If I recall, Trent R only rented the Tate house. Marilyn Manson writes about staying there and how when Trent was evicted he took the famous "political piggy" front door. The house was torn down, and three houses (two?) built on the land. Per Manson, Trent used the door as his coffee table.
As for my house, I was listening to Serial Killer Documentaries on YouTube, and -- blam -- there was my driveway. That's why I'm obsessed with Placeholder, a proposed website where people can log all the good/bad events that happen in their particular residence.
After the murder victim we found that the previous owners had paved over a septic tank. Fixing that cost a fortune...
Whoa! Supposedly, Trent didnt know it was the Tate house, but I find that hard to believe. Especially considering his next studio was a former funeral home in Nola. Went by there in 2008 and it was like Fort Knox. Cameras, bars, razor wire.
Was that serial killer Keith Jesperson? Also this is brilliant. I have this weird relationship with my vacuum where no matter how many times I see it from the corner of my eye it always looks like a person and I always scream thinking someone has finally come out of the walls to reveal they’ve been living there all along and watching me scratch myself and masturbate. It’s always my vacuum but it’s also always a small man living in my walls.
This isn’t a mistake in perception necessarily as like shown/made reference to in the above, but I love the scene in ‘American Psycho’ where Bateman has a panic attack as he’s reading a newspaper story about supposed giant flying rat sightings in New York, only for him to then get angry when he sees an apparent picture of one that somebody has sent to the paper. The line in which he describes the thing in the picture after shifting from fear to rage always kills me -- “It looks like a fucking Big Mac.”
Interesting. That scene echoes the scene in The Informers where the son goes to retrieve his father's burnt body from an airplane crash site. Bret describes the body as looking "like a little Darth Vader."
At the moment, I’m struggling to come up with stories that use this trick, but I’m sure I will notice it going forward. Kind of like morphing objects (see Guillermo del Torro’s Nightmare Alley) or ticking clocks (see the sick mom in Andor).
The only thing I’m coming up with now, is a vague memory of Jorge Luis Borges praising GK Chesterton’s detective stories for presenting a mystery, then first offering a supernatural solution, before finally revealing a rational explanation. His example was The Invisible Man, where a man is murdered in a house being watched. The watcher swears no one came or went. Ergo, murderer must be invisible! On further inspection, it’s revealed the watcher overlooked the mailman, because mailmen aren’t considered consequential. I think most of Chesterton’s mysteries are built like that, kind of like Scooby-Doo. The story takes the tour through a magical mystery before showing it’s grounded and all very human level cards. I wouldn’t say it’s the same as Denis Johnson’s “fantastic mistake” but it’s kind of “fantastic mistake” adjacent.
You live in NYC and all movement near the ground is an assumed rat. Jump first.
To Serve Man - The Twilight Zone
There are many examples of people's perceptions being clouded by wish fulfillment. Harder to think of examples where it reveals something more complicated.
Not stories per say but Ive made my own (minor) (not so fantastic) mistakes. Misinterpreted song lyrics, misperceptions about movie plots. Actually I did once misperceive a large opening in a room between two rooms as a big mirror, I guess because the two rooms were identical and I was high. So slowly stepping from one room to another felt like stepping through a mirror until the moment it wasn’t.
Chuck, Thank you for sharing that this phenomenon has a name: the fantastic mistake. I make them all the time...and that feeling of terror and awe when you make one, like the floor is falling out beneath you, like your worst fears or your deepest desires are coming true as you described in the first story and your own anecdote really are so revealing...as a window into to the characters psyche but also your own. Gonna start paying more attention to my fantastic mistakes and work one into a story. I just started following your cause someone said that you and Margaret Atwood are sharing about writing in a way that isn’t mystifying and inaccessible. My family members on my moms side are always having supernatural experiences. They are farmers who live in the middle of the prairies in Kansas and I love hearing their stories. I have collected them in a notebook for years and have always wanted to do something with them. Perhaps one could be a fantastic mistake? Although it seems like such a let down....they really believe they have seen ghosts and had contact with the spirit world...the let down part for me is that I also want to believe what they experienced was “real”. Anyways thanks for sharing! Looking forward to following you here.
I invented the term "fantastic mistake." Like "impossible detail" and "martyr/murder/witness" it's a reliable trick in fiction, but it seems no one has defined and labeled these things. The term "misdirection" is too vague.
I haven’t heard of the other tricks but I’ll look into them! When it comes to writing stories I’m a novice but it’s something I’m working on. Can’t stop thinking about fantastic mistakes and all the ones I’ve made. I have a repeating one that I think I’ll try to dig into. When I was much younger I had a first love who was much older. One day he disappeared, what people now call ghosting. Then he haunted me for 8 years in the form of fantastic mistakes. I saw him everywhere and every time it filled me with hope and terror. It’s that mix of desire and fear that I’m thinking might define the fantastic mistake. That checks out in my case cause even though I longed to see him and resolve what had happened between us, whenever I had “a sighting” I ran from it. Then one day the improbable, the fantastic, happened. After 8 years had gone by, i was sitting in a city plaza on the other side of the world and I saw him walking toward me.
