Parenthetical Explanation

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In a previous post, I discussed The Others as an example of a well-made movie whose twist (some might add, “twisted”) ending depends upon situational irony, which occurs when a situation sets up an expectation as to its resolution that is met in some other way than the audience has been led to believe--a bait-and-switch tactic of sorts, one might say. This film sets up not one, but three, possible explanations for the bizarre events that occur in an island mansion: the house is haunted, the protagonist is losing her mind, her servants are conspiring against her, perhaps to wrest her home away from her and her children. However, although it fulfills all of these expectations, the film resolves them in an unanticipated manner: Grace is insane, but she is also a ghost who is in purgatory as a result of having smothered her children, facts of which her servants hope to make her aware when they judge the time to be right.

Stories are not usually told in a straightforward fashion. Instead, the chronology of events typically is shuffled, so to speak, reordered so as to best capitalize on the drama inherent in and among them. Many stories, for example, begin in media res, or “in the middle of things,” relying upon flashbacks to fill in the details of the plot as the story progresses. A story that develops several alternative--or apparently alternative--storylines, the better to mislead the reader is even more difficult to plot than stories that don’t depend upon situational irony for their effect. Bizarre incidents are exciting, but they’re not ultimately satisfying unless they are explained or, at least, explicable. No one likes a tacked-on ending, or deus ex machina, and a story that fails to explain itself is equally unsatisfying.

It is easy, when a writer is telling a complicated story, such as The Others, or an unusually long story, such as most Stephen King novels, to overlook an explanation of this incident or that, frustrating the reader and decreasing the verisimilitude of one’s narrative. That’s where the technique of what I call parenthetical exposition can pay big dividends during the plotting process. The idea’s as simple as it is effective: as you write a synopsis of tour story’s planned action, include, at appropriate points, parenthetical explanations of why a particular bizarre and mysterious incident or set of circumstances occurs. Reserve the parentheses for this purpose.

Although you probably won’t want to explain the cause of the incidents or circumstances at the time that you describe them, as you write the story, you will have devised the reasons, motives, or foundations of the incidents or circumstances ahead of time and you will not, as a result, leave your readers hanging (and annoyed) as a result. At the appropriate moment, usually somewhere after the middle of the story, you can reveal the cause of these incidents or circumstances as appropriate opportunities to do so present themselves. The protagonist, for example, may discover the origin or the nature of the monstrous antagonist or the secrets related to the haunting of a house or other location; the protagonist may discuss with other characters a chain of events, thereby gaining insight as to the cause of these events; an external event or circumstance may enlighten the character as to the true nature of the threat he or she faces. In any case, you will have explained the reason, motive, or cause of each situation or incident when you plotted the story, explaining it in parentheses following your description of the phenomenon.

Syntactical Storylines

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

The adjectival subject verbed its object adverbially.

(Example: The old man ate cake quickly.)

The above sentence reflects the basic, normal syntax (word order) of the English language, which can be modified by additions of words, phrases and clauses, as necessary or desirable. Reducing this syntax to one of subject-verb-object, and appending to it a final phrase or clause that identifies or explains its cause, motivation, or reason can suggest a storyline that can then be developed into a plot. Here are some examples, based on summaries in Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide to Literature, Illustration, Film, TV, Radio, and the Internet, edited by Neil Barron:

Most writers can come up with the subject (protagonist or antagonist), the verb (incident or action), and the object (which may or may not be the antagonist). The explanation as to why the incident or the action occurred is what often troubles authors--and it is upon just this item that the whole story hangs, for without a cause, a motive, or a reason, a sequence of incidents or a chain of actions (behaviors) has no meaning. Consequently, the story has no consequence or value. It is merely a meaningless succession of pointless happenings unrelated to one another except by chronology.

One of the beauties of a syntactical approach to creating storylines is that, in compiling a list of examples of the process, such as the one that we have complied here, based upon stories’ summaries in Fantasy and Horror, one can obtain, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of causes, motives and reasons--of the explanatory origins or consequences--of a plot’s incidents or a protagonist’s or an antagonist’s actions, which allows the writer to give significance and understanding to such incidents or actions.

Motivated actions, or behaviors (which, unlike incidents, which are caused, rather than motivated) have ends, or purposes; such actions are goal-directed. They may be directed toward self-satisfaction or the satisfaction of another. In either case, they fulfill various needs that psychologists have identified. Some needs can be fulfilled by oneself; others needs must be fulfilled by someone or something other than oneself; and still other needs may be fulfilled by either oneself, may be fulfilled by another, or may or must be fulfilled by both the self and another who act together, in cooperative interaction, with one another. (Abraham Maslow identifies classes of universal basic human needs that energize, or motivate, human behavior: physiological needs, safety need, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs, and other psychologists identify still other types of universal needs with which writers should be familiar.)

In horror fiction, the past often affects the present, and the present often affects the future. Sometimes, these effects are intended; they are set up by a character on purpose, to initiate future incidents. Other times, they seem to be merely the workings of chance. They may be caused by a character’s performance of a ritual by which he or she hopes to impart a supernatural status to a natural object, process, set of circumstances, condition, or event. They may result from the contact of two points in the space-time continuum that are usually separate. An action may be the result of hubris, or they may be intended to effect catharsis, or a venting of powerful emotion.

