Is Slender Man coming to ‘American Horror Story’ season 6?

BY AARON PRUNER

With every waking day it seems like FX has another teaser to whet fans’ appetites for American Horror Story season 6. What’s real and what’s not is still a very valid question but something caught our eye over the weekend which has led us down an old train of thought: Is Slender Man coming to AHS?

The Slender Man theory hit the Internet back in January. It was rumored that the script was from an outside party with Ryan Murphy and Co. interested in adapting it for the new season. But as soon as this rumor spread, it was shot down. E! News went on to report that the theme for the new season would be announced in March—that never happened.

After the first batch of teasers hit the web, we did a deep dive and picked apart what we felt was real and what wasn’t. But could some of the other clips be guiding us in the right direction, too? Take a look at the trailer, which weaves all the previous seasons together before running through a quick montage of the new teasers. It’s the final seconds of the video that really piqued our interest.

The visual of bones has recurred in recent promotional videos but the overlay of bones over the backdrop of a spooky forest feels Slender Man-like to us. We may be reaching here, but there’s something about this ending that reminds us of the web game Slender Man: Bones of Children.

We’re not quite sure Murphy would make such a random and obscure reference. However, between that detail, the notion that this season will somehow be about the innocence of children and those recent promos that feature spiders crawling out of a woman’s mouth, our thoughts keep going back to Slender Man.

After all, there is enough imagery out there that presents the be-suited man as a spider-like creature. And let’s be clear here, we are not posing the notion that Slender Man is the theme of the new episodes. But, given how previous seasons have worked, the FX series has a habit of throwing all sorts of spooky tidbits at the proverbial wall to see what sticks. For example: “Hotel” wasn’t about the Addiction Demon … But he did pop up from time to time.

We know an image of a creepy forest could just be that and nothing more. But with the leaked images showing “CROATOAN” carved into a tree, we’re going to assume there is more at play here than mere creepy stuff to look at. If the theory is true that Lady Gaga is playing a monster—named Croatoan, possibly—who’s to say that Slender Man isn’t connected with her character?

There’s less than a month before we begin to receive answers to these questions—and hopefully, a whole lot more. American Horror Story season 6 premieres Sept. 14.