Creepypasta Research Journal

Theories and Discussion- Sally

*TRIGGER WARNING: Brief mentions of SA (sexual assault)*

*To see the author credits, full origin story, and fanart credits for any chapter, click on the external link. It will take you to the chapter on Quotev. Scroll to the bottom of it and you'll find everything linked.*

Appearance/Info

Her full name is Sally Maryam Williams, but she prefers to go by Sally Maryam Dawn after her death. Her real last name is a trigger for her. She's a German-American and was born on April 5th, 1958. She appears as a young female with a tattered and bloody dress. While the original story stated that Sally wears a white dress with her name sewn on the front, most art made by her creator has depicted her in a plain pink one. She has lengthy, curly brunette hair and green eyes. Sally's skin is covered in blood and lacerations, as is her dress. She has cuts on her arms and legs, a few scrapes on her knees and elbows, and bruises around her body and neck. She is 4'8 at age 12, but she likes to appear as an 8 year old when playing with young children. At this age, she's 4'0. She is always seen with her teddy bear who she affectionately calls 'Mr. Death'. This was a gift from Slenderman.

As a kid, she loved playing with friends and was seen doing so at the beginning of her story. Then, her uncle came to town and began living with the family since he was getting divorced. He began to abuse Sally in ways I don't want to mention which lasted for years. At one point she gained a little courage and began to lock her uncle out of her room. She also gained the courage to tell her friends, and they began plotting on how and when to tell her parents. However, they didn't notice that the uncle was eavesdropping. Sally eventually has a birthday party and the uncle went to get icecream, making up an excuse for Sally to come along. Sally knew something could go wrong so she told her friends to tell her mother everything if she didn't come back. As you can expect, she didn't. Her uncle abused her again and killed her in a park. He was caught eventually and put in prison for it. All of these events caused Sally to have a fear of being held down for too long. She also doesn't like to be forced to do anything.

After death she became a poltergeist. As a poltergeist, she does not kill (there was only one exception to this) and never will, but she does chase off the people living in her home if there aren't any children there for her to play with. The exception I mentioned is seen in a piece of art drawn before the story was rebooted in which Slenderman took her to her uncle's cell and allowed her to kill him. This seemed to be canon, but the author later stated Sally doesn't kill, so take that as you will. I personally like to consider it canon.

Traits

As Sally died young, her personality traits are child-like. Her author did say her mental state grows and she can change her appearance from child to adult at will, but she prefers to be a child so I don't really think she matured into an adult mentally. She's kind, playful, witty, confident, honest, loud, childish, a tad bratty at times, stubborn, sensitive, and a bit of a trickster. Like most others her age, she can have trouble with jealousy, temper tantrums, and anger at getting the spotlight taken off of her. She tends to enjoy scaring and pranking older people, but she likes playing with young kids in a normal fashion like she did before she died.

Her hobbies after death include having tea parties, playing video games with Ben and the others, drawing and coloring, taking Smile Dog on walks, pulling pranks, eating a lot of candy, and staying up late to watch scary movies.

Disclaimer: Y'all don't take Sally playing video games with BEN in a weird way, please. I've seen so many people ship them in a really gross way. It's just not cool bro. They're kids. Go touch some grass. - Brinlee

Motive

Unlike the other creepypastas, Sally doesn't enjoy killing or hurting innocent people. All she really does is chase them from her home if they don't have kids for her to play with. Because of this, I don't know how she could be friends with the other creepypastas seeing as most of them do murder innocents. I can only really see her getting along with Suicide Sadie or one of the nice proxies who doesn't like murdering, like Cat Hunter. Ben too since in his canon he's a child who doesn't really hurt anyone.

Method

When haunting adults she uses her poltergeist abilities. She can float a few feet off the ground, phase through walls/floors/doors, lift small objects (bigger objects when angry), knock on walls/doors/windows, and leave scratch marks. When she leaves scratch marks, she leaves four rather than the stereotypical three. She only scratches when she feels threatened.

Apparently she can steal ya keys too. Hide ya keys y'all, she's a thief lmao. - Brinlee

Theories

I've been questioning the fandom's portrayal of Sally and Slenderman having a father-daughter relationship ever since I came across it. I know it's not canon to Slenderman's lore, only Sally's, but it confuses me still. How could a creature known for kidnapping children have any sort of sentimental, protective feelings over this one? Given his large influence, I'm sure he's seen countless children with damaged pasts similar to Sally's, so I'm not quite sure why she's so different to him compared to the many others. I guess that leads into the theory I'm about to propose which is that he kidnaps school aged children to groom into becoming proxies. We've seen this in Slender: The Arrival when he kidnapped and proxified a young boy named Charlie Matheson Jr. In none of his canon lore is he said to kill the children he takes, so what if he doesn't? What if he's not a child-eater like everyone seems to think? Children are easily swayed, they're young and their minds haven't developed yet. They adapt to behaviors they're taught, so if a child were to grow up learning how to kill, by the time they reached maturity they'd probably be more than skilled at it. They'd be the perfect proxy since they were trained to be obedient from a young age. I don't think Slenderman only recruits children, but I do think if he finds a promising enough child, he may groom them into becoming a proxy for him. Maybe the group from the school that he kidnapped was a test group. I'm sure it would take practice to find the right method, as well as the right age group. Sally might have been the perfect recruit since she was dead and had a strong need for revenge. Maybe if Slenderman took her in and gave her the chance to exact punishment on her uncle, she'd become exactly what he needed. I don't think Sally is a proxy (yet), but I do think she's one of the rare cases of a child being taken in and 'adopted' as a creepypasta. I also don't think that Slenderman would only want to groom a person to be a killer. Maybe he needs other jobs done. Scouting, spying, haunting a certain place, gathering information, etc. Since he took in Sally (as we can infer from all the fanart the creator made), it's likely she'd be more than willing to help him out in various ways. She doesn't need to be a killer to do so.

I don't know if the creator has said why Sally named her teddy bear Mr. Death, but I like to think she named it after Slenderman. Maybe soon after she died, he appeared, which made her think he was the spirit of death coming to take her to the afterlife. When he gave her the bear she named it after him.

Honestly, I'd like to think Slenderman took in Sally because she was the best experiment. She's a child, AND she's dead. Meaning her mind is easy to mold, and she isn't fragile. Children are known to be super fragile. I mean, they're in the beginning stages of becoming a full grown human. So, they're still growing and prone to getting injured. I'm unsure about if a dead person can get injured, but I'm assuming it's different to how a human would. Sally's immortal at this point. She won't disappear or rot if she gets hurt. Which means Slenderman can keep her for as long as he wants without her going away. He can make a lot of progress by using a permanent experiment. - Brinlee