The explanation for the incidents that occur or the actions that the protagonist or the antagonist performs may also suggest a back story--or, at least, elements that should be developed and, eventually, explained in the back story. For example, if an architect is motivated to perform ritual murders as a means of “baptizing” the cathedrals he designs or builds, in order to cause later repetitions of these initial killings, the reader, at some point, will want and expect to know why--in other words, what motivates this character to do want to do such a thing to begin with? The character’s immediate purpose, or motive, is to cause later repetitions of the original killings; his or her motive for wanting the initial murders to be repeated might be called the final motive. Learning the immediate cause, the reader will be content to read further, but he or she will expect to be told the final cause as well, at some point in the story, or the character’s actions will, despite the immediate cause having been identified, remain baseless and incredible. Withholding, but ultimately disclosing, the final cause as well is a good mean of maintaining suspense--as long as, at some point, the final cause is also revealed.

Note: All summaries are quoted directly (except where modifications are indicated) from Alan Frank’s The Horror Film Handbook.

The storyline, or premise, of a narrative should normally follow the subject-verb-object syntax that is typical of English sentences and include any necessary articles:

A bishop unleashes a demon.

Usually, the subject identifies the story’s protagonist; the verb, his or her action; and the object the recipient of the protagonist’s action.

The storyline may add words, phrases, or dependent clauses to provide additional information about any or all three of these elements. However, the additional details should be necessary and minimal, at this point. For example, Since this story (Abby) (1974) is set in an African country (Nigeria) and, in fact, the demon itself is a native, as it were, to this country, the bishop’s race may be regarded as significant; therefore, it is mentioned; otherwise, it would not be:

A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon.

If it is pertinent to the plot of the story to further describe any of these elements, additional words, phrases, or clauses can be added. For example, the type of demon can be indicated; in our example, based upon the movie Abby, the demon is one “of sexuality,” so this phrase is added, after the noun “demon”:

A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing. . . .

This sentence comprises the setup of the story; it is the inciting moment--the one incident in the action of the story that sets everything else in the narrative in motion, the spark, or catalyst, that ignites the remaining actions of the plot. To identify this moment as the cause of the actions which follow, rather than merely their antecedent, many writers convert the sentence into an adverbial clause by adding “When” to the beginning of the group of words:

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing. . . .

What was formerly an independent clause (“A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing”) is now a dependent clause (“When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing”), and an adverbial one, at that, which will modify the as-yet non-existent independent clause that will follow it, completing the sentence. The independent clause (underlined in the example, below) will identify the effect, or consequence, of the cause that the dependent, adverbial clause identifies:

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing, his daughter-in-law becomes possessed.

As before, if it is pertinent to the plot of the story to further describe any of these elements, additional words, phrases, or clauses can be added. For example, the location in which the daughter-in-law lives may be deemed relevant; if so, it should be identified (as it is here, underlined):

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing, his daughter-in-law in Louisville becomes possessed.

The consequence that follows from the storyline’s initial cause can itself become the cause of a subsequent consequence, as in the extension of the premise (in which the added consequence is underlined):

When a black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing, his daughter-in-law in Louisville becomes possessed and he has to perform an exorcism.

This is a fairly well-written summary of Abby’s basic plot, or storyline, although the phrase “and evil-doing” possibly could be omitted. As such, it specifies the three parts of the story, in a cause-and-effect sequence, thereby representing the germ of a logical, coherent, well-structured, three-act premise:

Beginning (Act I): A black bishop unleashes a Nigerian demon of sexuality and evil-doing. Middle (Act II): His daughter-in-law in Louisville becomes possessed. End (Act III): He has to perform an exorcism.

A storyline can also state or suggest the protagonist’s motive, as this one does, in summarizing the plot of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), in which, here, underlining has been added to indicate the motive:

A wealthy musical genius, the horribly disfigured Dr. Phibes, plans to murder all the surgeons who failed to save his wife’s life and uses methods of death based on the ten curses of [i. e., on] Pharaoh.

In other words, Dr, Phibes is motivated by revenge. This premise could be improved:

A wealthy musical genius, the horribly disfigured Dr. Phibes uses methods of death based on the ten curses of [i. e., on] Pharaoh to murder all the surgeons who failed to save his wife’s life.

Notice that this summary, in addition to suggesting the protagonist’s motive (revenge), also identifies an unusual twist: Dr. Phibes will employ “methods of death based on the ten curses on Pharaoh.” If a story contains such a twist, the storyline should indicate it, as this one does, because it is such unusual twists that add interest to a storyline. However, a writer is still well advised to start with the simplest subject-verb-object method of delineating the original germ of the plot and then add such words, phrases, or clauses that seem justified to present all pertinent details, whether of character, setting, unusual plot twist, motive, or otherwise:

A genius murders surgeons.

