For my upcoming “Keeping it Weird” workshops…
We’ll be talking about introducing small elements of the uncanny to keep people guessing.
The Opened Book
Finnian Burnett
Thunder cracked overhead as Dr. Kirk Barnfield crossed the threshold of what, from the outside, looked like a dilapidated shack at the end of an alley. Inside, the small pub overflowed with a host of patrons drinking at the long, low bar. A fire roared in the hearth, casting shifting shadows onto the walls—shadows that moved even when their owners did not.
So, the map had been right.
The Old Woman’s Soup
“Come in for a meal,” the old woman says, and you step into her one-room cottage, blinking in the dim light. The scent of oregano and basil drifts through the space, thick and intoxicating, making your knees go weak.
You glance around. There’s only one window, covered with a dirty cloth, but the light filtering through doesn’t seem to lighten the room at all.
On the stove, a giant stockpot bubbles. The woman stirs it, humming an unfamiliar tune. You step closer, peering into the pot—just as something under the surface shifts. Not a potato. Not a carrot. Something else—
The old woman claps a hand on your shoulder, her grip firm. “Sit,” she says, smiling warmly. “You must be starving.”
In the Principal’s Office
Josh sat in the main office, staring at the principal’s closed door. He knew his mother was in there—her drugstore perfume floated in the air outside the door.
He could feel the secretary’s eyes on him. He could feel her sympathy, cloying and fake. “Father died,” he overheard her whisper to the teacher standing near her desk.
Josh didn’t correct her.
Instead, he watched the shadows beneath the principal’s door. They stretched and shifted, lengthening unnaturally as though someone—or something—was pacing inside.
Finnian Burnett 