Weird House Tales and Danielewski

Thanks go out to Wez for linking an interesting story told through a chain of e-mails, "The Dionaea House." For those who enjoyed the SCP Series several posts ago, this should also appeal, as it's another amateur production of eerie quality. Not to give much away, but the tale is a short mix of madness and investigations into a mysterious house, with bizarre connections to Dionaea Muscipula, better known as the Venus Flytrap. While the standardized e-mail method and subject matter suggests connections with the SCP Series, there's little evidence it was written by the same anonymous authors.


To anyone familiar with Mark Z. Danielewski's work of experimental fiction, The House of Leaves, there are obvious similarities. In fact, Danielewski's book is a probable source of prime inspiration for "The Dionaea House." Though not ostensibly written as a work of horror fiction, it can definitely be placed in the weird tradition. The novel follows explorations into an improbable rupture in space-time through a fictional film called "The Navidson Record," which documents explorations into a room with mysterious expansions on the inside, without the same spacial changes reflected on the exterior. This footage, in Danielewski's experimental method, is then analyzed in an academically styled essay which comprises the bulk of the story. The rest is wrapped around correspondences, and the personal babbling of a character named Johnny Truant, who serves as the guardian and editor of the analytical essay telling the story of "The Navidson Record."

Evaluating The House of Leaves as a piece of weird fiction isn't the easiest task. However, the sheer oddity of the house, and the atmosphere of subtle terror and unease experienced by explorers of its immense, empty, and black chambers gives it an unmistakable air of the weird. This is highlighted further by two key developments: the unclear potential for a supernatural being within the house, or apparent sentience in the house itself, and the unexplainable anomaly of the house's endless inner expansion. Agoraphobia and megalophobia are critical responses incited in the reader by Danielewski's storytelling, and catalysts of fear. Unfortunately, that storytelling is not always as clear as it might be, diminishing the bizarre horror throughout the book so successful in localized chapters. This can't be helped though, since Danielewski himself set out to create experimental literature, and ended up with something overlapping the realm of weird horror. All in all, The House of Leaves certainly deserves a read if its unusual format can be tolerated, to take in its serious literary attributes and its weird atmosphere that's stunning in parts.

-Grim Blogger