The following summary (of The Abominable Snowman) also indicates the movie’s three-part plot structure, the character’s motive, and the setting:

An expedition travels into the Himalayas [Beginning (Act I), which constitutes the inciting moment and includes an identification of the setting as “the Himalayas”] in search of the legendary Yeti [Middle (Act II), including the characters’ motive] and discover the creatures to be monstrous but friendly [End (Act III)].

Notice that this summary could be recast in the “when-this, that” format:

When an expedition travels into the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti[,] [the team] discover the creatures to be monstrous but friendly.

Even a classic like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) can fit this format:

[When] a young woman steals $40,000 from her employer and stops over at an isolated motel . . . she is killed by a schizophrenic transvestite who believes that he is his own mother.

[Beginning (Act I)]: A young woman steals $40,000 from her employer. [Middle (Act II)]: [She] stops over at an isolated motel. [End (Act III)]: She is killed by a schizophrenic transvestite who believes that he is his own mother.

Although this summary doesn’t state or suggest her motive, the movie itself does, and the summary could easily be adapted to do likewise:

[When] a young woman steals $40,000 from her employer to finance a new life with her boyfriend before stopping over at an isolated motel . . . she is killed by a schizophrenic transvestite who believes that he is his own mother.

Source: Barron, Neil, ed. Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide to Literature, Illustration, Film, TV, Radio, and the Internet.

Frank, Alan. The Horror Film Handbook. Barnes & Noble Books: Totowa, NJ. 1982.

Motivation as Explanation

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In earlier posts, we have considered the nature of evil as various horror writers have defined it. Some have seen evil as sinful; others as indifference on a cosmic, worldly, or local level; and still others as destructive of one’s local community.

These considerations of evil can be considered as being metaphysical. They deal with the very nature, or character, of evil. They delve into the heart and the soul, as it were, of wickedness, seeking to penetrate the depths of the mystery of iniquity.

More than many genres, horror cries out--one might say, given the nature of the genre, screams--for an explanation of evil on such a level. Moreover, horror fiction, to work at all, must also offer an explanation for the particular evil--the specific monster or other adversary--that threatens the protagonist of a particular tale. The very mechanics of the horror story demand this of its authors, and those who fail to supply such an explanation or whose explanation is not all that explanatory or plausible within the context of the story in which it is offered tend to perturb their readers.

Elsewhere, we laid bare the bones of the horror story’s skeleton, or formula:

1. A series of bizarre incidents occurs.
2. The protagonist discovers the cause of these incidents.
3. The protagonist uses his or her newfound knowledge to put an end to these incidents.

The second stage of the narrative is our topic in this post, for the cause of the bizarre incidents in a particular story is the antagonist’s motivation, and this motivation is the explanation, on the immediate and narrative, if not the metaphysical and universal, level, for the evil that occurs, although, often, the former is a consequence or, at least, a parallel, of the latter. An example of these two levels? In Christianity, the nature of evil is pride (“pride goeth before a fall,” as Satan learns), whereas Satan’s individual and personal motive in corrupting humanity is his blasphemous attempt “to be like the most high God”:

How art thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit (Isaiah 14: 12-15).

Likewise, the apostle Peter, although he protests that he would never betray Jesus, even if his loyalty to the Messiah should cost him his own life, betrays Jesus, an act which stems from the greater love that he had for himself than that which he had for God (a sort of pride), but is, more immediately, directed at the saving of his own life, in the here and now.

This chart shows some of the explanations that are provided for the series of bizarre incidents that unfold in several well-known horror stories; again, as the motives of specific antagonists within particular narratives, they are causes in the immediate sense and within the contexts of the stories themselves, not in a universal and cosmic sense, as definitions of the very nature of evil itself:

These example could be multiplied ad infinitum, but the point is that, in the horror story that accommodates itself to the formula we identified, the antagonist’s motive is the explanation for the horror--the series of bizarre incidents that unfold in the first part of the tale, whatever the ultimate, metaphysical nature of evil itself may be.

Therefore, the horror writer’s first task is to determine what the antagonist’s motive shall be, to identify, in other words, what the antagonist wants and hopes to accomplish. Having done so, the author withholds this explanation for the bizarre incidents that occur in the story until the middle of the tale, wherein, discerning or learning the antagonist’s motivation (i. e., the cause of the evil events that are taking place), the protagonist is equipped to put an end to these incidents (and, possibly, the monster that is causing them). It’s extremely doubtful that the protagonist will ever but an end to the nature of evil, to sin, or pride, or indifference, or threats to the local community, or whatever this nature may be.

Despite the chaos, there must be order. Despite the madness, there must be a method. Despite the bizarre series of incidents, there must be a motive to the monster’s behavior which causes these incidents. Writers who do not provide a plausible motive for the bizarre series of incidents that result from their antagonists’ actions do not fare well with readers and critics, and otherwise good, or even superior, novels suffer as a result of such failures as well. Although Stephen King’s motives usually suffice to make his villains’ actions believable, he drops the ball in a big way with It, and Bentley Little, despite having written nearly a dozen novels and many short stories, has yet to pick up the ball or, perhaps, even to notice that it exists. The effect, upon It, is to all but ruin a potential masterpiece of the genre. The effect, upon Little’s reputation, of not yet his career, is sustained disappointment and, most likely, eventual oblivion.

