mysterious house

The empty landscape began to churn -- and from its gaping maw, came a town. A spawn made of oxidized copper spires and asphalt arteries. Oil and horsehair painted drab and uninteresting foliage to fill the space that the concrete and metal did not. The ground began to swell and bloat like a freshly nursing tick. On that hill, a house was born. A house with eavesdropping windows. A house that the street lamps could not touch. A house that with its overgrown yards and peeling paint, seemed empty.

Rising from the mud came the inhabitants of the town. Mute but not silent, they heaved their lethargic bodies from place to place -- tracking their filth into any and every building they desired. Faceless but not emotionless, the inhabitants indulged in each other's company. Pressing their masses against one another until there was no resistance and they became a larger chunk of earth.

“I hate them.”

In the house, down the stairs, beyond a door, was a basement -- a panopticon with no windows and no light. “I hate them,” whispered a single figure as he examined his hapless subjects. Surrounded by bloodstains and concrete sat the lacerated patriarch, his legs were bound tightly by angry hands. It was his house -- and he wanted a family. The house had many rooms. Bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, miles of hallways and empty storage space. Lonely, but not empty. Bed bugs and gnats are not suitable companions.

“They track mud everywhere. And they don’t talk. They couldn’t entertain us.” spoke the man towards a crude drawing. The face with spiked hair and a hat seemed joyful to bant about the townsfolk.The utter silence was cut by another tangent of dialogue, “You make a marvelous point. It would be easier to build a family by hand than try to talk to those people.” He paused. His ears were ringing. Through long greasy hair his single eye pulsated and stared deeply at the drawing. “They’re just unreasonable. That’s all.”

He stood up. And dug his fingers deeply into his abdomen, whimpering softly. Blood trailed down his fingers and gathered in his palms. He pressed his hands against his face, tugging at the skin, playing with the sensation of touch. He twirled locks of hair within its fingertips, letting the buildup of dirt, soot and congealed crimson marinate in his scalp. His arms fell to his sides, limp and now without purpose. He slammed his head into the concrete, paint splattering chaotically across the canvas. As lines coalesced in the dark, a figure would soon begin to emerge on the wall. Wide, soulless eyes, a toothy smile and bulky, metallic garments.

Ding-dong. The doorbell rang and echoed through all the halls of the house. He dragged his body up the miles of stairs necessary to greet his new family member. His hand pressed a single gnarled fingernail against the withered and harsh stone, whittling it into a sharp, triangular shape. The patriarch’s vision blacked out.

Outside stood a woman with a toothy smile, armorclad and bookclad. Bags made from animal leather and burlap hung from her shoulders, holding tomes and various works of fiction. Her hair is a golden sorbet color and is pulled back into a neat bun. The yard of the house has wilted in her presence, stomped and pushed aside in exchange for a clean and organized path to the front door. Her eyes cannot sit still, every rotted, splintered plank of wood and stone consumed by moss cannot escape her wide, soulless eyes. She taps her sabatons together in rhythm with the wind as she fidgets with her bookbag’s leather straps. As she reaches to ring the doorbell once more, the door opens.

“Hello. Welcome to my home.” said the patriarch, standing from the center of the incoming room. “Come inside. Please.”

The guest obliged. The walls of the atrium were plastered by a sickening yellow wallpaper with graphics of flowers that always had one too many petals. Colorful furniture was sprinkled around the room without rhyme or reason. A bright red rotating recliner was laid parallel against a wall. A circular glass coffee table was shoved into a rectangular corner -- only a muddied handprint stood atop the table. Portraits of friendly enough faces were hung at ankle level. “This is quite a lovely home you have. It’s very eccentric.” she spoke.

“Thank you, I’m so glad you like it.”

“The furniture really matches with the carpet.” she crouched down, pressing two fingers through the carpet’s bright magenta hair. The imprint of repeated, identical footsteps was burned into the floor.

“Where did you come from? You must’ve had a long and arduous journey.” the patriarch asked, his body completely still.

“I…Don’t quite know.” the guest responded. “I’ve been walking in a straight line for days, hoping to find someone to tell me where I’ve been.”

He stared. The door creaked and slowly began to close as the wind pushed delicately against its back. “And have you found that person?”

“Not exactly. I tried speaking with some of the townsfolk, but I don’t think we share a common language.”

“They’re horrible, aren’t they?”

“But they showed me around town. The shops, the parks and even the roads-”

“Miserable and degenerate little people. Repeating the same patterns.”

“-and towards the end of the tour, they led me here. Seemed like the only place without mud tracked somewhere. It really is a-”

Who is this woman? He thought to himself. Could she be a sister? She certainly had a knack to speak without acknowledging…But the armor, the books, the shield and sword…the burlap cover on her back. A small arm protruded from a tear in the bag -- it made him think otherwise. Ahh. A mother. A woman who stays up late, fearing that her child may choke in its sleep. A woman who is overly concerned with preaching literature she finds self-gratifying. A woman who cooks for the pleasure of chewing but not swallowing.

It didn’t matter who she was.

“What is your name?” he interrupted. Her head slowed down. Every strand of peeled wallpaper and spec of idle dust no longer held the attention of their observer. She turned her body to face him.

