Zeke Strahm

Ezekiel Strahm, more commonly known as Zeke, was a detective from New England and the main protagonist of the blog stories Seeking Truth and The Mystic. Often cited as the first active fighter against Slender Man, Zeke sparked a revolutionary movement against Slender Man and his followers that remains to this day. His fight lasted for two years until his death in early 2012.

Background
Zeke was born on July 9th, 1983, to parents Mark and Mary-Pat Strahm. Subjected to bullying at a young age, Zeke was diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder after an incident where he beat a classmate with a folding chair. In reality, he was haunted by the Slender Man, who came to visit him in his house located in the middle of the woods. The visits eventually stopped when Zeke moved to the city as a teenager, although his irate personality remained with him.

At some point in high school, a girl he was going to go on a date with was murdered by Albert Conaghan, a businessman with several charges of rape and child molestation. The memory haunted Zeke for years, partially fueling his long vendetta to bring him down.

Zeke was inspired to join the police force after watching the movie "Dirty Harry," and eventually became a detective partnered with Elizabeth Armeen, whom he referred to as "Lizzie." Initially, the two were on very unsteady terms, with his angry, gung-ho temper against her hard-working, positively cheerful personality. All that changed when he saved her from her abusive father, and the two began a very long, accepting friendship that blossomed into a deep love.

Zeke was also friendly with detective Eric Riley and SWAT officer Wren Stephanos, the latter of whom taught him useful fighting techniques that became Zeke's trademark. Their friendship ended when Wren set off a bomb in a building during a hostage mission, resulting in numerous deaths, and Wren was carted off to jail.

It has been hinted numerous times that at some point prior to the events of Seeking Truth, Zeke encountered Stephanie from EverymanHYBRID. The exact details of their meeting have never been revealed.

Seeking Truth
The story begins with Zeke documenting a case he had been handed of a missing teenage girl. Upon investigating her house, he discovers drawings of a tall man with no face and multiple limbs. He also is set up with a blog by Lizzie to help him open up more, much to his frustration.

Within a week of the first case, another girl goes missing, this time leaving behind a journal that indicates that someone had been stalking her. Before long a third child, a boy named Sam, is brought in for interrogation, but only confuses the detectives when he talks about a mysterious "HIM." The boy disappears himself a few days later from his holding cell, and a message with a Bible passage is left for Zeke.

Commenters on the blog try to point him in the direction of Slender Man, but Zeke, already aware of the internet meme, refuses to believe any of it. Lizzie, however, looks into the myth and soon becomes engrossed in it, which causes friction between her and her partner and eventually leads to a heated argument. Zeke later tries to make it up to her by taking her to a carnival, which seems to work until Lizzie sees something that clearly scares her, although Zeke cannot see what it was.

Zeke begins to close in on a likely suspect, Albert Conaghan. Eric's disappearance, as well as the discovery of four dead teenagers, reveals a message directed at Zeke; whoever is behind all of it is gunning for him. Conaghan is eventually apprehended, but offers little help, and Zeke in a fit of rage savagely beats him to try and force him to talk.

Lizzie starts to succumb to the effects of prolonged exposure to Slender Man and begins to stay home ill. Zeke goes to take care of her and watches as she starts to sink into her madness. Lizzie tells him that Slender Man has been after Zeke for years, since he was young, and was the reason behind his sleepless childhood, but Zeke has no memory of that ever happening.

A mass breakout leads to Conaghan escaping into one of his warehouses. Zeke enters and during his search encounters a locked door, but before he can open it a woman's screams send him running through the hallways. It is here that he finally encounters Slender Man as an adult, and doing so unlocks all of the old memories he had buried from childhood. As he runs away, he stumbles upon Lizzie, cut up with a knife in her chest. Her last words before dying are that he is next.

Zeke is suspended from the force, and spends the next several weeks in isolation, his blog posts showing his gradual mental deterioration as Slender Man haunts him. One night, his neighbor, hearing Zeke's angry outbursts, goes to his house to check on him and accidentally triggers the shotgun trap Zeke had rigged at his door, killing him. Zeke hides the body and lies for a time, claiming it was Slender Man.

Eventually, he regains enough of his sanity and swears to get revenge on Slender Man for what he did. He asks the community for help on information, and the result was creating one of the first big information dumps for Slender Man activity.

Towards the end of July 2010, Zeke returns to the warehouse to save Eric and stop Conaghan and Slender Man. Although the exact details of the encounter remain a mystery, the basic information provided is that Conaghan and Eric were killed and Zeke encountered Slender Man, suffering a debilitating throat injury in the process. With the warehouse burned down and the body in the garage found, Zeke was forced on the run as F.B.I Agent Fisk issues a warrant for his arrest.

From August to December
Zeke spent most of the remainder of 2010 in hiding from both the Slender Man and the F.B.I. During this time, he suffers a second, more severe mental break, one that took months to recover from but was eventually regained through the use of old children's nursery rhymes.

A large chunk of this time was spent commenting on other blogs of people trying to survive Slender Man. While initially seen as taunting and dismissive, as he regains control of himself, he turns to offering advice to the younger runners. He makes acquaintances with a good number, most notably Celeste from Make it Count.

The Mystic
The Mystic was Zeke's second blog, which proved that he was still alive, and not ready to back down of this now personal fight. This blog started following the lifes of Zeke and other people as more generally got involved with the case

(will add more to this later)

Personality
Zeke was rude, rash, hot-headed and stubborn. He is most remembered for his volatile temper, which had a short fuse and would go off whenever his patience wore thin. It has been revealed that most of his anger issues have stemmed from his encounters with Slender Man as a child, and that the paranoia and fear inflicted upon him caused him to snap.

The only person that he had any longing patience for was his partner Lizzie. The two were like yin and yang; she would calm him down, and he would keep her from losing herself to work and her own demons. They were the best of friends and the best of work partners. Zeke grew to love Lizzie deeply, and it is implied that she felt the same way, although she never explicitely said so.

Although he claimed numerous times that adults annoyed him, Zeke had a soft spot in his heart for kids and teenagers, and claimed that he could connect with them better than his peers. This is seen frequently throughout his adventures, as he helped other bloggers- most of whom were teens and early twenties- with their own battles against Slender Man through blog comments and suggestions.

Zeke also showed moments of deep psychosis, most notably whenever Slender Man approached him. It can be noted that with every progressive encounter with Slender Man, Zeke slipped further and further into insanity and depression, and at the end of his life he was tired of fighting and was ready to stop "playing his game." He was severely depressed after Lizzie's death, and that depression remained with him until the end.

Despite his mental state deteriorating with every Slender Man encounter, his resolve to defeat him grew with every meeting as well. Although he did not believe in the creature at first and brushed off every attempt to convince him as people being stupid, once he came to terms with Slender Man's existance, Zeke committed fully to bringing him down, as shown when he taunted, spat on, and even shot at Slender Man on numerous occasions. Zeke's fire and committment to the cause inspired many others to join the fight, and even after his death people continue to fight today.

Links
First post Zeke made