I’m not quite sure what compelled me to start my journey with the Silent Hill 2 Remake on an evening when I was home alone. But before I knew it, I was hunched over on the edge of my couch, heart racing, white knuckling the controller, as I edged ever so carefully down a dark hallway in the Woodside apartments checking doors.

Only one of them nudges open a bit at my touch, but of course, radio static starts up around my ears and the path forward (a fight to the death with the unnerving Mannequins) is clear. As the buzzing grows louder and more frantic I push the door open, but for some reason I find myself feeling eager to step over the threshold, and accept my fate.

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If you ask anyone who knows me they’d likely be surprised to hear that I found myself, late at night, home alone, playing, arguably, the scariest game of all time. While I enjoy the slow burn, psychological horror of a good Lovecraftian tale, I didn’t anticipate that I would enjoy the unrelenting terror I’d heard comes from the Silent Hill experience. I assumed I would play for a few minutes, get too freaked out, endure a night or two of nightmares and be done with it.

But I was even more taken by surprise when, after a few hours wrapped in radio static, the thud of handless arm attacks, and James’ heavy, injured breathing (I remain pretty bad at fighting games, even if I enjoy them), I put the controller down and felt…good?

Night fell completely as I was playing, and finally a couple of antsy dogs dragged me outside into the darkness; but while I was second guessing every shadow, I still wanted to go back in and keep going.

I absolutely had to go down a bit of a rabbit hole to understand why I was enjoying this, and how horror games work in general.

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I’m certainly not the first person to experience a sort of euphoria after having a manufactured scary experience; in fact scientists have a name for it: voluntary arousing negative experiences or VANE.

Essentially, horror media can trigger the same type of fight or flight responses in the brain as real danger, building up a bunch of negative feelings that then release, at the guaranteed resolution, as dopamine and endorphins.

But that seems to be only the first element of the potential benefits of horror. Particularly in gaming, where part of the goal is to provide us ways of getting through scary situations, horror media becomes a tool that we can use to practice and understand our own reactions to fear and challenges. In this essay Monsters and the Moral Imagination, Professor Stephen T. Asma explains that

“In order to discover our values, we have to face trials and tribulation, and monsters help us imaginatively rehearse. Imagining how we will face an unstoppable, powerful, and inhuman threat is an illuminating exercise in hypothetical reasoning and hypothetical feeling.”

So when James twists a key and a door flies open, revealing 2 Mannequins charging at me spitting acid (after a few tries) I’m able to calm down, observe, understand the timing, and fight my way out.

It’s not just experiencing fear and anxiety, but learning to remain functional along with it. And beautifully, it seems that our bodies can’t really tell that the experience is fake, so they internalize that learning just the same.

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Asma goes on in his essay to explain that

“Monsters can stand as symbols of human vulnerability and crisis, and as such they play imaginative foils for thinking about our own responses to menace.”

And in games we get to physically navigate a character through that vulnerability and those monstrous encounters.

This idea fits nicely with the apparently somewhat simple formula for creating good gaming horror (although I’m sure opinions may vary): create an empathetic character with something important to lose - like life. Then make them vulnerable to loss by forcing them into dangerous situations either via tasks that must be done or questions that must be answered.

Silent Hill 2 very effectively employs many of the tools of horror via art, sound design, and general atmosphere: grotesque + uncanny monsters, a constant feeling of dread, and the unstoppable descent into guilt and trauma induced madness.

From that first foggy walk through the forest, and initial exploration of the seemingly abandoned town, the vulnerability is palpable.

However, it also leverages storytelling and character development to push us to empathize with what’s going on in James’ mind and want to continue on so that we can unravel it, creating a deeply unsettling, overall experience where each challenge feels worthwhile.

The tension then comes from design that balances creating danger with providing enough tools to get through it. When the monster we’ve anticipated finally springs out of the shadows, the game has to make it just possible to survive (for instance a couple of bullets here and there, a health drink when you’re near collapse, and a trusty club with a few nails in the end).

And hopefully, each successful fight builds a bit more calm and confidence for the next one.

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While I know I’m nowhere near the scariest parts of Silent Hill, the creepier it gets the more it pulls me in.

So, while I’m a bit surprised I picked up this title, I’m determined to stick with it and get to the end, even if it takes me a while. And as a bonus, maybe I’ll pick up a few real life anxiety management techniques along the way.

Thanks so much for reading! If you’ve had this experience with a horror game, or even just have a favorite, please do share!

