Statistics Don't Lie

According to Google, these are the most popular Chillers and Thrillers posts so far from 2021 and 2020. In case you missed them, click the link to any you care to read.

"Man Overboard” by Sir Winston Churchill: A Commentary

Describing Images of Horror, Part II

 

Describing Images of Horror as a Means of Enriching Narrative Possibilities

 

Available NOW on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited: On the Track of Vengeance

 

 Talking Pictures: Plotting through Image Analysis and Imaginative Elaboration

Secret Motivations

 Three Girls Walk into a Forest, and . . . .

 

 Edgar Allan Poe's “King Pest”: Analysis and Commentary

 “She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways” by William Wordsworth: Analysis andCommentary

 “Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

 “Long-Legged Fly” by William Butler Yeats: Analysis and Commentary

 “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe: Analysis and Commentary

 

 “The Snake” by D. H. Lawrence: Analysis and Commentary

 Gigantic Horrors

 Truly Monstrous: The Electric Eel

 Truly Monstrous: The Alligator Snapping Turtle

 

 Horror Again (and Again): Increasing Your Audience by Using Universal Themes

 

 Zombies: A Questionable Scientific Explanation

 

The Z Plot

Inspiring Ideas and Insights from the Matriarchy

 

“The Last Halloween”

 

 Freaks of Nature (and Applied Science)

 Erotic Horror, Japanese Style

 Damsels (and Villains) in Distress

 The Not-So-Gentle Sex

The Tzvetan Todorov Plot

Benefits of Alternate Endings: Pick One

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

It was fashionable in Hollywood, at one time, to produce movies that have alternate endings. Hollywood executives hoped that, by trying out two or more endings for the same movie on test audiences, they could determine which one viewers enjoyed most, which might translate into more ticket sales (i .e., dollars) at the box office.

For short story writers and novelists, however, there may be other benefits to devising possible alternate endings. In doing so, however, authors should follow Aristotle's dictum (and Edgar Allan Poe's advice) that a story's ending should end in a manner that does not destroy the integrity of the rest of the plot.

Devising possible alternate endings to a story can also assist writers in selecting the most appropriate, effective, and memorable ending possible from an array of alternatives.

In addition, imagining possible alternate endings can, perhaps, improve the story, because a new possibility might round out, explain, or otherwise complete the narrative in a more believable or otherwise satisfying manner than the original ending. (We're speaking, now, of works in progress, rather than published, stories.)

Imagining alternate endings could also produce unexpected or better twist endings than the one a writer originally had in mind.

“The Cone” by H. G. Wells

Current ending: Raut, who has cuckolded Horrocks, is doomed when a blast-furnace cone lowers him into the furnace, while Horrocks pelts the adulterer with hot coals.

Alternate ending: Horrocks seizes Raut by the arm, shoving him into the path of an oncoming railway tram. (This incident occurs earlier in the story, but, at this point, Horrocks is terrorizing Raut and, at the last minute, pulls him to safety; revised, the original story would end with this incident, without Horrocks pulling Raut from the tram's path.)

“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce

Current ending: An entry in Morgan's diary reveals that the creature he hunts is invisible because its color is imperceptible to the human eye.

Alternate ending: Both Morgan's friend Harker, who witnessed Morgan's death and Morgan himself are insane, the former because of his fantastic testimony at the coroner's inquest concerning the cause of Morgan's death, the latter because, in writing of the incident in his diary, he described it in a manner that is consistent with Harker's account of the occurrence. On suspicion of having killed, and possible brainwashed Morgan, Harker is arrested and held for trial.

“Dracula's Guest” by Bram Stoker

Current ending: Horsemen frighten off the werewolf guarding and keeping an English hotel guest warm in a forest and take him back to the hotel; they were dispatched at the request of a Transylvanian count named Dracula.

Alternate ending: The horsemen arrive to find the Englishman's throat torn out by the werewolf feasting upon his corpse.

 

"The Signalman" by Charles Dickens

Current ending: The narrator learns that a signal-man, seemingly mesmerized by something he saw, was struck and killed by an approaching train after ignoring the engineer's repeated warnings to get off the track.

Alternate ending: The train strikes the signal-man, but investigators cannot find his body; on the anniversary of his supposed death, the signal-man again appears on the track and is struck, but, afterward, investigators cannot find a body.

Horror Again (and Again): Increasing Your Audience by Using Universal Themes

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Diogenes the Cynic observed that it is impossible to step twice into the same river. The writer Tom Wolfe said we can't go home again. George Santayana proclaimed that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” A more colloquial expression of the same thought is “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Horror fiction tends to repeat itself.

In his Republic, Plato mentions the Ring of Gyges, an artifact the wearing of which is supposed to render one invisible. Invisibility, whether it is effected through a ring or by supposedly scientific means, has become a staple of both horror fiction and science fiction. Ambrose Bierce's “damned thing” is an invisible creature, just as H. G. Wells's invisible man is, well, an invisible man. More recently, invisibility is featured in The Invisible Man (2000), a combination science fiction-horror film “in which a woman believes she is being stalked by her abusive and wealthy boyfriend, even after his apparent suicide,” until she “deduces that he has acquired the ability to become invisible.”

