The Slender Man Mythos/WMG

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". No 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?

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. Slenderman 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 dissention 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 defence 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 wro

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.

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 Slenderman may not have been an active combatant.
 * Not necessarily. When Evan described his fight with Slendy in the11/26 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 repond 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 Slenderman 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 Slenderman 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?

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

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.

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 are He is fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good luck."

Slenderman is, in fact, human.
Due to his appearance and strange powers, Slenderman 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.
 * Cross-posted from the Marble Hornets WMG: but perhaps, instead of being born that way, he went through a mysterious hole in his shape?
 * Or he was mutated by Zalgo. As far as mutations caused by Zalgo infection go, he got pretty lucky.

Slenderman 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.

Slender Man is a lifeform 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...

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.

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.
 * Ohh, 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.

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.

Everyone's encounter with Slenderman 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.
 * 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: Slenderman 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...

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 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 Slenderman 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.
 * 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. Everytime a new story pops up that differs from the previous story, a new friend is created for him and we are inadvertantly filling the world with more Slender Men, each one with new, possibly more horrifying powers.

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.
 * You're both wrong - Slendy's appearance is a glimpse into his true form...

Recording the events prior to your death is Slender Man's doing.
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 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 Favoured 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 beastlike, rodent's body.

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.

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.

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.

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 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, 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.

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

Slenderman is a Men in Black field agent
However, he is a rookie and is a threat to MIB's secrecy. His shapeshifting abilites 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.

Yahtzee is or was stalked by Slenderman
The third and fourth Chzo games would suggest this.
 * This can be also tied to the Zalgo theory below if you give it thought.

Slenderman 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.
 * If Dare 2 Die is to be believed, then you're right.
 * FFFFFFFFFFFFF-
 * Furthermore, that whole "Slenderman is but a tool" thing might actually imply that Zalgo holds Slendy in contempt. Is the feeling mutual? Perhaps they oppose each other on some level? Is Slendy Blue while Zalgo's Orange? Humanity is caught in the middle. Hooray?
 * Zalgo is tired of Slendy and HABIT is his replacement in training...

Slenderman 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 Slenderman 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.

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.

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?

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-existant, he is still a threat.

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" and it seems like in Marble Hornets

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.

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 tall suit and faceless mask really are just a stupid, unconvincing costume...
...But the wearer is not human.
 * He is an alien stranded on Earth and stuck in a poorly made human disguise. And Ax Crazy because of it.

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 existance 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."
 * He kills people specifically so that the rest of us keep believing he's out there and scary. Our belief brings him into existance, but if we stopped believing, he'd go away again.

Slendy is a True Fae
Creepy, alien, disturbing, and prone to messing with people's heads... Sounds about right.

Slendy is Mr. Popo's little brother
Seriously, watch this and tell me that they aren't related somehow. They're both creepy enough.

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...

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.

Slenderman 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. Slenderman 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.

Slenderman 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 Slenderman, maybe it was, but Slenderman now is always have now that Slenderman 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 Slenderman'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

Slenderman 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 Slenderman is so disproportionate.

Slenderman 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.

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

Slenderman's creator...
http://wwwrunningwonthelp-lya.blogspot.com/2010/11/asshole.html#comments Team Fatal Tactics comment at the bottom.

Slenderman'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...

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

Slenderman's suit is hiding his true form.
Why does Slenderman 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 Slenderman is the true form and the suited Slenderman is the disguise.

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. ..

The Slenderman's motivation...
...is simply to stop existing. Going on from the post above, well, let's assume he's right, 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 existance? 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 disspear from the world so he can rest.

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.

Slenderman 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 Slenderman with sacrifice of some sort, but eventually forgot. Now, he's taking his payment with force.

Slenderman 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 - Slenderman (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.

Slenderman 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.

Slender Man is the Bed Intruder.
He's climbin' in your window, he's snatchin' your people up.
 * You Bastard.
 * Further evidence?
 * Even more.

Jack Skellington is the Disney Version of Slenderman.
Jack is a Slenderman 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 Slenderman. 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.