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I did the bulk of this writing at the end of a long workday, from beneath a pile of Kleenex and cough drop wrappers; debris from a cold that I’m sure I picked up due to a particularly brutal dentist appointment a week ago (although I have no scientific evidence or explanation to support that).

Needless to say I haven’t come to gaming lately looking for a massive challenge, and Wytchwood has been perfect for my current mood.

Wytchwood is a crafting adventure game in which you play as a somewhat crotchety, completely no nonsense, witch of the woods; puttering about, casting spells, and brewing potions to help solve the problems of the folk around you (and also hold up your end of a bargain that you made with a goat - only you can’t quite remember the details).

The world is intricate and beautiful, the art style inspired by storybook illustrations; and the repetitive nature of the “find resources -> use resources to craft” loop is incredibly soothing. Each little recipe you add to your grimoire builds into a fun story, woven from folklore and fairy tales, with familiar characters used in clever new ways.

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I’m nearly done with Wytchwood and will likely write something longer about it. However, since I do tend to fixate on themes, playing a witch game with so many little bits of fun lore made me want to actually learn a bit more about witches. Naturally I went to the Last Podcast on the Left reading list for a title, and was drawn to The History of Witchcraft and Demonology.

This is an odd book, written in the early 1920s by Montague Summers, an Anglican deacon who, for some reason, also cosplayed as a Catholic priest. He spent much of his career writing about the occult from the steadfast perspective that witches are real, and indeed commune with the devil and eat babies.

His intention in writing was to dispel historical inaccuracies in the depiction of witches that he believes are preventing us from fearing them as much as we should. He writes:

“A few authors have painted the medieval witch in pretty colours and satin. She has become a somewhat eccentric but kindly old lady, shrewd and perspicacious with a knowledge of healing and herbs and simples, ready to advise and help her neighbors.”

While I can’t say that his fears are not well founded (I have spent the last few weeks enjoying a virtual adventure based in this very notion), I’m also fascinated by how he seems to be highlighting the reality of the 17th century witch trials, but also somehow missing it. Essentially, that the civil and religious powers of the day weren’t brutally tormenting witches because of any deeply held belief that they were really wandering the woods at night making human sacrifices to Satan. They did it because “witches” were groups of people who presented a challenge to their power and the (patriarchal) social order that they’d established. Or as he puts it:

“It must be clearly born in mind that these heretical bodies with their endless ramifications were not merely exponents of erroneous religious and intellectual beliefs, by which they morally corrupted all who came under their influence, but they were avowed enemies of law and order, red hot anarchists who would stop at nothing to gain their ends.”

The book, as you can see, is over-written and academic, so the reading has been slow going, however, his views have ultimately been quite influential in pop culture (and games) and I hope to eventually learn enough about all of it to write something more comprehensive.

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You may wonder how I found myself curled up on a rainy Sunday afternoon, sipping a London fog, and reading such an esoteric historical text. And the answer is that I’ve been thoroughly influenced by the personal curriculum trend all over Youtube and Substack.

It’s quite self explanatory: pick a topic and build a syllabus of books and assignments to work through over some period of time you’ve chosen. And, most importantly, do it simply because it is enjoyable, and not because someone is telling you to.

I’m starting small, with this one book, and I’m not interested in applying any pressure or even structure quite yet, but I will absolutely continue to enjoy watching everyone else organizing and recapping.

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And that’s been my past few weeks! I am working on something longer, as I recently picked up Silent Hill, and, although I know I won’t finish it for ages, I already have so many thoughts and feelings.

I am also going to continue my witch pseudo curriculum, so if you have any interesting witch related material to share, please comment!

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Thank you for reading! If you’d like to be notified of more entries in this series, you can subscribe below!

“There should be no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation.”

—Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear

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There’s nothing quite like a drizzly day in Victorian London to put one in the mystery solving mood. When we first step into a gloomy 221B in Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened we encounter the seemingly inconsequential problem of a disappeared newspaper; just a small gap on Sherlock’s murder board that takes little time to solve.

It’s on its face an insignificant mystery, but once we pull the thread it unravels into a series of questions that take us, Sherlock and Watson all over the world in pursuit of that next little bit of knowledge.

A footprint in a back garden in London, an errant scrap of paper in a mental hospital in Switzerland, an oddly positioned bit of furniture in a mansion in New Orleans; every little thing draws notice because it connects one more dot.

And once all of those lines are drawn, an animation illuminates our completed path, the answer unfurls across the screen, and a hypothesis is finally confirmed. For a moment everything makes sense and we feel just a tiny bit more confidence as we move on to face the next question.

