Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000 — Chapter XVIII
Karen visits the real estate agent. Zampanò follows the agent's passing remark back to 1610. Johnny leaves Los Angeles.
Old spelling of “cask hoops”: the bands of wood or metal that hold a barrel together.
XVIII Ashe, good for caske hoopes: and if neede require, plow worke, as alfo for many things els.
Old spellings of “else”, “employed” and “discovering”. The “f” is a long s.
XVIII Ashe, good for caske hoopes: and if neede require, plow worke, as alfo for many things els.
Thomas Hariot (or Harriot, about 1560–1621) was an English scientist who sailed to Roanoke in 1585 for Sir Walter Raleigh. His Briefe and True Report (1588) is the first English book about Virginia.
The epigraph comes from his list of useful trees: ash wood is good for barrel hoops and plough work. The chapter is set on Ash Tree Lane, and it goes back to the first English colonies in Virginia.
XVIII Ashe, good for caske hoopes: and if neede require, plow worke, as alfo for many things els. — A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia by Thomas Hariot servant to Sir Walter Raleigh — ‘“‘a member of the Colony, and there imployed in difcouering.”
English courtier, soldier and explorer (about 1552–1618). He paid for the Roanoke voyages, the first English attempts to settle Virginia. The epigraph names Hariot as his servant.
… good for caske hoopes: and if neede require, plow worke, as alfo for many things els. — A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia by Thomas Hariot servant to Sir Walter Raleigh — ‘“‘a member of the Colony, and there imployed in difcouering.”
Charlottesville is a Virginia city, the home of the University of Virginia, where Reston lives. Days Inn is a cheap American motel chain; Karen checks into one instead of the house.
During the first week of April, she stayed in close contact with Reston who made the long drive from Charlottesville more than a few times.
Making a person very weak.
Daisy and Chad seem to have shaken off the debilitating effects of the house and their grandmother is more than happy to look after them while Karen is gone, believing her daughter’s trip will take her one step closer toward selling the house and …
The invented local real estate agent; Karen went to her earlier about the strange closet. Her small research says the house has had almost twenty owners in fifty years, and no one stays long.
She checks into a Days Inn but instead of going directly to the house makes an appointment with Alicia Rosenbaum.
Hi8 was a consumer video format for small camcorders, popular in the 1990s. Karen films her own trip with one, and the house still has its wall-mounted Hi 8 cameras.
“Oh lord” she exclaims when she sees the Hi 8 in Karen’s hands.
Looking good in photographs or on film.
I’m not at all photogenic.”
Of a shot: taken from above, looking down on the people.
Karen sets the camera down on a file cabinet but leaves it on, thus providing a high-angle view of the office and both women.
A made-up word here: different, of another kind.
And so with that, what was supposed to have been a business meeting instantly becomes something else, something otherly, a sisterly get together where one woman reads in another signs of strain invisible to a man and sometimes even a mother.
A plant with small daisy-like flowers, used to make a calming herbal tea.
“I don’t know,” Karen finally says as she stirs her chamomile tea.
The quality of being like a ghost; here, signs of a haunting.
Truth be told, I hoped to find some kind of ghostliness.
A stock explanation in American horror films and novels, used for example in Poltergeist and Stephen King's Pet Sematary: a house is haunted because it stands on a Native American grave site. Rosenbaum checks it and finds nothing.
I went ahead and checked if the house was built on an old Indian burial ground.”
Wet and soft, like a marsh or swamp.
It’s all too marshy with winter rains and the James River nearby.
The large river of Virginia that runs past Richmond and Jamestown to Chesapeake Bay. Rosenbaum says the ground near the house is too marshy for a cemetery.
It’s all too marshy with winter rains and the James River nearby.
A reference to the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693 in Massachusetts. In fact the Salem victims were hanged, not burned; Rosenbaum repeats the popular image.
So I looked for some murder or witch burning—though I knew, of course, that had all been Massachusetts folk.
Well-known Virginia ghost stories. Evelyn Byrd (1707–1737), daughter of William Byrd II, is said to haunt Westover Plantation on the James River. Lady Ann Skipwith is the ghost of Williamsburg's Wythe House area, said to walk in one shoe. These tales fill L. B. Taylor's books (fn 394).