A vast number of short stories, novels, and movies are based on the premise that human beings can be hunted like any other animal. One of the first stories of this type, if not, indeed, the original story, is Richard Cornell's 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game” (aka “The Hounds of Zariff”), wherein “a big-game hunter from New York City . . . falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean [Sea], where he is hunted by a Russian aristocrat.” This same theme is reprised yet again in the 2020 movie The Hunt, in which twelve strangers are gathered as prey for a hunting party, and in the 2015 film Final Girl, in which a group of sadistic young men stalk a young woman through a forest, intent upon hunting her down and killing her.

The idea that the door to a locked room should not be opened (sometimes the opening of the door is explicitly forbidden) is as old, at least, as the story of Bluebeard, who allows his newlywed wife to open any door in his palace but one. When she defies his order, horror ensues. The idea of the forbidden room reappears in The Skeleton Key (2005). In this film, horror also results when Caroline opens the attic of the house in which she acts as a caregiver to Ben, an elderly bedridden gentleman who has suffered a stroke. Although she has not been expressly forbidden to open the attic, the fact that the skeleton key she is given does not open the attic's door suggests that Caroline is not intended to have access to it.

Many other examples can be given of horror movies that recycle themes that have already been used many times before. Of course, each time, the repetition changes some elements, omits others, adds still others, presents a new twist, or otherwise diverges at least a little from the stories that have used the same theme before it. Such changes keep the motif fresh (or, perhaps, seemingly fresh).

Why, besides convenience and obvious box office or sales appeal, do short stories, novels, and movies recycle past themes?

Advertising executive Jib Fowles offers one possible explanation. He wrote that advertisers typically appeal to one or more of fifteen basic needs that everyone has. Among these needs are the need to dominate. Invisibility confers the ability to manipulate and control other people more so than almost any other power. Invisibility blinds by stripping away our sight—but selectively. We can see all things but the one thing that matters most in a dangerous situation—the danger itself, our invisible adversary. We become helpless to resist, which heightens both our fear and our vulnerability, making it easy for the invisible foe to dominate us.

At the same time, from the hunter's point of view, stories in which human beings are hunted as prey appeal to the basic need to agress (as almost all horror stories do) and the need to dominate. From the perspective of the hunted, these stories appeal to the need to escape and the need to feel safe. (Paradoxically, according to Fowles, advertisements can appeal to needs by thwarting them.)

The expression “curiosity killed the cat” is exemplified in many movies, including The Skeleton Key. Often, such cautionary tales remind us, being nosy about other people's business can be costly—perhaps even fatal.

Fowles's observations about basic human needs goes a long way to explain the universal appeal—and, therefore, the recycling—of such themes as invisibility, hunting humans, and the lure of the forbidden, but there are probably other reasons for the repetition of these themes in horror stories.

How much do we trust others? Would we trust someone we couldn't see? Someone who could watch us unseen, who could alter our environment without our knowledge, even in our presence? Someone who could hear—or see—everything we did in private? We might not trust even a good friend under such circumstances. Now, imagine that the unseen person is an enemy intent upon harming or killing us! Stripped of sight, we are helpless and vulnerable.

Dehumanization might explain the appeal of stories involving the hunting of human beings. Although we are, from a biological point of view, animals, we don't like to think of ourselves as such. We prefer to think that there is a difference between animals and human beings. We'd rather imagine ourselves as the Bible characterizes us, as being “a little below the angels” (Hebrews 2:7) or as Hamlet describes us: “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! / how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how / express and admirable! in action how like an angel! / in apprehension how like a god . . . !” If we must think of ourselves as animals, we should consider ourselves, at least, to be, as Hamlet says, “the paragon of animals.” Most peoples, especially in our own day, regard cannibalism as not only a criminal act but also as a moral outrage. People should not be hunted, whether for sport or for food. Stories in which human beings are hunted are, therefore, regarded as horrific; the very theme itself makes such narratives or dramas horror stories.

We are curious by nature, which can be a good attribute. Science, for example, is built upon curiosity. However, the attempt to satisfy curiosity can also lead to danger or even death. Why, we might ask ourselves, before charging in where angels fear to tread, is this room locked? What sort of valuables does the locked door protect? Treasure? Secrets too dark and dangerous to be exposed? Crimes or sins unimaginable? What skeletons lie in wait within this closet, this chamber, this attic, this basement, or this wing of the house? Or, perhaps, the door is locked not to keep us out but to keep someone—or some thing—from escaping!

Another film in which a forbidden space awaits behind a locked door.

A locked room creates a private space, a space reserved, a space off limits to everyone but the holder of the key or keys. A locked room as much as commands, “Keep Out!” A locked room as much as warns, “No Trespassing!” A locked room is a forbidden space. A locked room prompts questions, evokes curiosity. A locked room is temptation. All such impulses are familiar to all men and women and, indeed, children. A locked room story has universal appeal.

Repeated themes often indicate universal concerns, needs, fears, or impulses. Depending on how such themes are handled, their inclusion as the bases of additional horror stories, whether in print or on film, can appeal to a wide audience. They could result in a bestseller or a blockbuster.

Maybe.

The Horror of Objective and Subjective Threats

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Some horror fiction, both on the page and on the sound stage, features threats which are both objective and subjective. Just as objective threats can vary, so can subjective ones. If there is the threat of a loss of limb, or of mobility, or of stamina, or of life itself, there is also the threat of such losses as trust, of scruples, of faith, or of sanity.