"Shirt."

The front door closed. The atrium became eclipsed in a wash of dark orange as its windows closed their eyes. Two blank faces. Four idle legs. One house. “It’s getting dark outside. You should stay the night. It isn’t safe in the town.” he paused for a moment. “There are lots of bedrooms here. You can be all by yourself.” She only nodded in response.

The bedroom she chose was cold, desolate and unaccommodating. Freshly pruned ivy and photography of livestock grafted themselves to the walls. The bed was left to rot and sweat profusely like a patient in the sick ward. Shirt gently laid her bookbags on the ground. Beside it were the ripped burlap cover with a hand coming out of it. She stood still, staring at the bag in utter darkness. “That mustn’t be very comfortable.” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” She picked up the cover and placed its head on a pillow, covering its lower body with a duvet. “Is that better?” she paused. “Okay. Goodnight.”

But she could not sleep. Perhaps it was because of the armor. Maybe it was because of the long-haired figure that stood at the end of their bed. But it was the gnawing of bed bugs that made her realize: she was hungry. It was a type of hunger that chews at your insides, swallowing itself like the ouroboros. It was the type of hunger that makes you believe it’ll be satisfied with food. She looked around the room, quickly picking up the only thing that mattered to her -- after all, her buckler and sword never left her hands. Throwing the bag over her shoulder, she approached the bedroom door with muddied boots.

The creaking of the door, her footsteps and every little exhale echoed through the hallway. Carpets were hastily stitched to one another, refusing to be so immoral and dare show a floorboard. Furniture masked as being human, but after the fifth mile of empty cabinets and coat racks, the facade grew tired. Time continued forward, as it often wants to do. Shirt occasionally changed pace, walking in triplets to stifle the monotony. She swatted her long, greasy hair out of the way and pressed her fingers delicately against her wrinkles. Bartering with her body, one eye was allowed to sleep.

She slammed into a cabinet while mid-blink. Its corpse lay sideways on the floor, its wooden organs spread out on the carpet. She sighed. It wasn’t her fault, no sensible person would leave a cabinet in the middle of the hallway. Dazed, she kneeled and pulled the body of the cabinet back where it was. She ignored the furniture’s transgression, turning back towards the hallway, or what was left of it. A door frame was revealed by a flickering orange light coming from inside.

The veins of the house pulsated and throbbed, it refused to front any longer. There was no wallpaper, only stairs and miles of unsanded concrete. The stairs yearned for legs, legs and feet to descend upon them and make them feel used. Perverts. Yet she indulged in their fantasies, stepping on each and every one of them. A door saw her and demanded the same treatment. It wanted to be pushed aside and handled. But not by its old partner, it had grown tired of his touch. It wanted her.

Shirt did as it wished. She turned its knob and pushed it aside. The door winged and closely quickly thereafter, easily satisfied. As it closed, darkness consumed her once more. But the basement provided no sustenance like the hallways. The walls began to close and shrink, slowly shaping her into the form it desired. And she could do nothing but stir in her own madness and let her hair grow longer and greasy. She took up drawing. Spreading the material not in a way that pleased the eye, but what felt correct. Her waking eye twitched as the other had gotten used to sleeping. She knew that she could not fully fall asleep. For if she did, the house would consume her too.

wife's tale

The body of a swordless knight lay crumpled in the shallow end of a rotting bog. A gnarled green fungus gnawed at what remained of his right arm. The mycology intertwined itself with his skin just as an experienced weaver would two types of twine. The knight refused to fight as there was nothing he could do but let the fungus drip feed him nutrients until his body succumbed to starvation. The fungus provided a numbing, intoxicating type of comfort that made him forget he had been shot with arrows. His other arm lazily reached over and scratched at the fungi before returning to its resting position. The sun slowly begins to drift towards the horizon, casting long and delicate shadows through the lichen covered cypresses.

He turned his head towards the sunset, gazing on what little specs of the environment he could see through his overgrown houndskull bascinet. The air grew stale and frigid as clouds of mist began gathering at the base of the cypresses. Gnats and carrion beetles walked from lilypad to lilypad on a pilgrimage towards the knight’s waterlogged body. The mosquitoes that occupied the bog seemed to ignore the knight -- whether it was because of his armor or the bitter taste of his blood was up for debate. The knight began to breathe quickly and rapidly.

The night crept up on him and the deafening silence was broken by footsteps disrupting the calm surface of the bog. The sound alerted the knight and he turned to see a figure approaching from behind. A sword dragged against the rocky swampbed as it cut the water in half. Long ovis horns protrude outward from its helmet, scratching at the hanging bodies of dead leaves. The branches of the cypress scratched delicately against the figure as they were pushed aside by bulky shoulder guards. A lost paladin -- a large humanoid believed to be a wife's tale to scare children away from the bog. Its blood pumped and its limbs obeyed, to the knight it was all too real. The knight recalled the story and tried to minimize his movements.

The paladin hummed, “I am the king of sheep, and sheep I am called -- in honor of the sheep I am crowned.” as some sort of mantra. “I am the king of sheep, and sheep I am called -- in honor of the sheep I am crowned.”

