Three Images

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: This discussion is based on Tzvetan Todorov's analysis of the fantastic, which is detailed in “The Tzvetan Todorov Plot.”

In solving crimes, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, and other consulting or amateur detectives often look for singularities—things that were out of place, things that didn't “belong,” things that stood out.

Why do things stand out from everything else? Why, in a myriad of other objects, does this one physical entity catch the eye (or the ear or the nose or the tongue or the finger)? What makes it different and, therefore, visible?

A bell rope attached to nothing: how singular!

Abnormal things stand out. According to Oxford Dictionaries, “abnormal” means “deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable or worrying.” Something abnormal deviates, or departs from, the normal or the usual. A beautiful woman, in this sense, is “abnormal,” but she is neither “undesirable” nor “worrying,” so she doesn't fill the bill.

What about a nude? Even if she (or he) were unusually attractive and naked, it's likely that a nude's presence, among clothed people, would be regarded as at least “undesirable” by some—perhaps many. Such a person's presence might also be seen as “worrying.” However, in a nudist camp, a clothed person would stand out, perhaps as “undesirable” or even “worrying,” even if he or she were attractive. In either case, the person, nude or clothed, has violated the norms, or “rules,” of the greater group. Abnormality, like beauty, is, it appears, in the eyes of the beholder, at least to some extent.

Fortunately, we do not need to be philosophers to recognize things that many, if not all, people regard as abnormal. We can start with a good image browser (I prefer Bing; you may favor Google.) All we need to do is to select our filters and type in our search term: “abnormal.” The server will return lots of images that have been labeled “abnormal.” We can then select those that we also view as abnormal and ask ourselves why these particular images seem abnormal to us.

Something uncanny!

Here is an image in which placement and shape conspire to create an abnormal effect. A glass of wine is positioned directly in front of a woman in a simple white dress. At the level of her crotch, the glass of wine, at first glance, appears to be her pubic hair. However, the woman is fully dressed, the dark triangular shape cannot be her pubic hair—unless, perhaps, her dress is cut out to reveal this feature. We look again, more closely. No. The dress does not have a cutout, and the dark triangle is not hair, but wine in a glass. A sight which had seemed to be fantastic turns out to be uncanny. At first, the sight appeared to deviate from the norms or propriety in a manner which some would find “undesirable or worrying.” Closer inspection shows that such is not the case.

Something marvelous!

This image shows a spoon lying on a white surface. It casts a shadow, part of which is visible below the bowl of the spoon. The spoon itself looks quite normal. There is nothing in the least unusual about the utensil itself. However, the image is slightly “worrying” because the spoon casts the shadow of a different implement altogether—that of a fork. The shapes of the fork's tines, rather than the rounded edge of the spoon's bowl, contradict our interpretation of the object as a spoon. The shadow under the spoon defies our experience, wherein a fork, not a spoon, would cast such a shadow. All we know about spoons and forks, about shadows, and about the science of optic is contravened.

The first image, although seemingly abnormal, can be explained as normal. What we see is an illusion caused by placement and shape. The effect is uncanny, but not fantastic. However, neither science nor reason can account for the shadow of the fork cast by the spoon. This image, therefore, is marvelous, and the marvelous is, or can be, the source of the horrific. In this image, we are confronted by a refutation of reason, a denial of the validity of empiricism, a denunciation of science itself. This image suggests that we neither know anything for certain nor are able to know anything with certainty.

Something fantastic!

A third possibility exists: the fantastic consists of things that could be either marvelous (for example, supernatural) or uncanny (extremely unusual but explainable through science or reason) and for which the jury remains undecided. Such a thing might be the cyclops of ancient Greek mythology. Some scientists suggest that the apparently fantastic creature is explained by ancient people's mistaking the skull of Deinotherium giganteum for that of a gigantic, one-eyed human:

The large hole in the center of the skull of Deinotherium giganteum, representing the animal's extremely large nasal opening, could well be the foundation for their tales of the fearsome one-eyed Cyclops.

The fantastic and the uncanny are variation on Holmes's singularity. Holmes's singularity is strange; it is displaced; it does not “belong” in its present environment; therefore, for the detective, it is a possible clue regarding the mystery he seeks to solve. However, that it is solvable is never in doubt, either to Holmes himself or to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legion of readers. Likewise, the fantastic is potentially solvable, while the uncanny is completely solvable.

Holmes' singularity is at first fantastic, but it is always, in the end, found to be uncanny. The marvelous is inexplicable; that is precisely why it is and remains marvelous. As such, it has no place in the detective story as it is practiced by Holmes.

Plotting Board, Part 2

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff.

