you walk through a doorway. He ended up getting banished, and is now taking kids to power his experiments to get back home.
  • See the theory below about him being benevolent because he’s associated with children’s laughter. (If he is malevolent, though, he may be from a Darker and Edgier Alternate Universe where the monster world never discovered laughs were stronger than screams and scarers were forced to get much, much scarier to produce enough screams to solve the energy crisis.)

The Slender Man is actually a rejected/runaway Robot Master from Dr. Wily
  • He programmed him to guard the forest or do some impossible job with his tentacles but it attacked Dr. Wily and Wily destroy him. He then threw him into the forest and abandoned him, however...it was still alive and legend has it that he is still roaming around looking for revenge against Dr. Wily.

The Slender Man is a Spy
He wanted to be able to turn invisible without his cloaking devices, so he asked the Medic to operate on him. The results weren't exactly... pretty.

Baba Yaga is Slendy's mother.
Think about it; both are malevolent Humanoid Abominations who live in the forest and prey on small children. Baba Yaga may either be Slendy's mother in the traditional sense (as in, she gave birth to him) or perhaps she created him with her evil magic. She's also the only one who can tell the Slender Man what to do because, hey, even creepy humanoid abominations love their mamas.
  • Baba Yaga is often paired off with Koschei the Deathless, who shares more than a few similarities with Slenderman (very thin, seemingly invincible). The only way to kill Koschei is to destroy a needle inside an eggnote . If Koschei is Slendy's father, then this means one thing - ladies and gentlemen, we have found the way to kill Slenderman. Now, where to find an island with a spooky oak with a case hanging on it?note 

Slendy is The Tall Man.
BOY!

The “Third Man Effect” (named for a line in T. S. Elliot’s The Waste Land) is a Real Life phenomenon where people in danger (typically in the wilderness) report feeling as if another person is there beside them, often helping and guiding them to safety. There are a variety of psychological explanations for how this may be a survival mechanism produced by the human mind, but more spiritually-inclined people who have experienced it tend to prefer to interpret it as a real Guardian Entity, possibly an angel. (The book that coined the term moves towards this interpretation at the end, with the author wondering if there is “only one Third Man” that can only be in one place at a time.) Like Slenderman, the Third Man was only written about as a larger phenomenon in the 21st century, but stories of such incidents can be found in art and literature going back much farther, most famously among the polar explorers of the early 20th century. (Titus in the novel The White Darkness is based on these reports.) Just like Slenderman sometimes seems to shapeshift and appear as other people, in some Third Man cases, the people rescued felt like the entity helping them was someone specific, often a deceased loved one. Slenderman is also (sometimes) encountered out in the wilds, but (usually) harms people instead of guiding them to safety, and is frightening and madness-inducing while in most Third Man stories, the entity is calming or at worst Creepy Good. Maybe Slenderman is the Third Man’s evil opposite, or a similar kind of entity that was somehow corrupted? (If we go with the other theories here that Slendy is benevolent and trying to help but just bad at it or misunderstood in his actions, maybe he’s just a faulty or confused Third Man?) This can also tie in with the theories of Slendy being a fey or the Mothman— these could also be varying manifestations of the same entity.

Slender Man has ties to The Backrooms.
Perhaps Slender is a Reality Warper entity that escaped from the Backrooms. Maybe being chosen by Slender is one way to be sent to his home level.


    Possible allies and enemies 

Cthulhu hates the Slender Man, or at least considers him an annoyance
Some believe Slender Man to have a negative connection to water, The Great Old One's element. In fact, all times he has been successfully harmed, bodies of water have been present. Maybe one Eldritch Abomination empowering people to destroy an annoyance? Or depowering said annoyance to allow said destruction?

Yahtzee is or was stalked by The Slender Man
The third and fourth Chzo games would suggest this.

The Slender Man and Zalgo are somehow related.
Both are Eldritch Abominations, and both were born from Memetic Mutation around the Internet.

And if the above WMG theorizing that the expansion of the mythos actually is bringing Slendy to life is true, then we're completely fucked.

Slendy is related to The Rake somehow.
Pale skin, long limb, murderous, attack at night. I can't be the only one to have noticed this.

Alternatively, Slendy and the Rake are enemies.
I don't have much of a reason for believing this; I mostly do so because 1. I can see them being rivals and 2. I like the image of Slendy saying "I hate you" to the Rake.

Slendy is related to Herobrine somehow.
Think about it. Both of them have the exact same tendencies, even though Herobrine isn't picky about who he attacks. No one is certain if either of them are real. My guess? Herobrine is either an ally or foe of Slendy's.

If Herobrine were Slendy's enemy, that would explain why he's trapped in Minecraft. Every time Mojang removes him, he escapes for a short while, but is promptly locked up again, explaining the "Removed Herobrine" thing.

However, if they're allies, that means someone is keeping Herobrine locked up so we can deal with Slendy. Question is, who??

Slenderman can outperform a few key vampiric powers and exploit a few key vampiric weaknesses. A Daywalking Vampire will not be safe from Slenderman during the day. Unlike some vampires, Slenderman can teleport across running water and break into where he's not invited (granted, he might have a little bit of difficulty), which means he can outmaneuver and corner vampires with those weaknesses. Slenderman's Offscreen Teleportation can keep up with vampires who turn into Super Smoke or a bat for faster travel. His Combat Tentacles can fend off a Zerg Rush of vampires. To add insult to injury, Slenderman's blood (if he even has any) is probably toxic to vampires.

Slenderman putting his victims' internal organs into trash bags is effective Anti-Regeneration for any vampires with a Healing Factor. If he ever figures out that vampires are vulnerable to wooden stakes, there's nothing stopping him from skewering vampires onto tree branches, especially if they're Wrong Genre Savvy enough to go hunting in his forest.

Slender Sickness symptoms include fever, coughing, vomiting, memory loss, and bleeding from the nose and lungs. Depending on where a given vampire lies on the sliding scale of undeath, some symptoms might not manifest, or they might manifest with complications. Vomiting and memory loss are the two symptoms guaranteed to manifest regardless of what kind of vampire is being stalked.

  • Fever: This symptom depends on whether a given vampire still maintains a human body temperature or lost the ability to do so.
  • Coughing: This symptom depends on whether a given vampire still needs to breathe or not.
  • Vomiting, Memory Loss: Regardless of where they are on the sliding scale of undeath, vampires will still be just as vulnerable to these symptoms as humans are. Vomiting will tax a vampire's Horror Hunger.
  • Bleeding from the nose and lungs: This one is a little more complicated. A vampire with a Healing Factor might be able to stop the spontaneous hemorrhage within seconds, but a vampire without a Healing Factor risks having his/her lungs fill up with blood entirely. A vampire who still needs to breathe would risk drowning, but would also cough out the blood like a human. A vampire who doesn't need to breathe will need to first notice, then deliberately expel, the blood pooling in his/her lungs. In any case, losing blood like that taxes the vampire's Horror Hunger.


    Is or was Slendy human? 

The Slender Man is, in fact, human.
Due to his appearance and strange powers, Slender Man is commonly considered some sort of alien or inhuman creature... but maybe he really is a human being. A horribly deformed mutant with strange powers, but a human being nonetheless. It's doubtful an accident made him the way he is, he was probably born that way. Despite his apparent lack of sensory organs, he is able to "see" with telepathy, which also allows him to tell when people are thinking or talking about him. The distortion effects are either part of his telepathy/telekinesis or his body just has a weird electromagnetic field.While he miraculously managed to survive to adulthood with his condition, growing up the way he was(not to mention the fact that he may not be able to turn his telepathy off) drove him completely mad. So now he lurks in forests, occasionally changing location by teleporting, killing people, kidnapping children, hanging up garbage bags full of blood, generally being a lunatic. But in spite of his powers, and his appearance, he is still human. And most importantly, mortal.

The Slender Man is the Zodiac Killer.
Think about it. Nobody really has seen who he is. There are some sketches from witnesses, but that's all. He mainly communicated in symbols and cryptic messages, much like our Slendy is fond of doing. Another thing: What did the Zodiac killer sign with? A circle with a cross through it. Now, one would say it's a crosshair, but turn it sideways?Also, it would help the guesses which involve Clap Your Hands If You Believe and Slendy feeding off of fear. The Zodiac Killer is one of the more popular serial killers, getting referenced largely in pieces of media, not to mention the hysteria he caused.
  • It seems more likely to me that the Zodiac Killer would be a proxy. People do seem to agree this killer is human, and recall that it's not the Slender Man himself who often communicates the messages but the proxies he is controlling.

The Slender Man is Cain.
  • Cursed to wander the earth, "marked" in a certain manner... committed the first murder.... Cain's a likely candidate for Slendy as well. God Himself warned Cain that his hate and sin could potentially consume him completely if he did not keep it under control (Genesis 4:6-7). The Mark of Cain that causes harm done to rebound on the doer sevenfold is the crossed-out circle. Plus, Slendy might be a zombified Cain: in The Bible, Lamech, sixth-generation descendant of Cain, apparently killed him (at least that's one way of reading Genesis 4:19-24) and boasted that "if Cain be avenged seven times, then let Lamech be avenged seventy-seven times!" Not much is mentioned about what happened to Lamech afterward, so it must have been something so horrific that even the gore-loving Old Testament writers wouldn't write of it but apparently the First Murderer's up and about again.

The Slender Man is Buckethead.
I mean, just look at him.