The paladin marched on a path not of the knight’s. The paladin seemed to be chasing the sun, his slow and methodical walking pace no match for the cosmic body he desired. As the paladin passed him, the knight tugged on his arm -- but the fungi was too tightly interwoven with his skin. He dug his heels into the malleable swamp mud and tried to stand but the fungus was too strong. It roughly pulled him down back onto his ass, splashing the surface of the water. The ripple traveled quickly across the surface of the bog until it tickled the back of the paladin’s calves.

Every piece of the paladin’s rusted chainmail and overgrown metal plates clacked violently together. As hollow eye slits scanned the bog for the perpetrator, its horns torn through nearby cypress branches, reducing them to kindling. They fell into the water, creating small and elegant splashes. The sensation they created caused the paladin to twitch its head more erratically. More branches fell into the water and the paladin eventually stopped, his neck going limp and his body falling against a tree.

With a crash, he fell clean through the trunk of the withered cypress. The paladin dropped his sword as his body lounged inside the makeshift coffin. The paladin’s shortsword fell into the bog and was captured by a current. The knight gazed upon the sword as it swam towards him through the bog -- cascading past tall rocks, tree branches and populated lily pads. Eventually, it caressed the knight’s foot, slowly brushing up his body and floating beside his uninfected arm. The knight pulled the sword out from the water and swung it in the air -- light, ergonomic and strangely well-maintained. It would certainly cut through fungus, but whether it would cut through chainmail and bone was to be decided. Before his mind and body could find common ground, he lifted the sword up high -- his hand shuttering in the cold nightly breeze. The incessant singing of the bog provided ample ambience to calm his mind. Though he was blind due to the pain in his eyes, he steadily rose onto his feet for there was a village he yearned to come home to.

Manufactured Psychosis in Silent Hill

Silent Hill is a series of survival horror video games created by Keiichiro Toyama and published by Konami. The original tetralogy -- Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room -- were all developed by an internal development team called Team Silent. These four games will serve as the scope of this paper as after Silent Hill 4: The Room’s 2004 release, Team Silent would break up. While possessing remnants of the tetralogy’s identity, the Western developers trusted with the Silent Hill IP would be unable to capture the manufactured psychosis of the originals. This isn’t because Team Silent is a legendary team of visionaries that could do no wrong but simply their ideas were cohesive with one another. The gameplay inspires the sound design which inspires the visuals which then inspires the gameplay. Silent Hill possesses a tight and cohesive set of systems particularly manufactured to incite fear, doubt and a sense of psychosis within its player. However before discussing its systems, the era of horror Silent Hill reigns from should be discussed to demonstrate how it differed from its contemporaries.

The horror landscape of the nineties proved that despite low visual fidelity, there was potential. Titles such as Clock Tower (1995), Resident Evil (1996) and Alone in the Dark (1992) demonstrated a clear desire to break away from campy tropes of older horror media. Ironically, all three of these games place their player character in a mansion that they are trapped inside. Within the halls of their prisons are distinct and terrifying creatures with an intent to harm the protagonist. In the case of Clock Tower, it is a single archetypal slasher character named the ‘Scissorman.’ Though the Resident Evil series is known for its more personable slasher villains (Albert Wesker and Nemesis) the 1996 release would primarily feature bestial creatures like feral dogs and zombies. These enemies would act as persistent hunters that could appear at any time -- installing a sense of dread (James, 2023) within the player. Music arises from the silence when they appear and it becomes a battle for survival. This was the birth of a new sub-genre: survival horror.

The caveat of survival horror is buried within the medium’s title itself: survival. But what is the distinction between horror and survival horror? Isn’t all horror rooted in an animalistic sense of self-preservation? Yes, however, the key distinction is the addition of resource management and an emphasis on player choice -- particularly the fear of making the wrong choice. Not enough medicine. Not enough bullets. Not having a proper exit strategy. Games of the survival horror genre put the burden of surviving onto their player. It isn’t a horror movie that functions more as a rollercoaster -- with choreographed ups and downs -- were the only choice a person has deciding whether they want to finish watching it or not. The active component, the requirement that its player must press forward, is what makes it effective.

It could be dissected from the origin that its genre and medium are ultimately its message (Marshall). “Survival horror game” primes a person’s expectations for what they might expect. “Horror” as a genre is clearly designed with an intent to scare its viewer. “Survival” brings the aforementioned caveats of management and player choice. Finally, “game” means that for it to be enjoyed, it must be played. A person must sit themselves in the driver’s seat and render themselves vulnerable to the game’s systems and ultimately their own ability to “win the game.” But ultimately just because the medium states its purpose, if its components are not tightly designed, it loses its ability to be effective. What makes it all effective is its aura and ability to lure in the player into its perspective.

