The Here, the Now, and the Eternal

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Paintings and illustrations are, of course, visual modes, whereas fiction is a narrative form. A painting or an illustration may suggest a story, but fiction must tell a tale. In the process, it will suggest images, through description. However, in doing so, its purpose will be ever the same: to tell a story. Paintings and illustrations are under no such obligation; they may or may not tell a story, as their creators please. For visual artists, the picture is the point; for writers, pictures are means, not ends, and the end that they do serve is to contribute to the tale’s overall effect and theme.

In “The Premature Burial,” Edgar Allan Poe describes, from the point of view of one who has suffered the fate suggested by his story’s title, what it would feel like to be buried alive. In doing so, Poe puts his reader alongside his living corpse, as it were, heightening the horror and the terror of the protagonist’s situation. Before reading his story, one may have dimly understood the horror and the terror of such a situation, but Poe ensures that his reader shall comprehend, in full, the emotional and even the visceral significance of such a situation. The author makes the reader live, as it were, inside the coffin for much of the duration of his story.

The tale is horrific, and its great fear deepens as one returns to the tale when he or she has advanced in years and the story’s potential threat looms larger--or closer. The victim’s struggle inside the coffin seems to suggest the ordinary person’s fear that life may be ultimately without meaning or value, that eternity reduces a life lived in time to insignificance. (Art, as represented by “The Premature Burial” itself, it may be argued, transcends time and, thereby, may give value and significance to temporal human existence.)

A visual artist might depict the living corpse’s situation, as, for example, Buffy Summers’ having been buried alive is depicted in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which, having died, she is brought back to life by a spell cast by her friend, the witch named Willow Rosenberg: the viewer sees Buffy’s somewhat skeletal remains take on flesh, as it were, as her corpse reverts to life, and her eyes, having reformed, snap wide in abject terror.

It’s a disturbing scene, to be sure, but it’s over almost as soon as it begins, Buffy’s reversion to life taking but a few seconds, and, thereafter, we only hear of her sustaining lacerations and bruises to her hands (and, presumably, a few broken nails) as she clawed her way out of her premature grave. In a couple of later episodes, Buffy performs in a mechanical fashion, merely going through the motions of living, before finally confiding to the vampire Spike that Willow’s spell had snatched her out of heaven, returning her to this world, which seems, by contrast to the bliss she’d experienced, rather like hell to her. Nice touches, but they are far removed from her plight as one who has been, as it were, buried alive. Poe keeps the pressure on his reader by focusing his entire story on the trauma that his story’s victim experiences as one who has been buried alive.

A story, as Aristotle taught us, long ago, is a sequence of causally-related incidents which comprise a single, unified action theoretically divisible into a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a destination, in other words; having started somewhere, it goes somewhere, that it might, as it were, arrive somewhere. It moves (as do our eyes, from left to right, as we track the text down the page). A painting or an illustration may suggests a sort of narrative flow, but, of course, it is not going anywhere; it is, even if it does draw and move the eye, a static picture, a snapshot of life, eternally memorializing a moment rather than an experience.

The significance of the painting or the illustration is the moment which it captures in paint or ink. The significance, in fiction, is not in the momentary image, but in the relationships among a series of such images and the incidents which give rise to these images. It is as if the visual artist is saying, “Behold the moment; in it is the meaning of life,” whereas the author is proclaiming, “Behold the experience; in it, is the meaning of life.” One artist is seized by the particular moment; the other, by the relationships among a series of moments in which he or she discerns a cause-and effect or a logical sequence.

For the visual artist, meaning is fragmented and brief, here one moment, in this or that instance, and gone the next. Life is a transitory and temporal affair. For the literary artist, meaning is whole and long-lasting, if not permanent. Life is enduring and eternal. One artistic form is not necessarily better than the other, for painters and illustrators remind us that the here and the now are important, that much of life is lived in the instant, and that what happens today shall happen just this once and, therefore, should be appreciated and, where possible, enjoyed and prized, and writers remind us that it is important to understand relationships among the momentary and fleeting parade of sensations and perceptions, to interpret them together, whenever possible, and to take away from our experience an understanding that transcends the moment and can be recalled again, in some sense, independent of the moments themselves, out of which the understanding arose.