These dual threats are depicted or dramatized through conflict: the villain or the monster is the agent by whom the objective threat is presented, and the physical threat, in turn, causes the subjective threat.

 

The outcome of conflict involving these two types of threat is resolved in one of at least seven ways:

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
5. The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat.
   
   
   
   
   

In the hands of skilled writers, these seven permutations can seem to multiply, as various twists are put upon each threat and each possible outcome.

Edgar Allan Poe's short stories often involve both objective and subjective threats. The outcome of the stories' conflicts vary across the spectrum of possibilities.

1. The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat. Hop-Frog and Tripetta, of “Hop-Frog,” not only overcome the threat of violence and possible death at the hands of the cruel king they serve, escaping after immolating the villain and his courtiers, but they also overcome the subjective threats to their pride and self-respect posed by the king's dehumanizing conduct toward them. Their victory is double; they regain both their physical freedom and their autonomy and self-esteem.

2. The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat. The protagonist of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” imagines that an old man with a “vulture's eye” is a menace. He vanquishes this perceived objective threat by killing the old man. However, the police, alerted by a neighbor who'd heard the victim's screams, arrest the killer, and readers realize that the protagonist has not vanquished the subjective threat of his own madness—nor is he likely to escape the additional, real objective threat of prison or, possibly, hanging.

3. The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist is a good example of this variation. Father Karras is questioning his religious faith until, in an act of self-sacrifice, he bids the devil to forsake a girl he's possessed and possess him instead. However, when the devil makes the jump from the girl into the priest, Father Karras foils his adversary by leaping to his death from the upper-story window of the girl's bedroom, in which the exorcism had been being conducted. Although the objective threat of possession by the devil overcomes Father Karras, the priest retains his faith.

4. The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat. During the American Civil War, Second-Lieutenant Brainerd Byring of the Union Army succumbs to his on imaginary fears when, on an isolated portion of terrain over which he stands guard, he encounters a dead enemy soldier. Byring fancies that he sees the Confederate soldier's body moving slowly, stealthily toward him. A captain and a surgeon find Byring the next morning.

He has driven his own sword through his heart, after hacking the dead Confederate's cadaver. The enemy soldier's weapon lies on the ground, unfired, and his body is rotten enough to indicate that he has been dead some days before Byring “killed” him. The fight hinted at in Ambrose Bierce's “The Tough Tussle” has been entirely Byring's own; he has survived neither the objective struggle with the corpse nor his delusion that the body was alive, that the dead Confederate soldier was, indeed, sneaking up on him under the cover of darkness to kill him.

5. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. The protagonist of Poe's “The Pit and the Pendulum” avoids the objective threat—execution—when the Inquisition that has imposed the sentence of death upon him is defeated by its enemies and he is rescued. It is unclear whether he also triumphs over the terrors of helplessness and the horrors of physical and emotional abuse. The story's ending does not say or even imply.

6. The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown. In H. G. Wells' short story “The Cone,” the protagonist, Raut, avenges himself upon Horrocks, the adulterer who has cuckolded him, by causing his wife's lover to fall into a furnace. The objective threat to his wife's violated fidelity has been ended, but the murderer himself may not as easily be rid of the humiliation and rage that appear to have driven him to this desperate act. Even if he does vanquish these emotions, he may have to struggle with another subjective threat, for he seems horrified at the terrible crime—the sin—he has committed: “God have mercy upon me!,” he prays, saying, “O God! what have I done?”

7. It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat. Legs and his companion Hugh Tarpaulin escape the mad, self-proclaimed King Pest and his courtiers, who have taken refuge from the plague in the basement of an undertaker's shop, but it is unknown whether the rash sailors also escape the plague that has disfigured the afflicted. They might, in fact, be taking the disease aboard the very ship from which they earlier departed, for the narrator of Poe's “King Pest” informs readers,

the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and made a bee-line for the “Free and Easy,” followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

 

If they have not escaped the plague, it is doubtful that they will escape the terror that it will bring and, if the rest of the crew they infect understand that it was they who infected them, it is unlikely that they will escape the ire of their fellow seamen; indeed, a new objective threat may arise, one which costs them their very lives. They may have merely escaped one type of death to flee into hands of a death of another kind.

These seven variations on the theme of an objective threat coupled with an often-related subjective threat provide a fertile foundation for a multitude of treatments so that no story needs to be like another, even if they are based on the same dynamics—or, indeed, a specific dynamic within the seven-fold group of dynamics. Likewise, the same writer can produce a story from any one of the objective-subjective threat pairings or from the same one, treated differently.

Ambrose Bierce's Puddle-Jumper, "The Flying Machine"

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Recently, I've become more and more interested in flash fiction. To my delight, Fight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales contains such a story: Ambrose Bierce's “The Flying Machine” (79).

The tale, which consists of 110 words, describes a prototypical flying machine's unsuccessful maiden flight. Despite the machine's failure, its inventor's assurance to the crowd of onlookers that the machine's “defects . . . are merely basic and fundamental” is enough to get them to invest in the construction of “a second machine” (79).