Slender Man used to be Jack the Ripper.
Just last night I took one of the Ripper tours around London, and on the way we passed a shop that had faceless mannequins in black suits. Considering that Jack had a tendency to dissect his victims, and that was one of Slendy's earliest known traits, I put two and two together. Plus, some accounts of people who thought they saw the Ripper described wildly different men, also a power Slendy used to have but seems to have dropped as of late.

Let's be honest, it's not even the craziest Ripper theory out there.

  • He's also the Zodiac killer and the one who killed Black Dahlia.

Slender Man is a normal human with Marfan Syndrome.
Explains the elongated limbs and height and other distinguishing features.

Slender Man was human, but was transformed and is now immortal.
As a punishment for his sins while he was alive.

He lived during the Middle Ages, possibly earlier, but the location is unknown. He was a terrible man, but no one knew, because he acted very polite in public. He would purposely frightened young children and sometimes steal them away from their families in order to make them work for him. He would move from place to place constantly, making it impossible for the parents of the children he kidnapped to find them. When he did move, he changed his persona and his appearance as best as he could, to avoid any suspicions. Occasionally, he would end up in a land that was stricken with famine. In order to survive, he would kill the fattest child that he'd kidnapped and eat them (he'd also serve part of the body to the other children, but none of them would know what it was they were eating).

Eventually, he and the children made their way into a wooded area, where they found a shack. They made to take residence in it, but there was already a woman living there. She offered to let them stay, and they obliged her. After several days and nights of staying with the woman, the man tried to kill her and take all of her possessions, but she revealed that she was actually a witch, thus the reason she lived in the forest, away from society. She used a spell from an old book of witchcraft to change him into his true self - he became faceless, due to him constantly changing his name and appearance, and he was forced to wander in the woods alone, for eternity. He wandered for so long without eating that he became permanently thin. His clothing became too small for him, as he continued to grow, so he had to wander around naked until, some hundred years later, he found a man in a suit who was around his height (eight or nine feet) wandering in the forest. He then killed the man and stole his clothes. No one ever found the man's body.

The witch had placed a spell on herself that held off her death for several centuries, but once the spell did wear off, she died instantly. With the witch dead, the spell that was placed on Slendy was weakened. He was now free to leave that forest, but was still immortal and was still faceless. This is why he can be seen in the daytime, and in towns, though he mainly resides in the forests, and is so thin that he looks like a tree from far off.

The Slender Man is what a normal human becomes when someone is photographed too much.
This might need a bit explaining: There was a theory at 1800 century, that photographing works by tearing a part of your soul and printing it on a paper. And what happens when a person is photographed too much? He (or she) becomes one of "The Slender Men".

Slender Man is actually Jhonen Vasquez
He's tall, skinny, he's got tentacle arms and is clearly a little bit twisted. All Jhonen has to do is put on (take off?) a mask and a suit and ta da- The Slender Man.
  • But Jhonen Vasquez is really short.

The Slender Man is H. P. Lovecraft himself.
In death, he has become what he was once famed for creating—an eldritch horror. Take a look for yourself. Tell me you don't see the similarities.
  • I know i'm late to thr party, but I would like to add my two cents its an Ironic Hell for him. Lovecraft was a notorious white supremacist who feared the unknown as being horrific, so the Powers That Be turrned him into a pale tentacled monster who has no face and thus no (white) identity, while being unknown and unknowable to all.

The Slender Man is Robert Wadlow in disguise
Slendy has been reported to be around 9-10 feet tall. Wadlow was 9 feet tall. Wadlow had simply faked his own death, shaved his head, and puts on a flesh-colored material over his head whenever he appears to others, which actually hides the fact that he's currently in his 80s (Slendy doesn't have any wrinkles in his skin) as well as making it seems as though he is lacking a face.

The Slender Man is a Wall Street businessman.
Think about it; he always wears a suit, started causing problems for people in the late 2000's, and screws over the younger generation.

The Slender Man is the ghost of John Belushi.
Belushi used to ask everyone he met if he could borrow twenty dollars, just to gauge their reaction.

Slender Man is the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.
Extraordinarily tall, freakishly long "arms," wears a suit all the time. And his face is simultaneously unremarkable and fascinating, much as Lincoln's actual face was described. As for the reason for the victims? Lincoln's kinda psychotic. Always was, really. It's what made him such an effective president. Also, it makes about as much sense as any other theory regarding him.


    Capabilities and motives 

Slendy is not powered by our fear
He is pulled into this universe by it! He kills those who know about him so he can leave, and he moves through higher dimensions to move around thus he stands still when he is being watched because seeing completely traps him because seeing is believing Up to Eleven!

The audio/visual distortion caused by Slender Man...
...Is actually Slendy's attempts at auto-tuning reality. He listens to Ron Browz, is white, faceless, and wears a nice suit; clearly he's a music industry executive trying to take auto-tune to the next level so he can profit off of it.

Slendy is physically stronger than a normal human, but just barely.
His Combat Tentacles and large stature give him the upper hand in an otherwise-unfair fight, but he's not strong enough to take on a whole group of people. That's why Evan survived his attack on the Slender Man (killing him personally would have drawn the ire of his compatriots). This is also why Slendy preys on children: he's got the munchies for homo sapiens, and kids can't fight back and (potentially) kill him. Slendy's only real power is to alter perceptions, which is how he distorts cameras, induces insanity, "teleports," hides in plain sight, and makes buildings seem to be too big on the inside. If you're certain your target is the real Slendy and not an illusion, then you should be able to take him out with an angry mob, a few well-placed rounds, or some Car Fu.

His primary MO in messing with the various protagonist groups is to create mad quislings like Totheark, TheArsonist, Albert Conaghan, and Damien's family. He uses these psycho sidekicks as proxies to kill and capture humans without risking physical harm to himself, and to give his human opponents something to retaliate against. The Rake serves the same purpose, but he's just helping out because he's a sadistic prick.

  • Just Another Fool possibly Josses this: Slendy took out an entire squad of marines. That said, this is one of the very rare instances where Slendy actually fought people.
    • If I recall, the official report claims that it was an insurgent attack. It is very possible that The Slender Man may not have been an active combatant.
  • Not necessarily. When Evan described his fight with Slendy in the 11/26 uStream, the bat didn't make contact at all; Slender Man blocked it with telekinesis, then used some sort of biokinetic attack. The fact that he bothered to block the bat at all implies it could actually hurt him. The same could go for bullets; he doesn't just tank the shots, he telekinetically blocks the bullets before they reach his body(if only just barely). In fact, it's quite possible that he is physically WEAKER than an ordinary man, relying on his tentacles and psychic abilities to fight or defend himself. Which would mean his weakness would be ambush; he can't block an attack he doesn't see coming. Good luck finding an opportunity to sneak up on him though; if you can see him it usually means he's watching you like a hawk.
  • Also keep in mind that the marines were a large group of people with long-range weapons. Slendy could use his powers of illusion to cause them to attack one another, sitting on the sidelines until the bullets stop flying.
    • My theory is that Slendy is Immune to Bullets. When he did not respond do the Marines' calls to surrender, they opened fire. Sustained assault-rifle fire failed to kill him. Freaked out, one of the Marines used something along the lines of an M203 grenade launcher against him, and Slendy simply telekinetically redirected the explosion. This created the blast that killed the squad.
  • They tried hitting The Slender Man with a car. It did not work.
    • Again, he could have used his obscenely powerful telekinesis to block it before it hit him, or teleported it. Now, say if you were to try to run him over while his attention was elsewhere...

  • So then what would happen if Slender Man happened to be pitted against a psychic or if possible, a telekinetic? Who would win in a fight if someone, or some THING had the same powers a Slendy?
    • Or greater power... we need the Emperor of mankind from 40k to come and play hide and seek with Slendy.
    • That last bit can be arranged, if we assume Slendy is just what Chaos mindfuckery manages to get through on a planet of blanks. We just need to pack in tighter or become a hive planet and he'll be the one being mindraped.

The little kids in the pictures are the real threat
They're intentionally summoning Slender Man! And getting people to take pictures of them! Little kids and cameras are Slender Man's two favorite things!
  • MIND = BLOWN

There is only one Slender Man, but he can be in multiple places at once.

Slender Man exists in our imaginations AND in the real world simultaneously. When one does not directly observe him, he can be in any location the mind imagines. And since he is quite scary, that location is normally /right behind you/. But when one observes him either electronically, or visually, he is locked into reality, meaning he cannot Slendermove right behind you. But, the moment you take your eyes off him, BAM, he can be anywhere and anything. For your sake, I hope you don't start imagining him around you.

Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They areHe is fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good luck.

Slender Man feeds on fear.
He deliberately causes terror in his victims, though not necessarily because that's how he gets his kicks (although he may yet enjoy it), but because the emotion of fear is his sustenance. So the more people fear him, and the more intensely people fear him, the better.He may not even really kidnap children or kill people at all. He simply tries to take credit for any kidnappings/butcherings that he can.And with everyone writing chilling stories about him, it's unlikely he'll ever go hungry.