Visual art immerses us in the moment; narrative art lifts us above the present. To remain immersed forever in the present would cause one to tire of the assault of impressions upon his or her flooded senses, but to remain, as it were, on the dock, looking out to sea, would be never to bathe one’s soul in the refreshing ebb and flow of life and to be as much alive as one of the stationary planks or posts of which the pier is built.


In horror fiction, a series of seemingly unrelated incidents of a bizarre and horrific nature occur, and the protagonist seeks to understand the reason or the cause of these incidents. In other words, he or she seeks to fathom their meaning, their significance, their importance. When something--even something horrible--can be understood in such terms, it may remain horrible, but it also becomes consequential; its importance recognized, it becomes known and familiar, and it may also be understood to have some benefit, despite the pain and suffering it causes in the moment, in the here and now. An early narrative of such a theme is the story of Job, who learns, as a result of the horrific and undeserved suffering he undergoes, that “the just shall live by faith.”

But let’s have an example from the horror genre. In The Exorcist, the protagonist, Father Damien Karras, has come to doubt his faith because of the suffering that his dying mother endured before her death. Since, in Christianity, an unbeliever goes to hell after dying, the priest is in danger of losing his immortal soul. According to William Peter Blatty, the author of the novel, it is in the hope of bringing about the priest’s damnation that the demon possesses the soul of young Regan MacNeil.

In doing so, the demon sets up the occasion of the exorcism which involves Father Karras and so now has the opportunity to tempt the priest to renounce his faith by showing him the work of the devil, up close and personal, so to speak, as the demon torments the innocent girl whom it has possessed. Father Karras’ suffering now has meaning. It has importance beyond itself. It has value, for it has become the means by which, in the exercise of his own free will, he will retain or lose his faith and, thereby, his soul.

Other horror stories depict sets of circumstances or series of incidents which also find meaning and value by pointing beyond themselves, to the eternal realm of value, of reason, of faith, of beauty, and, in doing so, point the way to something like the possibility of Platonic forms or (less abstractly) the enduring value of life, or, for the religious reader, the reality of God. (“The just shall live by faith,” as both Job and Father Karras learn.) Along the way, such stories often also criticize many of the fallacies and idols, philosophical, theological, personal, cultural, and otherwise, that we hold in false esteem or false reverence.

The good life, horror fiction suggests, lies not in misery, madness, mayhem, suffering, and sin, but in the significance that such experiences may have beyond themselves, as stories, so to speak, that lead one from the temporal to the eternal. Without the hope of meaning within and beyond the moment, we would be mired only in sensual and perceptual experience; we would be lost among the phenomena of subjective experience, forever an image among images in a painting or a drawing of the here and now.

As Buffy’s Watcher, Rupert Giles, once quipped, concerning his protégé, “Buffy lives very much in the now.” Her philosophy, as Buffy herself tells Willow, is carpe diem, or seize the day--that is, live for the moment--because life is short. The series itself, however, rises above the discrete incidents of pain and suffering, of beauty and joy, that make up the protagonist’s day-to-day existence to show the series’ viewer that the meaning of life lies (as it is understood in the context of the series as a whole) in the acceptance of responsibility and the answer of the call of duty, even when doing so requires the sacrifice of oneself. Life may be short, but the consequences of one’s behavior can have lasting effects on others, including those generations which are yet to come.

Everyday Horrors: Coffins

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Replica of Abraham Lincoln's Coffin

There’s no pleasant way to get rid of a dead body. Cremation, burial at sea, exposure to the elements and wild animals, burial in the earth, mummification--all these methods and others have been tried, but they all leave something, more or less, to be desired. If one opts for burial in the soil, rather than at sea, he or she will need a coffin, whether of pine or solid gold. Since most people do opt for burial in the soil, coffins are likely to remain everyday horrors. As such, they’re worthy of a post in this series.

Originally, the coffin was simply a simple pine box. Its purpose was simple, too: contain the corpse. Once buried, the coffin, if not the corpse, was soon forgotten. Now, it would be considered gauche, to say the very least, to bury a dearly departed in so simple (and cheap) a box. Nothing less than the finest mahogany, or even bronze, lined with satin or silk, will do. After all, the more expensive the coffin, the more its quality indicates the degree to which the loved one was loved.

