But what you have here is a bit of background information on the rumor of the house, what really happens, and the origin of the entire ordeal. At the end is a side note, I guess, on the current state of the little boy and perhaps his victims when they end up trapped in the house. I guess I'm trying to create what our heroes will end up fighting at the end.
So now that we've grasped the concept of "the evil behind the evil" (as explained in the previous chapter), it's time to do some brainstorming.
The house contains the evil. Let's start there.
The Rumor
The house gets the center of attention. It's rumored to be haunted since it had been abandoned for several years.
The urban myth consists of unsuspecting victims being lured into the house and killed. The original owners of the house seemed to had suddenly disappear without a trace years ago. This fact led people to believe that the ghosts of the previous owners reside in the house and are the ones killing off the victims.
Residents in the suburban area also believe that the rumor has connections to the recent cases of disappearances in the area. The reason:
The disappearances are recorded to have happened at night, around the hours of midnight and four AM. According to superstitions, the midnight hour is referred to as the witching hour, and the hour of three AM is referred to as the devil's hour. So naturally, people thought some stuff would go down. 8|
And if some stuff would go down, it might as well happen at that house, right? Gosh. The mentality of these people.
The Truth
In all actuality, the house is completely normal. It's what's inside the house that makes people believe it's haunted. In one of the rooms is a mirror, which turns into a portal starting at midnight and ending at four AM. The portal leads to another world, which is filled with monsters called shadows. They are dangerous when they come in contact with humans.
The Origin
Okay. The world's origin. It was created by the original owner of the house. It fed off the owner's feelings of anguish. I was thinking of a small child who had to deal with loneliness. The scenario is this:
The kid and his family move into the house. He becomes lonely. It hurts him so much to the point that he spends his days staring into a mirror. One day, his reflection beckons him to the other side. To his surprise the little boy is able to pass through the mirror.
On the other side, he sees a nicer version of his house -- the way he had imagined it before he moved. According to his "reflection", the other side of the mirror is the boy's portrayal of his perfect world. The boy then points out that as nice as the other world is, he would still end up alone. The boy's reflection then resolves to help him find some friends to live in the new world.
And of course, that method is luring people into the house and trapping them there. lol.
Over time, the boy gave in to his reflection's lies, and in turn succumbed to the shadows. Falsely believing he was truly happy, the boy's feeling of anguish was never resolved and the world transformed into what everyone in the area knew as the haunted house.
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Side note:
I actually don't know if I would consider the victims dead or not. If they die, then the little boy would not have company, right? Perhaps they would merge into shadows, like the kid.
Yeah. Merging with shadows sounds retarded, but it works. Trust me on this. In Persona 4, you have the option of accepting or rejecting your "shadow self". If you reject it, the shadow gets upset and tries to kill you. Hence the boss battles. If you accept it, you obtain your persona. Win.
However, there have been instances where people in the game have transformed into the monsters, instead of traditionally rejecting their other self and that other self transforming into the monster. Namatame and Adachi both transformed into a monster, but did not confront their "shadow selves". It can be confirmed that they merged with shadows to become these monsters (note how they both transform the same way in the cut scenes). And well... to do that you must accept your other self, I'm sure.
So to get back to the point, there are two ways to accept your "shadow self": positively and negatively.
When the characters of the game gained their personae, they accepted their other selves in a positive manner. They acknowledged their internal conflict as opposed to denying it. Once they were honest with themselves they learned to accept the good with the bad and well... accepted their other self.
I'm guessing that Namatame and Adachi merged with their shadow selves by accepting them negatively. They may not had denied their nagging feelings, but they agreed with their other selves. It's almost like they gave in.
It's kind of like the concept of mind over matter. If you agree with someone who says that you are unable to do something, you really won't be able to do whatever that something is. Then, that feeling of inferiority starts to eat away at you.
Namatame and Adachi gave in to whatever their shadow selves told them, or probably had such strong negative emotions that they merged with the shadows, which is made up of that stuff.
I'll make a separate chapter for the boy, since there's so much, because there are actually other examples from other installments in the Persona series that can be recycled.
Uh... The next section will revolve around the nature of the world inside the house. We'll get even more in depth.