The first game in the series, Silent Hill, is about a father named Harry Mason who is looking for his daughter after a car crash leaves them separated from one another. The deserted town of Silent Hill has been eclipsed by an out of season snow. After exploring a bloodied alleyway in search for clues, Harry finds the corpse of a skinned dog, flayed and strung up on a chain link fence. Suddenly, Harry is ambushed by otherworldly creatures as the world around him suddenly becomes dark. As he falls unconscious, he’s saved by a cop named Cybil Bennett who gives him his first hint about where his daughter might be. What separates this opening section from the likes of Clock Tower or Alone in the Dark is its mixing of all available mediums. The PS1’s controller haptics will rumble, mimicking Harry’s heartbeat. The quiet and understated ambience of the town will begin to swell as Harry’s footsteps become increasingly less audible. As he furthers in his descent, the overworld becomes more bloodied, rust covered and lacks natural lighting. And it ultimately ends in a sequence where you’re left without a method to defend yourself. As Harry wakes up, Cybil tells Harry about the town and the tools she’s left for him.

This is a masterful scene in which Harry narratively is told how to progress his quest while naturally informing the player about key game mechanics. After some pleasantries, Cybil says she’s left Harry a few things to keep him safe: a pistol, ammunition, a map and a few health vials. However, these items are somewhat scattered around the environment, requiring a player to walk around and pick them up manually. This primes the player to look for these items in the future. Before leaving, Harry investigates a mysterious radio, which seems to play nothing but static white noise. As he investigates the radio, a pterodactyl-like creature named the Air Screamer breaks through the windows of the cafe, trapping Harry inside. Now armed, the player has all the available tools to fight off this enemy. After a swift battle, the player should find that they have no more than four to five rounds of ammunition left. With nothing left to do in the cafe, Harry takes the radio and embarks upon Silent Hill. The ‘tutorial’ thusly ends and the primary game emerges.

The Silent Hill tetralogy has a fairly standard cycle of gameplay. Firstly is narrative, second is exploration and finally a puzzle or thematic battle. However, what Silent Hill does to remedy this predictable cycle is by obscuring random encounters within the environment. Due to hardware limitations of the era, the player will never see very much. However, it allows Team Silent to hide things out of a player’s view. With industrial sounds composed by Akira Yamaoka and hollow sound design, the player is left to ruminate about what they can’t see. This problem is exacerbated when radio static begins to play. The radio is a mechanic that when a monster is in a certain proximity, it will begin to play static. The closer it is, the louder and more distorted the audio will become. However, underneath the static are heavy unrhythmic footsteps, cacophonic cries of the damned and the scraping of metal. These sounds haunt the town of Silent Hill and their source is typically not revealed to the player until they’re within lunging distance. The white noise of the radio becomes in a sense, muzak, ambient music that signals a particular mood (Lanza). Joseph Lanza’s Elevator Music discusses Jean Claude Borally’s Dolannes Melody as a popular musical track because of its pan-pipe -- an instrument with a distinct aura that did not see much use. The radio becomes muzak to the player, a [pavlovian] sound that will elicit some sort of fight or flight response. It may either become an auditory tool to evade danger or an omen to signal what’s to come (Neumann, 2007).

The sound of the radio often clashes with Yamaoka’s industrial compositions which use a wide range of bizarre sounds such as metallic door clanging, winging analog technology (televisions and monitors) and string instruments played with sharp objects. Similar to Borally’s use of the pan-pipe, these unusual “instruments” give the soundtrack a uniquely harsh sound that buries itself into the listener’s head. Furthering a sense of harsh noise, some of the sampled noises are used in creature and environmental audio. The line between music and sound design is often hard to distinguish as they all blend together to create an entrancing sense of psychosis. The player is left to wonder if what they hear is a creature waiting to attack, the environment winging in pain or simply the soundtrack. Examples of these overbearing and overstimulating sounds can be heard in tracks such as All, Until Death and Devil Lyric (Yamaoka, 1999). What differentiates Silent Hill from other horror IPs of the era is its willingness to include music in sections without explicit terror. Clock Tower [famously] has a short soundtrack as only its intro, credits and chase sequences feature background music -- leaving the game feeling dreadfully empty outside of a chase. Silent Hill remedies this issue with ambience that tonally fits the environment. While the music is a general ‘tell’ of an area’s safety, the aforementioned background ambience and radio will often undercut a player’s sense of security at random intervals. Just as sound will interrupt the player’s mental processes, the many monsters of Silent Hill will interrupt their physical processes.

Silent Hill is famous for its surreal and absurdist monster designs. Abstract Daddy and the Closer are two examples of creature designer Masahiro Ito using human anatomy to illustrate a “familiar” yet grossly unrecognizable monster. Abstract Daddy is a monster from Silent Hill 2 is a creature resembling a human laying down on a table. The body of the human and the table meld together to create an analogous, phallic shape of flesh (see Figure 1). The Closer is a humanoid monster from Silent Hill 3 whose “face” is only a single vaginal-like orifice. It stands approximately eight feet tall and drags two tumored arms on the floor due to the sheer mass of them (see Figure 2). They’re not scary purely because of their appearance but because their sheer size will require the player to confront them. Level design in Silent Hill is labyrinthian and claustrophobic by design. The player is often asked to walk down hallways no wider than their shoulders. Because of this, the contextual understanding of the radio shifts for the player as its scope widens from “a monster is nearby” to “they’re blocking your forward path” (Galloway, 2010). A player must listen to their radio, inch closer to see the creature with their flashlight and before they’re overwhelmed, decide whether they should fight or run.