The MOTW Formula

In our previous post, we mention The X-Files's use of the Monster of the Week (MOTW) as a plot generator to provide variety which would prevent the series from rehashing these series' mythological elements and becoming boring an “repetitive” as a result. But we didn't explain the formula the show's writers used. (There has to be some incentive to return for more posts, after all.) So here it is (the formula, not the incentive):

The MOTW episodes follow the same formula: “There's a monster; Mulder and Scully chase the monster; people die; the monster is caught or killed; and the status quo is restored . . . or is it?”

Innovative Investigation

An innovation in the investigation of a mystery is to have the detective solve it as a result of a shift in his or her thinking. This approach is as old as detective fiction, having been used, for example, both by Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as well as such over-the-top police procedurals as Hawaii 5-O. (I use it myself in my historical murder mystery, Death in the Old Dominion, which is set in colonial Williamsburg).

The X-Files takes this approach in “The Erlenmyer Flask,” as VanDerWerff explains: “At every turn of the episode, Mulder and Scully are confronted with what seems to be a brick wall, until they twist their thinking in a new direction and discover the solution waiting just around the corner” (47).

Often, an intuition or the chance discovery of a clue or the understanding that a clue can be interpreted more than one way (as in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, in which what is assumed to be the name of a person is finally understood to refer to a building.) However, this turn of thought can also occur as the result of a deliberate review of the evidence (as in several of Doyle's short stories, including “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”).

Upsetting the Apple-Cart

In many television series, to keep things fresh, the last episode of a season upsets the apple-cart, as it were, by introducing several significant changes to the status quo. These changes can involve characters, the principal setting, the show's basic situation, or other elements, as “major changes” are made, some of which are “easily” reversible, while others “reverberate for years to come.” 

As VanDerWerff points out, at the end of The X-Files's first season, “the death of Deep Throat,” Mulder's revelation “that the X-Files has been closed down,” and Mulder's and Scully's being split up as they are “assigned to different divisions” certainly upset the apple-cart (47-48).

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the apple-cart is upset by Buffy's death at the end of season one, by Buffy's dispatching Angel's soul to hell and leaving Sunnydale at the end of season two, by Faith's escape after Buffy stabs her during a rooftop fight and by Buffy's graduation from high school at the end of season three.

Art Imitates Life

Another way to generate new directions in the plot of a novel is to imagine that the book is a television series in which actors portray the characters and that something unexpected happens to an actor, which requires a new, if temporary, change in the plot's routine. For example, as VanDerWerff recounts, during the filming season two of The X-Files, Gillian Anderson (Scully) became pregnant; as a consequence, Scully “had to recede from the narrative” (52). To accomplish this requirement, she is abducted.

Similar situations can occur in your own novel, if you imagine your characters are enacted by flesh-and-blood personnel rather than described in words on paper. Such an approach may open many possibilities that might not occur to a novelist otherwise.

MORE next post!

Doctors of Death

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

“When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first among criminals.” – Sherlock Holmes, “The Speckled Band”

Some believe Jack the Ripper was a medical doctor, perhaps a surgeon. Other serial killers are known to have practiced medicine, include H. H. Holmes, Harold Shipman, Michael Swango, Marcel Petiot, Shirō Ishii, John Bodkin Adams, Josef Menegle, Robert George Clements, Thomas Neill Cream, Louay Omar Mohammed ai-Taei, Maxim Petrov, and Kermit Gosnell.

As Sherlock Holmes (okay, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) observes, medical doctors make splendid criminals. They have the knowledge, the discipline, and the skill to kill, but they also often present the persona of a caring and humanitarian professional in whose hands patients are well-advised to place not only their trust, but also their lives. In fact, their victims often come to them, as patients who are both physically and emotionally vulnerable. They look upon their doctors as their best hopes for survival. Ironically, “when a doctor goes wrong,” he or she is apt to be just the opposite. Alas, patients sometimes learn too late that their trusted physician or surgeon is, in fact, a cold-blooded killer.

Horror movies have featured their share of diabolical doctors, some of whom are researchers, others of whom are medical practitioners or surgeons. Dr. Jekyll, of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, (1886) appears to be a chemist; Dr. Moreau, of H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), is a physiologist and vivisectionist; and Dr. Griffin*, of H. G. Wells's novel The Invisible Man (1897), is an optics researcher. (Mary Shelley's Victor von Frankenstein is not a doctor, but an amateur scientist of sorts. Likewise, Dr. Anton Phibes [of the 1972 movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes] is not a medical doctor; he has degrees in music and theology, one of which is a doctorate.)

Several other novels and movies also feature doctors of one type or another, but the ones we've identified are sufficient for our (or, rather, Sherlock Holmes's) thesis: “When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first among criminals.”