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If you, like me, spend too much time on TikTok, you likely remember the trend where people conducted their own “research” on the statistic that half of (non-pilot) men believe, if handed the controls to a Boeing commercial airliner mid flight, they would be able to land it. If you didn’t experience these videos first hand, you likely already guessed most men, when asked, 100% agreed.

@ian.guntherWould you trust us to land a plane in an emergency? 😂✈️ #gymnastics #olympics #gymnast #plane #airplane #team #sports

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Well I’m no better, because that is exactly how I feel about my ability to solve a murder if the opportunity ever came my way. And not just because of how much true crime I consume, but because, for better or for worse, almost nothing means more to me than finding an answer; and not just knowing a thing, but having figured the thing out after a borderline unreasonably relentless effort.

Collecting information, watching patterns emerge, solidifying an explanation, is akin to getting inside after a long, treacherous hike in the cold and wrapping yourself in a warm blanket. I wanted to get back into gaming again because I wanted to tap back into a type of pure enjoyment I feel like I’ve lost over the years, and of course I found myself drawn to titles that built the experience of finding answers into the play.

I’ve also lately been working my way through the psychological horrors of the Cthulhu Cycle. So Sherlock: The Awakened surfaced as a starting point that satisfied both cravings. A world of Sherlock where we could invoke order by figuring things out, but one that might also reveal itself to be something entirely different from what we once thought.

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Without straying into spoiler territory, that missing first newspaper turns into a missing man, which turns into more and more impossible mysteries. Sherlock’s “superpower” lets us take in tracks on the ground, broken bits of wood, an empty medicine jar, and recreate a chain of events; but it also sometimes throws us into an “upside down” where geometry doesn’t work the way it is supposed to.

Through the eyes of Sherlock we witness such strong evidence of a cosmic reality that we see him start to accept it, and that acceptance leaves him unmoored and questioning his own sanity.

Classic Lovecraftian faire: a man of learning pursuing the mysteries of the universe that are best left alone, and sacrificing his psyche in the process. To Sherlock, we can and should attempt to know and understand the world; but in Lovecraft there’s a universe outside of what the human mind can comprehend, and intellectual curiosity about it can be an existential risk.

I’ve enjoyed a number of Lovecraft/Sherlock crossovers over the years (The James Lovegrove’s “Cthulhu Casebooks”, Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald”) and wondered idly in passing why this combination of essentially opposing ideas draws in so many authors. I felt it had to be more than just the fact that both are in the public domain, although I’m sure that helps.

I finally stumbled on an excellent paper that seemed written to answer my question, Weird History / Weird Knowledge: H. P. Lovecraft versus Sherlock Holmes in Shadows Over Baker Street by Chloé Germaine Buckley.

The author explores the “Shadows over Baker Street” anthology (an anthology of short Sherlock + Lovecraft stories), and how “Weird fiction’s combination of speculation with absolute materialism provides a fertile imaginative space in which to explore these tensions in modern thought.”

In Sherlock’s world of the Enlightenment, the pursuit of knowledge through research, observation, and the other tools of information gathering, ultimately lead to an answer, putting everything in order. In Lovecraft’s world, the tools of inquiry are no different, but they lead to answers that the psyche can’t manage. The distance between believing and knowing is collapsed because the seemingly nonsensical things that the cultist or folklorist believes are verified by the tools of objective data gathering.

“Knowledge is not the result of a historical accumulation of data inexorably bringing the human perceiver closer to the truth about the world, but a single moment of horrified realization that recasts all prior knowledge as delusion.”

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All of that to say, one thing I find interesting in Lovecraft’s tales is that the narrators often know their undoing awaits (or at least strongly suspect it) and keep going anyway.

In one of his longer tales, and the one that fleshes out much of the mythos, “At the Mountains of Madness”, two explorers (academics) wander past a cavalcade of red flags into the depths of an Arctic mountain, taking photos and notes of each bit of evidence they encounter along the way, even as its clearly leading to a murderous eldritch monster.

This could be read as the narrators stubbornly resisting the reality of their situation or even a narrative device to get the reader in the mind of believing in the unreal horrors (“We can all see that this stuff is obviously real, you need to be running away!”)

But in “At the Mountains the Madness” the narrator explains:

“...there are those who will say Danforth and I were utterly mad not to flee for our lives after that; since our conclusions were now — notwithstanding their wildness — completely fixed… Perhaps we were mad — for have I not said those horrible peaks were mountains of madness? But I think I can detect something of the same spirit … Half‑paralysed with terror though we were, there was nevertheless fanned within us a blazing flame of awe and curiosity which triumphed in the end.”

