Jon: It’s like there’s a, a door, in my mind. A-a-and behind it is, is the entire ocean. Before, I didn’t notice it, but now, I – I know it’s there, and I can’t forget it, and I can feel the pressure of the water on it. I – I – I can keep it closed? But sometimes, when I’m around p-people, or.. places, or.. ideas? A drop or two will push through the cracks at the edges of the door. And I’ll… know something.

Basira: What happens if you open the door?

Jon: I drown.

—”Remains to Be Seen”, The Magnus Archives.

They say that knowledge is power, that the more you know, the more power you have to take the world by storm. Yet very rarely do people speak of the price of said knowledge. What happens when you learn the wrong thing? Or when you come across bits and pieces of information into a subject that was better left buried? What happens when you see what cannot be unseen? 

They say that ignorance is bliss, and of this I have no doubt. 

I am a curious individual, like you’ve seen throught the journey of my blog, I like to touch upon topics that, while not rare, are certainly odd and often dark. There is something intriguing about the unknown, the macabre, about the things that never appear in the light of our world. My mind often travels on tangents, trying to think about the who’s, the whys and the reasons. A lot of the time, their are just that, stories. I’d say about 98 percent of time they are nothing but tales and speculations from the overactive mind of some random story teller, a fable created to either terrify or intrigue, both in most cases. Yet I find these the most entertaining of all. When you know that the tales you find are nothing but fabrications of the mind of some individual, I find it inspiring to try and understand what the person’s mind was thinking at the moment of the story’s creation. Where did he pull the creativity and experience from to show their view of a dark and twisted world? You might say that the world is twisted enough on it’s own without the help of some storyteller, and I respond with “write to me how you see the world”. 

An author like H.P. Lovecraft is the perfect example, often delving into his own fears, his own selfish and bigoted views, his own way on how he sees the world as unknowable and uncaring for the tiny specs that live within it. He was a terrible man, who lived a horrible life, buried under fear, sickness, and hate. Hate and fear which would take form in his writings as The Great Old ones who lived in the darkness regions of our minds and universe, praised by those people who he considered below himself (meaning most people excluding only the white, educated man). He serves as a perfect example of myths that are not real, yet are made realistic enough to explore what they represent and how they reflect the mind of that broken and sad man.

Yet what about that one percent? What about those very rare yet very real times when the unexplainable happens? When the dark and the twisted take some strange physical form to disrupt and break our understanding of the real world and how it functions. Of how life works in this ever changing universe we live in. What is the price of knowledge? What is the burden it carries? What does it mean to know? 

We see examples of the price of knowledge in fictional series such as The Magnus Archives, where the main character is an archivist who is thrown unknowingly into a world of dark secrets and incarnated fears. As the series goes on The Archivist’s knowledge grows, but also how much horror he goes through, all the pain, the loss. The price of knowledge eventually ends up taking more than he could ever imagine, but I won’t spoil it for you. I recommend you give the podcast a listening, it’s top quality!

We also see the price of knowledge on the book series turned movie series, A murder on the orient express, or more prominently, on one of it’s sequels, A Haunting in Venice. Where the detective isn’t able to differentiate what is real and what might be potential spirits, yet his near death experiences taunt his ever agnostic mind. 

Or perhaps we might go into the real world, away from all that is dark, spooky and ghostly and turn our gaze into the terrifying truth of reality, with examples of such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who’s knowledge lead to the creation of a weapon that would haunt his conciouness for the rest of his life. What about those reporters who find out one too many secrets? What have happened to most of them? Knowledge is power, and to know is to play with powers that in truth, we barely understand. Because you fear what they will do to you for knowing, while they fear what you will do with that knowledge you have. (Does Jeffrey Epstein ring any bells? A man who knew too much)

The Oxford dictionary defines fear as “an emotional state evoked by threat of danger.” and people say that the greatest fear we carry is fear of the unknowable. Yet fear and knowledge often seems to be held by the hand. For what is more terrifying? Some fantastical threat that we might not know, who might not be real? We prepare for the worse, yet the worse often ends up being nothing. Or the knowledge of what is truly out there, who’s consequences or regret we may already know, yet because of our limited human nature we are often powerless to stop it.

I do not live my life in fear. I am simply a man who knows. And perhaps that is enough to make the heart, at times tremble. 

Thank you for reading