House of Leaves is a psychological novel by Mark Z. Danielewski that has been described under multiple genre. The book is based around three interconnected, layered, separately developed yet intertwined narratives, the basis of which is a seemingly fictional documentary known as The Navidson Record, a review of the Record by a deceased blind man named Zampano, and the life of the man named Truant who finds Zampano's critique. The most interesting aspect in relation to the Slender Man mythos is the Navidson House.
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The Navidson Record details a film self-shot documentary from Will Navidson, in which he and his family move to a house filled with spacial deformities. In the beginning, they discover a short hallway between their children's room and the parents' bedroom that's not in the floorplan. Will measures the houseand notices that the inner wall of the house is a few inches larger than the outer wall- essentially meaning the house is larger on the inside than the outside, an impossibility. After leaving the home for a trip, upon returning, the Navidson family discovers a door has appeared in their living room wall that had not been there when they left.
Opening the door leads them to a pitch dark hallway with ashen grey walls that are made of an unknown material. This hall branches off to more halls, and more halls, and even more halls, creating an endless maze of halls, within this door, within a single house. Exploration into the halls reveals that the halls and walls are constantly changing, shifting, moving, extending and shortening, creating a new maze constantly. The anomaly creates strange physical effects, and creates problems with certain technologies and compasses.
The book uses symbolism to loosely associate the house to the Greek legend of Theseus and the Minotaur.
Style[]
The typography is unique in that the book uses a form of word distortion as an added effect in addition to its narrative. Words and phrases are set askew, they are moved about a page, reflected on opposite sides of pages. They are also written up, down, and diagonally.
The book is riddled in code. For example the term "House" is always in light blue. "Minotaur" is always red, and stricken words are also red. There are also check marks, removed sections, blanked-out sections, obscure references and phrases which litter the pages.
The organization of the text itself is also strange, in that the primary narrative is of the Navidson Record, written as a bunch of quotes in Zampano's critique, which is accompanied by footnotes by Truant that can last several pages, interupting both narratives. All of these are cited and noted by the publishers some of whom do not exist.
The author himself does not claim the novel to be horror or of any genre, and even admitted that a fan had once called it a romance novel, to which he agreed. As a result, it is most likely to be interpreted by the individual as to the meanings in the text rather than any grand scheme of word play.
Relation to the Mythos[]
House of Leaves is shown in the EverymanHYBRID episode "Jeff", where the crew discovers a flash drive containing episodes "78of76.avi" and "77of76.avi", in addition to a circled quote in the book.
EMH may also reference the House of Leaves with their Slenderwalk through Alex 's bedroom closet in episode "Last Week/Taking it Back." In it, the group enters a hole in the closet, where the Rake has apparently been transmuting through. There they find themselves in a tunnel leading to an abandoned basement that they had previously been shown at in both the videos "78of76.avi" and "77of76.avi", with much of their stuff missing. It should also be noted that the group is dressed in the exact same clothes in which they appear in "77of76.avi" implying that some of the flashdrive's content consists of events that occur after its initial discovery. A similar event takes place in "The Property.", in which there is a dipiction of Vincent hopping from one house to the next by a series of interconnected doorways that lead to places they should not. He ends up in new rooms or rooms that belong to other houses. Slenderman and The Rake seem to inhabit this dimension according to his father, and it is suggested that a location known as "Eden" lies at the center of the maze of halls, or that the halls may not exist at all. The existence of these spacial inconsistancies may be an allusion to House of Leaves, specifically the Navidson Record.
Daniel Shipman is also seen reading it on a park bench in Tribe Twelve before Noah goes to interview him.