The Slender Man

The Slender Man is a monster that varies in all but the most fundamental of its respects between accounts, but many patterns emerge informing its modus operandi and foothold in human history. If you have read enough generalized descriptions of the Slender Man to want sources for each detail, then this page is for you. Safety from behind your computer screen is not.

Common Threads

This wiki has several pages elaborating on the Slender Man’s exact place among humanity:

• Connections: too many entities depicted in folklore and art resemble the Slender Man for it to have been a coincidence.
• Timeline: in fact, examining the order of dated events eliminates the possibility that any increased Slender Man activity was a coincidence. How they all tie together is another question entirely.
• Locations: a quick review of the Slender Man’s haunting grounds indicates that it prefers wooded, abandoned, and/or overall isolated places.
• Body Count: every human on this list, alive or dead, can in some way be classified as a victim of the Slender Man. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
• Objects: what gets left behind when the bodies are not.
• Dreams and Pareidolia: why you aren’t safe in any reality.

Names

“The Slender Man” is the name used by much of the Original Mythos, Just Another Fool, and Everyman HYBRID, but there are others with origins in either folklore or nicknaming:

• Him, It, TSM: humans typically refer to the Slender Man by pronouns or euphemisms more frequently than its actual name; “TSM” comes from a superstition of forum users in the Original Mythos Meta that the monster can find those who speak its name. This wiki refers to the entity exclusively as “it” to emphasize its inhuman nature.
• Der Großmann: faerie depicted in German woodcuts from the 16th century and mentioned in a journal entry from 1702.
• The Tall Man: derivative used by a Romanian fairy tale of the same name and, on an unrelated note, the government of Dark Harvest to describe what they claim is an organ-thieving serial killer.
• The ynirono: plural for the “tomb guardians” present in photographs of Mississippian Mounds, an apparent connection to the Slender Man.
• Der Ritter: “The Knight”; title of two woodcuts circa 1543 by disappeared German artist Hans Freckenberg.
• Fear Dubh: “The Black Man”; monster featured in Scottish folktales.
• Mare Barbat: “Tall Man”; subject of children’s game in a Romanian village, among other Small Findings.
• Padre Flaco: Mexican variant of the Slender Man legend.
• Transformed Man: humanlike being with unknowable thought processes described in a grimoire by Nathaniel V.
• Man Walking Yonder: in an account later republished in Ghost Stories of the American South, the correspondent’s cousin referred to the monster by this name after having previously recognized it.
• The ya’axche’ wíinik: roughly, “Ceiba Man”; god believed to live in Ceiba Trees by the Mayans, either called by this name or conflated with the Devil following the introduction of Catholicism to Mexico.
• The svartalfar: roughly, “Withering Walkers”; dark faeries or elves of Norse mythology that would pull people into the earth.
• The Green Man: name of a once-benevolent being that was later seen as an ill omen.
• The Operator: Marble Hornets equivalent of the Slender Man whose name evokes illness and the number zero; name acknowledged only in writing by Alex Kralie and totheark.
• The Keeper, the Administrator: names given by the Collective of Tribe Twelve, “Keeper” being used exclusively within the context of the Collective’s servitude.
• Gorr’Rylaehotep: Dark Harvest confirms this as the name of an Egyptian god from another world now worshipped by a modern cult called the Order.
• The Big Guy, Stick-In-The-Mud: nicknames given by HABIT of Everyman HYBRID.
• Mr. Slim: nickname given by Mary Asher of Tribe Twelve.
• Daddy Long Legs: nickname given once by Noah Maxwell of Tribe Twelve (“Obituary”).

Appearance

Variations in the Slender Man’s appearance can be explained either by its shapeshifting abilities or the unreliability of witnesses’ traumatic memories; some common ones are as follows:

The Slender Man’s head is consistently pale but its degree of facelessness varies, with only an apparently smooth space visible in most video accounts except for the facial indentations on the Administrator of Tribe Twelve. However, witnesses frequently describe its facial structure as skeletal: “like he was wearing a man’s face as a mask or somethin’… it didn’t fit right, doc” (Transcript 21), “just like a piece of cloth with a human face formed out of it” (Deadly House Fire), “I could see all his flesh and shit around his eyes and his gums. It was stretched so tight… God…” (War Accounts). On the rare occasions that they reportedly exist, its eyes have been described as white (Der Großmann, Windsor Pines) or black (Miscellaneous Journal Entries) spheres that “may or may not glow” (Optic Nerve); the only instances of pupils come from drawings (Henry Coe).

