Is it normal to have a walkthrough of a book’s first dozen pages or so? Absolutely not (after all, who wants an in-depth tour of, say, the title page or other assorted front matter niceties?). Then again, Horrors Untold isn’t anywhere near a normal project, literary or otherwise, and understanding the very deliberate, very time-consuming thought processes we went through to deliver the opening scenes will, I think, show a bit of the alchemy – and, more importantly, the horror immersiveness – that was conjured up for this undertaking (it also gets to show how all those unique elements we discussed previously are actually put into practice, making the transition from abstract concept to actual, “boots on the [narrative] ground” action).

We wanted to open our strange love child of Halloween Horror Nights, creepy storytelling, and puzzle-solving fandoms on the strongest possible note of intrigue, mystery, and, just maybe, menace. We accomplished that by having as our first page a picture of the missing Hunter Spivey’s corpse – yes, right up front, we’re revealing that the 30-year-old writer has, indeed, shuffled off this mortal coil – realized almost in autopsy-esque fashion.

(Missed our first post and need just a quick primer on Hunter? Easy: he’s a former haunt blogger who decided to go all-in on HHN Orlando, got caught up in wider, weirder events, and ended up missing in short order. A mysterious figure, who’s referred to as Writer 1 among us creators, intervened, finished his book, and shipped it off to you in the hopes of “helping” you discover what happened to the fan-favorite social-media personality – and, more importantly, why.)

By setting up the all-important first page in this cryptic, eye-catching way, we were hoping to accomplish several different-but-equally-important tasks all in one fell swoop:

• Attention-grabbing – the whole point of a splash page is to stop you as the reader in your tracks and get a stranglehold on your attention, and its usage here in Horrors Untold is no different: someone has died, even though you may not have a clue as to who Mr. Spivey is just yet, and you are going to be front and center in trying to solve the mystery behind that death. Plus, by having those lines off to the sides of poor Hunter’s body, we’re planting the seeds of a key notion in your head right away – namely, that you’ll need to write (yes, actually write) in this big beautiful book that you just got.
• Puzzles – as we talked about last time, Horrors Untold’s riddles are a major distinguishing factor in what makes its experience so unique, and here, right from the jump, you get just a taste of what those will entail. This is chiefly accomplished by a cryptic handwritten clue that reads, “Head – left arm + right arm + hand + legs – guts = ???” which actually works on two levels: it’s an equation that you’ll need to ultimately solve, in order to unlock an extra bit of the story towards the very end of the proceedings, but it’s also a tampered-with equation, establishing on the first page the fact that various individuals have worked their way through all 320 pages and attempted to manipulate their contents. Speaking of which…
• Multiple narratives – even before the crossed-out letter in this marginal comment, which may be too much of a subtle cue for some, we make it pretty clear (well, “pretty clear” in a purely implied, contextual manner, of course [which is the chief operating principle of this whole project]) that there are dual efforts at shaping the content on the page, which means dual efforts at (mis)informing you, the reader. Starting right with the book’s third sentence, we see Writer 2, as we refer to her internally, sliding in and marking up Writer 1’s work, inserting her own commentary, questioning his, and generally establishing the rather schizophrenic nature of the entire enterprise, all the way up to its explosive, ambiguous ending (see what I was saying about implications and context?).

In short, this single page was meant to be something of a gauntlet that we threw brazenly to the ground, declaring in no vague terms that you’re heading into uncertain waters from here on out.

The second page may, upon first blush, seem like we’re already backing off that dramatic gauntlet-throwing, but, in fact, it has a lot going on under the hood: this is the merging of our unusual layout and interactivity with a standard book page, submerging the more unique aspects of our atmospheric undertaking so that they lurk threateningly (or is that promisingly?) right under the surface. And all of this starts with Writer 1’s explanation of what you, as the reader, will need to do regarding that mysterious, stop-you-in-your-tracks body diagram on the previous page – recreate a series of strange sigils upon it, symbols that, supposedly, the unnamed editor/narrator/mastermind had witnessed upon the real Hunter’s real body. Yes, this means that, at certain strategic points throughout the book, you’ll need to flip back to the very first page, continuing to fill it in with your drawings (yet another reason why this was placed where it was, to allow for perpetual easy access).

Different members of our creative team actually got quite excited by this element, both its concept and its placement. For our puzzle designer, the impeccable Mairi Nolan, she loved the fact that the illustration of the late blogger’s body would serve as an immediate, visual indicator of your progress not only through the book (or, at least, through the HHN portions of it, since those chapters are the ones where the Writer 1 riddles live), but also through this first bucket of gameplay challenges – the “meta-mechanic,” she kept referring to it as. For Jamie Nash, the talented writer-director-producer who served as our story consultant, he really responded to the fact that, as you continue to change as a reader, responding to the latest informational twists of Horror Nights and dramatic turns of the original story, Hunter’s body would keep changing, as well – as would the book itself, an external manifestation of this underlying internal reality. It’s almost as if Horrors Untold were a living, breathing entity of its own (which, again, how many novels can say that?).

(There was, additionally, an unintended consequence to implementing this drawing-on-a-character’s-corpse mechanic, one that we had to stop and discuss as a team: it’s almost as if you, even if only subconsciously, are personally doing this to Mr. Spivey, inscribing these strange, seemingly ritualistic sigils on his flesh. It was decided that, yes, it may engender a certain level of discomfort for some members of the audience, but it would be worth it due to [a] the further level of immersiveness it would engender, and [b] the sheer innovation of it.)

Another way the unusualness of Horrors Untold peeks through the ordinary-looking veneer of this page is via the little instruction, positioned after Writer 1’s formally written note, to have you skip right ahead to page six of the book. While the suggestion of a nonlinear reading experience isn’t a dominant refrain – it’s nowhere near as prevalent as, say, Writer 1’s puzzles that are positioned throughout the Halloween Horror Nights sections – it’s nonetheless an important one, particularly at such an early juncture; it underscores the interactivity of the experience, gives you permission to hop around the 320 pages in a non-sequential fashion (something that is especially important to HHN readers who may only want to drill down into their favorite event for their current reading session), and, finally, engender yet another sense of uncertainness or, perhaps, unease – who do you trust, Writer 1 or 2? Do you plow methodically ahead, regardless of what your instructions are, or do you take that leap of faith? And then, once you are there on page six, do you backtrack to the previous ones or just carry on?

All throughout its long and sometimes-convoluted development process, we wanted Horrors Untold to create a unique and, just perhaps, visceral reading atmosphere. We wanted you to feel like you were in a haunt, of sorts, with a readily identifiable path forward, but one that may occasionally branch off and that always, to one degree or another, deep in the background or screaming up in the foreground, felt treacherous.

(Just for fun, I’m including here the first-draft version of page one, back when we were trying to merge the imagery of the finalized version with the text, exposition, and instruction of what would ultimately become page two. This approach was abandoned for several reasons, starting with the simple fact that everything was just too crowded, squeezing the image down and, therefore, reducing its visual impact and practical utility, and ending with the space limitations for the text; when you have to do a considerable amount of heavy lifting, establishing Hunter’s fate, your role in “investigating” it, setting up the puzzle mechanics around it, and introducing the somewhat-flexible reading approach, you need every last letter you can cram onto the page.)

This is part two of an ongoing series about Horrors Untold, the HHN guidebook/immersive horror mystery. You can read samples and buy your copy here or jump back to the table of contents here.