“Oh my yes. The curse tree, the ghost of Miss Evelyn Byrd, Lady Ann Skipwith, ghost alley, and lord knows a whole handful more.2% Unfortunately, the only thing distinguished about your home’s past, but I guess it’s part of everybody’s …
Jamestown (1607) was the first lasting English settlement in America, on a marshy peninsula in the James River. The Virginia Company of London (the London Company) paid for it. The colonists landed in May 1607; the book gives May 2.
… lord knows a whole handful more.2% Unfortunately, the only thing distinguished about your home’s past, but I guess it’s part of everybody’s past around here, and it’s no mystery either, would be the colony, the Jamestown Colony.”
A small first position from which one can advance; a foothold.
However having some familiarity with the bloody and painful origins of that particular toe hold in the new world reveals just how old the roots of that house really are.
A piece of land almost surrounded by water.
Thanks to The London Company, on May 2, 1607, 105 colonists were deposited on a marshy peninsula where they established what soon became known as the Jamestown Colony.
A deadly epidemic disease.
Despite pestilence, starvation, and frequent massacres carried out by native Indians, John Smith effectively held the village together until an injury forced him to return to England.
English soldier and leader of the Jamestown colony (1580–1631). A gunpowder injury forced him back to England in 1609.
Despite pestilence, starvation, and frequent massacres carried out by native Indians, John Smith effectively held the village together until an injury forced him to return to England.
Coming next; following.
The ensuing winter of 1609-1610 almost killed everyone and had it not been for 394See L.
Real works. L. B. Taylor Jr. wrote a long series of books on Virginia ghosts. Sir Ernest Bennett's Apparitions and Haunted Houses (1939) collected witness reports. Rupert T. Gould was a British naval officer and writer on mysteries (Oddities, 1928). Walter Franklin Prince was an American psychical researcher, and Suzy Smith wrote popular books on the paranormal.
Zampanò lists them as if the house could be a normal haunted house, although Karen says she never saw a ghost.
B. Taylor, Jr.’s The Ghosts of Virginia (Progress Printing Co., Inc., 1993) international look at hauntings consider E.
A ghost, or a ghost-like image of a person.
Bennett’s Apparitions & Haunted Houses: A Survey of Evidence (London: Faber & Faber, 1939); Commander R.
The study of ghosts, telepathy and other claimed paranormal events.
Prince’s The Psychic in the House (Boston: Boston Society for Psychical Research, 1926); and Suzy Smith’s Haunted Houses for the Million (Bell Publishing Co., 409 For a more
During this winter most of the Jamestown colonists died of hunger and disease; of about 500 people, some 60 were left alive. The invented journal in this chapter is set in this winter.
It seems that prior to Warr’s arrival, during “the starving time” of the winter of 1610, three men had left the Jamestown Colony in search of game.
Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (1577–1618), governor of Virginia. He arrived with supplies in June 1610, just as the survivors were leaving. The state of Delaware takes its name from him.
Lord De la Warr’s timely arrival with supplies those still living would have fled.395 With the help of John Rolfe’s tobacco industry, the marriage of Pocahontas, and the naming of Jamestown as the Virginia capital, the colony survived.
John Rolfe started tobacco growing in Virginia, which saved the colony's economy. In 1614 he married Pocahontas, daughter of the Powhatan chief, which brought a few years of peace.
Lord De la Warr’s timely arrival with supplies those still living would have fled.395 With the help of John Rolfe’s tobacco industry, the marriage of Pocahontas, and the naming of Jamestown as the Virginia capital, the colony survived.
In 1676 the settler Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt against Governor William Berkeley, and his men burned Jamestown. In 1699 the capital moved to Williamsburg, and Jamestown slowly disappeared. Archaeologists began digging at the site in 1934.
However Nathaniel Bacon’s fierce battle with the tidewater aristocrat Sir William Berkeley soon left the village in flames.
Of the low coastal land of eastern Virginia, where rivers rise and fall with the tide; its old rich families.
However Nathaniel Bacon’s fierce battle with the tidewater aristocrat Sir William Berkeley soon left the village in flames.
A member of the noble or ruling upper class.
However Nathaniel Bacon’s fierce battle with the tidewater aristocrat Sir William Berkeley soon left the village in flames.
An invented official and an invented report. His quote says the marsh has swallowed the colony's traces, an image of the ground consuming the past.
