My Hobby of Horrors
How can anyone find pleasure in the horrific? Find joy in terror? I am not referring to a case of schadenfreude, chuckling at a bird gliding into a freshly waxed window, but rather a sickly, sinful pleasure from the truly repugnant. A sense of blissful consternation from the ruination of another. A sense of wonder for the macabre. For me, horror is a hobby.
Horror stems from many areas of the human psyche. For some, horror takes the form of gruesome bodily harm or grotesque acts of violence. For others, horror may be purely psychological, taking root inside of one’s mind and later germinating into phobias. For me, though, true horror is far more nebulous. The universe is a limitless black void of uncertainty and speculation. Too often it is assumed that humanity holds the lofty position as its sovereign ruler. Beings with incomprehensible power, knowledge, and ability may be just outside the field of view. The hopes, dreams, goals, and passions of humanity mean nothing to a race that can traverse the vacuous expanse of space. We experience this dynamic in our everyday lives, squashing a bug, yanking a weed out of the garden, or ensnaring a rat in a trap; all of these can be interpreted as grisly acts of brutality. To us, these acts are axiomatic to our way of life, nothing more than a chore to be checked off a list. Cosmic horror plays on this dynamic, and reflects our hubris back on us, transforming us into bugs about to be pulverized.
My fascination with cosmic horror began when I was in high school, still figuring out my own identity. I had been invited to a friend’s house for a game night, a concept at that time still foreign to me. Up until that point, I used games as a primarily solitary means to escape from the monotony of day-to-day life, to live out a fantasy only possible in the vast vistas of the imagination.
When I arrived at my friend’s house that fated Saturday night, I was greeted by the familiar faces of my friends gathering up “supplies”—snacks mostly—for the adventure we were all about to embark upon. After ransacking the pantry, one by one, we descended the dimly lit staircase into the cold, but fortunately carpeted basement. As we turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, the room opened, and in its center was a white plastic folding table with four matching chairs, three of which were laid claim to with a red Solo cup near the chair’s proximity. Each sanguine chalice had a name etched in black marker and lay in a pool of its own cold and clammy sweat: a poetic portent of the fright I was soon to experience.
Resting on the gritty surface of the plastic table was an unfamiliar box large enough to store a dead cat. The aberrant box, and the mysteries of its contents, began to swirl and chip into my brain like warm chocolate in the final moments of preparing Stracciatella. Had death and sickness been stored in this box, intended to be locked away, never to be seen again? Were the powers that lay within its walls beseeching my presence; gnawing at my gangling curiosity, beckoning me to meet a fate not unlike Pandora?
Printed on the top of the box is a strange piece of artwork depicting a scene of three people riding in a black Model A through a foggy, bleak forest with only the full moon for illumination. In betwixt the trees, glowing green eyes peer sinisterly, waiting for their chance to strike from the shadows. The group in the car are being pursued by a crimson, multi-tendrilled abomination, each tentacle ending with a mouth or maw uniquely shaped and disturbing; two of the passengers, a man in a trench coat wielding a .45 Thompson, and a woman with a Mauser or some type of revolver—hard to tell exactly—are raining lead into the creature, seemingly to no avail. In the background of the image there is a mausoleum positioned on top of a hill with silhouettes of, what I assumed to be at the time, large bats, or carrion of some variety. The whole piece is bordered by a wrought-iron fencing pattern which encases the game’s title, Arkham Horror: The classic game of LOVECRAFTIAN ADVENTURE.
The game had not even begun and already I was entranced, perplexed, and filled with curiosity. What is that tentacled monster? Why is it chasing these people? What heads hold the eyes of the ones staring from the woods? What is LOVECRAFTIAN ADVENTURE? What the heck is Arkham, and why is it so horrible?