Figures 1 and 2. The Abstract Daddy and Closer, respectively.

The environment then becomes a creature of its own, inciting subtle messaging that briefs the player for what may come. Wider environments utilize a player’s ability to run away, but due to the low visibility of their flashlight, allow monsters and possible resources to hide in the shadows. Additionally, larger environments means that larger and tougher creatures such as the Closer may lurk in the shadows. Claustrophobic environments typically means that a player will be forced into confrontation at some point in their journey. But because monsters respawn after an unstated amount of time, players must find their way through the environment before their resources eventually run dry. Every encounter becomes more than just a monster, but an amount of bullets to spend and an amount of damage to heal. The manufactured psychosis of Silent Hill is simply not the horrifying visuals but the doubt it instills within the player. The fear of the monsters soon transforms into a fear of human choice -- that one wrong decision may lead to their own downfall.

The fear of human choice -- or the possibility of making the wrong choice -- then manifests as the player’s ability or right to look. Nicholas Mirzoeff’s concept of the “right to look” stems from colonial America in which plantation slaves -- at the fear of physical violence -- were unable to look at certain things (such as the plantation owner or specifically their wives). This bred a culture in which looking became an act of rebellion that would slowly shift social footing and the power held over oppressed people(s). In the context of Silent Hill or other survival horror genres, the right to look is an extension of the player’s power. With more healing items and bullets, a player amasses power and thus gains the right to look -- in this case at the monsters that populate the town. This differs from horror movies as the viewer holds an omnipotent role not present in video games because of the medium’s required intractability. While both horror movies and video games are both designed with scaring their audiences in mind, the forced intractability of the video game medium requires its viewer to actively decide whether they possess the right to look or not. This principle will actually physically manifest within the game in the form of the radio and flashlight mechanics.

The radio as previously stated is a proximity based audio device that plays white noise and static when an enemy is in its range. The flashlight is a conical light source always attached to the protagonist’s chest which can only light the area in front of the player. The right to look physically manifests as the radio has a larger range than the flashlight. When the player hears an enemy nearby they will always be outside of the player’s visual stimuli (with exceptions). In this moment, a player must decide whether they possess the power to march forward and confront the creature or to turn around, conceding their right to look (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Visual representation of typical combat encounter.

Silent Hill’s combat and environmental design defaults its player into a fight or flight scenario. This issue is exacerbated with open environments as the radio does not designate the number of enemies nearby, simply that there is a threat in the area. Paired with the flashlight only able to target a select area, the player is left to scramble around in the dark, desperately looking for nearby threats. Finally, these open world sections are most often where a majority of survival items are scattered. Fear becomes a currency of sorts, where it must be spent in order to ensure player safety. The right to look itself is not a singular action of fighting back, but a continuous system of struggling to maintain power and personal agency.

Silent Hill does feature smaller narratives with non-player characters, however they are often awkward, impersonal or just downright weird. Their introductions are always simple and rarely explain how they ended up in Silent Hill -- but nonetheless they always establish a sense of communitas. Victor Turner’s concept of communitas is the unstructured sense of community built between [liminal] people who submit to ritual elders [during a rite]. The town of Silent Hill -- the ritual elder, in a sense -- creates a rite for its inhabitants through physical and mental battery. Every character struggles through something unique to themselves -- such as Silent Hill 2’s Eddie Dombrowski and his internal turmoil with his weight and the social backlash he received because of it. Despite their bizarre personalities, their appearances are always a source of humanity and safety. Even with their stilted, late 90s dialogue delivery, their representations are flawed but deeply and instinctively human. The illness and of their appearance comes from the player’s inability to help them. It's never fully outlined to players whether their actions can meaningfully help or affect these people. Items such as Angela’s Knife instill this idea that it has a purpose and can be used to help aid in her recovery. The player is simply left to dwell on its use, psychotically fidgeting with it in hopes that they make the correct action at the correct time. However, items like this never have an applicable use. While the primary horror/resource management gameplay sections grant player agency, the “human” sections are typically relegated to cutscenes. The player then becomes an observer -- just like within a horror movie -- and thus is unable to save what is the only safe and human part of the town. The juxtaposition of distinctly human characters with the horrors that be create a thick and palpable aura. The town’s aura of psychosis melts in their presence and what soon arises is helplessness. What Silent Hill uses to sell its horror is its lack of agency with its human characters. With every staggered interaction, the characters slowly begin to lose themselves to the town’s influence and all the player can do is watch as their safe spaces melt away.