* * *

Dr. Jekyll

In creating the dual character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson seems to have separated the private person from his persona. The former is the public face, the persona, presented to the world; the latter, the private person, known only to himself (and not entirely known, even then).

All of us are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We have private selves and public selves, and these split aspects of our personalities are not always in synchronization with one another. Privately, we desire and fantasize and, perhaps, in some ways act upon less-than-honorable, or even shameful, impulses and proclivities which, in our public lives, we would never dare to acknowledge, much less entertain or act upon.

We are hypocrites, all—or would be, had society not, in its wisdom, allowed us to a differentiate between our private lives, wherein ignominious and disgraceful thoughts, feelings, and secret behaviors are allowed without penalty, as long as they harm no one, and our public lives, wherein we are expected to conform to the mores, traditions, customs, and laws of civilized society.

Wanting to kill, or even entertaining fantasies about murdering, another person is permissible to us in our private lives, the lives that our counterparts to Mr. Hyde live, but such ideas, emotions, and dreams are strictly forbidden to us in our public lives, the lives of our Dr. Jekyll dopplegangers live.

In crossing the line between the private hell of his personal life and the public life of affected propriety, Stevenson's protagonist committed a horror more horrible than the murders he perpetrated. Stevenson's novel is a cautionary tale: this far, one may go, but not a step farther. The boundary between the vile, secret self and the acceptable persona must be respected at all costs. When it is, murders and other immoral acts are unlikely to occur; the monster within is kept at bay.

Dr. Moreau

As we point out in another post, mixing human and animal perverts both natures, dehumanizing the former while objectifying the latter. Men and women, like animals, are better off as men and women or as animals than they would be as manimals or womanimals. By being hybridized as chimeras, neither human nor animal is improved.

Compared to humans animals are not, by nature, very bright. They live mostly by instinct, unable to comprehend the ways of men and women, whom, according to scientists, they regard as alpha members of the pack of which they themselves are lesser members. Unfortunately, with intelligence comes the capacities for treachery, infidelity, malice aforethought, and all manner of other evils. There are no innocent adults, and even children are often cruel to one another. They do not need teachers; such cruelty comes naturally to them. An animal, especially a domesticated one, is more innocent than any child.

By mixing humans and beasts, as Dr. Moreau did, both are made different and are devalued in the process. Indirectly, through is hybrid creatures, Dr. Moreau causes the deaths of others, but his greater crime is the immorality of vivisection as the means he employs for grafting human beings and animals. His means to his ends set him apart in his villainy, just as does Dr. Jekyll's means to his ends set him apart for the same reason.

Dr. Griffin

Humans depend upon their five senses to perceive the world. Primarily, they depend upon sight. To render oneself or anything else invisible is to eliminate the sense of sight, at least as it concerns the persons or objects made invisible. Invisibility blinds us, and blindness hampers our powers to conduct reconnaissance or surveillance and to protect ourselves and defend others. To confer invisibility upon someone or something is to disable those who are thus deprived sight of the person or thing made invisible.

To use a unique and extraordinarily effective ability against others, leaving them vulnerable and defenseless is tantamount to betrayal. Dr. Griffin's invisibility allows him to accomplish just such an immoral act. Instead of using his power to benefit others, he abuses it, even committing acts of murder. Again, his ends to his means is worse than the deaths he inflicts upon his victims, because these ends set him apart from his peers as not only ruthless but also inhuman.

* * *

Stevenson and Wells, although not, perhaps, in the first rank of literature, many might contend, are, nonetheless, superior to the vast majority of writers of their time or, indeed, of any time. The quality of their writing, its urbane and sophisticated style, the subtlety of their novels' various themes, their superb craftsmanship, their attention to detail, and the unhurried manner of their narratives, in which, most often, structure and function are so perfectly balanced as to appear to be one and the same thing, make their stories of such a character that the morality of the tales are not overwhelmed by the sensationalism of their plots. Directly, or by proxy, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, and Dr. Griffin are serial murderers. Although their criminal deeds are described in lurid detail, the murders they commit, as extravagant as they are, do not cloud the moral implications of their heinous acts.

Plotting a Horror Story as a Mystery

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Many of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories start with Sherlock Holmes's observations about a client. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” the detective makes declarations about the modes of transportation Helen Stoner used and about her truthfulness.

“You have come by train this morning, I see,” he tells her. He adds that she also “had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before [reaching] the station.” Helen is “bewildered” by Holmes's performance, until he explains how he deduced these facts: “I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove,” he says, adding, concerning her ride in the dog-cart, “the left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less [sic] than seven places. There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left hand side of the driver.”