Everyone's encounter with Slender Man is merely his attempt at making friends
When the 14 children disappeared in the fire, he was trying to demonstrate why not to play with fire, which ended in disastrous results. The 14 missing children were killed in the fire, and panicking, Slendy buried them in a forest, thinking that he's in big trouble. Since then, he has been failing time and time again to make friends.
  • ... awwww.
    • That makes it even worse for this troper.
  • Also, the pages you need to find in Slender: The Eight Pages are actually just drawings Slendy found from his "friends". When you start taking them, he takes the reasonable course of action of finding you to request that you to give them back. Unfortunately, whenever he catches someone they usually freak out and faint. But Slender Man's a busy person, so he takes the pages from your pockets and puts them around his around his home, only for you to wake up and keep trying to steal his drawings.
  • So if all the blogs, videos, and stories are what happens when he tries to make friends, what happens when you piss him off?
  • Alternately: Slender Man is a generally benign entity that just naturally causes death and madness in people around him. He's not actively trying to hurt anybody; he's just generally curious about people and doesn't realize he damages them by hanging around. The fire wasn't deliberately set by Slendy, it just sort of happened because he was in the neighborhood and he decided to go bury the bodies in the woods because that's what humans are supposed to do for their dead. During Marble Hornets Slendy stumbled across some students making a film and decided it would be cool to be an extra in the background; so he starts hanging out in the background of their photoshoots so he could get caught on film. Then, when Alex started filming himself after noticing him Slendy didn't quite put two and two together and figured the video logs were just more footage for the movie and kept up his antics.
    • Which means, for all he knows, every single person with a camera is in on the film project too. And he will try his damnedest to make sure he retains a starring role wherever and whenever the cameras rolling...

Whatever the Slender Man is, the, well, slender men in suits are its "hands"
Whether he's a demon or an extradimensional entity, whichever way you want to spin it, the Slender Man we see is not his actual physical manifestation, but rather the consciousness manifesting one of many "instruments" through which to manipulate the world. The entity can produce an indefinite amount of these, or at least several, to stalk multiple people at once. This explains how multiple Slender Blogs are running simultaneously when they begin cross-referencing one another.
  • Jumping peppers! That means he's like the Orz!

The Slender Man is trying to warn you.
Maybe he comes not to kill you, but rather to warn you that something else is coming to kill you. Something far worse.
  • Might be the case in Everyman HYBRID, where there's The Rake. If you believe Damsel, he's still out to get you.
  • It actually makes a lot of sense, assuming that the previous WMGs of him feeding on fear, or the mythos bringing him to life, aren't true. Think about it. If he actively seeks out and kills those who know too much about him, why would he allow anyone that discovers him to record any information? Unless he actually wants people to know and fear him, it doesn't make any sense. It's possible that Slender Man is an entity in counterpart to another being, the one who is actually performing the murders. Slendy notices people getting too close to whatever is actually going on, and reveals himself to us. He then proceeds to freak people the fuck out, making sure they have the means to get records out to us, warning us all to stay away. Of course, we're idiots, and we keep looking for more information.

The Slender Man kills people because the alternative is something worse.
This was hinted at in one of the original stories from the Something Awful thread. He spreads terror and death among humanity because it's necessary in order for him to protect us from something even worse.

The Slender Man is a malevolent guardian.
Slender Man has never been shown to actually hurt any of the people he's been stalking (one Marble Hornets video shows Alex with blood on his face, but it's hard to tell if it was on his face before Slender Man arrived) and in many of the videos, he's usually just watching, many times not even paying attention to the person filming until the person filming focuses on Slender Man. The one account of Slender Man actively doing something was a first-hand account from someone who even said that "our" Slender Man didn't look quite the same. Is it possible that Slender Man is trying to prevent something, and people are misinterpreting his actions?

The Slender Man runs entirely on Clap Your Hands If You Believe
One of the most common beliefs about the Slender Man is that he only exists when you're thinking of him. Just like in Hogfather, when minor gods start appearing just because people have started believing in him, Slendy was actually willed into existence by people believing in him. In addition, all the myths about him are occasionally contradictory. Well, they're all true. His powers are whatever people believe him to be. However, as he more and more is generally agreed upon, his attributes will solidify. Ironically, this means that, due to Memetic Mutation, he will, in fact, leave you alone if you give him "20 dollaz."

Slendy is a pedophile.
That's why he's always kidnapping children. And that's why he's always asking for "Tweny dahlaz," so that he can pay for his monthly subscriptions for his favorite Child Pornography sites/magazines.

The Slender Man runs on the inverse of Clap Your Hands If You Believe
He only exists when we're thinking about him. Does that mean he needs our belief? Not really. What actually sustains the Slender Man is our skepticism. Conscious disbelief despite what we've seen gives him power. That's why he allows the videos and blogs to surface; a bigger audience of people thinking this is all just a weird meme means he gets stronger. What he intends to do with that power is anyone's guess.

Oh, and also? You in front of the computer? The one who thinks this is a fun little internet phenomenon? You're in more danger than anyone crazy enough to believe in him.

  • . . .Oh fuck you. . .
  • So, this WMG implies that Slendy becomes more real the less you believe in them. I might be wrong, but I do believe there's an entire place which runs on that, named Gensokyo. Maybe he's a native?

The Slender Man's motivation is simply to stop existing.
Let's assume that the Slender Man exists because of humanity's belief in him. If that is true, why does he only target his believers? Wouldn't he want the numbers to grow to assure his eternal existence? Perhaps that is his motivation in itself: perhaps his motivation is to stop existing, to erase himself from humanity's memory. He only kills the people who make him be. That would explain why he leaves people ignorant of his existance alone unless they become believers by getting involved with one of his targets. He's tired of existing, and wants his memory to disappear from the world so he can rest.

The Slender Man is benevolent
Have we ever seen him kill anyone? No. He just scares them, stalks them, and makes them disappear. But, now hear me out, what if he is doing it for their own good? All those kids who disappeared from the playground, and then the fire soon after? Those kids were to die in the fire. He took them away in silence, and returned them one by one just as silently, to prevent the news from catching on. Those disemboweled wanderers? They are criminals who deserved to die. Jay and those people he drives insane are actually victims of the secondary villains, like Maskie or The Rake. He's the one who keeps them remotely balanced and alive. It all adds up... if you can stretch our belief in him, a lot.
  • More evidence of this - The Slender Man (referred to as "Man") saved one of the mining town four (I want to say Vince, but I'm not sure) from a heavily-implied child molester.

The Slender Man is at his strongest during the fall and winter
During the fall and winter, the trees are bare and spindly and so it's much easier for him to hide. Plus, it's usually overcast - definitely something he'd like. Finally, Halloween is in the fall - the time when everyone would stat thinking about him.

The Slender Man can stop time.
and the damage to your tapes is when he pulls the tape apart curiously and puts it back in

The Slender Man just really likes photobombing people.

Alternatively, Slender Man hates photography and cinematography.
In one of the first posts by Victor Surge concerning Slender Man, Victor says "He doesn't like being known about." However, it was also said by Surge that there have been recorded times when some children have claimed they can see him while adults in the area have been unable to do so. These same children soon go missing. Surge also claims that it is apparent that Slender Man, for some reason, needs child victims. If we extrapolate this concept to all ages (not just children) and assume that the missing children who saw Slender Man became his victims then we can deduce the following: Either A) Certain people can innately see Slendy, he then eliminates those people since he hates being known about, which would explain why he prefers children victims (the earliest age that children can see Slendy, think about him, rationalize that he's unnatural and spread the knowledge of his existence). or B) No one can see Slendy until he allows them to do so, and when he does, he's designating them as his next victim. (the fact that children are often written off as having overactive imaginations, don't have much control over their own situations and are physically weak also lend support to Slendy's seemed preference of child victims). In both of these I'm applying a new idea, that cameras and camcorders allow anyone to see Slendy, also once you see him you can always see him (as long as he's present), I will refer to these two ideas as one factor, "X". Also X has another restraint to it: you can't fully understand Slendy without seeing him in person, so those who have only seen a picture or video of Slendy TAKEN BY ANOTHER PERSON pose much less of a threat to Slendy's privacy than those who can already see him or who took the picture or video (because those who took it, although seeing Slendy for the first time in the lens of their device, must also have seen him in real life as once they saw him in the picture or video, they have the ability of seeing him in real life and as they witnessed him in their camera while he was present, they became able to see him without the aid of technology while he was in their line of sight) SO Slendy would kill them (referred to from now on as "the audience") only after he had eliminated all those who saw him in real life (also those who never see his image but hear of him are even further down in kill priority).

Explanation of factor "X": Surge brings forth the idea that Slendy has been around a long time (he shows a wood carving depicting Slendy from ancient Germany I believe); however, Slendy becomes a lot more active after cameras and video cameras are invented. In series such as Marble Hornets, Slendy appears in the series as having an effect on the recording equipment as well as appearing in videos before being seen by the characters in normal life. This, and other things like the disappearance of photographers of Slendy, leads me to believe that cameras and video cameras can give people the ability to see Slender Man.

Going under the assumption of A, then Slender Man may be trying to kill all the people who can see him, since they have knowledge of him(I'm under the assumption that Slender Man is a special blend of mnemonic and selective omniscience: if you have memory of him, specifically of his appearance, then he knows who you are and where you are, therefore if someone sees him, they'll think of him and then he can tail them until he kills them). In this case, the only way to know of Slender Man and survive him is to either forget about him, or stop thinking about him AND leave the location in which you last thought of him (I believe this may be supported by the survival of J and Alex in Marble Hornets, also you'd have to leave the location because even if you forget him, you can still see him and he hasn't forgotten about you, so if you see him you'll remember him and if he sees you he'll know you can see him and kill you anwyay). When we apply factor X, then those not born with the ability to see him can see him with the aid of either photography or cinematography. Still under the assumption that Slender Man may be killed, then he'd not only kill those who can see him from birth, but also those who can see him because of a picture or video, he'd then go after the audience and those who have incidental knowledge of him.