The editors, Stephen King and Bev Vincent, see the witnesses' willingness to subscribe to the second machine's construction as evidence of their gullibility. In their opinion, the spectators are duped by the inventor, a con artist who claims to have built a machine that is able to fly. King and Vincent could be right. As they point out, Bierce was both cynical and misanthropic, after all. Perhaps “The Flying Machine” is merely a literary expression of the declaration, sometimes erroneously attributed to showman P. T. Barnum, that “there's a sucker born every minute.”

A comic book version of Ray Bradbury's short story "The Flying Machine"

Another possibility—one that the late optimistic Ray Bradbury might have preferred—is that, despite the flying machine's failure, people are willing to finance the apparently impossible; in doing so, they often find that they have financed the next technological marvel, whether a flying machine, artificial intelligence, or a cure for the common cold.

Ambrose Bierce: A New Hope for Horror Fiction?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Like other literary genres, horror becomes, sooner or later, more lulling than chilling. The same formulas, repeated over and over, become tiresome. The originality of horror stories become mere banality, and where there was once a race of the blood through arteries, veins, and brain, there is now only but the yawn and the nod. Every so often, a genre needs to reinvent itself—or be reinvented—and horror is no exception.

Unfortunately, it is a rare talent, indeed, that can reshape, or even redirect, an entire genre of fiction. In horror, there are many would-be masters but few Hawthornes, Poes, Lovecrafts, and (at least, for a time) Kings.

What usually happens in such times is a falling away of the aficionados. Only the young, the inexperienced, and the desperate cling to a dying literary form. Others either stop reading fiction altogether or seek their pleasures in other genres or in more serious literature of a quality that stands the test of time.

Horror fiction has been moribund for some time, critics contend. The death vigil has been long and grievous. Now, perhaps, the cadaver stinks so badly that the truth cannot be any longer denied. Horror fiction, clearly, is dead.

At least, horror fiction as it has been known since its last revival, in the latter half of the twentieth century, which witnessed Robert Bloch's Psycho, Stephen King's Carrie, and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, among others.

Now, though, the chills—and, indeed, the thrills—are gone again, and, like the narrator of William Butler Yeats' “The Second Coming,” we await the coming of some new “rough beast,” yet to be born.

For a while, it seemed the marriage of horror and science fiction might save both genres. There was hope, after all, such films as Alien, Jurassic Park, and the remakes of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, and The Fly suggested.

Of course, the wedding of such an unlikely couple was really nothing new. Such authors as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and even Stephen King had married fear and wonder before. But, for a while, anyway it seemed new, as resurgences often do.

Alas, those days, too, are gone.

We get merely more of the same, with writers revisiting old themes, characters we have met before, and places we have been in times long past. Thus, we get Dan Simmons' A Winter Haunting, the sequel to Summer of Night, Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining, and Dean Koontz's endless series of self-parody, the Odd Thomas spectacle. Been there, done that.

After a long night, the faint illumination of first light seems to appear upon the far horizon. There seems to be the dimmest hope that a trickle, if not as tide, of resurgence may again moisten, if not inundate, the infertile shores of the wasteland that horror fiction has become. When the genre seems not almost dead but a goner for sure, there may be some last vestige of hope, and, if there is, we have another great writer of horror to thank for it, none other, ladies and gentlemen, than Ambrose Bierce.

I would explain, but, alas, I am too tired at the moment and will save the explanation for another time.

Perhaps. . . .

. . . if the interest doesn't flag. . . .

Monstrous Signs

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Haunted houses are easy. Well, the signs that a house may be haunted are easy to spot, anyway. Things seem to move of their own accord. Last night, your car keys were on the dresser; this morning, they’re on the kitchen counter, beside last night’s leftover Chinese takeout meal. You hear strange noises. Slime oozes down the walls. There’s a foul stench--and it’s not coming from the leftover Chinese food. Ghosts are seen--or something that could be ghosts.

The signs of the presence of a monster are not so easy to spot. But there are some, for those who have the eyes to see them. In his short story, “The Damned Thing,” there are signs aplenty of a monster’s presence. Invisible, its presence is known by its effects upon vegetation and, indeed, human beings. During a fishing and hunting expedition with his friend Hugh Morgan, Harker, who witnessed Morgan’s death, says the two men heard “a noise as of some animal thrashing about in the bushes, which we could see were violently agitated.” Morgan aims his shotgun in the direction of the noise, and when Harker asks what has made the commotion, Morgan replies, “That Damned Thing.” Harker then sees a peculiar sight, which he describes, to the coroner’s jury investigating Morgan’s death, in the following manner:

"I was about to speak further, when I observed the wild oats near the place of the disturbance moving in the most inexplicable way. I can hardly describe it. It seemed as if stirred by a streak of wind, which not only bent it, but pressed it down--crushed it so that it did not rise; and this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly toward us.

A few moments later, Morgan is attacked, and, as he looks on in horror, Harker hears

“. . . Morgan crying out as if in mortal agony, and mingling with his cries were such hoarse, savage sounds as one hears from fighting dogs. Inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and looked in the direction of Morgan's retreat; and may Heaven in mercy spare me from another sight like that! At a distance of less than thirty yards was my friend, down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and seemed to lack the hand--at least, I could see none. The other arm was invisible. At times, as my memory now reports this extraordinary scene, I could discern but a part of his body; it was as if he had been partly blotted out--I cannot otherwise express it--then a shifting of his position would bring it all into view again.