Later, when he asks her whether she has told him everything and she answers that she has, Holmes says she has not; she is shielding her stepfather. The “five little livid spots” on her hand, representing pressure from “four fingers and a thumb” indicate that her stepfather has “cruelly used” her. Holmes's display of such skills characterize him as an astute detective, amazing readers, just as he has amazed Helen and as he regularly amazes his friend and colleague, Dr. Watson.

Doyle was inspired in employing this method of characterization by Dr. Joseph Bell, who taught classes at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, where he frequently demonstrated the powers of observation and deduction to his students, one of whom was Doyle. In “ From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon, Mattias Bostrom includes four examples of Bell's prowess.

In the first, Bell dips a finger into a “vial” filled with a “bitter liquid” before tasting it. He then invites his students to do the same, and they pass the container from one to the next. After all have complied with his request, he expresses his disappointment at their lack of observation, confessing to them, “While I placed my index finger in the awful brew, it was the middle finger—aye—which somehow found its way into my mouth” (7-8).

In the presence of his students, Bell demonstrated the degree to which a person can ascertain information concerning a patient's “history, nationality, and occupation” simply by means of observation and deduction. The doctor told the day's “first patient,” who wore “civilian clothes,” that the man had “served in the army,” in “a Highland regiment,” as a non-commissioned officer “stationed at Barbados,” and had only recently been discharged (8-9). When the patient confirmed the accuracy of Bell's statements, the doctor explained to his students how he'd reached these conclusions:

“The man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he long been discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to the Barbados, his complaint is elephantiasis, which is West Indian and nor British” (9).

The third example of the powers of observation and deduction occurs as Bell asks a woman at “another lecture” where her cutty pipe is, causing her to produce the item from her handbag. He deduced that she smoked such a pipe, he explains to his students, from the presence of “the ulcer on her lower lip and the glossy scar on her left cheek, indicating a superficial burn.” These marks were produced by the “short-stemmed clay pipe [she] held close to the cheek while smoking.”

Bostrom's fourth example of Bell's skills in observation and deduction follow a student's failed application of the doctor's method. Asked for his diagnosis concerning “another patient,” the student ventures the opinion that the patient suffers from “hip-joint disease.” Bell corrects his pupil:

“The man's limp isn't from his hip but from his foot. Were you to observe closely, you would see there are slits, cut by a knife, in those parts of the shoe where the pressure of the shoe is greater against the foot. The man is a sufferer from corns . . . and has no hip trouble at all. But he has not come here to be treated for corns . . . . His trouble is of a much more serious nature. This is a case of chronic alcoholism . . . . The rubicund nose, the puffed, bloated face, the bloodshot eyes, the tremulous hands and twitching face muscles, with the quick pulsating temporal arteries, all show this. These deductions, gentlemen, must however be confirmed by absolute and concrete evidence. In this instance my diagnosis is confirmed by the fact of my seeing the neck of a whiskey bottle protruding from the patient's right hand coat pocket. . . . Never neglect to ratify your deductions” (9-10).

In these examples, Holmes's own method, based on that of Bell, is summed up nicely: observe, deduce, and verify one's deductions with “absolute and concrete evidence.”

As Bostrom points out, “Bell's assertions, which had first seemed miraculous, appeared perfectly logical after his explanations” (9). In this statement rests the method of the mystery story: present effects, but withhold causes; show the what and even the how, but not the why. Without a full context, readers will find it difficult, if not impossible, to solve the mystery. Therefore, the cause should be provided only at the end of the story, when the detective explains the case.

Interesting, one may think, but what do the methods of detectives and the manner of the mystery have to do with horror fiction? Horror writers do much the same thing as authors of detective stories, except that the explanation, which typically includes an account of the nature or origin of the monster, provides the information the protagonist needs to neutralize or eliminate the monster (or other threat), rather than to solve a crime.

In an interview, Doyle revealed that he normally started the writing process by envisioning the story's end. “The art,” he said, “then lay in writing his way to the end while managing to conceal the finale from the reader” (Bostrom, 78). It's possible that Doyle learned this approach from Edgar Allan Poe, whose own earlier detective fiction Doyle admired; in explaining the process, in “The Philosophy of Composition,” by which he wrote his poem The Raven, Poe says he wrote the poem backward, first devising the end and then making everything lead toward this conclusion so that the story had unity of effect and the end seemed inevitable.

In Writing Monsters, Philip Athans quotes Lynn Abbey as recommending a similar backward approach to plotting horror fiction. She recommends determining how the monster will be neutralized or eliminated and then dismantling “the characters' knowledge and preparation” before developing the “plot details that allow the characters to pick up the pieces [i. e., the clues and other information] they're going to need.”

Such an approach allows writers of both detective and horror fiction to develop their plots since, at the heart of both genres, there is a mystery: a crime in the former case and the nature or origin of a monstrous menace in the latter instance.

