“From the most innocent and mundane come the things we fear the most.”

–Michael Smith, blogger, 20 January, 2023.

I’ve often had feelings of unease and then a questioning of reality during and following innocent errands, trips to new places (most of which were hardly “new” but new to me, as in, places I’d never been before.

Most recently, and perhaps significantly as well, was a trip to an oddly generic office building in Ellicott City. I was to see an ophthalmology specialist, a plastic surgeon.

Driven there by my healthcare worker who accompanied me to the suite, I was struck immediately by the ordinary familiarity with it. I had been to the location before, I was certain of it. I knew the area well, as it contains a somewhat infamous and infuriating intersection, known for accidents, road rage and confusion among drivers because of limited vision ahead and the lack of automatic signal. There is one close by, but it only makes the problem of entering its intersection worse. You never forget such a place because traffic backs up ahead of the intersection itself by an obsolete merge area with little allowance for courtesy or patience. Yes. I’d been here before. It even has a place in my novel.

Upon entering the building, I was gripped by an uncanny feeling which had the promise of getting more serious.

Not Déjà Vu. I knew I’d been in the building so that particular sensation was not present. Of course, it had been sufficiently into the past that I could not recall which doctor or practice I had been there to see, and of course that causes people to be distracted on a somewhat semi conscious level. And this, I suppose, could contribute to what I experienced next.

My healthcare worker punched the elevator button for the second floor and the doors closed. Assuming that we were on the first floor, it took too long to reach the second floor. It was wrong, just as the tiny lobby had been wrong. I actually said to her that I didn’t like the whole building because it just felt “off”. She pretty much ignored this and that’s as it should be. But as we turned a corner to walk through one of two long hallways, it felt even more off, as if I had entered some sort of parallel universe, one I did not belong in. It felt like it wasn’t real, as if staying there would result in some nebulous but unfortunate outcome.

Once we reached the proper office suite, it should have cleared up. In different spaces, energy, temperature and pressure can have slight changes. These could explain why one suddenly forgets why they have gone to the kitchen, which happens to everyone. We stand, vacantly staring, until we either remember our reason for being there, or give up. It’s so common an experience that no one really feels fearful of it.

The reception area was generic, but small; so much so that an appropriately wallpapered support beam stood in the center of the room. This subconsciously forces one to picture the building at its barebone newest appearance before finishing carpentry crews moved in. It’s there, but you never really put much thought to it unless you’re an architect, who of course would know the entire building on sight and see its blueprint in his or her mind.

In practice, though, it adds a certain claustrophobic element, and various reactions from annoyance to terror are probably felt quite plainly by incoming clients. Around this county it is common structure. I’ve seen it before but there is always something that makes each suite different: these range from what type of practice or other business uses the space, but all have at least light touches which make them unique in some fashion. The counter at the reception window had at the right end a large silver-colored candle box, usually associated with Christmas decorations of an old-fashioned lantern vein. I’ve wanted one for years. Never seen one before except in advertising or as elements in holiday season wallpapers for computers and phones.

That’s what I think of as a grounding point. It is real.

Or is it? You’ll question everything before you leave here, old man.

There comes a moment when that voice speaks inside you, and at least a good number, no matter how much in the minority they are, believe once again that their perception proves that we are living in a simulation.

Personally, my take on “simulation reality” is that it would still prove the existence of God; a higher being, a creator, and that our souls are who and what we really are, and physical life in our sense is temporary, fleeting, but very real.

In other words, who built the machine? It’s a way for people to account for their anti-religious stances while paradoxically also proving that they can in fact believe in some higher being.

The doctor saw me, and in his examination room, a small picture hung. A depiction of a doctor and patient as if painted in Ancient Egypt. It was singularly remarkable, another grounding object.

But wait, did I really see it, or was it some trick because I’m about to replay “Assassin’s Creed Origins”, a game which takes place in Ancient Egypt?

Come on, now, this questioning of ordinary life is really getting out of hand.

That wasn’t the end of this weird excursion. Oh, no. It gets worse.

Having set the date for the optic surgery, having also been reassured that I did not have cancer, you’d think I’d feel all set. I should have; after covid-19’s initial outbreak and disruption of most healthcare concerns, I’m finally taking care of myself.

My healthcare worker had left after checking in. I had to go downstairs and call her. I left the office, and right outside of the door, there was this old man. Really old, and he was bent as he walked, concealing his face. Immediately he struck me as sinister, and after asking him which direction the elevator was in (a generic hallway, exit signs at both ends, and the lack of anything to regain one’s bearings especially if vision impaired is unsettling), I got the idea that I’d just asked the devil which way to go.

