The Twin (Universe) Paradox, Part Three: Hell Comes to Your House

 

So we've talked about Twin Earths and Twin Dimensions, but what happens when some kind of alien force comes to Earth and tries to turn our world into theirs? After all, this is the ultimate form of colonization.

There are plenty of examples of this trope in science fiction, but sticking to our original thesis, let's look at examples in which childhood trauma becomes the portal that creates these other worlds or else becomes the medium for those forces to recreate ours.

Foremost among these is the Silent Hill franchise, originally a video game series but later adapted for the big screen.

Silent Hill is pretty dark stuff, and I don't recommend watching these videos if you're sensitive to extreme trauma. But be aware that this clip varies from the videogame's origin story. 

The movie - which, be forewarned, is pretty terrible - went for the usual tired Christian-bashing instead of the more interesting Lovecraftian cult in the original telling.

Here's the telling from the game:

Alessa, a young girl with latent psychic abilities, is targeted by the Silent Hill cult, led by her mother. The cult believes Alessa can birth their god by impregnating her with its essence, a horrific act they carry out when she’s just seven years old. 

They burn her alive in a ritual sacrifice, but her powers keep her alive, though severely injured and comatose, her soul splits and leaves her in agony. This trauma gives her the strength to shape reality around her, even unconsciously.

So there's the spin - Alessa's trauma doesn't quite open a portal to a parallel world. Instead, it creates parallel worlds.

Alessa’s pain and hatred project outward, warping Silent Hill into distorted versions of itself. The Fog World—a misty, abandoned town—reflects her isolation and suppressed emotions, while the Otherworld—a rusty, nightmarish hellscape—mirrors her raw torment and the violence inflicted on her. 

The entity growing inside Alessa amplifies her powers further. Its presence adds a malevolent edge to the Otherworld, filling it with grotesque creatures like the Grey Children and Air Screamers—manifestations of Alessa’s fear, anger, and fragmented memories.

 

This short video explains the mechanics of these worlds. It gets a bit convoluted if you're not a gamer, but if you're looking for a bit more detail than what I've given you, this will do the trick.

SYNCHRONICITY AND WORLD-BUILDING

This video - by the same YouTuber - offers up an interesting but not entirely convincing explanation of the alternate realities by drawing on Jung's theories on synchronicity. 

The basic core here is sound - inner realities reflected in the world outside - but it doesn't really work for me as far as the storyline in the franchise goes, at least in my understanding. This chap is probably more of an expert on the game than me, but by his own admission is not an expert on synchronicity.

That said, there are definitely some patterns to recognize here.

First of all, the creators of Silent Hill were inspired by a couple of things well-familiar to us here.

• David Lynch: The surreal, dreamlike quality of Silent Hill—especially its eerie pacing and bizarre characters—draws from Twin Peaks and Eraserhead. 

• Jacob’s Ladder (1990): This movie’s protagonist, is haunted by trauma, experiences reality warping into grotesque hallucinations, much like Silent Hill’s characters.  

The Lynch influence extends to the score:

The soundtrack for Silent Hill was composed by sound director Akira Yamaoka, who requested to join the development team after the original musician left. His compositions were influenced by Angelo Badalamenti, the composer for Twin Peaks.

And where there's David Lynch and Twin Peaks, always start looking for a Sibyl...

And there one is! 

Played here by Laurie Holden, bringing in the prerequisite X-Files connection (she played Marita Covarrubias). Seriously, TXF is like the Kingpin - everyone has to pay tribute somewhere along the line. 

Holden also starred on The Walking Dead, but her character was killed off in the third season before Samantha Morton debuted as Alpha in the ninth.

And where there's a Sibyl, then start looking for the Siren: 

Directed and co-written by Keiichiro Toyama after he wrote and directed the original Silent Hill for Konami in 1999, Siren revolves around interconnected storylines featuring a cast of characters throughout different time periods who find themselves in the mysterious town of Hanuda, inhabited by the shibito, deadly zombie-like creatures.

Christophe Gans, who developed and directed the first Silent Hill movie, next tackled a story whose significance is well-familiar to all Secret Sun readers. 

This version didn't fare much better than Silent Hill, alas, but that doesn't matter, since it resonates the franchise with some very familiar themes...

...like this...

...and this...

... and as we'll see when this all gets tied together, this.

Which, by the power of sheer synchery, also resonates with this.

I've got some fresh smoking guns on this insanity, so do keep an eye out for an upcoming livestream on Annihilation et al at The Secret Sun Institute.