The Slender Man has been observed with retractable extra arms or tendrils in much of the Original Mythos and Tribe Twelve, most other video accounts showing it with only the two. These have been described as “outstretched arms”, (Stirling City Incidents), “many arms, all long and boneless as snakes, all sharp as swords, and they writhed like worms on nails” (The Tall Man), “branchy” (Transcript 21), “thick ropes of shadow” (Tias), “the roots or tentacles […] growing out of him like weeds” (Henry Louis Marshall), and “twisting and serpentine” (The Orphanage). They usually end without hands, notable exceptions being the Inhuman Handprint and Psychologist’s Notes cases, both of which show abnormally long fingers. The Diamond Lake, Grandpa, Miscellaneous Journal Entries, Deadly House Fire, Henry Coe, and Detector Images accounts entail it carrying itself on its tendrils, which the Administrator of Tribe Twelve also does after assuming the appearance of a spider (“DEATHTRAPEXODUS”). It has also displayed hands on one occasion when reaching towards Noah Maxwell (“Crawlspace”).

The Slender Man almost universally resembles a man in a black suit and tie before further inspection –the “almost” being due to the knight impersonation of Der Ritter, the soldier and priest impersonations of Padre Flaco, and the impersonation of Aztec priests; Optic Nerve has speculated that it mimics the human elite to be trusted yet inconspicuous. Its height has been commonly estimated as at least eight feet, but accounts such as Fog indicate that it can be even taller. Its movement varies from the lithe floating shown by the Operator of Marble Hornets (“Entry #6”) to the “jerky, but purposeful, gait” described by Henry Coe and shown by Gorr’Rylaehotep in Dark Harvest to the abnormal speed described by Sarah West of the Deadly House Fire and witnessed by Noah Maxwell of Tribe Twelve (“Mary Asher Phone Call”). More commonly observed from the Slender Man is an eerie stillness, and it ubiquitously displays teleportation abilities that lead to its victims’ disappearances.

Interactions with Humans

Children

Children constitute a unique subset of Slender Man victims, targeted either more frequently or in more unusual ways than adults. A key discerning factor is trust, which usually only applies to adults in aforementioned examples of the Slender Man mimicking known authority figures; most likely, the children’s understanding of reality had not developed enough for them to recognize the threat as readily as adults. The majority of Slender Man fairy tales (Der Großmann, The Tall Man, Schlankwald, Fear Dubh, Withering Walkers) exist for the purpose of warning children away from the woods, and many remain oblivious: “The Slender Man. He’s my friend and you can’t have him” (Little Brother), “I am happy wen I see the man in the sute” (Dawn, Everyman HYBRID). Some children who do detect the threat, but slowly, express a combination of trust and fear: “but then she started going on about how it wasn’t an end, but a beginning” (Stanley Ercavich), “he is very, very greedy. Apparently, the Reverend didn’t know that Man doesn’t share” (The Bag, Everyman HYBRID), “Milo seemed frightened of this man, but also held a sense of… let's just say, concerned respect. Accepted inevitability” (Tribe Twelve Envelope, Everyman HYBRID). Still others realize the monster’s wrongness immediately but are powerless to stop it.

Compared to adults, children targeted by the Slender Man more frequently disappear than die –sometimes even in cases where the adults’ bodies have been found, suggesting a difference in their fates (Found Photographs, Henderson Horse Farm, Missing Family, The Orphanage, the Rainwood Incident of Dark Harvest as it corresponds with nearby “Tall Man” murders). In the rare cases where children’s bodies turn up, they display the same effects as adults’: “bizarre contortion” (Stirling City Incidents), “precise removal of certain body parts” (British Myths, Legends and Unsolved Tales), “some mornings, I find a piece of my brother on the window sill” (Little Brother), “he had been dismembered and strung up” (Marble Hornets, “Entry #38”; apocryphal). One forum user from the Original Mythos Meta posited that the higher rates of unsolved disappearances among children present a possible origin for the Black Eyed Kids.

