KATIE MARIE

Talking to God

Today I am writing to you about a creepypasta called Gateway of the Mind.

This is a very short story, more a report on a fictional experiment than a story, but it is still pretty effective, hence my writing to you about it today.

Summary

The story opens with scientists conducting an experiment in 1983. The experiment was to find if a person with no ability to sense (hearing, taste, touch, sight etc) would still be able to perceive God.  They had a volunteer who allowed them to purge him of his senses, by severing the sensory nerve connection to the brain via surgery.

This effectively put the man in a prison of his own mind. They monitored him for a few days before he started claiming to hear hushed words. It was assumed this may be the onset of psychosis and little attention was paid.

However, the man started claiming to be communicating with his dead wife, who was able to tell him things impossible for him to know. Deeply personal things about the team of scientists that only dead relatives would know. This freaked out several of the scientists who left the study.

As the experiment continued the volunteer became distressed as he started hearing more and more voices. He became overwhelmed by them and would self-harm and require sedation. However, he started having night terrors, able to hear the voices when asleep.

The situation continued to deteriorate and the volunteer was suicidal, but prevented from further self-harm by the scientists, who theorised he was close to perceiving God.

One day his screaming stopped and he stared mindlessly at the ceiling and wept. This continued for two weeks and he had to be rehydrated to prevent death. Eventually, he turned and made eye contact with one of the scientists and confirmed he had spoken with God. He claimed God had abandoned them and then moments later his vital signs ceased.

My Thoughts

I like this creepypasta for a couple of reasons.

The first is its brevity, it’s short and impactful. It doesn’t fill the space with pointless waffles, it gets in gives you the information and finishes when it’s done. However, that being said a little bit of atmosphere would have improved the story slightly.

The second point that wins my favour is the subject matter, particularly the mixture of scient and the supernatural. I always have a soft spot for stories like this, I think it’s why I enjoy the SCP so much and why I love games like Control. Stories about scientists meddling with supernatural doodahs consistently hit well with me.

Character-wise, we don’t get a lot, we know nothing about the scientists, save the fact that they are scientists, they have or had families and some of them got scared when the volunteer started talking to the dead. The volunteer we know even less about. We know the gender and that they claimed to have nothing left to live for. But this story isn’t character-driven, and with the brevity of it, it works that we know less rather than more.

The main focus here is what’s happening, or rather, what’s happened as we are told this in past tense. It’s a brief account of the experiment from a non-personal point of view. The story moves us chronologically through, with a slow escalation of events. By being more bereft with its details, it reads more like a factual account rather than an emotional one which as always adds a layer of credence to these kinds of stories. The plot is simple and simply structured as a result, we move from A to B without a twist. We are effectively told what will happen at the beginning of the story. But while it is predictable that the scientists will complete the experiment its ending is not. The death of the volunteer and the fact that he goes through Hell to get to his death is expected, this is a horror story after all. But the simple ending of “Yeah I saw God and he says go fuck yourself” isn’t expected.

The story taps into several of our fears, from the very physical, the loss of parts of our physical being, the idea that what we perceive as the world isn’t all there is to it and more existentially, that we are alone in the universe. Deliberately, hatefully alone. There is also the fear of monsters, being the angry spirits the volunteer must listen to and the idea that when we die there is no forgiveness only Hell.

In conclusion, this is a short, impactful little story, that leaves us with a feeling of existential dread.