"All this must have occurred within a few seconds, yet in that time Morgan assumed all the postures of a determined wrestler vanquished by superior weight and strength. I saw nothing but him, and him not always distinctly. . . . “

One way to recognize the presence of a monster, then, is by its effects upon its environment. Other stories in which invisible or nearly invisible monsters may be recognized by such signs include the short stories “The Horla” by de Maupassant and “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien and the motion picture Predator, directed by John McTiernan.

Monsters are sometimes recognizable by their unique signatures, or distinctive marks. For example, vampires are often suspected when it is discovered that the throats of human corpses bear puncture wounds such as those that a large snake--or a bloodsucking fiend--leave as a result of slaking their thirst. There are a number of other ways by which to recognize vampires, according to The Vampire Hunter’s Guide, including:

• Fangs
• Red eyes
• Long nails
• Paleness
• Reluctance to enter house without invitation
• Hairy palms
• Aversion to bright lights
• No appetite
• Never seen during the day hours (not always true with some species)
• Possesses remarkable strength
• Has quiet footsteps
• Possesses knowledge about botany, with a large collection of soil in a house or in a vicinity
• Resides in an abode deemed evil by others
• Strange clothing habits
• Evidences enormous sexual appeal
• People who know him/ her frequently die
• Rarely, if ever, discusses religion
• Really bad breath

It’s hard to miss a demon: the claws, horns, tail, and cloven hooves are sure giveaways. However, a demon that takes up residence inside a person, possessing him or her, may be more difficult to detect, especially when he or she can be confused with the effects of organic or mental illnesses. In fact, until quite recently, the mentally ill were often considered to be people possessed by demons. A movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, makes it clear how difficult it can be, even for a priest who has been trained as an exorcist, to make the distinction between madness and demonic possession. This film also makes it clear how tricky the terrain becomes, legally speaking, when one seeks to exorcize demons that may or may not actually exist and the mad (or possessed) person dies in the course of the exorcism. It’s best to leave exorcisms to the exorcists or psychiatrists, but, for those who are too willful or stubborn (or stupid) to do so, these may be signs, according to the website Demonbuster, of the presence of an indwelling demon:

1. Disturbances in the emotions which persist or recur.
2. Disturbances in the mind or thought life.
3. Outbursts or uncontrolled use of the tongue.
4. Rcurring unclean thoughts and acts regarding sex.
5. Addictions to nicotine, alcohol, drugs, medicines, caffeine, food, etc.
6. Many diseases and physical afflictions are due to spirits of infirmity (Luke 13:11).

 Of course, when a writer finds it difficult to determine the signs of a particular monster--perhaps the fiend is one of a kind--the author can just make up an invention that has the amazing capability of detecting monsters, somewhat as Professor Xavier’s Cerebro can detect the presence--and, indeed, the location--of mutants among the human population centers of the world. Indeed, a machine isn’t even necessary id a writer becomes desperate enough. On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy (often aided by Willow Rosenberg, a witch, or her mentor, Rupert Giles, a practitioner of the mystical arts) often identified or located various monsters and demons through the use of supernatural spells. Buffy also has a sort of “Spider sense,” which enables her to detect the presence of vampires the way homosexuals are sometimes alleged to identify others of their kind by using “gaydar.” In one episode, in which Giles was turned into a demon, she is even able to recognize, by his look of utter exasperation, the man in the monster! Still, it’s kind of cool, one must admit, to develop a mythos concerning demon spoor and how to detect it.

"The Damned Thing": Commentary, Part 2

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

As I indicated in my previous post, Ambrose Bierce’s short story “The Damned Thing” depends, for its effect, upon a fragmented and out-of-sequence timeline, the piecemeal exposition of facts that prevents the establishment of a context sufficiently clear to allow interpretation, the withholding of certain items of information, and the misdirection that results from Bierce’s incongruous, often tongue-in-cheek chapter titles, which have no bearing upon the chapters they introduce and, in fact, may suggest lines of thought that are themselves absurd and irrelevant.

However, Bierce accomplishes more than the generation of mystery and suspense through the use of these techniques. By employing these strategies, he also creates a metaphor by which he implies the theme of his story. The lack of context can be read as the vague, uncertain, and finite understanding of reality that derives from human perception that is itself limited to the phenomena that it perceives.

Bierce’s story’s reference to science is not accidental, for science is the primary and predominant means by which modern individuals ascertain knowledge, if not always truth, and it is science--the science of optics, to be precise--that allows Hugh Morgan to understand the nature of the Damned Thing as being of a color imperceptible to the human eye and thus invisible. However, since science is empirical, resting upon the senses and their perception of phenomena (including colors), it is itself limited to the perceptible world, and, in the final analysis, the nature of the Damned Thing must, therefore, remain essentially mysterious.

