Scary Ghost Story!

[LesliePHX]

A haunted house story to chill your bones ...

www.dionaea-house.com (http://www.dionaea-house.com)

It's a ghost story for modern times, written entirely in the form of Emails, chat logs, blogs, etc. Be sure to click on the "updates" link at the end (not the one on the first page, that'll just confuse everything).

I haven't read a spooky story this good in a long time so I had to recommend it. Even people who don't like spooky stories like this one.

Leslie

[xiknal]

:shocked :eek :run

after reading this, I wanted to erase all my cookies, shut down my computer and thank my lucky stars (once again) that I do not live in Houston!

But for comfort, after reading the tale above, read this:

forums.unfiction.com/foru...torder=asc (http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?start=0&submit=Go&t=7533&postdays=0&postorder=asc)

and:

www.heisserer.com (http://www.heisserer.com)


by the way:

Dionaea muscipula: Venus' Flytrap

[LesliePHX]

Right! The author is a Los Angeles screenwriter who wrote the thing as a companion piece to a film he is pitching to producers.

He explains it all here:
www.dionaea-house.com/afterword.htm (http://www.dionaea-house.com/afterword.htm)

Here's an excerpt:

"Dionaea House is a companion piece to a feature film I'm pitching. From day one, it was my plan to share the URL only to producers and other business contacts. It's clean and easy to send along, versus paper and brads. Early on I shared the link to a few friends for some peer review."

I still get the creeps thinking about it. Did you read the babysitter's log?

Leslie

[Leslie]

(I can't seem to edit my post from this remote location)

P.S.,the link above used to be in one of the author's posts in the long list of responses that follow the final spooky one. For some reason he deleted the link a few days ago.

[xiknal]

OMG...a yahoo! group to discuss the unfolding meta-tale of Dionaea House!! I am gonna purge all my cookies for sure! Right now! This monster will get us all via the Internet! It lives on electricity as a staple, and devours users' souls for dessert! :shocked

Yes, I read the babysitter's log...no more bathtubs for me! :nono

er, um, thanks, Les; this tale is pretty scary all right! It takes Lovecraftian horror to a new level.

[Leslie]

Gosh, I never thought about it like that, but it would all work, wouldn't it? Paraphrase from the story: "It's skepticism plus curiosity that snares them." :)

About the babysitter's log -- I thought the string in the bathtub thing was one of the least scary things in the story because it was all laid out for us. The scarier stuff (I think) was where stuff was only hinted at, leaving the rest to our imaginations, like Mark's keys and the last entry in the babysitter's log, "found you," with the link back to Jenny's intro -- It took me a day or so to figure out what that even meant and put the whole thing together. (Less simple-minded folks probably got it right off.)

Woo! Shivers! I loves me a good ghost story.

[xiknal]

I found the red room in the dollhouse that "smells like cookies and candy" to be right up there at max creepy also.

The string in the faucet was apparently in one of Eric H's dreams, which is why he included it.

I have been sharing this with some friends--including one who has published some science fiction and horror short stories (not recently). She thinks this is really good!

Some of the discussions about this site have mentioned a book titled The House of Leaves (dunno the author); those who've read both seems to think it is scarier still, and some have suggested that Heisserer borrowed its theme. Makes me want to track it down, perhaps...but...yeech! I don't want to lie awake at night listening for things in the walls...:eek

Did you ever play Red Rover?
Wasn't "send Jenny right over" the last entry in Dani's log? Of course...who knows who...or what...typed it.

And then...tmptest.attic...did you ever figure that one out?

[LesliePHX]

I'm glad your friend likes it!

<Wasn't "send Jenny right over" the last entry in Dani's log? Of course...who knows who...or what...typed it.>

Oh, now, this is creepy. The first time I read Dani's log, I didn't catch the Oct. 31 "found you" entry at the top either. Just like you, the "send Jenny right over" was the last entry I read. When I went back to read the story again, the Oct. 31 one was there. At the time, I wondered how I had missed it before.

It's a link to the profile Jenny made when she registered with the Blog service in order to communicate with Eric. Jenny's profile has a link to Eric's "private" blog. But if anybody clicked on Jenny's Eric blog link before reading all the stuff that comes after the Oct. 21 "Red Rover" entry Dani's journal, they would miss a bunch of stuff. So maybe it only shows up the second time you go to Dani's journal site? Jeepers, is it even possible to set up a web page to work that way? Am I making any sense at all?

Jeez, this is confusing!!! But if you have time, please do go back to Dani's journal, and you should find the "found you" link as the last (top) entry. I guess by then the house had taken complete control of the girl and was typing through her.

How is it that we both missed it the first time we read the girl's journal? I feel like we are in the story for real now!

<And then...tmptest.attic...did you ever figure that one out?>

No, I have no idea what that means.

Yeeks! Iss a thrillin' chillin' story. :D

Leslie

[xiknal]

I am sure that when I was first reading Dani's journal I was doing it so quickly that I did not see the 'found you' entry dated 10-31. It surely was there???!! It better have been! I went back to the entries concerning MrParanoia and his first contact with Eric, dated 10-17 (after the keys turned up and were IDed), and threaded those dates in with Dani's and Eric's journals. So it appears that the house "took over" Dani on the 21st, and went looking for Jenny, and THEN on the 22nd Eric got the link from MrParanoia, and somewhere in there Jenny got the keys and headed straight to Phoenix, didn't she?

So...she went to the Fry's and...they had Dani's address. I suppose they must have! And thus...'found you'. Maybe MrParanoia was Dani by then.

