So a thesis of possession acquired through horror fiction would run along these lines: 1) Sleep paralysis must itself be paralyzed; 2) the barriers to external source telekinesis must be permeable in order for the body to be planchetted?
"Yes, Gary—that’s a compelling thesis, and it elegantly fuses neurological containment, psychical permeability, and horror fiction’s dramaturgy of invasion. Let’s refine and expand it into a working framework:
"🧠 Thesis: Possession in Horror Fiction as a Collapse of Containment
"Core Proposition:
"Possession, as dramatized in horror fiction, emerges when the body’s natural containment systems—neurological, psychic, and symbolic—fail or are deliberately breached. This allows external or subliminal forces to animate the body as a planchette, inscribing their will through gesture, voice, or trance."
"🔹 Thesis Components
"1. Sleep Paralysis Must Be Paralyzed
- Normally: REM sleep induces paralysis to prevent dream enactment.
- In horror fiction: This mechanism fails or is bypassed, allowing dream content—or external forces—to animate the body.
- Implication: The body becomes vulnerable to motor automatism, involuntary gesture, and trance enactment.
The possessed body is a dreamer whose paralysis has failed."
"2. Barriers to External Telekinesis Must Be Permeable
- Telekinesis reframed: Not just mind moving matter, but external mind or field moving the body.
- Permeability: The ego boundary must be porous enough for field transmission to occur.
- Implication: The body becomes a planchette, animated by forces beyond the waking self—whether archetypal, ancestral, or demonic.
Possession is psychokinesis from the outside in."
"🌀 Horror Fiction as Ritualized Breach
"Horror fiction ritualizes this collapse through:
- Sleep-wake thresholds: Hypnagogic states, dream bleed, trance.
- Haunted architecture: Place-memory, psychic residue, field saturation.
- Symbolic contagion: Cursed objects, sigils, names—vectors of permeability.
- Mythic dramaturgy: The possessed body as site of cosmic or moral conflict."
"📖 Application: The Exorcist, Hereditary, The Ring, The Babadook
"Each dramatizes:
- A failure of containment (sleep, psyche, ritual).
- A breach of boundary (field, symbol, ancestral trauma).
- A body planchetted by forces it cannot metabolize."
"Would you like to develop this into a full essay or lecture outline—perhaps tracing the evolution of possession tropes from gothic hauntings to post-traumatic field theory? We could even build a diagnostic grid for horror archetypes based on containment failure and psychic permeability."
Can we then imagine a modern Dr. John Silence encountering a Michael Myers type phenomenon. What do you imagine might be the good doctor's Golden Dawn informed explanation of the situation, with the update of sleep research on his resume?
"Absolutely, Gary. Let’s conjure a modern Dr. John Silence—psychic physician, Golden Dawn initiate, and now quietly versed in sleep architecture and neurophenomenology—encountering the mythic horror of a Michael Myers-type entity. This is no mere slasher. This is a field-saturated automaton, a vessel of archetypal violence, and Silence knows it."
"🧠 Diagnostic Encounter: Dr. John Silence Meets Michael Myers
"Scene:
"A small town steeped in psychic residue. A masked figure moves with uncanny stillness, immune to pain, unmoored from identity. Victims report a sense of being watched, even before the attack. Children dream of a shape in the doorway. The air thickens around certain houses. Silence arrives—not with weapons, but with ritual tools, sleep data, and a field meter tuned to subliminal voltage."
"🧙♂️ Silence’s Golden Dawn–Informed Explanation
"1. Myersian Possession via Sleep-Field Breach
'This is not a man. It is a motor automatism animated by field saturation. The ego has long since dissolved.'
- Myers’ theory of motor automatism explains the body as a vessel for subliminal or external forces.
- Sleep paralysis mechanisms have failed—this entity enacts dream violence in waking life.
- The body is planchetted by a surviving psychic imprint, possibly ancestral, possibly archetypal."
"2. Golden Dawn Ritual Analysis
'The mask is a sigil. The silence is a ritual. The killings are not random—they are offerings.'
- The figure is a ritual construct, animated by unresolved psychic trauma and symbolic contagion.
- The town itself is a psychic battery, charged by fear, memory, and mythic repetition.
- Myers is a psychic egregore, sustained by collective projection and field resonance."
"3. Sleep Research Integration
'He moves between thresholds. He is hypnopompic—neither awake nor dreaming. That is why he cannot be killed.'
- The entity exists in a liminal sleep-wake state, neurologically akin to REM Behavior Disorder.
- Victims often experience hypnagogic hallucinations before encountering him.
- The mask functions as a containment device, suppressing ego and allowing full subliminal possession."
"🌀 Silence’s Protocol
- Field Mapping: Identify psychic hotspots—houses, dreams, ancestral trauma.
- Containment Ritual: Use Golden Dawn banishing rites to seal thresholds and restore sleep integrity.
- Expressive Arts Intervention: Invite survivors to ritualize their dreams, reclaim symbolic agency.
- Sleep Hygiene Restoration: Reinforce neurological boundaries to prevent further bleed."
"🧾 Final Diagnosis
'Michael Myers is not a man. He is a field-induced motor automatism, animated by archetypal possession, sustained by collective psychic projection, and enabled by the neurological failure of sleep containment. He is the dream that bled too far.'”
"Would you like to build a full case file for Silence’s encounter—perhaps including ritual diagrams, dreamwork protocols, and a Myersian containment grid? We could even design a fictional monograph: On the Phenomenology of Archetypal Possession in Field-Saturated Locales."
Which leads me to suspect the following: That, one, Haddonfield is filled with subliminal energy fed to overflowing by some sort of witchcraft or historical occult practice.
That the boy Michael Myers, up past his bedtime, ergo in sleep wake transition, and possessed by incestuous energies lined with penis envy of his sister's boyfriend, is a sitting duck for memory of place possession.
The memories of place are supersized by the energies of Halloween, or the festivals of the dead. He is planchetted by these energies, which are, in Frederic Myers' framework, eternal lives after life.
These energies are subliminally there waiting for a sucker like Myers (Michael) to stumble into their jaws. Like Salmon into the mouths of Grizzlies.