Bierce’s fragmented and vague narration, as it occurs in “The Damned Thing,” despite the presence of his omniscient narrator, is deliberate, symbolizing the limits of the scientific method’s reliance upon empirical data and emphasizing the finitude of human perception, cognition, and knowledge by underscoring his story’s victim’s inability to see the invisible adversary that ultimately slays him. Without a context, interpretation is difficult, if not impossible, and Morgan’s (and Harker’s) inability to see the Damned Thing prevents them from understanding it, just as it also prevents the pedestrian and unimaginative “farmers and woodsmen” who make up the inquest’s jury from accepting Harker’s account of the creature’s existence as true. They conclude, despite Harker’s eyewitness testimony, that Morgan was killed by a “mountain lion.” In short, they are unable to think outside the box, so to speak, that the accepted model of reality, based upon science, provides as the basis, or context, for interpreting perception and experience. Therefore, they conclude that Harker’s story demonstrates his madness.

Science tells us how to interpret the things that we perceive (see, hear, smell, taste, or touch), but limits upon human perception and the ignorance that results from such limits make certain knowledge problematic even under the best of circumstances and can (and has) resulted in erroneous and fantastic conclusions concerning even everyday matters. For example, before the invention of the microscope, bacteria and viruses existed, but, unaware of these germs or their functioning, human beings regarded demons, not microbes, as the causes of diseases and mental illnesses. Likewise, the Hubble space telescope has increased astronomers’ understanding of the universe exponentially since its launch in 1990.

Nevertheless, to some degree, we can (and do) hypothesize about experiences, even when knowledge about what we perceive (or do not perceive) is uncertain. For example, no one has seen an actual tyrannosaurus rex, but paleontologists claim to know quite a bit about this dinosaur (even if their “knowledge” is tentative and subject to change in the wake of new discoveries and conjectures). These gigantic animals are considered to have been carnivores with extremely powerful jaws, binocular vision, a bipedal posture, and a highly developed sense of smell. The young, some believe, possessed prototypical feathers, although more as insulation than for flight. In addition, they were believed, by some, to have been scavengers and even cannibals. Although they were once considered too slow-moving and “cold-blooded,” because of their massive size and weight, to be good hunters, scientists later revised this conception and suggested that the tyrannosaurus was more likely than not a fleet-footed predator.

One may argue that some features and abilities of the Damned Thing could likewise be determined by observing its effects on its environment. It is likely to be fast and physically powerful. It is obviously predatory. It is apt to be large, for Morgan’s diary reports that its passing momentarily blocked out the stars. Nevertheless, any ideas concerning the nature of the Damned Thing must remain as vague, uncertain, and finite as humanity’s understanding of reality that derives from perception that is itself limited to the phenomena that it perceives. Bierce’s fragmented and out-of-sequence timeline, his piecemeal exposition of facts that prevents the establishment of a context sufficiently clear to allow interpretation, his withholding of certain items of information, and the misdirection that results from Bierce’s incongruous, often tongue-in-cheek chapter titles, which have no bearing upon the chapters they introduce and, in fact, may suggest lines of thought that are themselves absurd and irrelevant all conspire, as it were, to symbolize and reinforce the epistemological limits of an intelligence that is informed by perceptions of phenomena that, as a rule, cannot be confirmed independently of the senses that detect them.

"The Damned Thing": Bierce's Exercise in Existential Absurdity

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

The plot of Ambrose Bierce’s short story “The Damned Thing” is simple--so simple, in fact, that the author must rely upon a piecemeal presentation, in chopped chronological progression, of the narrative’s incidents. Bierce gives vague, and therefore intriguing, hints of something that has happened that is bigger, so to speak, than what is currently taking place, at the same time withholding details to keep the reader guessing as to what’s going on--and what has already gone on. The first paragraph introduces the reader to nine men, one of them a corpse, who have gathered in a small room. One of the men, seated at “a rough table,” reads from a book, by candlelight. There is an expectation, on the part of the men, other than “the dead man,” who is alone “without expectation.” The men, the reader learns, are locals, “farmers and woodsmen.”

By throwing together, as it were, a group of local men who seem to have nothing in common but their vocations, and informing the reader that something seems likely to happen, and soon, but otherwise withholding details that would create a context by which the action, such as it is at this point, could be interpreted, Bierce creates suspense. In addition, he characterizes the men as unimaginative and pedestrian, which will prove important, given the extraordinary incident that will soon be related by William Harker.

Only the man who reads from the book is unlike the others, a “worldly” man, a coroner, in fact, and the book he reads belonged to the dead man. It is, the reader will learn, the dead man’s diary, which was found in his cabin, which is the location in which “the inquest” concerning his death is “now taking place.” The casual manner in which Bierce presents the purpose of the local men’s gathering--an inquest into a man’s death--makes the revelation all the eerier.

Harker makes his appearance, his manner of dress marking him as a city dweller. The reader learns that he is a reporter; he arrives late to the inquest, he says, because he had “to post" to his newspaper "an account” of the incident concerning which he has been summoned to testify. Harker’s statement that he posted the account as fiction because it is too extraordinary for readers to accept as fact piques the reader’s interest, as does his declaration that he will, nevertheless, swear “under oath” as a witness at the inquest, that the story he tells is “true.” Again, Bierce provides just enough vague clues to keep the reader guessing--and reading.

As Harker begins his testimony, the reader learns that he had been visiting the deceased, Hugh Morgan, with whom he was hunting and fishing. In addition, Harker, admits, he was also observing Morgan, having found “his odd, solitary way of life” intriguing and supposing him to be “a good model for a character in fiction.”