The computer alert came on as the lights went off briefly and the flytrap dimension--the upstairs--became visible. The program was called tmptest_attic (or something similar) though it was not a link (someone will probably create a link, just for the purpose). could it be 'tempt test'--as in 'come hither, my sweet juicy prey'? Meanwhile the hall leading to the upstairs warms up and smells like a bakery. And the rest of the house gets colder.

Is no one else here reading this? C'mon, y'all, join in the fun!!:run

[LesliePHX]

Barb, I think you might be making the same mistake I made when I first read the found you link -- thinking that it meant Jenny had found Dani, rather than Dionaea (I'll use that word rather than "the house") finding Jenny online.

Only Dani could have made the "found you" post (Dani controlled by Dionaea) because it was her journal -- Jenny can't post in Dani's journal -- so the message means Dionaea had found Jenny on the Net, not that Jenny had found Dani. The link to Jenny's blog profile is Donaea's proof.

I don't think Jenny ever went to Phoenix. Remember how Jenny tries to talk Eric out of going to the house by saying, "Remember when you talked me out of going to Phoenix?" or something like that?

I'm not sure what MrParanoia is supposed to be, other than another tug at Eric to explore further. Was he controlled by the house, or was he just a long-time Dionaea watcher, a little removed from the action? What do you mean when you say he might have become Dani?

Your "tempt test" theory is really interesting! That makes sense. The house has been doing its bad old thing for centuries, but it's new to the Internet age and has to test out the possibilities. What better place to do it than in the home of two tech geeks (Dani's words, not mine!) who have all the latest equipment?!?

Gosh, I love this! This is fun!

Leslie

[xiknal]

Yep, I did think that Jenny went to Phoenix, but now I don't know what to think. I assumed the keys would suck her in. I didn't ever think that she could post in Dani's journal; I assumed that hollowed-out Dani did that last post after connecting with Jenny somehow--either in Phoenix or on the net. Jenny apparently got grabbed, from Eric's failed attempts to contact her starting--as I recall--Oct. 26.

What do you think happened to her?
Did the local flesh puppets get her?

MrParanoia is an important link in there, and I don't think he is Dani--that was pure, hasty speculation. He has excellent insight, and connected the dots (which puts him at risk unless he's in cahoots).

And what about x@x.x who sent that newsbit from Scottsdale about dem bones in de street? Hoo dat?

Did you happen to see that Jenny's profile has had some 3000-plus hits?

I think the spookiest aspect of this story is the way it teases and baits the edge of reality...because the very skepticism and curiosity which (as we are told) ensnares Dionaea's victims are the natural responses of people picking up on this story. Even though we know (or have been told!) this is a work of fiction, we find it has indefinite edges as it interfaces with its readership. It metastasizes into its readership...look at us! :shocked A lot of people might well think it's nonfiction, especially at first, and who knows what the conspiracists make of it.;)

Did you look at the 180-plus readers' comments?

[noflyingfan]

Maybe I should give this thing another read, because I didn't think it was scary at all. I found it kind of predictable. I only read the e-mails from Mark, and I didn't care to read anything else. I think he should have broken up the e-mail format with a little narrative here and there, or something, because with just the e-mails, it was too contrived. It started out with a small newspaper story about a guy he hasn't thought of in years, and all of a sudden he's obsessed about finding answers? And he described in the e-mails, at length, events the recipient supposedly witnessed.

Edit: I went back and read Danielle's journal, and I'm still not scared. I don't know, I just don't get what's so creepy about it.

[xiknal]

Erika wrote:

and all of a sudden he's obsessed about finding answers? And he described in the e-mails, at length, events the recipient supposedly witnessed.

I agree about this being contrived; I noticed the same thing. But--unless the author had chosen to use more a standard narrative device, this was the only way he could introduce the background. My solution would have been to have the two main characters be much more current from the outset, and have Mark's recollection of Drew's weirdness at their last gaming night be immediately recalled.

As for why you don't find it scary--I can't explain that! Maybe not much creeps you out in general, or maybe the flaws in the writing overrode its realism for you to a great degree? As a professional writer, you are more sensitive to this than I am.

I am not particularly spooked by a lot of horror (though I did find the Alien/Aliens series pretty creepy and suspenseful--how 'bout you?), but, like Leslie, I found this one scary. I think that standard narrative would betray it too early on as fiction (though the weak background-history strategy at the beginning did that for me).

I really appreciate its convoluted, figure-it-out-later quality and the way it interfaces with reality via the internet.

Maybe we should start a discussion on what creeps us out? I sorta doubt that fearful fliers are any more susceptible than normals to horror and suspense, but it might be fun to see. :lol

[noflyingfan]

I think the contrived quality could easily have been avoided (or at least sidestepped a little) if he had included more of Eric's responses. Every once in awhile, one of Mark's e-mails quoted something Eric had written to him, but if this had been done more, I think the exposition wouldn't have seemed so...expositiony.

And as a friend of mine pointed out, guys don't usually talk to each other that way.

I think that's really what ruined the story for me, honestly. I just got so frustrated reading it that no matter how good the story was, I wouldn't have liked it because I didn't like the way it was written.

[LesliePHX]

Barb wrote:

Jenny apparently got grabbed, from Eric's failed attempts to contact her starting--as I recall--Oct. 26.

No, no, she couldn't have gotten grabbed because remember, she responds to the last post in his "private" blog on Oct. 31, and then the house (really hollowed-out Dani) responds to her by inviting her in and saying "All the boys are here."

I'll write more later on ... training ... pooped.

Leslie

[xiknal]

oh, yeah...that's at the start of the 187 comments. I suppose I didn't give those due consideration because I wasn't sure if they were insider or outsider (author or fans) in origin. But their links lead to the characters, so they must have been placed by Heisserer. OK...

So why was she so slow about getting back to Eric over those several days?

:scratch

I haven't really given this story quite enough time...too busy!