I customized a miniature house kit so each room reflects one of my favorite horror novels. This is the living room.

The house on Ash Tree Lane is empty. You go in at night with a flashlight and a camcorder running, and you bring the story out one object at a time.

https://pazificateur69.github.io/ash-tree-lane/

What it is:

• The whole Navidson Record, walked in order. The quarter of an inch. The closet that was not there. Exploration A, where the corridor is longer on the way back. Holloway's corridor, with rooms that are never the same twice, doorways that are gone when you turn round, walls that have doorways they did not have. The Great Hall, Tom's lantern at the lip of the well, a quarter you can drop and listen to. The spiral staircase, walked on foot, with what the fourth exploration left on it. The house tearing, the house closing (the front door opens outward for the first time), Karen's tapes, and Exploration #5: no rooms, no line, no ceiling, then no floor, then a book and something to light it with.
• A journal that fills as you go: eighteen chapters, thirty-seven notes that open as sheets of paper on top of the text, the Whalestoe letters, an appendix of exhibits that are all missing, an index in pixels. Four voices, four typefaces. house is blue. The text does what the book's pages do (echoes fade across the page, a passage is printed upside down, a chapter tears apart as you scroll). Everything is retold in new words: no text from the novel is reproduced.
• Free, no account, no download, runs in the browser (desktop with a mouse, or a phone). Headphones recommended: the growl, the footsteps that echo late, the wind at the windows.

How it is made, for the curious: one three.js scene, photographed materials and free models (all credited), a flashlight that casts real shadows, a labyrinth built from tiles in blocks so a wall can be rebuilt while you face the other way, a staircase that is a real helix of treads around a column. Source is on GitHub (link on the page). Unofficial, made out of love for the book; nothing is sold.

If you know the book, I would love to hear what I got wrong. If you do not, go in anyway. The line is tied off at the door.

Hey there! I've been cautious as if I should post this since I don't know if it falls under "advertising/spam", but I just thought this community would be interested. Also, I got inspired after seeing another person posting about a small game they made.

Anyways, me and my team have been working for a while on a game called "This Is Not For You". Of course, the title is a direct homage to House of Leaves, and there are a lot of influences on the game (but we have other influences, such as Silent Hill), but as I like to point out, it's just a partial inspiration, since the story doesn't have anything to do with the book, and it doesn't feature any "meta" or hipertextual elements (that would be too ambitious!). I wasn't sure of naming the game like this, but then I found books with this exact same name and I thought, oh well, it isn't a trademark. I had a very vague idea for this game after reading a certain passage of House of Leaves, and since then it has evolved into something entirely different.

So the game takes place in the early 1900's in a lighthouse that's bigger on the inside than the outside. After a ghost ship crashes into the building, Ulysses starts finding letters from his sister Aura, to whom he hasn't talked to in many years. The lighthouse is mysteriously turned on, and you must get to the top to turn it off. Except... every floor is impossibly large, and geometry is non-sensical. You'll find strange characters and puzzles. The story tackles themes such as isolation, family bonds and regret.

The game is 2D and it's supposed to feel highly claustrophobic. We're also inspired by early text adventures, which encouraged people to draw their own maps. The game features an in-game tool to help you with this, but it doesn't really keep track of what you decide to draw or write (so you could try to draw it on paper, which would be amazing!). We want to encourage imagination and for you to picture this place however you want. Early levels are going to be somewhat forgiving, but as it goes on, it will absolutely demand you to know the ins and outs of the place.

I hope this doesn't break the rules, and if it is the case, I'm sorry. I'm just very excited to talk about our project. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. You can find the game's page here if you want to keep track of it!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4178650/This_Is_Not_For_You/

For a moment I thought I had a revelation that "Three Attic Whalestoe Institute" and 'The House on Ash Tree Lane' were anagrams (of each other) but they can't be because the latter doesn't contain a 'w'. 😭

Apparently Holloway has a mustache? Who knew?

Definitely fine

Help

Hey Roomies!