Children in particular often believe that the Slender Man has offered them a sort of ethereal and/or frightening journey into the unknown, as in the case of Katrina and Alice Elkins of the Stirling City Incidents, children following it away from the Orphanage, the Mining Town Four of Everyman HYBRID (Fourth Hidden Box) and Milo Asher of Tribe Twelve (Tribe Twelve Envelope). Speculation that the monster has any involvement in its adult victims’ lives since childhood has proven true in the cases of the son of one man who wrote Miscellaneous Journal Entries, the great-grandson of Jozef, the son and grandsons of Pyotr, one woman surrounded by Superstition, Tim Wright and Alex Kralie of Marble Hornets, Mary Asher, Milo Asher and Noah Maxwell of Tribe Twelve and Vince, Evan, Jeff, and Stephanie of Everyman HYBRID (all four in their previous iteration(s) and at least Stephanie in the current one).

Adults

Adults targeted by the Slender Man disappear just as children do, but they are more susceptible to violent deaths or prolonged periods of stalking. “Or” refers to the apparent pattern of how the Slender Man mostly kills victims it has approached with minimal stalking, and yet keeps others alive and aware of its presence. It is from these others that information on the monster surfaces, mostly notably in the video accounts Marble Hornets, Everyman HYBRID, Tribe Twelve, and Dark Harvest that all show the impact of its long-term stalking. Some of them recall distinct reactions to witnessing the Slender Man with their own eyes: “its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…” (Stirling City Incidents), “I got this weird feeling from the tall man, like I was intruding upon something I was forbidden to see, namely his presence” (Dorothy Birch), “like I’m looking at Satan himself, except he’s more threatening than all the stereotypical depictions” (Tribe Twelve, Ask.fm). Most try to avoid the subject.

Different facets of human society have taken notice of the Slender Man, including governments: Optic Nerve is a secret agency whose worldwide branches have been forced to acknowledge the monster’s infallibility despite specializing in the termination of “supposed ‘Gods’”, and the Dark Harvest channel has uncovered the United States government’s cover-up of the 1957 Princeton Experiment that summoned Gorr’Rylaehotep. They have also found that local police and alleged government agents concerned with the “Tall Man” murders include members of the Order, a violent cult that operates in secret worldwide. In addition to cults, disturbed lone Slender Man victims who revere or fear it have been known to leave unsettling cryptic messages for others; these include owners of a house that was later the site of an Emergency Call, the unknown sender of the Rodzby Incident envelope, totheark of Marble Hornets (an account run by at least two people who fear the Operator and seek revenge on Alex Kralie), and Logan Renault of Just Another Fool following his descent into madness.

Deaths caused by the Slender Man display several gruesome patterns; most commonly, organ removal. The Steinmen Woods, Diamond Lake, Optic Nerve, Missing Family, Carvings, Windsor Pines, Atlantic Historical Review, and Abandoned Journal cases all involve impalement high in the treetops, sometimes overlapping with the disappearance of vital organs. In the Steinmen Woods, Optic Nerve, Missing Family, Mr. Sanderson, Everyman HYBRID and Dark Harvest accounts, removed organs reappear in garbage bags either hung from trees or reinserted into the victims’ chest cavities.¹ The Slender Man has been witnessed causing these: “it watched as they opened, and began to work” (Optic Nerve), “he would pull off their arms and legs one at a time, like the petals of a flower” (Deadly House Fire), “the thing had something like… black knives or something. Skewered Morgan” (Tias). According to Steinmen Woods and Optic Nerve reports, the impaled bodies are often found in a circle formation. Some bodies have been found with little to no decay in spite of long disappearances (Stirling City Incidents, Remains of Missing Camper, “Entry #65” of Marble Hornets) while others have been found with advanced decay in spite of short disappearances (Radio Newsroom); some of these involve victims’ bodies resurfacing far from where they disappeared. Still others die suddenly and without violence (From the Journal of Dr. Jeffrey Scripter, Dorothy Birch). Animals have also been subjected to violence by, or in relation to, the Slender Man (Stirling City Incidents, Henderson Horse Farm, Henry Louis Marshall, “Entry #15 – Interview with Tim” of Marble Hornets, Everyman HYBRID and Tribe Twelve).

