| FROM A VIDEOGAME This article discusses content originating from the video game Slender: The Arrival and thus is confirmed to be fictional. Characters and organizations discussed are either entirely fictitious or are portrayed by voice actors/actors. |
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| “ | Close all the windows and doors. Just... Don't let him in. | ” |
| — Kate, in Slender: The Arrival | ||
Kate is a major antagonist in Slender: The Arrival and the main protagonist of Slender: The Eight Pages.
Slender: The Eight Pages[]
Kate is the player controlled character in Slender: The Eight Pages. According to Slender: The Arrival, when they were children, Kate and her friend CR went exploring in the woods behind Kate's house. On one of these trips the two of them encountered Slender Man and fled back to Kate's home. CR blocked this memory out for several years, but whether or not Kate remembered this event more clearly is unknown. A few years later Kate and CR, after he began to recover his memories of seeing Slender Man and discussed it with his doctor, decided to go into the woods to confirm that what they had seen had simply been a figment of their imaginations as kids. They then got separated and CR experienced intense and distressing hallucinations before managing to find his way back to Kate's House, where he saw Kate sitting in her living room. He couldn't get her attention and went home, presumably to recover. Kate, however, was actually experiencing the events of the original Slender: The Eight Pages.
CR began to worry and returned to Kate's House the next day, after calling her several times without response, but was unable to find her. He searched the woods and found Kate unconscious on the ground with a broken video camera, a flashlight, and a stash of weird drawings. He took her to a hospital where she stayed for around 2 weeks before returning home.
Slender: The Arrival[]
Kate drawing in her room, before being attacked by Slender Man at her house in Escape.
Kate has multiple appearances in the game. Between The Eight Pages and The Arrival, she appears to be in her late teens to early 20's.
At some point prior to the events of Slender: The Arrival, Kate's mother passed away. According to a collectible within the game Kate started looking to sell the house and move elsewhere, a process which her childhood friend Lauren may have offered to help her with. This would explain Lauren's arrival at Kate's house in the Prologue as well as Kate's line "I can't thank you enough for coming all this way to help me out!" found in her thank you note. Although the player may find the collectible revealing information about Kate's mother early in the game and assume her death is connected Kate's wish to sell her home, this event is more likely to have been a result of the CR's 10th email, after the events of Slender: The Eight Pages, in which CR suggests he and Kate stay somewhere far away from the woods. This would also imply that Kate's tone in her thank you note to Lauren was falsely cheerful, however.
Kate and Lauren often played on the swing set outside Kate's house as children and were good friends, but unlike Kate and CR they either never ventured into the woods or simply never encountered Slender man when they did. This means that Kate's only confidant about her experience seeing Slender man was CR. There is no indication that Lauren ever knew about what Kate and CR saw, and in CR's letters it may be inferred that Kate either blocked the experience out like CR did or simply never told Lauren or anyone else about what had happened.
Some time before Kate and CR could successfully relocate away from the woods, CR confessed to having feelings for her, which she responded badly to. They appear to have stopped contact after this, and their mental states continued to deteriorate. The next time they met, it was when CR told Kate that he had a solution to end their hallucinations and "fix all of this." Kate did as he asked her to, but CR's solution was suicide at the radio tower, which she either didn't know or realized she could not commit to only after they had already arrived. We can assume at least a week passed between their loss in contact and CR's note, as his solution changes from moving away to suicide, suggesting a much more severe case of mental instability. After telling CR "I can't!" and fleeing the radio tower as he commit suicide alone, Kate drove* back home and got progressively worse, compulsively drawing images resembling the original eight pages on papers and the walls. Her portrayal of the radio tower as the "solution" suggests that she either intended to commit suicide with CR but panicked and left, or later, in a much worse mental state, also began seeing it as the only answer. Chapter 6: Escape began some amount of time after, depicting her last appearance as human before she was abducted and proxified, becoming The Chaser.
*The car the player sees on the way to Kate's house in the Prologue may be CR's. He asks for her to meet him by the street, suggesting he drove to her house. If that was the case, he would likely have then driven them both to the radio tower. Kate, however, would have been the one to drive back, which might explain its haphazard parking.
The Chaser[]
Kate, proxified as the Chaser.
This section goes through each chapter that The Chaser appears in and describes her involvement.
In Chapter 3: Into the Abyss, Lauren ventures into the Kullman mines' warehouse and proceeds to be chased by a proxified Kate known as "The Chaser."