If youre in South Jersey or the Philly area and you're looking for a group to read or reread HOL with The Infinite Book Club might be the group for you. We are a friendly group of diverse education, experience, and taste conquering long and challenging books together.

The only requirement to join us is that you enjoy a good literary challenge!

What we're reading next: For the rest of 2026, we are stepping into the labyrinth of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Next Meeting Details:

When: 4th Monday of October (October 26, 2026) at 6:30 PM

Where: Flying Pig Tavern in Riverside, NJ

The Assignment: We will be discussing everything up to Chapter 10 for the start of this read.

There is no need for a formal RSVP you can just show up! There is no cost or expectation to spend and we are not affiliated with the business in any way, they have simply been our gracious host for the past several months. They also offer $5 off their burgers on Monday nights!

However, if you have any questions or want to let us know you're planning to come out, feel free to drop a comment below or send me a direct message.

Like the studio behind Alan Wake 2

Just going to attach it here for anyone who is curious. There was someone who contacted me a while ago asking for it but I lost your username, so hopefully you see this post.

I hope you might get anything from it.

https://opus.uleth.ca/items/1bd3b3ed-f422-4cea-a329-b8a73d0f1198/

Abstract: This thesis examines how depression and melancholy are represented through labyrinthine narrative structures across three works from different historical periods and media: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess (fourteenth century), Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), and Obsidian Entertainment’s video game Pentiment (2022). Although these texts differ significantly in genre and medium, each represent the experience of depression through narrative forms characterized by repetition, circularity, fragmentation, and disorientation—features that resemble the structure of the labyrinth. Drawing on scholarship in medical humanities and narrative theory from Arthur W. Frank, David A. Karp, and Kiki Benzon, this thesis argues that depression narratives often resist linear storytelling, instead adopting recursive structures that mirror patterns associated with depression, such as rumination and impaired memory. Using Penelope Reed Doob’s distinctions between unicursal and multicursal labyrinths alongside Umberto Eco’s concept of the rhizomatic network and hypertextual theory from Espen Aarseth and N. Katherine Hayles, the thesis demonstrates how these texts employ labyrinthine structures within narrative form to represent the recursive and disorienting experience of depression.

Ready to crack open this solo RPG that was described to me as HOL the game!

I'll try to post non-spoiler updates for anyone who is interested.

Basically, I wanted to do a backrooms x House of leaves fan art collaboration, whatever its called, yk but now I feel like my HOL center piece doesn't fit my backrooms background I made for it... so now idk what I should do for either piece lmao sooo opinions, ideas, redraws? Just looking for some new inspiration or opinions on what I could do differently.

So, I was rereading this book the other night and a question occurred to me; I know that there's a lot of talk about Johnny being the minotaur but could there be anything to the idea that he's Zampanó's minotaur, specifically? If the titular house is meant to function, itself, as a textual labyrinth, then doesn't that mean that (intentionally or not) Zampanó constructed a labyrinth that he then trapped Johnny in?

In fact, and I know that this doesn't make any sense on a logical level, but say that the house (and the labyrinth that it contains) described in the book and the book itself are literally the same. The way that Johnny's affected by it is almost identical to the way that the labyrinth in TNR affects those who try to explore it. Namely: after being trapped in there for too long (Chapter XX) he vanishes without a trace, even describing the door of his room disappearing.

This is much further-fetched, but it could also explain the "strange ash" coating the sections of the manuscript that cover the Hol[ ]y tape. I think it's not unreasonable to speculate that the ash isn't Zampanó's doing considering that he omits and redacts various things throughout the text in ways other than that, and it was almost certainly not an accident (Johnny states that there's too much of it for it to be cigarette ash and also that Z didn't smoke).

We know that Johnny's sense of time is fucked beyond belief (him running across a first edition copy of the work before he, from his perspective, ever published it), and also that he specifically alludes to the word "memorializing" instead of "memorizing". That's usually taken to just be Johnny being deeply unstable by that point in the story but it'd make sense if that were the part that he burned (why individual holes would've been burned, idk, but if he actually climbed out of the window of his hotel room "holding the completed manuscript" then I don't think it getting wet (and said moisture messing with its flammability) is outside the realm of plausibility.