Another ubiquitous aspect of the Slender Man’s influence is illness both mental and physical. Common sleep disturbances of Slender Man victims include insomnia, night terrors, sleepwalking, and sleep paralysis, and the frequent symptom of coughing fits will often draw up blood (and black fluid in the case of Vince of Everyman HYBRID).² The spiral of self-destructive paranoia and obsession associated with long-term subjects of its stalking is most commonly exemplified in Jay Merrick of Marble Hornets, who develops a proneness for hallucinations and seizures after refusing treatment for years. Tim Wright, who has dealt with the Operator his entire life and was tentatively diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result, wears a mask in periods of erratic behavior he cannot remember; a similar impulse drives Brian Thomas, although with method in it. The Operator’s severe erasure of memory resembles an ability that the Slender Man of other video accounts uses to a lesser extent. Catatonia sometimes results from particularly traumatic encounters with the monster (Stirling City Incidents, Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, “Entry #74” of Marble Hornets, “Log #14-2” and “2014 - boiler room” of Dark Harvest); in one instance from the Journal of Dr. Jeffrey Scripter, it causes a formerly unresponsive patient to rouse the entire catatonic ward into screaming. Humans have been made animalistic by the Slender Man’s influence, most notably in the case of HABIT’s “cameramen” of Everyman HYBRID, and the monster exerts other forms of compulsion as well. It compelled Stephanie of Everyman HYBRID to leave home following its murder of her family (November 1, 2010), and it has compelled the Patient of Dr. Bronn (although only in his mind), Joseph Lhie of Transcript 21, Dorothy Birch, and Mr. Sanderson to commit violence unwillingly.

Strange dreams are a particularly common symptom of Slender Man exposure, often bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to reality. Cases of the Slender Man visiting its victims in their dreams include Miscellaneous Journal Entries, Fear Dubh, Dorothy Birch, Of the Slender Man, and Stephanie of Everyman HYBRID (November 1, 2010), and ones who have difficulty telling troubled dreams or hallucinations from reality include the Patient of Dr. Bronn, Jozef’s great-grandson, and Tim Wright of Marble Hornets (“Entry #66”). Jay Merrick of Marble Hornets has a nightmare about Alex Kralie and his unsettling ties to the Operator, which prompts him and Tim to relocate and which totheark would later visualize: “his eyes were missing, and he constantly made these awful, high pitched screams inches from my ear.” Logan Renault of Just Another Fool, having received the Journal of Matthew Selby, has a recurring dream of three bodies burning in a tree –an echo of what Matt witnessed in Iraq and a sign of Logan’s imminent demise. In Everyman HYBRID, Evan’s dream of children disappearing from a town and screaming coming from the woods (“Sleep Lab Part 2 - Evan's Dream Log”) anticipates the group’s discovery of organ bags in “Joke’s Over”; in 1990, Doctor Corenthal dreams of Linnie’s death by the Rake in Lambertville High School, which would ultimately happen in her present iteration. Noah Maxwell of Tribe Twelve soon learns that the Collective are aware of his frequent and often prophetic nightmares about the boardwalk, eyes watching him, and the Administrator; they cause them, so the Observer often projects the imagery into his hijack videos.

The Slender Man is almost always silent: “its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time” (Stirling City Incidents), “he did not speak, but made his intentions known” (The Tall Man), “I don’t think it really knows or values the concept of communication” (Harris). It has spoken, though only ever briefly, in the Stirling City Incidents, Disappearance of Boy, Jozef, Atlantic Historical Review, Henry Louis Marshall, Little Brother, and Stanley Ercavich accounts. Sounds caused by the Slender Man include its echo of children’s laughter in the Steinmen Woods, Optic Nerve, and Windsor Pines cases, Fear Dubh’s rustling of wet leaves, and tapping on windows throughout the Original Mythos. The Operator of Marble Hornets once gave a low echo of Jay’s “hello?” (“Entry #23”), and the Administrator of Tribe Twelve and Gorr’Rylaehotep of Dark Harvest have been known to emit low, chaotic intonations (most notably in “Milo’s Tape” and “Rainwood”). Marc McComber claims that Gorr’Rylaehotep made noises in his head (“Unsolved Conspiracies Se1 Ep00 [Pilot]”), much like the Slender Man had with the man whose Miscellaneous Journal Entries recount a dream of his unborn son; to quote Jozef’s great-grandson, “its voice came from all over the room simultaneously, surrounding me.”

