Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2019
- A world of made is not a world of born
Support me: / jacobgeller
Follow me: / yacobg42
What’s Spoiled?
Control: No character arcs are spoiled. One mid-game sidequest is briefly mentioned. Footage shows late-game areas and abilities without context.
Anatomy: Some footage and voiceover clips taken from late-game.
The Haunting of Hill House (book): One character’s fate is implied.
House of Leaves: Third-act actions of one character are discussed.
Anatomy: kittyhorrorshow.itch.io/anatomy
Mokumokuren: yokai.com/mokumokuren/
When buildings kill: placesjournal.org/article/whe...
Thanks to Ewan Wilson for research consultation: / ewanwilson4
Thanks to Jay Taylor for Nioh footage: / jaysevenzero
Footage used: Control, Anatomy, The Haunting (1963), NaissanceE, Haunted Castle Dark Ride at Santa Cruz Boardwalk (SoCal360), Mickey Mouse: The Haunted House (1929), Nioh, Scooby Doo: When Ghosts Go Boo, Yom Kippur Torah Reading (Moshe Weisblum)
Music used: Various tracks from Control, various tracks from Silent Hill 2, Humphrey Seale Suite (The Haunting, 1963), Max Docks (Max Payne 3), Serenity (Resident Evil 4), Sea of Stars (Bayonetta), Mental Caverns without Sunshine (The Caretaker), Save Theme (Resident Evil 2) - Ігри
"Haunting of Hill House" was the whole inspiration for Anatomy and the connection and comparisons you've made here make me happier than I can say. Thank you so, so much for this
I love seeing things like this happen.
I’ve only ever played one of your games (I *love* horror games done well, but I have to be in the right mood, so I don’t play them more than once or twice a year, is why) and it was this one.
I’m not sure if more well-versed fans of yours would recommend others of your works even more highly, but this one got to me in a way other horror games have not.
Essentially it made me think in a similar way to this video’s narrator (tho without the Hill House touchstone, having never read it).
It really did make me *think* while still being quite ominous.
Thanks for making it.
Anatomy made me feel like a monster for moving. I can only imagine the crushing darkness descending on the abandoned halls of my old home.
Every clip I've seen from Anatomy makes me too terrified to play it, which I think means that you did an amazing job. Are you the narrator? Because it absolutely chills me.
Hill House is tragically unrelated, your game was a great exploration of the outre, counterfactual aspect of it!
Great to know the connections made sense. Now I'm excited to both play Anatomy AND read Haunting of Hill House"
_When a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth_
That's a gorgeous line.
The line "The is an important distinction that must be drawn between the words dissection and vivisection" was also really impactful. The delivery of it also helps it a lot.
the voice acting in this game, along with the various sound effects and how they were used and mixed etc, is just a masterclass in horror sound design overall imo.
Well well well
@@bt.v9255 hello there Mr maybe gay
The writing in Anatomy is terrific throughout, and incredibly paced.
Therapist: Houses being alive and malignant aren't real, it can't hurt you.
House: Aight, Bet.
I feel like this implies that the house is seeing a therapist, presumably for whatever experiences caused it to become haunted.
I would venture that only psychiatrists and cognitive-behavioral psychologists would discredit personal experience, because they are wedded to "objective" reality.
House: oh damn it, I've got a bad case of humans again.
*Laughs in House of Leaves*
As a therapist, we’d never say that. We don’t make assumptions on symbolism.
Houses can be alive to people in different ways, everyone has a differing interpretation on what home means. It would make more sense to say: What does home mean to you? :)
Perhaps it's an unintended parallel, but one of the first things Anatomy reminded me of was the experience of living with chronic illness. It's like being an inhabitant in a house that fights you at every conceivable opportunity, a house that hates you. A house you can never move out of. You can try to renovate it and hope it makes peace with the fact that you live there, but it's your home, forever, whether you like it or not.
Oh wow you’re absolutely right. I deal with chronic illnesses and yeah, that’s a really good metaphor for the experience
Thank you for this perspective!
If I remember correctly Kitty Horrorshow herself is transgender and has incorporated such undertones in some of her other titles, so I can totally see Anatomy metaphorically depicting being "stuck" in a body that ultimately hates you in one way or another. It's not only a cool general parallel, but one that would most likely resonate with some of her own experiences.
There is a brilliant article called "The Average Fourth Grader Is a Better Poet Than You (and Me Too)" that includes poetry by children. When I read your comment this one immediately came to mind.
[Writing about a terminal illness:]
"I am feeling burdened
and I taste milk……
I mumble, ‘Please,
please run away.’
But it lives where I live.”
That's one of the awesome things about art and poetry, complex experiences we have as human beings but often don't know how to talk about or have someone to listen, they can make us feel so alone and singular. And then through art, we find that we're not alone! the hidden connections across humanity are revealed. In this way, a burden is lighter knowing it is shared. I'm not an alien mistakenly shoved into a human body. My experiences are human ones. Just as human as all the humans in the world.
An apt description! I think you'd really enjoy a short essay called Ghost/Home: A Beginner's Guide to Being Haunted by Dennis James Sweeney. It's been a while since I've read it, but I found the way Sweeney related his own chronic illness with hauntings being very fascinating!
Just a heads up: my 4 year old son is really into Halloween and he caught a glimpse of the thumbnail for this vid on my front-page, so he asked to watch it. Long story short, now he asks to watch "the scary house" at least once every couple of days while wrapped in blankets.
Congrats, your video essay just turned into a 4 year old kid's favorite horror "movie" lol
Ps: huge fan of your work, this is probably one of my favorite of yours.
PS: His second fav is Four Short Games About Pain so I guess Kitty Horrorshow has a little fan in the making hahahaha
Sounds like a good kid, cool even, the both of you
Take great care, I find myself feeling fond of you, internet stranger
That's adorable, you're adorable.😄
Every kid needs a story that sends shivers down their spine… If it’s Jacob’s work that does it for him, then he’s gonna be alright…
When I was a kid I would beg my dad to watch his scary movies and he did and I never forgot that. This might mean more to him than you even think
**pats the inside wall of my house** “Please don’t eat me”
I actually did this and was looking for a comment about it lmao, I hope my house know how much love I have for it
relax. If you keep it clean and nice, it will keep you safe.
o.k., but what would you do if it answered back: "sure"
@@masonjones7777
Say "thank you". It would be rude not to
If it hasn’t eaten you yet, that means it loves you.
its kinda comforting how universal the childhood mad sprint up the stairs in the dark experience is. i've never really met anyone who hasn't had that experience.
Even if you've never lived in a house with multiple floors. I've only ever lived in apartments, but i still experienced this when going to the toilet at night, or simply when i have to turn off all the lights before going to bed. I keep saying it's ghosts or whatever im afraid of, but i know i don't believe in ghosts, so maybe it is just.. the dark house itself
I luckily never had that. Our house has a "downstairs lightswitch" in the upstairs hallway.
Lollll I'm 24 years old but I recently had that feeling coming up from the basement, even though I go down there practically every day. It's funny how some experiences never truly go away and can come back at random times out of nowhere
Our spirits are not born to embrace darkness. Its only when weve been broken that we are no longer afraid of exterior darkness but the darkness that has seeped in and lives within us. Feeding on us till death.
Ever since I've started actively venerating the house and my connection to it, I haven't had that fear anymore. I love the house, and she loves and protects me.
I was playing through A Plague Tale earlier today and this excerpt struck me.
"Can you feel that?
...
When you enter a place that has been long abandoned, theres something in the air.
Its feels like...interrupting a conversation."
It reminds me of the fact that in abandoned buildings there will always be things that just look like they were forgotten somewhere, like a cup on a countertop, and it was just waiting for someone else to come and put it back in its place
One of my favorite characterization of a place is room 1408. “It’s an evil fucking room.”
Something being evil for the sake of it is so underrated as a concept. It’s like cosmic terror - you can’t understand it, change it, stop it, or escape it.
1408 fucking rules
Yes. There's something just so compelling about an evil that's evil just for the sake of cruelty.
Underrated film. I love the repair man, "I ain't going in there. Do you know what happened in this room? Any jackass can fix that thing." The subtle storytelling is so much more frightening
"Something being evil for the sake of it is so underrated as a concept" ... ever heard about the Devil ?
How could you do this to me? I live in a house!
oh no!
Living in a box never felt so good
A dog bigger than me pressed against my face snoring has never felt better
We live in a
*h o u s e*
I live in the oldest house in my small town. Build in 1904
“If I’m sitting alone at home on a dark and stormy night, and I glance nervously up towards the bedroom doorway, my fear is not that my house is being haunted by a spirit called Mabel who died in the 19th century at the age of fourteen and is constantly seeking her favourite teddy bear… because all of these details both humanize her and make her ridiculous.
