User:WritingAboutCreepypastas/Dionaea House

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"The Dionaea House"
Short story by Eric Heisserer
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Supernatural horror
Publication
Media typeHypertext fiction
Publication date2004–2006

The Dionaea House was an online hypertext narrative written by Eric Heisserer from 2004 to 2006. It started on a website, initially intended to be a companion to one of Heisserer's spec scripts, before it unexpectedly went viral. The story continued in updates to the website which linked to three blogs written by the other characters.

The titular Dionaea House, derived from the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), is a sentient house which has identical copies across the United States and subsumes or influences those who remain inside it for too long. Narrating characters include Mark and Eric, two old friends who investigate the house; Dani, a teenager who babysits in it; and Loreen Mathers, a former resident.

Scholars consider The Dionaea House a pioneering work in Internet horror fiction. After selling the spec script to Warner Bros. Pictures in 2005, Heisserer went on to become a successful screenwriter.

Overview[edit]

The Dionaea House began in September 2004.

The Dionaea House began in September 2004,[1] on a website titled "Correspondence from Mark Condry", which archived fictional emails and texts from Mark to his friend, Eric.[2] It begins with a note from Eric claiming that the website was made to easily share Mark's messages with his friends and family and anyone else who could help.[1] Mark was investigating the disappearance of their former friend, Andrew. It is revealed that, with no clear motive, Andrew had recently shot two people before killing himself, and Mark received part of a newspaper article about it in the mail. He became unhealthily invested in the case.[3] Recalling that Andrew had suddenly changed at an unsettling house sitting,[2] he found the house, which belonged to Andrew's stepfather, in a completely different location. His final text before entering the house and disappearing read "THE DOOR IS OPEN".[2]

In a LiveJournal titled "Adventures in Babysitting", 16-year-old Danielle "Dani" Williams writes about babysitting in a house in Phoenix, Arizona, for ten nights. Danielle finds the keys which Mark had dropped at the house in Boise. The tone of her final two posts changed significantly, implying Dani is being controlled by the house.[2][4]

The story continued in a LiveJournal, "Adventures in Babysitting", where 16-year-old Dani describes babysitting in what is revealed to be the same house. The tone of her final two posts changed significantly, implying Dani is being controlled by the house. Another LiveJournal owned by Loreen Mathers, a former resident of the house, reveals more details on how it controls and changes people who remain inside it for too long. Eric's blog, "A Quiet Place", described his efforts to continue Mark's investigation and also ended right before he entered the house. A subsequent entry from his girlfriend on "Correspondence from Mark Condry" reveals that Eric had been missing for over a year.[2]

Background[edit]

Eric Heisserer, the author, in 2021

Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, fledgling scriptwriter Eric Heisserer saw a house exactly like one he always drove past in Houston and was astounded at how two buildings so far apart could be so similar. Later, Heisserer was having trouble sleeping and watched a documentary about the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), a carnivorous plant which can grow multiple identical "mouths" to catch insects, and thought, "What if we're the insects?" Heisserer came up with an outline for a spec script, but his agent told him that original scripts were not selling anymore. He decided to create his own source material and claim his script was based on it — a "ridiculous" idea in hindsight, Heisserer later wrote — and started working on The Dionaea House, named for the plant. One writer, Cristiana Pugliese, thought it was "clearly inspired" by House of Leaves (2000), another work about a sentient house.[5][6]

Heisserer created a website (www.dionaea-house.com),[7] but he started getting emails about the page before he had completed it. Most readers thought it was true. Some, Heisserer claims, even told him that they had known his characters personally, and he adds that he even got offers from professional paranormal investigators to take the case on.[8] Netizens shared The Dionaea House on their blogs and social media and copy and pasted the text around the internet. The story became viral; in 2020, Pugliese wrote that it "remains one of the most successful internet horror stories to date."[4]

Legacy[edit]

Scholars consider The Dionaea House a pioneering work in Internet horror fiction and electronic literature. Joseph Crawford, a lecturer at the English department of the University of Exeter, wrote that while previous hypertext horror such as "Ted the Caver" (2001) were confined to a single webpage, The Dionaea House spread its narrative across multiple Web pages and social media accounts for different characters. This gave it a greater sense of immediacy and verisimilitude than "Ted the Caver". Later works, including World Without Oil and the Slender Man–based web series TribeTwelve, would use similar techniques and go further by having characters respond to their audience in-universe.[9][10] American academic Bryan Alexander considered The Dionaea House a "transitional text [...] between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 storytelling", since its lack of comments sections for the most part meant it was not as interactive as World Without Oil and other blogs.[10]

In May 2005, Warner Bros. Pictures bought Heisserer's spec script on The Dionaea House, which followed a man who discovers a sinister force hiding in tract housing after investigating a double-murder suicide by a former friend. The film was set to be produced by Heyday Films and directed by Peter Cornwell.[7] However, it was never produced.[11]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Owen 2008, p. 180.
  2. ^ a b c d e Kvistad 2020, p. 960.
  3. ^ Owen 2008, p. 181.
  4. ^ a b Pugliese 2020, p. 308.
  5. ^ Myers 2013.
  6. ^ Pugliese 2020, p. 308–309.
  7. ^ a b Kit 2005.
  8. ^ Kvistad 2020, p. 966.
  9. ^ Crawford 2019, pp. 76–77.
  10. ^ a b Alexander 2011, p. 52.
  11. ^ Pugliese 2020, p. 322.

Sources[edit]

Books and chapters[edit]

  • Alexander, Bryan (2011). The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media (1st ed.). ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-4961-9.
  • Crawford, Joseph (2019). "Gothic Digital Technologies". In Aldana Reyes, Xavier; Wester, Maisha L. (eds.). Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 72–86. ISBN 978-1-4744-4094-3. OCLC 1124782430.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Kvistad, Erika (2020). "The Digital Haunted House". In Bloom, Clive (ed.). The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Springer. pp. 957–972. ISBN 978-3-030-33135-1.

Academic articles[edit]

Websites[edit]

External links[edit]

ttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22Dionaea+House%22&btnG=

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