Technology has been known to fail in the Slender Man’s presence; most notably, the audio and visual distortion present in the Marble Hornets, Everyman HYBRID, Tribe Twelve, and Dark Harvest footage. Its appearance has also been signaled by technology: Detector Images indicate how it climbs, an X-ray of Three Ages of Woman and Death has revealed the Slender Man influence of the painting, and the black box device of Everyman HYBRID detects the Slender Man’s presence by ticking in the presence of Sigma radiation (Jester’s Prize); “personally, it seems like the branding of ‘radiation’ is simply the closest they could have gotten to naming it. [J]”. Also on the topic of human conventions, numbers play significant roles. Four comes up in Marble Hornets with Alex Kralie’s April 4 birthday, the Operator’s appearance on that day at 4:04 PM on the tape (“Entry #26”), the sum of “1102” from Jessica’s phone number, the number of times Alex drops a chunk of cement on the stranger’s head (“Entry #49”), and the “Quadrant” of people subject to the Operator (Tim, Alex, Brian, and Jay).³ Ever since its appearance in the first Just Another Fool post, 2:37 PM was the time players called Logan on 11/11 (as per clock hands in the Journal of Matthew Selby pointing to 11:11) and became recurring in the Journal of Logan Renault. Everyman HYBRID has seven boxes, seven trials of HABIT, and seven rabbits remaining at the start of the seventh trial. 11:11 also figures into Tribe Twelve with Noah Maxwell’s 11/11 birthday and its corresponding incidents some years.

With regards to natural phenomena, witnesses most frequently associate the Slender Man with fog; Optic Nerve posits that it “either prefers foggy areas or [is] capable of summoning it” as a means of ensnaring victims. The case of Henry Louis Marshall reveals that at least some of the fog is actually the remains of humans exposed to the Slender Man. Inexplicable thunderstorms have occurred in Tribe Twelve (“Night Recording”) and Marble Hornets (“Impurity”, “Entry #61”) –the last of which coincides with Tim’s seizure, an electrical storm of the brain. Sudden cold from the monster’s presence has been reported in Found Photographs and Marble Hornets (“Entry #17”, “Entry #20”). Many fires have also been linked to the Slender Man, often caused for the sake of erasing evidence of the monster’s existence by either the monster itself or humans (Stirling City Incidents, Deadly House Fire, the Rainwood Incident of Dark Harvest). Some, such as Optic Nerve’s wildfires and possibly the hospital fire caused by Tim Wright of Marble Hornets, have been vain attempts to fight it. The latter fire and the ones in Found Photographs, Everyman HYBRID (“I'm okay.”), and Tribe Twelve (“Secret Parent Interview”) have all involved children.

The possibility of the Slender Man growing stronger, in that it may extend its influence to more of humanity, has been an increasingly common topic of discussion. Regardless of whether or not the monster wants to be seen, which has been a major point of contention in deciphering its purposes, human exposure has increased dramatically with globalization: “back in 88 there were about, I would guess, three to maybe four S.MAN reports a year… now it’s 2009 and I’m getting hits of S.MAN sightings damn near 20 to 30 times A WEEK!” (Optic Nerve). One post on the Slender Man’s Metaphysical Territoriality proposes that a spread of Slender Man media online could strengthen the Slender Man itself, and another in the Original Mythos Meta likens it to a tulpa or thoughtform either held back or strengthened by its innate contradictions. Human sacrifice has also been shown to empower the monster on two notable occasions: when Alex Kralie of Marble Hornets attempts to kill everyone exposed to the Operator in his ill-guided belief that it would quarantine the monster like a disease, and when the Order of Dark Harvest attempts to harness life energy or “Vim” through mass murder following the Princeton Experiment’s successful summoning of Gorr’Rylaehotep through human sacrifice.

Proposed weaknesses of the Slender Man often come from the opposites of its strengthening factors. One poster in the Original Mythos Meta notes that fire is “man's primordial achievement, and casts shadows of its own. Maybe the shadows from the fire can fight him. Maybe humans discovered fire because of him, the embodiment of darkness and fear”; however, above examples of fire may cast doubt upon this. Others there proposed, in keeping with increasing exposure to the monster, that “there will always be someone to spread fear of the Slender Man, yet always too many people for the Slender Man to exterminate them all” due to its selectiveness with victims, which could also account for its remaining obscurity; “of course now with cellphones and security cameras everywhere, there's almost nowhere in the world you could go that would really be safe.” Most explicitly, the Operator of Marble Hornets relies on victims’ mental vulnerability to the point that Tim Wright’s attempts to stave it off by taking pills have proven effective. On the Tribe Twelve front, the Collective seeks the journal of Sebastian Kraus because of the information it contains on the Administrator’s weakness.