My fear is that there will be something standing in the doorway, because the doorway is where things come to stand.
Because unoccupied spaces, in our imaginations, must find something to fill them.”
- from “The Saturday Interview: ‘I Am in Eskew’ podcast”
This is why I have always feared open doors.
Yes, thank you!!!!!! Someone else who thought about Eskew!!!!!! It's such a good example of the sort of structural horror discussed in this video.
I just want to thank you so much for introducing me to I am in eskew!
Well looks like I'm having nightmares tonight!
Eskew is SO good, and such a fitting reference to make to this video
"a house malignant, boiling with leprosy, with lesions deeper than its walls" is a line that still gives me chills on my dozenth rewatch
There’s a poem in my native language, Afrikaans, that describes a similar scenario. It’s written from the perspective of a house that slowly grows depressed and hopeless as it sees the constant strife, degeneracy and fighting of its inhabitants. I think it’s quite relevant to the situation:
1 my kamers is hol soos ‘n binne-oor
2 ek hoor hoe die bewoners roesemoes
3 liefde maak, verwyt, mekaar vertroos, skoor
4 soek met die goor hede, nooit tevrede
5 aanhou kibbel oor kon en sou en moes
6 luister, ek bewaar julle verlede
7 my fondamente kraak onder die las
8 my plafonne raak voos van die eggo’s
9 te veel vloeke laat my pleisterwerk bars
10 jare se trane laat my rame roes
11 so word ons saam verweer deur dit wat was
12 my dakplate en julle gebede
13 fluister en knal al hoe harder om hulp
14 ongehoord in elke nag se oorskulp
Translated:
1 my rooms are hollow, like the inside of an ear
2 I hear the inhabitants’ tumult
3 making love, reprimanding, comforting each other,
4 finding faults in the present, never at rest
5 continuously bickering about could and would and should
6 listen, I guard your past
7 my foundations crack under the burden
8 my ceilings grow rotten from the echoes
9 too many curses make my plasterwork burst
10 years of tears make my frames rust
11 so we become ruined together by that which was
12 my roof-plates and your prayers
13 whisper and crack ever louder for help
14 unheard in every night’s ear-shell
That's beautiful. Did you translate it yourself?
@@tortis6342 As best I could, yes.
Thanks for this!!
This incredible, thanks for the great translation
Dis eintlik skrikwekkend as mens dink aan watse geheue ons oorlaat in n plek.
WOAH. You didn't mark spoilers for The Bible!
I think it was the Torah not bible.
Nah, it's in Leviticus. I can definitely say that's in the Bible. It might _also_ be in the Torah; I dunno, I only know the Bible thing 'cause I'm christian myself.
@@NathanielPayday The torah usually just refers to the five books of moses in the tanakh, which is pretty much the hebrew version of the bible, whose old testament is pretty much identical to the tanakh. The torah is just the most well known part because it's content is the most important to judaism, comparable to the importance of the gospels in christianity.
@@DerGyrosPitaFan Hey, I learned something. The internet works, everybody!
@@kieronirwin1668 I mean the Bible meaning the "Book of Books" is basically same energy, being a collection of various books with various authors from various time periods but from one divine source. The Torah specifically is a section of "The Bible" which means The Law, the commandments and instructions handed down to the people by Moses.
honestly, the idea of being an unwanted guest in a house - being hated - is not as scary to me as the flipside. a house that, in its time of being alone, turns not to bitterness but obsession. a house that, upon the arrival of any human life, becomes enraptured with its guest. it pleads not to be left alone, trapping the person in a maze of walls, screaming its love for them. a house that, should the guest try to leave, does not allow it.
i find that much, much scarier.
You get that sometimes. Houses are fun that way. You know those houses that are just always under renovation? They're always changing or something and people are always moving in and out
personally i just find that much sadder :'(
I kinda want to to write a fantasy story, about a person managing to calm and soothe a haunted house, and ultimately befriend it.
How To Train Your House, maybe. Haha
The flip side of that is this: an obsessed house wants you in it. An obsessed house wants you to stay in it. I don't know if you've ever felt what it's like to be hated from the very walls. I lived in a place like that once. My wife and I got divorced there. And the sorrow and anger and the shame and the hate and the blame and the shouting and the tears... the suicidal depression... all soaked into the walls. I had to leave. And when I came back, the house was staring at me. _Glaring_. You could feel it's seething rage from cross the street. I feel terrible for what we did to that house. I hope somebody loves it now.
There was a short story by Dino Buzzati about a guy who fell in love for a house.
It reminds me of two beautiful opening monologues by Stephen King for his mini series Rose Red:
"Houses are alive.
This is something we know. News from our nerve endings.
If we're quiet, if we listen, we can hear houses breathe. Sometimes in the depth of the night, we hear them groan. It's as if they're having bad dreams.
A good house cradles and comforts. A bad one fills us with a distinctive unease. Bad houses hate our warmth, our humaness. That blind hate of our humanity is what we mean when we use the word haunted."
"A house is a place of shelter. It's the body we put on over our bodies. As our bodies grow old, so do our houses. As our bodies may sicken, so do our houses. And what of madness? If mad people live within, doesn't this madness creep into the rooms, walls and corridors? The very boards? Don't we sometimes sense that madness reaching out to us? Isn't that a large part of what we mean when we say a place is unquiet, festered up with spirits?
We say haunted, what we mean is the house has gone insane."
Glad to see someone else mention Rose Red.
I kept viewing the actions of that house as a means to enact vengeance against abusers; it saw women suffer abuse, so it hide them away. Likewise, it had come to associate all men with its creator-an abuser-and therefore violently murdered them, as if executing revenge for the abuses and torments that its previous female residents had suffered.
It's been too long since I last watched the movie, but my takeaway from it had been how the house had come to feel the pain of its original inhabitants, particularly the abused women; and because its male creator had caused much of that suffering, it pushed the house's collective consciousness to become embittered against men, violent and resentful in its taught misandry.
…my houses past owner used a hammer on the garage door.. there are deep dents in it to. None of the doors lock. Not even the bathrooms. At yet I treat my house nicely, and so shall my house for me.
One of Stephen King's biggest influences was Shirley Jackson, so this isn't surprising at all!
The part about the "house with leprosy" is so reminiscent of Pathologic, entire districts diseased to their foundations even when the residents have been dead for weeks
As someone in the construction industry, there is something greater than reality about a house, or a building. The wood, the plaster, the paint, the plumbing - all is built over a period of months or years, with tens or hundreds of hands involved in each step of the process. But the complete building takes on a life of its own in a way that is difficult to explain. You can see the house built step by step, your own hands framing the struts and screwing the drywall in place - but when the house is complete, it isn’t yours anymore. It is more than the sum of its parts. It’s something you can drive past and feel a sense of pride in knowing you had a hand in building, but it isn’t “yours”.
House of Leaves has always been one of the books that stayed with me the most throughout my life. You would think that in knowing the process and being involved in every step of construction would take away the horror of works like “Anatomy” or “The Haunting of Hill House”. But in truth, knowing the guts of the building only makes it more awe inspiring to comprehend its singular existence. It’s knowing that a building will outlast me, perhaps hundreds of years after I am dead and gone. It’s knowing that a building has existed, perhaps thousands of years before I was born.
There is an undeniable power to the built environment, the walls and roofs within which we spend so much of our lives.
Thank you for making this video. Incredibly well done, and has given me quite a bit to think about.
absolutely love this, thanks so much for commenting!
I know this comment is a year old but it's a little eerie how closely your experience mirrors my own. Even as you're lifting the walls themselves, it feels more akin to gardening than construction, like you're helping a giant plant to grow.
That set of crafts is a lot like any art. You may create it, but once done, it is no longer your own. People will do with it whatever you like, including perhaps even saying you had little to do with it.
The way you talk about the construction of the house vs the house itself's existence, it reminds me of the pyramids or the first few skyscrapers/massive dams, how the men who built them/started building them were either killed during construction or knew that they wouldn't live to see it's completion due to the enormity of the project. Buildings as eldritich sort of beings, who exist made of parts we create but who can outlive us 1000 years over. I live in a listed building - 100+ years old, and a bookshelf in my parents bedroom is made out of the hole that used to have the dumbwaiter. The attic has a bedroom carved out of it with crazy slanted ceilings, and there's a tiny crawlspace behind it, within the attic, that we keep Xmas decorations in, which looks like a triangular throat.
