![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() (I was a particularly gullible child, which made this story particularly effective.) It was the earliest evocation of something menacing in a place where menace could be kept at a distance. When I was in middle school, I remember reading a story in a collection of age-appropriate scary tales where the premise was that this story in this particular book was, in fact, written by a killer that this one copy had been prepared and placed for one reader’s eyes only, and something horrific would soon follow. Narratives like this collapse that sense into something unsettling. ![]() The act of reading or watching something ostensibly gives the reader or watcher a sense of safety, a sense of distance. Danielewski’s House of Leaves also touches on this premise, and it even takes on a meta-narrative aspect in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. In the film Pulse (also known as Kairo), an otherworldly presence spreads through the internet, with ghastly consequences. Lovecraft to John Carpenter’s homage to the genre in In the Mouth of Madness. This turns up frequently in tales of cosmic horror, from H.P. The idea of a narrative as contagion, as the means by which some uncanny door can be opened to nefarious ends, is one with plenty of permutations in horror stories. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work. ![]()
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