Some motives that horror writers have used to explain the bizarre incidents that unfold in the first parts of their stories include:

• Demonic possession in an attempt to bring about a person’s damnation
• An alien’s mission (for example, conquest or mating with a man or a woman)
• Vengeance upon a wrongdoer
• Eruptions of a past or future events into the present
• Pollution
• Humans’ encroachment upon a monster’s habitat
• An effort to steal or control dwindling food or other resources
• Behavioral control or modification
• Recruitment or testing
• Eugenics
• Efforts to survive a plague or the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust
• Genocide
• Punishment, individual or wholesale
• Colonization
• Commerce
• War

Explanations for Evil, Part II

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In the previous post, we saw how the explanation for the evil that is at the root of the bizarre incidents of the typical horror plot is an essential part of such a story line. However, although there are a variety of possible and potential sources of evil from which to choose (ignorance, indifference, inhumanity, sin, madness, and others), these sources are not inexhaustible, and, eventually, vary them as he or she may, the horror writer is going to run out of new (that is, not used previously by him or her in his or her fiction) types fairly soon. Therefore, the horror writer needs a few more tricks up his or her sleeve to assist in the maintenance of suspense and reader interest. Since, by nature, the explanation depends upon knowledge, the writer will not only provide information in dibs and dabs, piecemeal, as it were, on an as-needed basis, but he or she will also enhance the delivery of these bits and pieces of exposition by adopting one or more techniques, some of which we have compiled here:

Introduce a red herring. In other words, suggest a cause for the events that is, although plausible and potentially explanatory, turns out to be false or erroneous. Dean Koontz is a master of this approach. For example, in Phantoms, he suggests (through the thoughts and declarations of one of his characters) that the cause of the disappearances, deaths, and dismemberments of a small town's residents are the effects (perhaps) of a secret biological or chemical warfare agent. In fact, the cause turns out to be an ancient, egocentric creature who periodically feeds upon humans and whose physical structure is based upon petrolatum, enabling the survivors of his attacks to destroy him with oil-eating bacteria (no, we're not making this up). There really are such bacteria, of course. Some were used to clean up oil spills. However, the likelihood of a petrolatum-based organism seems spurious to say the least. Nevertheless, if the story is horrific and suspenseful enough, the readers will overlook the ultimate explanation as long as there is one and it could, however unlikely, be a dim possibility (even if the alternate, red herring theory makes more sense from a scientific point of view). What appears to be a guardian angel in Lightning turns out to be a time traveler from Nazi Germany. Are the bizarre incidents in Midnight the work of aliens? No, politicians and scientists have cooperated in creating a computer system to "convert" citizens to their way of thinking. What appears to be the results of fugue states and amnesia in The Bad Place are actually the effects of genetic mutations that resulted from hermaphroditic self-fertilization. Incest can have negative effects, apparently, even when its practice is limited strictly to oneself. Likewise, murderous fugue states are not responsible for the mayhem in Mr. Murder, as it turns out; the death and d estruction is the result of the actions of a genetically engineered clone. the supposed SWAT team in Dark Rivers of the Heart turns out to be a clandestine paramilitary group. The use of the red herring explanation suggests that nothing is as it appears to be--or shouldn't be, at le

Complicate the search for answers. As the characters seek to make sense of their experiences--that is, of the odd incidents happening to and around them--they happen upon a situation even more bizarre, complicated, and seemingly impossible.

Make the answer man part of the problem. The character from whom the others learn the explanation (herein after called "the answer man," even if he's a she rather than a he) may be part of the problem or, worse yet, he may be the problem.

Use the jigsaw approach. The explanation may depend upon each member of a group of characters contributing some knowledge of the total answer. This jigsaw puzzle approach allows further complications of the plot's conflict. First, somehow, the individual members of the group must rendezvous (and there may be some or many who want to prevent one or more--or all--of them from doing so); one or more may actually be eliminated before he or she or they can add his or her or their missing piece or pieces of the puzzle to complete the big picture (that is, the explanation as to the cause of the strange incidents or bizarre situations); or one or more of the answer men may decide to provide false information or may report erroneous information without any conscious intent to deceive.

Give the answer man an alternative motive. The answer man may have an ulterior motive--a reason not to explain the cause or to explain it falsely (that is, explain it away).

Use the missing-in-action (MIA) appraoch. Someone may know the secret--may even have known it from the get-go--but the answer man may be missing and have to be tracked down or incarcerated and have to be sprung. Alternatively, he might have passed the answer on to someone else, before being killed, so, now, this surrogate answer man must be found.

Let repentance be the key. An answer man, possibly working for the enemy, may refuse to divulge the answer until, repenting (for some believable reason), he repents, confessing everything.

Use the repressed memories approach. The answer man may have repressed his memories of the cause of the extraordinary incidents or astonishing situations and, although the information returns, in bits and pieces, it may nort always be reliable and accurate; he may have a few false memories (red herrings) among the "facts" he recalls, whether on his own or as a result of hypnosis.