As Park Warden Davis Manatok reported, “The marsh land has obscured if not completely consumed the monuments of the colony.”3% All of which is relevant only because of a strange set of pages currently held at the Lacuna Rare …
An invented library and college. A “lacuna” is a gap or a missing part in a text, a fitting name for a library in this book.
… Davis Manatok reported, “The marsh land has obscured if not completely consumed the monuments of the colony.”3% All of which is relevant only because of a strange set of pages currently held at the Lacuna Rare Books Library at Horenew College in South Carolina.
An invented bookshop and owner, quoted in a “personal interview”. The journal survived among crates of cheap books from an estate.
Supposedly the journal in question first turned up at The Wishart Bookstore in Boston.
Rubbish; worthless things.
“Most of it was dreck” said owner Laurence Tack.
Two American writers of best-selling popular novels, full of sex, money and crime. Tack names them as the “dreck” that hid the old journal.
“Old paperbacks, second rate volumes of Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, and the like.
Working together in secret, usually to do harm.
For the most part, the entries concern the quest for game, the severe weather and the inevitable understanding that cold and hunger were fast colluding into the singular sensation of death: 18 Janiuere, 1610 We fearch?**for deere or other Game and alwayes there is nothing.
Old spellings of “deer”, “always” and “have”.
… most part, the entries concern the quest for game, the severe weather and the inevitable understanding that cold and hunger were fast colluding into the singular sensation of death: 18 Janiuere, 1610 We fearch?**for deere or other Game and alwayes there is nothing.
An invented 17th-century source, with an odd quote in old spelling: De la Warr gave dances (“Balls”) and had a “strange Veering Spirit”. The name also belongs to a real modern actor, Rupert Everett.
395Consider the interesting mention in Rupert L. Everett's Gallantrie and Hardship in the Newfoundland (London: Samson & Sons Publishing Company, Inc., 1673), where a colonist remarked how “Warr in Fray sure was all tabled Balls, full with much Delight and of course …
Legally forced to leave the place one rents.
Good thing too, fince I’m also being evicted from my apartment for failure to pay.
Great damage and disorder.
… that place, or at the very least find some piece of reality that’s at the root of that place, which might in turn—I hope; I do, do hope—help me addrefs some of the awful havoc always tearing through me.
A small case, often holding a picture, worn on a chain around the neck.
My Vifa was canceled a month ago but I had some good fortune selling my mother’s locket (though I kept the gold necklace).
Characters from Johnny's Los Angeles life, met in earlier footnotes: Thumper from the tattoo shop, his friend Lude, Kyrie and her jealous partner “Gdansk Man”, and Flaze, a neighbour. Here Johnny says goodbye to them.
Man, I muft look bad becaufe the woman who replaced me almoft screamed when she saw me walk through the door. Thumper wafn’t around but my boff promifed to give her the envelope I handed him.
An invented diary of three hunters from Jamestown, written in 17th-century spelling (“haue”, “Dreames”, the long s that looks like f). They camp in a strange cold place, hear no life, and dream of bones and blood. The last entry is one line about stairs.
Footnote 400 cites it as the invented Jamestown Colony Papers of a “National Heritage Society”.
Were it not for the ftorm we would have abandoned it. Verm was plagued by many bad Dreames last night.
Old printing used a long form of the letter s (ſ) inside words. It looks almost like an f, so “search” can read as “fearch”. Johnny does not know this, and from here his own footnote starts to swap f for s (“Funset”, “Fhop”).
The Editors explain it and name John Bell, a London publisher who dropped the long s in his British Theatre series. Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1786 that fine printing now rejected it.
In 1786, Benjamin Franklin indirectly approved of the decision when he wrote that “the Round s begins to be the Mode and in nice printing the Long S is rejected entirely.”
Footnote 398 runs from p. 410 to p. 413 under the diary. Johnny is evicted, sells the locket, visits the shop and Lude, and packs to drive to Virginia. His letters s turn into f, the same “error” as the 1610 diary.
A person who judges the value of a thing, for example jewellery.
I found an appraifer, approached some ftores, never budged from my afking price.
To formally accuse a person of a crime.
… me with guilt, voices converging from behind thofe gloomy curtains of afternoon light, almoft as if drawn out of the dull earth itfelf, still bitter with winter, and gathering together there to accufe me, indict me for abandoning the book, for selling that stupid fucking locket, for running away now like a goddamn coward.