What exactly happened to her is unknown, but afterwards she is animalistic in nature and appears incapable of speech, instead growling, hissing, and gurgling. She wears a damaged mask and has a dark substance around her eyes and mouth that is visible when she attacks Lauren. She appears to have entirely black sclera and white irises. She wears a white hoodie, blue jeans, and dark gloves that are all stained with dry blood. Where she obtained these clothes is unknown, as she wasn't wearing any of them in the footage shown in Chapter 6: Escape aside from her tanktop worn underneath. Either Slender Man provided them (unlikely considering Charlie's state), she stole them, or she took them off of a corpse, the last two both implying that she managed to retain a level of sentience and is capable of relatively clear thought. The idea that she might have been driven purely by survival instinct is questionable, as the events of the game take place in summer or late spring and she began wearing a hoodie. There's also the possibility that the Kullman mines' warehouse is cold, however, and that that might be where she is usually located.
The Chaser is sensitive to light and is dazed when Lauren concentrates her flashlight's beam on her face. The Chaser pursues Lauren until she manages to get on the elevator and escape the mines. In contrast to her behavior, the writing on the floors and walls in the same style of Kate's writing on the walls of her home appears to actually be trying to guide and help Lauren to the exit. It's possible that these messages were written by Kate herself, as no other character could have been in the mines up until that point. The writing also repeats phrases and warnings that are found in Kate's house.
The full extent of Kate's proxification and whether or not she is able to struggle against it or reach a more coherent state than seen in Chapter 3: Into the Abyss is unknown, but the writing on the walls of the Kullman mines' warehouse and her ability to acquire new clothes means a level of consciousness cannot be entirely ruled out.
Chapter 6: Escape begins with Lauren watching a tape that shows Kate frantically drawing images Slender Man that strongly resemble the eight pages. In the recording, Kate stops abruptly and appears to hear something, as she then whispers "He's here!" and attempts to close the windows and doors in her home to keep Slender Man out. He is able to enter regardless of this and she desperately tries to escape to her room, but ends up being cornered. As she sees him appear in her room she is suddenly either thrown out of her closed window by Slender Man or jumps through it while attempting to flee from him. This would have been a two-story fall, which likely would have injured her badly. Seeing as Slender Man was attempting to abduct and proxify her, it may be more likely that Kate jumped out on her own.
Curiously, when Lauren is exploring Kate's house in the Prologue, she finds the glass shards of the broken window are inside Kate's room and are covering the floor. This puts both the idea that she may have been thrown out and the idea that she jumped out into question.
It is implied* that the events of the recording in Chapter 6: Escape take place the same day that Lauren arrives at Kate's house, which would mean that they happened moments before the Prologue begins. In the Prologue, after investigating the alarmingly chaotic state of Kate's house, Lauren hears what we can assume is Kate's scream from the woods. Lauren runs outside and into the woods to try and find her, but is unable to. As a result, she is then lost in the middle of Oakside Park, where the first chapter of the game takes place.
*Despite this, the events of Chapter 6: Escape are unlikely to have taken place immediately prior to the Prologue. The following points explain.
- The events of Chapter 6: Escape take place at night while Lauren arrives at Kate's house after sunrise. This means that anywhere between roughly 30 minutes or several hours could have passed between Kate's abduction and Lauren's arrival at her home.
- In the events of Slender: The Eight Pages, CR was both tortured with the sound of Kate screaming and led to see Kate in her living room when she was truthfully in the woods behind her house. This proves that Slender Man is able to induce both visual and auditory hallucinations. It is possible, and likely based on Kate's extremely damaged and feral condition when Lauren next encounters her, that an extended period of time passed between the events of Chapter 6: Escape and Lauren's arrival at Kate's house. The scream she heard could have been either an auditory hallucination or evoked from an already-proxified Kate and was intended to lure her into the woods in search of her friend.
- The deterioration of Kate's mental state between the time Lauren hears her scream in the Prologue and the beginning of Chapter 3: Into the Abyss is not impossible when you consider Slender Man's abilities, but unless the blood on The Chaser's hoodie is her own (something that would be strange if you took the angle and placement of blood into account), there is no source for it in such a short period of time.
- Chapter 2: The Eight Pages in Slender: The Arrival is heavily reminiscent of Slender: The Eight Pages, and there is nothing that indicates that it didn't also take place in one night as the events of The Eight Pages did, making the idea that Lauren was unconscious or trapped in search of the pages for any extended period of time unlikely to be true. This rules out the possibility that Chapter 2: The Eight Pages could have taken place over a prolonged period of time, instead, rather than weeks or months passing between Chapter 6: Escape and the Prologue.