Can't come up with other stories using this, but made me think of this day I parked my car, a brown, 1983 four-door Honda Civic, out front of some shops, went in, did my shopping, came back out, and my key wouldn't fit in the lock. I started to fit the key in again, easier like, and when that didn't work, I started to jam it almost to the point of snapping it off. Da fuq? Then I was aware of stuff in the passenger's seat that wasn't mine: a half-peeled orange; a Webster's Dictionary; some McDonald's empty wrappers. Freak out. Who the hell got in my car? Of course, by then, it was obvious that my car was parked four spaces down. Case of mistaken Honda identity. But a spontaneous vision out of nowhere hit me: I had a double "me" gallivanting about in a duplicate brown four-door Civic, and that our timelines had gotten crossed up for some reason. I seriously considering hanging out in the bushes to see my doppelganger emerge.
Anyways, as usual, thanks for the great post and giving a name to this phenomenon. Will pay more attention on how to use it.
Wonderful story. Instantly reminds me of the neighbor with a white Prius wagon that I often park next to at the UPS Store. He's always climbing into my unlocked car -- our cars are identical.
Again, the mark of a good story is how it evokes similar-but-escalating stories from other people.
I had a few similar experiences with my ancient Subaru station wagon back when I was in my 20s and living in Durango, CO (a college mountain town where every other car was an ancient Subaru station wagon). I never used to lock my car, and I remember once having a panic thinking I had accidentally locked myself out when the door I tried on someone else's car didn't open.
I love your idea of the doppelganger. That would make a great story!
The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics holds that there are many worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time as our own.
Just leaving a comment to say that you really got me on this one. You wrote it so perfectly that you panicked and wrecked me for two paragraphs thinking about you really finding a dead child. Chef's kiss.
My pleasure. Thank you for helping the Pixie Project.
Now I gotta figure out how an 11 year old would see a flaming shit house so I can end this thing.
Did you buy that place to compete with Trent Reznor buying the Tate house?
Better yet, everyone - do you entertain the idea that objects retain memory? I love used books for this reason.
If I recall, Trent R only rented the Tate house. Marilyn Manson writes about staying there and how when Trent was evicted he took the famous "political piggy" front door. The house was torn down, and three houses (two?) built on the land. Per Manson, Trent used the door as his coffee table.
As for my house, I was listening to Serial Killer Documentaries on YouTube, and -- blam -- there was my driveway. That's why I'm obsessed with Placeholder, a proposed website where people can log all the good/bad events that happen in their particular residence.
After the murder victim we found that the previous owners had paved over a septic tank. Fixing that cost a fortune...
Whoa! Supposedly, Trent didnt know it was the Tate house, but I find that hard to believe. Especially considering his next studio was a former funeral home in Nola. Went by there in 2008 and it was like Fort Knox. Cameras, bars, razor wire.
Was that serial killer Keith Jesperson? Also this is brilliant. I have this weird relationship with my vacuum where no matter how many times I see it from the corner of my eye it always looks like a person and I always scream thinking someone has finally come out of the walls to reveal they’ve been living there all along and watching me scratch myself and masturbate. It’s always my vacuum but it’s also always a small man living in my walls.
The killer was a truck driver out of Salt Lake City. See you tonight.
what about the garbage dumper, was it Fabio?
It’s nice that you cut the piece right before another reveal. In this abridged version, the bunnies live.
I recall you talking about this scene from ‘Jesus’ Son’ in this vid (at 47:20): https://youtu.be/dw7ty_EFWJ8
This isn’t a mistake in perception necessarily as like shown/made reference to in the above, but I love the scene in ‘American Psycho’ where Bateman has a panic attack as he’s reading a newspaper story about supposed giant flying rat sightings in New York, only for him to then get angry when he sees an apparent picture of one that somebody has sent to the paper. The line in which he describes the thing in the picture after shifting from fear to rage always kills me -- “It looks like a fucking Big Mac.”
Interesting. That scene echoes the scene in The Informers where the son goes to retrieve his father's burnt body from an airplane crash site. Bret describes the body as looking "like a little Darth Vader."
Luke Skywalker: Look, he's trapped in the pool by that snake.
Obi Wan: That's no snake...
At the moment, I’m struggling to come up with stories that use this trick, but I’m sure I will notice it going forward. Kind of like morphing objects (see Guillermo del Torro’s Nightmare Alley) or ticking clocks (see the sick mom in Andor).
The only thing I’m coming up with now, is a vague memory of Jorge Luis Borges praising GK Chesterton’s detective stories for presenting a mystery, then first offering a supernatural solution, before finally revealing a rational explanation. His example was The Invisible Man, where a man is murdered in a house being watched. The watcher swears no one came or went. Ergo, murderer must be invisible! On further inspection, it’s revealed the watcher overlooked the mailman, because mailmen aren’t considered consequential. I think most of Chesterton’s mysteries are built like that, kind of like Scooby-Doo. The story takes the tour through a magical mystery before showing it’s grounded and all very human level cards. I wouldn’t say it’s the same as Denis Johnson’s “fantastic mistake” but it’s kind of “fantastic mistake” adjacent.