Spoiled; damaged the look of.
And though no clouds or kites marred a sun as yellow as corn, some invifible punifhment still hung above me there like a foul rain, caufing even more rage to dump abruptly into my syftem, though where this reaction came from …
A place a person visits often, such as a favourite bar.
Eventually a bouncer at one of his haunts told me he'd been tagged bad enough to land him in the hofpital.
Hit hard; beaten.
Eventually a bouncer at one of his haunts told me he'd been tagged bad enough to land him in the hofpital.
Thin loose cloth used for bandages.
Even his normally large nofe was bigger than ufual, stuffed now with pounds of gauze.
The smallest blood vessels in the body.
His jaw was a deep purple and all over his face capillaries had been ruthlessly shattered.
The shinbone, the large bone in the front of the lower leg.
He treated his broken ribs and the tube draining his fractured tibia with newfound refpect: “My summer bonus,” he smiled, although the effort was somewhat warped.
A strip of cafés and shops on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Lude drinks margaritas there before Gdansk Man attacks him. Johnny types it as “Funset” because of the f-for-s swap.
The way Lude told it, he'd been delighting in the comforts of an idle hour fpent on Funset Plaza quaffing his thirft with several falty margaritas when who should stroll by but Gdansk Man.
Drinking in large mouthfuls, with pleasure.
The way Lude told it, he'd been delighting in the comforts of an idle hour fpent on Funset Plaza quaffing his thirft with several falty margaritas when who should stroll by but Gdansk Man.
Here: angry and upset (standard spelling “tweaked”).
He was still tweeked about the time Lude popped him in the nuts but he was even more fueled by something elfe.
Hit him in the testicles.
He was still tweeked about the time Lude popped him in the nuts but he was even more fueled by something elfe.
Hid and waited to attack a person.
Anyway, bright enough not to make a public scene, that monfter known as Gdansk Man crept back to the parking lot and lay in wait for Lude.
Walked slowly and in a relaxed way.
Eventually Lude fucked down the laft drop of his drink, paid his bill and ambled away from Funset, back there, towards his mode of tranfportation, right past Gdansk Man.
Las Vegas is the Nevada gambling city. “Red” is a bet on red numbers in roulette, the whole sum on one colour.
Then you and I are going straight to Vegas to lofe it all on red.”
An extra benefit that comes with a situation.
“Another perk,” he whifpered to me with a fading leer.
An unpleasant, sly smile.
“Another perk,” he whifpered to me with a fading leer.
Approached and spoke to a person in a bold or aggressive way.
Old spellings of “likewise”, “Lord”, “dreams” and “shelter”.
Likewife we muft also believe or elfe in the name of the Lorde take charge of the Knowledge that we are all dead men.
Jacaranda trees cover Los Angeles streets in purple flowers in late spring. Culver City is a city inside the Los Angeles area, where Johnny rents a storage unit for the old black trunk.
Everywhere the jacarandas are bloffoming.
Dollars.
… finifh this note, I plan to load the book and everything elfe into that old black trunk and drag it down to a ftorage unit I rented in Culver city for a couple hundred bucks.
In Franklin's old sense: fine, careful, exact.
In 1786, Benjamin Franklin indirectly approved of the decision when he wrote that “the Round s begins to be the Mode and in nice printing the Long S is rejected entirely.”
A small locked room that one rents to keep belongings in.
Orders a thing to be burned.
Warr, however, does refer to the journal as a clear example of death’s madness and in a separate letter consigns the delicate relic to the flames.
An object that survives from the past.
Warr, however, does refer to the journal as a clear example of death’s madness and in a separate letter consigns the delicate relic to the flames.
A person who studies claimed paranormal events, such as telepathy or ghosts.
In 1995, parapsychologist Lucinda S.
An invented critic with two theories. First the house is like the blind spot of the eye; then it is “the omphalos”, the navel or centre, of everything. Her invented articles have joke titles: “Oh Say Can You See” (the first line of the US national anthem) and “The Navy Navel”, in invented magazines.
In 1995, parapsychologist Lucinda S. Hausmaninger claimed that Navidson’s place was analogous to the blind spot created by the optic nerve in the retina: “It is a place of processing, of sense-making, of seeing.”4°2 However, she soon altered this supposition, …
The nerve that carries signals from the eye to the brain. Where it leaves the retina, the eye has a blind spot.
