On the rare occasion, I wake up in the middle of the night and roll over while I am half asleep. In my blurry vision, I see my coat hanging on the wall. However, the combination of poor lighting and my blurry vision makes my coat seem just dissimilar enough to be a cause for alarm. Consequently, I am now fully awake and adrenaline is rushing through my system. So much for going back to sleep. This is one scenario in my life which I consider uncanny. Despite knowing I hang my coat there and the repeated occurrences of this scenario, my inability to immediately identify the dark figure in my room still results waking up.
This story came to my mind after playing Andy Campbell’s The Flat. A normal household, like my coat, should cause no alarm. However, the addition of a few special effects changes the entire situation. Just as darkness and blurry vision contributed to my sleepless night, Campbell used darkness, unsettling audio, and even perspective to create the uncanny nature of The Flat. As an example of perspective, I began panning up in the starting screen. As the top of the stairs came into view, I saw what I thought was another person. As I continued panning up, I realized it was a coat.
While I agree that uncanniness comes, at least in part, from the returned of the repressed, as Freud argues in “The Uncanny,” I believe a certain aspect of the uncanny arises from the unknown. As I see my coat in the darkness or as I see a figure at the top of the stairs, I do not feel uneasy due to some repressed memory or forgotten tragedy. Rather, I do not recognize my coat in such a dazed state and nearly a million thoughts rush through my head at once because I do not immediately know what it is. The figure at the top of the stairs, as far as I was concerned, was very real and potentially hazardous, especially considering the atmosphere that Campbell established. Essentially, the unknown is unsettling as our mind prepares for the worst.
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