Under the assumption of B, Slender Man is killing for some reason. Before killing someone he also gives them the ability to see him. Reasons as to why he may be killing are possibly sustenance or just sport. As to why he gives them the ability to see him I have two theories: He must allow them to see him for him to harm them, OR He does that also for sport (or perhaps in the case of sustenance he needs a victim which is highly psychologically compromised and terrified). B is highly theoretical and raises more questions than it answers. Why doesn't Slender Man allow everyone to see him? (which might be answered: perhaps he's mortal, but may only be harmed by those who can see him, while he can only harm those he can see) Why doesn't he like being known about? Why do cameras or video cameras pick him up? Why does he need victims?

The Slender Man doesn't have a true shape; what we think is his shape is the closest our minds can understand of him.
I was looking at the videos, at the pictures, and I couldn't see exactly what others saw. It's clear in each picture that others don't see exactly what other sightings have seen... variable height, number of appendages, even coloring at times. You Cannot Grasp the True Form of The Slender Man. You only have a rough idea, based on the shadow looming behind you right now.
  • One blog actually has prolonged exposure to a good photograph of him cause intense headaches and, after a while, insanity as the brain struggles to fit him into something our sane minds can comprehend, until eventually it gives out. It's heavily implied that mad people see his true form.

The Slender Man has no eyes or ears because he doesn't need them.
Slender Man doesn't need to see or hear you, becuase he can detect your thoughts through telepathy. If The Slender Man is a creature from another dimension or planet, then his species would have evolved differently. If every member of a species is a telepath, then they would only rely on telepathy, and thus lose their other senses. As for why he doesn't have a mouth, well, perhaps that's what he's hiding under the suite.

Slendy is trying to be a hero.
He is the last of his kind, and is trying to keep humanity from being killed by the same whatever that killed his race. But he gains power from people knowing about the idea of him, and until he's accepted by the masses as a hero, he doesn't have enough power to stop the real villan from killing people...

Slender Man is just really narcissistic
Yep. He just really likes to be the center of attention. Why else would he wear such swank suits all the time? He probably killed those people because they pointed out his weird facial features and he overreacted.

On Slender Man's powers

1. He has a somewhat more powerful brain. This enables limited psionic powers (his creation of insanity and mild reality warp)

2. He can teleport at an incrediblly fast rate. He's not actually in multiple places at once: it just looks that way because he's teleporting around so fast. Because his brain is so powerful, he can comprehend the information from the different places, and form it into something cohesive. However, he doesn't move much while using the Teleport Spam, because that would require more thinking that he can handle. This is why he merely observes a lot of the time. When he goes in for the kill, he stays in one place and moves normally.

3. He has limited shapeshifting power. Just to explain the discrepancy in his form between stories. He uses these powers to fight. This may be how he killed the Marines in Just Another Fool.

Slender Man isn't evil, but he isn't good either.

He is a businessman. He is working for...something that IS truly evil, but Slendy is just doing his job so he can stay alive. Maybe his boss cursed him with being mute, and being faceless, but gave him...noodle-limb-tentacle-powers. It might be Zalgo, if Dare 2 Die is to be believed.

The Slender Man can be killed, and has.
But the one who kills him, becomes him.
  • I didn't need to sleep tonight anyway.
  • So, Slender Man is just like Santa?

The Slender Man is a ninja.
If you see him, it's already too late.

Beware.

The Slender Man is the logical extreme of Schroedinger's Cat.
His Slenderwalking ability is the result of not only being alive and dead, but also in every single state of being known to man (and several known to dolphins) until observed. He is everywhere at once, and once observed is able to use his other powers.

The Slender Man's telepathic abilities are vastly overhyped.
This is not to say that the Slender Man is weak, but rather certain telepathic powers attributed to him (namely the whole inducing people to insanity thing) are not actually the result of his mental abilities. As far as the mental breakdowns the various characters affected by him suffered, I haven't seen anything that can't honestly be attributed to someone simply suffering intense fear or stress over an extended period of time. The fact that said fear and stress are the result of paranoia being caused by a subtly inhuman monstrosity of supernatural ability only makes the effect even worse. The Slender Man doesn't have the telepathic power to drive his victims insane, he doesn't need it. That's the main reason he spends so much time always lurking in the background rather than actually taking action.

Slender Man can tesser.
He can move pretty much at will through both time and space without the use of any particular craft, and he can apparently take others along for the ride. Perhaps he's even an agent of the Black Thing, a hypothesis I only forward because he doesn't exactly seem to be a good guy. If he were fighting the Black Thing, he wouldn't be kidnapping children and/or eviscerating them. (Although, we don't know what he does with all the kids... maybe he really is some sort of guardian entity; he knows the Black Thing is coming, so he's trying to save us. But he's so damn freaky, we just don't get it. ...I think I like him better as a villain.) Even his physiognomy might be blamed on tessering; perhaps he tessered to the wrong sort of planet. After all, Mrs Which did land everyone on a 2-D planet by accident once. Or maybe he tessered too much, and that much playing with physics reflected itself in his body.

Slendy just wants a hug.
But he's shy and has No Social Skills, so he mostly lurks around awkwardly, trying to get up the confidence to talk to people. When he does actually find the nerve, he still has No Social Skills, so he's just like, "YOU. YES YOU. YOU THERE WITH THE CAMERA. I DEMAND HUGS. YOU WILL HUG ME, DAMMIT. STOP COUGHING, YOU PRICK."

The Slender Man has a hard time getting inside people's homes.
Whatever The Slender Man is, his state prevents him from easily entering a person's home, somewhat like a vampire. That is why he's always outside, seemingly doing nothing for so long: He's trying to figure out how to get inside this particular building. It takes time, which is why he never strikes inside a person's home instantly.

The only reason the Slender Man wants 20 dollars is so he can buy Minecraft.
There's only one problem: This contradicts the theory that the Slender Man is Herobrine.

Slender Man isn't the abomination. We are.
Our universe is an Eldritch Location made up of Alien Geometries, filled with endless light-years of Brown Notes which the inhabitants of all the other universes try to pretend doesn't exist. Slender Man is a Messianic Archetype among them, coming over here to try to show us humans a much more rational way to exist. Even though he's gone the A Form You Are Comfortable With route, the head has no details because a humanoid shape is as much Body Horror as he can deal with, and having to wear a vile, hideous face would drive him insane. Every once in a while the stress of existing in a World Gone Mad like ours makes him snap, causing him to lash out at us. He's very sorry when this happens, and apologizes by cutting open the body cavity, removing the organs, placing them in plastic bags and putting them back in. The Hallowed and Proxies are those humans that Slender Man has enlightened and have decided to help him on his mission. Those who disappear he's taken to live in one of the normal universes, where triangles sanely have four sides, one plus one isn't tyrannically constrained to always equal two, and organs aren't trapped inside of bodies.
  • This just made this troper's day. Thanks dude. :)

Slender Man is omnipresent - he watches everybody everywhere at all time
He is however seen only by people he choses. He is watching me, he is watching you, and everybody else. And only those he want to mess with will ever find out.

Slender Man is not a single entity, it's an entire race.
This explains why Slendy is different in different ARGs and stories in the mythos: The Slender Men that appear in these stories are also each a different member of the Slender Man race. Most likely, whenever someone discovers about Slendy, a new member of the Slender Race is created as their personal stalker out of their imagination - in other words, creating your own opinion on what Slendy is only serves to create you a personal Slendy according to your views. But it is also possible to pass on your own Slendy to someone else, like, for example, in the case of Marble Hornets. The Operator was originally Alex's personal Slendy, but due to the involvement of the MH crew they all became targets of The Operator. When multiple people who have a Slendy meet, they see the same Slendy (for example, they can all agree where Slendy is and his general qualities), but he might appear slightly different to all of them. This cements Slendy's true nature as an abstract monster that just takes the form of a tall, suited man due to the imaginations of the people who first summoned him.

Slender Man and his powers have no limitations.
Any "rules" he supposedly follows are just another way of toying with his victims' minds. This is why he acts differently across the various stories of the mythos.

The Slender Man is made up of the mist that so very often accompanies him
The mist is some kind of supernatural miasma, hence the "Slender Sickness." He can't be harmed physically because he is a solid representation of the sinister Miasma. This mist messes with you mind and causes you to hallucinate, and Slendy can just revert to a gaseous form is threatened. This gas is slightly caustic to the insidey-parts of electronics, hence the visual distortions when the videos are played.

The Slender Man doesn't know his own origins and is trying to find out.
That's what this is all about. The Slender Man has either forgotten how he came to be or never knew in the first place. He is either prevented from looking into it himself or he has tried, reached a dead end and thought human perspectives might work better. His stalking of people is to make them start investigating him in the hope they'll find out something useful. He kills/abducts/whatever his victims to motivate those who knew them to work harder or tie up a loose end if he thinks they've gotten as far as they're going to and their continued survival might distract other possibilities. He'll only stop if someone finds out, once and for all, what he is. If that's even possible.

