Seeking Truth

Seeking Truth is the blog of Zeke Strahm, an antisocial and wisecracking detective who is investigating the disappearance of a 16-year-old girl, Victoria Krell. When Zeke and his partner Lizzie Armeen visit the the family's house, they find dozens of hand-drawn pictures depicting what the reader will recognize as Slender Man.

In the months preceding her death, Victoria became increasingly withdrawn, aggressive, and paranoid, and reported that she was being stalked by someone in a business suit. Zeke is just hoping to wrap the case up fast, until another girl disappears under similar circumstances.

Zeke is made aware of Slender Man by commenters but dismisses the connection and maintains an antagonistic relationship with the fandom for a good portion of the work. At the same time, Zeke reveals that when he was younger, he lived in a remote house in the middle of the woods, and was often frightened, to the point that, as an adult, he cannot stand silence at night.

A third teenager, Sam Ford, is brought in for questioning due to experiencing many of the same behaviors and symptoms that led up to the other disappearances. They keep Sam at the station for his protection, only for him to vanish from his guarded cell a few nights later. Zeke begins a protracted manhunt for their primary suspect, Albert Conaghan, a powerful businessman who previously avoided conviction for several murders and sexual assaults.

Lizzie, Zeke's partner, becomes obsessed with the case. At first Zeke writes this off as her usual workaholic behavior, but then he discovers that she has been obsessively researching Slender Man online. And not only that, but something in her real life has her seriously spooked. Zeke continues to be hostile to any mentions of a connection to Slender Man, for fear that it will become too real.

In the meantime, a third detective, Eric Riley, has been out sick for several days. After a disturbing conversation over the phone, Zeke visits Eric's house to find the whole place trashed, and Eric missing. Now that another cop has been targeted, it's personal.

Conaghan is finally apprehended after several sightings around the city. During Zeke's confrontational and violent interrogation, Conaghan reveals that Slender Man came to him several months back and recruited him as a "disciple." He describes Slender Man as coming from another world to which humans are abducted for food and entertainment. He also says that Slender Man is targeting Zeke specifically for some reason.

Lizzie now takes a series of sick days, rare for her. Zeke stops by her house and sees how terrible she looks, how obsessive and paranoid she's become. She claims that Slender Man is real and has been stalking her too. Her mental state is deteriorating rapidly, so Zeke stays at her house to take care of her.

As the circumstances become more bizarre and disturbing, Zeke loses patience with rational explanations and begins to consider the supernatural. He speaks with Lizzie about her sightings and experiences. She says Slender Man came to her and showed her telepathic visions of visiting Zeke as a child. Lizzie is convinced that Slender Man cannot be stopped, and that anyone he targets will eventually disappear.

While Zeke is with Lizzie, Conaghan escapes from jail and hides out in one of his warehouses. Zeke goes to the warehouse to bring him in and encounters Slender Man there instead. Seeing Slender Man causes Zeke's repressed childhood memories to come flooding back. When he was younger, someone he called The Nightmare Man would sneak into his room at night, and none of the adults in his life believed him.

Back in the present, Zeke shoots Slender Man, but either he misses or the bullets don't hurt him. Zeke turns and runs, only to stumble upon the mutilated body of Lizzie, who followed him to the warehouse against his instructions, and who proceeds to die in his arms.

Zeke sinks into depression and paranoia. He stays around crowds during the day, where he feels safer, and barricades himself inside his house at night. Slender Man watches him through the windows every night and beckons to him telepathically. The stress and sleep-deprivation make Zeke increasingly paranoid, casting everything he's seeing and saying into doubt.

After a drunken breakdown and several erratic posts, Zeke decides that he must confront and kill Slender Man. He does a research binge and lays out his findings in his next post. He concludes that Slender Man only targets adults who escaped him as children. He knows this is true of himself, and suspects that it may have been true for Lizzie too. He prepares to return to Conaghan's warehouse, hoping for answers, and hoping to find Eric there, alive.

The next post is written by an FBI agent named Agent Fisk, who improbably hacked Zeke's blog to update Zeke's readers. Conaghan and Eric were found dead in the burned-down wreckage of the warehouse. Zeke is now the primary suspect, and currently missing. Fisk's post casts additional doubt onto Zeke's story and mental state. A few more cryptic and sporadic posts are left on the blog — including one that warns readers not to trust Fisk — but otherwise the story is concluded.

Slender Man's overall behavior follows a classic pattern in this work. Primarily, he targets children and teenagers. Once he has his victim's attention, he begins to stalk them, following them everywhere. He is known to peer in through windows, and sometimes he enters his victim's bedrooms to watch them from inside. The victim typically becomes increasingly withdrawn, fearful, and paranoid and may experience memory lapses before finally disappearing under mysterious circumstances.

Slender Man is depicted in various ways in the victims' drawings. Sometimes he is in typical business attire. Sometimes he is shown in a more spider-like form or with multiple arms or tentacles. Sometimes he is menacing others figures in the drawings, other times he is holding his arms outstretched as if in welcome (a repeating motif in this work). Victims also compulsively draw the Operator Symbol or "no face" symbol originating from Marble Hornets. One victim claims that this symbol marks whoever is "next."

Slender Man can only be seen by certain individuals and is invisible to others. In one instance he is seen by a whole group of teenagers. In another, a teenage girl sees him through the window while her father remains oblivious. Zeke and Lizzie both see him at different times.

Slender is described as 6 to 7 feet tall in this work, but can seemingly stretch himself, as he has been reported peeking into second story windows. Zeke caps the number of Slender's limbs at 10. Zeke speculates that Slender Man is only wearing a human disguise, and beneath is something truly alien. He is frequently referred to with capitalized pronouns in this work, as in He/Him and HE/HIM. He is depicted tilting his head curiously. In this work, he is only active at night.

Slender Man is able to speak telepathically to his victims, mostly in short phrases such as "Come out," as well as showing them mental images, memories, and visions. Sam Ford describes being "contacted" by Slender Man, and describes Slender's influence like voices in his head, affecting his behavior and making him do things. In addition to mind manipulation, Slender can disrupt electronics.

Zeke concludes that Conaghan is Slender Man's proxy. Slender Man came to Conaghan and showed him telepathic visions of "wonderful, horrible things" to recruit him as a "disciple." Conaghan tells Zeke that Slender takes people to "his world." He describes Slender as coming from another world or dimension containing horrors we can't imagine, to which human beings are abducted as food, "entertainment," and perhaps for other unknowable purposes.

Although children are his primary victims, Slender Man targets some adults as well in this work. Zeke speculates that he targets adults who previously escaped him as children. When he comes for Zeke, he only comes at night. He stands at Zeke's window every night and stares at him, beckoning to him telepathically.

Slender Man seems impervious to bullets in this story. Zeke fires several rounds on him to no affect, although Zeke admits that he may have just missed. Slender Man also allegedly survives a shotgun blast when he enters Zeke's house, although this occurs "off-screen" so the details are unclear.

Zeke subscribes to a hybrid model of the tulpa theory. Slender Man has always existed, but his power grows through the spread of his stories, as more and more people turn their attention to him. Like many Slender blogs, this blog acknowledges Slender Man's modern origins on Something Awful, but also acknowledges some of the "historical" evidence including the "Der Ritter" woodcuts, concluding that something like Slender Man has existed throughout human history.

Slender Man seems particularly drawn to those who become obsessed with him. Lizzie explains that the more you know about Slender Man, the easier it is to become a victim.