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.

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 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 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.

The only way to defeat the Slender Man is to trick him into saying "Candle Jack"
Even if it doesn't work, at leas

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 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 weakend 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. Slenderman 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?

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 is Buckethead.
I mean, just look at him.

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.

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 Slenderman 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.

The operator symbol literally represents Slenderman 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.

 * 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...

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.

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...

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.

Slenderman 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Slender Man is Mammon, the son of Lucifer
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 can be killed, and has.
But the one who kills him, becomes him.
 * I didn't need to sleep tonight anyway.

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. Slenderman 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.

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.

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

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.


 * 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, and C) he's not a creation, he's a memory and now that memory has been inflicted on millions of Doctor Who fans.

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.

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.

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.

The Slenderman is related to Longcat and Ceilingcat
What about Basement cat?
 * You know it's true.

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

Beware.

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.

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.

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

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.

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman is the Watcher, a form of the Doctor, and no longer needs the TARDIS.
The Watcher is an apparition of the Doctor that appeared prior to his regeneration into Five with creepy similarities to Slenderman: 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 Slenderman, and totally independent of the Doctor. Troper suggests that the regeneration is due to the Silence: you forget them when you see them, but Slenderman 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.

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman is what a normal human becomes when someone is photographied 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 "slendermen".

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.

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 Slenderman either mutated away from The Game, or that The Game is a product of Slenderman, 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 because we never actually created The Slender Man, Haruhi did.

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

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- Slenderman.
 * But Jhonen Vasquez is really short.

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."

Slenderman has a hard time getting inside people's homes.
Whatever Slenderman 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 Slenderman 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 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.

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman 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.

"Slenderman" 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.

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 The Messiah 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.

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.

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 Light Bulb Joke, or be lecturing them on why light bulb jokes are evil, but all they hear is "Stalk and murder people".

Slenderman 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.

Slendy's "tie" is actually an organic growth.
Perhaps another tentacle of some kind.
 * An erogenous zone?

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.

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.

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 a rogue agent of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum or Anti Cliche 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 killing them, driving them crazy or scaring them shitless.

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 killed them.

He allows getting caught on pictures and tapes, as well as being subject of blogs, so he can make people fear him more, as this makes his job easier and people more afraid of him. He didn't go after people like Chris-chan or Tim Bukley, as their hatedoms would cheer for him killing them, and he doesn't want to be loved or worshipped - only feared. He, however, is The Entity stalking Linkara - defeating and breaking popular reviewer will leave his fandom terrified of him and send stright message - nobody is safe.

Fears are allies or other rogue 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 ridiculous to thinks of him as more than mere annoyance.

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 children he killed? They had potential to create MS when they grow up. Of course, they had potential to actually learn and become skilled writers and now all stories they could give us are lost forever. Which means that he might be threat to his native Multiverse - by killing future creators he will immiediately cut out Multiverse's supply of new worlds. Without writers there will be no fiction. Without fiction Multiverse will stop evolving. And what cannot evolve, must die. He will throw our world into depths of despair and apathy created by lack of creativity and entertainment and doom his own, along with countless of others.


 * The Anti Cliche and Mary Sue Elimination Society apologizes for the actions 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 fucker'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.
 * On behalf of the Anti Cliche and Mary Sue Elimination Society, I, who am solely responsible for this event, offer an official apology to the PPC for my less-than-proper behavior.
 * Now, if you'll excuse me, I've a flamethrower crazy asshat to capture and neuralyze. God-fucking-dammit, the paperwork is going to be insane.

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 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.

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 Cosmic Horror that just takes the form of a tall, suited man due to the imaginations of the people who first summoned him.

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

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 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.
 * ...HOLY FUDGE.

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman doesn't know his own origins and is trying to find out.
That's what this is all about. Slenderman 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.

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

Slenderman 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.

Slenderman is Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.
In an episode of Angel, Wesley teleports and stares at Angel ominously. Need I say more?

Slenderman 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 immagining one of  in a black suit.