As Sonny Beauregard quipped: "Were it not for the fact that this is a supreme gothic tale, we'd have bought the whole thing hook-line-and-sinker." ¹⁹³

Perhaps the best argument for the authenticity of The Navidson Record does not come from film critics, university scholars, or festival panel members but rather from the I.R.S. Even a cursory glance at Will Navidson's tax statements or for that matter Karen's, Tom's or Billy Reston's, proves the impossibility of digital manipulation. [76]

They just never had enough money.

Sonny Beauregard conservatively estimates the special effects in The Navidson Record would cost a minimum of six and a half million dollars. Taking into account the total received for the Guggenheim Fellowship, the NEA Grant, everyone's credit limit on Visa, Mastercard, Amex etc., etc., not to mention savings and equity, Navidson comes up five and a half million dollars short. Beauregard again: "Considering the cost of special effects these days, it is inconceivable how Navidson could have created his house"

Strangely then, the best argument for fact is the absolute unafTordability of fiction. Thus it would appear the ghost haunting The Navidson Record, continually bashing against the door, is none other than the recurring threat of its own reality. [77]

couldn't X remember any of it in the morning?

I checked to make sure my door was locked. Returned a second later to put on the chain. I need more locks. My heart started hammering. I retreated to the corner of my room but that didn't help. Fuck, fuck, fuck—wasn't helping either. Better go to the bathroom, try some water on the face, try anything. Only 1 couldn't budge. Something was approaching. I could hear it outside. I could feel the vibrations. It was about to splinter its way through the Hall door, my door. Walker in Darkness, from whose face earth and heaven long ago fled.

Then the walls crack.

All my windows shatter.

A terrible roar.

More like a howl more like a shriek.

My eardrums strain and split.

The chain snaps.

I'm desperately trying to crawl away, but it's too late. Nothing can be done now.

That awful stench returns and with it comes a scene, filling my place, painting it all anew, but with what? And what kind of brushes are being used? What sort of paint? And why that smell?

Oh no.

How do I know this?

I cannot know this.

The floor beneath me fails into a void.

Except before I fall what's happening now only reverts to what was supposed to have happened which in the end never happened at all. The walls have remained, the glass has held and the only thing that vanished was my own horror, subsiding in that chaotic wake always left by even the most rational things.

Here then was the darker side of whim.

I tried to relax.

I tried to forget.

I imagined some world-weary travelers camped on the side of some desolate road, in some desolate land, telling a story to allay their doubts, encircle their fears with distraction, laughter and song, a collective illusion of vision spun above their portable hearth of tinder wood, their eyes gleaming with divine magic, born where perspective lines finally collude, or so they think. Except those stars are never born on such far away horizons as that. The light in fact comes from their own gathering and their own conversation, surrounding and sustaining the fire they have built and kept alive through the night, until inevitably, come morning, cold and dull, the songs are all sung, the stories lost or taken, soup eaten, embers dark. Not even the seeds of one pun are left to capriciously turn the mind aside and tropos is at the center of 'trope* and it means 'turn."

Though here's a song they might of sung:

Mad woman on another tour;

Everything she is she spits on the floor.

An old man tells me she's sicker than the rest.

God I've never been afraid like this.

Heart may still be the fire in hearth but I'm suddenly too cold to continue, and besides, there's no hearth here anyway and it's the end of June. Thursday. Almost noon. And all the buttons on my corduroy coat are gone. I don't know why. I'm sorry Hailey. ¹⁹⁷ I don't know what to do.

Eventually Jed tries again to carry Wax toward what he hopes is home. He also attempts periodically to signal Navidson on the radio though never gets a response. Regrettably very little footage exists from this part of the voyage. Battery levels are running low and there is not much desire on Jed's part to exert any energy towards memorializing what seems more and more like a trek toward his own end.

The penultimate clip finds Jed huddled next to Wax in a very small room. Wax is silent, Jed completely exhausted. It is remarkable how faced with his own death, Jed still refuses to leave his friend. He tells the camera he will go no further, even though the growl seems to be closing in around them.

In the final shot, Jed focuses the camera on the door. Something is on the other side, hammering against it, over and over again. Whatever comes for those who are never seen again has come from [78] him, and Jed can do nothing but focus the camera on the hinges as the door slowly begins to give way.

Bibliography

Architecture:

Brand, Stewart. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. New York: Viking, 1994.

Jordan, R. Furneaux. A Concise History of Western Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson Limited, 1969.

Kostof, Spiro. A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Pothorn, Herbert. Architectural Styles: An Historical Guide to World Design. New York: Facts On File Publications, 1982.

Prevsner, Nikolaus. A History of Building Types. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976.

Prost, Antoine and Gerard Vincent, eds. A History of Private Life: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.

Prussin, Labelle. African Nomadic Architecture: Space, Place, and Gender. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

Travis, Jack, ed. African American Architecture In Current Practice. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, Inc. 1991.

Watkin, David. A History of Western Architecture. 2nd ed. London: Laurence King Publishing, 1996.

Whiffen, Marcus. American Architecture Since 1780. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.

Wu, Nelson Ikon. Chinese and Indian Architecture: The City of Man, the Mountain of God, and the Realm of the Immortals. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1963.

Film:

Too numerous to list here.