These questions continued to float around in my mind like a bloated whale carcass as my friends and I began the monstrous task of setting up the game. Opening the lid unveiled the menagerie of components that went along with the nearly three-foot by two-foot long gameboard. In the box were hundreds of cards of different colors and sizes, dozens of cardboard squares depicting various monsters, weird-looking red and blue pill tokens, tokens with magnifying glasses on them, cardboard money in multiple denominations, brains, hearts, tokens with strange portals on them, and a set of six six-sided dice. After about thirty minutes or so of meticulous placing and careful arrangement of the game pieces to ensure the four of us would still have a place to sit down, my friends and I were nearly ready to play this behemoth of recreational entertainment. At that point, the game looked more an autopsy than a means for a good time on a Saturday night. Decks of cards strewn about the feet of the board stood like canopic jars, half a dozen plastic sandwich bags laid beneath the cards housed the cardboard monsters, brains, hearts, portals, magnifying glasses, and those red and blue pill tokens whose purpose still eluded me.
The vibrancy of the bottom of the table is stoically contrasted by the game boards’ muted beige palette, which upon proper inspection shows a map of a city. Arkham. The map is divided into districts, each of which are color coordinated and each of which are comprised of two or three locations. While most of the districts have generic names like Downtown, Uptown or Southside, Miskatonic University stuck out to me amongst the rest. What do the students at Miskatonic study? I wondered. The right side of the board, labeled “Other Worlds,” displays eight circles sliced in twain containing pieces of art eldritch in nature. These Other Worlds had names like R’lyeh, Yuggoth, and Plateau of Leng; names that sound and feel truly alien. The bottom of the board features a “Terror Track” counting from zero to ten, and a second section called “City Limits” which has three zones, “Outskirts,” “Sky,” and “Lost in Time & Space.” How do I get lost in time and space? Before I could fixate on and collect my thoughts about the strange places I was about to investigate, my eyes quickly glanced to the top of the game board and became transfixed on the monstrosity that crowned it.
Nyarlathotep. The human tongue contorts in unforeseen ways to create the syllables required to speak its name. A name that when spoken aloud creates an immediate sense of unease. I was told by a friend at the table that Nyarlathotep is what is called an “Ancient One,” a sort of terrible, old, apathetic, and fearsome deity from the far reaches of the cosmos. Nyarlathotep is depicted as a slender amalgamation of tendrils and claws undulating from a conical shaped head with marble like eyeballs draped in a metallic blue green. It was this being whose summoning we were tasked with thwarting. What schemes could the alien god plot? What does it want with Arkham? Who would worship and revere such a being as a deity? The concept of an alien god arriving on Earth and wreaking havoc on the planet gripped me, and still does to this day. What is to say that the god(s) that brought the existence of life have any resemblance of empathy towards its creations? Does a human care for the ant when he steps into the grass?
I took my place at the table and it was then that one of my friends handed me an investigator card. Printed on glossy card stock, this 5”x7” sheet placed in front me had a picture of a young woman with short blonde hair, half-moon reading glasses, and a green sweater pulled over a light-blue dress. Next to the image reads Amanda Sharpe, the student. I began to ponder on what life for Amanda Sharpe must have been like in fictional 1920s Massachusetts. What does Amanda study at Miskatonic? What are her talents? What does she have to hide? What does she fear? Upon further examination of Amanda’s investigator card, I was able to glean the purpose of some of the tokens I had helped excavate from their box-shaped sarcophagus. The brains and hearts represent a player’s sanity and stamina, respectively. Those blue and red pill tokens are used to track the stats of your investigator, and the magnifying glasses represent clues gathered by the players. Like Amanda, I was beginning to unravel the mystery surrounding Arkham Horror.
Turn by turn I was drip fed the rules of the game, allowing me to sink into Arkham’s dreary and bleak atmosphere. Portals to other dimensions were appearing all throughout the boroughs of the city, and it was up to our intrepid group of—a student, a photographer, a mob boss, and a dilletante—to put a stop to it and seal the gates shut. The game oozed with dread—each encounter in Arkham provoked a sense of hopelessness I had never experienced in a game before. Each encounter was represented with a card which described the events that transpired, resulting in some change to the game state. Some of the cards also featured quotes from stories I had not yet read but was sure to make mental note for future reference. Many of the monsters running rampant in Arkham were as alien as their Ancient One deity, but a smattering of classic gothic horror threats like ghouls and swarms of vermin made appearances as well. With each passing turn, the state of the game descended further and further into madness. Despite our cooperative efforts, investigators were beaten, robbed, mangled, and driven to the brink of insanity in the pursuit of preventing the summoning of Nyarlathotep. Ultimately however, we had failed in our initial duty and we now had to face the consequences.