Likewise, the basement in the (listed building) shop we used to own had uneven Victorian steps and had my great great grandfathers work bench still in the corner, tools long abandoned, surrounded by storage. Both of these buildings have the same feeling to them, that whatever you do to change them is immaterial, cosmetic, compared to it's own consistency.
That’s a beautiful comment
Great, now I want to comfort fictional houses.
I want a story about a haunted house learning to love people again.
I want the houses to feel better.
What have you done to me.
Comfort your house
There's an episode of courage the cowardly dog where this does happen. An old mansion gets jealous of the farmhouse courage lives in, to the point of trying to destroy it and kill the residents. In the end courage gives it a very quick renovation which made it happy
check out piranesi by susanna clarke
Two years ago, my mom had our living room remodeled. There was a massive tarp closing off our living room for a few weeks, and it was always drafty and cold.
During this period, one of my siblings had a terrifying medical emergency. Without going into detail, it was the most terrifying night of our lives. All I could do was watch, wait, and listen to their suffering until my mom finally called 911 and the medics came.
I spent an agonizing weekend alone in the house. I had to stay home, alone, looking after our dogs and ready to answer the door for the contractors. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t hunker down in the living room with all the lights on for comfort.
I’ve always been fairly superstitious. I believed in ghosts when I was a kid, and as an adult I’ve had experiences that I couldn’t find a rational explanation for. That weekend was different. It didn’t feel like there was a presence in the house, as much as the “presence” was the house itself, watching me. Waiting.
Holy shit, that is horrible
Even excluding the more rationally terrifying scenario from the medical emergency itself, just the idea that the very house you had to endure the pain within was watching you, like a hunter watching its soon to be prey or a curious higher power observing the plight of a ”lesser being” is just… perfect for the video.
@@BobbinRobbin777 It certainly didn’t help that part of my sibling’s medical emergency was that they were experiencing hallucinations. They don’t remember it now, but I remember them crying about shadow figures coming to take them away, yelling “I’m not dead!” Over and over.
They’re doing much better now, thankfully, but it was terrifying being alone in that house and wondering what the hell my sibling could see that I didn’t.
That's so weird, I had a very similar experience when parts of my house were being remodeled
Similar happened to our house years ago when it was being renovated. My mother swore up and down she could hear children giggling at night in that part of the house, long after my brother and I were asleep. After the renovations were done, giggling stopped.
I was never scared of the dark. Why? Because I grew up in a house with several cats. There was always something with claws and teeth and glowing eyes in the dark and I knew exactly what it was, so the fear never really came.
God your lucky, I'm still afraid of the dark, or I geuss I'm afraid of the IDEA of the dark. The things you can't see, that things that go bump in the night, the creaking right outside your door you know shit like that
I just got a lil black kitten, i named her pancake and she has made me more afraid of the dark.
I had a small dog and it was the opposite, one night I was in the basement with dog on my lap playing video games and I was home alone. My dog stared off into the other room, that was quite larger and full of random basement stuff. He started to growl lightly at first and then soon his growl turned to a snarling growl and his hair stood up on his back, I have never flew up a flight of stairs so fast in my life. What the hell did he see....
I was very afraid of the dark, until my uncles gave me a copy of Ghost Master. It was a janky game, but from then on, the clawed shadows of the night were no longer obscure threats: they were the very toys I had played with all evening.
Having a cat actually made me unafraid of the dark when I was growing up. Didn’t get raised with them, but it got better
When I played Anatomy, I was taken back by how accurate the narrator had talked about how humans care for the things they built, that we had sympathy for them. I had thought that was a beautiful way to describe how I felt whenever I saw abandoned houses. I didn't think they were ever creepy, just spaces that needed to be filled. It was when the recording started repeating on the word "sympathy" that I started getting chills. I felt like my small heartaches for empty houses was being mocked, scorned. The house in Anatomy didn't care if I felt bad for it. It didn't want me here. It hated me. Maybe it even hated the way that I felt towards it, like *I* was the one mocking *it*. This wasn't a place that wanted sympathy. It just wanted revenge.
Goddamn, you have a way with words
Beautifully written.
I suppose, in a way, that House might have thought such sympathy being expressed now would be "too little too late". Because the ending monologue did sound very lonely and depressed, so I imagine once it would have welcomed someone in with open arms. But it's been so long that it's grown angry and bitter, and so it's first priority is to take out all that bottled up rage and pain it's had over it's abandonment it hasn't been able to express all these years.
Write a book, please, I wanna read something good.
funny that you focused on the same part (the "sympathy" repetition) that also made me extremely uneasy, in my case for a much more mundane/less poetic reason however
Ugh, I had a recurring nightmare when I was younger and we had just moved into our new house in which I would be in the kitchen with my family and it would be warm and bright, but something would feel off. I'd be afraid, seemingly for no reason. Then, since I was still a little kid, it would come time for me to go to bed. I'd ascend the stairs with growing dread with one of my parents, but when we got to the top, I'd look up to find myself alone in a dark expanse of rooms and hallways that seemed to go on forever. I'd race through the rooms, picking up speed as I went, screaming for my parents, but the only answer I would get was the dark and silence of the house. Sometimes I'd see monsters, but they never seemed too interested in me, simply standing there, as solitary as I was. One time, I fell down a set of stairs, and I miraculously ended up in the kitchen again. Sobbing, I told my dad what had happened, and tried to take him up the stairs to show him, but he seemed disinterested and brushed me off, as one does to little kids. As I pleaded with him, he started to walk away through the hallways, and I, following him, soon found myself alone again as his voice faded away around the corner. Worst series of dreams in my life lol
It IS pretty cool though
I used to have dreams about going down a tightly wound spiral staircase with a group of people. One by one they would fall off the side until I was alone. The scariest part was what was at the bottom. I couldn't go back, but didn't know where i was going, and now i would have to face it alone.
@@electricyarn That's terrifying, but our dreams together could make a great thriller movie! Lol
Hey, Jacob. This video is a year old but I want to thank you for sparking an obsession I now harbour with haunted houses and the the unknowable in general. You directly inspired one of my main creative projects, you're the reason Control is one of my favourite games, you're effectively the reason I got into film school, I could say way more... Your videos are all fantastic, but it's this one in particular I keep going back to - thanks for making it.
House of Leaves served as a one of the main inspirations for Control. Thanks so much for a very well researched and cool video!
< We are excited\grateful >
Thank you so much, Remedy, for creating what is already one of my favorite games ever! The concepts and lore in Control are endlessly fascinating, and while it is the closest we might ever come to an X-Files/The Lost Room crossover in video game form, it is far more special than that. Thank you again, and I can’t wait for that DLC
This comment just made me reserve House of Leaves at my library. I can't think of a game that has more interesting and (to me) appealing worldbuilding and atmosphere-building than Control. If House of Leaves was one of the main inspirations for it, I need to read it asap.
@@UCvow2TUIH0d2Ax2vik9ILzg basically control = house of leaves + SCP foundation
@@TheCivildecay Which is amazing because I love the SCP foundation, and apparently, I love House of Leaves. I'll read a bit of the ebook and then borrow the physical version to get the full experience.
Several years ago I was living just outside of Chicago, and the lease on my apartment was running out, so my roommate and I went looking for a new place to live. One of the places we looked at must have been a house haunted in this way.
The very first thing I noticed, as we walked through the enclosed porch, was the absolute carpet of dead flies. There had to have been hundreds of them all over the floor and I remember being astounded that no one had thought to clean them up. And then inside the house, it just felt.. wrong. Suffocatingly claustrophobic even though it was a fairly decent size, with an open plan and white walls and plenty of light. The ceilings seemed impossibly high. The closer I looked, the more convinced I was that every single corner of the house was slightly less than 90 degrees. And on every windowsill, piles of flies.
The basement really drilled it in, though. It was so, so much too big for the house it lay under. And there was a hole on the far wall that caught my attention as soon as I walked down the stairs. It was like it was calling to me, and every part of me was taken by a desire to reach it. I swear I must have walked for a full minute without getting any closer. And when my roommate called down to me, I turned around and discovered I was feet from the stairs, as if I'd stepped off the bottom and gone not an inch further.
We did not move into that house.
I think about that house sometimes. About its endless basement and its concave corners and its ceilings that felt higher than the roof they were under. I wonder if anyone lives in it now. Or if, like the flies, nothing can ever truly live in it. If they can only become trapped, unable to ever escape.
(Or maybe there was just a carbon monoxide leak that no one had caught... but that's not as fantastic-sounding a story.)
