NIGHTTIME LOGIC

A stranger appears at your door and knows everything about you. A figure looms in the dark by your bed every night without explanation. You receive a photo of yourself from an anonymous phone number. You find yourself in a series of connected rooms, a liminal space where there can be any one or anything behind the corner. All of these scenarios elicit the icky, unsettling feeling of the uncanny valley. While we’ve all experienced feeling “a little weird,” to truly understand uncanny horror is to also understand, as Kelly Link says, when describing Nighttime Logic, the way “moments of trauma rearrange, disrupt, and reverse how we make sense of the world.” In other words, as writers, understanding the uneasy nature of horror can help us face the true monsters of reality. In this class, we will examine the feeling of terror before the horror is defined. We will see the ways in which playing with time and withholding information create a sense of dread; how the uneasiness of strangers in fiction is influenced by ancient folklore and the way industrialization and modern anxieties influence “creepypastas” and “the Backrooms.” How do the bureaucracy and constraints of the modern world create a specter of its own? What happens when our illusions of safety break down and what gets let inside? Coursework will include weekly, in-class writing assignments, a reading journal and one completed short story.