Explanations For Evil

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Iniquity is a mystery.

Despite penis envy, the Oedipus complex, phallic women, and Rorschach inkblots, we really don’t know what makes people do evil.

A lot of theories have been advanced over the years: ignorance, sin, indifference, emotional instability or mental illness resulting from childhood trauma or abuse, genetic abnormalities, birth defects, and even the devil. Although these theories have shed some light on the mystery of iniquity, wickedness remains inscrutable.

Nevertheless, authors of horror stories, whether the stories appear in print or on film, must offer at least a plausible explanation for the evil that occurs in their narratives. We live in a cause-and-effect universe, after all (or so, at least, we want to believe). Therefore, there must be a cause of--an explanation for--all events, situations, and behaviors, including--and maybe especially--those that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

The explanations don’t have to hold water. Not well, anyway. They do have to fall this side of “impossible” on the plausibility continuum, though. They have to be believable if not provable, credible if not verifiable, acceptable if not certifiable. Since horror stories begin with bizarre incidents or situations that, at some point in the narrative (usually just before the turning point), must be explained in some way, the explanations are important, and audiences expect to read or hear something that doesn’t insult their intelligence.

Sure, they know that, should they examine the explanation carefully, it’s likely to explain away more than to explain, but, as long as it doesn’t sound too far-fetched at the moment it’s trotted out, they’ll be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s only when the explanation is vague and shifty and half-hearted (as in the otherwise-superb novels of Bentley Little) or inane (as in Night Shyamalan’s latest film, The Happening, that audiences will wonder why they ever plunked down their hard-earned money to read or see something so idiotic.

So the explanations may be just this side of ridiculous, as long as they’re there and don’t actually insult the audience’s intelligence, but they must also fit the bizarre situations or series of incidents that are supposedly their effects. There must be some discernable logic--or even emotional relationship--among the cause and its effects. There must be a sense, on the part of the readers or moviegoers, that the cause “fits” the effects, either logically or emotionally (or, ideally, both).

If the author can set up one explanation that seems both plausible and rationally or emotionally satisfying, only to replace it with a second, better (or, at least, not worse) explanation that accounts for everything, so mush the better. Dean Koontz does this in The Taking. The bizarre series of events that is initially suspected to result from an advance party of invading aliens’ attempts to reverse-terraform the earth so that its atmosphere and environment are friendly to the attacking species turns out to be the result of an attack upon the planet by none other than Satan and his demons--and, yes, Koontz manages to bring this rather incredible plot twist off.

The-devil-made-me-do-it is a popular explanation for the evil deeds of characters in horror stories, of course, and has been since the books of Genesis and Job. The devil stirs up trouble in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Stephen King’s Desperation and The Regulators, and such movies as The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen. Aliens are other popular sources of the madness and mayhem in horror movies, as Alien and its sequels and many other horror movies, from Invaders from Mars, The Blob, and The Thing From Another World to Independence Day, and The War of the Worlds indicates. Vampires, witches, mummies, ghosts, werewolves, and zombies are other popular explanations for the occurrence of the horrific incidents and situations of horror stories.

Horror maestro Stephen King

One way to consider a lot of the explanations horror fiction has put forth for the evils that this genre of fiction depicts (and sometimes celebrates) is to consider some of the major novels of Stephen King (stories with identical causes are excluded, as are those for which no more than a mere mention is given on King’s website:

What makes one explanation for the bizarre incidents and situations in a horror story acceptable to an audience while another explanation for such happenings is not? Here are a few possibilities:

• Magical Thinking. No, we don’t live in a pre-scientific age during which magical thinking is part and parcel of one’s worldview, but, were we to be honest, we’d have to admit that, even in the twenty-first century, after having put a man on the moon, we still believe in magic, at least on a gut level. How else do we explain such notions as penis envy, the Oedipus complex, phallic women, and Rorschach inkblots? How else do we understand the way television signal transmissions and receptions operate or gravity or thermodynamics? The scientists among us may be able to answer some of the questions we have concerning the universe and our place in it, but they also admit that many of their statements are analogical or metaphorical, rather than literal, meaning that, beyond a certain level, they have no idea what they’re talking about. As Sir William Frazier points out in The Golden Bough, there are basically two types of magic: sympathetic, or imitative, magic and the magic of correspondence. Both rely upon magical thinking--the belief that non-scientific relationships among phenomena can be of such a nature that one somehow (mysteriously) affects or controls another. Sympathetic magic rests upon the premise that one can obtain the results that he or she imitates. Want to cause someone to suffer a heart attack? Stick a pin into voodoo doll’s chest. Correspondence rests upon the premise that one can influence what occurs to one person, place, or thing by manipulating another person, place, or thing to which the former is somehow related. Astrology (“as above, so below”) is a perfect example: the positions of heavenly bodies affect and determine one’s fate. According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary, sympathetic magic is probably behind such beliefs as those pertaining to “most forms of divination. . . voodoo. . . psychometry. . . psychic detectives. . . graphologists. . . karma. . . synchronicity. . . homeopathy” and, of course, magic itself. This list indicates that, pre-scientific age or not, ours is still one in which there are a great many believers in magic and the thinking that underlies it.
• Recognition. Emotion, rather than logic, can be sufficient grounds for many of us to accept an explanation as appropriate and satisfying. To be emotionally acceptable to us, the explanation for the horror story’s uncanny events must suggest that the truth that the main character learns about him- or herself and/or the world, including others, is a natural, even inevitable, consequence of his or her experience. In other words, given what has happened to him or her, the protagonist has no other alternative but to draw the conclusions that he or she draws concerning the cause of these events--and the cause will have to do with his or her own behavior. Carrie’s explanation for the bizarre incidents that take place in the novel (and the movie based upon the novel) is acceptable to its readers (and viewers) because Stephen King ties the incidents to the existential and psychological states of the protagonist whose telekinesis, in service to her damaged emotions, self-image, and thinking, causes the murder and mayhem that she unleashes upon her tormentors, almost as an afterthought, once she realizes that, despite appearances to the contrary, nothing has changed, and she is still the target of other people’s prejudices and hatred.
• Tradition, or Familiarity. Once a type of monster gains acceptance from the general public, usually as a result of its traditional use, its reference as the cause of the story’s eerie events is accepted for the sake of the narrative, even if (as is likely) it is rejected on the rational level. In other words, readers and viewers are willing to suspend their disbelief. This tendency on the part of readers and moviegoers to accept traditional monsters as the causes of bizarre incidents is the basis for the use of demons, ghosts, mummies, vampires, werewolves, and the like as causal agents in horror stories. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also generate a grudging acceptance of causality which, otherwise, would be summarily dismissed. “Oh, it’s a werewolf. Okay, then.”
• Analogy. To be persuasive as a cause of the horror story’s horrific events, an explanation must be detailed. There must be a series of correspondences between the alleged cause and the alleged effects. In other words, one must be able to infer, on the basis of the similarities between two things that these same two things are alike in yet other ways (“A” is like “B.” “B” has property “C.” Therefore, “A” has property “C.”) Analogies are notoriously unreliable and often fallacious, but that doesn’t stop them from being persuasive to many, and, in fiction, what counts is their persuasiveness as causes. Writers of fiction are not especially concerned at all points (or maybe at any point) as to whether statements are true; they’re concerned with entertaining their audience, and, to this end, with whether their audience will “buy” a particular explanation of their action’s incidents and situations, bizarre and uncanny or otherwise.
• Integrality. The explanation, whatever it is, must not be haphazard. It must not be tacked on, seemingly at the last minute, simply to explain (or to explain away) the story’s eerie occurrences. Instead, the explanation must be essential. Without the explanation, the series of odd incidents and situations would make no sense (not that they need to make a whole lot of sense, necessarily, even with the explanation in place). For the explanation to be acceptable or plausible, the writer must give hints early and often as to the nature of the cause behind the effects. In The Taking, Dean Koontz, early on, plants the idea that the bizarre actions in his novel may be the effect of Satan’s return to earth, and this possibility is repeated in the thoughts of the protagonist concerning her sorrow for past moral offenses she’s committed and her hope for forgiveness and reconciliation and by the narrative’s end, in which she becomes a new Eve, carrying within her womb the first of humanity’s new humanity. At the same time, however, the possibility that the novel’s bizarre events are the effects of reverse-terraforming by an advance party of invading aliens purposely detracts from this, the actual, cause. By contrast, in The Resort, Bentley Little merely mentions an older resort near the one in which his story’s action take place and implies, without ever saying exactly how, that the former resort is somehow associated with the contemporary one. There are no specific correspondences, no detailed links, between the two (the older one of which, in fact, has burned down). There is only the suggestion, without a supporting context supplied by a pertinent back story or other means of exposition. The result is the deux ex machina that Aristotle so much abhorred and rejects in his Poetics as emotionally and dramatically unconvincing.
  

Dean Koontz and Trixie

A horror story stands or falls, to a large extent, by its explanation for the evil, bizarre events and situations that occur during much of the story. The explanation may not pass scientific muster, but it must at least pass the emotional and dramatic smell tests of the audience if it is to be satisfying and, therefore, successful. In the final analysis, the inexplicable must be explained, if only in theory.

Alternative Explanations, Part I: Demons and Ghosts

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In most horror stories which involve paranormal of supernatural forces or entities--which is to say, most horror stories--there’s a skeptical character whose purpose is to explain--or to explain away--the story’s apparently paranormal or supernatural incidents. To be convincing, such a character should know what he or she is talking about, at least as far as the science used to refute this or that apparent extraordinary incident. This article offers some tips concerning the type of debunker’s knowledge that skeptical characters ought to know and the sources in which the creators of these characters--namely, you--can find such information on tap, alas, not alongside the house brew.

The type of info you’ll need to know depends upon the type of paranormal or supernatural force or entity that is (allegedly) involved. Is it a demon? A ghost? A clairvoyant or a telekinetic person? Someone who’s adept at levitation whom other characters just don’t want hanging around all the time? Vampires? Werewolves? Zombies? An extraterrestrial species? Cthuthlu? Something else entirely?

