The Last Bookstore
A few days ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Last Bookstore in Los Angeles - very much a house of books.
The place both houses an immense collection of new, used and rare books, it also houses artists; and, as one can see from the picture, is a work of art itself. Showing remarkable restraint (or being self-aware of the bulging, overstuffed bookcases at home) I limited myself to two purchases: a copy of Ghostland, a nonfiction book which deals with the mythology of haunted places, and a copy of William Hodgson's classic horror novel The House on the Borderlands. Both deal, in their own way, with the idea of the Mysterious House, which is a theme I've been interested in my whole life. The former discusses, among other things, the how and why that houses become 'haunted' - not from the sense of literal ghosts, but figurative ones. The latter is a chilling story, one of HP Lovecraft's favorites, that was more cosmic-minded than I expected (but I certainly could see the influence it had on HPL), centering on a mysterious house in Ireland which seemed to have connections to other universes, but remains unexplained even by the end.
I visited the eponymous "Haunted Mansion" at Disneyland while there as well. Despite being terrified of 'scary things' at a young age, riding the Haunted Mansion here in Orlando was must every time that my family went to DisneyWorld. Part of the allure was trying to figure out just what the deal was with the house - how was it actually structured, what was story behind the paintings, who was the Attic Bride, and where did the front door of the residence actually lead? Every time I went on the ride, I would keep an eye out for details that I felt might be one more missing piece of the puzzle to solve its riddle, while still cowering in terror at the hall of doors. As an adult, I know that this particular riddle was made without any solution in mind; still, it doesn't stop me from picking out details to see if anything builds on other details, as I outlined prior. The various publications that pretend to 'explain' the mysteries generally seem to fall flat (that the Attic Bride was a murderous woman whose sole motivation was that 'she liked weddings' would fall in this category).
But I'll turn again to another mysterious house from my youth, one I've mentioned before - the infamous White House from Zork. In many ways it represents the allure of the unknown; I spent many an English class in middle school, for instance, meditating on the meaning of the house. For those who have never played Zork, the house sits abandoned in the middle of the woods, with boarded up windows and front door; the only entrance is through a window in the back which leads to the kitchen. There's a dark attic upwards, and towards the interior stands a living room with another closed door, this one nailed shut. Hidden under the Persian rug is a trapdoor leading to the labyrinths under the house. While one would think that the nailed door corresponds to the front door, or at least to a shared room, you learn later that it leads to a sloping passage into the labyrinth as well. (There's also a chimney in the kitchen that leads down, not up, although you can't descend it as you aren't "Santa Claus". An artist's studio and gallery lies below). The house offers no real explanation, especially why it's sitting in the middle of a vast forest; apparently on mail routes, because there's also a small mailbox out front. It's a bit anticlimactic when Zork Zero revealed that the house was actually a construct that was never truly a 'house'; rather, it was the result of a curse that destroyed the largest city in the world by turning it into the ubiquitous structure - an explanation that in reality explained nothing.
Of course there's a White House at the start of my game (in fact, I've already mentioned that in a prior post). Mine diverges greatly from the original, of course; my game isn't a Zorkian pastiche set in their game universe, but one of my own creation. The house is a real structure, a remnant of a past settlement otherwise swallowed by trees; and is accessible by the traditional manner of going through the front door (once you've found the key, of course). Even so, there's a callback to the original feeling I had when experiencing that mysterious house for the first time - researching the house in the archives at the adventurer's guild reveals that 'all new adventurers gravitate towards the white house in the woods'. The lure of the mysterious house is too much to escape.
I visited the eponymous "Haunted Mansion" at Disneyland while there as well. Despite being terrified of 'scary things' at a young age, riding the Haunted Mansion here in Orlando was must every time that my family went to DisneyWorld. Part of the allure was trying to figure out just what the deal was with the house - how was it actually structured, what was story behind the paintings, who was the Attic Bride, and where did the front door of the residence actually lead? Every time I went on the ride, I would keep an eye out for details that I felt might be one more missing piece of the puzzle to solve its riddle, while still cowering in terror at the hall of doors. As an adult, I know that this particular riddle was made without any solution in mind; still, it doesn't stop me from picking out details to see if anything builds on other details, as I outlined prior. The various publications that pretend to 'explain' the mysteries generally seem to fall flat (that the Attic Bride was a murderous woman whose sole motivation was that 'she liked weddings' would fall in this category).
But I'll turn again to another mysterious house from my youth, one I've mentioned before - the infamous White House from Zork. In many ways it represents the allure of the unknown; I spent many an English class in middle school, for instance, meditating on the meaning of the house. For those who have never played Zork, the house sits abandoned in the middle of the woods, with boarded up windows and front door; the only entrance is through a window in the back which leads to the kitchen. There's a dark attic upwards, and towards the interior stands a living room with another closed door, this one nailed shut. Hidden under the Persian rug is a trapdoor leading to the labyrinths under the house. While one would think that the nailed door corresponds to the front door, or at least to a shared room, you learn later that it leads to a sloping passage into the labyrinth as well. (There's also a chimney in the kitchen that leads down, not up, although you can't descend it as you aren't "Santa Claus". An artist's studio and gallery lies below). The house offers no real explanation, especially why it's sitting in the middle of a vast forest; apparently on mail routes, because there's also a small mailbox out front. It's a bit anticlimactic when Zork Zero revealed that the house was actually a construct that was never truly a 'house'; rather, it was the result of a curse that destroyed the largest city in the world by turning it into the ubiquitous structure - an explanation that in reality explained nothing.
Of course there's a White House at the start of my game (in fact, I've already mentioned that in a prior post). Mine diverges greatly from the original, of course; my game isn't a Zorkian pastiche set in their game universe, but one of my own creation. The house is a real structure, a remnant of a past settlement otherwise swallowed by trees; and is accessible by the traditional manner of going through the front door (once you've found the key, of course). Even so, there's a callback to the original feeling I had when experiencing that mysterious house for the first time - researching the house in the archives at the adventurer's guild reveals that 'all new adventurers gravitate towards the white house in the woods'. The lure of the mysterious house is too much to escape.
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