James Sunderland, protagonist of Silent Hill 2, is drawn to the town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his dead wife, Mary. Unsure if she could still be alive, he ventures to the town in search of “their special place.” What Silent Hill 2 changes about the narrative from Silent Hill 1 is its focus on the liminality of reality. Victor Turner describes liminality as the unstructured state of transition where all members are equal as they all experience a common change in identity (via a rite). Liminality is established both in the literal and theoretical sense. Literal in that Silent Hill is afflicted by the “Otherworld,” a parallel plane of existence that seeps into reality. Through the course of the games, it is often unclear whether the player character is venturing through Silent Hill or Otherworld and the player/character is thus in a constant state of transition. However in Silent Hill 2 [and beyond], it becomes more theoretical as the rite becomes a meta-physical journey of self-discovery. The Otherworld has an ability to manifest the trauma of a person and allows a character (such as James) to physically overpower it. Once this becomes established, every small little detail becomes subject to analysis. Psychosis then becomes an overpowering feeling of analysis in order to understand the plot. Silent Hill has a very “show don’t tell” approach to storytelling and requires careful visual analysis to read its subtext. But on the other side, much of Silent Hill’s surreal imagery is simply for aesthetic horror value. What’s actually relevant evolves into a constant, psychotic internal monologue of symbolic imagery and red herrings.

Manifested by the Otherworld, monsters become extensions of characters and the horror that the player doesn’t see. The phallic Abstract Daddy becomes an image of sexual abuse and its attacks where it humps like a dog become recontextualized. Similarly, the twitching Closer becomes a manifestation of literal sexual battery. As details slowly reveal themselves to the player, they must reevaluate the actions and visuals that they have previously seen. Does the environment reflect a personal trauma of a character? If so, which character and how does that relate to their relationship with the protagonist? What does this item symbolize? Why is this character acting in a certain way? This constant questioning nags in the player’s mind as they race to figure out what is truly real and what is simply for aesthetic horror value. How Silent Hill aids (and confuses) the player is with its camp 90s horror dialogue.

Silent Hill perfectly uses the principles of thin and thick description with its character writing. Thin description is simply the non-biased visual description of an object, environment or person. Clifford Geertz’s thick description is a description that doesn’t purely encompass [a] physical behavior but its context within an environment. Details and the “true nature” of a character slowly reveal themselves throughout the course of the game[s] as these members of comunitas descend further into the town. When James Sunderland, protagonist of Silent Hill 2, meets Eddie Dombrowski he’s vomiting over the toilet after seeing a corpse. A thin description would be: An overweight man with blonde hair is wearing a backwards blue baseball hat and a striped blue shirt. But immediately from his dialogue and mannerisms, "I didn't do it... I swear I didn't kill anybody." There is a small layer of thick description given to the player. Throughout Eddie’s story arc, he frequently brings up his weight and how others would treat him because of it. He slowly becomes more unhinged and unfeeling towards his peers, “That guy... he had it coming! I didn't do anything! He just came after me! Besides, he was making fun of me with his eyes, like that other one!" As Eddie becomes more friendly with James, he quickly becomes paranoid that James is “like all the rest of them.” Eddie arc’s ends when he succumbs to own feelings of inadequacy and lashes out at James. “Maybe I am nothing but a fat disgusting piece of shit! But you know what? It doesn't matter if you're smart, dumb, ugly, pretty... It's all the same once you're dead!” As Eddie attacks James, he shoots in self-defense, killing Eddie. But even after death, James shows remorse for the psychotic young man, "Eddie? Eddie! I... I killed a... a human being... a human being..."

An interpretation of Eddie’s character is that he is the monster manifested by the Otherworld. While other creatures such as the Abstract Daddy and Closer are based on the vile acts of off-screen characters, the places Eddie shows up often only feature him -- the sole threat. Eddie could be a creature in the vein of Abstract Daddy and the Closer -- but instead of manifesting as sexual violence, he is an aspect of physical violence. Like the Otherworld and its influences on the town’s monsters, characters like Eddie juxtapose the cast of human characters by posing the question if those safe spaces were really all that safe to begin with.

Silent Hill isn’t good at manufacturing its sense of psychosis purely on its art direction -- but its ability to juxtapose it against small specs of humanity. When juggling the violent sound direction, surreal visuals and stressful gameplay, it becomes difficult for a player to distinguish what truly is real and what impact they truly have. The tools it gives players to defend themselves actively make the player fear themselves and their inability to make the right choice. And even if they can make every correct decision, things may still fall outside of their control and they’ll be left to pick up the pieces.

The knight pulled the sword out from the water and swung it in the air -- light, ergonomic and strangely well-maintained. It would certainly cut through fungus, but whether it would cut through chainmail and bone was to be decided. Before his mind and body could find common ground, he lifted the sword up high -- his hand shuttering in the cold nightly breeze. The incessant singing of the bog provided ample ambience to calm his mind. Blind from the pain in his eyes, he ached as he animated into a standing position. There was a village he yearned to come home to.

* 'Angels and Demons of the Renaissance'

A look at angelology and demonology in Italian renaissance paintings.

* Introduction

All religions have a basis in spiritual mysticism. Their beliefs would manifest into art -- stories were visualized with new mediums and would aggrandize the work beyond literature. While the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) all stem from the titular Hebrew patriarch, their respective writings all portray themselves much differently from one another. The imagery of religion is also based on the secular life around it.

Italian painters were commissioned to paint religious imagery as the line between secular and religious life was often blurred. Works created during the renaissance were inspired by a myriad of different stylistic influences -- like the Christian imagery of surviving Byzantine art. With the introduction of new materials, like Flemish oil paints, Italian artists were able to achieve a level of detail/accuracy that was previously impossible.

