House of Leaves (14 page)

Though Posah goes on to discuss the cultural aspects and consequences of beauty, these details in particular are most disturbing, especially in light of the fact that little of their history appears in the film.

Considering the substantial coverage present in
The Navidson Record
,
it is unsettling to discover such a glaring omission. In spite of the enormous quantity of home footage obviously available, for some reason calamities of the past still do not appear. Clearly Karen’s personal life, to say nothing of his own life, caused Navidson too much anxiety to portray either one particularly well in his film. Rather than delve into the pathology of Karen’s claustrophobia, Navidson chose instead to focus strictly on the house.

[69—Fortunately a few years before
The Navidson Record
was made Karen took part in a study which promised to evaluate and possibly treat her fear. After the film became something of a phenomenon, those results surfaced and were eventually published in a number of periodicals. The
Anomic Mag
based out of Berkeley (v. 87, n. 7, April, 1995) offered the most comprehensive account of that study as it pertained to Karen Green:

… Subject #0027-00-8785 (Karen Green) suffers severe panic attacks when confronting dark, enclosed spaces, usually windowless and unknown (e.g. a dark room in an unfamiliar building). The attacks are consistently characterized by (1) accelerated heart rate (2) sweating (3) trembling (4) sensation of suffocation
(5)
feeling of choking (6) chest pain (7) severe dizziness (8) derealization (feelings of unreality) and eventual depersonalization (being detached from oneself) (9) culmination in an intense fear of dying. See DSM4V “Criteria for Panic Attack.” … Diagnosis— subject suffers from Specific Phobia (formally known as Simple Phobia); Situational type. See DSM-TV “Diagnostic criteria for 300.29 Specific Phobia.”… Because behavioral-cognitive techniques have thus far failed to modify perspectives on anxiety-provoking stimuli, subject was considered ideal for current pharmacotherapy study … Initially subject received between 100-200 mg/ day of Tofranil (Imipramine) but with no improvement switched early on to a B-adrenergic blocker (Propranolol). An increase in vivid nightmares caused her to switch again to the MAOI (Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitor) Tranylcyprornine. Still dissatisfied with the results, subject switched to the SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) Fluoxetine, commonly known as Prozac. Subject responded well and soon showed increased tolerance when intentionally exposed to enclosed, dark spaces. Unfortunately moderate weight gain and orgasmic dysfunction caused the subject to drop out of the study… Subject apparently relies now on her own phobia avoidance mechanisms, choosing to stay clear of enclosed, unknown spaces (i.e. elevators, basements, unfamiliar closets etc., etc.), though occasionally when attacks become “more frequent”… she returns to Prozac for short periods of time … See David Kahn’s article “Simple Phobias: The Failure of Pharmacological Intervention”; also see subject’s results on Sheehan Clinician Rated Anxiety Scale as well as Sheehan Phobia Scale. [70—See Exhibit Six.]

While the report seems fairly comprehensive, there is admittedly one point which remains utterly perplexing. Other publications repeat verbatim the ambiguous phrasing but still fail to shed light on the exact meaning of those six words: “occasionally when attacks become ‘more frequent.’ “ At least the implication seems clear, vicissitudes in Karen’s life, whatever those may be, affect her sensitivity to space. In her article “Significant (OT)Her” published in
The Psychology Quarterly
(v. 142, n. 17, December 1995, p.
453)
Celine Berezin, M.D. observes that “Karen’s attacks, which I suspect stem from early adolescent betrayal, increase proportionally with the level of intimacy—or even the threat of potential intimacy—she experiences whether with Will Navidson or even her children.”

Also see Steve Sokol and Julia Carter’s
Women Who Can’t
Love;
When a Woman’s Fear
Makes Her Run from Commitment and What a Smart Man Can Do About It
(New Hampshire:
T.
Devans and
Company, 1978).]

Of course by the following morning, Karen has already molded her desperation into a familiar pose of indifference.

She does not seem to care when they discover the hallway has not vanished. She keeps her arms folded, no longer clinging to Navidson’s hand or stroking her children.

She removes herself from her family’s company by saying veiy little, while at the same time maintaining a semblance of participation with a smile.

Virginia Posah is right. Karen’s smile is tragic because, in spite of its meaning, it succeeds in remaining so utterly beautiful.

The Five and a Half Minute Hallway
in
The Navidson Record
differs slightly from the
bootleg
copy which appeared in 1990. For one
thing, in addition to the continuous circumambulating shot, a wider selection
of shots has made the coverage of the sequence much more thorough
and
fluid. For another, the hallway
has shrunk.
This
was
impossible to
see
in the VHS copy
because
there
was
no point of comparison. Now, however, it is
perfectly
clear that the hallway which
was
well over sixty
feet deep
when the children entered it is now a little less
than ten feet.

Context also significantly alters “The Five and a Half Minute Hallway.” A greater sense of the Navidsons and their friends and how they all interact with the house adds the greatest amount of depth to this quietly evolving enigma. Their personalities almost crowd that place and suddenly too, as an abrupt jump cut redelivers Tom from Massachusetts and Billy Reston from Charlottesville, the
UVA
professor once again wheeling around the periphery of the angle, unable to take his eyes off the strange, dark corridor.

Unlike
The Twilight Zone,
however, or some other like cousin where understanding comes neat and fast (i.e. This is clearly a door to another dimension! or This is a passage to another world—with directions!) the hallway offers no answers. The monolith in
2001
seems the most appropriate cinematic analog, incontrovertibly there but virtually inviolate to interpretation. [
71—Consider Drew Bluth’s “Summer’s Passage” in
Architectural Digest,
v. 50, n. 10, October 1993, p. 30.]
Similarly the hallway also remains meaningless, though it is most assuredly not without effect. As Navidson threatens to reenter it for a closer inspection, Karen reiterates her previous plea and injunction with a sharp and abrupt rise in pitch.