I live in an old house which is actually pretty cosy... except for it's basement. A narrow staircase leads you down into a dark space which doesn't seem to make sence - the walls don't align with what's built above and while there is only one hallway on the ground floor, there are many narrow hallways in the basement, leading into all directions. The walls and sealings are made of brick, though every brick seems to be different, every wall is constructed in a different manner. These narrow hallways lead to small ''rooms'' which are further subdivided into small cells. In some of them I noticed that there seem to be sealed off passages to other rooms. The wierd thing is that those rooms would have to be under the street or the buildings nearby. What's even more interesting the building seems to date back to early 20th c. but there is no document to prove it, nor is there any photo from that period showing it despite that fact that every other building around is well documented. All in all, the basement is not a place you want to stay long but at the same time it draws you in, it makes you question ''what is behind those walls'' or ''when it was built''. You just know there is more to it.
@@kacperwoch4368 I'd say get a sledgehammer a few friends and check whats behind
You run into this when looking at houses. Some of them just feel wrong, like they really don't want anyone living in them.
Kacper Lubiński what city? Could it be part of those tunnels built under cities to transport things/ commit crimes, like the Shanghai Tunnels? Or something like that?
@@fleshylattice Probably somewhere in Poland, because of his profile name. Trust me its very Polish.
This is giving me flashbacks to something I built in Minecraft when I was younger. These days I build hallways and rooms aligned to grids and always in repeatable patterns.
When I first played though, I just built rooms and hallways wherever and of whatever size seemed convenient at the moment and these homes were often dug into the rock underground.
One day I was in a rather large labyrinth I had built and due to it's size and interconnected hallways and sideways rooms and cramped dead ends I managed to lose the exit to the surface. I should mention that I didn't go to the surface often; this was the sort of labyrinth complete with trees and farms carried on by torch light. I was calm at first, but then a thunderstorm started above ground and I had not heard thunder underground in the game before. For whatever reason I was overcome with panic and a feeling like tears in my eyes and a scream in my chest. I felt chills and a certain sense of being followed and surrounded by something malevolent. I dug into the wall and blocked myself in and then just started digging up and placing blocks underneath me until I reached the surface. Once I was above ground, I exited the world and deleted the save and never looked back. I didn't play for a month after.
Thinking back on it still gives me goosebumps. I don't know what was wrong, but it felt awful and I didn't want to be there anymore.
Edit: This was a single player world, back during Beta 1.6.4ish era. The world was empty except me and there wasn't much content in the game otherwise. The best way I can describe the feeling is the place began to feel perceptually intractable. I couldn't picture everywhere at once and it made me feel unomfortably vulnerable.
I feel like this has the same vibe as being 5 and accidentally locking yourself in the bathroom, and the initial burst of panic never goes away cause you're a kid and suddenly the door just will not open no matter how patiently your parent tries to explain what's wrong and how to fix it
I can absolutely see this happening. My friend made a labyrinth for me to run through and hide for him to chase me and try to attack me, and as soon as I walked in I was so lost I couldn’t even find the next area to get to the rest of the labyrinth 😂 that alone was so frustrating and unnerving that I just walled myself in and dug my way out. The noises in minecraft can be really scary too, especially when you’re playing alone and ESPECIALLY when you’re lost.
I had a similar though not as severe experience around the same era of the game. What made it more disturbing though was that I could swear my game was changing when my back was turned. Items that I would swear I put in chests wouldn't be there when I got back most of all, but I believe there was one instance of a painting I was certain I placed not being there when I checked again. Amusingly though, I figured out that this was because whenever I was done playing I would just close the game window abruptly, often without even pressing the esc button to open the menu, which meant the game just wasn't saving properly. Still, before I had that explanation was some of the most anxious I've ever felt in a game because I started to literally feel the sense that someone or something else was in my singleplayer game with me.
That segment about sleeping and shutting out your senses , putting your faith into the house that it protects you and keeps itself shut . That was *spine-chilling and terrifying* .
dude, what's your educational background? the way you connect all these texts, in video after video, it's poetry - no exaggeration, some of the best writing i've seen on youtube.
There’s more to writing than references. Nobody is arguing that Jacob is smart because he played two games and read two books and bible verse that all have a similar theme. It’s how he brings it all together, the structure and organization and tone and editing is perfect. The creative intelligence to draw upon such a universal and powerful feeling in the opening, to sharply set the tone for the entire video. Yeah indulging in pieces of media that you haven’t doesn’t make someone smarter or better than you, but the ability to convey their essences in such an articulate way? Notice how sparingly he uses cutscenes or direct quotes. Because he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to read every creepy line from house of leaves to make his point, or okay every clip from anatomy or control to convey a tone. That’s a real skill, especially considering the dozens if not hundreds of amateurs on UA-cam who try to Bill themselves as authorities in game/book/film writing who are little more than reactionary commentators, who summarize entire stories or show whole scenes and then give shallow “”analysis”” as to what happened, neglecting such basic but crucial aspects such as theme, tone, and cultural context. Jacob doesn’t need to make a 3 part video series about what all of control is about, because he understands it and has the competence and maturity to be secure in his own interpretation, and the restraint to only use what he thinks are the most fascinating and worthy bits to make a video expounding upon. And THAT takes skill.
If he did go to university, I feel like he did something in the humanities or social sciences- literature, english, or media studies sound like the most related ones.
I didn't realize it until you said it, but yeah! That's something that's been *very* hard for me to learn, and something lacking in many video essays I have watched.
I recommend "introduction to human behavioral biology" 2010/2011 from Stanfords then professor, it tickles my brain like MENSA metings
He who controls the cure to disease and death controls the people. Also scientists did some sort of experiment where they somehow...attached robotic legs to a patch of black mold. Maybe it wasnt black mold yet but it was big enough and conscious enough to get up and walk to a dark corner of the room.and stayed there. They admit in leviticus that black mold is the cause of disease/ leprosy.
I really liked what you said about how the house growing “eyes” , because I realized that in Control, there are cameras EVERYWHERE, always watching you. I guess that could be interpreted as the house growing “eyes”
do you not have any cameras in your city? in your school? in your work building? what's so scary about them? they are your friends if you are not a criminal
@@MacMan2152 it's normal for people to want privacy and not be watched at every moment of their lives. it's not always an issue of malicious intent, just an issue of not wanting to be constantly observed
@@xanecho you are already constantly observed if you have a web-camera or a smartphone. Hypothetical people who want your private data and camera image from your devices can get it if they try hard. Your web browser constantly gathers cookies that contain your interests, age, sex, what music you like, what language(s) you speak, what your political views are, etc, etc, etc. Are safety cameras on the streets what bothers you the most? Gotta live with it in the age of technologies, otherwise, you will just develop crippling paranoia.
You're not really strengthening your argument about the issue of modern surveillance and information gathering, just pointing out that it's normalized and ubiquitous. I think that normalization is exactly what should be questioned.
Yeah, i was kinda freaked out when i noticed the cameras following me constantly. Especially since no other modern technology was allowed in the oldest house.
I'd be really interested to explore the intersection of haunted houses and ghost ships. They're both homes that people live inside, but one embodies the sinister betrayal of being the very image of cozy domesticity, while the other has the wrinkle of being mobile and carrying people through a hostile environment, while also almost being a "creature" of its own already, with a purpose that can be similarly "betrayed" and left unfulfilled.
this literally opened my eyes. Now i understand the Russian folktale of the domovoy. Which is a troll creature that supposedly lives in your house and takes care of you as long as you take care of the house. It is essentially the spirit of the house and if angered could cause misfortune of some kind. I imagine that this is linked to houses becoming sick.
Also, Herobrine takes after this "house corruption" thing as well. It plays into our fears of something in the game going wrong and turning into something alien and terrifying. Basically anything strange that happened in Minecraft was usually attributed to Herobrine out of fear. Which is why people still report Herobrine sightings even now.
But what this really opened my eyes to was how a home is intimately connected to us as a mental retreat. In the case that our own mind doesn't feel like a safe and comforting place (for example due to self hate or anxiety), these discomforts become mirrored in how we perceive our home. As a result, the home becomes foreign and out of our control. contorting what should be familiar into an uncanny version of itself.
...for some reason that last paragraph just threw me back to the days of "Hi I'm Mary Mary" which had similar premise iirc.
I always saw the House of Leaves as almost a tragedy, where the House on Ash Tree Lane was trying to give the family what they wanted. It was lonely, and broke itself for their sake, so they would stay. But in doing so the house destroyed itself and the family both.