The main idea of the ‘New Renaissance’ is that old ideas would be reinterpreted, recontextualized and recreated with a new spin put on it. Humanism is the philosophical movement associated with personal betterment and scientific advancement. Italian artists were as concerned with advancing science as they were about advancing cultural iconography. The best example of this can be seen with the Italian cherubim. Previously represented in the bible as a four winged, four headed (ox, lion, eagle, human) angel who served as God’s protectors, the cherbum took on a new representation. The putto/putti is a small, chubby boy with wings whose design is based off of the Roman deity: Cupid. Likely because of the humanist movement and the advancements made regarding the human body, artists (and their patrons) wanted naturalistic representations of the human body and subsequently angels. Angels such as Gabriel or the Virtues were illustrated as their appearance made it easy to imprint upon and relate to.

Demons in Italian art were almost the opposite. While still distinctly humanoid, they featured more animalistic features than angels (often just avian wings). Illustrated to be ugly, violent and ‘feral,’ demons juxtaposed angels, heaven and the virtuous lifestyle the religious world wanted to promote. These illustrations would act as a deterrent to a sinful lifestyle -- an omen of hell and the torture if they did not live their lives as good, worshipping Christians. Their purpose in storytelling is almost exclusively to be one-sided faces of evil and sin or to be fodder, crushed by the popular and beautiful angels.

---

Tobias and the Angel
Circa 1470-5
The workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio
Italian, about 1435 - 1488
Egg tempera on poplar wood

Tobias and the Angel is a Judiac story about the titular Tobias going on a journey to collect a debt for his father. On this journey, the young boy is accompanied by one of the seven archangels: Raphael. The Book of Tobit, the fiction from which his story derives, is the first piece of literature to name Raphael.The angel guides Tobias though his journey as he was sent to do so by God.

In late 15th century Florence, it was common among confraternities to pledge devotion to the archangel, Saint Raphael. It is likely that this piece was commissioned by one of Florence’s rich mercantile class due to the similarities between them as Tobit, Tobias’ merchant father. However, the painting is notable not for its subject matter but the means of its creation. The painting is attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio and an unknown assistant who is commonly believed to be Leonardo da Vinci. This theory is supported by the varied qualities of the painting as well as the knowledge that Leonardo da Vinci was trained in Verrocchio’s workshop.

The most recognizable details of Verrocchio’s work are his representation of the eyes and the halo. The eyes are recognizable due to the heavy emphasis placed on the colorization of the eyelids and eyebags. Verrocchio’s figures have well defined eyes that often denote the underlying anatomy that lays beneath it. Additionally, Verrocchio’s design of the halo differs from other representations as it is a reflective, metal disk that floats above the angel’s head. In Tobias and the Angel, the sky and environment around Raphael can be seen reflected by his halo.

However, due to the inconsistency in the painting’s quality, scholars have hypothesized the painting to be aided by one of Verrocchio’s assistants -- namely Leonardo da Vinci. One of the inconsistencies mentioned is the differing quality of rendered fabric. The blue cloth worn by Raphael, Tobias’ pants and his top lack the weight and 3d dimensionalities that other garments of clothing possess. A key component of these garments are their distinct lack of highlights -- this absence is what gives them their overall dull and unfinished look. These clash against the figure’s other clothing, such as Raphael and Tobias’ extremely detailed sleeves.

---

Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata
Circa 1537
Domenico Beccafumi
Italian, 1486-1551
Oil on poplar wood

Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata is a wooden predella painted by Domenico Beccafumi for the Oratory of the Compagnia di San Bernardino. In 1273, the confraternity was dedicated to both Mother Mary and Saint Francis of Assisi. Why this piece is commissioned is likely because it parallels Mother Mary’s annunciation -- a story also present in the oratory.

This painting of Saint Francis receiving the stigmata is much different from previous iterations -- notably Giotto’s representation. While Giotto’s representation shows all figures of equal size, Beccafumi does not. Beccafumi emphasizes that the story is about Saint Francis by making him the largest figure in the painting. The lines used to illustrate the receival of the stigmata (paint knife on oil) guide the viewer’s eyes to the small figure in the sky. Due to damage done by the painting, it is not entirely known if this seraph is or isn’t Christ.

Brother Leo is slightly off to the right of the seraph, remaining in the final third, disconnected from the rest of the composition. He blends in with the background, his robes painted with similar colors to that of that naturalist landscape. Additionally, he is illustrated to be in shadow/half-lit, as opposed to Saint Francis whose entire body is practically lit by the seraph.

The small representation of the seraph may also be a representation of the sun. The origin of the name Seraph comes from the Hebrew verb, lisrof (לשרוף), which means “to burn.” Seraphs are angels of the highest order and defend God’s throne by burning. This coincides with Saint Francis’ rapidly declining health after receiving the stigmata -- he is cited as being “almost totally blind,” which would align with the theory of him gazing upon the sun/seraph.

---

The Damned Cast into Hell
Circa 1502
Lucas Signorelli
Italian, 1441-1523
Fresco mural painting

Signorelli’s vivid and brutal imagery can be attributed in part to Girolamo Savonarola. Savonarola, a Dominican friar, was renowned for his denouncement of immoral ideas. He held much influence in the city of Florence and encouraged its citizens to repent for their sins. As the new century grew closer, his sermons were able to instill a grand fear of hell and the consequences of not repenting.