BOY, YOU TURN ME

The Other World of Silent Hill sounds quite a lot like something we've looked at quite a bit here. 

In the first season of Stranger Things, the Upside Down is an alternate reality that runs alongside our own, resembling Hawkins but twisted into a nightmarish version. It’s characterized by a cold, foggy atmosphere and a landscape overrun with slimy, organic growth—like vines and spores—that coat everything from houses to trees. 

Time seems frozen there; the town’s layout matches Hawkins exactly, but it’s abandoned, silent, and crumbling, as if it’s a distorted snapshot of the real world.

This isn't a fan theory - Silent Hill was one of the very many things the Duffer Brothers - AKA the creators of Stranger Things - were inspired by.

Which brings us to an ongoing controversy in Stranger stan-circles, and that's whether or not Eleven actually created the Upside Down.

Here's the Goog's take on it:

In Stranger Things, Eleven accidentally opened the "Mothergate" at Hawkins Lab, which created the Upside Down. 

1. Eleven made psychic contact with the hive mind from across dimensions.

2 This contact created a physical copy of the human world, which became the Upside Down.

3. The Upside Down was overrun with alien vines, spores, and membranes.

4. The Upside Down was devoid of human life.

5. The Upside Down began to corrupt the town of Hawkins, Indiana.

Eleven also created a gate behind Henry Creel after fighting him. Henry was flung through the gate into the Upside Down. Eleven later used her powers to defeat Henry and close the gate. She returned to Hawkins to save her friends and family from the Mind Flayer.  

And this from the ST fan-wiki da Goog is filching from:

Four years later, Eleven made psychic contact with the hive mind from across dimensions under Dr. Martin Brenner's instruction. By doing this, she inadvertently opened the "Mothergate" at Hawkins Lab; somehow, making contact also created a perfect physical copy of the human world, exactly as it existed on November 6, 1983.

Now given how all this will all tie together, make special note of that exact date. 

It's hard to see this being intentional, but that's the eve of the release of Sunburst and Snowblind, whose cover was admittedly inspired by the Zone in the 1979 film Stalker, which is very much the prototype for all these worlds.

 

Although itself inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic, Stalker also carries echoes of Lovecraft. And more importantly, it also provides elements later seen in Annihilation, Silent Hill, Stranger Things and others.

• The Zone is a mysterious, restricted area rumored to have been created by an alien visitation or cosmic event.
• The Zone doesn’t overtly mutate biology but warps reality in subtler, more existential ways. It’s said to contain a room that grants one’s deepest desires, yet it’s full of invisible traps ("meat grinders") that kill or strand intruders. Its rules are unknowable and seem to shift based on human intent or subconscious will.
  
  

The Silent Hill connections - particularly those explained by that YouTuber - are especially notable here:

• The Zone is steeped in existential melancholy and spiritual ambiguity. It’s less about horror and more about introspection, radiating a quiet, oppressive mystery.
  
  
• The Zone’s purpose is tied to human psychology—it’s a mirror for the soul. The room at its heart allegedly fulfills desires, but only the truest, often unconscious ones, suggesting a judgmental or revelatory nature.
  
  

Consciousness - or rather, unconsciousness - reshaping reality itself is a major thruline here, as we turn back to the original thesis of childhood trauma opening doors.

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH

I'm not saying I sign off on his interpretations, but here's Dr. Ammon Hillman's characteristically-controversial take on the mechanics of this hypothesis, taken from the introduction of his book Hermaphrodites, Gynomorphs and Jesus: She-Male Gods and the Roots of Christianity. 

Religion is a wormhole; it is a multidimensional, collapsible bridge in space that only a thirteen-year-old girl in the bloom of life can open and only when she has entered a state of heightened sexual arousal.

 

According to ancient Etruscan sibyls, the teenage priestesses who established the norms for much of Roman culture, religion is a method of cosmic tunneling; it’s a practice that creates a fluid structure through which dark-matter-breathing beings can travel in order to possess their maddened devotees.

 

The ancient world believed religion was a resonant span across the fabric of space-time; and ancient clerics taught that its thermodynamic seal could be forcefully broken open with the songs of maidens. 

 

Let me state for the record that I haven't yet been able to nail down his sourcing on these claims, but the synchronicity of it all cannot be ignored. Though I often wonder if the good doctor obtained this thesis from certain groups of a more recent vintage than the Etruscans. And a more secretive one as well.

TO BE CONTINUED

Speaking of Synchronicity...

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