Let’s take a look at some of the paranormal and supernatural classics and mainstays of the horror genre and the alternative explanations for them.

Okay, demons. First, what are they supposed to be? Evil spirits, right? But spirits of what? Dead animals? Dead people? Hats and shoes? Or are they a breed apart? Biblical traditions maintain that demons are fallen angels--angels, in other words, who rebelled against God, perhaps under the leadership of Satan, and were punished by being cast out of heaven and into hell. From time to time, they may visit the earth to tempt human beings for fun and profit (their victims’ eternal damnation, which would swell the population of hell).

Apparently, demons--or, quite a few of them, anyway--can possess people, and they may do so either individually or in groups. William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist and the movie based upon it are supposedly based upon a true exorcism. The movies The Possession of Emily Rose and Requiem are both allegedly based upon another real-life case. They are interesting to study because each suggests a different approach that the skeptic character in your story could take in debunking the existence of demons--at least those who possess people.

The case upon which The Exorcist is supposedly based is nothing more than the result of exaggerations of the incidents that are alleged to have occurred in the actual case or sheer inventions, some contend. According to “The Real Story Behind the Exorcist,” “virtually all of the gory and sensational details were embellished or made up. Simple spitting became Technicolor, projectile vomiting; (normal) shaking of a bed became thunderous quaking and levitation; the boy’s low growl became a gravelly, Satanic voice.”

The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Requiem rely upon mischaracterizing mental illness and its effects as being demonic possession and its effects, critics argue. Adopting this approach to debunk diagnoses of demonic possession, the horror story’s skeptical character would say that the supposedly possessed person is mentally ill and susceptible to suggestions on the part of the exorcist:

“. . . exorcisms have been (and continue to be) performed, often on emotionally and mentally disturbed people. . . . Most often, exorcisms are done on people of strong religious faith. To the extent that exorcisms ‘work,’ it is primarily due to the power of suggestion and the placebo effect. If you believe you are possessed, and that a given ritual will cleanse you, then it just might.”

Mark Opsasnick’s thorough, detailed debunking, “The Haunted Boy: The Cold, Hard Facts Behind the Story that Inspired The Exorcist,” explains the exaggeration-invention approach to creating demons and demonic possession. The Skeptic’s Dictionary lists it and numerous other books and articles that question, evaluate, and reject spurious claims to demonic possession. (The Skeptic’s Dictionary, by the way, is an excellent basic source for all alternative explanations of allegedly paranormal and supernatural and, indeed, otherworldly, or extraterrestrial, phenomena).

Thus, the horror story’s skeptical character can explain demons and demonic possession by suggesting that demons and demonic possession are concocted out of exaggerations and inventions, the misdiagnoses of mental illness as demonic possession and susceptibility of the apparently possessed religious victim, or both.

What about ghosts? How might our fictional skeptic debunk them and their ghostly deeds? Supposedly, a ghost is the spirit of a dead person. Over the years, ghosts have collected quite a list of characteristics:

• They’re made of ectoplasm.
• Their presence is discernable by psychics.
• They make the air cold because they’re energy magnets, and thermal energy is energy. (One might say that ghosts were once environmental threats, except that, with global warming underway, they may now be ecological heroes.)
• They tend to be rather camera shy, but other equipment seems to register phantom phenomena.
• They sometimes haunt places or people or both with which or whom they were associated in the days of their incarnation, perhaps for revenge or for no other reason that they don’t know they’re dead (hard to imagine) or how to get to the great beyond.
• They can walk through solid objects, such as walls or your Aunt Betty.
• Some, known as poltergeists, are especially noisy and destructive.

What’s our skeptic’s likely answers to such claims? Ghosts may also be products of hallucinations, especially during sleep paralysis. Most ghost stories rely upon anecdotal evidence, which is “always incomplete and selective.” (For a critique of anecdotal evidence, check out “anecdotal [tensional] evidence”.)

According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary, skeptics have found cheesecloth an excellent “ectoplasm” material for use at séances conducted by mediums (sort of psychic midwives), especially if the medium who delivered the ghosts, so to speak, was a woman. Scientific American established a committee to investigate one medium’s psychic abilities, Harvard psychology professor William McDougall summarizing one of his group’s findings: “There is good evidence that "ectoplasm" issues, or did issue on some and probably all occasions [from] one particular 'opening in the anatomy' (i.e., the vagina).” She refused to be strip-searched before séances and would not “perform in tights.” Another skeptic “offers a much simpler explanation for the production of ectoplasm. Have your husband sit next to you during the séance. Make sure he has stuffed his shirt or pants with stuff to slip to you under the table when the lights are out.”

According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary, the big chill that is said to accompany the presence of ghosts is likely to result from drafts of air. Some noise may also be attributed to such ventilation. The activity of mechanical equipment, such as extraction fans, may also create air currents that produce odd sounds. Ghosts supposedly prefer night to day and darkness to light because it’s easier to see them in the dark than in daylight, since their ectoplasm is supposedly see-through. Our skeptic might counter this claim by suggesting another reason for ghosts’ alleged preference for darkness: it’s much easier to deceive others under conditions of darkness, too, than it is in broad daylight or in a well-lighted room.

