When mathematical propositions refer to reality they are not certain; when they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
— Albert Einstein
Up until now The Navidson Record has focused principally on the effects the house has had on others: how Holloway became murderous and suicidal, Tom drank himself into oblivion, Reston lost his mobility, Sheriff Axnard went into a state of denial, Karen fled with the children, and Navidson grew increasingly more isolated and obsessed. No consideration, however, has been given to the house as it relates purely to itself.
Examined then from as objective a point of view as possible the house offers these incontrovertible facts:
1.0 No light. I, iv-xiii*
2.0 No humidity. I. V-XIII
3.0 No air movement (i.e. breezes, drafts etc). I, v-xm
4.0 Temperature remains at 32° F ± 8 degrees. ix
5.0 No sounds. iv-xiii
5.1 Except for a dull roar which arises v, vii, ix- xm
intermittently, sometimes seeming far off, sometimes sounding close at hand.
6.0 Compasses do not function there. vii
6.1 Nor do altimeters. vii
6.2 Radios have a limited range. vii-xid
7.0 Walls are uniformly black with a slightly I, iv-xiii
'ashen' hue.
8.0 There are no windows, moldings, or other IX
decorative elements. (See 7.0)
9.0 Size and depth vary enormously. I, iv-vii, ix-xm
9.1 The entire place can instantly and without I, iv-vii, IX-XIII apparent difficulty change its geometry.
9.2 Some have suggested the dull roar or vn 'growl' is caused by these metamorphoses. (See 5.1)
9.3 No end has been found there. v-xm
10.0 The place will purge itself of all things, ix-xin including any item left behind.
10.1 No object has ever been found there. i, iv-vn, ix-xm
10.2 There is no dust. xi
11.0 At least three people have died inside. x, xm
11.1 Jed Leeder, Holloway Roberts and Tom Navidson.
11.2 Only one body was recovered. Xlii (See 10.0)
See Chapter.
Where objective data is concerned, this was all Navidson had to work with. Once he left the house, however, he began to consider new evidence: namely the collected wall samples.
In lush colour, Navidson captures those time-honored representations of science: test tubes bubbling with boric acid, reams of computer paper bearing the black-ink weight of analysis, electron microscopes resurrecting universes out of dust, and mass-spectrometers with retractable Faradays and stationary Balzers humming in some dim approximation of life.
In all these images there is a wonderful sense of security. The labs are clean, well-lit, and ordered. Computers seem to print with a purpose. Various instruments promise answers, even guarantees. Still in order to make sure all this apparatus does not come across as too sterile, Navidson also includes shots of the life-support system: a Krups coffee maker hissing and bubbling, an Oasis poster taped to the vending machine, Homer Simpson on the lounge TV saying something to his brother Herbert.
As a favor to Reston, petrologist Mel O'Geery, up at the Princeton geology department, has agreed to donate his spare time and oversee the examination of all the wall samples. Prone toward bird like gestures, he is a slight man who takes great delight in speaking very quickly. For nearly four months, he has analyzed every piece of matter, all the way from A (taken a few feet into the first hallway) to XXXX (taken by Navidson when he found himself alone at the bottom of the Spiral Staircase). It is not an
inexpensive undertaking, and while the university has agreed to fund most of it, apparently Navidson also had to throw in a fair amount himself. [157]
Setting out all the sample bottles on a long table, Dr. O'Geery provides the camera with a summation of his findings, casually gesturing to various groupings while he sips coffee from a Garfield mug.
"What we have here is a nice banquet of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic samples, some granular, possibly gabbro and pyroxenite, some with much less grain, possibly trachite or andesite. The sedimentary group is fairly small, samples F through K, mainly limestone and marl. The metamorphic group predominates with traces of amphibolite and marble. But this group here, it's composed primarily of siderites, which is to say heavy in iron, though you also have aerolites rich in silicon and magnesium oxides."
[2 pages missing]