- The Chaser's photophobia, or her sensitivity and aversion to light, also implies that she was in the mines and in the dark for longer than a single night. If Chapter 6: Escape did occur moments prior to the Prologue, this should not be possible. The possibility of The Chaser's photophobia being a result of torture is slim, as the effects are shown in CR and Charles Matheson to be insanity, not direct changes to the physical condition.
The blood on Kate the Chaser's hoodie and her sensitivity to light may have been simply design choices and it is likely that Chapter 6: Escape was intended to be placed right before the Prologue begins, as the scream Lauren hears from the woods is clearly meant to be Kate crying out as she's abducted by Slender Man and is never suggested to be anything more than that, but several factors prevent this from making sense, unfortunately.
Chapter 8: The Arrival. After escaping a forest fire, Lauren is knocked out by a proxified Charlie and, after finding her way through the charred remnants of a building, finds what appears to be Kate, without her mask or hoodie and covered in dirt and/or possible wounds, crouched in the corner of a dark room. When Lauren approaches her, The Chaser, in her bloodstained hoodie and mask, appears to jump up and attack Lauren, killing or knocking her out and ending the game. It's likely that Kate's appearance without her mask and hoodie was a hallucination created by Slender Man to lure Lauren into danger with the relief that she had finally found Kate, whom she couldn't have known was The Chaser. Seeing as the model of Kate the Chaser that attacks Lauren is fully clothed, Kate couldn't have actually been huddled in the corner. The difference in clothes was likely for the purpose of tricking the player as much as Lauren, but if that was the case, why it is still The Chaser's game model that attacks the player is unknown. It may have been to explicitly show that Kate became The Chaser, as Kate simply having the same attack animation could have left some room for confusion, but explaining this with the idea that the image of Kate was a hallucination does not really have any affect on the scene either way. It may have even been the intention in the first place.
Bonus Chapter: Genesis (added in version 1.3) is a flashback, and confirms that Kate is the person in the original Slender: The Eight Pages.
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Quotes[]
Kate, before being proxified, is one of few characters with dialogue in the game.
Escape
- "He's here." - Kate, referring to Slender Man, during the level's opening sequence.
- "Close all the windows and doors. Just... don't let him in." - Kate, instructing the player.
- "Don't go outside... he's out there." - Kate, if the player attempts to leave the house.
- "I need to hide!" - Kate, when Slender Man is inside the house.
A portion of Kate's dialogue heard in Chapter 6: Escape.
The Arrival
- "Let go..." - Kate talking to CR, at the start of the recording.
- "I can't... I can't!" - Kate, refusing to commit suicide with CR, midway through the recording.
Kate's dialogue heard from CR's video camera in The Arrival.
Letters & Notes Timeline[]
A fanmade timeline of the letters and notes found in game. Focuses on Kate and CR and excludes the Mathesons. Found here!
Trivia[]
- As evidenced by the songs that play on the radio in Chapter 6: Escape, Kate seems to prefer old fashioned blues and country music. The Radio plays the following songs:
- Kate's last name is either Milens or Hayes. Her email is "kmilens@bserv.adv.co", indicating that the last name she goes by is Milens. Her mother's name is Beth Hayes, however, meaning that either "Hayes" is her mother's maiden name, Beth Hayes is her stepmother, or Kate was adopted.
- It's also possible that Kate's last name is double barreled, indicating that her biological parents presumably died.
- The physical appearance of the Chaser is possibly inspired by Kayako Saeki. Developer Brenden Frank stated in an interview that The Grudge was one of the scariest movies he'd ever seen. Kayako and the Chaser have many similarities that include having black hair, a pale face and making terrifying noises when nearby.
- Kate is the first Proxy to be officially announced.
- The Chaser suffers from photophobia, a medical condition that causes the eye(s) to become sensitive to bright lights. Additionally, a symptom of photophobia is common headaches. This is most likely why the Chaser gets confused and makes grunting and growling noises after losing sight of Lauren for a long duration of time.
- Kate is one of the few characters in Slender: The Arrival to speak in dialogue. Others include Charlie Matheson, Jr., his parents, and CR.
- Kate the Chaser is the only enemy on the game to chase the player a number of times before the player receives the "Game over" screen. The number varies depending on the difficulty setting.
- Easy: Possibly unlimited or a large amount of hits before death.
- Normal: 3-4 times.
- Hardcore: 1-2 times.
Sounds[]
All the sounds made by Kate's Chaser form in the "Into The Abyss" level.
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