While few ghosts worthy of the film have appeared on camera, some ghost hunters claim to have caught evidence of them on such equipment as “tape recorders, EMF detectors, video cameras with night vision, metal detectors.” Skeptics might question whether this--or any--equipment has been designed to detect ghosts, noting that, just because such equipment may look scientific, doesn’t mean that it is, and that certainly “tape recorders, EMF detectors, video cameras with night vision, metal detectors.” are not designed to detect the spirits of the deceased. Live Science finds ghost hunters’ supposedly scientific equipment questionable and challenges the claims its users have made concerning the equipment’s detection of ghosts. After pointing out that “the equipment is only as scientific as the person using it,” Benjamin Radford, the author of “The Shady Science of Ghost Hunting,” queried an equipment supplier as to the “scientific rationale. . . behind the equipment he sold” and received this surprisingly candid answer:

“At a haunted location," Cook said, "strong, erratic fluctuating EMFs are commonly found. It seems these energy fields have some definite connection to the presence of ghosts. The exact nature of that connection is still a mystery. However, the anomalous fields are easy to find. Whenever you locate one, a ghost might be present.... any erratic EMF fluctuations you may detect may indicate ghostly activity. . . . There exists no device that can conclusively detect ghosts."

Radford observes, with logic fatal to ghost hunting, “The supposed links between ghosts and electromagnetic fields, low temperatures, radiation, odd photographic images, and so on are based on nothing more than guesses, unproven theories, and wild conjecture. If a device could reliably determine the presence or absence of ghosts, then by definition, ghosts would be proven to exist.”

As Radford points out in the same article, statistics also cast doubt upon ghosts who are said to haunt their murderers: “If murder victims whose killings remains unsolved are truly destined to walk the earth and haunt the living, then we should expect to encounter ghosts nearly everywhere. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly a quarter of all homicides remains unsolved each year,” and “There are about 30,000 homicides in America each year.”

He also questions how it is that ghosts wear clothing: “Do shoes, coats, hats, and belts also have souls? Logically, ghosts should appear naked.”

“On the Subject of Ghosts,” an article by Michael LaPointe, the “laws laid down by Sir Isaac Newton” make it “impossible for a non-physical entity to simultaneously walk upon surfaces and pass through solid objects, such as doors and walls; if a being is applying force to the ground in order to propel themselves, they therefore can’t pass through other solids without falling through the floor.” One has a choice, it seems. He or she can believe the anecdotal evidence of a haunted soul who sees ghosts do such things or the eminent scientist Isaac Newton, who says that neither ghosts nor anything else in the universe can perform such impossible feats. The party with whose claim one sides suggests much about his or her faith, whether it’s in the supernatural or the scientific.

As The Skeptic’s Dictionary points out, poltergeists generally turn out to be not mischievous, noisy nuisances of the spirit world but, rather, flesh-and-blood pranksters of a juvenile nature, whose antics are coupled, perhaps, with “perceptual misinterpretations, e. g., seeing things move that never moved or attributing sounds or movement of inanimate objects to spirits when one can't detect the source” or air drafts and other natural causes.

In one case, a woman named Mrs. Connolly found:

“A imitation fireplace and a couple of chairs overturned in the living room. Such things went on for four days. A building inspector suggested the problem might be coming from the fireplace, so Mrs. Connolly hired someone to put a protective covering over the chimney top. "From that moment on, the objects stayed put". . . . Mrs. Connolly was not a superstitious woman and attributed the events to powerful drafts swirling down the chimney and disturbing objects in their path. When confronted with poltergeist activity one should not rule out such natural factors as drafts of wind.”

Children are the poltergeists in another account of alleged poltergeist activity that is recounted in The Skeptic’s Dictionary:

“William Roll investigated the Resch case and declared it authentic. In 1984, Tina was 14 years old and living in Columbus, Ohio. Newspaper reports testified to her chaotic household where telephones would fly, lamps would swing and fall, all accompanied by loud noises. James Randi also investigated the case and found that Tina was hoaxing her adoptive parents and using the media attention to assist her quest to find her biological parents.

A video camera from a visiting TV crew that was inadvertently left running, recorded Tina cheating by surreptitiously pulling over a lamp while unobserved. The other occurrences were shown to be inventions of the press or highly exaggerated descriptions of quite explainable events. (Randi 1995).”

Even mere forgetfulness can explain the movement of objects by ghosts. People sometimes move an object, such as a set of keys, from one location, such as their bedroom dresser, to another, such as the kitchen counter, and, forgetting having done so, attribute the object’s relocation to the ghost that they believe must be haunting their homes.

But what about well-known accounts of ghostly visitations and haunted houses, such as Amityville? A couple of articles have appeared on the Live Science website that debunk Amityville: “The Truth Behind Amityville” and “The Truth Behind the Amityville Horror.” They’re a bit too involved and lengthy to summarize here; that’s why you’re directed there.

In Part II of “Alternative Explanations,” we’ll consider how your horror story’s skeptical character might debunk claims about other paranormal and supernatural phenomena.