People seem to forget in summaries of the plot that the first anomaly isn't the door in the living room. It's a small hallway connecting the parent's bedrooms to the kids'. The Navidsons moved to the House to reconnect as a family, and so the house found a way to bring them closer together. Then Will got obsessive about the impossible hall, so the house gave him an even more impossible place to explore, growijg steadily bigger and more complex. When the explorers thought there was a monster in the labyrinth, the house (kind of) gave them one.
But then they got scared and wanted to leave the House. Initially, the House lashes out, but eventually accepts that it has to let the family go. It's a sad story, and one can almost pity the House's desire to be loved and inhabited, despite the harm it did.
I thought it was sad too. It's a story...being lost? Out of your element and confused by something you just can't control. Your family, your job, your life...
ok, but what is the terrifying evil that can sometimes feel Johnny Truant?
@@tommasobonvecchio Johnny Truant is a tragic story as well. He's so disconnected from reality and so terrified of this horrible evil he loses everything: his job, his friend, and all of his relationships. But none of these losses are actually caused by the evil stalking him. He destroys himself through his own obsession.
I agree though when it "ate" his brother Id say thats an understandable reason to stick with leaving
Isn't the first anomaly the quarter of a inch difference between the inside and outside?
It's interesting to me that you never brought up House of Leaves' Minotaur, the secondary antagonist that seems to haunt the book itself, and is only ever heard, not seen. In the book, Navidson remarks that the sound of the Minotaur was likely just the grinding of the walls and floors as they endlessly grew, and yet against all common sense continues to believe that there's an unseen monster chasing him through the hallways. Kind of interesting how even in the most dire of situations we still trust our houses, even to the point of making up a monster within it to avoid admitting that the monster all along was the house itself.
Love this. There's so much I wanted to bring up but didn't have time, minotaurs and labyrinths specifically.
@@JacobGeller Understandable. The video is still a masterpiece regardless, imo.
And the minotaur, despite not being real, transcends all layers of the narrative. Not just the Navidson Record, but it's thought to be the cause of the blind man's death even though that's clearly impossible, and Johnny experiences visions of and fear of it out in the 'real' world. It's kind of a false-personification of the growth of the house, as it relates to the growth of the story being invented, and the growth of the "research" and footnotes that do the exact opposite of grounding each claim in reality. Like the house infects every narrative that touches it, and the concept of the minotaur is the way that infection is perceived by people.
@@z-beeblebrox thats sounds like a work for the pataphysics department
@@JacobGeller I'm looking respectfully though 👀💕
There's an old concept called "the heart of the house". The general idea is that a house is constructed out of organic material and as a direct result, it is also exposed to the emotions and feelings of anyone who is in there. Over time, these emotions can amass and create a kind of sentience. The behavior of the house is going to depend on the emotions it was exposed to. Some houses are sick, just like their previous owners.
"Houses don't die easily, they just wait." UM SIR HOW DARE YOU GIVE ME SUCH EFFECTIVE CHILLS 😨
This video had me thinking about the time when OCD made me be terrified of being my own home. Anatomy seems to capture that feeling. The overwhelming feeling that *something* is there, that *something* is wrong, constant fear of certain rooms, corners, mirrors, that they might reveal some kind of horror, though they never did.
fellow ocd comrade here, I feel you. my sleep schedule is basically nocturnal and once in a while I won't be able to shake that primal, obsessive fear
don’t know that if I have ocD buT. yeaH...
I have more generalized anxiety, but I relate to that big time. Everything felt like it was just slightly off, maybe just two inches too long, or quieter than it should be. I was convinced that there was something wrong, but I didn’t know what. When I was younger, I used to “rationalize” it by thinking there was a bomb in the house, or a squatter, or malicious aliens. (thanks doctor who, for making me convinced that my parents were slitheens)
It can work in a surprisingly similar way with agoraphobia. You can feel that there could be no possible good to leaving the house, or even answering the door or phone. It can become almost impossible to walk outside, as if you were jumping over a cliff.
When I was younger I also used to avoid certain rooms and places in my house, actually I lived mostly transitioning between three different houses all the time and each of them had places that felt very unnerving
"When a house gets leprosy..."
Me (who has played Pathologic HD): You know, I'm something of a doctor myself
duude im so excited for this guy to cover pathologic
that's exactly what I thought of too!
"The house isn’t haunted, I know a lot of people think that, because it’s so - the house isn’t haunted, but it is a *haunting,* in itself. It remembers, it remembers everything, every stitch and cross, every scratch in the hardwood floors and rings from drinks left to sweat without a coaster." (Mabel, episode 7: The King in the Labyrinth)
Yessss I was hoping someone would mention Mabel!!!
"Anything might stand beside us, watch us, keep us company until dawn, and we would never perceive it"
Remembering this line in my sleep made me wake up in cold sweat.
"A ghost can be a lot of things. A memory, a daydream, a secret. Grief, anger, guilt. But, in my experience, most times they're just what we want to see."
That's beautiful, where is it from?
@@DodaGarcia the haunting of hill house tv show on netflix!
👻
The setting of Control is basically the SCP foundation but with even less control over the situation
Least the Foundation can contain most threats, the Bureau looks like they need their site detonated to contain their SCPs.
The Foundation has mastered magic to a point that they could destroy most of their phenomena, but that's not their job. They Secure, Contain, and Protect. From outside, and from within. The world shan't abuse these strange and wondrous anomalies, nor shall the anomalies freely act upon the populace.
That's the goal of the Foundation. Make sure everyone can go to sleep in blissful ignorance.
@@Illegiblescream I feel if the scp foundation got a hold of the oldest house... Well I think the distinction between dissection and vivisection is lost on them, too.
@@toakovika more like the uiu honestly
@@alexbradshaw5466 UIU is still more disappointing
There's a podcast named Mabel. And it's about a house like this. alive and occaisionally malicious, hated and beloved. It's perfect if you're looking for more like this.
Mabel is so good
I feel like the Fall of the House of Usher should also have an honorable mention that would fit your video essay too. The story shows what happens when generational trauma and decay could last for long periods of time in a house before things come to a head and it collapses under the weight of it. Like the other houses you've mentioned, the House of Usher is also a place where people still inexplicably stay even when they should leave (the narrator being the only survivor after the house collapses, but he still stayed there for long periods of time).
there is a house my family moved into when i was 15. we stayed there for 4 years, yet i consider it my home. even after we left i thought and dreamed about it nearly everyday. i don’t even dream about the house i live in now. when i close my eyes i imagine i’m in rooms of that house. i wonder if the people living there now can feel a presence there whenever i do. i feel like i haunt that house, even though i’m not dead
You're why my house is haunted.
My childhood home was recently sold and I'm still angry and sad about it. That was the place where I spent my formative years and I'll always have a connection to it. Even though I'm not there, I can still remember the way my room looked when I was little, all the way down to the dusty spider webs in ever corner and the stories the stains in the carpet told. That house was always a mess before it got renovated, honestly it was a trainwreck, but I hold it dearly in my heart. I'd like to believe that the younger version of me haunts that place and that the new owners can feel my presence.
Omg, I feel this way about my old house...I wonder if the new owners feel haunted. I kind of hope so.
Reminds me of a farm house that was for sale. Rooms and stairways in odd places, looping corridors that make you wonder how the hell you ended up back in the kitchen for 10th time, connections to rooms that made no sense.
An attic that required going up a very steep staircase that almost becomes a ladder at the end. Said attic having three rooms all at slightly different levels, connected by doors that were way too small.
A very narrow hall and winding stairway brought you from the masterbedroom on the 3rd floor, to a side passage in the pantry on the 1st. A massive 'basement' with exposed pipes everywhere that somehow connected to the guest quarters, the barn, a poolroom, the garage, a workroom, a hallway that seemed too long that lead nowhere, and the kitchen.
Why does everything end back at the kitchen again? I try but I can only remember there being 3 working doors.
But there was a fourth one, that was bricked off.
My family was there for several hours while the retail person tried leading us through. My sibling and I got separated from the group when we decided to check out a few rooms our 'guide' had seemed to ignore. They were obviously bedrooms, each a different color. Yet when we left, none of us could agree on which room had the single large closet, or which one was closest to the bathroom. We had to go up three staircases to get to them on the second floor.
I can only remember going down one set when we found ourselves in the 'basement' afterwards while trying to follow our parents voices. We got split up again when I squeezed around a wall of thick pipes and they didn't notice which way i went.
I wandered that place for at least 45min finding everything except the main house, before finding stairs to the kitchen I hadn't noticed before. I found everyone when walking down a long, windowless hallway that lead to the guest rooms. Turns out they had been looking for me for 20min once my siblings turned up without me. They had been calling, loudly, but I had heard nothing.