Doyle also wrote according to “template,” or formula, from which he seldom varied, Bostrom observes: a client arrives for a consultation; based on observations, Holmes makes and explains deductions about the client; Holmes explains these deductions, identifying his observations; the client presents the facts of his or her case; Holmes investigates the case, sometimes in the company of Watson; Holmes solves the case; the perpetrator is captured (or, we might add, killed).

Applying the writing-backward approach and using this template, Doyle's short story, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” might look like this:

The perpetrator is apprehended.	Dr. Grimesby Roylott is killed by a venomous snake.
Holmes solves the case.	Holmes explains that, to prevent his stepdaughters from inheriting most of the fortune their late mother left in his charge when they wed, Roylott uses milk to train a venomous snake to return, at the sound of a whistle, to his room, through a ventilator between his bedroom and that of his first victim, Helen Stoner's sister, Julia. He would then slip a leather loose around the snake's body to return the reptile to the safe he kept in his bedroom. To provide the snake with access from the vent to the bed he'd bolted in place in Julia's bedroom, Roylott installed a bell-cord unconnected to a bell. After Julia's death, he ordered Helen to switch from her own bedroom to her sister's, under the pretext that construction was underway in the wing of the house in which Helen's bedroom is located. He would release the snake at the same time every night until it bit its victim.
Holmes investigates the case.	Holmes, accompanied by Watson, travels to Roylott's house while Roylott is away from home. There, they determine that reliable shutters on the bedroom windows and its locked door are sufficient to have kept out both wild animals and gypsies roaming the estate. Holmes also discovers a vent that connects with the adjacent bedroom, that of Roylott, rather than emptying outdoors; a dummy bell cord; a bed bolted to the floor to make it immovable (a clue shared only at the end of the story); and, in Dr. Roylott's bedroom, a saucer of milk atop a safe (despite the absence of a house cat), a leather leash with a loop in it, and a chair beneath the vent leading to Julia's bedroom.
The client presents the facts of the case.	Helen recounts the engagement of her sister Julia to be married and Julia's mysterious death; the sound of a whistle she hears every night; unnecessary construction on her stepfather's estate; the fortune her late mother left for them, in Dr. Roylott's care, payable to them upon their marriage; and the presence of wild animals and gypsies that freely roam the estate.
Holmes makes and explains the deductions he makes about the client based on his observations.	“You have come by train this morning, I see,” Holmes tells Helen. He adds that she also “had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached the station.” Helen is “bewildered” by Holmes's performance, until he explains how he deduced these facts: “I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove,” he says, adding, concerning her ride in the dog-cart, “The left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less [sic] than seven places. There is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left hand side of the driver.” Later, when he asks her whether she has told him everything and she answers that she has, Holmes says she has not; she is shielding her stepfather. The “five little livid spots” on her hand, representing pressure from “four fingers and a thumb” indicate that her stepfather has “cruelly used” her.
A new client arrives to consult with Holmes.	Holmes's landlady and housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, announces the arrival of Helen Stoner to see him.

Note: The gypsies and the wild animals are introduced as possible suspects in Julia's death.

Not surprisingly, the same method can be used to plot a popular type of horror story. However, the template, or formula, for this type of story differs from the one Doyle used to write his Sherlock Holmes stories. Typically, the template for this type of horror story includes these phases:

1. A series of bizarre incidents occurs.
2. The protagonist learns the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents.
3. The protagonist uses the knowledge of the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them.
   
   

Applied to Them!, backward plotting from this horror template might result in something like this:

The protagonist uses the knowledge of the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents to put an end to them.	Army troops use flamethrowers to destroy two escaped queen ants and their brood. (By nature, queen ants are vital to the survival of their colony and, indeed, to the species itself, “producing thousands of eggs” over their lifetimes.
The protagonist learns the nature, origin, or cause of the bizarre incidents.	FBI agents destroy a gigantic ant with their sub-machine guns. A scientist theorizes that a colony of ants became giants after atomic radiation from a nuclear test at Alamogordo caused them to mutate.
A series of bizarre incidents occurs.	In shock, a girl wanders the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Her trailer appears to have been attacked and destroyed. Gramps Johnson, a store owner is found dead inside his ripped-open store. In an ambulance, the girl sits up when a high-pitched sound occurs. State Trooper Ed Blackburn screams as he goes outdoors to investigate a shrill sound. Since both Johnson, who died of a broken neck and whose body contains formic acid, and Blackburn were found with fired weapons, it seems unlikely their attackers were gunmen. The girl found wandering in the desert awakens from her catatonic state when exposed to formic acid and yells, “Them!”