Slendy's reputation as a Child Eater is totally undeserved.
Look at the children in the original image. They're not frightened of him; they're gathered around, looking up at him expectantly, like he's about to tell them a story. And what sound is the Slender Man often associated with? Children's laughter. Not their sobs or screams, their laughter.

The Slender Man himself does not kill or harm anyone.
His presence drives humans mad, causing them to attack and kill each other. Any disappearances are simply when the killers are able to hide the bodies.

The Slender Man is not corporeal.
Slendy doesn't just have telepathy, He exists in human minds. Visual sitings are hallucinations. Electronic recordings were modified by telekinesis, edited by someone under His influence, or don't themselves contain the image - we just hallucinate His image in the photo. His victims kill themselves.

Slendy exist beyond both space and time and is both evil and good(in a human sense)

so here is my theory there are two forms of slendy that we humans see one is the evil or just sadistic version that we are scared of and the other is the good or kinder version that protects children and others but especially children, my theory is that along time ago or in the far future he was torturing someone or something with latent psychic ablitys and wanted to feel there fear (an emotion its been theorized on here he feeds off) but do to the psychic ablitys of the victim he suddenly got a view of himself and his kind form the perspective of those he tortured, suddenly seeing us as more then just cattle he fights back against the lovecraftian abominations, even though he is one, to make sure are little rock in the back waters of forever is safe form his brothers and sisters.

Slendy is trying to censor himself from reality.
The Slender Man does not enjoy being in our plane of existence. By erasing all evidence of himself, he hopes to leave our universe and go back to... somewhere.

In the past, it was relatively easy for him to undo the damage from his accidental encounters: a kidnapping here, a bout of amnesia there, and when it was necessary, arson to destroy any depiction of himself that was too accurate. At most, this left behind tales of an evil, child-murdering being, but nothing that the Slender Man would consider too tangible evidence of himself that would bind him to this world.

Unfortunately, the information age has changed all of that. Much to the Slender Man's horror, stories and videos of him are spreading like wildfire, such that it might trap him in our world forever. Because of that, his attacks have gotten more frequent, but even these just make his presence in our minds more permanent. Expect him to take more extreme measures in the future...

Slender Man saves children from abusives parents
Think about it. Slendy is tall, and wear a nice suit, and don't seems to be the "naturally violent" type. He's primary kidnapping children, but he does so in a "strange manner". I don't think there's a lot of story about Slendy Mind Screwing a child. The child just goes to him, and pop, he disappears, followed by Slendy.

The look is mean to hide in the human world while having a reassuring appearance for children. Perhaps the blank face appears like this because we're adults / relatively old persons. The child will see a smiling face, and the suit is a plus to make Slendy reassuring. Once the child's gone with Slendy (maybe he drop them somewhere in the world, a very far away place and possibly erase some of their memory so they don't get trauma issues), he then goes to a rampage against whoever dared hurt an innocent child.

Years later, the child is all grown up, but Slendy still keeps an eye on him, kinda like a dad. But he can't interfere in his life, just provide some mental support (not a superpower, just like a compassionate friend). However there is drawback. If the children (now adults) notices their protector, their brain will start to bug, receiving contradictory information. The results : paranoia, nosebleed, y'a know the thing. Sure we mainly see Slendy screws over people, but considering the amount of time he's been active, I'm confident about the fact that the vast majority of his "children" don't know about him.

For those who knows him and start creeping out, Slendy, who truly loves them, understands that he has to let them go, so he start going after them, but they're mistake it for him trying to kill them and start creeping out more, maybe starting a blog to relate their nightmare. But eventually, Slendy will catch'em all. And then he will erase their memory of him. Definitively. Using his powers he will modify the entire internet, the tapes they have recorded, the videos they have made, everything, to make it look like fictions, horrible, fearful fictions of him.

Why doe she does this ? Because he knows his place. He knows the harm he will does to the world if he get really discovered. Scientists will hurt children to summons him. And he cannot accept that. He'd rather have the whole humanity against him than that. He's the hero we need, not the one we deserve. Yep, Slender Man is BATMAN.

The Slender Man is just really fucking bored.

The real reason the more you know about Slender Man the more you're in danger...
Slendy is Genre Savvy enough to realize that human beings are very good at figuring out how to hurt or kill other living things. Although his weakness/weaknesses are as of yet unknown, every time someone starts investigating him there is the chance that they may discover the secret. If such a person were to succeed, and live to share that information with others, Slendy would be ruined.

The Slender Man is a rapist.
The main character in the game Slender is a girl, right? So, The Slender Man might try to rape her if she isn't fast enough to collect all 8 pages.
  • Do I even need to state all the things that are wrong with this guess?
  • Buddy, you've accused the wrong Slender. Sexual-Offenderman is the one who pulls this sort of stunt.note 

Slender Man is actually able to disguise himself as an ordinary human.
To most people, he just appears to be a random suited man. However some people are somehow able to see past this guise, so Slendy monitors them to make sure his cover isn't blown.

Slenderman is actually a time-traveling creature protecting us from the protagonists of the web series
He's singling them out because at a certain point in their futures, they will all do something terrible to someone else. Think about it: most of the protagonists had some sort of connection to him in their childhood. Perhaps he tried to kill them off before, or at least, dissuade them somehow. So, now that they're adults, he hunts them down and kills them or drives them to insanity to the point where they can't harm anyone. His methods, however, can be... extreme.

The reason most of the webseries protagonists discover that they've met Slendy as children.
It's not that they escaped Slendy when they were young. When Slendy discovers a human that interests him for whatever reason; he goes back in time to their childhood to torment them.

Why Slenderman is a Walking Techbane

To his Bizarre Alien Senses, electronics look like something he can talk to. Unfortunately, his Starfish Language is too rough on the hardware, and he breaks the electronics completely when he attempts Translation by Volume.

Slenderman is Just Following Orders to slay vampires, but he can't tell the difference between vampires and humans, so he kills humans mostly because of mistaken identity.

Slenderman is a Beleaguered Assistant (hence the suit) whose Bad Boss sent him to Earth to slay vampires. Unfortunately, Slenderman's Bizarre Alien Senses can't tell the difference between life and undeath, so he has to use other means to distinguish between humans and vampires. His starting knowledge about humans and vampires is that vampires drink human blood, he has to figure out the rest from scratch.

To him, any given power or weakness (or lack thereof) in an individual isn't a reliable indicator of whether or not that individual is a vampire, because he's unfamiliar with the full extent of humanity's capability or vampiric capability. He doesn't fully understand the purpose of blood transfusions, and can easily mistake a human recipient for a vampire if he witnesses a transfusion taking place. Further complicating the issue are countless different types of vampires each with a different set of powers and weaknesses, some of whom avoid using their powers whenever possible so they can pass as human; and Vampire Vannabes who are really good at imitating vampires. Therefore, for every vampire that Slenderman has caught, he's also caught at least one human by mistake.

Slenderman stalks his victims for so long for a few different reasons. First, he's trying to learn behavioral differences between humans and vampires. Second, he's trying to see if Slender Sickness affects vampires differently from humans. Third, he's trying to provoke a Godzilla Threshold use of vampiric powers so he can confirm that whoever he's stalking is indeed a vampire. Fourth, his most long-term stalking is for figuring out whether vampires age differently from humans.

Slenderman hangs around children a lot because it's comparatively easy for him to notice when an Undead Child isn't growing up. He continues stalking people beyond their childhood to catch the vampires who can age up to but not beyond their twenties.

Slenderman dissects at least some of his victims as an attempt to decipher any biological differences between humans and vampires. He has had at least one dissected vampire reassemble and (temporarily) get away from him, but he's figured out through trial and error that trash-bagging the internal organs puts a stop to any vampire's Healing Factor. He's also mistaken humans for vampires and trash-bagged their internal organs as well.

Slenderman's proxies are humans that he has finally identified as such and subsequently enslaved. Proxies whose necks are bare Got Volunteered to be The Bait for vampires. Proxies whose necks are covered in clothWhy?  Got Volunteered to ambush vampires wherever Slenderman doesn't want to show his (lack of) face. Unfortunately for Slenderman, communicating with his proxies is a tedious and not always accurate effort. This can derail his hunting plans. Also, if he were to try to interrogate his proxies for information about vampires, he might get a response like My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels. He can't research vampires via computers because he's a Walking Techbane, and he can't direct his proxies to research for him or bring him informative books because of the aforementioned communication barrier.


     General Unsorted 
The Slender Man created the original stories himself
After all, who knows who is really behind an internet persona? Exactly. Slendy decided to inform the world of himself via the internet, so that more people would be in danger from knowing him, while disguising it as a meme so that people would feel safer telling their friends.
  • But... Slender Man only exists so long as people believe in him. Before he was created, no one knew anything about him, so how could he have done that if no one knew, much less, believed in him?

Slendy is a scout for an alien race
Think about it, he's definitely something out of this world, perhaps in a very poor human disguise much like Invader Zim? Maybe he's scouting out for another race to conquer Earth. Or he's trying to warn us of his people's incoming conquest. The only problem is his species hasn't got a mouth. So though he'd like to warn you he can do nothing but watch from afar. He believes that the children will be more likely to understand due to their naivety and thus tries to get their attention by somewhat stalking them. He also knows that adults portray him as a monster, something he isn't happy about in the least. His species can also multiply and teleport evidenced by his multiple sightings in other places sometimes and once as well as his ability to move quickly despite his size.