In the second chapter of the story, Harker relates “the circumstances of” Morgan’s “death”: As they hunted quail, they heard “a noise as of some animal thrashing about in the bushes,” and saw that the vegetation was “violently agitated.” Morgan appeared frightened and immediately “cocked both barrels of his gun. . . holding it in readiness to aim.” As the men watch, “wild oats near the place of the disturbance” begin to move “in the most inexplicable way. . . . as if stirred by a streak of wind, which not only bent it, but pressed it down--crushed it so that it did not rise; and this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly toward” the two men. Morgan fires and flees, leaving Harker to fend for himself. Harker is “thrown violently to the ground by the impact of something unseen in the smoke,” and something knocks his own gun from his hands. As Harker looks on, Morgan seems to wrestle with an invisible creature. Before Harker can run to his friend’s aid, Morgan is killed, and the ripple and movement of the vegetation betrays the path of the invisible creature’s flight.

In the story’s third chapter, the condition of Morgan’s battered and bloody body is described as the coroner pulls the sheet that covers the corpse away; the dead man's clothing is “torn, and stiff with blood.” Despite the witness’ testimony, which the jury finds incredible, Morgan’s death is attributed to a mountain lion’s attack. Although Harker requests permission to peruse his dead friend’s diary, thinking that the public would be interested in Morgan’s writings, the coroner denies his request, claiming that it is irrelevant to its author’s demise, since “all the entries in it were made before the writer's death.”

Harker may not have been privy to the entries in Morgan’s diary, but the story’s omniscient narrator is, and he reveals to the reader that the journal contains “certain interesting entries having, possibly, a scientific value as suggestions.” Morgan had become convinced of “the presence” of an invisible intruder, and he had been terrified of the creature. However, he had resolved not to be chased away from his own home, believing, also, that God would consider his fleeing from the creature an act of cowardice. Thinking that he may be going insane, Morgan invites Harker to visit him for “several weeks,” to go hunting and fishing, thinking that, in Harker’s reactions to his own behavior, Morgan may find evidence to support either his own sanity or his own madness.

As if by “revelation,” Morgan discovers “the solution to the mystery” of the creature’s invisibility: just as there are sounds that the human ear cannot hear, there are colors that the human eye cannot see, and the invisible creature, or “the Damned Thing,” as Morgan has come to refer to the monster, “is of such a colour!”

A simple tale, “The Damned Thing” depends, for its effect, upon a fragmented and out-of-sequence timeline, the piecemeal exposition of facts that prevents the establishment of a context sufficiently clear to allow interpretation, the withholding of certain items of information, and the misdirection that results from Bierce’s incongruous, often tongue-in-cheek chapter titles, “Chapter I: One Does Not Always Eat What Is On The Table” (a corpse); “Chapter II: What May Happen In A Field Of Wild Oats” (an attack by an invisible creature!); “Chapter III: A Man Though Naked May Be In Rags” (an aphorism that suggests wisdom but introduces the final existential absurdity of death); and “Chapter IV: An Explanation From The Tomb” (the incongruity of the dead offering an elucidation of a text addressed to the living). Like the titles of Rene Magritte paintings, Bierce’s chapter titles have no bearing upon the chapters they introduce and, in fact, may suggest lines of thought that are themselves absurd and irrelevant.

Another way that Bierce withholds information, at least for a time, is to use synonymous phrases in lieu of characters' names or occupations.  For example, he refers to "a man [who] was reading," to "the man with the book"; to "the person reading," instead of to "the coroner"; he refers to "eight men," to "that company," to "farmers and woodsmen," rather than to the jurors of the death inquest; and to "a young man" instead of the inquest's witness.  In doing so, Bierce withholds, for a time, the nature of the enterprise in which the party is involved, thereby maintaining the mystery of the story and the tale's suspense.

Bierce’s reference to science is not accidental, for science is the primary and predominant means by which modern individuals ascertain knowledge, if not always truth, and it is science--the science of optics, to be precise--that allows Morgan to understand the nature of the Damned Thing as being of a color imperceptible to the human eye and thus invisible. However, since science, which is empirical, resting upon the senses and their perception of phenomena (including colors), is itself limited to the perceptible world, the nature of the Damned Thing must, in the final analysis, remain essentially mysterious.

To Be Is To Be Perceived (And To Be Perceived Is To Be)

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines “edible” as meaning “good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.”

His humor’s not for everyone, but it does, in this case, at least, suggest something important to writers, whether of horror fiction or otherwise: We are either who we would have ourselves be or what others would have us be. To a hungry lion, we are perhaps viewed as food. However, were we armed with a spear (or, better yet, a rifle), the king of the beasts himself might become our prey. To Christians (in the old days, at least) and to Moslems (even today, in some cases) alike, those who were not of the faith were pagans or infidels, although, from their viewpoint, the pagans and infidels, not the Christians and the Moslems exercised the one and only true faith. To Republicans, Democrats are the opposition; to Democrats, it’s the other way around. We either define ourselves or we are defined by another.