Metaphorical Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although most of us have a healthy respect for significant incidents, we may dismiss what we see as trifles too quickly. The great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes didn't make such a mistake. Indeed, as he reminded his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson, “You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”

Holmes even gives Watson an example of the importance of so-called trifles: “I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth [to] which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.”

Unfortunately, we know no other details of the adventure to which Holmes refers, for it was not one about which he or Watson wrote. Nevertheless, we can assume it constituted a “singularity,” a unique fact or feature, something that stands out because it doesn't fit or add up and which turns out, in his experience, to be “almost invariably a clue.”

Although no writer should ever imagine the matter of metaphors to be a mere “trifle,” some, no doubt, do. Having forgotten the difficulty they experienced in mastering this basic, but most eloquent, figure of speech (or imagining that they have mastered it), some authors seldom revisit it and cease to practice the art of its creation. As a result, they are likely to write less well than they otherwise could—and should—write. Had Claude Monet, in having first mixed red and yellow, obtaining orange, concluded no other shades and hues of the color could be produced that were worth his time and effort, he might never have painted San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight. Great writers, like any other type of artist, much practice every technique to perfect it. 

While great writers' work provide many examples worthy of emulation, other sources of inspiration are also useful, especially to the apprentice or aspiring author. For writers of horror fiction, for example, posters created to publicize horror movies offer quick studies of astute uses of metaphor to advertise, or “sell,” these products. If copywriters, painters, and photographers can sell a film, partially through their use of metaphors, an author of horror stories should be able to “sell” a phrase, a sentence, a scene, or, in some cases, even an entire story through his or her adroit use of appropriate and emotionally powerful metaphors.

The metaphor, we know, is a figure of speech that compares two things (or abstractions, such as thoughts or feelings) that are not alike. A metaphor may be thought of as an equation. One variable, “A,” is said to be equal to another variable, “B”:

E = MC²

wherein, “E” is energy, “M” is mass, and “C” is the speed of light times itself

We can turn an equation around, writing, for example—

MC² = E

Often, a metaphor makes readers aware of a quality that they might otherwise fail to notice:

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.

World = stage

Men and women = players

Exits = deaths

Entrances = births

Often, we make metaphors by stating them directly, as William Shakespeare does in the above quotation (“the world's a stage”).

However, we can create a metaphor indirectly, by speaking (or writing) of an object in relation to one (or more) of its parts. Consider this poster for the movie Teeth: 

We see a young woman lying supine in a bathtub of soapy water. Only her head appears above the water's surface. The featureless white wall above her head does not distract us with color, patterned wallpaper, paneling, or anything else. The water is also featureless, and the layer of soap lying upon its surface makes it seem one with the tub and the wall. Our gaze remains on her face; we are encouraged, in effect, to consider her, to study her. We see that she is young and beautiful. Her skin is flawless, her cheeks rosy, her lips full and red. She looks at us directly, without fear or shame.

As our gaze wanders down the poster, we see, beneath the dark water, rising bubbles and a single red rose which seems to float at about the position the young woman's genitals would be, were they visible to us. The metaphor is unstated, but suggested: her vagina = a rose. The image of the rose recalls the flower's qualities: delicacy, beauty, fragrance. We might also associate the rose with romantic love, for the flower is traditionally a symbol of erotic passion.

Beneath the flower, we encounter a single word, in the capital letters of a serif font: “Teeth.” The word's blood red color is reminiscent both of the rose above it and of the young woman's vagina, which it represents. The vagina is bloody during the moment of deflowering and throughout each menstrual cycle. This rose-vagina, or vagina-rose, becomes more and more complex, as layers of meanings unfold themselves, much in the manner of a budding rose.

This seemingly simple poster has more to offer: the smaller text, also in the capital letters of a serif font, but white, not red: “EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORNS.” White is often a symbol of purity, or innocence, of virginity. If the young woman is a virgin, transforming her from a state of purity and innocence into a woman of knowledge—and of carnal knowledge, at that—and experience, through sexual intercourse, is apt to result in violence, injury, and, perhaps, death, not to her, but to the man who so transforms her. This young maiden is no passive and acquiescent Galatea, but a vengeful Fury. Such seems to be the warning conveyed by the poster's reference to a vagina with teeth, the legendary vagina dentata.

The front cover of a DVD made for the Spanish-speaking segment of the market bears the same imagery as the movie poster for its English-language counterpart (described above), except, instead of the title Teeth, the Spanish version is called Vagina Dentata, and, in case the front cover's message isn't clear enough, text on the Spanish edition's back cover spells out the meaning of the front cover's iconography:

[Vagina Dentata] es la historia un brusco desperta sexual como nunca se ha visto antes . . . Como nuestra protagonista pasa de liderar un grupo de castidad a experimentar sus primeras experencias sexuales de manera traumatica . . . un extrano habita en su cuerpo. Adivine que pasa cuando Dawn O'Keefe descrubre una dentadura en el lugar mas espantoso que usted puedo imaginar . . . Cuidado las chicas buenas pueden morder.

