Slender Man Lore #12: Slender Man's Dimension/The Ark
Consider this a place of refuge, not from the waters, but from damnation.
Ever since the lore's beginning, the Slender Man has stolen children away in the same manner of classic Faeries, vanishing without a trace. But where does he go; where does he take them?
The Slender Man is believed to have some kind of dwelling place where he takes victims for some ill purpose. It is often used to explain how Slenderwalking works, and uses Alien Geometries to terrifying effect. Typically, it manifests itself as our world with a more extreme influence from the Slender Man's abilities. Those led astray deep into the woods find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of the same landmarks seemingly rearranging themselves, the encroaching fog threatening to swallow them up. There are no signs of life, but some of death; among other nightmarish possibilities would be the return of the black bags. The Slender Man's apparent distortion of space transforms familiar buildings into impossible winding labyrinths, making the line between our world and his all the more undefined.
One shared interpretation of the Slender Man's domain is the Path of Black Leaves, a forested road covered in black leaves that victims find themselves trapped in, with no signs of human life and a presence of monsters lurking within the woods. Tribe Twelve referenced a "dark place" in one of its early Twitter codes before eventually establishing that the Collective exist within some kind of alternate plane, and the cult from Dark Harvest see a macabre paradise in the "Fourth World" that the Slender Man (Gorr'Rylaehotep) was pulled from. But perhaps the defining example would be the occurrence in Marble Hornets that gave a possible explanation as to why everyone was "gone".
"The Ark" may very well be the most beautifully enigmatic concept the Slender Man Mythos has had to offer. It originated in Marble Hornets with totheark, the channel that sent cryptic responses and occasionally referred to seeking an Ark. Its identity became one of the most heated grounds of fan speculation, to the point where the phrase is now iconic to the mythos as a whole. In the end, Marble Hornets only left implications of what it could be when its last mentions are in the note Jay receives from the Hooded Masked Man (totheark) instructing him to find it when he finds Alex, and the last video on totheark's channel saying that it awaits. While it can easily be written off as an insane attempt at rationalizing the Operator's presence, there could still be a possible meaning to it based on old theories.
The Biblical connotations of the word Ark were lost on no one, inevitably leading to theories that it would be a parallel to either Noah's Ark or the Ark of the Covenant. Theories on the latter state that the Ark would therefore be a repository of knowledge, such as the tapes. To put this into perspective with the ending: Tim attempts to convince Alex that the "infection" of the Operator can be fought when Alex thinks killing everyone involved is the only way. Totheark was clearly opposed to Alex all this time, therefore the message could have been to find knowledge that can be used against it.
The Noah's Ark connection is made with the theory that totheark was seeking salvation from the looming threat, and wanted Jay to find it as well. But if this is true, then there are some sinister implications in play. Jay was shot by Alex as soon as he found him as the note instructed, and the message of the ark awaiting would be the last totheark would ever send. It could mean that Alex was right about there being only one salvation from the Operator: death.
What many theorize is that the Ark is a place where the Operator may have come from - specifically, the surreal realm that Tim was dragged through in Entries #65, #83, and #86. It manifests itself as a trip of teleportation through several familiar locations that... aren't quite holding up correctly.
It phases in and out at random, disturbing places. In its first appearance, Tim is warped through different parts of Rosswood Park in a series of hectic imagery such as him struggling underwater, being dragged down a hill, and walking through the tunnel, its floor illuminated against unnatural darkness, to find the body of the stranger Alex killed nearly two years before... without any signs of decomposition. This, and the fact that Tim arrives at his car before Jay, indicates that time doesn't work correctly within it.
The appearance of bodies taken by the Operator implies that its purpose is to take people away into the darkness. Whenever someone is dead, or dying, or otherwise unable to escape, the Operator has allways appeared to ensure they are "gone". If this place truly is the Ark as many speculate, then our mad prophet has finally found what he was looking for.