Haraldskaer Woman's Coffin

Although many coffins are plain, some are fanciful, shaped like fish, bottles, or guitars, whereas others bear a glass cover that allows a glimpse of the body inside, such as that of the Haraldskaer woman on display in the Church of St. Nicolai in Vejle, Denmark or of S. P. Dinsmoor, the Civil War veteran who built a concrete Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas to showcase his political and religious beliefs.

S. P. Dinsmoor's Garden of Eden, where his glass-covered cement coffin is displayed, Dinsmoor, inside, looking a bit mouldy

In the nineteenth century, Americans and others were terrified of being buried alive, as Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Premature Burial” suggests, and coffins were equipped with alarms that could be sounded by the coffin’s occupant, in the event that he or she had been mistakenly buried alive. Modern coffins (often called “caskets”) are frequently equipped with features that are supposed to protect the body from bacteria, insects, temperature changes, and other threats, but none do so indefinitely and caskets with air-tight seals actually promote the decay of the body rather than retarding or preventing it. An airtight casket expedites the decomposition of the corpse by bacteria that thrive in an oxygen-free environment.

Among models offered by most casket manufacturers are the 20-gauge steel coffin with or without an airtight gasket; a 16-gauge steel coffin; a stainless-steel coffin; a solid copper coffin, which may or may not attract grave robbers bent upon collecting the metal for resale; a solid bronze coffin ; and hardwood coffins of poplar, oak, maple, cherry, mahogany, and pine. There are also extra-large caskets and Jewish caskets, the male versions of which, presumably, are circumcised. The best value among one supplier’s metal coffins is the Hamilton DCM01, regularly selling at $1,395, but discounted for who-knows-how-long, at a mere $795. It’s a 20-gauge steel coffin, without the airtight seal (what does one expect for a paltry $795?), of sliver color, and has a white crepe interior. The company’s best value in wood coffins is the Montgomery DCTH50, which normally costs $2,195 but is discounted to $1,395. It has a hardwood mahogany finish on the outside and a white crepe interior. The supplier offers a quick course on how to select a coffin, Caskets 101. The course begins with some basic (one might say self-evident) information, and, in bold font, states the disclaimer, “No caskets or vaults protect human remains from decomposition, no matter how much you spend.” Instead, the purpose of the coffin is to serve as “a vehicle to place a loved one in for a ceremony and an interment.” The decomposition of the corpse, Caskets 101 stresses, is “inevitable,” no matter how much or how little one spends on the body's “vehicle.” The course also offers this interesting tidbit, in case student-customers are wondering: “Besides steel caskets, there are copper and bronze caskets. These caskets are measured by the ounce, meaning a 32 Oz. Bronze casket contains 32 ounces of bronze for every square foot of casket.” The purpose of the sealer is to prevent air and water from disturbing the loved one’s eternal rest, but “there is no guarantee that this won’t ever happen.” The course concludes by suggesting the economy of buying directly from a wholesaler: “funeral homes tend to triple the cost of their caskets and sometimes a lot more, we just mark ours up one time. . . . funeral homes can succeed with high markups because most people still buy their caskets from them.”

Many vampire stories, including Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot and Joss Whedon‘s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, feature coffins, as do stories populated with zombies. In The Amityville Horror, George Lutz graciously, if rather oddly, builds coffins for the members of his family. In Homecoming, the war dead rise from their flag-draped coffins to vote. The movie Ed Gein starts with the title character robbing a grave, and, real-life ghoul that he was, Gein actually did rob quite a few graves, both in Plainfield, Wisconsin and in Spirit Land Cemetery, a few miles to the north of his hometown.

As Homecoming suggests, the Veterans Administration will supply an American flag to the next-of-kin of any honorably discharged serviceman or woman, and, incidentally, now allows the Wicca symbol on military headstones. (Other approved emblems include a large variety of Christian crosses, the Buddhist wheel of righteousness, the Jewish Star of David, the angel Moroni, the arrow-and-teepee emblem of the Native American Church of North America, the atheist atom, the Muslim crescent and star, the Hindu religious emblem, and various others.)

At a recent trade show, China introduced the world to a paper coffin, which resembles hardwood, and can be decorated with paintings. It can be easily cremated or buried, and has been used in China for years.

Coffins are also available for pet animals. Some are rectangular pine boxes; others are hardwood miniature versions of adult humans’ coffins, complete with handles on either ides for pallbearers’ use.