The fresco lacks an in-depth biblical story -- but it doesn’t need one. Signorelli creates an image that parallels Savonarola’s teachings and gives a real depiction of consequence. By not repenting, Signorelli shows the brutality of damnation. He depicts the sinners as lean, muscular and in visceral yet very real pain. Signorelli uses hatching in order to texture the human body. Hatching is an artistic technique used to grant texture by applying repeated lines in a single uniform direction. Skinny figures and the texture applied with hatching allow the brutality to not only be observed, but felt. Standing away from the chaos, the angels support the narrative by sheathing their swords, unable to help the sinners. .

In Christian demonology, demons typically take a monstrous form. However, Signorelli’s demons share little differences in body type than that of the sinner. While possessing colorful skin, fur, wings and horns, the demons share the same identical body type. Could be seen as a commentary on sin or simply Signorelli’s interpretation of the mythos. A hint at the former may be presented by Signorelli’s self-portrait in the fresco. In the center of the piece, a blue demon with a single horn is forcefully grabbing a woman. This demon is commonly agreed upon to be the self portrait of Signorelli. Who the woman is, or why she appears so frequently in the fresco, is unknown.

---

The Last Judgement
1349
Giusto de Menabuoi
Italian, 1320–1391
Fresco mural painting

The Last Judgement by Giusto de Menabuoi visually possesses many of the tenants commonly associated with the biblical scene. Two sideways registers broken by Christ represent the chosen and the damned. These sides are visualized by the symbolism of Christ’s hands -- his right arm raising the chosen to heaven and his left arm lowering the damned into hell. What Christ neglects are the fate of the damned as they’re torn apart and violently murdered by a band of demons.

What separates this depiction of the Last Judgement from others is primarily its representation of the Devil. Barely human, the figure has no neck, lizard claws and only a vague representation of the human face. The body lacks shading or distinct coloration with the exception of its eyes, mouth and on small details like its horns. The visual representation of the devil is not paralleled or mimicked by any other piece in the Viboldone Abbey, the place in which it is painted. Not even the other demons in the composition mirror the devil’s bizarre face -- having extremely humanoid faces.

Though the word devil and demon are effectively synonymous with each other, Satan, Lucifer, the Serpent and the Dragon are all effectively the same figure. While Christ is a single figure, the idea of the devil is moreso a unifying evil -- a boogeyman for all Christians who dare to sin. Of all these sinners, Menabuoi denotes their occupations by dressing them in clothing, atypical to other paintings of the Last Judgement. Of these, he shows artists, merchants and even an unnamed pope -- adorned in the papal crown. Whether the pictured figure in the papal mitre is supposed to represent the [at the time] ruling Pope Clement VI is unknown.

---

Works Cited

• Abbazia Viboldone Official Website and Resource, http://www.viboldone.com/.
• BAROLSKY, PAUL. “LEONARDO, SATAN, AND THE MYSTERY OF MODERN ART.” The Virginia Quarterly Review, vol. 74, no. 3, 1998, pp. 393–414. JSTOR,http://www.jstor.org/stable/26438340.
• Di Fidanza, Giovanni (Saint Bonaventure). The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Edited by George Errington, Archbishop of Westminster, 1868.
• DUNKERTON, JILL. “Leonardo in Verrocchio’s Workshop: Re-Examining the Technical Evidence.” National Gallery Technical Bulletin 32 (2011): 4–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42616226.
• Fenlon, Dermot. "The Elect Nation. The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545. By Lorenzo Polizzotto. (Oxford–Warburg Studies.) Pp. Xiv 488. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
• Herbermann, Charles George, editor. Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15, Robert Appleton Company, 1912.
• James, Sara Nair. Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry, and a Vision of the End of Time. Burlington: Ashgate, 2003.
• Kemp, Martin. Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvelous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007.
• Maggi, Armando. Satan's Rhetoric: A Study of Renaissance Demonology. The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
• Norman, Diana. Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena: (1260-1555). Yale University Press, 2003.
• Savonarola, Girolamo, et al. The Triumph of the Cross. St Athanasius Press, 2014.
• Seton, Walter Warren, and Leo. Blessed Giles of Assisi. United Kingdom, University Press, 1918.
• Struthers, Sally. Donatello's Putti : their genesis, importance, and influence on quattrocento sculpture and painting. 1992. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487777170405547.
• Wood, Diana. Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio, about 1435 - 1488. about 1470-5. Tobias and the Angel. Place: The National Gallery, London, Bought, 1867.
• “Workshop of Andrea Del Verrocchio | Tobias and the Angel | NG781 | National Gallery, London.” n.d. www.nationalgallery.org.uk.,https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/workshop-of-andrea-del-verrocchio-tobias-and-the-angel.

This section provides information about Mycology: the study of fungi.

Cornell Mycology Resources

FungiPhoto Identifier

M.S.A Learning Resources

Shroomery

Mould Cultivation

Mycotopia Forums

N.A.M.A Learning Resources