The eerie and the uncanny are two similar descriptions of situations which invoke a sense of uneasiness. In fact, the two are so interrelated that definitions of uncanny often include a feeling of eeriness (which doesn’t help when trying to differentiate between the two). In class, we described the eerie as something present when there’s supposed to be nothing, or nothing present when there’s supposed to be something. This description is not far off from the one presented in “The Uncanny” which states “everything is uncanny that out to have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes to light”(4). Both involve something being present when it typically isn’t. They also both rely on some degree of unknown. Once that uncertainty disappears and you know exactly what has been presented to you, any suspicions go out the window and take the eerie and the uncanny with it.
However, there are small subtleties that distinguish the two which I better understood after exploring The Flat by Andy Campbell. The Flat is undoubtedly an uncanny piece of work. The fact that you are placed in this unknown environment with no sense of what is going on captures the uncanny feeling of something being oddly familiar. To further push the point, the last line of text states “what you didn’t see was what happened when you weren’t here”. While the setting of an apartment is a familiar scene to most, the fact that you don’t know what’s going on, and the odd placement of certain objects throughout the flat create suspicion. Furthermore, the lone figure outside of the end of the work provides an example of how questioning if “an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate,”(5) contributes to the uncanny.
With the eerie, things show up when they aren’t expected and more so contribute to a feeling of fear than the uncanny. With our example from class, you know people are supposed to be roaming our campus, so if one day everyone mysteriously disappeared, that would be eerie. With the uncanny, everyone didn’t disappear, but you notice they seem a bit off. People might be acting differently than usual, or there’s a weird vibe in the air. In the Flat, the eerie could correlate to returning and expecting people to be over but they aren’t. When going through The Flat, I assumed I was alone and not expecting anyone so I wasn’t surprised by the lack of people. However, even without knowing much about the apartment, I had a feeling that something felt off. That is what is core to the uncanny.
In the scope of the class so far, this piece utilizes interactivity as a tool for storytelling like we’ve seen in most of the works we’ve examined. This interactivity gives the reader agency in the sense that they are able to decide which areas they want to explore. Even though there is no explicit end goal, this work encourages multiple plays as the reader tries to understand the story.