“Everyday Horrors: Coffins” is part of a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.

Solipsism, Claustrophobia, Vampires, and Zombies

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

As we age, the objects of our fear change. As children, we fear the dark. We fear monsters. We fear strangers. Later, we learn, as the Beatles sing,

What do I see when I turn out the lights?
I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.

There’s nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light, we learn. There’s nothing to fear, even if the jacket on the back of the chair looks, in the dim light, among the shadows, like a crouching troll. Monsters, we learn, are imaginary. There are far worse things--real things--to worry about. Disease. Sickness. Death. Strangers, we realize, are potential friends.

Like shape shifters, our fears change. They transform themselves. They metamorphose, becoming different, becoming other. Often, even when they’ve changes, they are still in mask and costume, impersonating our deeper, truer fears. Take the fear of close spaces. In “The Premature Burial,” Poe describes the terror of one who, thought to be dead, awakens inside his coffin, having been buried alive:

Fearful indeed the suspicion--but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs--the stifling fumes of the damp earth--the clinging to the death garments--the rigid embrace of the narrow house--the blackness of the absolute Night--the silence like a sea that overwhelms--the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm--these things, with thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed--that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead--these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth--we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell, is of my own actual knowledge--of my own positive and personal experience.

Terrifying, indeed, would it be to find oneself in the situation that Poe describes! It is such “premature burials,” historians suspect, that gave rise to the legends of vampires. Awakening within the narrow, close confines of a buried coffin, the panicked person would rip and tear at the lining or the bare wood of his or her confines, possibly turning over, if there were room enough for such an action to be accomplished, all the time wild with terror and horror, screaming in unheard anguish until there was no more air to gasp and stillness and silence put a merciful end to the victim’s horrific struggles and desperate pleas. Later, should the coffin be exhumed for some reason, the corpse within, now on its stomach, rather than on its back, and the casket itself disheveled and scratched, would seem to prove that the dead was not dead, but, rather, is one of the undying, one of the undead.

As terrible as claustrophobia is, there is something worse, perhaps. What if no one existed but oneself? What if all the world were but aspects of oneself, as are the artifacts of one’s dream? The existence of inanimate objects, of plants and animals, of other persons, of the universe itself cannot be proven, after all; rather, all things other than the experience of one’s own mind at work is all that one can know directly. The existence of everything else is merely inferred. Inferences can be misleading. They can be false. They can be illusory. The mirage on the highway seems to exist, until a car, traveling toward it, gets close. Then, it seems to vanish. In fact, it was never really there at all, perhaps, any more than is a rainbow or a dream. Psychologists believe that infants are natural solipsists, believing that they alone feel and think.

It may seem delightful to have a tropical island all to oneself, and, perhaps, for a while, it would be. What would it be like, though, after a week, a month, a year, or a decade? What would it be like to be alone in the world? The solipsist knows, or would know, were this philosophical position tenable for long in the thoughts of a person both mature and sane.


Even if solipsism is untenable to the vast majority of people, its possibility, even as but the topic of argument and debate, suggests the extremes to which people can go in challenging common-sense realism and, indeed, common sense itself. Some, standing upon the precipice of solipsistic madness, fall over the brink and into the abyss. But for the grace of God (or, perhaps, only chance), there go we as well. Claustrophobia may represent more than a fear of close spaces and of being trapped physically. It could symbolize the fear of being trapped inside oneself. There are various ways to be imprisoned within oneself. Solipsism is only one, and the unlikeliest one of all. Other, more probable alternatives to psychological imprisonment are the large number of mental disorders and even inarticulateness. If we cannot speak, if we are unintelligible or inarticulate or incoherent, we cannot make ourselves known. Therefore, we are trapped within the circle of our own thoughts and within the sphere of our own emotions. Our minds and hearts become the coffins in which we are buried alive. This, in fact, is the theme of Sherwood Anderson's novel, Winesburg, Ohio, which is, while not a horror story per se, full of moments of horror.

In horror fiction, we use cramped spaces--narrow hallways, tunnels, cages, cells, and the like--to symbolize such fears. We also employ the zombie, a creature much like us but slow-witted and slow-moving, shambling, stumbling, and unable to speak or think. Dead men walking, the zombies are we, as the solipsists of our fears.