Hausmaninger claimed that Navidson’s place was analogous to the blind spot created by the optic nerve in the retina: “It is a place of processing, of sense-making, of seeing.”4°2 However, she soon altered this supposition, describing it as “the omphalos of all we are.”403 Tt did not matter that the …
An idea that one believes without proof; an assumption.
Hausmaninger claimed that Navidson’s place was analogous to the blind spot created by the optic nerve in the retina: “It is a place of processing, of sense-making, of seeing.”4°2 However, she soon altered this supposition, describing it as “the omphalos of all we are.”403 Tt did not matter that the house existed in Virginia, only that it existed in one place: “One place, one (eventual) meaning.”4°4 Of course recent …
“Navel”: the centre of the world. The Greeks put one at Delphi.
… was analogous to the blind spot created by the optic nerve in the retina: “It is a place of processing, of sense-making, of seeing.”4°2 However, she soon altered this supposition, describing it as “the omphalos of all we are.”403 Tt did not matter that the house existed in Virginia, only that it existed in one place: “One place, one (eventual) meaning.”4°4 Of course recent discoveries shatter both of Hausmaninger’s …
Searching deeply into a subject.
… not matter that the house existed in Virginia, only that it existed in one place: “One place, one (eventual) meaning.”4°4 Of course recent discoveries shatter both of Hausmaninger’s theories.4°5 As everyone knows, instead of delving into the question of location or the history of the Jamestown Colony, The Navidson Record focuses on Alicia Rosenbaum in her dingy little office talking to Karen about her troubles.
Friendly talk and contact between people.
It may very well be the best response of all: tea, comfort, and social intercourse.
A strong door lock with a bolt that a key moves.
There is the brief click of teeth on pins in the heart of the dead bolt and then the door swings open.
The entrance hall of a house.
In the foyer, we can see almost six months of mail strewn on the floor, surrounded by wisps of dust.
Thin, light bits, for example of dust, hair or smoke.
In the foyer, we can see almost six months of mail strewn on the floor, surrounded by wisps of dust.
The area around a place.
Many feel it belongs somewhere in the environs of Richmond.
Lawlor, a University of Virginia professor, is invented. ZYZZYVA is a real San Francisco literary magazine. His landmarks are real places near Jamestown: Richmond, Colonial Williamsburg, Lake Powell and Bacon's Castle. So the footnote tries to place the house on a map.
However Ray X. Lawlor, English professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, places Ash Tree Lane “closer to California Crossroads.
Retired but keeping an honorary title, as in “professor emeritus”.
Lawlor, English professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, places Ash Tree Lane “closer to California Crossroads.
The Editors send the reader to the book's appendix about “recent discoveries”. It is a cross-reference inside the novel.
405See Appendix C.
Short for ibidem, “in the same place”: the same source as the last note.
Karen moves back into the house, writes a journal, and starts to hear something.
An abrupt cut between two shots that jumps forward in time.
No way —”—she backs out of the house and into a jarring jump cut which returns us again to the front of the house, this time without Alicia Rosenbaum, evening now replaced by beady sunlight.
Small and bright, like beads.
No way —”—she backs out of the house and into a jarring jump cut which returns us again to the front of the house, this time without Alicia Rosenbaum, evening now replaced by beady sunlight.
A B movie is a cheap genre film. In cheap horror films the heroine explores the dark house at night; Karen goes in the daylight instead.
Karen has avoided the B-movie cliché of choosing evening as the time to explore a dangerous house.
A story with exaggerated feeling and obvious effects.
Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night.
Thomas Edison (1847–1931), the American inventor of the practical electric light bulb. Karen thanks him when the lights come on.
This time a flood of electric light indicates all is well with the power company. “Thank you Edison,” Karen murmurs, sunshine and electricity steeling her resolve.
Making one's resolve strong and firm.
“Thank you Edison,” Karen murmurs, sunshine and electricity steeling her resolve.
Exactly level with the next surface, with no gap.
They are flush with the walls.
Of hell; terrible.
Still, there is no infernal corridor.
A decorative strip of wood along a wall or door frame.
There is only a closet barely a foot and a half deep with white walls, a strip of molding, and all of it slashed from ceiling to floor with daylight streaming in through the windows behind her.
A small space set back into a wall of a room.