Sometimes it seems as if the madness of knowing is preferable to the madness of not.

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At least once a day it seems, I find myself forwarding, or receiving, a piece of content along with the question “is this even real?” But more and more often than not, having no particular way to figure out the answer to that question. And maybe even more disheartening, less and less an inclination to try each time it happens.

Debates rage in the comments (“is this generated?”, “is this just rage bait?”, “is this large scale tragic event just part of some conspiracy?”). Who can say? Pulling any one of those threads will be maddening because there’s no end to it, and not even really anything to unravel.

I of course have no solution to this problem. I know I have to fight my impulse to check out completely, but I can’t seem to find the line where any engagement doesn’t feel exhausting and unhealthy.

What I do know is that next time I need a break from it all, I will be seeing what all the fuss is about at that Seance at Blake Manor.

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Thank you so much for reading! If you’ve found a great game, book, etc to escape into lately please share in the comments!

References

Buckley, Chloé Germaine. “Weird History / Weird Knowledge: H. P. Lovecraft versus Sherlock Holmes in Shadows Over Baker Street.” Sideways in Time: Critical Essays on Alternate History Fiction, edited by Glyn Morgan and Charul Palmer-Patel, Liverpool University Press, 2019, pp. 139–154.

Typically the New Year brings at least a bit of “new me” enthusiasm, but I started this year completely exhausted and burnt out. As 2025 came to an end, going on vacation, taking extra days off, becoming one with the couch for full weekends - absolutely nothing seemed to help. Reading, doomscrolling, a Real Housewives of Salt Lake City marathon, my brain still felt frayed at the edges and couldn’t grab on to any one thing long enough to focus.

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Every headline pushed out onto the web these days seems designed by a team of chaotic evil psychologists to snip any thread that still tethers the reader to functional sanity (“AI is doing absolutely every knowledge task known to man better than the smartest PhD’s now, and you should terrified”; “The top 50 reasons you’re unprepared for the coming recession - and how you can potentially survive even with less than $1 million saved”; “Top climate scientists say we only have 25 years left until the Earth turns into soup - and how millennials’ addiction to toilet paper is speeding up the timeline”; and so on). And for some reason my typical anxiety reduction protocol (work more - even when you’re on vacation or having a RHSLOC marathon - and focus more on your career) just isn’t working anymore.

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Then it occurred to me to revisit the things that brought me joy as a child, and something that I had completely forgotten about was gaming. Leave me alone on a summer vacation day with a few Caprisuns and Tales of Symphonia, or Final Fantasy X, or Golden Sun, or Luigi’s Mansion, or Super Mario Sunshine, or - well you get the idea - and I was in heaven.

And I LOVED to write. Made-up stories, my thoughts and feelings, whatever was on my mind. I collected and filled those $1 notebooks with sparkly gel pen ramblings like I was being paid to do it. But crucially, given the issue at hand, I wasn’t, it just made me feel better.

And that’s what’s going on here in this blog. Gaming and writing about it is a little thing that I can have that’s just mine to look forward to, and maybe share with other people who feel the same way.

And crucially it’s something I can be bad at; no frameworks, goals, milestones, or God forbid KPIs to meet. It has been at least a decade and half since I’ve played; I am _not_ good, and I do not care. Maybe I’ll get better as I keep going, maybe I’ll keep getting my ass handed to me in Hollow Knight dozens of times before I finally realize how to cause damage to a level boss. But I don’t care, because each time I die, it makes me laugh, and when I finally do figure it out, my brain gives itself a sparkly gold star sticker that no one cares about but me.

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Right now I don’t really have much of a plan, but more of a general direction, that will hopefully develop over time. The idea is to write about video games (collections of thoughts that I’ll call essays, “playing right now” gaming journal posts, maybe sometimes even something technical about video game creation).

The first game I picked up was Sherlock: The Awakened, and it led me to some interesting reading around the cathartic nature of the Sherlock + Cthulhu/Lovecraft crossover that I think would be fun to write about.

But I stocked up quite a bit during Steam Next Fest, and I’ve discovered I’m as much a mood gamer as I am a mood reader.

So Wytchwood, The Seance at Blake Manor, and The Hike are in the mix as well. Maybe it’s escapism, but for the first time in a while I’m really excited about something, and if this resonates with you, welcome along for the ride!

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