(English translation): [Teeth] is the story of a sudden sexual awakening unlike any ever seen before. . . As our protagonist goes from leading a chastity group to experiencing her first traumatic sexual experiences. . . a stranger lives in her body. Guess what happens when Dawn O'Keefe uncovers a set of teeth in the most frightening place you can imnagine. Beware: good girls can bite.

It may seem that we've gotten away from the original topic of our essay, but we haven't. The text on the back of the Spanish-language version of Teeth merely spells out the consequences, according to the movie's treatment of the topic represented by the double metaphor, “rose = vagina; thorns = teeth”: a young woman's first sexual experiences are traumatic; she responds by murdering her partners, using her vagina's teeth to effect bloody vengeance. For her victims (and for male members of the audience—yes, pun intended—the location of the young woman's second set of teeth is “the most frightening place” they can envision.) The effects presented by the movie are made possible by, if not contained within, the double metaphor.

One can create a metaphor directly, as Shakespeare does with his “all the world's a stage” trope, but a metaphor can also be created indirectly, by associating the qualities of one term (“A”) with the other term, “B,” with which it is linked by comparison. As we have seen, a well-conceived metaphor can accomplish a lot more than simply making us see something in a new light; it can become a vehicle for an entire movie's basic situation. In the case of Teeth, the screenwriters (and the poster's creators) have taken a leaf from Edgar Allan Poe, whose narrator, at the opening to his story “Berenice,” speaks of his having “derived from beauty . . [not only] a type of unloveliness,” but also a situation ripe with horror.

Note: For those who are inclinded toward psychoanalytical, or Freudian, interpretations of literature (as a rule, I am not), Teeth might also be seen as symbolic of the so-called castration complex and as rife with all sorts of unconscious significance.

Explaining Vampires

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, the Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective’s Greatest Cases, E. J. Wagner includes a series of facts that writers of horror stories, seeking to balance claims concerning the supernatural origin and existence of vampires with natural explanations for the belief in such creatures can use in their own stories:

In real life, exhumations of reputed vampires provided helpful information to medical science. In the eighteenth century, during a vampire panic in central Europe, a number of graves were opened by physicians of the occupying Austrian army. Their reports gave a detailed picture of the unexpected effects that burial can have on cadavers--effects that in less educated minds gave credence to the vampire legends. Bodies of males, for instance, were sometimes discovered showing “wild signs,” or penile erections, no doubt caused by bloating from gases. The same gases caused corpses to split open, often with sufficient noise to be heard aboveground. Some burials were in earth so rich in tannin that the bodies were extraordinarily preserved, even after centuries underground. All of this served to immortalize the belief in the “undead.”

. . . In many nineteenth-century country villages the disease [consumption, or tuberculosis] meant that infected descendents of diseased victims often showed the first signs of illness after their progenitors were buried. It was not recognized that the disease was the result of contagion within the household. The symptoms of weakness and anemia caused by poor lung function and bloody coughs suggested to the credulous that the dead had returned to feed on their young.

Opening the graves of suspected vampires sometimes disclosed that the corpses had changed position, a result of effects of decomposition and ensuing gas formation. Insect activity affected the visage of the dead, contraction of the skin made it appear that the hair and nails continued to grow, and what was thought to be fresh liquid blood could be found in the mouths or chest cavities. It was not generally realized that blood, which coagulates after death, can subsequently return to a liquid state, so when a stake was driven into the chest of an exhumed corpse and a plume of blood erupted, it satisfied the observers that a vampire had been quelled (202-203)

. . . The belief that hair and nails could grow after death was taken as evidence of vampirism in some primitive rural communities (207).

Occasionally, unconscious or catatonic men and women were buried alive by accident, and, when they regained consciousness, experiencing claustrophobia and seeking to escape the confines of their buried coffins, they flailed at the lids, tore the linings, and writhed and rolled about. If their bodies were later exhumed for some reason, the damages to the interiors of the caskets and the repositioned corpses might also be taken as signs that the supposedly dead were really the “undead.”