Reston visits her periodically, and each time he comes they go over every alcove and corner looking for some sign of Navidson.
Loud bursts of sound, like bells ringing.
… mounted Hi 8s and kept them resupplied with fresh tapes, there is ample footage of her hard at work at this task, filling page after page, just as she sometimes fills the house with peals of laughter or now and then the broken notes of a cry.
An invented professor and book, with an invented introduction by Patricia B. Nesselroade. AMACOM is the real book imprint of the American Management Association. She says Karen's journal matters as a process, not for its words.
Professor Cora Minehart M.S., Ph.D.
Wrapped up and hidden inside.
actual words are irrelevant: “process outweighs product.”406 Others, however, have gone to great lengths to suggest a miraculous and secret history enfolded within those pages.4°?7 Katherine Dunn is rumoured to have invented her own version of Karen’s journal.
Katherine Dunn (1945–2016) was an American novelist, best known for Geek Love (1989). The rumour that she wrote her own version of Karen's journal is part of the fiction.
actual words are irrelevant: “process outweighs product.”406 Others, however, have gone to great lengths to suggest a miraculous and secret history enfolded within those pages.4°?7 Katherine Dunn is rumoured to have invented her own version of Karen’s journal.
A quiet song to make a child sleep.
We often find her singing quietly to herself, anything from popular tunes, old Slavic lullabies, to a song about how many ways her life has changed and how she would like to get her feet back on the ground.
Ochs and his book on Karen's smile are invented; the publisher (Wesleyan University Press) is real. Glamour and Vogue are real fashion magazines that Karen modelled for. Ochs says the house broke her fixed model smile, and a freer one came back.
There is no question it has changed. Lester T. Ochs has traced its evolving shape from Karen’s days as a cover girl, through the months spent living at the house, the prolonged separation in New York, to her eventual return to the house: Whether …
In a way that seems shy but is meant to attract.
… in New York, to her eventual return to the house: Whether on the cover of Glamour or Vogue, Karen never failed to form her lips into those faultlessly symmetrical curves, parted just enough to coyly remark on her barely hidden teeth, so perfectly poised between shadow and light, always guaranteed to spark fantasies of further interiority.
Inner life; the hidden thoughts and feelings of a person.
… to form her lips into those faultlessly symmetrical curves, parted just enough to coyly remark on her barely hidden teeth, so perfectly poised between shadow and light, always guaranteed to spark fantasies of further interiority.
Took apart the structure of a thing to show how it works; here, broke down.
It deconstructed her smile until by the time they had escaped she had no smile at all.
Although.
Then further on: By the time she returned to Virginia, some expression of joy and relief, albeit rare, was also returning.
Natural; not posed or artificial.
The big difference though was that now her smile was completely unmannered.
In harmony, like notes that sound well together.
The interplay was harmonic, enacting a ceaseless dance of comment and compliment, revealing or entirely concealing her teeth, one smile often containing a hundred.
Invented books from real publishers (Hyperion; University of Oklahoma Press). They claim a secret history in Karen's journal, which the film never shows.
407See Darren Meen’s Gathered God (New York: Hyperion, 1995) and Lynn Rembold’s Stations of Eleven (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996).
The song “about how many ways her life has changed” and getting her feet back on the ground is the Beatles' “Help!” (1965). Zampanò describes it but does not name it.
Here: with no visible cause.
Her reactions seem entirely unmotivated until the following morning when she offers a startling revelation.
Closed cases that hold film for a camera.
… on the afternoon of May 10", she finds in the children’s bedroom, bom out of nowhere, Navidson's clothes, remnants of his pack and sleeping bag, and scattered across the floor, from corner to comer, cartridges of film, boxes of 16mm, and couly a dozen video tapes.
A small power unit that runs a device from a wall socket.
Then she locates an AC adapter, plugs in a Hi 8 and begins rewinding one of the newly discovered tapes.
A small video camera with a built-in recorder.
The angle from the room mounted camcorder does not provide a view of her Hi 8 screen.
Not able to change.
The shot lasts an uncomfortable fifteen seconds, until abruptly that immutable surface disappears.
Very dark, black like ink.
In less than a blink, the white wall along with the drawings secured with yellowing scotch tape vanishes into an inky black.
A film gauge used for documentaries and news. Navidson shot film on it; Karen finds boxes of it with his things.