Slender Man is a life form native to Australia
Because something that dangerous could only come from the Land Down Under.
  • Then all we would need to kill him would be a stingray.
    • Or enough cane toads.
    • Or someone dumb enough to publish a videogame about him there...
    • There are Aboriginal paintings showing what appears to be the Slender Man. I'd say this is just about confirmed.
    • or everyone has their versions of him some Native Americans describe the Wendigo as having similar facial features and then there is the Noppera-bō or faceless ghost of Japan the only difference between them and the others is they are more mischievous liking to scare people rather than hurt them, such as the fact they will make a fake face to lure people in and make it vanish when they are close enough.

Slendy's true horror comes from being created by collaboration
Shamelessly stolen from the original thread.

Think about it. We know that the Slender Man is an artificial Urban Legend, being created before your eyes with the ways that he scares you shamelessly explored and known. But he's still scary, especially to the creators- because they're creating him, but not fully in control.

With every new interpretation, he's given new powers and forms. With every new photoshop, he's given a new place to live. With every new background possibility, he's given a way to exist and a pattern to follow. We're watching him being born, and can do nothing to stop it.

Slender Man will some day exist, born from the internet itself.
(Related to the above post.)

As AI technology becomes more and more advanced, someone, somewhere, will create a network worm with an arguable sentient AI. He will release it, and as every computer becomes infected, it becomes more intelligent, more human like. It will learn to adapt it's own coding by itself, in order to spread itself. The coder of this worm had a sick sense of humor, and programmed it with the same "personality" as the slender man. As he finds his way into every nook and cranny he can access, he'll find ways to connect to computers that are on closed networks. Eventually, he finds himself in a robotics research facility, the place where he can find a body to use. Some are better than others for his purposes, but he tales a liking to modular linking robots. He forms spindly legs and arms from columns of the bots, and escapes into the forests.

In that event, the slender man will be complete. Going from joke, to experiment, to urban legend, to reality.

Slender Man has relatives.
Let's assume that Slendy was not a product of the internet. In that case, he couldn't have just sprung from nowhere, right? Therefore, he may be the product of some unknown race of being that share his powers, possibly from some planet of Slender Men, as Zeke Strahm himself speculated. There are more out there, somewhere.

Slendy has always existed, but his days are numbered.
He runs on Clap Your Hands If You Believe. Sooner or later, some redneck Munchkin is gonna come after him, believing he can kill him. It's Crazy Enough to Work.

The Slender Man is slowly dying, due to this page.
If The Slender Man was created by people thinking about it, then that would mean that its existence is shaped by people's perception of it. This WMG is giving different ideas about it, and each one is shaping it. But since the ideas are different, Slendy is being pulled in multiple different directions, and will eventually die from it.
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis also related with a WMG in the Marble Hornets pages that guess that tapes slowly steal The Slender Man's essence, the stories do that as well, and he is been torn apart by all faction that is been written about him.
  • The Slender Man is basically Chaos personified, and by compiling information about him he becomes less and less unknown... and therefore is slowly dying.

The problem with the above theory and a possible solution
  • But the Slender Man seems to only appear when it chooses to. Why would an entity like that keep appearing if that meant it would ultimately die?
  • If The Slender Man does exist because of human belief maybe the reasons he is being as mystery as possible and allowing himself to be caught on film is so that humanity will create stories about him. Every time a new story pops up that differs from the previous story, a new friend is created for him and we are inadvertently filling the world with more Slender Men, each one with new, possibly more horrifying powers.

Tying into the two previous theories, Slenderman staves off death by sloughing off collections of personality traits that he can't/won't embody into new "brothers".

These new "brothers" aren't exact copies of him. They still have basic body builds in common but can look, dress, and act wildly different. For example, this picture shows Slenderman with three of such brothers, Splendorman, Trenderman and Sexual-Offenderman.

This deviantart post contains the WMG that is merely being relayed here. To summarize, when contradicting personality traits are attributed to Slenderman, it destabilizes his personality until he rids himself of the conflicting traits by displacing them into one or more "brothers" better suited for those traits. Once that brother is formed, Slenderman can't kill that brother without those personality traits rebounding to him.

If you conjure Slender Man by thinking about him, then eventually everyone who believes in him would be dead, right? Well, He solves this by giving people the abnormal impulse to record their actions as they descend into madness. Marble Hornets had the tapes, and Just Another Fool had the diary.
  • And you are watching all of them.

The Slender Man was not created by the Something Awful pictures, he already existed, then took a form from them
Slender Man was originally a bodiless being, who, like the WMG at the top of the page says, fed on fear, or a similar concept. He/she/it had to take a form, so as to inspire fear in others to feed on. It was browsing the Something Awful forums when it found the Slender Man pictures. It then decided that the pictures were scary enough, so it took the Slender Man form and has been stalking the world ever since.

The Slender Man has a weakness
One of the generally-accepted Slender Man facts is that the more you know about him, the more likely he will kill you. Why? Simple - he has a Kryptonite Factor. He doesn't want people to know that, though, so in order to keep people from finding out how to kill them, he finds people who know about him and off them first.
  • Now we just need to figure out what it is.

The Slender Man IS an epileptic tree.
Think about it: he looks like a tree and he moves pretty past.
  • This was suggested back in the original Something Awful thread — he tends to divide into tendrils and branches, and more than one story about him revolves around forests.

Slendy, totheark and Masky are caught in a freaky love triangle.
They either don't want people butting in on something that's not their business, or they want the investigator(s) to join in. Or, OR, Slendy has a crush on anyone following him, and TTA or Masky are jealous.

The Slender Man does not exist, but his victims are real.
He is only real if you think about him. Logically, that does not make sense. But think about it: if he can only kill who knows about him, that means that his attacks are people dying from him, but not the way you might think. They actually die of fear, heart attacks from Jump Scares, hopelessness and suicidal actions. Even non-existent, he is still a threat.

The tall suit and faceless mask really are just a stupid, unconvincing costume...
...But the wearer is not human.

Slender Man is The Game
Think about it. How do you lose The Game? By thinking about it. How do you call Slender Man to attack you? By thinking about him. Gives a whole new meaning to you just lost The Game...

Slender Man's real name is Jimmy.
Well, it could be.

Slender Man's creator...
...is Sandra from H(a)unting.http://wwwrunningwonthelp-lya.blogspot.com/2010/11/asshole.html#comments Team Fatal Tactics comment at the bottom.

Slender Man's suit is made of children's skin.
How else would he get a suit that fit him? The children he's nabbed were skinned, the skin made into leather and sewn into a suit.
  • On the other hand, when he showed up to chat with Marik and Bakura, his suit fit Marik perfectly. Nobody said Slendy's proportions have to make sense in terms of our perception of dimensions...

The Slender Man is the creator of Candle Cove.
Following the above, The Slender Man is responsible for Candle Cove. He targets children primarily, so it makes sense. The Skin Taker is his Author Avatar.

The Slender Man's suit is hiding his true form.
Why does The Slender Man look vaguely human? He's obviously not human but he's attempting to fit in to lure us in, unaware of the fact that he's the Uncanny Valley personified.

So what evidence is there for it only being a disguise? Take a look at the original Something Awful pictures again. In those early stages, he didn't wear a suit. He was almost entirely black and this is when he showed his tentacles most frequently. When he's in the suit, however, we see his arms and hands far more than the tentacles. So the black tentacle-y Slender Man is the true form and the suited Slender Man is the disguise.

The Slender Man is, in a way, God
Think about it. At the beginning of the universe, Slendy could have been lonely. He could have thought up the human race, and, like him, slowly became realer and realer. Way back then, humanity could have payed tribute to The Slender Man with sacrifice of some sort, but eventually forgot. Now, he's taking his payment with force.

Slender Man is the Bed Intruder.
He's climbin' in your window, he's snatchin' your people up.

The Slender Man will be defeated once and for all by Chuck Norris.
If The Slender Man can get his power from internet memes, than so can an opposing force. On the internet, Chuck Norris has possibly even more power than him. He may be the only one who can defeat him.
  • Nope. That honor would obviously go to Kamina and Simon.
  • Wrong. it would go to Bruce Lee
  • Nope, Chuck Testa.
  • Why not all of them... COMBINED!

The Slender Man is Chuck Norris.

The Slender Man is an American phenomenon.
Why would he only ask for dollars? Because he lives in America and the site that started it was an American site. He wants their dollars so he can afford traveling to other countries.
  • Some accounts suggest that the earliest known sightings were in Germany's Black Forest, however.

The only way to defeat the Slender Man is to trick him into saying "Candle Jack"
Even if it doesn't work, at leasDo you have any idea how much rope it'll take to hold Slendy? More than what I've got at the moment because I've just run out... again...

The Master is responsible for Dare 2 Die
Taptaptaptap taptaptaptap taptaptaptap.

Slendy is a mannequin
...like this guy. He was modeling a snazzy suit-and-hat-combo... then someone stole the hat, and managed to ruin it completely before he could get it back. He wants $20 to buy a replacement, but nobody will listen to him. Poor Slendy.
  • This troper wonders who the hell would still buy those pants after seeing that commercial.
  • Slender Man must be a mannequin that was magically brought to life! He is probably this guy.

The operator symbol literally represents The Slender Man and his species
Think about it. It's just a circle with an x on it. And what does Slendy lack? A face. The x most likely represents the lack of face on the race.
  • Way to state the obvious there...