We never went back after that showing, my parents were too concerned about how much work would be required to make the place livable, with weird wiring that wouldn't be out of place in a Nancy Drew game. But I was too entranced by that labyrinth to care, and I still long to walk it's endless halls and stairs, and to get lost on the way to the kitchen the one time i actually want to end up there.
underrated comment, i genuinely cant tell if this is a real experience or a fictional work of art
This reads like a creepypasta, or maybe an actual horror story. Only thing missing is you getting obsessed with it and either obsessively trying to convince your family to move there. Or maybe you're all grown up and decide to buy a house, only to come across it, maybe even in a different state or something. Fucking wild.
Also, the bricked off door sounds like a major plotpoint. If you didn't experience this and just came up with it, you're amazing at it.
Man wrote a whole ass novel in the comment section
I know it's been two years but if you indeed wrote this and did not experience it please tell me what is meant to be behind the door o_o
The thing that breaks my heart about this is that the old internet story "Dionaea House" isn't really available anymore. It lives in this residence completely. It devours. It feels like something that fits right beside your videos on horror.
"The monster"... When you turned off the last light right before you made your way up the steps you were running the "the monster"... It has no shape, it has no form, it actually doesn't have any powers, abilities or actions it can take outside of instilling the fear of "I'm gonna get you" from the dark void of a place you had previously felt safe in.
House of Leaves is quite possibly the most alarming book I've ever read, and trust me, the description in the video barely scrapes the surface. At times you're physically wrestling with the book, turning it this way and that, trying to eke some meaning out of a chapter of twisted, butchered paragraphs or a literal labyrinth of footnotes. As the characters are lost and confused in the labyrinth of the house, so too are you caught, unsure which way to read to progress forwards. And when you finally reach the end of the twisting, multi-layered narrative, you decode a note in the appendix, and it reminds you of a tiny symbol on a corner of a page in an early chapter, and it flips the entire book on its head.
This book is terrifying, and with all the three-dimensional flipping you have to do, it's impossible to hide under the covers when you read it. This book takes everything you knew was safe and reliable about books, and it takes them all away, leaving you to stare into the dark.
Good luck.
A book being a puzzle doesn't make it more scary
@@SpaghettiToaster There's an unspoken contract between a book and its reader, and House of Leaves violates it at every turn. A page in a book is supposed to be linear, starting at one point and ending at another, but in HoL the text twists and jumps, flipping upside down or sideways or even backwards, mirroring the events of the book, or it traps you in a nigh-inescapable labyrinth of footnotes, all the while skipping Inception-style between multiple levels of the narrative. House of Leaves calls into question not only the safety of the home, as stated in the video, but also the safety of the book.
I can't convince you to believe me if you don't want to, but it is an entirely unique experience in literature, and if you find time to read it I think you'll see what I mean.
@@Sam-yr3bq I'll pick it up if I get the opportunity, but I'm pretty sure I don't feel unsettled by a book not being linear. I don't remember signing any such contract. In fact, I've enjoyed choose-your-own-adventure books as a little kid and I wasn't scared back then
I HAVE TO READ IT
@@SpaghettiToaster The structuring of the book is only part of what makes it disturbing. The narratives and descriptions combined with the layout have the hypnotic effect of unraveling your perception and sense of self in a way that can only be compared to a drug
'Jacob Geller? Who the hell is that?'
*Clicks video, hears your voice*
'OH this guy I subbed to and fell in love with!'
*literally,* and I mean *_literally_* this is what happened to me
Spot on
Exactly me.
he should say his name at the start or end of the video so people remember him better
Please stop following me. I didn't even say it out loud
I recently read a comment on a playthrough of this game where they mention just how absolutely terrifying the idea of a house that's haunted in this way is once you've been homeless.
Honestly, maybe a story or game that goes into that idea would be interesting - maybe a homeless person breaks into an old, abandoned "humanless" house, this haunted old building that seems sentient and upset at its own state, and you can either go sad/wholesome with how they complete one another and heal one another, or absolutely horrifying by how they oppose one another - the person needing a house but the house too bitter to accept or trust them.
This is an amazing video! If it's ok to give a small correction: The mokumokuren refers specifically to shoji screen walls filled with eyes. Household objects and tools that come to life, like the sentient paper umbrella (a karakasa), are called tsukumogami, but they aren't mokumokuren!
Oh cool. that's interesting.
Mokumokuren are tsukumogami, but not all tsukumogami are mokumokuren! And If you see a tsukumogami anytime, call an onmyoji or me!
I've pretty much always felt as though houses are alive, it's why i love spending time in the old abandoned barns that exist on the edges of fields or the middle of the forest where i live. No one owns them anymore, their builders are long gone, they're usually falling apart and filled with dirt, they just seem so lonely.
Sometimes i wonder if humans actually built them or if they just appeared one day, because there is at least one for every field and yet no one seems to own them or remember anyone who did
I'm kinda just rambling now so Point Is: Be nice to abandoned houses. Ask before entering, and be sure to thank them when you leave. They've lived much longer than you ever will.
wow I feel exactly the same way about barns. they just grew there one day.
@@JacobGeller There's a well-crafted and excellently drawn horror comic series that revolves around an insidious old barn that nobody seems to have built, or possibly it built itself. Also has a ton of reality-warping in it!
It's called Gideon Falls, from Image: imagecomics.com/comics/series/gideon-falls
The houses there live in isolation not wanting to be found
The houses do not want you their
The houses are not your friend
The houses want to be alone
@@ethanmcfarland8240 is that a damnd challenge??? I will pull a 'how to train your dragon' on a random house i stg
InsaneZanity
Local madman tames a fucking haunted house
Unrelated, but I now understand why people call Control the "Triple A SCP game"
SCP was a huge inspiration yes
It was definitely inspired by SCP
@@TURAMOTH the creators of this videogame certainly found the SCP foundation wiki inspiring
one might even say that a couple of the writers had heard the acronym SCP thrown around once or twice
Idk why but 047 comes to mind
Probably the moving concrete
anatomy had a profound effect on me when I played it myself. a house that grows old and bitter as it is abandoned with age, i can't help but think about post hurricane michael, the house we had to abandon for our own safety, we couldn't live there anymore, we went through the storm, and heard as the house was gutted from the outside in. seeing the entrails and how human it felt to see it fall apart and the walls taken off, the wiring gutted, and the sinks and tubs and toilets and light fixtures full off this gross brown liquid, how we may have been safe but the house died. I wondered after playing anatomy how that house is now, how the first house we moved from and never sold is. if they're angry, or if they're sad, or what. it was a literal interpretation for me, but it still sticks with em to this day.
the podcast Mabel does this PHENOMENALLY.
its about a nurse who’s there to care for an elderly woman living inside. what you hear are voicemails left for the daughter of the old woman, as a desperate attempt to get in touch with her after the old womans passing, and you listen as the nurse is slowly consumed by a house that is desperate to keep her inside.
When I was a kid, the animated movie Monster House scared the living daylight out of me. Revisiting it, I'm surprised how closely it follows the themes you discuss here. Great job, thoroughly enjoyed.
But that house was possesed.
LJK401 yes but no? The house gained a personality from a person
@@bizarrelovetriangle Don't remember when it's destroyed? You see her spirit
Even though the supernatural is there I definitely feel this too. It terrified me as a kid.
That's what I thought of too! I remember really liking that movie. A shame he didn't touch on it.
I can buy The Oldest House being mad, but having played through Control, I don’t think it’s malignant. At worst, I’d say it has an unfortunate sense of humour, but the relationship between the Janitor and the other inhabitants seems to suggest it even has a certain affection for its... residents? Assistants? Pets?
I guess in this reading, the house is actively inhabited so it has no reason to grow bitter and angry from isolation.
Miss Darko So it just likes screwing with people then?
It is more of a cat tbh
I thought that all of the objects and places of power were only becoming malignant do to the outside influence or the entity "the hiss"?
Everett Burgess Yes, but if Jessie and Polaris hadn’t come, the Hiss would have likely taken the Oldest House anyway. I mean, it almost got the Board didn’t it?
Just played Anatomy and all I can say is that if it were any longer it would be psychologically torturous. My hair stood on end, my heart raced and my breathing was short for the multiple play throughs it took to reach the final ending of the game. The way it increases the tension and feeds you little clues and snippets of information as you slowly realise what you are to the house and what the house is about to do to you is terrifying in a way no other game has made me feel.