Related Entities

These beings are not the Slender Man but are known or suspected to have interacted with it:

• The Rake: monster described as “what appeared to be a naked man, or a large hairless dog of some sort. Its body position was disturbing and unnatural, as if it had been hit by a car or something.” It has black eyes and a shrill voice, with sightings on four continents dating back to the 12th century. The Rake has targeted Linnie and Alex of Everyman HYBRID, attacking Alex and sending him dreams about its murder of Jessie; however, the Slender Man has stopped it from harming Vince and Jeff on account of their place in the iteration cycle.
• Black Eyed Kids: exactly what the name indicates, these beings will often ask for rides or entrances into a victim’s home while exerting a sense of danger whose source the victim cannot immediately trace. As mentioned, the Original Mythos Meta implicates them as the possible outcome of children stolen by the Slender Man.
• Shadow People: either an apparition or shared hallucination, the Original Mythos Meta ties these to the Slender Man with the suggestion that it either gets mistaken for them or creates them from its own shadow.
• HABIT: incorporeal possessive entity with a morbid sense of humor and penchant for extreme violence. He has implicated himself as several notorious killers throughout history and possesses Evan throughout iterations, recently creating a series of seven trials whose players (“rabbits”) must complete demoralizing tasks and whose outcome remains unknown. HABIT has manipulated the EverymanHYBRID group through every clue trail, and has seemingly worked both with and against the Slender Man at different times.
• The Collective: according to Firebrand, “we are cryptic creatures by nature, pacified by his dark force, puppets meant to manipulate your world through mortal vessels” (“DEATHTRAPEXODUS”). Known members among these former humans include the Observer, Deadhead, Cursor, Persolus, Mr. Scars, Swain, Firebrand, and Scriniarii. They exist within their own separate realm, and the Observer in particular has manipulated Noah since the beginning.

The Ark

There have always been suggestions as to where exactly the Slender Man’s lost victims go; the Stirling City Incidents, Deadly House Fire, and Stanley Ercavich accounts all imply a fate-worse-than-death scenario for them after (what should have been) fatal evisceration, Katrina Elkins in particular having been frozen in time. The closest articulation came from the Original Mythos Meta: “nobody knows where it is you are taken to, but nobody ever comes back, and everybody agrees it's generally a horrible place. And maybe in this place, you can't die. And maybe you also don't need organs or skin or even a body, really, and that's why yours has now been nicely wrapped up and hung in a tree.” But diverting more focus to the victims of long-term stalking by the Slender Man reveals more elaborate details as to the monster’s labyrinth, as it were:

The Biblical allusion behind totheark of Marble Hornets remained tied to the channel’s frequent invocation of water for years before a single drawing beside Jay’s body in “Entry #83” confirmed the Ark as the Operator’s realm. It manifests as different locations in the midst of a teleportation loop, including Rosswood Park, the hospital, Tim’s house, and Benedict Hall. It has taken Tim underwater and hanging from a tree, between day and night, and to the perfectly preserved bodies of the stranger and Jay that the Operator took immediately following their deaths (as it presumably also does with Brian and Alex). Time appears not to pass within it, as Tim is able to return to the parking lot sooner than Jay despite passing through it (“Entry #65”). The Ark manifests in full during “Entry #65”, “Entry #83”, and “Entry #86”, but is also implicit in the shifting layout of the abandoned house in “Entry #23”, Jay’s apartment in “Entry #24”, and Rosswood Park in “Entry #82”. The hospital fire shown in “Entry #83” is an echo of the past that it has caused Tim to re-live: “why’d you bring me here? I don’t belong here, why’d you bring me here?!”

Logan Renault of Just Another Fool, though at that point insane, posed a succinct question: “Does he intrude in our world? Or are we in his?” (Journal of Matthew Selby). The answer comes to him upon trading the sight in his left eye for knowledge, a parallel to Odin of Norse mythology: there are only nine truly conscious beings in existence, meaning the Slender Man and eight victims. The Slender Man hunts each of them individually and sequentially so that another may be born in their place, which is why Logan refers to an unknown child replacing Matt; it is also the only thing that can kill them, as Logan learns from being hit by a car (Journal of Logan Renault). Logan leaves Joshua, the next in line to die, with the message that “maybe I will see you in the nothingness of whatever is beyond this world(s)”; one of the two conscious beings he could not identify was you. “The Earth shifts. The earth shifts. Time shifts. Reality shifts. And he just. Doesn’t. Care.”