The ensuing tension is more than temporary.

Navidson has always been an adventurer willing to risk his personal safety in the name of achievement. Karen, on the other hand, remains the standard bearer of responsibility and is categorically against risks especially those which might endanger her family or her happiness. Tom also shies from danger, preferring to turn over a problem to someone else, ideally a police officer, fireman, or other state paid official. Without sound or movement but by presence alone, the hallway creates a serious rift in the Navidson household.

Bazine Naodook suggests that the hallway exudes a “conflict creating force”: “It’s those oily walls radiating badness which maneuver Karen and Will into that nonsensical fight.”
[72—Bazine Naodook’s
The
Bad
Bodhi Wall
(Marina
Del
Rey: Bix Oikofoe Publishing House, 1995), p. 91.]
Naodook’s argument reveals a rather tedious mind. She feels a need to invent some non-existent “darkforce” to account for all ill will instead of recognizing the dangerous influence the unknown naturally has on everyone.

A couple of weeks pass. Karen privately puzzles over the experience but says very little. The only indication that the hallway has in some way intruded on her thoughts is her newfound interest in Feng Shui. In the film, we can make out a number of books lying around the house, including
The Elements of Feng Shui
by Kwok Man-Ho and Joanne O’Brien (Element

Books: Shaftesbury, 1991),
Feng Shui Handbook: A Practical Guide to Chinese Geomancy and Environmental Harmony
by Derek Walters (Aquarian Press, 1991),
interior Design with Feng Shui
by Sarah Rosbach (Rider: London, 1987) and
The 1 Ching or Book of Changes, 3rd Edition
translated by Richard Witheim (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).

There is a particularly tender moment as Chad sits with his mother in the kitchen. She is busily determining the Kua number (a calculation based on the year of birth) for everyone in the family, while he is carefully making a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

“Mommy” Chad says quietly after a while.

“Hmm?”

“How do I get to become President when I grow up?”

Karen looks up from her notebook. Quite unexpectedly, and with the simplest question, her son has managed to move her.

“You study hard at school and keep doing what you’re doing, then you can be whatever you want.”

Chad smiles.

“When I’m President, can I make you Vice President?”

Karen’s eyes shine with affection. Putting aside her Feng Shui studies, she reaches over and gives Chad a big kiss on his forehead.

“How about Secretary of Defense?”

During all this, Tom earns his keep by installing a door to close off the hallway. First, he mounts a wood frame using some of the tools he brought from Lowell and a few more he rented from the local hardware store. Then he hangs a single door with 24-gauge hot-dipped, galvanized steel skins and an acoustical performance rating coded at ASTM E413-70T- STC 28. Last but not least, he puts in four Schlage dead bolts and colour codes the four separate keys: red, yellow, green, and blue.

For a while Daisy keeps him company, though it remains hard to determine whether she is more transfixed by Tom or the hallway. At one point she walks up to the threshold and lets out a little yelp, but the cry just flattens and dies in the narrow corridor.

Tom seems noticeably relieved when he finally shuts the door and turns over the four locks. Unfortunately as he twists the last key, the accompanying sound contains a familiar ring. He grips the red kye and tries it again. As the dead bolt glances the strike plate, the resulting click creates an unexpected and very unwelcome echo.

Slowly, Tom unlocks the door and peers inside.

Somehow, and for whatever reason, the thing has grown again.

Intermittently, Navidson opens the door himself and stares down the hallway, sometimes using a flashlight, sometimes just studying the darkness itself.

“What do you do with that?” Navidson asks his brother one evening.

“Move,” Tom replies.

Sadly, even with the unnatural darkness now locked behind a steel door, Karen and Navidson still continue to say very little to each other, their own feelings seemingly as impossible for them to address as the meaning of the hallway itself.

Chad accompanies his mother to town as she searches for various Feng Shui objects guaranteed to change the energy of the home, while Daisy follows her father around the house as he paces from room to room, talking vehemently on the phone with Reston, trying to come up with a feasible and acceptable way to investigate the phenomenon lurking in his living room, until finally, in the middle of all this, he lifts his daughter onto his shoulders. Unfortunately as soon as Karen returns, Navidson sets Daisy back down on the floor and retreats to the study to continue his discussions alone.

With domestic tensions proving a little too much to stomach, Tom escapes to the garage where he works for a while on a doll house he has started to build for Daisy, [73—See Lewis Marsano’s “Tom’s 1865 Shelter” in
This Old House,
September/October 1995, p. 87.] until eventually he takes a break, drifting out to the backyard to get high and hot in the sun, pointedly walking around the patch of lawn the hallway should for all intents and purposes occupy. Before long, both Chad and Daisy are sidling up to this great bear snoring under a tree, and even though they start to tie his shoe laces together, tickle his nostrils with long blades of grass, or use a mirror to focus the sun on his nose, Tom remains remarkably patient. He almost seems to enjoy their mischief, growling, yawning, playing along, putting both of them in a headlock, Chad and Daisy laughing hysterically, until finally all three are exhausted and snoozing into dusk.

Considering the complexity of Karen and Navidson’s relationship, it is fortunate our understanding of their problems is not left entirely up to interpretation. Some of their respective views and feelings are revealed in their video journal entries.