So such things would be "impossible details" that trigger a discovery process.
You live in NYC and all movement near the ground is an assumed rat. Jump first.
To Serve Man - The Twilight Zone
There are many examples of people's perceptions being clouded by wish fulfillment. Harder to think of examples where it reveals something more complicated.
Yes, one where the audience's assumptions are revealed and what it says about us.
Maybe the Sixth Sense?
Yeah. His movies could be labeled. Where the thing is definitely not ever the thing - it's always some other thing
Adaptation is one of my favorite movies. Was talking about it with a few people during a break at story night.
wow
Not stories per say but Ive made my own (minor) (not so fantastic) mistakes. Misinterpreted song lyrics, misperceptions about movie plots. Actually I did once misperceive a large opening in a room between two rooms as a big mirror, I guess because the two rooms were identical and I was high. So slowly stepping from one room to another felt like stepping through a mirror until the moment it wasn’t.
Chuck, Thank you for sharing that this phenomenon has a name: the fantastic mistake. I make them all the time...and that feeling of terror and awe when you make one, like the floor is falling out beneath you, like your worst fears or your deepest desires are coming true as you described in the first story and your own anecdote really are so revealing...as a window into to the characters psyche but also your own. Gonna start paying more attention to my fantastic mistakes and work one into a story. I just started following your cause someone said that you and Margaret Atwood are sharing about writing in a way that isn’t mystifying and inaccessible. My family members on my moms side are always having supernatural experiences. They are farmers who live in the middle of the prairies in Kansas and I love hearing their stories. I have collected them in a notebook for years and have always wanted to do something with them. Perhaps one could be a fantastic mistake? Although it seems like such a let down....they really believe they have seen ghosts and had contact with the spirit world...the let down part for me is that I also want to believe what they experienced was “real”. Anyways thanks for sharing! Looking forward to following you here.
I invented the term "fantastic mistake." Like "impossible detail" and "martyr/murder/witness" it's a reliable trick in fiction, but it seems no one has defined and labeled these things. The term "misdirection" is too vague.
I haven’t heard of the other tricks but I’ll look into them! When it comes to writing stories I’m a novice but it’s something I’m working on. Can’t stop thinking about fantastic mistakes and all the ones I’ve made. I have a repeating one that I think I’ll try to dig into. When I was much younger I had a first love who was much older. One day he disappeared, what people now call ghosting. Then he haunted me for 8 years in the form of fantastic mistakes. I saw him everywhere and every time it filled me with hope and terror. It’s that mix of desire and fear that I’m thinking might define the fantastic mistake. That checks out in my case cause even though I longed to see him and resolve what had happened between us, whenever I had “a sighting” I ran from it. Then one day the improbable, the fantastic, happened. After 8 years had gone by, i was sitting in a city plaza on the other side of the world and I saw him walking toward me.
Even though I knew Chuck's story was most likely the trick, I was still glued to the text believing it was all true. Great post.
Can't come up with other stories using this, but made me think of this day I parked my car, a brown, 1983 four-door Honda Civic, out front of some shops, went in, did my shopping, came back out, and my key wouldn't fit in the lock. I started to fit the key in again, easier like, and when that didn't work, I started to jam it almost to the point of snapping it off. Da fuq? Then I was aware of stuff in the passenger's seat that wasn't mine: a half-peeled orange; a Webster's Dictionary; some McDonald's empty wrappers. Freak out. Who the hell got in my car? Of course, by then, it was obvious that my car was parked four spaces down. Case of mistaken Honda identity. But a spontaneous vision out of nowhere hit me: I had a double "me" gallivanting about in a duplicate brown four-door Civic, and that our timelines had gotten crossed up for some reason. I seriously considering hanging out in the bushes to see my doppelganger emerge.
Anyways, as usual, thanks for the great post and giving a name to this phenomenon. Will pay more attention on how to use it.
Wonderful story. Instantly reminds me of the neighbor with a white Prius wagon that I often park next to at the UPS Store. He's always climbing into my unlocked car -- our cars are identical.
Again, the mark of a good story is how it evokes similar-but-escalating stories from other people.
I had a few similar experiences with my ancient Subaru station wagon back when I was in my 20s and living in Durango, CO (a college mountain town where every other car was an ancient Subaru station wagon). I never used to lock my car, and I remember once having a panic thinking I had accidentally locked myself out when the door I tried on someone else's car didn't open.
I love your idea of the doppelganger. That would make a great story!
Tons of potential there!
The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics holds that there are many worlds which exist in parallel at the same space and time as our own.
Hey, thanks! Just now I'm thinking of the possibilities.
Just leaving a comment to say that you really got me on this one. You wrote it so perfectly that you panicked and wrecked me for two paragraphs thinking about you really finding a dead child. Chef's kiss.