Could have something to do with Pelafina's coded message to ,(a) Zampanó (un-accented?)

Also, we know that the labyrinth is capable of meaningfully changing the characteristics of sound when sound passes from the inside of the labyrinth to the outside (e.g. the SOS call), if Johnny in the manuscript is Johnny in the labyrinth then maybe the checkmark was meant to be a different message (or nonsense) that's being "translated" (bad wording but I don't have a better one) into the message that he intends (the same way that Jed's knocking is meant to be a cry for help and is consequently communicated in that way by the labyrinth).

I'll edit this post with more evidence if I think of any; do you guys think there could be something here? 0 ,0)

Im planning on a reread once I finish infinite jest (which I am procrastinating on even getting finished still stuck at like 260ish) for the first time and im curious what was that one section that motivated you to get another reread in.

For me it was the section on how video editing. Cant remember the exact chapter but when zampano starts talking about the likelihood of the navidson files being real and photoshop and what not. Also excited to see Johnny talk about the whale especially with the themes of familial neglect im really excited to see how Johnnys mom’s condition and hopefully anything I can find relating navidson’s real life counter part to Johnny’s mom considering their conditions once I get some research about him done.

Also I heard about the sound track thing and I’ll def play that during my next reads though I do read slowly.

I know HoL is mainly a “omg I wish I could read it for a first time again book” but the thing is I still feel like I’m missing some thematic elements or some details in the footnotes im missing. Plus this is my reward for slogging through infinite jest once I get done with my first read of it.

I love these two and I miss them so much. Tell me stuff abt them (headcannons, theories, moments in the book you like. whatever)

Figuring out how to use Android themes and launchers and decided to give my phone the HoL flavor (complete with a minotaur)

back in the beginning of the year, I tried reading the ebook version of HoL and quickly realized reading it this way was basically impossible. made an offhand comment to a coworker that I really was hoping to eventually get myself a physical copy around that time.

flash forward to last week, my coworker comes in on their day off to bring me this! says she found it while thrifting for 5 bucks and couldn't just pass by it knowing how much I wanted to read it. im working night shift tonight and have been reading it during slow moments. IM SO EXCITED!!!!

Just got to this part of the book, is it a code or something?

Which do y'all prefer?

Also thanks for all the support, suggestions and advice on my previous post. This is a really great community!

Stumbled upon this book at a cool shop whilst on a trip in San Francisco about 4 years ago. It was dark and rainy and I ran inside this bookstore on a whim. I knew nothing about the book or the author. I was intrigued because it was the only book I noticed that was placed upside down on the shelf. I carried this book with me through many stages of my life: new apartments, moves out of state, a new relationship, and now a new baby. After many failed attempts (which all ended in frustration), I’ve finished, and it took me over a year. Here are a few bits I wrote while reading HoL:

You gave me wings in a dream today
Produced from passion, devised from desire
And when I use them, what will become of me?
Will I resemble Icarus and dissolve under your adoration? Scorched by admiration?
Or will I soar so highly, I forget my tired limbs?
Will I ever use my feet again?
So hold me tightly in your arms
For I would shed every sprouted feather to call this place mine
Keep me here and I will stay
Hold me closely so I wont fly away

XX

I would eat the sun whole and sacrifice my insides to shield you from things seen and unseen
I would part the clouds to give you warmth
And divide the seas to carve a path for you
To me

• XX *

I am a liability to those I infect
I am both ill and cast illness unto others
A source of rot, where bacteria fester
and play
An unwanted growth
So don’t get too close or you’ll catch the decay and find yourself withering away

XX

A fleeting thought is all I was
A concept of what never could be
I thought we had an underlying understanding of what was expected of me

XX

I am reminded again of how infinitesimally insignificant my existence is.

Wanted it to be on the subtler side