We may also regard ourselves one way while another regards us in a completely different manner. A man may consider himself to be a suitor, whereas, from the perspective of the object of his affections, he may be considered a stalker. The use, in the last sentence, of “object,” in describing the woman whom the man (depending upon one’s perspective) either woos or stalks, was intentional, intended as a segue to the concept that Jewish theologian Martin Buber introduces in I and Thou. In this profound book, Buber points out that we can consider either ourselves or others to be either a person (an “I”) or a thing (an “it”). We will then treat ourselves or others accordingly. Employers, for example, often think of employees as “human resources,” rather than as men and women with attitudes, beliefs, dreams, emotions, ideas, imaginations, morals, motivations, needs, principles, values, and wisdom of their own--and treat them as such. (Employees seldom forget that they are, in fact, as human--or more so--than their bosses, whom they may regard as tyrants--and treat them as such.) As the Bible says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

A philosophical adage has it that “to be is to be perceived,” but it seems equally valid to say that “to be perceived is to be,” for we assign both ourselves and others roles to play, thereby perceiving ourselves and others to “be” this or that or, perhaps, to “fit” a particular type of work, as being “suited to” or “suitable for” a certain activity. Writers should never forget that it is just as true, perhaps, that we are perceived to be certain things as it is true that we exist because we are recognized or understood.

We assign meaning, just as we assign value. In doing so, we construct reality. Both for ourselves and others. We do this every day, whether we are writers or not, but writers also do it every time they write a story. To Beowulf, Grendel is the monstrous troll who is killing Danish warriors and terrorizing the people of their village and mead hall. To his mother, Grendel is a beloved son whose death at the hands of the murderous Beowulf must be avenged. It is clear that how characters see one another can be, and often is, the basis of narrative and dramatic conflict.

Perceptions can also be the bases of ironic reversals. Indeed, such a reversal is the very foundation of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He imagined a young woman entering a dark alley, where she was attacked by a monster. However, instead of the monster killing (and possibly devouring) her, it was she who emerged victorious from their battle. The monster, a vampire, no doubt, saw the teen as prey (and, possibly, a meal), as would someone watching such a scene play out in a movie or a television episode (Buffy was a movie before it was a TV series.) Likewise, the typical teen would regard the vampire as a threat, as a predator. Both would act accordingly, the vampire actively, attacking, killing and consuming; the girl, passively, being attacked, killed, and consumed. (Acting upon the instinct for self-preservation, she might put up some resistance, of course, but it would be futile.) In Whedon’s ironic version of the scene, though, the vampire’s perception of himself as the predator and of Buffy as the prey worked against him, for it was Buffy who, as it turned out, was actually the actual slayer in their (brief) encounter.

Playing with roles can have other interesting effects, too. A boy or a girl, transitioning to adulthood, can leave childhood behind, seemingly in a moment, either because of an external event or because of an internal incident. For example, if one encounters child abuse, perhaps seeing a father bending back the fingers of his son’s hand, by way of “punishment,” will the witness become involved? Intervene? Pretend nothing unusual is happening and ignore the abuse? Whatever he or she does, the adolescent characterizes him- or herself, perhaps in several ways. Will a teen participate in the bullying, intimidation, and humiliation of a classmate simply because his or her “friends” are doing so, speak out against the harassment, stop the abuse and find new friends (perhaps starting with the bullied person), or ignore the situation altogether? Again, whatever he or she does, the teen characterizes him- or herself. The response shows maturity and independence (and compassion) or the opposites. Often, we are more revealed by what we say or do (or do not say or do) than others to whom we say or do whatever it is we say or do. (Yes, that is a sentence, of sorts.)

Dynamic characters (those who change by the end of the story) necessarily reverse the roles they played, as it were, at the beginning of their narratives. The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy Gale is disappointed in her home, dependent, and complaining at the beginning of the movie, but, at the end, as a result of the experiences she’s had in Oz, she is appreciative of her home, independent, and glad to be surrounded by the family and friends whom she’d taken for granted before. Tested, tired, and resigned to her fate at the end of the series’ seventh year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is no longer the unproven, perky, rebellious teen she was at the start of the show. Dynamic characters end up as the opposites of themselves. Arguably, even for a vampire, Buffy would be hard to mistake as a victim at the end of the series, just as it would be difficult for the Wicked Witch of the west to cowl Dorothy after all she’d been through in the wonderful land of Oz.

As far as others know (and can know), each of us is what we say, what we do, and the various roles that we play. For good or for ill, because we can think differently than we speak or act, we are able to deceive others, just as they are able to deceive us. We can also be hypocrites, acting at odds with what we say we believe or endorse. The possibilities of deceit and hypocrisy are important to writers, because they allow subterfuge, betrayals, treachery, treason, and the other violations of trust upon which intrigue, suspense, irony, and plots are built.

Speech (dialogue), behavior (action), and role playing are the bases, along with nonverbal communication cues such as facial expressions and gestures, of characterization and its exhibition to readers and audiences. It is, therefore, a good habit for a writer, in studying people (as models for fictional characters) to not only observe what and how people say and do things but, equally importantly, to imagine the various ways in which the same things might be said or done, both by the present and by other people, and both in their presently adopted or assigned roles and in other possible ones. Who might have imagined that a man, through technology, could become a mother of sorts? Mary Shelley did, in the fictional person of Victor Von Frankenstein, and, if Joss Whedon hadn’t imagine a reversal of roles between the teenage girl and her supernatural attacker, Buffy the Vampire Slayer never would have been born.