I absolutely love the various memos and documents you find scattered around The Oldest House in Control. Like the one that warns people to raise the alarm immediately if they happen to see a window somewhere, because the place is _definitely not supposed to have any windows._
Watching this drunk was the wrong decision because now I'm scared to go get more water but dude more please, I love this
This reminds me of a part in the book Coraline from Neil Gaiman. He describes the corridor connectin the normal world and the perverted other world, like an old beeing that shifts, stretches and moves and feels warm or cold and wet, depending on when Coraline moves though it.
The book also explicitly points out that it has a presence to it even older and more menacing than the Other Mother, which is really interesting.
Fun fact: my aunt played an audio book of coralline for her, me, and my sister to listen to… when I was like 9.
I only remember a scene with the hallway where she’s running through the it and oh god it wasn’t fun
@@carriegannon5344 it's not even really a "presence." it's heavily implied the hall is part of a physical body. it breathes, and shifts, and has the texture of a throat iirc
Speaking of the ending 'They're haunted by us' I'm reminded of The Shining. In it, the house is haunted by the sins of the past, not just the murders that take place, but the massacres of the people that come before, it's as though the trauma of generations reverberates through the present. When Jack Torrence does what he does, it's a reverberation of the past, the house is haunted, but the real monster is the humanity that corrupted it, the dead Natives who were killed to build it, their murderers will is present when Jack grabs his ax.
Or something along that nature, but a place is haunted also by it's people. Kubrick said something about 'every Ghost story is optimistic because it implies the living go beyond death' in his first phone call to Stephen King, I imagine Kubrick was trying to twist that notion into something horrific, the worse of the past lives, because it exists in our self presently.
Or idk
This, coupled with Curio's "CONTROL, Lovecraft in the Modern Day", are great examples of what video-essays on youtube have the potential to be. A strikingly beautiful hybrid of analysis and art. I started watching your content recently Jacob, and I love your output so far. Keep it real and stay passionate! Big hug all the way from Venezuela.
I can't find this video, care to give me the link ?
@@theolabbate1611 It seems Sophie took the video down (sad, but I respect her decision) and I can't find another upload here on youtube. Have you watched Eurothug4000's take on Control? Called "The Weird and The Eerie". Here's the link: ua-cam.com/video/TrKjkX-4Sks/v-deo.html
name's actually henry. You got me
Henry Ross me too lol
@@DOG-BOY-HOG Ah, it seems the Council of Henry is assembling
Present
Relative of Bob Ross?
Yup
I was literally going to make a joke about how a neglected house has walls that grow like neglected plants and you immediately went into house of leaves
that's some solid structuring
Revisiting this video after the SKINAMARINK hype train. I can't believe this vibe has gone so mainstream, to the point that analog horror, liminality, impossible spaces and uncanniness are *the* horror tropes these days. It feels so surreal to watch this movement take shape and go all the way to the mainstream. I feel like, whenever we talk about horror trends in the late 2010s to early 2020s in the future, we will mention analog horror and liminal spaces, much like how we mention slasher movies when we think of the 80s.
Though I do think we have a lot of haunted dolls and possessed nuns as well.
Hey, Jacob, I want to say thanks; I first saw this video last year, shortly before my final exams of high school. I was taken by this concept (and your presentation of it) and it stuck with me and now I love analyzing games, literature, and art thematically like this. Then I went to my AP lit exam, and the great big essay at the back: about man-made structures as characters. This video immediately came to mind, and using Hill House as my main source, I wrote the (non-history) exam essay that I am most proud of). So, yeah, thanks Jacob, now I don't have to take English 101 in Uni!
Me: "I wonder when the House of Leaves reference is going to drop."
Jabob one second later: "I n M a r k D a n e l e w s k i ' s _H o u s e o f L e a v e s_ ..."
I love this video. I am fascinated by architecture, and this theme about malignant houses resonates with me immensely. I have lived in a lot of different places (16 houses/flats), and each house, each apartment has its own very distinct 'character'.
There was an artist in the Netherlands who talked about 'the guilty landscape', in reference to the many landscapes and locations in Europe that had seen wars, battles, and other conflicts, and were now these very strange places, often taken over by nature. (the WW1 trenches you can still see in Belgium, for example) . It's made me very obsessed with the idea of 'the guilty building', which you can find a lot of here in Europe. For example: I used to live behind an old medieval building that was used to house people suffering from the plague, and is now the location of a fancy restaurant! But there are more subtle 'guilty buildings' around, like a brick shed in a park completely riddled with bullet holes. Or another small shed in the same park, covered in roses, with a plaque commemorating the people tortured within it.
Seeing these buildings and knowing their histories gives a building a strange feeling. Could a house, like in 'Anatomy', suffer from a type of PTSD? And what to think of the many buildings in Europe that changed function? A building that started out as a convent in the 13th century changing into an asylum, a prison, a hospital, a barracks, an execution centre, a school, and finally a fancy hotel! These layers and layers of history must profoundly mess up a building's 'character', and perhaps the inhabitants within. Being the last person to turn off the lights in a place like that must be something.
Anyways, I absolutely loved this and I hope you talk more about this concept sometime!
The idea of a 'guilty building' is so fascinating and you put such good words to the ones you've seen around Europe. It reminds me of some of the places I've read about in Chile - if you're interested, I would look up Villa Grimaldi, a former torture center converted into a site of memory. Carlos Cerda's novel An Empty House is also a beautiful and fascinating and sad exploration of a guilty building in Chile.
@@e.funkhouser7739 I did not know about Carlos Cerda! Thank you so much for the tip! I will put it on my reading list. I didn't know about Villa Grimaldi, but I remember long ago reading a short story about a football stadium where people were rounded up to be tortured and executed. I think it was about Pinochet's regime, but I just can't remember the story's title anymore. Perhaps you would know the story? In any case, I'm definitely going to read Una Casa Vacia.
@@SophieKaarsSijpesteijn Wow, I had never heard of that! I think I found an article about that football stadium: www.pri.org/stories/2013-09-11/soccer-match-disgraced-chile . Really, really interesting.
This reminds me of walking past the GPO in Dublin where the 1916 uprising was fought and seeing the bullet holes that still dot the massive white columns. Thanks for this comment
The story and background is what makes the feeling of house actually having a backstory. A childhood and than the house will die of age.
This reminds me of a novel I heard about that I can't remember the name of that both works with an goes against the themes you discussed. In it, a new house is built with the most modern of architectural styles. A soon enough, it is discovered to be haunted. As far as I remember, there is no obvious reason for this haunting. There has been no atrocities in it nor has it been abandoned. In your video, you discuss houses being haunted because of things happening inside it or to it. Even when there's no ghost, there is still a reason. There is still history. The novel that I am mentioning fully embodies another Shirley Jackson quote: "Sometimes houses are just born bad." This happens with people as well, tragically.
this is really interesting for me, i grew up in 3 story house in a secluded neighborhood, blackouts were a big problem back in the day before the neighborhood got developed.
sometimes i'd be home alone when the power goes out, and every single time it happened i would bolt for the exist door, i just had to leave, as if i would be safer if i were outside which of course is not true at all on the contrary, you'd think a house would provide comfort at a time like that.
why would i want to be outside at a time like that, vulnerable, exposed, forest all around, nothing and no one in sight with bears cayotes and god knows what else lurking in the darkness.
its the house's overwhelming presence, its enormity, its silence that if broken even slightly will send shivers down my spine.
at least out there i expect to be attacked, i know im vulnerable, i expect the noise, i anticipate the creeping fear, i can thrash, fight, run, hide.
but in there im shrouded with an illusion of safety that gets decimated by sudden darkness, im trapped, i have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, it is everything around me and its just the two of us.
the house cant hurt me, but just the thought of it being aware of my existence, terrifies me.
really weird things, houses, we spend time and effort on them we spend our lives in them we put everything and everyone we hold dear in them, and then we think WE own THEM,
like a white blood cell thinking it owns the human.
House: "I reject my Humanity"
*JOJO!*
*SONO CHI NO SADAME*
"Houses don't die easily, they just wait."
Between this video essay and the comment section, I'm gleaning so much inspiration for so many stories. Excellent work, and thank you all.
Another example of the 'house that is alive' trope (should we call it that) is the animated movie Monster House, where a trio of kids deal with the house in the neighborhood, which happens to be alive and it transforms in order to hunt them; although it's revealed at the end that the house was haunted by the spirit of somebody who died in the foundations of the house during its construction, it is still an example, I think, worthy of mention.
"If we don't live at ease in our bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, then where would we?" I listened to that line several times. Welcome to living with anxiety.