As the final showdown for the fate of all humanity began, my friends and I took the card representing the Ancient One and moved it to the center of the board. Nothing but the destruction of this eldritch force would sate our appetite for alien blood. Each roll of the dice was a roller coaster of emotions as we desperately threw everything we had gathered up until that point at the alien god. Each success felt like an achievement against impossible odds. Each failure, a submission to the will of Nyarlathotep. The witching hour was upon us and I was destined to make the final roll. I gathered my wits, and as calmly as a teenage boy with too much caffeine could, cupped the dice and tossed my hands to-and-fro until a bead of sweat ran down my forehead. I hurled the dice, pelting the board with pent up cubed fury. The results were astounding. Every roll had failed. I had failed the world! The Ancient One breached our world, and all was forever doomed.
As we were packing up Arkham for the night, my friend who owned the game was thrilled with how close we were to victory. “Yeah, but we didn’t win,” I remember naively saying to him. “What, you thought we were going to win?” My friend’s reply to my ignorance seemed smug at first, but upon further reflection, carried with it a poignant observation. Arkham Horror used its entire arsenal against us to further the ends of Nyarlathotep and impeded every effort we made to prevent this outcome. At first, I felt I was pilfered of some grandiose ending where Amanda would defy all odds and defeat Nyarlathotep, not unlike Frodo in Lord of the Rings casting the One ring into the fires of Mt. Doom to defeat Sauron. But after we finished stuffing the organs of the game back into its hellish cadaver, said our good-byes, and each of us returned home, my mind kept wandering back to the world of Arkham Horror.
Still transfixed on the themes, setting, monsters, locales, and characters that comprised the games world, I spent the following Sunday questioning my friend about where I could find more information about Arkham. The next day in school my friend loaned me his copy of The Call of Cthulhu, and other weird tales by H.P. Lovecraft. When I read the titular story, I immediately recognized the opening lines from days prior; lines that to this day I still find eerie and chilling. More importantly, however, I began to understand what themes the game was trying to portray. Knowledge is power in this universe, and that power comes at the hefty price of the seeker’s sanity. Arkham wants the players to not only feel like the odds are stacked against them, but to feel like they have no chance, that all hope is lost.
This nihilistic world view challenged my philosophies, my beliefs, and made me reconsider previous assumptions. What if the God of the Bible was just Nyarlathotep, a frenetic, callous cornucopia of tendrils and claws, who adheres to no laws? There is nothing to suggest—scientifically speaking—that this is not possible. What if the assumption that God loves us is a lie that we tell ourselves to dissociate from the harsh reality of apathy? Apart from books written by humans, we have no evidence to suggest that such a being would love us. To the contrary, Yahweh was quick to smite those who had forsaken him. Humanity often uses knowledge to wage war on, cause pain to, or undercut others. A god could argue that ending our existence is for our own good, claiming it would end all suffering.
Horror, in its own visceral way, connects us to our surroundings. Horror makes us question the world with a well-placed sense of skepticism We fear what we do not know, and we use that fear like a compass to guide us across the black seas of infinity and into the safety of the familiar. Horror also shows us what we value most, and what we are most willing to fight for. Horror is often a vehicle to display acts of heroism, perseverance, and wit in grueling, tense, life-threatening situations. In the case of Arkham horror, it showcases our most fatal flaws, our darkest secrets, and crippling weaknesses to create a challenging and engaging board game filled with gripping, pulpy action.
I came to find a twisted sense of belonging in the world of Arkham. As I played more, each of the characters began to feel less like game pieces and more like lost friends or relatives; the streets of Arkham started to feel like old stomping grounds and the monsters, aliens and elements of horror resonated with me. Arkham began to feel like home.