Slender Man is one of two ghosts of the Lost Dutchman's Gold mine
He's either the Borega Phantom, described as an 'eight foot tall skeleton with a lantern hanging from its rib that demonstrates supernatural agility'. A bit of a stretch and this would be the account for a benign Slendy. If he's evil he could be The Skin Walker, the collection of vengeful spirits of people skinned alive by the Apache natives seeking the goldmine, he may may have put on a suit and stolen someone's skin to try to 'disguise them self'. This would also mean that he doesn't want your petty 20 dollars, he wants his goddamn gold mine!Admittedly, this is a bit of a stretched theory, especially as for what either one would be doing so far from the alleged location of the mine.

Slendy is much, much older than anticipated.
[2]
  • THANKS A LOT FOR MAKING ME SHIT A HOUSE. *shudder*
  • It's a sculpture of a face. I.e., the one thing Slender Man doesn't have...
  • If anyone wants a link that still works, I believe this is what the OP was referring to.

That Other Wiki's page deletion is the result of Slendy
Or someone close to him. Wikiped cited "notability" as one of the reasons for deleting the page. Uh, hello? He's a popular web meme, he's really damn notable.
  • Hence my skepticism. Instead, I believe the page was deleted as a way of freaking people out more...somehow. Instead of having all the information you need about him in one spot, you are forced to scour the 'net for info., thus becoming deeper involved in the mystery, whereas if there were one comprehensive page (because let's face it, TV Tropes, this page just isn't comprehensive enough) you could skim it, go 'eh', and not give a damn.
  • Wikipedia pages are dry and imfomative. It made the mythos sound boring, so it didn't drag many people in.

Slendy is Anonymous
The reason his face is so blurry is there's no image availible. He is cruel and chaotic. The tentacles are from /d/, and he kidnaps children to keep Pedobear fed.

Slender Man is the Little Dream

There is more than one Slender Man
SM is a race of beings, not a single entity. Therefore, even if one of the series kills him off for real, it can still be placed in the same continuity as all the other series.

The Slender Man was the epitome of Vile Villain, Saccharine Show
Until he escaped into a world where people lack the ability to summon rainbows or randomly burst into songs. While it makes everything easier for him, he does feel a little homesick and thus likes to prey on small children.

Slendy is an alien.
He is part of a large race of beings on his planet. They have the ability to take any shape they want in order to blend in with other beings on their current planet they are invading. Problem is, Slendy is one of the lower ranked guys, and can't get the face thing down, or the proportions thing down either.

Slender Man is a Tulpa
Like the Tulpa from Supernatural, he was created by people on the internet reading about him, and their collective subconscious brought him into existence.

The The Slender Man is related to Longcat and Ceilingcat
  • You know it's true.
    • What about Basement Cat?

Slender Man is a by-product of the MKULTRA experiments conducted by the CIA in the latter half of the 20th Century.
  • The use of drugs, shock therapy and other cruel treatments caused psychological conditions in the subjects that made them hallucinate their abusers (conviniently men in suits) as a monstrous creature that could pop up anywhere at any time. They passed on this belief of this horrible entity to their children, and the rest is history.
    • But many blogs take place outside of America, and the creature seems to have existed at least as far back as the Medieval period.

The Slender Man was phone.
You know it makes sense.

Slendy and The Game are related in some way
We know that you lose The Game when you think about it, and you win by not thinking about it. Slendy works in the same way, just magnified. When you think about him, he's dangerous, he can get you. When you don't think about him, you're safe. My theory is that The Slender Man either mutated away from The Game, or that The Game is a product of The Slender Man, perhaps even a way to draw people in by proxy.

The tulpa Slender Man was created by Haruhi Suzumiya
Just like what most people believe the tulpa theory is, it involves Marble Hornets and possibly Just Another Fool being fictional. Haruhi stumbled upon the mythos and became so obsessed she accidentally used her god powers to make The Slender Man real. The generation 2 Slenderblogs like Seeking Truth, The Tutorial, and the other Core Theory blogs are all from the Haruhi Slender Man. This is also why it turned out that the core theory didn't work, because we never actually created The Slender Man, Haruhi did.

The Slender Man is coming to YOU next.
Makes you think doesn't it?

Jay is the Hero... sort of.
While the Slendercommunity at large considers Marble Hornets to be a part of the greater mythos, as far as the creators are concerned, it's a stand-alone work. It will, of course, have a conclusion eventually. In the (admittedly extremely unlikely) event that it ends on a happy note, with Slendy defeated, a large number of Slenderbloggers will probably accept it as the end of the entire mythos and shut down. In order to justify this within accepted canon (what little there is of that), this is the most likely explanation.
  • The community considers it to be part of the mythos in terms of it being the first and most notable Slender-blog out there. Many of the big names, like Everyman HYBRID and Tribe Twelve (which happen to be in the same verse) have noted that Marble Hornets is purely fiction in their stories.

The proxies/hallowed only think they're carrying out Slender Man's commands
Either:
  1. Being exposed too much to Slendy drives them insane, and one of the symptoms of the insanity is hallucinations of him giving them orders. Outside of these hallucinations, he's not actually communicating with them.
  2. He is communicating with them, but via a Starfish Language which they never interpret properly. He might be trying to tell a Lightbulb Joke, or be lecturing them on why light bulb jokes are evil, but all they hear is "Stalk and murder people".

Slendy's "tie" is actually an organic growth.
Perhaps another tentacle of some kind.

Slender Man is not the slender man. Slender man is the slender man.
Somewhere in the abyss of time and space, under lock and key, there is a reality eating abomination called the Slender Man. He is worshipped by a small cult. With me so far? Soon, the time has come to release this entity and have it consume something, just to make sure that all cultists are sufficiently faithful. At some point, one of the cultists has a breech in faith, and sets of, secretly, to alert the various denizens of the Soon-to-be-Consumed reality of their gruesome fate. Most of the inhabitants heed this warning and flee, as entities under threat are wont to do. Unfortunately, there is at least one planet still too primitive to realize the danger, still wondering why they haven't been able to make contact with any other lifeforms. Irritated by their failure, the cultists attempts to warn them in cruder fashions, by following them, assuming odd forms, and even projecting the Slender Man's name. (Seriously, don't most victims or even just those who manage to see him get their name from a friend, or just begin thinking about it?) Unfortunately for our cultist, the Slender Man is powered by Clap Your Hands If You Believe , and it doesn't matter if you know what he looks like, or who he is, as long as you believe that he exists, in some form or another. The cultist becomes horrified at his counterintuitive results, an finally results to kidnapping or even eliminating any who might otherwise doom their planet and their reality. We are that planet. The Slender Man is the least of our troubles.

There's something else out there.
  • Welcome.

The Slender Man is Lord English.
He's creepy, dangerous, mysterious, and most of all, he fills out the coat.Oh my...

The Slender Man is Jack Noir
Able to teleport from place at will, killing children. He is slim and can use tentacles.

The Slender Man is behind you ...

Slendy is both created and his own creator.
The Slender Man didn't exist until that first photo was posted on the Something Awful forum. Since then, it has snowballed into a worldwide Memetic Mutation. However, at some point, the collective interest in Slendy coalesced and he willed himself into existance. The various videos/blogs that exist are all real accounts of run-ins with him. He has used his Mind Rape / Laser-Guided Amnesia powers to convince the people in those videos that they are simply making an Internet series and has buried the truth from them within their own minds. As the popularity of these shows/blogs grows, so does his power. Once he has enough power, he will begin working towards his own goals.

Slendy is the opposite to Santa Claus.
Think about it. Santa is a short, chubby, jolly man who gives presents to children. Slendy is a tall, skinny, mean thing who turns the children into presents... somehow...

The Slender Man had his face stolen after a run-in with Koh the Face-Stealer.
He made the mistake of showing emotion when encountering Koh, and thus he now has no face as a result.

The Slender Man's origins are similar to those of the Wandering Jew.
He was cursed by God to roam the earth forever in a form of a Humanoid Abomination because of some sort of felony. That would explain why he hangs around the children: he has overheard the Christ's words: "Except ye becomeas little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven". It's just that The Slender Man misunderstood His words, and now he steals children's faces.

Alex wasn't just telling a "spooooky ghost story".
His story of tying criminals to fast-growing trees wasn't made up for the series - this has been a persistent legend for some time. If it's true, and there was a Puritan settlement in Alabama where this was done, Slendy was probably a Humanoid Abomination that the villagers came across and, in their fear, attempted to execute. When he survived, they attempted to kill him in a more direct method which resulted in him breaking free and killing the villagers. He stays in the woods now to ensure their brutality never returns, by killing or wiping the memories of anyone who wanders too close.

The Slender Man is not an entity, but a virus.
Just hear me out on this one. Slender Man was originally just a picture on the Something Awful Forums. However, one kid who happened on the picture grew interested, and then because of his overactive imagination, a parasite is given form. It possesses the kid, and turns him into a Slender Man . Confused, he finds his friends, children, so he can become normal again. However, the virus controls him, and forces him to Consume his friends, gaining his suit. The children's minds are added to the virus, so as it consumes more people, it forms a sort of collective mind. It IS possible to kill The Slender Man , but the virus would then leap from its destroyed host body to the body of its killer, a la Jason Goes to Hell. The previous body becomes the suit for the new host, and the virus starts with a new mind. The powers like tendrils come from the virus itself, while the powers like audio/video distortion comes from the electronic devices on the bodies it consumes.

The Muslims are right.
... if you'll forgive the crass phrasing.

