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ACD: The Original Found Footage Horror Master
by Max Magee
The idea of finding digitally filmed footage or videotape that has been left behind seems innovative and raw. You can’t be much closer to the actual event than watching what someone has just recorded, can you? Well, yes and no. Before the advent and development of technologies for films, there were several examples of a similar concept, notably, epistolary novels. Books like Frankenstein and Dracula were told in the form of diary entries and letters; additionally, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos was built largely in the form of manuscripts left behind by a (presumably) deceased narrator.
Although by now you’ve likely realized that “The Terror of Blue John Gap” falls squarely into this genre, consider that so do many of Doyle’s other works. Consider “The Horror of the Heights,” (1913), whose author, a pilot named Mr. Joyce-Armstrong, lost his life conducting a final experiment that is related by a blood-spattered journal to the readers; and The Lost World (1912), a novel in which the narrator, Edward Malone, finds the deceased American explorer Maple White’s travel journal and uses it as his guide; and even the epistolary “The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star’” (1883), which was later subtitled “Being an extract from the singular journal of John McAlister Ray, student of medecine” [sic]. Most famously, the Sherlock Holmes stories are first-hand retellings of the happenings of Dr. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes related long after the cases took place, and whose narrators never lived and so can never die (in this context, consider the events of “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” set in 1891 and published in 1893. “A Scandal in Bohemia” wouldn’t debut until June 1891).
The world-building and plausibility of a suspenseful tale that is cultivated not through the use of a narrator telling their story, but instead, by relating the story second-hand of some other poor person who likely suffered an unfortunate outcome, is a powerful tool for storytelling. We’re hearing a ghost tale told in the words and deeds of the ghost themselves, and no matter what we do or hope for, much like the characters in the Final Destination films, there will be no escaping that predestined fate for our narrator.
WHO IS MAX?
Maximilian P. Magee, PSI (“Agent Tobias Athelney”) is an aerospace engineer turned software developer from Madison, Wisconsin. He’s a Student of Starrett, a Devotee of Derleth, and of course, a Doting Doylean. As a computer-scientist, Max has engaged in various enterprises to electronically analyze, re-serialize, socialize, and discuss Doyle’s works in new and (sometimes) interesting ways.