What Is a Slender Man?

What indeed.

No, this isn’t a full, in depth explanation detailing every aspect of Slender Man. Most of that isn’t even fully known right now, and I’m not willing to delve totally into the theoretical nature of his existence until I’ve covered more background information. No, this is just the generic overview, stating what is known and agreed upon about Slender Man.


slen•der
–adjective,-er, -est.
1.
having a circumference that is small in proportion to the height or length: a slender post.
2.
thin or slight; light and graceful: slender youths.
3.
small in size, amount, extent, etc.; meager: a slender income.
4.
having little value, force, or justification: slender prospects.
5.
thin or weak, as sound.



man
1.
an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman.
2.
a member of the species Homo sapiens or all the members of this species collectively, without regard to sex: prehistoric man.
3.
the human individual as representing the species, without reference to sex; the human race; humankind: Man hopes for peace, but prepares for war.
4.
a human being; person: to give a man a chance; When the audience smelled the smoke, it was every man for himself.

(Definitions courtesy of Dictionary.com)


Slender Man is a humanoid being, although taller and lankier than the average human. Some descriptions have put him at 9 feet, others at 7, some people are from Europe and use the metric system, but there isn’t an exact measure on his height, apart from tallness. He is always seen wearing a suit, or at least what appears to be a suit. In earlier versions, it was claimed that his face appeared different to everyone, although now it has become accepted that his face appears completely blank. The better stories/ARGs make him completely silent; there have been people who made him create some sort of noise, but that universally detracted from the horror.

There’s rarely any consistency in regards to Slender Man’s abilities, although a few do stand out across the various stories (I plan to go into further details regarding these abilities in a later post). Slender Man is capable of stretching out his limbs, changing them into tentacle like appendages, or growing multiple arms. A few pictures have shown him walking on those arms Doc Oc style, which in my opinion looks pretty silly. It’s also frequently alluded to that he has a vaguely hypnotic power, although again, apart from the fact that he can pseudo-hypnotize people, there’s little consistency. Being around Slender Man often results in black outs, and often when the subject awakes, they’re in a different location. Whether this is related to the hypnosis ability is debatable. In addition to screwing with peoples’ heads, Slender Man’s presence causes malfunctions in electronics, especially recording equipment. This usually is in the form of video tearing, color distortion, screeching audio, loss of audio, etc. Slender Man is also capable of something akin to teleportation (which I like to call Slenderwalking), although there are many strong arguments against it being true teleportation. Again, I will go into more detail later (after I’ve reread all the books I own on physics). On the rare occasion, he has been shown with the ability to start fires. Arson tends not to be his favorite trick, and it usually only conveniently pops up shortly after the writer has left the burned building, or shortly before they were about to go inside and discover THE TRUTH.

The natural habitat of the wild Slender Man tends to be in wooded areas, or by rivers. This is due to a connection he has with trees, although at this time, there is little information on that connection beyond its existence. Usually the woods will be foggy, because Slender Man likes to create a suitable atmosphere. He is not constrained to woods, and can appear anywhere (Including right behind you, in case you wanted to feel paranoid today. Hell, he could be right behind me, watching over my shoulder as I write, shaking his head with sadness at all the stuff I’m getting wrong. That is, if he can read.)

According to what everyone claims, Slender Man’s targets are usually children. However, those claims don’t exactly match what happens very well. Since the majority of writers are adults, and most stories are about the writer themselves being hunted by Slender Man, most of his victims tend to fall around their low to mid twenties. Sometimes a high schooler is thrown into the mix as well, but only a small percentage of the victims mentioned in the stories are actual children.

Slender Man is often associated with the operator symbol (a circle with an X over it), which is displayed in text as (X). There’s way too much stuff on that to go into in this one paragraph here, so I’ll need to save that for its own entry.

The methods Slender Man uses to kill his victims varies, even within the stories. Some he outright kills, usually tearing out and then replacing their organs. Said deaths are rarely witnessed in person, with only the corpse shown. More often, he causes his victims to simply disappear, especially if they’re children. Some people claim he eats his victims, although this opinion seems to be in the minority. He has also been linked with accidental deaths, such as dying in a mysterious car accident.

As of now, I haven’t read/watched anything which indicates any ways that Slender Man can be harmed. It’s probable that no one has created one; after all, being able to hurt Slender Man means we can stop him, or even kill him. And an eldritch abomination which can be killed easily isn’t very frightening.

Useful Links
Mythical Creatures Entry on Slender Man: http://www.mythicalcreaturesguide.com/page/Slender+Man
Picture of an Operator Symbol: http://rlv.zcache.com/operator_symbol_sticker-p217568565303589996qjcl_400.jpg


Also, a small update on my readings/research. Since my previous post, I have finished Seeking Truth, Cut!, and have caught up with Anomalous Data.