Note: George Washington, who suffered from taphephobia, ordered that he not be buried until twelve days after his death, and others who feared being buried alive ensured that their coffins and graves were equipped with means of escape and egress. Vestal virgins who violated their oaths of chastity were buried alive as a form of torture and execution. The antagonist of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” was likewise immured, and the protagonist of “The Premature Burial” was buried alive. In reality, before modern medical knowledge provided safeguards against live burial, people were accidentally buried alive more often than one might suppose; as Christine Quigley points out, in The Corpse: A History, “William Tebb records 149 such cases, as well as several 219 near misses, ten live dissections, and two awakenings during embalming. “10 Horrifying Premature Burials,“ an Internet article, also describes additional live burials.  Maybe being a vampire wasn’t all that bad, compared to the virgins’ fate!

Paranormal and Supernatural Hoaxes

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

A number of paranormal and supernatural hoaxes have been, and continue to be, perpetuated upon the public; many of these, whether from a position of belief or skepticism, are of interest to published and aspiring writers of fiction concerning horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Some of the more familiar and long-standing of these frauds are included in this post.

Cottingley fairies

Cousins Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffith (10), of Cottingley, England, photographed themselves with cutouts of cardboard fairies. Experts confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, but Kodak refused to follow suit. The pictures sparked a huge controversy, which involved, among others, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, who wrote an article on the incident, “Fairies photographed--an epoch making event,” for Strand magazine. He wrote a follow-up account of the fairies in The Coming of the Fairies, expressing his personal conviction that they were real beings. In 1981, the girls finally admitted that the photographs were a hoax, the fairies being cardboard cutouts mounted upon hairpins.

Crop circles

Geometric patterns that appear overnight in crops or pastures, as in the film Signs, are alleged to be the handiwork of extraterrestrial visitors who, perhaps, intend the designs to be navigational aids for their more navigationally challenged peers. However, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley have explained how they created such designs as a prank. Using nothing more than planks of wood, rope, hats, wire, and ingenuity, they created a 40-foot circle in only 15 minutes. When publicity proved to be less than they’d anticipated, they repeated the procedure near a natural amphitheater near a busy roadway and increased the complexity of their designs when critics were unimpressed by their simple circles. The wire was used to fashion a loop that, suspended from a hat, allowed the men to focus on a distant landmark as an aid to keeping lines straight. Their hoax was exposed when Bower’s wife, noting the high number of miles on her husband’s odometer, confronted him as to his many outings, and, afraid she’d think he was being unfaithful to her, he confessed his and Chorley’s hobby. Others have since taken up the practice, which has become something of an international pastime.

Hundredth Monkey Effect

Lyall Watson claimed that Japanese scientists observed the so-called hundredth monkey effect, in which, once a number of the animals learned to wash sweet potatoes, the practice was instantly performed by other monkeys on nearby islands as well. However, this account ignores the fact that one of the monkeys who had learned to wash the vegetables by imitating older monkeys (the same way that all the others also learned the practice) had swum to one of these islands, where it lived for four years, and that sweet potatoes were introduced by humans into the area at about the time that the so-called effect was supposedly observed.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP) Internet article, “Don’t Be Fooled: Strange Hoaxes That Endure,” debunks several paranormal hoaxes:

• The Roswell incident, in which a crashed alien spaceship and its crew, killed in the impact, were supposedly recovered and sent to secret military installations.
• Spiritualism, which is predicated upon channeling spirits or otherwise communicating with the dead.
• Psychic networks, which the gullible can telephone for help with the future.
• The Shroud of Turin, which is said to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
• The Cottingley fairies (see above).
• Crop circles (see above).
• The Amityville Horror, the story of a supposedly haunted house, wherein a previous resident “murdered his parents and siblings,” was created by homeowners George and Kathy Lutz “over many bottles of wine” and became a major motion picture.
• The Piltdown Man, who was comprised of a human skull and an orangutan’s jawbone.
• Psychic surgery, which involves the supposed removal of “'tumors' and other diseased tissue” sans scalpel and anesthesia.
• King Tut’s curse, which was supposedly inscribed over the doorway to his tomb and has caused the deaths of his final resting place’s plunderers, whereas, “in fact, ten years after the tomb was opened, all but one of the five who first entered it were still living.”

The Cardiff giant, mentioned among the “C” entries of our own “A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly” post, is also mentioned.

For those who are interested in the subject of paranormal and supernatural hoaxes, two excellent sources are The Skeptic’s Dictionary and James Randi Educational Foundation's An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. We also recommend Chillers and Thrillers own four-part “Alternative Explanations” series: Part 1 , Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

About.com’s Stephen Wagner sponsors an annual “Paranormal Photo Hoax,” inviting the public to send him “a fake paranormal photo of any kind,” such as one of monsters, ghosts, poltergeists, fairies, UFO’s, or “anything else you can dream up.” Stories concerning the photographs are also welcome, he says. He’s the judge, and certain “terms and conditions” apply. Interested parties can read more at his blog, Paranormal Phenomena.