Islam forbids (discourages) the depiction of humans in art, particularly their faces? Why? The faith says because such depiction is tantamount to idolatry, but in face, every time you create the image of a face - anything from a marble sculpture to an emoticon - a little bit of Face power goes out of the world.

The Slender Man is the hole created by the absence of Face power.

Now just think about how many paintings, photographs, (Facebook profiles,) text messages have faces... each one of these added to the Slender Man's powers.

The Slender Man is not real.
He is a piece of internet Creepy Pasta.

He is not real, he has no powers, and you should stop believing in him.

Better yet, unsubscribe to all those blogs your following about him, since it such a silly and obviously not real.

Come on, do you believe in Fairy Tales, Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny?

No matter how hard you believe, Santa will not give you Christmas presents. Even if he did, you would get nothing but Coal, because you believe in The Slender Man .

Please, stop believing in The Slender Man, now, rigHt now, I am bEgging you, pleaSe stop. no matter How hard you bElieve, nothing will eveR comE of it.

STOP IT! END THE MADNE

The Slender Man 's victims become Slender Men.
The Slender Man doesn't kill people, he drives them insane to the point that his victims see beyond the walls of reality. When the madness takes them they become his masked minions as seen in Marble Hornets, and the Slender Man game. Those that fully embrace the insanity lose their humanity entirely and become a new Slender Man and find another reality to seep into, repeating the cycle over and over in infinite new universes. The new Slender Man begins as only stories, folktales, urban legends, and Internet postings until enough people fear him that he can manifest into their reality and begin stalking new victims. In essence, insanity is The Slender Man's method of reproduction.

The Slender Man is a Faerie created by children's fear of getting lost, and of strangers
Faeries arise from strong emotions and/or wishes, and feed off belief in the stories that spring up around the type of faerie they are. Think of this; you're lost in the forest at night, being hunted down by a stranger. What, at that moment, is your dearest wish and strongest emotion? To be rescued/protected, and fear. Slendy feels this, and sets upon the predator, vivisecting him and putting his insides in little baggies for display, as a warning to any others who prey on children. Then he drops the kid off at the nearest orphanage. As for the twenty dollars thing, all faeries have a gift associated with them-Pixies want fruitcake, Leprechauns want a gold coin, etcetera. He attacks anyone who films him because he associates cameras with the first thing he saw someone film, a snuff movie involving a kid. The first sighting of them was in mediaeval germany, as a Bogeyman called Der GroBmann (I cant do a Beta properly), used to scare children into behaving (like most of them are), but they were, as stated before, manifested of the fear and desire to get home safely of children lost in the woods, so he guided them home when they got lost instead of whatever true Bogeymen do. When the type of faerie manifested in America, the first person he saw with a camera was making a [redacted in the interest of not getting banhammered], and the GroBmann was enraged. It brutally killed the cast and cameraman. It's greif and rage, amplified by the childs' need for protection, twisted it into a terrifying avenger of lost innocence. Whenever it senses a child in an Unfortunate Situation, it lures it into the woods in hopes of attracting the child's tormentor. The predator is harangued untill he is mad with fear, and killed. Slender Man harassing Alex was simply a misunderstanding-and a way to keep the story alive.

The Slender Man is a ghost of the past
He is a bad memory that happened in the past of the stalked person, who is escaping the truth. This would explain most of his attributes: He is faceless when recorded, because photographs and the like show thr cold truth of what happened. He seems different to different people, since mistakes affect everyone differently. He can "teleport", since escaping the truth of what happened is hard, especially when you know more of it, hence the aggressiveness increasing with knowledge. The static is caused by the stalked person slowly going insane an opting to destroy the device, hiding the problem from others. This insanity drives them to suicide.

The Slender Man is the Anthropomorphic Personification of paranoia.

Slender Man's full name is Slender Slending Rodriguez.
...And he comes from the future.

Slender Man is the tentacles.
The humanoid aspects are actually just a statue/puppet he uses for a crude disguise.
  • If this is the case, it's likely that Slender Man is a homunculus, as Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is basically the same thing - a core of shadow appendages within a humanoid container.

Barely anything is concretely known about Slendy, he's certainly scary and dangerous, and primarily targets kids. Sounds like the kind of Anvilicious Strawman you'd see in a stranger danger PSA. As suggested elsewhere, Slendy is the fear of strangers embodied. Nowadays, strangers are more scarier when it involves kids, mainly because of what they might "do" to them.

The Slender Man is a group of entities with a partial Hive Mind but separate personalities that spawned from Your Mind Makes It Real and is the modern-day equivalent of The Fair Folk.
Because combining guesses is fun. The Slender Folk "evolved" from the Fair Folk; whereas back in the day they took on the form of tiny people with wings and such because that's what humans thought was lurking in the woods waiting to take their children, now they take on The Slender Man form because he's what people think hangs out in woods kidnapping children. The group has some kind of collective goal they are trying to achieve and a partial psychic link with each other which explains why many of them act alike, but they are independent enough that there are differences in the way they go about achieving that goal. Some of them infect young children and then suppress their memories until they are grown and able to be "harvested" and made to work for them. Others actually do go around saving children from abusive families and care about them in a weird Blue-and-Orange Morality kind of way, we just don't normally head about these ones because the kids they saved aren't haunted by the memories or bothered again when they grow up or forced into attacking other people so they don't get involved with the bloggers. If they do remember, they may even be keeping silent to protect the "good" ones from being targeted.
  • Since the Slender Folk change according to the ideas of the humans around them, they probably take on other forms in other countries that invoke the mythology and urban legends of those places.
  • Some of them are actively malicious towards humans. Some of them see them as only tools to be used. Some are indifferent and do not go out of their way to hurt people but will fight back if attacked. Some try to protect humans from others of their kind, thinking that it is unnecessary to hurt humans to achieve their goals. The more benevolent ones may be helping the humans trying to fight the other Slenderpeople, and they may even appear to people in other forms so that they don't know that they are part of the same race.

The Slender Man will find and fall in love with a lovely young woman one day...
...and her name will be Maleficent.

Slender Man is a hupia.
Hupias have no definite form, but sometimes appear as faceless humanoids. In Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton, hupias are described as "night ghosts, faceless vampires who kidnapped small children".

We just wished Slender Man into existence around last month
Think about it. Stabbings. Perpetrators claim to have done it on Slender Man's orders, or that they don't even remember doing it. In the latter case, they donned a mask, a common trait of many Proxies. Last night, I heard children playing outside... Talking to someone. We've finally crossed the line: the Tulpa Theory was correct.

Slender Man is actually not a Tulpa.
About half of these theories have been assuming that Slender Man is a creation of the human imagination brought to life. For the sake of being contrary, I suggest that Slender Man's existence has nothing to do with whether humans are thinking about him. Seriously, it's kind of lame to suggest that a terrifying monster must depend on the beliefs of mere mortals!
  • As ridiculous as this?

There's a Slender Woman roaming around somewhere.
Am I the only one to wonder about this question? This is of course assuming that Slender Man isn't an asexual being.

Slender Man is just an elaborate hoax.
He's actually a prankster who has posted lots of scary stories on the Internet, and dresses in a monstrous costume to stalk people in his local area. He loves to scare gullible and superstitious people.
  • I'm surprised that he hasn't been captured by Scooby-Doo yet.

An early genesis of the Slender Man looked something like an Azhdarchid pterosaur.
Depending on whether or not Slendy was around back in the Mesozoic, which isn't unlikely. Tall and thin? Check. Has extremely long limbs? Check. Stalks his prey (which are usually children) relentlessly? Check.

Everyone assumes that Slendy must be a man because "he" appears to be wearing a suit and lacks breasts. However, man's clothing have become unisex decades ago (and that is assuming the suit is actual clothing and not part of Slendy's body) and there is no reason to assume that Slendy's species would exhibit the same sexual dimorphism as humans. So Slender"man" could conceivably be female.

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme can hinder Slenderman's attempts to erase your memory.

Why those specific herbs, you ask? They're associated with remembrance. Now the question is, would the herbs would be more effective if you carried them or ate them?

Slender Man is a fairy.
More specifically, he's a changeling. Resembling but obviously not being human, and having some incomprehensible morality fits the fey part. As for the changeling, he does the kidnapping kids part. Ignoring the tentacles and nice suit, he looks like some sort of generic template for a human, which would fit if his race can disguise themselves as human children. He acts different because Slendy is an outcast by their own standards, and targets kids and sometimes adults instead of infants. Maybe he's some sort of mutant changeling. That, or they just changed their methods since the Middle Ages. The suit is meant to protect him against Cold Iron.

Slender Man is the remains of our childhood imaginary friends we've forgotten.
Sort of like Tarboy, or Ermac from Mortal Kombat. Every time we forget an imaginary friend, or stop believing in one, their little imaginary soul becomes a part of him. The children-related stuff is because he is the literal ultimate friend of them. And the technology-breaking effect of his presence? That's because he is a being of no logic. Why he stalks you? All he wants is for you to remember that friend you used to spend so much time with. And why he only started popping up more and more recently? The youths of today are so quick to stop believing, to forget, to discard their friends. The teleportation is a byproduct of how your friends of imagination used to be with you wherever you went. Lack of face? Fuzzy memory. The pages? A slightly darker manifestation of childhood scribbles. The lack of consistency? Come on, how can you expect something made of childhood memories to be consistent?


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