“Here is the hopeless despair of one haunted by the night.”
– Mark Samuels, The Age of Decayed Futurity
What’s always fascinated me by weird tales is the seeming entrancement by supernatural events as a sort of temptation. Why? Because most horror is written by atheistically or skeptically inclined authors, who for the most part neither believe in such events nor in the religious meaning conveyed by such beliefs. What is this attraction for outmoded forms of human experience? Do we seek to revive the animistic gewgaws of shamans and sorcerers? Explore the darkened environs of the undead and the monstrous night? Travel into those edge lands, the liminal spaces where imagination and reason switch places and the world begins to tremble with a life other than we know? What if the world is not as it seems, that all the mythical and legendary personages of our ancient ancillary thoughts existed; were more real than reality? What if the unreal worlds of ghosts and zombies, vampires and werewolves; monstrous creatures from the depths of sea or infinite black space were but a unqualified abstraction away? What if horror itself were an abstraction that portended more concrete experiences which those who seek to master in their own fears and dreads could no longer abstain from? If one were to look in the mirror one day and see the very image of fright staring back at one out of the mimicry of one’s own visage… then what?
Speaking of reality, here is an interesting read: Do we live in a simulation? Chances are about 50–50. https://www.livescience.com/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50.html?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9160&utm_content=LVS_newsletter+&utm_term=4432980&m_i=dStwDlsXIIb5VzdoMpfiZ1tPz3Mlj7OPs5SC8_lip19uijf3bPgH9dCO5PXq_BkUkGGpZCC68Cy9S3emP3ZKYN0JG0LiVXM9%2B5olAgJddQ
LikeLike
Yea, that’s an old idea that’s been tossed around for years, which seems to crop up now and again as someone provides a new twist in the math. Interesting, but not testable as of yet. Fun to think about as a Science Fictional plot device, though!
LikeLike
It’s just human nature. Why do we read stories of serial killers? We love the thrill. Babies are born with a fear of falling, yet love climbing, being tossed, and sitting on our shoulders. The French call it “L’Appel du Vide” — the call of the Void.
LikeLike
We don’t need anything, but it is what we do. The Void is like all tropes another mask for the unknown we are unable or unwilling to task, a boundary marker for the Mind’s own Abyss – but then, what is less than the Void? Subtracting ourselves from the equation what is left? Would anything know, or would everything know? Is sentience a variable in any remaining equation? Or just a empty void of the Void without remainder or program?
LikeLike