References to water, floods, and an ark also emerged from early Everyman HYBRID when Stephanie’s blog CANYOUSEETHEWORDS used this exact text markup to denote them; “when people make a mistake, they generally try to cover it up. I’m no different.” Her antediluvian metaphor for the Slender Man’s influence was not without precedent when “Welcome to the ARK”, one of two “leaked videos”, shows Vince, Evan, and Jeff somewhere with no other people around, technology failing, and an endless night where time has stopped; they must “get to the lights” to escape the monsters. Drowning footage from this video makes its way into others on the channel. HABIT’s clue trail soon makes it apparent that the group are part of an iteration cycle where they may return from death until the end of a cycle prompts their rebirth. The hidden video “-.-.” shows a space between iterations where the group are aware of what they experience, and one video shows a place that Corenthal identifies as the “monsters’ sanctuary” after he rescues Vince from a shifting conglomeration of the groups’ houses to get there (“The property”); it is presumably the same place where HABIT continues to hunt Jeff in spite of his apparent death (“Bridge to Nowhere”, Tribe Twelve). Vince examines the many contradictions in the group’s lives and concludes that the merging of their houses in “The property” showed that there was only ever one house all along because their lives were written for them and must conform to the constraints of fiction (“Le premier cours”). But if a phantom tweet and the Fifth Hidden Box are to be believed, “YOU, TOO, ARE ON THIS SAME. SINKING. VESSEL.”

The Collective realm of Tribe Twelve has always accounted for its beings’ ability to travel through time, but it would be much later that Firebrand would elaborate upon its exponential temporal elongation: “Seconds are minutes. Minutes are hours. Hours are days. Days are weeks. Weeks are months. Months are years” (“DEATHTRAPEXODUS”). On two occasions where the Observer had taken Noah there, he woke up a week after his disappearance with no memory of it (“COMECLOSER”, “HAPPYBIRTHDAY”); however, he does remember the month he spent in it during 2015 that also displaced him by only a week in linear time. Collective videos on Noah’s channel, really mental projections, render this realm in pure black and white; when Noah enters with a camera, the footage displays as red and picks up the Collective videos’ same ambient noise and nightmarish imagery such as trees manifesting tendrils (“Fortunes”) and eyes (“Pitfall”). Described by Firebrand as “no place for mortals”, the Collective realm’s manifestation on the boardwalk allows the Observer to toy with Noah using its deliberate layout shifting. Firebrand additionally reveals that when Noah reads the journal that the Collective want delivered to that same boardwalk, “the flood” and “the dark times” will follow.

The Order of Dark Harvest write of the Fourth World from which the Princeton Experiment summoned Gorr’Rylaehotep: “the land He hails from is so unlike ours, filled with pain and suffering – His world is paradise” (The Black Book). Regardless of whether or not there is any basis for the cult’s belief that they may attain godhood in Gorr’Rylaehotep’s likeness by entering it, the scientific portion of the Black Book (likely originating from the Princeton Experiment itself) elaborates upon the Fourth World in more credible detail. Its “notion that one would age quite slowly even after exiting the Rift” has proven true in the case of Marc McComber after his encounter with Gorr’Rylaehotep, and its references to the instability of a Fourth World being’s presence in the Third World could account for Gorr’Rylaehotep’s every anomalous property. Both the Princeton Experiment and the Order’s practices have involved human sacrifice to acquire Vim, the life energy needed to traverse between worlds. The book’s implication of the Fourth World as outside of time and subject to “the Forbidden Geometry” could also account for the time warp that Chris, Alex, and Jessie experience at the site of the collapsed Rift (“The Atlantic Test Site”).

Symbols

The Operator symbol of Marble Hornets is Alex Kralie and totheark’s basic representation of the Operator’s lack of face, simply a testament to their paranoid obsession:

The Everyman HYBRID logo, whose uncertain meaning likely relates to its presence within HABIT’s clue trail:

The Severance symbol of Tribe Twelve, formerly known as the Observer or Collective symbol before its true purpose was revealed, is a rune whose user may relinquish power from something else:

The Order symbol of Dark Harvest, a calling card for the cult and representation of the Rift through which Gorr’Rylaehotep was summoned:

Footnotes

1. One poster in the Original Mythos Meta even asked “are they really plastic or something that the slender man makes naturally from his body?”, a question not inconsistent with the “patch of black cloth” found to contain Sigma radiation in Everyman HYBRID (The Jester’s Prize).

2. Ask your doctor if being stalked by an otherworldly abomination is right for you.

3. More instances have been provided by Marble Hornets: Explained - Odds & Ends.