I just rediscovered something that seems to indicate a haunted house:
"There are always secrets, doctor. There's only so much that hate can build up in a place before it starts hating you back… I don't know what's in the attic, or if there's anything up there at all, and I don't think I want to." -from scp-2740
I couldn't stop thinking of SCP's while watching this video, especially when he spoke about control.
this video makes me think of the Overlook Hotel in Stephen Kings "The Shining", mainly the movie. there are shots where the camera wanders through the empty halls and slowly pan around and behind the characters just to show how empty the hotel is and how much it dwarfs the characters.
its suggested and theorized that the house itself is not only alive but also malicious, and with the chef character who tells Danny about how people and places can Shine (the story's explanation for psychic powers) it doesn't bode well for the characters.
The layout is also impossible and shifting if you pay attention. There are hallways that turn in ways that dont follow the established hotel. Its fascinating.
@@synaestheticstudios i actually forgot all about that XD
I was thinking about the Shining, too! The book though, because I never saw the movie. I think I remember how near the end, when Halloran (the chef) prepares to get away with Danny & Wendy, the house tries to entice him to come back, to stay. I think it tries to make him sabotage the engine of a jet ski or something. And when the house explodes, it is described in very human terms. The Overlook Hotel to me, too, has always felt more like a malicious, evil being in and of itself than simply a house haunted by ghosts.
@@SarahWolverine I was just about to say this! I recently read the book too, and I think the best example of this is, spoilers, Jack's body, mangled after his suicide to protect danny, being puppet-ed by the Overlook. It's a very predatory building masquerading (literally at some points) with the souls it's trapped to capture more.
“It’s suggested and theorized that the house itself is not only alive but also malicious”
What do you mean theorized? I thought that was pretty explicitly stated in the book to be the case. Granted, it’s been a while since I’ve read it.
When I think of the impossible house that is sentient, I don't feel any sense of fear I feel an intense longing, I would want to delve into the never ending hallway, not to bend it to my will, but more to try to be able to understand and befriend it, I would be willing to risk my life for the chance to find it's heart
Yeah!
But what fucks me up the most is that just about all of them seem to inevitably "feel" anger and pain whenever humans interfere. Like, is my understanding it worth it if It's just making things worse?
Don't you think that is the bait? The siren song? To the fly the flytrap's mouth must seem quite attractive, enchanting even. When you come across the never ending hallway, you just have to go in. Yes, of course it's a terrible idea, but it cannot be resisted. You cannot ignore it, you cannot walk away from it. Because hallways are not caves nor rock formations, they are explicitly made for something to go through them. If the hallway is made for you, you wouldn't dare defy the wishes of the house in which you live, would you? And if it's for something else, waiting, at the end of the hallway, for you to come to it, again you must, because whatever that might be, it could not be more fearful than the darkness that keeps its identity unknown.
This video drove me to buying House of Leaves. Loved it. My girlfriend is dyslexic and has trouble reading books but when i gave her the premise she really wanted to experience the book (it's not a book that adapts well to audiobook), I'm now rereading the book, to her / with her. Reading a book allowed to your partner is something I never thought I'd do or realize how enjoyable doing that is. Anyway, thanks for the recommendation.
8:20
“And maybe it’s hates you HENRY!”
Every Henry:”wtf!”
Dude it freaked me out I’m alone watching this at 1 am
@@BobBob-hf2ix lol
Yeah I jumped from that
Me, now out as trans: Did this video just deadname me?
@@SongbirdOfficial lol oof
this is my favorite video on games I've watched in a long time. so glad you touched on house of leaves.
I'm a massive fan of your mtg videos! So cool to see you like Jacob Geller as well!
Same!!
I finished reading House of Leaves last night, a book I was inspired to read by this video
Amazing book
Still trying to get through house of leaves (dang that book is massive) but I feel like when it ends, I'm gonna have to re-read it over and over to ever try and fully understand it. This video also inspired me to read it which was a freaking amazing decision.
Had to come back to this video after finishing Control for the first time. What a ride.
This video has reminded me of the Polyhedron from Pathologic. A superstructure that physically cannot be, build partialy from its own blueprints, a place that only children can fully enter and experience their dreams between the folds in its walls, a place that has brough its architect to substance abuse just to numb the pain that he can never fully understand the beauty of what he created. The plague and the cure.
The fact that you got praised by both of the creator(s) of Anatomy and Control for this video explaining the games is pretty remarkable.
I guess it only states how well your analysis was!
I also love the short in the Animatrix about a similar but emotionally flipped situation: the house, abandoned by the sensibilities of society, becomes a place instead of joy and wonder for the forgotten and neglected people of Tokyo. The anomalies, presumably intended to frighten visitors, spark delight and intrigue in children and young adults, and it develops a relationship with them. At the end of the story, society, threatened by the agency it provides the marginalized and fearing the anomalous, inexplicable behavior of reality within its walls, quarantine and destroy the house. It is turned into a parking lot. The protagonist of the story stands outside the chain link fence and picks up the rusty old can that once used to float so wonderfully over the ground. It cuts her finger and falls to the ground. The house's identity has been stolen from it, much like identity is stolen from a child as they grow older, and it has become enraged and embittered by this and lashed out at one of the few people who remembered and cared.
This entire discussion lives in my head rent free even four years later.
I agree with the previous poster about the parallels with mental illness, because “whatever walked there, walked alone.”
I think, too, this is somewhat of my fascination with the Dark Souls series. I didn't play it for its huge difficulty curve of learning patterns and trudging. I loved the idea of these large sprawling cities that I felt the game made a point to tell you that they were once grand and sterile and beautiful. Now that time has passed and instead you're left with rot and infestation of enemies that are a physical manifestation of what Anatomy described as a hunger and anger for being left alone and abandoned. The deeper you go into the game, the deeper you delve into the house and you meticulously cut out each malignant force acting on the house, while trying to not become one of these hallowed manifestations yourself. Your video analysis helped me put that feeling into words - thank you lol.
I saw the word 'house' highlighted in the first 10 seconds of the video and immediately had flashbacks. House of Leaves is a helluva drug.
"we keep coming back"
tv in the house in anatomy: "you never came back"
MRW I see my Warframe friends list
The type of haunted house you're describing actually reminds me a lot about the Winchester Mystery House and while it may the house isn't alive and it isn't completely abandoned especially since its now a tourist attraction, the place was essentially built to be a labyrinth with the purpose of the layout of the house being that its created the way it is to protect Sarah Winchester from getting harmed by ghosts by confusing ghosts with its layout
Every now and then I come back to this video, just to get swept away by the creeping feeling of dread and wonder and inevitability in it. It never disappoints.
Thank you for the strangest form of comfort I've ever craved at midnight.
Okay, between this and your video on NaissancE, I think you've convinced me that I have a deep-seated fear of architecture. Having said that, amazing video! The use music from the Silent Hill games is an especially nice touch.
mood honestly.
though for me it's both fear and... somehow fascination. like the video states, it's something i keep coming back to, even when it kind of scares me, maybe even *because* it does.
I love your eye for architectual oddities! Your work has helped me discover so many beautiful things, and scratches an itch no other content does!
I love psychological horror, I love this guy explaining it even more.
Anatomy and control give a specified feeling, they aren’t filled with any entities that have emotion, they are owned by something beyond formality, it’s owned by insanity, and throughout it, you have to cross through that insanity, some of it brushing onto you
There is another game that I've always thought about while playing Control, and that was Echo. Echo is the player being trapped in this... Planet-sized, endless labyrinth that may even be much larger on the inside than the outside, all the while being hostile to the player's very existence and creating puzzles and enemies that just makes the world feel like a large, sentient maze, left abandoned but still feeling... Alive.
Yes! Echo is perhaps the only game that beats out Control in sheer architectural uncanny awe for me.
Echo is awesome!! I wish it were made in the current gen. Highly recommended.
There's a really good reddit post about a man experiencing paranormal phenomena in his house, then is told that it's a carbon monoxide leak. Houses can most definitely mess with your mind - carbon monoxide, black mold, faulty meter boxes.
this is without exaggeration my favorite video on the internet. i can’t explain why but i find it strangely comforting. i absolutely adore every idea you’ve brought forth and admire the connections you’ve drawn-it’s so impressively constructed. thank you so much for this, i’ve forced everyone i know to watch it, including my philosophy professor, who loved it.
I get so excited any time someone references "House of Leaves" in a video essay. It's such a great book, and it's the reason I got into the band Snowing (they have a song named "Mark Z. Danielewski" where they reference the book in the opening lyric).