Although only three Entries involve these teleportation trips, there have been many other examples in the series of the world itself behaving strangely. Early on we had Entry #23 in which Jay explores the abandoned house only to find himself in the boiler room from the previous Entry, and Entry #24 where Jay goes through one side of a door without coming out through the other. A similar effect occurred in Entry #72 when time apparently passed faster outside of Alex's house, and in Entry #82 Jay suggested that Rosswood Park could be "shifting itself around" as nothing was left in the same place.
In addition to other parts of its surreal plot, Everyman HYBRID has also included notable examples of a bizarre "other world".
Of all the other series that have referred to the Ark (including Tribe Twelve's nod of naming the character Noah), the most curious example would be that of Everyman HYBRID. In its unique metafictional way, it references the phrase without establishing it as plot-relevant, in the same way that it acknowledges Marble Hornets as being a fictional series in-universe. The blog CANYOUSEETHEWORDS seemed ominous upon first discovery for the emphasis it placed upon the ark, water, and floods; when asked about it, the "ordinary Princeton student" running it simply cited the crossed-out text as "mistakes". Additionally, the Ark is subtly referenced in this video as the song is distorted. But here, I will talk about the implications of one widely debated video.
"-.-." is the last of the "morse code videos" - a series of videos that were out of place with the rest of the channel, and which the crew were unable to see. It shows a discussion between them that seems to reference the Iteration Theory. The basis of this theory is that the characters of Everyman HYBRID go through a cycle of reincarnation struggling against the same demons, making them the same as the children from a series of medical reports released throughout the ARG. The conversation in this video shows awareness of their "other selves", as does "The Hidden Videos", where an attempt to show them the videos causes them to apparently revert to their Fairmount selves, leading to speculation of what the morse code videos even are.
Two videos put under scrutiny for their canonicity are "Slender Man" and "Welcome to the ARK"; they were uploaded out-of-game but seemed to foreshadow later events. The former foreshadows Evan's violent behavior under a monster's control, while the latter seemed to reference the Iteration plot. In its reference to the Ark, the video has the cast inside a room discussing where they are. There are no people outside, it has been entirely dark out for "three days", time has seemingly stopped, technology is failing, and they must stay in the light to avoid the Slender Man and the Rake. I mention this here because
Doctor Corenthal's involvement ties this all back to the "other world" in the video "The property". In this video, he saves Vinnie from the Slender Man inside a house made up of different rooms from the crew's houses, and takes him to "[his] Eden", a place he says is the "inner sanctum to the monsters' sanctuary". His speech is also consistent with the Iteration theory by referencing "your sister, your brother, and me".
This "monsters' sanctuary" seems to be the place where HABIT sends Noah in the Tribe Twelve video "Bridge to Nowhere". Noah is displaced by two months into the past, running through random parts of a city and talking to himself as ambient noise like that of the Collective videos is heard throughout. He reaches a bridge where Jeff appears, telling him the only way out is to commit suicide, even though Jeff was already killed by HABIT. When HABIT confronts Noah, the end of the bridge shows a sunny field like the one in The Property, and HABIT says he will go back to go after Jeff "and a few others".
The dilemma of the house being made of all of their different rooms is referenced in "Le premier cours". Vinnie is convinced that it was allways the same house, and that they are in some way a work of fiction. This brought a whole new look into the nature of the cycle and the "Candleverse". It gave even more of an unfictional look into what we thought was true for our world compared to its own, and
although its meaning cannot be definitively proven, that is also the beauty of the Ark.
This one enigma has conveyed such atmosphere with such little focus that it will allways be a morbid curiosity to lose sleep over. Its meaning was up to the interpretations of anyone haunted enough by its ambiguity to look for reason in vain, and
from that it brought everything full circle. That's what the Slender Man's world is about, too; it is everything we fearfully don't understand, encroaching upon what we do. It's everywhere parents warn their children never to tread, and the place our wandering minds are ultimately lost forever
yet we consider the chance it is a place of refuge
as time and space flee every which way, disregarding our beloved logic,
and we seek that salvation,
and we are all trapped together
for we are truly
in the same
sinking.
vessel.