I followed him at a lagging pace. I had severe misgivings, however hilarious they seem now, about getting on an elevator with him and going the opposite direction of up.

I passed a door marked “women” and decided I’d use the men’s room. But I couldn’t find it. I really did need to go; I’d had a glass of water with my meds before leaving. I said to the old man, who was now insisting that I get on the elevator, where the Men’s room was. He pointed but paused, so I told him to go ahead. He did, but didn’t he seem disappointed?

Entering the latrine was completely disequilibrating: it, too, was all wrong. The urinal was too small in proportion to the room and in comparison to every other pisser I’d ever seen!

The same generic wallpaper was there, yellowish-beige, a very unsettling color if ever I saw one. The only way it could have been worse was if they were blood-red or all black.

I went to wash my hands and found the hottest water I had felt since slipping while making pasta and plunging my left hand into boiling water. Had the old man really been the devil, and was he now punishing me for not going down on the elevator with him?

Back at the elevator, I noticed a door to a suite adorned with enormous silver laurel leaves: who does that, I wondered. It is bizarre and out of place and gave me the flying shits. I had to get out of this unholy place!

Pushed the button for the first floor. Exited the elevator only to find myself looking through a huge window onto the parking lot below. I stepped back into the elevator and found a button marked “LL” — Lower Level. I hesitated. I knew it was the floor we had entered the building on, but why mark it such when it should be the first floor? I wondered if the old man would be waiting, if the elevator would take me below ground. Far below ground. All of this seems silly now, because at no time did I feel panic. It was all disorienting and creepy, but not frightening. Except for the old man, who in reality must have been acting out of kindness. Still, the whole setting contributed to my perception, and in future, more consideration must be given to ensure that the layout and aesthetics of buildings comfort rather than the opposite. Because once outside, I felt better, less oppressed in the rain and cold air.

LIMINAL

There’s creepy pasta all over the internet, so much that there’s always more to catch up on. One of them involves “liminal spaces”. The first story and accompanying photograph involved something called “noclipping” a sort of transport into another reality, almost always accidentally. One ends up in a liminal space, like an office floor with yellow walls and absolutely no people or even furnishings. There is nothing but miles of connecting offices and one can actually become trapped there. Coming from 4chan initially, this concept has of course migrated to reddit, where it has been added to. Now long hallways exist in which you can walk until you die and never find a way out. Noclipping is a new concept for me, (I’ve encountered it in video games) but I take it to mean an accident during normal travel which deposits one into an alternate, in-between reality.

I have encountered the feeling before. Once, a very long time ago, in the 1980s when mega-malls were the next great part of the American Dream, I had to deliver a carpet to a shop called T-shirts Plus in the White Marsh Mall. The mall was unfinished, and that’s not an experience I’ve ever wanted to repeat. I walked through the mall with a heavy roll of Burlington Industries carpet slung over my shoulder (I was so much younger then) and the only comfort was a few construction workers above me.

While it was fascinating to see the mall in incomplete condition, it was also unnerving and uncomfortable. With the failure of malls to survive Reaganomics, and finally strip malls and online shopping, urban exploration has become popular, as have the recorded proof, both visual and auditory, of such risky endeavors. Trespassing is one thing; risking one’s life and limb quite another.

Liminal spaces are a real fear, although unquantified and little known, that I believe has been with us for a very long time. Whether psychologists want to examine the phenomenon, I can’t say, but it certainly does seem to qualify for scrutiny. It appeals to a fear of being lost and never found, a fear of being watched or menaced by an unseen force or being, a fear of being trapped, closed-in, and even of open spaces.

And while I believe these fears to be ancient in origin, I believe it all comes from one fear more than any others: the loss of control over one’s own life.

Since I have never been in control and believe that the concept of it is delusion and unreal, I have nothing to fear.

But yesterday, I came very close.

The old man was no devil. But in heightened awareness, when one suffers from various maladies, the wrong surroundings can make one believe almost anything.

Perhaps no one can explain the phenomenon more concisely than the Why Files personalities A.J. and Hecklefish. Here is the episode that gives us the skinny on liminal spaces and how they have entered pop culture.

And if you should find yourself somewhere strange, a featureless, empty space which evokes a feeling of the uncanny, of being menaced, trapped or lost, don’t worry.

You aren’t really alone.